Let's talk house rules for Third Edition! That Skype game I was talking about a while back is starting to come to fruition, so I've started compiling a list of worthy rules hacks to smooth over the portions of the system that go moderately braindead. So far, I've got:
Character Creation:
Instead of the normal 15 Bonus Points, you get 65 experience points that you spend at the normal rate given in the advancement table. This is mostly to address the ability to 'win' character creation that people have gone on at lengths about before. This doesn't completely neutralize potential differences, but I'm not about to break down what all the individual basic dot allocations amount to in terms of experience. This is the most 'solution' for the least amount of work.
Sorcery:
Custom Sorcery initiations will be liberally used by NPC's. Most notably, the Enlightenment of the Imperfect Lotus initiation that lets you get Martial Arts charms as Sorcery spells so that I can have my mortal kung fu mystics.
In addition, I grabbed an idea from elsewhere on the net for allowing for completing Workings quickly by claiming negative Means for the reduced intervals. So, currently I have it at -1 Means for intervals of three days, -3 Means gives rolls daily, and -5 Means gives you rolls hourly. Yes, this means that at hourly intervals you must have other Means in order to get any rolls at all. I'm actually considering moving it to -2/4/6 Means given how incredibly good the time savings can be. That said, while this is powerful, I think it's worth the risk because it also enables certain uses for Workings which were kind of awkward before (specifically, if any of you have read The Black Company series, things like Shifter's fog bank that he whipped up on short notice in... I think it was Shadow Games?).
Combat:
GMs are encouraged to thwap players for trying to game the initiative system by feeding off crashed foes, so I figured I'd set something down in writing in advance to see if that provides all the disincentive I need. Withering attacks launched at a crashed target only award half the normal amount of initiative (rounded down) to the attacker. Note that this only applies if the target is crashed to begin with, you still get the full amount of initiative on the attack that actually crashes them. If I need to go further, options like 'consecutive attacks against crashed targets give no initiative' can come in.
Martial Arts:
Separate Martial Arts Abilities (i.e. Martial Arts [Crane Style], Martial Arts [Tiger Style], etc.) are gone. You have one Martial Arts skill, and before learning Charms of a style you must purchase a three-dot initiation merit. This gives a little bit of a discount on the XP surcharge for someone picking up one Martial Art, but it gives a big break to people whose character concepts involve mastering several ('I want to learn all the Dragon Styles', and so on).
Weapon Tags:
The Smashing tag is really damn good. I'm trying out a bit of a nerf where rather than having the knockdown/back be automatic, the target rolls (sta + res) verses the attacker's strength in order to resist the displacement.
All that, plus a few miscellaneous charm adjustments (Fate-Shifting Solar Arete can only apply to one interval of an extended roll, and so on) seems like it covers most of the bases. I'm leaving Craft alone for now, since all my players are new to exalted, and none of them have expressed an interest in craft. I figure we'll play it as is out of the box if it comes up and if we end up hating it there's a bunch of rewrites around we can use.
Are you guys using any cool 3E house rules not on this list? Are any of these in danger of breaking something non-obvious?
