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So, in the spirit of turning Earthdawn on its ear with 4e, I thought it might be cool to hear what sort of crazy house rules people have been using over the years.

I've got a few doozies that will probably make people cry out in indignation. Most of them result in a major power shift towards the players.

1: Strain Pool: Characters get a pool of points equal to Toughness that they can spend as strain. It refreshes after every encounter. I put this in place because my players were very risk averse and often refused to use any talents that required strain.

2: Karma: Total Karma equals Karma Ritual x racial modifier. Karma refreshes to full amount once per day (following your Karma ritual, of course) and refreshes by Karma Ritual rank after each encounter. You can spend Karma on ANY talent (spending a number of points up to the talent rank).

3: Pattern Strength: This one was the BIG change. I wanted to have something that emphasized the inherent power of a character's True Pattern, so this is what I came up with. I always hated the fact that the fluff makes such a big deal about your True Pattern, but it never seemed to be as big of a deal as it should be mechanically. This one involves a lot of crazy stuff, so I'll just list the bullet points:

-Pattern Strength may not exceed circle x 3
-You gain +1 Pattern Strength every time you advance a circle
-Pattern Strength ranks can be purchased for 500 Legend Points
-For every rank of Pattern Strength, you may add 1 Talent Option to any Talent OR attach 1 thread to an item to gain a bonus
-No Talent may have more than 2 Talent Options

Talent Options (these abilities apply every time you use the talent):
1: 2nd Chance- Reroll lowest die result
2: Double Down- Double highest die result
3: Exertion- Add a point of Strain to the test result until the test is successful
4: Focus- Ignore situational penalties (environment, wound effects, etc)
5: Expert: Treat success level as one level higher (a Good success becomes Excellent, Excellent becomes Extraordinary, etc)
6: Hardy: Reduce Strain requirement by 1
7: Lucky: Roll 1d4 on every test, but only apply a result of 4 (4 results are re-rolled as normal, but only a result of 4 is applied to the test)
8: Playing the Odds: Roll any combination of dice equal to the maximum dice roll for the Talent (if you roll 2d8 for a Talent test, you may instead roll any combination of dice that add up to a maximum value of 16 [4d4; 2d6+1d4; etc]

Obviously, some of the Talent Options are kind of nuts. I keep meaning to add more, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Also haven't made all the item bonuses that you can purchase with Pattern Ranks.

Anyway, this was what we threw together after a few particularly stale adventures to spice things up. It certainly got my group reenergized, but I shudder to think what would happen to some of these houserules if they escaped the "closed environment" of my group!

Oh, I also totally broke apart discipline progression and essentially made every talent function like a Talent Option at each discipline level (journeyman, warden, etc). Can't remember why I did this, honestly. I think it was because we had to custom build a discipline for a player that wanted to play an assassin from Marac and that was the easiest way to do it. After he had that advantage, I pretty much had to let everyone else do the same for their characters. It'll create balance headaches, but it sure made for some fun character building. As if it wasn't already clear, I don't tend to stand on ceremony when it comes to rules.

So if any new 4e previews strike you as worrisome, just take a moment and be thankful that I'm not one of the people throwing out ideas at the FASA Games design table!

I have a whole blogged page about my method. It's a bit out piecemeal, but my players love the way they can have an affect on their environment.

Hah! Great post! oh, wait, you are serious . . . Ahhhh [runs fleeing].

I tried a Strain Pool but called it Tolerance. I think I used the Toughness Step and it refreshed everyday (not every battle). It didn't fit my group, they've no problems using Strain. I did go through an eliminate Strain for certain Talents, such as Detect Trap, Search, and Tracking.

There was an obscure optional rule in one of the editions that gave Obsidimen a +1 to their Mystic Armor as well. I use that old rule.

First Edition Discipline Restrictions. I can't let go for some reason.

Also from First Edition, the Windling's Strength Maximum.

T'skrang start with one rank in the Swim Skill. As long as they are River T'skrang of course.

As I was waiting for ED3 to be translated to German and always thougt that Character advancement and diversity was to low I came up with my own ED3 based on ED1:
For every discipline I put 3 talents in every circle after the first. So threat waving went from circle 4 to c 3, both of the 5th circle talents went to c 4, the (in my opinion) less powerfull talent from c 7 went to c 6 (which was now c 5) and so on. A player had only to choose one of these talents for circle advancement. So he or she could decide to advance fast in circles or to learn as many talents as possible.

Don't know if this is crazy enough for your definition. We have a lot of other house rules but most of them a minor ones. Never had a problem with tweaking rules when I didn't like them, thought they were unlogic or when they stood in the way of having more fun.

I like the Strain Pool idea! My groups never thought of using something similar, I might suggest it.

For my part, I'm playing 2 different games with 2 different sets of house rules.

In one game, we have an house rule that was imposed by the GM regarding failing tests; basically, if you fail a test more than twice (on some occasion 3 times) you can't try again. (Ex: A thief tries lockpicking and fails, he can try again. If he fails again, the character believes he doesn't have the necessary ''skill'' and can't try again immediately.

Another house rule is willpower test to determine if the character is actually willing to complete an action. This happens mostly in combat, when the players are getting manhandled by their enemies, the GM will ask for a willpower test to see if our character is willing to get up or retaliate an attack.

Skills are also used differently or more traditionally I should say; If I have Unarmed Combat as a skill, I need to choose it's going to be for either kicking, striking or grappling. Can't do all of them if it's by skill.

On my other game, we decided to replace some tests by roleplaying. This is done mostly on talents and skills that use Charisma, instead of rolling dices, we roleplay the ability and the GM decides if we failed or succeeded. It created a lot more fun in that campaign I must say, if you try using taunt or inspire others, you need to be sharpen your roleplay and impress the GM

We also use the + 3 bonus for defensive abilites such as Avoid Blow when using defensive stance.
We are also considering that you heal a wound if you roll an extraordinary on your wound threshold but I'm not sure if we'll apply that as well.

Sorry to disappoint if you're looking for more technical house rules.

Looking forward to hear about other house rules you guys have been using!

Cheers!