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I assume by now a lot of us GMs have run a few games of 4E and found some rough spots that needed to be smoothed over with a house rule or two.

I've only brought one in so far, and it's really just a tweaked version of an old official rule - lowering Mystic Defense. In 4E spellcasters can no longer lower their own Mystic Defense to cast spells on themselves. This caused a bit of frustration for our group's Wizard and Nethermancer trying to beat their own high MD (having to weave threads and then having the spell fizzle afterwards is a minimum of two rounds wasted).

Lower Mystic Defense Combat Option: Magicians know how to manipulate their natural Mystic Defenses to make it easier to cast spells upon themselves, although it does leave them vulnerable to other casters. Magicians can automatically reduce their Mystic Defense to 2 at the start of the round, but forfeit any extra successes generated when casting spells upon themselves because of the focus needed. He has normal Mystic Defense -2 for the round against any spells cast at him by other magicians (he is essentially Blindsided).

Originally I had this as "lower MD to 2 for first success, but extra successes are 5 and over the normal MD", but this was too messy. I think now there is a good balance and our magicians must ask themselves: "Should I cast this as normal and maybe add some karma to get those tasty extra successes? Or do it quick and dirty by lowering my MD but only getting one success?"

Anyone care to share their 4E house rules?

None yet for me, other than some conventions for how I draw terrain:

A hex side that is pierced or blocked off by a terrain feature (such as a crag, pillar, wall, or cliff) counts as an opponent for the purposes of determining whether the character is Harried. This lets me freely draw right angles on buildings, knowing that the partial hexes I create are usable but represent the restricted movement that happens when you get pinned to a wall.

Most hexes cost 2 yards of movement ("hex" being a Theran word meaning "six"). A hex with a triangle drawn on it costs 1 additional yard of movement. A hex with a 6-pointed star (i.e. 2 overlapping triangles) costs 2 additional yards of movement.

We are playing with the "Using All Talents to Advance" and "Specific Training for Talent Options" optional rules.

Oooh, I really like those hex-map rules, etherial. I've been using a hex grid laid over building floorplans, etc, and just hand-waiving it, but I really like how this adds some tactical maneuvering. Nice one!

I use a "mass combat" system of my own design, where I can roll 1 attack test for a group targeting up to 3 targets. I designed it for 3rd edition and have to re-work it for 4th. I'll probably have more details available once we've seen more of the GM Guide preview.