House Rules

[Taavi]

Just to assemble all these sorts of things in one thread.

1) Your Previous Career
This has come up in discussions with Andyw666. In order to allow characters to reflect their ex-military (or ex-whatever) backgrounds, I am happy for people to assemble their Occupational Abilities list from a mix of their current and previous professions, provided that the total number of Occupational Abilities stays the same, and there are more Occupational Abilities from your current Occupation than your previous Occupation. Feel free to rebalance your characters (within reason) accordingly, but remember, you're not in the Army now!

2) Idiosyncratic Magic
This is available to those who find it appropriate - make a 3 point, Difficulty 5 Stability Test (see below for new Stability Test rules) and then, pass or fail, you can swap Stability for other abilities on a 2 for 1 basis with some odd little ritual, including abilities you don't normally possess. You can use this to retrospectively turn a fail into a success.

3) Some changes to Stability tests
I am firmly of the opinion that the standard Stability test system short-changes players by discouraging Stability spends. Here's a slight revision which is statistically more balanced, IMHO:
Standard Stability tests are difficulty 6. Minor tests (1 or 2 point) are 1 lower (Difficulty 5). Being Shaken or facing something especially horrible may raise your difficulty.
Stability points spent to change your roll add 2, not 1 to the roll.

4) Using allied abilities
If it seems reasonable, I'm happy for people to use one ability to substitute for another, similar ability (but no crossing the Investigative/General divide) on a 2 for 1 basis (e.g. 2 Streetwise for 1 Filch, 2 Documentary Analysis for 1 Textual analysis). Basically, if it's implausible that you would know Ability A without having picked up a bit of Ability B, then you can substitute them.

[Taavi]

Not a House Rule, but since all the characters (except Laura) have had the opportunity for a good night's sleep between Saturday and Sunday, I thought I'd remind you all of the rules for refreshing abilities. A good night's sleep counts as a "temporary haven" - see below - so you can refresh all physical abilities and 3 General abilities, if required.

Refreshing General Ability Pools

Whenever the Investigators are able to create a temporary haven for themselves in which they’re free from danger and
horror manifestations for an hour or more, they may refresh up to three General abilities, except for Health, Sanity, and
Stability. They lose all refreshed points if their supposed place of safety is penetrated or reveals itself as a place of hazard. This is an excellent time for Pulp gunslingers, especially, to fully refresh those Firearms pools. The characters get only one opportunity for this accelerated refreshment per session.

Additionally, pools for the physical abilities of Athletics, Driving, Firearms, Fleeing, Firearms, Piloting, Riding, Scuffling, and Weapons fully refresh whenever 24 hours of game-world time elapses since the last expenditure. The remaining General abilities refresh at the end of each case, like investigative abilities.

Refreshing Investigative Ability Pools

Investigative ability pools are refreshed only at the end of each case, without regard to the amount of time that passes in the game world. Players seeking to husband their resources may ask you how long cases typically run, in real time. Most groups finish scenarios over 2-3 sessions. Players may revise their sense of how carefully to manage point spending as they see how quickly their group typically disposes of its cases.
Keepers running extremely long, multi-part investigations may designate certain story events as breakpoints where all
investigative pools are refreshed. For example, a globe-hopping investigation where the team meets a separate Mythos cult in five different locales might allow refreshment of Investigative pools after each group of enemies is neutralized.