My P&P House Rules

Here’s some house rules that came to mind after two reads through The Collected P&P hardcover.

Rules that don’t fit the narrative get ignored.  Fun always comes first.

No movement grids.  The battles will be theater of the mind, with props as needed.  If there is a pursuit, divide speed of all participants by 10, and add it to 2d6.  If your movement is 40′, 2d6+4.  The higher roll wins the pursuit.  If one side has an overall slower speed, I may give an initiative advantage to the faster side.

Useful ranges are melee, thrown (daggers and hand axes), near (short bows), far (long bows and slings).  Everything else improvised as needed.  If unobstructed, you can move one range per round: from melee to thrown, from thrown to near, etc.

Thieves may, with a successful hit roll, steal an object off their victims if there is a steal-able item.  This requires a free hand.  I got this from Nethack, where thief and brigand NPCs steal items after hitting the player character.  Thieves can backstab at level 1, adding 1 extra damage to a successful hit.   At levels 3,  6, and 9, add an additional point of damage to whatever the damage roll.

There are no sling-shots as in rubber powered projectile launchers.  Regular slings can be fired with one hand and do not do extra damage.  The easy ammunition of the sling is balanced against the extra damage of the longbow.

Clerics start with a holy water and a small cask of healing beer.  Taking a break after a battle and passing around the beer will restore 1 hit.  The Cleric’s order will refill the cask once per gaming session if he or she  has access to a monastery.

For everything else I’ll use the reference tables or wing it.