House Rules

These house rules are intended to build atmosphere and to increase the usefulness of Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma.

Class Changes and Exceptions

The Warlock class can choose Int as its primary spellcasting stat instead of Cha. The Fighter class can choose proficiency in Cha saving throws instead of Str saving throws.
Three homebrew subclasses are available; the Cleric Daylight Domain, the Fighter Gunfighter Archetype, and the Warlock Pact of the Undying Emperor.
One Unearthed Arcana (UA) playtest subclass is available; Bard College of Spirits.

Encumbrance and Supplies

The game uses the Variant Encumbrance rules from the Player's Handbook. Ammunition and spell components will be required and tracked.

Firearms Technology

Technology in the Imperium has advanced to a point where firearms are available to most characters. Firearms use the firearm rules from the Gunfighter subclass rather than the rules in the DMG. Firearms are considered simple or martial ranged weapons for the purposes of all rules, including proficiency. Anywhere the rules refer to crossbow, you can replace it with firearm, and likewise light crossbow with carbine or blunderbuss, heavy crossbow with musket, and hand crossbow with pistol.

Horror and Fear

The game uses a variant of the Horror and Madness rules from the DMG. Horror requires a Cha save and replaces any source of natural fear, such as the dragon's Frightful Presence. Magical fear, such as the fear spell, works normally.

• Short-Term Madness occurs when failing a Horror save and lasts the duration of the fear effect, or 1d10 minutes if it has no set duration.
• Long-Term Madness occurs if a character fails 3 Horror saves in a row from a single source of Horror. This can only happen once per Horror effect.
• Indefinite Madness occurs if a character suffers Horror 3 or more separate times between long rests and fails Cha save vs 10 + number of times.

Intelligence Skills

The Investigation skill will be used more often, replacing or augmenting Perception in some cases. For example when looking for a secret door, Perception might spot that one section of a wall is cleaner than the rest, while Investigation would deduce why it’s clean.
Proficiency in a knowledge skill (Arcana, History, Nature, Religion) provides some basic background in that area without the need to make roles, and will unlock additional content in articles throughout this site. In addition, ability checks with a proficient knowledge skill provide more detail and context.

Languages

In this game, "Languages" represent language families, rather than specific, individual languages. Familiarity with a language family means your character can understand all dialects of that family, with varying levels of difficulty only relevant to role-play. For characters proficient in History, more information can be found in the article on languages in the Imperium.
Common represents the Imperial language family, and encompasses all the languages commonly spoken in the Imperium. Characters with proficiency in Arcana, History, or Religion are also familiar with an older dialect of this family known as High Imperial.
Most characters will only know Common. If your background allows you to pick a non-exotic language, choose a tool, instrument, or gaming set of your choice instead. If you are able to choose an exotic language, the options are:

• Abyssal — the language of demons, beings of chaos
• Celestial — the language of angels, beings of order
• Deep Speech — the language of nightmare creatures and the dream realm
• Draconic — known as Glav, once spoken by many southern races
• Giant — known as Jotun, once spoken by many northern races
• Sylvan — the language of the fey, beings of nature and the elements

Perception and Obscurity

You can attempt to hide at any time; whether you're successful depends on your Stealth roll and if creatures around you could reasonably detect you. If you are heavily obscured from a creature, you can hide from that creature. If you are lightly obscured from a creature, you cannot actively hide from that creature unless you have an ability that allows it. If you are already hidden from that creature, you can remain hidden while lightly obscured.
You are immediately revealed to any creature if you:

• Attack that creature.
• Move 5 feet or more into an area where you are unobscured from that creature.
• Create a sensory effect that the creature can notice, such as a flash of light, loud sound, etc.

If something is lightly obscured from you, you have disadvantage on Perception checks that require vision (e.g. reading a book). If it is heavily obscured from you, Perception checks that require vision automatically fail. If it is possible you could perceive something without vision, then you have no penalty; for instance, you may not be able to see someone in the dark, but you can still hear them, so you would have no penalty to detect where they are.
These same rules apply for checks that primarily rely on a sense other than sight, simply interpret obscurity in terms of the new sense; a loud common room would be light obscurement for sound, a strong perfume for scent, etc.