In general, I'm adopting the House Rules that Peter and Heather have used for their games, found on the Augmented NWoD ruleset page. Here are a few specific rules that were created for this game or that came up in this game.
Sense Element, Dot 1 of the Contracts of Communion (from the Winter Masques book) is modified and extended as follows, to adjust how it works based on the clutter in the element the Changeling is trying to sense:
Modifier
Situation
0
Element is sparse with easily identifiable features (sensing air in a spartan room, sensing metal in the woods)
-1
Element is common but with easily identifiable structure or patterns (sensing air in a house, sensing metal in a rural farm)
-2
Element is common and cluttered (sensing air in an apartment complex, sensing metal in a small store)
-3
Element very common and complex (sensing air in a subway system, sensing metal in a shopping mall)
The size of the area being sensed also matters. When sensing a very large area, penalties will be increased up to an additional -2. When limiting the sense to a smaller area, such as the current room, penalties may be reduced at the expense of not sensing anything outside that area.
If a character takes some time to focus their attention, penalties will be reduced:
Out of combat, under no time pressure, we'll just narrate how long it takes.
In initiative in combat, a simple Perception check (at the appropriate penalty) is a Reflex action, or the character can choose an Investigation as an Instant action to focus and reduce penalties.
Outside of combat but still under time pressure, a character can use some small period of time to focus and reduce the penalties.
Control Elements, Dot 3 of the Contracts of Elements, is modified as follows to allow a character to take control of an element away from someone else who is currently controlling it. The book already says that to gain control of a mass of your element, you need to be within Willpower × 2 yards of its edge. This same requirement also applies to maintaining control. Once you’re controlling it, you can manipulate it at will, as long as you don’t try anything utterly impossible. Fire can be made into a wall, for example, but you can’t force it to burn underwater.
During combat, you need strict line of sight to all of the element that you want to control, in addition to being close enough to its edge. Brief, temporary occlusions don't matter (for instance, a breeze that passes behind something and immediately reappears on the other side), but if you put some of it around a corner or behind a barrier for any significant time, you lose control over that portion of it at the beginning of the next round. At that time, it will behave naturally, which could mean spreading into a puddle or dissipating into a natural breeze. When moving fire around, its original fuel source continues to burn as normal. The contract physically displaces the fire, while leaving it linked to its fuel in all other ways. As that fuel burns out, the fire you’re controlling needs a new source to maintain its strength. Fire that leaves the control of the contract snaps back to its fuel source after one or two rounds.
You can actively seize control over some of the element when someone else is controlling it thusly:
Roll: Manipulation + Wyrd vs your opponent's Composure + Wyrd
Action: Reflexive
Results:
Dramatic Failure: Not only do you fail to gain control of the target mass of the element, it turns against you and actively hinders your actions for the remainder of the scene.
Failure: You fail to gain control of the target mass of the element.
Success: You’re able to control the contested mass of the element as usual.
Exceptional Success: You gain control of the target mass of the element, and are able to keep it with greater ease than usual. Further attempts to wrest control from you suffer a -2 penalty. The penalty lasts until another character succeeds in taking away your control, or the scene ends.
Suggested Modifiers:
Modifier
Situation
+2
The element was created with the character's own magic
+1
The character knows at least one clause in the Contracts of Communion for the target element
-3
Trying to gain control of an object which has special significance to its current owner (a soldier's trusted sidearm since basic, the locket from a first girlfriend, etc.)
Warmth of the Blood, Dot 3 of the Contracts of Eternal Spring: The catch for this clause requires that "the target has honestly professed a heartfelt and deep love, romantic or filial, for the changeling." This goes beyond the changeling asking as the contract is invoked, "You love me, right" and the target going "Sure." The target must have previously professed "heartfelt and deep love" for the changeling. This doesn't necessarily require saying those words, though. Love can be expressed in other ways, such as by taking a real risk to protect someone or doing something sincerely thoughtful for them.
When the catch for a contract is met, this means the character need not pay the glamour cost of invoking the contract. It does not negate any Willpower that the contract requires.
Flaws: Characters do not earn XP based on the consequences of taking flaws. Instead, if a character takes a flaw at creation they earn 3 XP, similar to the XP that can be earned by lowering clarity.
Fencing merit (in Armory) can be applied to a hand axe (something bigger than a hatchet but not as big as a full battleaxe) by making suitable changes in terminology.
Elemental Specialty: Elementals who do damage with their element that involves the Brawling skill can take a specialty called "Element" which adds a die when applying that skill to their element. They would have to take this separately for multiple different elements.
“For This Turn”: In many places the books says things like, “Using this ability means giving up your Defense for one turn.” Unless otherwise specified, for this game the phrase is interpreted to mean, “From the moment you use the ability until the beginning of your next turn.” It does NOT mean that having used your Defense at some earlier point in the turn order, before your turn came up, makes you unable to use the ability.
Sensing Emotions: Roll to pay attention to and sense whether your own emotions are being influenced (“different from what you would expect”): Resolve OR Composure + Empathy.
Paying for IDs: If a character purchases an ID not covered by the Freehold (a second 2-dot ID or a 4-dot ID) the character may pay with money that takes some time and effort to accumulate in game. In that situation, the character does not also have to pay with XP.
Modifications to range calculations: When calculating the range for a thrown weapon, the number of dots in a skill are included. If the character has a specialty in that skill for that weapon, then the specialty adds one to the skill for the purpose of calculating range. If the character has boosted the skill through pledge bonuses, these bonuses do NOT add to the skill for the purpose of calculating range.
Laying in Wait: The Lay in Wait maneuver described in the New World of Darkness ruleset applies in this game. If your opponent is hiding behind total cover, you can use this maneuver to predict where they will pop into view and, if successful, to take a shot at them before they can re-hide. Find this maneuver here: https://wiki.talarius.org/rulesets/aug-nwod/combat/maneuvers/lay-in-wait.
Called shots: A character may choose to take a -5 penalty on a ranged shot to focus on a tiny but important area in the target, such as aiming for an eye. Any hits will then be upgraded from lethal to aggravated. It is noted that damage done in this way can, if the target survives, be healed through magical means. In other words, though the shot hits in such a way as to deal aggravated damage, the eye could still be repaired if treated promptly by someone with sufficient skills (and contracts).
Crafting hedgespun garments: You need 3 successes on an extended Wits/Strength + Crafts + Equipment roll. Use Wits if it's intuitive or creative, Strength if it's brute force or straightforward engineering. Someone with any dots in Contracts of Artifice gets +1 on this roll. Each roll takes 1/2 hour.
Clothing that has no features beyond its appearance (e.g. a necklace that flickers like flame) is one dot.
If it does anything active (e.g. a backpack that becomes a parachute), that's a second dot. Hedgespun items can add as much as +1 to a single skill for this second dot. For bigger bonuses, or a bonus to an attribute, you will need a token.
If it becomes any kind of weapon (e.g. a bracelet that becomes brass knuckles), that's a third dot.
To tell if something is a token, hold or concentrate on it and roll Wits + Wyrd. With any successes you will detect the tingle of glamour coming from an item that is a token.
To know what it is or how to use it: Make an extended Wits/Int + Occult roll, 1/2 hour/roll, successes needed equal to 5x the token's dots.
Getting an exceptional success means you get not just the overall function of the token but its actual mechanics.
After getting the needed successes you can choose to continue to roll, at 1/2 hour/roll, until you get the exceptional success needed to know the mechanics.
The roll to identify something as a token (Wits + Wyrd) will also identify something as having magical properties even if it is not a token.
An extended Intelligence + Wyrd test at 1/2 hour/roll will also reveal the nature of the magical item.
For most minor trifles you need just 3 successes to know how to use it. Items with more consequential effects may need more successes.
You still need an exceptional success on a single roll to know the actual mechanics of how it works (for instance, if you want to learn how to duplicate it).
Different characters joining in a pledge, for instance different members of a motley pledge, may choose whether or not to add the sanction of poisoning the boon and, if so, how much poisoning to add. However, no character can add more than 3 points of poisoning to the pledge.
Though the book says that taking a flaw is always permanent and always a -2, there is actually more flexibility allowed. In some cases flaws may be temporary. Some flaws may be minor (-1), some medial (-2), and some greater (-3), decided on a case-by-case basis. See Flaw Severity for more info.
Freehold pledges have a unique definition of duration. They count as a season, but they always end on the day after the next seasonal transition, so if entered into partway through a season will actually less time. If a pledge is broken, the sanctions will last as long as the actual duration of the original pledge, which may be less than the full season.
Both Freehold and Court pledges are vows, but do not count toward the number of vows a character can have. In practice, the limit on vows is the book limit (Wyrd + 3) plus two additional vow “slots” that are set aside for a character’s Freehold and Court pledges. If a character does not have one of those (for instance, if a character remains Courtless), that vow “slot” cannot be used for another purpose.
While in the hedge, you make an extended roll (which can be a teamwork roll as long as all involved are using the same pool).
The roll takes an hour, but only needs one success.
The pool always involves either Presence or Manipulation, but the skill involved depends on the mechanism you are using to shape the hollow out of the wild Hedge. Some examples:
Seducing the Hedge: Presence/Manipulation + Persuasion
Subtract the number of wards a hollow has from the number of dice rolled on any attempt to find it.
Once a hollow is successfully located, a character can try to break through the wards.To open a door, the hollow and the invader both roll repeatedly and simultaneously:
Hollow: roll wards
Invader: roll Wyrd + Larceny
The first to reach a total of 5 wins.
If the hollow wins, the invader is locked out for the rest of the scene.
If the invader wins, they are able to get through the wards into the hollow.
If both reach the total on the same roll, the decision goes to the defender (the hollow wins).
The hollow is still resisting an invader who broke through. There is a -3 penalty to Speed and a -1 penalty to all rolls to activate contracts.
If a party is trying to enter a warded hollow:
They all attempt to break in at the same time, rolling simultaneously with the hollow. This is a collection of simultaneous individual attempts to break through and cannot be a teamwork test.
If the hollow reaches the goal of 5 successes before any of the party, they are all locked out for the remainder of the scene.
If any party member reaches the goal before the hollow does, that character can enter, suffering the penalties described above. The door remains open for a number of turns equal to the opener’s Wyrd, so anyone quick enough can follow them through (suffering the same penalty).
The wards do not prevent anyone in the hollow from opening its doors and passing out.
The wards also protect the walls between the hollow and the wild hedge. The durability of the materials from which the wall is made is increased by the number of wards. Unless some other construction is specified in designing the hollow, assume the walls have the durability of wood.
Moving a hollow door
From inside a hollow, you can remove a door and then immediately add a new door without gaining or losing XP.
It must be a location you have personally experienced and remember fairly well, and you need something to connect you to the new door location, something that calls the location to mind. Just taking a splinter from a door frame won’t work, but having a photograph of the place, a cushion from a sofa, or a piece of art from a wall will. Note that this is a link to a location, not to a person or an object.
The link will dissolve if the location linked to is significantly damaged or if it moves at all.
Reclaiming a Hollow:
Characters may declare before the Wyrd that they wish to have this hollow no longer. The XP they have invested will return to them immediately.
Although the hollow's wards vanish instantly, the doors, size, and amenities will fade more gradually. How long it takes is up to the GM and will be affected by how much was invested in them initially. Something from the Hedge might move in and could follow you out again.
There are two changes to this merit, one consequential, the other not.
Dot 3: Each success on your roll grants you an additional 5’ per dot in this merit, not per dot in Athletics.
Dot 5: Purely as a matter of flavor with no mechanical effect, think of this ability granting the ability to spend a point of Willpower to make the movement into a reflex action, and then allowing you to achieve this goal by running for a full minute first instead of spending the Willpower.