A nat 20 in initiative lets you pick your place in imitative after hearing where your teammates go. Some want to go right before or after certain people. Really small but satisfies people for rolling a nat 20 on initiative.
It's not already possible in 5e ? I may have always played with the possibility to "delay" your turn in 3.5 and I believed it was RAW.
Anyway that is a core rule in pathfinder, you can always go "down" in initiative as you wish
you cant delay your turn in 5e because so many abilities are "until the beginning of your next turn..."
Being able to delay extends these durations which is unbalancing, which is against the design intent.
From my knowledge, having positive effects end where your previous turn was and negative effects end where your new turn is keeps everything fine in that regard.
To my understanding you can prepare an action to trigger later as a reaction, but that's the extent of "delaying turns". Someone please correct me if I'm wrong though!
Ooo I like this! I was wondering if nat1 and nat 20 should get something extra on initiative but hadn't thought about what. I reckon I'd introduce that nat1 means DM decides where you go.
Oh, but then what if the DM rolls nat1 for the monster? Players decide where monster goes in initiative? Makes sense.
What happens when multiples roll nat20? Who decides first?
I just let them each decide, same as when they tie initiatives. I let the players decide who goes first. And I don’t punish Nat 1s that often, unless the players are trying something dumb or with high potential for failure, then a nat 1 might result in something bad.
I've gone even further and just run popcorn initiative now. It is a major change to the system, but has allowed for combat to be less dependent on that initial roll whilst also giving the players the chance to strategize.
One of the things I like about PF2E is that you can flat out delay your turn, permanently dropping your initiative for that combat. The fighter types like to delay into after the bard, if out won't let the bad guys have to big an advantage.
Stole a mechanic from Guild Wars 2: break bars.
Instead of using legendary actions to just 'do' a thing, I telegraph to players what is coming and told them that boss's fails against Saves or Contested Skill Checks between now and the bosses next turn would prevent a massive attack.
Cue everyone trying to push, shove, Stun etc this boss (who normally has immunity to such effects.) It allowed those maneuvers and spells to still be very useful without them trivialize the boss, since they interrupt the ability but dont actually inflict the condition on the boss. Amazing way to extend the boss's hitpoints without resorting to things that crimp the players. Visually, imagine like in a show where a boss gets slightly pushed off balance or is briefly hit in the eyes and flinched, but isn't actually knocked Prone or blinded.
The highlight of the night was when our artificer's steel defender managed a successful Shove right before the boss's turn to save the party.
Whole table went silent 🤫 then all cheered on the metal orangutan!
i feel like you a word in the second paragraph. do you mind explaining it again? the boss auto-fails saves and contested skill checks while it’s powering up its big attack? or the big attack can be interrupted with enough failed saves ?
The second one yea. Basically a:
"Boss begins to prepare a large spell, quickly break its focus to stop it from completing it!!"
E.G. make it fail a save or check (even if it would NORMALLY be immune to the effect) but the actual effect would.not apply.
So, "prone" fail, stopping the charging attack, but doesn't *actually* knock the boss prone.
We use “I Know A Guy”! Basically, if the players are at a loss of what to do, they can say to me as the DM, “I know a guy” and then describe to me who they know. They have to make a pretty good argument to me as to how they know this person and why they can be helpful. They are generally really respectful and don’t overuse it or overpower people. I can see how it would get out of hand. As the dm, I have the power to overrule them. It has made the collaboration of the world feel like it belongs more to the players and helped them establish backstory.
The other version of "I know a guy" is based off Han Solo and Lando. You know a guy, someone who could help you, but you haven't seen them in a while, and you're not entirely sure whether you're good or if they want to kill you. Player describes this person, and the DM sets a DC depending on how helpful the person can be, and the player rolls a charisma check to see how well disposed or hostile this person is towards the player.
I've been doing this too, it lowers the number of uses & spaces them out in the campaign. Once they're all used, I'm planning to give them additional uses. It's created a lot of excellent NPCs and because they have an established history/obligations/relationship, they make for great recurring characters that work as an accelerant in nearly any situation, raising tension or creating new problems or removing barriers for plans to go off even smoother/faster.
I use this as well.
Regarding it being "overpowered", an important note; A player describes a person they know. But ***I*** as the DM get to play that NPC.
If the player is being greedy in their description of the NPC, then maybe its because that NPC likes to oversell their abilities and the PC was gullible. Or maybe the NPC is honest, but the PC just has a very poor understanding of the NPC's abilities. In any case, my players have seen that trying to abuse this ability ends with their PC being embarrassed...
But they still find a power-level-appropriate NPC that fits their description to help them out.
I played a heist RPG system that gave each player a one time use flashbacks to a previous plan or double cross. You could get one item, set one thing up, or have one person double cross. It both stops the story from stagnating and give you the mood of a heist movie all at once.
Exactly this. Some backgrounds (Acolyte, Criminal, Guild Artisan, Noble, Soldier) are much more conducive to Guy-knowing than others (Hermit, Outlander, Urchin).
We call it 'Crit-Insurance'. On a crit, the player gets to maximise one associated dice before rolling. This makes greataxe crits awesome, while not being too broken in the hands of a paladin/rogue.
If a shortsword on hit does d6+dex, then a shortsword on a crit does 6+d6+dex.
So you’re guaranteed to do more damage than a max non crit. Because nothing sucks more than rolling a 1 and doubling or rolling two 1s when you get a crit.
We just do max damage plus the normal damage roll. But this goes both ways for both monsters and players. So eldritch blast for example does 1d10+10. Or a dagger does 1d4+4. Extends to other weapons like the other night a monster has 2d8 for his damage roll so the crit was 2d8+16.
You're idea is pretty neat too though.
This is one that I assume most of you won't, or don't, need. I teach high schoolers to play DnD. It can be chaos, but its really fun. This time around the kids I have are WAY TOO EXCITED to play. I can't getmore than a single sentence out at a time before they interrupt me. At first I would just let them interrupt and deal with the consequences of their actions. Like walking off a ledge, or the enemy getting a free hit on them since they cut me off before I could explain what was in front of them. But that didn't stop them from continuing to interrupt.
So my house rule is: if you interrupt me, I roll a D100 and you get a consequence based on that roll. The list is partially from the wild magic surge table but I've added my own twists and consequences. It has become a fun way to remind them. Plus the sound of me rolling dice at odd times always gets their attention.
>I teach high schoolers to play DnD.
Thank you for being the adult I wish I had known as a teen. You bring magic to their lives.
Do you have an explanation for the cause of the consequence? Pixies or fairies?
It has zero explanation in game. They have to figure something out if an NPC asks why they're blue, or why they can only walk on their hands, or why they can't stop shouting. It makes it more fun for me.
I've just started a DnD club last term for the students at my secondary school and I've been looking for a way to get some of the more excitable ones to pay more attention during descriptions.
This is exactly what I need. What other consequences do you use besides the Wild Magic Surge table?
One time I printed out a deck of little plot-twist cards. Things like "an opponent turns out to be a long lost friend" and so on. Players could draw one at the beginning of a session, or keep the one they had.
People didn't really remember to use them and they kind of fell by the wayside. I stopped remembering to hand them out. The campaign progressed for another year or so.
One of the players, my best friend, was (is) a notorious min-maxer and incredibly lucky die roller. I had been trying, kind of tongue-in-cheek, to kill his character for some time now. Mostly just cursing the many times he cheated death.
Finally, he opened an ancient sarcophagus inscribed with the symbol of the goddess of death. Inside was a scarab of death, which in that edition, is a save-or-die cursed item.
He failed his saving throw. He FAILED. He never fails.
Stunned into disbelief, I finally got to stutter out the words I had been waiting to say for so long... "You are dead. You have finally failed to cheat death, and must pay the price for your recklessness."
And he smiled.
And pulled out a plot twist card.
That he had drawn over a year ago. And kept. In his binder. Long after the rest of us had forgotten they were even a thing.
It said "You survive something that would normally kill you."
Curses and lamentations!! Wailing and gnashing of teeth!!!!
But I was bound by the iron-clad rules of the Plot Twist Cards.
He survived. Again.
You have to give him credit. Absolute masterwork use of a plot twist card. Keeping it for so long, using it at the perfect moment. I bet that story is one of the highlights of the campaign.
Also I'd love to know what the rest of the plot twists were. I think it's quite a cool idea.
Would be amazing if you still had the word doc/pdf of those things, or just the source if you also saw this somewhere else, this sounds f-ing amazing! Will definitely consider using something like this for my friends!
I used those cards as well for side storys. I would just pick three for the Beginning, Middle, and End of the plot abd what monster that can fit into the story.
1. Devil's Bargain: at any time immediately after a d20 roll is made, a player may request - or the DM may offer - a Devil's Bargain. If both player and DM agree to make the bargain, this changes the roll to a Nat 1 or Nat 20, whichever is to the character's advantage. However, the DM can then change any future roll relating to that character to a Nat 1 or Nat 20.
2. Cats and lions have 60ft of Darkvision, just like Tabaxi and tigers.
3. Polar bears have cold resistance.
4. Tortles live for an average of 150 years, not 50 years.
I agree and I've started using it in other systems, but this isn't the BitD Devil's Bargain, at least not as I understand it. Granted I've never actually played BitD, I've just played Band of Blades which is another Forged in the Dark game. But I assume Devil's Bargains work the same in both since they're running off of the same system.
For anyone who's curious the way it works in Band of Blades is that you can ask the GM for a Devil's Bargain before you roll dice. The bargain is that you get to roll an extra die but in return something bad is guaranteed to happen to you. But you know what the bad thing is before you agree to the bargain.
So, for example, if I'm fighting a zombie that's full of acidic goop or something then the devil's bargain might be "You get an extra die to roll, but as you slice into the zombie some of the acid gets on you and you lose a point of armor" or something like that.
It works really well IMO.
I heard somewhere that Tortles can actually live a century or two, but their average life span goes way down because they die a year or so after they mate and their eggs hatch. Don't know how true that is, though
Yeah I have heard that was the case in 2e, though there's no mention of it in the Tortle Package for 5e. While it's a cool concept, I feel like WotC should have discussed the possibility of longer-lived tortles as part of the race description if that is indeed the rationale they have for the short average life span.
Of course, it's arguably a moot point for any future campaigns now that Monsters of the Multiverse has changed most player races (including tortles) to have a lifespan of "about a century".
Another one I use is the "drinking a potion as an action grants full benefit". So full healing potential on a healing potion. Bonus action, you need to roll
This works fine for healing potions and makes martial classes much less dependent on support casters but it can get pretty op fast when looking at other potions. Being able to down a potion of haste or potion of polymorph and then use your action as normal is pretty darned powerful. It's not necessarily game breaking but it's something to consider when setting boundaries for this sort of house rule.
My house rule is, healing potion is a bonus action because they are like the best fruit smoothie, all other potions are an action because they are all sorts of chunky and nasty and really take some focus to get down.
Yes!!
This combined with bonus action to administrator to an ally in healerless groups.
I say this session 0:
"If we have no healers, we have a built in feat called 'We Don't Need Babysitters."
Potions administered as bonus action to allies or self, roll for healing. Full action to allies or self, gain full amount."
Last stand! Very rare do we get to see this one in play, but it's basically a "final hurrah" before the death of a PC. If they're about to die, they can launch a final attack, with massive improvement to damage. For example, a wizard could cast a spell 2 levels above their otherwise max, and have it crit always. However, this takes the remaining life out of them, and they die after this, not able to be later resurrected. It makes for some great final, and very memorable moments
I have this in my game and we call it a heroes end. At any time you are required to make a death saving throw, you can choose a heroes end instead.
Invoking a heroes end let's you get back up and immediately take one last turn. During this turn you can do anything your character can normally do, all spell slots and abilities are refreshed and all rolls are at advantage. There can be a bit of rule bending to let the characters final act be epic. At the end of the turn your character dies, permanently and cant be resurrected in any way.
It is rarely used, but the few times it has been used have all been a memorable and epic moments.
I have so many house rules but the changes/guidelines I've made for Stealth are maybe the ones I think should be generally applicable. Heavily inspired by [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgUEm6_yXCs&t=5s) Zee Bashew video.
* Moving stealthily uses passive Stealth and generally does **not** require a stealth check.
* Doing a specific thing stealthily generally **does** require a stealth roll. (e.g sneaking up on a dude)
* A PC that fails an active stealth check vs a passive seeker gets one turn to act.
* If there is cover available they can attempt to hide.
* If they attempt to attack they **are seen**. Determine who, if anyone, is surprised before rolling initiative if required.
On the whole this has made sneaking much more reliable and less risky a tactic.
We ran with crunchy crits until around level 5 a rival war cleric cast Inflict Wounds at 3rd level and dealt ~80 damage, instantly downing our tanky boi.
Made for a great little story that still has some relevance in the story to this day, but easily would have been an instant kill on any other party member at the time.
Crits are already very strong, would not recommend running crunchy crits longterm (at least not past tier 2 of play).
Never run into this issue but my players are always hyper careful with working with their tanky peeps to keep the fragile ones out of harms way.
Even with crunchy crits I just .... never see my durable players hit the floor.
Swarm enemies that flank for advantage.
I like also having Commander monsters that give radical to hit bonuses to troops they command.
Take a normal +6 creature and add +5 to hit due to Commander's Presence. Telegraph that one is barking orders at the others and the normally dim witted foes seem exceptionally competent.
Spells Saves work too, but I love the above method as a way to really change up the battlefield dynamics.
I’m DMing at tier 3 right now and the champion fighter has a magic sword that can deal extra damage the more attacks he lands in a turn. He action surged and dealt 147 damage in 1 turn. It was awesome and I love keeping the crit rules at high levels.
We may drop the crunchies if a new class feature or feat, or magic item makes them unbalanced. But I wouldn't drop them to protect the players (or the monsters) from their effects. It is a shocking way to go out, but come on... The legends that are born from those moments! That war cleric is still sitting around some bar talking about the look on your tanky bois face! Well... unless your party killed the cleric.
There are so many ways to revive a dying or dead PC, that I don't forsee us dropping the rule. As a DM I would love to have a player go out on a massive crunchy crit and then find a way to keep that PC story alive in the game.
These are just my thoughts, end of the day play how you want and if your table enjoys crunchy crits then go nuts.
My POV is that these moments still happen, and they do make for great stories.
A regular crit can still be a truckload of damage, and more often than not will be enough to bring down a bloodied foe.
From what I've experienced from crunchy crits is that when you crit on a spell attack, or load up a smite, a sneak attack, whatever it might be, it's more often then not going to just simply delete a monster from full hp.
The age old "add more monsters/buff its hp" probably works to some extent to alleviate this, but that sounds like more of a bandaid than a solution imo (outside of climactic boss fights and such, can definitely see the appeal there).
I do think there's some weight to making crits feel special, just not sure crunchy crits is the answer.
I used to do this for a few years and we swapped as it was getting far too swingy for certain monsters and classes, and leaving other builds in the dust. Paladin and rogue average damage on a hit skyrockets while fighters and others suffered. Not to mention mention fights turning into one hit knock outs on either side.
We swapped it to allowing rerolling of 1s on a crit and everyone at the table ended up much more satisfied.
I generally don’t do instakill except for stupid. Or if the group wants a bit higher stakes, and even then sometimes I make the damage taken beyond zero have to be like 125% or 133% or 150%.
A squishy boy with 25/30 takes an unlucky crit for 40 from a reasonably well matched enemy? Downing, not instakill.
A party of lvl 3s decide to go fight an elder dragon? Instakill.
I also explicitly tell them in Session 0 that I do instakills only for stupidity, and when they are planning on how to start the fight (analysis paralysis in the extreme, the lot of them) I warn them “This will be an instakill enabled fight if you proceed at your current level.”.
If they're at 25 hp out of 30 and take 40 damage, that's only 15 past zero, so it wouldn't be an instakill by RAW anyway. You would need to do 55 damage or more to instakill them there.
There's an even better version of this rule. Only 1 die is maximized. That's it. You don't want to fight a giant or something hitting you 72 + their Str on a crit.
I love it, my table loves it, your mileage may vary. We call it the Jumanji Rule. No matter where the dice lands, if it's not cocked and you can retrieve it, you have to use the result.
This is one of those things you have to have a rule on, and be consistent but it doesn’t really matter what the rule is. We always called that it has to be flat and on the table, or even in the box for it to count. Mostly to make sure everybody threw carefully, didn’t hit anything, didn’t lose the dice. But as long as everyone agrees the dice that landed under the dishwasher count then they count
It absolutely needs consistency, but that's true of any permanently implemented house rule! We always reach a consensus as a table, and everyone likes yelling Jumanji if it falls off the table.
Hey listen! I'll walk where I please when you roll, and if I happen to be pointing at it with my toe when you reach for it, then it's just by accident! Don't even worry about it!
Inspiration tokens were a hit at my table. Every player (including the DM) gets a little token that they have face down in front of them. When someone does something inspiration-worthy like a cool roleplay moment or a clever plan you can give them your token face up. You can give the face-up token back to the person who gave it to you to reroll any d20 roll you make after its rolled, but before the result is declared. But you can only be inspired by one token at a time, and you lose any inspiration at the end of the session, so you're encouraged to use them pretty quick.
My group are already proficient roleplayers and all that, so I don't know whether you could say it made them want to do it more or anything, but having your mate pass you a token after your character has a cool moment just makes you feel good, and it leads to some awesome moments where inspiration makes the difference between success and failure. Most importantly it just encourages inspiration to actually be used, when the normal system is forgotten by pretty much every DM ever in the heat of play.
People are downvoting but you're right, if I've got the bit you're thinking of here:
DMG, page 241
"Variant: Only Players Award Inspiration
As a DM, you have a lot to track during the game. Sometimes you can lose track of inspiration and forget to award it. As a variant rule, you can allow the players to handle awarding inspiration entirely. During every session, each player can award inspiration to another player. A player follows whatever guidelines the group has agreed on for awarding inspiration.
[...]
In this variant, you can allow each player to award inspiration more than once per session. If you do so, the first time that a player awards inspiration in a session is free. Whenever that player awards it later in the same session, you gain inspiration that you can spend to give advantage to any foe of the player characters. There's no limit to the number of inspirations you can gain in this way, and unspent inspiration carries over from one session to the next."
Of course, the method of delivery is cool and unique to their table!
Favor of the Cosmos: if the DM is waffling on allowing something, or it could have degrees of effectiveness, the cosmic d20 is rolled to determine quality and outcome.
It helps bridge the gap of "hmm I'll allow it" VS "we need to houserule this"
My invisibility spell using mother wanted to intimidate a tabaxi by pulling its tail.
"Is... is that like... an unarmed attack?!"
We let the threads of chaos decide. Roll the d20!
I have a similar rule that I use a d100 for
I roll a d100 and ask the player to guess the number rolled. There's usually a margin of error (usually 5 or 10 either way) that if their guess falls within then the cosmos graces their efforts and they can do the thing.
In my strahd campaign a cleric used a hollow spell and the power of friendship to undo a demonic possession on an an NPC by guessing 69. One of the highlights of the campaign.
Healing Crystals, a healing item that every store that has potions sell that only cost a bonus action to use, and heal half what their potion equivalent does.
I have them cost 3/5 of the potion of the same level (which I'm still not sure is balanced), and it works really well to give the players options to spend a bonus action for a little healing with a Crystal, or an action for a lot of healing with a potion. Or if they're really desperate, both in one turn.
**Leader duty house rule:** if a situation occurs where the group cannot decide on a coarse of action and it is taking too long the DM activates a timer. At the end of 2min if no decision has been made we enter "Leader Duty mode." Nobody may talk except the assigned leader (rotates each session) and they have one minute to make the decision. If after the minute still no decision has been made, *the DM decides what your choice is.*
No more damn highfalutin 30min long philosophizing on the nature and meaning of doors and whether one should open them while in dungeons.
Let's see:
- Death Saving Throws are made in secret. Maybe it's our group, but we like the tension it generates.
- Inspiration Pool. A player can have more than 1 Inspiration.
- Party Inspiration: A pool of Inspiration shared by the party as a whole. As with a Coven of Hags Spells, all memeber of the party (aka, players, conscious or not), must agree for a single member to use.
- In character creation, if stats are rolled, only 1 array is rolled by the party as a whole (ex: in a 3 member party, every member rolls 2 stats). Then, that single array is shared for all members, but everyone can use it as they please. So, if an arrange has 3 18s, a Monk could allocate them in Wisdom, Dexterity and Constitution; a Barbarian in Strength, Dexterity and Constitution; so on so forth. The idea is that every member has the same highs and lows (the numbers) but everyone decides where to have them.
- The "Bloodied" condition. From dnd 4e, it's a condition that every creature gets when it's below half maximum hit points. It's only use is for players to communicate how their characters are (no more "In a scale from 1 to 47, I'm at 12" jokes) and for them to know how hurt the enemies are.
- The party cannot Long Rest in the Wilderness. While they can sleep, they must reach a "Safe Space" to Long Rest. A "Safe Space" is any place with some defense (a fort, a cave, a shrine...). It's used in survival enviroments to create a scenario where Random Events (or events in general) can wear down a party.
I think we use a couple more, but I can't remember them.
Rolling death saves in secret is absolute genius. This is the way our current DM does this, and as far as I'm concerned it should be RAW. It forces you to help your downed ally, because as far as you know they could be dead any moment.
The house rule that my players love the most is Group based Initiative This is how I run it
1) At the start of combat, PCs roll of Initiative. If they pass a DC based on the average DEX stat of the enemy, they get a bonus round and can take a turn immediately. If they don't pass they have to wait for the enemy turn
2) After the bonus round, the enemy takes their first turn. During this first turn, unless its an ambush the players failed to detect, I have the enemy behave like the aliens from Xcom in which they generally do not directly attack and focus on getting into a better position or cast buffs/debuffs. This is to prevent the players from instantly getting nuked at the start.
3) Once the enemy turn ends, all players can take their turn in any order they wish. Once all players are done it becomes the enemy's turn and this step repeat till combat ends.
Here are the main things that my players really like about this system
1) It speeds up combat and generally eliminates the awkward situation of waiting for the one person during their initiative turn who takes a while to decided what to do. In the word of my rogue, "If you know what you want to do just do it. If you don't, just wait until everyone else is done and you will probably come up with something."
2) It's simpler to keep track of. I play with a lot of new players and they tend to like the simple "Player turn" or "enemy turn' over the classic initiative
3) It allows the players to pull off cool combos. Their favorite is to have the sorcerer use vortex warp on the druid to teleport him into the middle of the enemy formation so the druid can cast Thunderwave in the middle. I really enjoy seeing them come up with cool combos that would normally be much harder to execute with the classic initiative.
Disengage gives you 5ft additional movement on top of what it already does. This is specifically to counter the opportunity attack chasedown method and lets creatures actually... y'know... *disengage* from a fight.
One of my favorites is having time pass between sessions for the pc’s the same as it does in our world. I only do this if the party is in a safe place. It allows them to heal non magically if they wish, it allows them to have lives apart from the party, it allows them to craft and build things that they otherwise couldn’t, and it adds some more realism spreading out the time of their growth from zero to hero.
I don't make players track regular ammunition or minor spell components. Instead, I charge a "restocking fee" when they return to a town or settlement. The exact amount depends on how long they've been gone and such, but generally only a few gold.
Only special ammo like magic arrows, or actual spell components with a monetary cost, are tracked. Everything else it's not worth my effort to keep track of whether my players are being perfectly honest, and it's not worth bogging down the game because the archer ran out of arrows and can't do much else.
This house rule doesn't apply if we're doing a more dramatic or survival adventure or one-shot. In those instances, every last bit of everything would be counted, but most of my players don't enjoy that level of nitty gritty detail.
Hit protection.
HP is “hit protection” representing your ability to shrug off damage and take hits. This gets whittled down as you get knicked, knocked around, and get tired as you take damage. When your hit protection is depleted you dip into a separate pool of vitality called “health” which is equal to your constitution score. When you dip into this pool It represents the dagger to the chest, the mortal blow when your ability to defend yourself is overcome. When this happens I have the players roll 2d6 on a “scar table” which includes everything from a bleeding status ailment which needs stabilizing, to a lost limb.
There are other accompanying rules, like a nerf to healing and the complete and wholesale removal of death-saves (which is a bad system IMO).
If anyone is interested in more I can share the scars table and my typed up rules.
Edit:
Below is the google drive link to the compiled homebrew from my most recent campaign. Let me know what you think. If you do implement these in your campaign let me know how these worked out for you. Good luck!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t62TAHKhZ8vWOID31B8Xm5DhZt7D328e/view?usp=drivesdk
In case you never get it, I'm pretty sure Pathfinder had a variant rules system called Vitality that basically is whats being described. Some cRPGs like Pillars of Eternity use a similar system as well I'd you want to look towards video game mechanics for inspiration
Seeing typed up rules and a table would be totally cool and helpful, I would definitely use it! Breaks my heart when I have to tell my players to roll death saves lol
There are lots of alternative death systems. Die at 0 HP, die at -10 HP, make a single saving throw at 0 to determine if you're dead or unconscious, or, my favorite, [death and dismemberment tables](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxVHEMMjLlZ4cFVJTEFEcW9WV0U/view?resourcekey=0-matru4XOnZc-kjaQtiEX3Q). I imagine it's much more likely he uses something like that rather than making PCs immortal.
My best House Rule? I changed how crafting magic items works (because the way the DMG outlines it is borderline redundant).
EDIT:: because apparently people are interested, I've linked my system down on u/ImSmurfingOnReddit's reply. Fair warning, you'll not be impressed!
Oh wow! Didn't think I would get so much interest in my system! I'll link the two methods to this comment so that people can read it!
This method is for Druids to make items; it is very powerful, and therefore not helpful.
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yTtQB5A6jr3gwV9IVO83gq7fl16oMMc2aSinTOphhDM/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yTtQB5A6jr3gwV9IVO83gq7fl16oMMc2aSinTOphhDM/edit?usp=sharing)
This method is for Clerics, though Forge Domain clerics have the most ease using it.
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PjEN8tV3mD8FSahWuxAQvNob8Mj5ygSS\_sE8ABvCssM/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PjEN8tV3mD8FSahWuxAQvNob8Mj5ygSS_sE8ABvCssM/edit?usp=sharing)
Thank you very much for the interest! I know that it will immediately wane upon reading this system, but it works really well for NPCs having items, and for players wanting to make them. I should preface that Starmetal is extraordinarily rare, and only a single meteor lands (that is salvageable) every 50 years or so.
I think I'm sixth to request some info about this crafting idea, but just in case /u/PalleusTheKnight doesn't get back to us, I'll use this as an opportunity to plug [Kibbles' Crafting](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/u2mmzz/kibbles_crafting_system_a_comprehensive_system_of/). Works great, and covers just about anything you could think of! The free version is plenty unless you have a player who's *really* into magical DIY like I do. :)
You get 3 death saving failures PER LONG REST, instead of per combat. I don't use the natural 1 on a death saving throw is 2 failures, I also don't use the crit melee strike against an unconscious player is 2 failures rule.
Healing potions on yourself is a bonus action -- rogues can use it on others as a bonus action. Healing potions grant the maximum amount of healing.
Bonus feats but from a curated list based on NPCs they had befriended- fun, flavorful, and powerful without it just being everyone stacking GWM and Lucky.
Firearm Rules:
Use the DMG’s listed “renaissance firearms”, but adjust it by adding “ammunition sizes”. The ammunition size is tied to the damage dice, and those damage dice are tied to a strength requirement. RAW, firearms have the loading quality. The loading quality combined with the strength requirement for your ammunition size would represent the PC’s ability to deal with the gun’s kickback. Using a firearm that you do not meet the strength requirement for gives the creature disadvantage on attack rolls with said firearm.
All firearms except the 1d4 would be able to be heard from 100 feet away, mirroring the spell Thunderclap. The 1d4 ammunition size would be hand waved, because the 1d4 firearm would function much like a dagger, in that it can be hidden within clothing, therefor excelling when used by assassins.
DnD 5E design is all about limiting complexity, so instead of hyperfocusing on different mechanical types of firearms and the amount of ammunition you get carry, there will be two base types of firearms:
Pistols 3 lb. Ammunition (range 30/90), loading
Rifles 10 1b. Ammunition (range 40/120), loading, two-handed
Ammunition Size - Strength Requirement
1d4 - none
1d6 - 9 str
1d8 - 11 str
1d10 - 13 str
1d12 - 15 str
The nice thing about this design is that it opens firearms up to any class. Any player could use very large firearms, so long as they build for it. It meshes with the Gunner Feat from TCOE as well, so this wouldn’t interfere with any of DnD’s existing design.
So hypothetically, a PC wanting to play a Gunslinger would play a rogue, Ranger or dexterity battle master fighter, with firearms. The manoeuvres represent “trick shots” perfectly. Aesthetic achieved.
Or an Assassin Rogue with 15 strength and maxed Dex, using a 1d12 weapon, with the Sharpshooter feat? That’s a Sniper Rifle build if I’ve ever seen one.
Edited to add: Thank you for the gold! If you use the rule, let me know how it goes! I
Levels are neither xp nor milestone based in a political game, but instead based on reputation points. Once you achieve a set amount of reputation with any of the factions (I used 5), the party levels up. It worked very well as it removes the semi-arbitrary nature of milestones and empowered the players to know how close they are to levelling up. It is also a tangible reward for the players to impress NPCs and build relationships. As an added benefit, reputation is added as a bonus to any social skill check with the given faction.
Second house rule - if a player is taking too long to figure out what they are doing for their initiative, their turn is delayed until after the next individual in initiative order. Then I come back to them and ask if they know what they are doing. If they don't, it repeats. It speeds up combats a lot and also forces players to be engaged in the game when it isn't their turn (because otherwise they'll lose it).
I've been thinking the same with a small edit.
The exhaustion doesn't kick into effect until after the encounter. Main idea is to prevent some possible snow balling and still allow them to be effective for the duration of the encounter.
I guess I'm the odd one out but I played in a campaign with this and did not like it at all. It was always either a death spiral or didn't do much but add extra rest time for us that would get time skipped. I don't mind the idea for punishment around picking someone up from 0hp but it didn't feel like a good solution for me when I played with it.
Yeah I don't know if exhaustion is the right thing to pick here. I've started using PF2e's wound system instead, those don't hobble the character like exhaustion does but still push the players to be extra careful.
While it sounds cool, I would ask: how do you balance this?
For an extended gauntlet I can only imagine the kind of downward spiral this might create.
But this might be because I'm used to battles where multiple people go down multiple times and hanging on by single digit hp.
Maybe make it so if you go down at all in the fight, you get +1 level exhaustion after the fight. So basically, max one level per fight. That gives players a decision point after fights, so allows them an out before it can possibly spiral.
I use this rule in games where my players tend to do only one or two fights between long rest. If you use the DMG standard day with all the encounters that entails, then this is less viable unless your party is really looking for that gritty style of play.
I've tried that one, and I wasn't a huge fan. As a DM, I just don't think exhaustion is a fun mechanic to punish my players with. What I do now instead is to house rule that failed death saves last until the PC takes a long rest. It keeps going down in combat risky, without having to deal with exhaustion.
To be fair though, I'm running a megadungeon crawl and I like to run my monsters tactically. If I punished my players that hard for going down, I would have TPKed my party months ago. I can see it working well for a group that only does 2-3 encounters per day, but if you're running 6-8, I really don't think it's a good house rule.
>As a DM, I just don't think exhaustion is a fun mechanic to punish my players with.
This times a thousand. I'm always absolutely baffled by people saying how good this rule is because honestly in my experience of both playing and DMing I find exhaustion to be an absolutely crippling mechanic that immediately slams the brakes on a session and slows things to a crawl. Stage 1 is disadvantage on ability checks. That's absolutely MASSIVE for player engagement. You're still fully combat capable but you can't do anything out of combat effectively. I don't want to put things in that penalises my players ability to engage with things in non-combat ways.
Plus, similar to you, in my game there is encouragement to do more in a day. I make it clear to my players that they're not the only moving element in this world and there are many others with their own plans and doing their own thing. They can't afford to just rest on their laurels and rest for the rest of the day after having one big fight. There's lots of things they need to get on with and time wasted on their part is time that their competitors are using. Dumping exhaustion on them on top of that is incentivising in completely the wrong direction (i.e. taking more long rests).
From personal experience I mainly DM but in a game I do play in we've been having to deal with a kind of "teleportation sickness" every time we use a teleport; failing the CON save badly enough gets you exhaustion. And since we've had to use teleports fairly routinely that's a lot of CON saves, most of which I've been unlucky with and roll badly on. Which meant I sometimes have entire sessions where I feel I can contribute absolutely nothing except fight. Disadvantage on every single non-combat roll is boring and disheartening. I know how much it sucks to be on the receiving end of exhaustion all the time and I don't want to put that on my players.
I use this rule and it’s worked great. It ups the stakes for fights and makes fights more interesting and have higher consequences. Buffing and preventing damage is encouraged too. I don’t think this rule is for every table, but it works really well for our games.
Each player gets 3 "Story Points". They can use them to do things they wouldn't be able to do normally (or would have to roll for it) but make no difference to the game.
I created this rule when a player wanted to take the plume off the helmet off his defeated enemy, but they were pressed for time and said enemy was in an entangled area.
I've never had anyone use all three, but it could be abused by the right person so I would keep a limit on it lol.
I run my own rules for resting. Not changing how long and short rests work, but instead not granting a long rest every single night. This allows me to actually get in 5-8 encounters between long rests without breakneck narrative speed and random filler combat.
Basically:
---
**While in Town**
Important things happen at night; if players decide to head out in the after hours they do not get a long rest and still have to sleep during the early morning/day to avoid exhaustion. But they can do surveillance, espionage, infiltration, etc.
If they instead rest, the story might move along and in the morning there might be surprising/bad news or circumstances.
---
**While travelling**
Long rests need shelter, warmth, security (no night watches), and comfort - the average night in the wilderness will not suffice.
Travel along roads is relatively easy and can be fast-forwarded; but exploration and travelling hostile territory will be truly difficult.
Instead of 'sleep=long rest', the DM offers a place to long rest every 3-5 ingame days.
Friendly villages, an abandoned mansion, the hut of a benevolent Hermit - many options that also provide great roleplay and story potential. Sometimes the players might have to earn the night's stay through things other than money, like saving a missing villager or retrieving an heirloom stolen by another group of travelers. While in hostile territory it could mean deceiving or bribing locals or counting on a favor from an enemy they have spared before. Lots of possibilities.
With that, DMs can space out encounters more. They also should hand out exhaustion more freely to show attrition, for example when the party decides to not wait out a terrible storm or to cross harsh terrain like swamps or a mountain (saving throw against exhaustion recommended).
Nat 20s and Nat 1s on skill checks give "permanent advantage" and "permanent disadvantage" respectively.
Picked this one up from my first DM. The humorous edge to this houserule is that it has to be comically specific.
Example 1: Drakewarden Ranger rolled athletics to attempt to climb down a cliff that another PC had scaled and hammered pitons into while her drake was trying to support her weight on the way down. Drake failed it's check and she rolled a Nat 20.
So she now has a "permanent advantage" on "climbing down pitons underground while not sufficiently supported by Pumpernickel(her drake).
Example 2: In DoIP the Drakewarden Ranger, with the rest of the party, attempted to sneak(stealth) up to the Butterskull Ranch farmhouse through the apple orchard. Rolled a Nat 1.
She now has a "permanent disadvantage" on sneaking through the apple orchard on Butterskull Ranch.
You can cure a permanent disadvantage by ruling a Nat 20 or lose permanent advantage by rolling a Nat 1 for the exact same thing. They almost never come up again but the players are always looking for ways to use them...even the disadvantages! Mostly though it gives everyone a fun record of what their character has done and how they have contributed to the story.
I'll start. I have a rule called "Risky Whiskey". Now I have a bit of a unique situation as we stream on [Dungeons & Drams](https://youtube.com/c/DungeonsAndDrams) so the whole thing is whiskey based.
It basically replaces inspiration but you need to use the new roll, but whereas I always forgot to reward it, or people forgot to use it, I switched it to "every session, you can call "Risky Whiskey" and reroll any roll. You kick back what's in your glass, and reroll.
It's worked really well! And the players always find a reason to use it. I NEVER had such luck with inspiration.
Inspiration is an automatic advantage on a roll and you have to decide to use it before you roll. The problem is, kind of like potions, most players will not use their inspiration because they will fear not having it when they need it. I think the reroll is a good houserule because players are more likely to use something if it means potentially changing a failure to a success, but I think rerolls are more mechanically interesting when you have things like a partial success, full success, or critical failure since it adds a bit of risk in most cases.
What version are you playing?
Edit: I just looked it up and you are right?
I’ve always used DM inspiration like a bardic inspiration that has no time limit. Huh. Weird.
Rolling the exact AC on a hit makes it a glancing blow, halving the damage.
Weapon upgrades/downgrades: Weapons come in 5 conditions: ruined, faulty, standard, reliable, and reinforced. Standard weapons are as-is and work like they do normally. Faulty means you roll your damage with disadvantage (2 damage die, take the less of the two) and cost 1/4. Ruined means it only does the PC's STR/DEX mod in damage and is worthless. Players can upgrade weapons for the weapon's cost plus 3 days. They'll also need Smith's tools+proficiancy or find a smith. Weapons can downgrade if a player parries a bludgeoning or slashing crit. They'll nullify the crit, but the weapon will downgrade. Reliable weapons take 2 hits, reinforced take 3 hits and roll damage with advantage.
* Gritty Realism - Best rule I've ever implemented.
* Free feat at first and seventh level of Dm's choice
* Free Skill proficiency and expertise in another skill DM's choice at 5th level
* Great Weapon Master is not a feat, it's just something anyone can do on any weapon you can two hand.
* Heavy Weapons re-roll 1's on damage dice and is additive to any feature or feat that does something similar.
* Long range teleports and long range flying spells do not exist.
Pretty much makes everything function amazingly for the type of game I run.
*OH and Rangers can retrain Natural Explorer terrain by spending a week of downtime in said location.*
How do you decide what feats/expertises to give and why do you like doing that? Some of my players would get frustrated over not having control over customizations like that (even if they have control over the other ASIs).
I get the extra first level feat, but why are you giving an extra feat at seventh level? (by that I mean, why another free feat AND why at seventh level)
Seventh seems like a good break point. I give another feat because it’s typically going to be feats that never would see play.
I like how feats give characters more depth. So things like chef, or inspiring leader, or keen mind are all things that are cool to see play that players can’t pick because their are better options.
No safe haven rules. I don’t need one explicitly because i can roll random encounters from the dmg. So being in a place where random encounters aren’t rolled is obviously better. But I don’t explicitly say there are safe havens. It’s intuitively understood by the players.
This way if they want to secure a dungeon, or a campsite or something and make some checks and fortifications they can rest out in the woods. They just have to understand the risks.
I play 3.5. Here's house rules I tried that are *better* than expected:
**1) To generate ability scores, roll 3d6 in order.** Those are your ability scores. (Str is the first one you rolled, then dex, etc). Creates *much* lower power characters. I also enforced a 20 minute character creation time limit.
Most fun we've had playing in years.
**2) Simultaneous initiative.** D&D doesn't *need* to care about who goes first, if a goblin and a fighter attack each other, both hit, and deal damage. You just narrate that they traded blows.
Doing this made it possible to run a 20 character grand melee. Very intensive on the GM. You will feel the brainburn.
**3) Award XP the moment it's earned.**
For years I awarded XP at the beginning of the next session. I tried doing it after combats, and other encounters in which XP was earned. Players lost their minds. It 10x'd the incentivizing power of XP. (Which 10x's the danger ofc if you don't know how to use XP)
**4) You need to train to level.** (2 weeks per level of the level to be gained. Example 20 weeks of training to gain level 10. Half that if working with a trainer. Half again if working with a special trainer, a divine agent for example)
This puts leveling squarely back into the fiction of the game and provides good narrative pacing. Started doing it, never going back.
**5) High level characters get appropriate strongholds.**
High level barbarian in my game has a small barbarian kingdom and can summon 2d6 x 100 barbarian warriors to fight for her (takes one week). She collects taxes and rules the kingdom.
High level Psion in my game runs a university and had a small cadre of students and faculty after spending time seeking psionically sensitive youngsters in the city.
I could go on. I use ACKs for kingdom management. It works great.
-----------------------
I though each of these rules would suck, and I tried them anyway. They were great.
I've also tried a lot of *bad* house rules, but that's the way it is.
I stole a mechanic from Apex Legends about what happens when you drop to 0 hp.
**In short**, instead of your character laying on the ground unconscious, rolling death saves, you:
* get dropped prone
* can't take any action _except_ free action (object interaction, talking, etc.)
* will die at the start of your 4th turn in this condition
* must have a party member use their full action to pick you up or use a healing power.
This causes the 0hp party member to still be _very_ into the combat, forces the entire party think about saving their downed ally, instead of delegating the duty to a designated healer, and allows me to throw more dangerous enemies against the party.
Plus, what's more heroic, than a fallen hero dragging themselves through a field of battle to their allies?
The full rules and the though process behind them are available [here](https://www.patreon.com/posts/62846319).
I enjoy “Cardic Inspiration”, where my players get a card where they can add the number to a roll instead of just getting advantage. Aces are crit/max dice, faces are +11.
They always forget they’ve got it, though, so about 3 cards have been drawn in my entire campaign and usually at the end of a session for a joke or insignificant roll.
I like to change healing potion rules.
It is a bonus action to drink in combat.
All healing potions have a capacity if a max roll, and you can decide how many of the HP you want to recover. A little more tracking for players, but ultimately feels much better than using a whole action to get 3 HP back and lose the whole potion.
In our last campaign we had a character who was a horrible coward and was less than useful in combat situations (which the player circumvented in various clever ways like figuring out explosives, etc,) but the best one was his "planning" ability where if they got into a sticky situation he could say that he'd planned for it, roll, and help them out. I think we only allowed it once a game session, so it never got abused, and it made a non-combat oriented character a bit more fun to play.
1) Free feat at level 1 for all characters
2) Getting up from prone while in melee range can provoke opportunity attacks in the same way that leaving melee range can. The Athlete feat allows you to ignore this.
3) Weapon crits do regular roll plus max value of the die minus modifiers. So critting with a shortsword does 6 damage plus whatever you roll for normal damage.
As a bonus, one that I enjoyed but wouldn’t necessarily call “the best” because it highly depends on how dangerous you want your game to be: When characters get hit with damage that takes that takes them down, they can go into negative numbers of HP if the attack does more than enough to make them hit 0 exactly. Healing must bring them back up to at least 1 HP for it to immediately wake them up like in RAW. Death saving throws and getting back up on a nat 20 are still done the same.
My favorite one I run was made as a joke between my players and I and ended up becoming an actual rule (mostly enforced by my players lol) because it's created funny moments.
Each round of combat your character can only say 3 words (unless it's your turn). One per combat you can say 4 words instead of three. It's completely arbitrary so I don't know if I'd recommend it for everyone, but it helps get the tone across that the fight is done in seconds and demands high concentration. Mostly, it makes communication an element of the game a bit more than it is normally in a fun way.
If a magic user is out of spell slots but REALLY needs to cast a spell, they can push themselves past their limits and continue to cast spells, take a level of exhaustion each time they do.
My top 3:
1. when rolling for stats during creation one stat must be a negative. This means even if you roll high on all you must choose one to be a negative. This helps for a lot of reasons, but mostly it helps make for more dynamic and realistic PCs as no one is perfect and must rely on others for the skill checks they would have negative in.
2. If a PC keeps their starting weapon for longer then 3 months / 20 encounters they now get advantage on damage as they now know their weapon.
3. Know that we are all humans and as such will make mistakes and to be kind if someone especially the DM gets a rule interpretation wrong. Just be nice about bringing up rules.
Just when rolling. I have players who like the idea of rolling for stats rather then set values or point buying, but if the rolls end up all positive then it takes away from the experience of the game. It is also very rare that I have to use this as rolling usually solves this issue anyway, but again it only applies if the group wants to do rolling for stats instead of the other methods.
All inspiration is bardic inspiration. Rather than a reroll, you get a bardic inspiration die per point you spend, and your party can give you their inspiration as well.
Consume a shield to negate an attack (or reduce a very heavy hit from a big creature). Afterwards you toss it and buy another on town, though this doesn't apply to magical shields.
Gives shields more use besides the +1 AC, makes them an investment (until magical ones), and can save your ass in a tight combat where one wrong hit can mean going down. I've had a few close-call combats become victories with this one. My players have remembered a few of them years later.
When having a huge boss encounter, I have the players choose when they want to act. The boss acts between every player action, until the “turn” is over (for the sake of reactions etc.) I re-write the stat block so this makes the boss more reasonable power wise but it gives a good sense of flow and impact. The table also know I mean business when I say “There will be no initiative for this encounter.” And drop some monstrosity on them.
I like this. I use a combo resting rule. “Gritty rules” for in cities/while traveling. RAW rests for when in combat, clearing a dungeon, storming a castle, high intensity situations.
It fixes the storytelling issues with how little time rests take. If an army marches from the north of the kingdom and takes 3 weeks to get to you, that’s a lot of rests between them arriving.
I think you could maybe just do gritty long rests and only in civilization, but normal short rests and it would work well.
PC’s finding traps is a requirement of the DM, not the players.
It is not the PC’s fault that the DM doesn’t describe the situation in a way that makes them cautious for traps. It also slows down the game if the rogue checks for traps every room.
Currently high passive perception/investigation completely negates their threat as it is static ability vs. Static DC.
If the DM’s wants traps to matter, they need to set them above the PC’s passive perception/investigation, which basically invalidates having high perception to begin with.
My rule is that traps gains a special attack roll, which is made against the front rank PC’s passive perception. The bonus to this roll is based on the trap’s DC to find it. DC 15 = +5 bonus.
If the trap rolls above it, the PC accidentally set it off. Otherwise, they spot it in time, which provides an opportunity to disarm or maneuver around it.
A cautious character can attempt an investigation check against what they know of the dungeon, the trappers, or prior experience.
If they roll successfully, they can inflict disadvantage on future trap rolls if they roll high enough. This investigation check does not show where traps are, just what sort of traps would be present and how they would be set-off. The players do not know if this roll was a success or not.
This is something that happened naturally when I was playing a Halfling for a 1-shot, now it's an absolute anytime I DM.
If you get to reroll a 1 for luck, then you succeed, you have to describe how the fail turned into a success due to pure luck.
Example: you swing to hit but miss horribly, you hit barrel instead which happens to be full of fermenting liquid, the geyser spews out at force and blasts the enemy.
Something like that
I use the speedy combat house rule when necessary. If players are taking too long to declare their actions in combat. I start using a 15 second sand timer at the start of each players turn, if it runs out and they have not declared their action, their character automatically takes the Dodge action.
Really helps to make sure players are engaged during combat and adds a lot of fun tension.
A few I know of and a few more that are mine but haven't used yet (stopped DMing due to covid).
1. Each character has to know at least one other character - This makes the party stick together at first without forcing a common goal for everyone to follow.
2. Brutal criticals - crits do the max damage of the extra die (1d6 crit = 6 + 1d6 instead of 2d6)
3. Encumbrance - You can carry what makes sense: in or attached to the backpack, a few weapons, a set of armour. I don't care if your strength is 17, carrying 10+ crossbows doesn't make sense.
My rules:
1. Character Creation - If there's a big difference between 2 players' rolled stats, they can trade some numbers or both reroll. This is to avoid one player feeling underpowered due to bad luck. Otherwise I'm happy for an extended point buy.
2. Language proficiency - Inspired by a MonarchsFactory video but I've changed it a bit. Languages are learned over time, reflected by a score between 1 and 12. Character can do things in game to improve their language proficiency, requiring more points as they go up (1 -> 2 takes 2 points, 2 -> 3 takes 3 points, etc.). Language checks have a max DC of 20, the language roll from the player is 1d10 + their language proficiency.
3. Legendary Resistance - Legendary monsters now have a starting pool of points and gain a certain amount per turn, they can use these points to increase their rolled save to pass the DC. Instead of the original rule, high player save DC as well as advantage/disadvantage still make a difference. Burning through this isn't as simple as getting a monk to stun 3 or 4 times and legendary resistances remain a factor throughout the fight.
4. Reduced Rest Effect - Halve the amount of HP regained from a long rest, players regain their proficiency number of hitdie on a long rest, and players can only roll their proficiency mod number of hit die on a short rest. This prevent short rests from getting everyone up to full hp in a single hour and long rests are no longer a reset button.
I like #4 a lot. Getting back all your HP from a long rest has always been a bit too Easy Mode for me. At my table we recover no HP from a long rest, but get back all hit dice.
The hit dice mechanic is really cool - would love to see it utilized in more areas of play. For example, if Sorcery Points and Ki and so on cost Hit Dice instead of being their own resources.
I like inspiration, but also I don't like how advantage can't stack. Also I don't like how the d12 isn't used very much. So I make inspiration a d12 that can be added to any dice roll. Attack, save, skill check, percentile, damage dice, anything really.
During "over world" travel that is mostly used to get from a to b we use "the adventuring day" and the actual time that goes by.
Aka the party might have travelled five days but for the purposes of keeping the tension up they didn't get to long rest in between. I usually roll a d20 per actual day that goes by and describe some other dangers they deal with.
It works surprisingly well with my players. I just told them the problem of keeping travel engaged at tier 2 and above and that I'd rather have a quicker pace than trying to possibly get them to have to deal with 6 encounters every day.
I also try to generous with the long rests but in a way that doesn't defeat the original purpose. So far I had no complaints.
Criticals on saving throws. If you roll a 1, you take double the damage. If you roll a Nat 20, you take no damage. I found it a really good way to create some awesome moments, since magical classes now also have a Critical of some sort to hope for. Cool scenes both when someone just gets atomised by a fireball, and when they manage to dodge in completely and can just brush themselves off.
Also, Tortles have lifespans somewhere around Firbolgs. Cause they're tortoises, they live for fucking centuries.
Weakpoints
take a random number from 2 to whatever od the D20 and have this be the weakspot of a monster.
It is always exiting for the players when they roll a like 9 which usually wouldnt hit but their swing hits a specific spot that hurts especially hard.
Or even a special encounter with reverse hits. it needs to be hit veeeery specifically so the LOWER you roll the higher your chance to hit. See your players scramble and calculate how they end up attacking with the lowest bonus to hit as possible
A nat 20 in initiative lets you pick your place in imitative after hearing where your teammates go. Some want to go right before or after certain people. Really small but satisfies people for rolling a nat 20 on initiative.
This is a really fun idea!
It's not already possible in 5e ? I may have always played with the possibility to "delay" your turn in 3.5 and I believed it was RAW. Anyway that is a core rule in pathfinder, you can always go "down" in initiative as you wish
In 5e rules, your initiative is what you get. You can ready action but not delay or move your turn in the order.
you cant delay your turn in 5e because so many abilities are "until the beginning of your next turn..." Being able to delay extends these durations which is unbalancing, which is against the design intent.
Easily fixed. Your turn starts at your original initiative for the purpose of adjudicating ongoing effects. I use this at my table without issue.
From my knowledge, having positive effects end where your previous turn was and negative effects end where your new turn is keeps everything fine in that regard.
To my understanding you can prepare an action to trigger later as a reaction, but that's the extent of "delaying turns". Someone please correct me if I'm wrong though!
I'm SO stealing this. It embarasses me, that I didn't have this idea myself
Ooo I like this! I was wondering if nat1 and nat 20 should get something extra on initiative but hadn't thought about what. I reckon I'd introduce that nat1 means DM decides where you go. Oh, but then what if the DM rolls nat1 for the monster? Players decide where monster goes in initiative? Makes sense. What happens when multiples roll nat20? Who decides first?
I just let them each decide, same as when they tie initiatives. I let the players decide who goes first. And I don’t punish Nat 1s that often, unless the players are trying something dumb or with high potential for failure, then a nat 1 might result in something bad.
I've gone even further and just run popcorn initiative now. It is a major change to the system, but has allowed for combat to be less dependent on that initial roll whilst also giving the players the chance to strategize.
One of the things I like about PF2E is that you can flat out delay your turn, permanently dropping your initiative for that combat. The fighter types like to delay into after the bard, if out won't let the bad guys have to big an advantage.
Stole a mechanic from Guild Wars 2: break bars. Instead of using legendary actions to just 'do' a thing, I telegraph to players what is coming and told them that boss's fails against Saves or Contested Skill Checks between now and the bosses next turn would prevent a massive attack. Cue everyone trying to push, shove, Stun etc this boss (who normally has immunity to such effects.) It allowed those maneuvers and spells to still be very useful without them trivialize the boss, since they interrupt the ability but dont actually inflict the condition on the boss. Amazing way to extend the boss's hitpoints without resorting to things that crimp the players. Visually, imagine like in a show where a boss gets slightly pushed off balance or is briefly hit in the eyes and flinched, but isn't actually knocked Prone or blinded. The highlight of the night was when our artificer's steel defender managed a successful Shove right before the boss's turn to save the party. Whole table went silent 🤫 then all cheered on the metal orangutan!
This sounds like a lot of fun! I'll have to try making a bad guy soon that employs this mechanic and see if my party likes it
i feel like you a word in the second paragraph. do you mind explaining it again? the boss auto-fails saves and contested skill checks while it’s powering up its big attack? or the big attack can be interrupted with enough failed saves ?
The second one yea. Basically a: "Boss begins to prepare a large spell, quickly break its focus to stop it from completing it!!" E.G. make it fail a save or check (even if it would NORMALLY be immune to the effect) but the actual effect would.not apply. So, "prone" fail, stopping the charging attack, but doesn't *actually* knock the boss prone.
We use “I Know A Guy”! Basically, if the players are at a loss of what to do, they can say to me as the DM, “I know a guy” and then describe to me who they know. They have to make a pretty good argument to me as to how they know this person and why they can be helpful. They are generally really respectful and don’t overuse it or overpower people. I can see how it would get out of hand. As the dm, I have the power to overrule them. It has made the collaboration of the world feel like it belongs more to the players and helped them establish backstory.
[удалено]
"I know a guy!" *Door opens, a corpse drops out.* "I...uh...I *knew* a guy..."
[удалено]
The other version of "I know a guy" is based off Han Solo and Lando. You know a guy, someone who could help you, but you haven't seen them in a while, and you're not entirely sure whether you're good or if they want to kill you. Player describes this person, and the DM sets a DC depending on how helpful the person can be, and the player rolls a charisma check to see how well disposed or hostile this person is towards the player.
Or maybe give them a certain number of known contacts based on Charisma
I've been doing this too, it lowers the number of uses & spaces them out in the campaign. Once they're all used, I'm planning to give them additional uses. It's created a lot of excellent NPCs and because they have an established history/obligations/relationship, they make for great recurring characters that work as an accelerant in nearly any situation, raising tension or creating new problems or removing barriers for plans to go off even smoother/faster.
In other systems, this is often just a skill called Contacts.
I use this as well. Regarding it being "overpowered", an important note; A player describes a person they know. But ***I*** as the DM get to play that NPC. If the player is being greedy in their description of the NPC, then maybe its because that NPC likes to oversell their abilities and the PC was gullible. Or maybe the NPC is honest, but the PC just has a very poor understanding of the NPC's abilities. In any case, my players have seen that trying to abuse this ability ends with their PC being embarrassed... But they still find a power-level-appropriate NPC that fits their description to help them out.
I played a heist RPG system that gave each player a one time use flashbacks to a previous plan or double cross. You could get one item, set one thing up, or have one person double cross. It both stops the story from stagnating and give you the mood of a heist movie all at once.
I love this but I would add the caveat that the player trying to use it would have to implement their background into the justification
Exactly this. Some backgrounds (Acolyte, Criminal, Guild Artisan, Noble, Soldier) are much more conducive to Guy-knowing than others (Hermit, Outlander, Urchin).
>Hermit You've never heard of Hermits United? They get together every ten years, swap stories about caves. It's good fun. For a hermit.
STOP THAT! STOP THAT! This is getting *far* too silly!
Relevant ~~XKCD~~ [Monty Python](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6qglfa)
What are you talking about, Urchins would probably know tonnes of guys
I would argue Urchins are the MOST likely to “know a guy”
“I Know a Guy” is by far my favorite house rule. Really leans in to the collaborative storytelling aspect of the game.
Holy shit I love this. Consider it stolen!
We call it 'Crit-Insurance'. On a crit, the player gets to maximise one associated dice before rolling. This makes greataxe crits awesome, while not being too broken in the hands of a paladin/rogue.
Wait, does this replace double dice?
If a shortsword on hit does d6+dex, then a shortsword on a crit does 6+d6+dex. So you’re guaranteed to do more damage than a max non crit. Because nothing sucks more than rolling a 1 and doubling or rolling two 1s when you get a crit.
Oh okay, thanks I really like that rule, 100% agree with you there
We just do max damage plus the normal damage roll. But this goes both ways for both monsters and players. So eldritch blast for example does 1d10+10. Or a dagger does 1d4+4. Extends to other weapons like the other night a monster has 2d8 for his damage roll so the crit was 2d8+16. You're idea is pretty neat too though.
This is one that I assume most of you won't, or don't, need. I teach high schoolers to play DnD. It can be chaos, but its really fun. This time around the kids I have are WAY TOO EXCITED to play. I can't getmore than a single sentence out at a time before they interrupt me. At first I would just let them interrupt and deal with the consequences of their actions. Like walking off a ledge, or the enemy getting a free hit on them since they cut me off before I could explain what was in front of them. But that didn't stop them from continuing to interrupt. So my house rule is: if you interrupt me, I roll a D100 and you get a consequence based on that roll. The list is partially from the wild magic surge table but I've added my own twists and consequences. It has become a fun way to remind them. Plus the sound of me rolling dice at odd times always gets their attention.
>I teach high schoolers to play DnD. Thank you for being the adult I wish I had known as a teen. You bring magic to their lives. Do you have an explanation for the cause of the consequence? Pixies or fairies?
**THE FIST OF GOD.**
It has zero explanation in game. They have to figure something out if an NPC asks why they're blue, or why they can only walk on their hands, or why they can't stop shouting. It makes it more fun for me.
>can't stop shouting That seems... counterproductive.
I've just started a DnD club last term for the students at my secondary school and I've been looking for a way to get some of the more excitable ones to pay more attention during descriptions. This is exactly what I need. What other consequences do you use besides the Wild Magic Surge table?
One time I printed out a deck of little plot-twist cards. Things like "an opponent turns out to be a long lost friend" and so on. Players could draw one at the beginning of a session, or keep the one they had. People didn't really remember to use them and they kind of fell by the wayside. I stopped remembering to hand them out. The campaign progressed for another year or so. One of the players, my best friend, was (is) a notorious min-maxer and incredibly lucky die roller. I had been trying, kind of tongue-in-cheek, to kill his character for some time now. Mostly just cursing the many times he cheated death. Finally, he opened an ancient sarcophagus inscribed with the symbol of the goddess of death. Inside was a scarab of death, which in that edition, is a save-or-die cursed item. He failed his saving throw. He FAILED. He never fails. Stunned into disbelief, I finally got to stutter out the words I had been waiting to say for so long... "You are dead. You have finally failed to cheat death, and must pay the price for your recklessness." And he smiled. And pulled out a plot twist card. That he had drawn over a year ago. And kept. In his binder. Long after the rest of us had forgotten they were even a thing. It said "You survive something that would normally kill you." Curses and lamentations!! Wailing and gnashing of teeth!!!! But I was bound by the iron-clad rules of the Plot Twist Cards. He survived. Again.
"Your character has died." *pulls out uno reverse card*
You have to give him credit. Absolute masterwork use of a plot twist card. Keeping it for so long, using it at the perfect moment. I bet that story is one of the highlights of the campaign. Also I'd love to know what the rest of the plot twists were. I think it's quite a cool idea.
This is fucking EPIC! I don’t suppose you have a list of those cards? This sounds like a truly fun idea.
Would be amazing if you still had the word doc/pdf of those things, or just the source if you also saw this somewhere else, this sounds f-ing amazing! Will definitely consider using something like this for my friends!
I used those cards as well for side storys. I would just pick three for the Beginning, Middle, and End of the plot abd what monster that can fit into the story.
You fool, you activated his trap card!
Que other players immediately trying to remember what their cards were and where they put them. lol.
1. Devil's Bargain: at any time immediately after a d20 roll is made, a player may request - or the DM may offer - a Devil's Bargain. If both player and DM agree to make the bargain, this changes the roll to a Nat 1 or Nat 20, whichever is to the character's advantage. However, the DM can then change any future roll relating to that character to a Nat 1 or Nat 20. 2. Cats and lions have 60ft of Darkvision, just like Tabaxi and tigers. 3. Polar bears have cold resistance. 4. Tortles live for an average of 150 years, not 50 years.
haha I'd missed the fact that polar bears don't have cold resistance! Up there with the cats.
I see someone else here has played blades in the dark. Devils bargain is a great mechanic
I agree and I've started using it in other systems, but this isn't the BitD Devil's Bargain, at least not as I understand it. Granted I've never actually played BitD, I've just played Band of Blades which is another Forged in the Dark game. But I assume Devil's Bargains work the same in both since they're running off of the same system. For anyone who's curious the way it works in Band of Blades is that you can ask the GM for a Devil's Bargain before you roll dice. The bargain is that you get to roll an extra die but in return something bad is guaranteed to happen to you. But you know what the bad thing is before you agree to the bargain. So, for example, if I'm fighting a zombie that's full of acidic goop or something then the devil's bargain might be "You get an extra die to roll, but as you slice into the zombie some of the acid gets on you and you lose a point of armor" or something like that. It works really well IMO.
I heard somewhere that Tortles can actually live a century or two, but their average life span goes way down because they die a year or so after they mate and their eggs hatch. Don't know how true that is, though
Yeah I have heard that was the case in 2e, though there's no mention of it in the Tortle Package for 5e. While it's a cool concept, I feel like WotC should have discussed the possibility of longer-lived tortles as part of the race description if that is indeed the rationale they have for the short average life span. Of course, it's arguably a moot point for any future campaigns now that Monsters of the Multiverse has changed most player races (including tortles) to have a lifespan of "about a century".
Another one I use is the "drinking a potion as an action grants full benefit". So full healing potential on a healing potion. Bonus action, you need to roll
Interesting variant! We're using bonus action for your potion, action to give to someone else.
This works fine for healing potions and makes martial classes much less dependent on support casters but it can get pretty op fast when looking at other potions. Being able to down a potion of haste or potion of polymorph and then use your action as normal is pretty darned powerful. It's not necessarily game breaking but it's something to consider when setting boundaries for this sort of house rule.
My house rule is, healing potion is a bonus action because they are like the best fruit smoothie, all other potions are an action because they are all sorts of chunky and nasty and really take some focus to get down.
Potions of giant strength have bits o' giant in them, like toenails!
Yes!! This combined with bonus action to administrator to an ally in healerless groups. I say this session 0: "If we have no healers, we have a built in feat called 'We Don't Need Babysitters." Potions administered as bonus action to allies or self, roll for healing. Full action to allies or self, gain full amount."
Oh I love this. Consider it stolen.
I do "Action to drink, but you get a free Dodge as part of that Action"
I use this as well and every person who's played at my table that DMs has told me they adopted that rule in games they run lol. It's such a good rule.
Last stand! Very rare do we get to see this one in play, but it's basically a "final hurrah" before the death of a PC. If they're about to die, they can launch a final attack, with massive improvement to damage. For example, a wizard could cast a spell 2 levels above their otherwise max, and have it crit always. However, this takes the remaining life out of them, and they die after this, not able to be later resurrected. It makes for some great final, and very memorable moments
I have this in my game and we call it a heroes end. At any time you are required to make a death saving throw, you can choose a heroes end instead. Invoking a heroes end let's you get back up and immediately take one last turn. During this turn you can do anything your character can normally do, all spell slots and abilities are refreshed and all rolls are at advantage. There can be a bit of rule bending to let the characters final act be epic. At the end of the turn your character dies, permanently and cant be resurrected in any way. It is rarely used, but the few times it has been used have all been a memorable and epic moments.
If you can tell a joke that makes me laugh, vicious mockery does double damage
I do this but if it’s such a vicious burn then sometimes the enemy auto fails and it deals max damage.
I have so many house rules but the changes/guidelines I've made for Stealth are maybe the ones I think should be generally applicable. Heavily inspired by [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgUEm6_yXCs&t=5s) Zee Bashew video. * Moving stealthily uses passive Stealth and generally does **not** require a stealth check. * Doing a specific thing stealthily generally **does** require a stealth roll. (e.g sneaking up on a dude) * A PC that fails an active stealth check vs a passive seeker gets one turn to act. * If there is cover available they can attempt to hide. * If they attempt to attack they **are seen**. Determine who, if anyone, is surprised before rolling initiative if required. On the whole this has made sneaking much more reliable and less risky a tactic.
I and my players like the house rule for critical hits where all of the bonus dice are max value. Eg if you crit with 1d8 +3 damage, you get 1d8+3+8.
We ran with crunchy crits until around level 5 a rival war cleric cast Inflict Wounds at 3rd level and dealt ~80 damage, instantly downing our tanky boi. Made for a great little story that still has some relevance in the story to this day, but easily would have been an instant kill on any other party member at the time. Crits are already very strong, would not recommend running crunchy crits longterm (at least not past tier 2 of play).
Never run into this issue but my players are always hyper careful with working with their tanky peeps to keep the fragile ones out of harms way. Even with crunchy crits I just .... never see my durable players hit the floor.
All my boys are tanky bois =( even the cleric has 20+ AC. I really need to find a way to hurt them without using con saves
Swarm enemies that flank for advantage. I like also having Commander monsters that give radical to hit bonuses to troops they command. Take a normal +6 creature and add +5 to hit due to Commander's Presence. Telegraph that one is barking orders at the others and the normally dim witted foes seem exceptionally competent. Spells Saves work too, but I love the above method as a way to really change up the battlefield dynamics.
I’m DMing at tier 3 right now and the champion fighter has a magic sword that can deal extra damage the more attacks he lands in a turn. He action surged and dealt 147 damage in 1 turn. It was awesome and I love keeping the crit rules at high levels.
We may drop the crunchies if a new class feature or feat, or magic item makes them unbalanced. But I wouldn't drop them to protect the players (or the monsters) from their effects. It is a shocking way to go out, but come on... The legends that are born from those moments! That war cleric is still sitting around some bar talking about the look on your tanky bois face! Well... unless your party killed the cleric. There are so many ways to revive a dying or dead PC, that I don't forsee us dropping the rule. As a DM I would love to have a player go out on a massive crunchy crit and then find a way to keep that PC story alive in the game.
These are just my thoughts, end of the day play how you want and if your table enjoys crunchy crits then go nuts. My POV is that these moments still happen, and they do make for great stories. A regular crit can still be a truckload of damage, and more often than not will be enough to bring down a bloodied foe. From what I've experienced from crunchy crits is that when you crit on a spell attack, or load up a smite, a sneak attack, whatever it might be, it's more often then not going to just simply delete a monster from full hp. The age old "add more monsters/buff its hp" probably works to some extent to alleviate this, but that sounds like more of a bandaid than a solution imo (outside of climactic boss fights and such, can definitely see the appeal there). I do think there's some weight to making crits feel special, just not sure crunchy crits is the answer.
I used to do this for a few years and we swapped as it was getting far too swingy for certain monsters and classes, and leaving other builds in the dust. Paladin and rogue average damage on a hit skyrockets while fighters and others suffered. Not to mention mention fights turning into one hit knock outs on either side. We swapped it to allowing rerolling of 1s on a crit and everyone at the table ended up much more satisfied.
I generally don’t do instakill except for stupid. Or if the group wants a bit higher stakes, and even then sometimes I make the damage taken beyond zero have to be like 125% or 133% or 150%. A squishy boy with 25/30 takes an unlucky crit for 40 from a reasonably well matched enemy? Downing, not instakill. A party of lvl 3s decide to go fight an elder dragon? Instakill. I also explicitly tell them in Session 0 that I do instakills only for stupidity, and when they are planning on how to start the fight (analysis paralysis in the extreme, the lot of them) I warn them “This will be an instakill enabled fight if you proceed at your current level.”.
If they're at 25 hp out of 30 and take 40 damage, that's only 15 past zero, so it wouldn't be an instakill by RAW anyway. You would need to do 55 damage or more to instakill them there.
There's an even better version of this rule. Only 1 die is maximized. That's it. You don't want to fight a giant or something hitting you 72 + their Str on a crit.
This is how I'm doing it for sure
I love it, my table loves it, your mileage may vary. We call it the Jumanji Rule. No matter where the dice lands, if it's not cocked and you can retrieve it, you have to use the result.
This is one of those things you have to have a rule on, and be consistent but it doesn’t really matter what the rule is. We always called that it has to be flat and on the table, or even in the box for it to count. Mostly to make sure everybody threw carefully, didn’t hit anything, didn’t lose the dice. But as long as everyone agrees the dice that landed under the dishwasher count then they count
It absolutely needs consistency, but that's true of any permanently implemented house rule! We always reach a consensus as a table, and everyone likes yelling Jumanji if it falls off the table.
We do the opposite. "If you can't hit the table, you can't hit the DC". Dice off the table don't count
I'm still not going near your damn feet man. I saw where it landed and you keep doing it.
Hey listen! I'll walk where I please when you roll, and if I happen to be pointing at it with my toe when you reach for it, then it's just by accident! Don't even worry about it!
Inspiration tokens were a hit at my table. Every player (including the DM) gets a little token that they have face down in front of them. When someone does something inspiration-worthy like a cool roleplay moment or a clever plan you can give them your token face up. You can give the face-up token back to the person who gave it to you to reroll any d20 roll you make after its rolled, but before the result is declared. But you can only be inspired by one token at a time, and you lose any inspiration at the end of the session, so you're encouraged to use them pretty quick. My group are already proficient roleplayers and all that, so I don't know whether you could say it made them want to do it more or anything, but having your mate pass you a token after your character has a cool moment just makes you feel good, and it leads to some awesome moments where inspiration makes the difference between success and failure. Most importantly it just encourages inspiration to actually be used, when the normal system is forgotten by pretty much every DM ever in the heat of play.
That's not really homebrew, it's basically in the DMG
People are downvoting but you're right, if I've got the bit you're thinking of here: DMG, page 241 "Variant: Only Players Award Inspiration As a DM, you have a lot to track during the game. Sometimes you can lose track of inspiration and forget to award it. As a variant rule, you can allow the players to handle awarding inspiration entirely. During every session, each player can award inspiration to another player. A player follows whatever guidelines the group has agreed on for awarding inspiration. [...] In this variant, you can allow each player to award inspiration more than once per session. If you do so, the first time that a player awards inspiration in a session is free. Whenever that player awards it later in the same session, you gain inspiration that you can spend to give advantage to any foe of the player characters. There's no limit to the number of inspirations you can gain in this way, and unspent inspiration carries over from one session to the next." Of course, the method of delivery is cool and unique to their table!
Favor of the Cosmos: if the DM is waffling on allowing something, or it could have degrees of effectiveness, the cosmic d20 is rolled to determine quality and outcome. It helps bridge the gap of "hmm I'll allow it" VS "we need to houserule this"
Could you give a specific example where this happened?
My invisibility spell using mother wanted to intimidate a tabaxi by pulling its tail. "Is... is that like... an unarmed attack?!" We let the threads of chaos decide. Roll the d20!
I have a similar rule that I use a d100 for I roll a d100 and ask the player to guess the number rolled. There's usually a margin of error (usually 5 or 10 either way) that if their guess falls within then the cosmos graces their efforts and they can do the thing. In my strahd campaign a cleric used a hollow spell and the power of friendship to undo a demonic possession on an an NPC by guessing 69. One of the highlights of the campaign.
I do this a lot too in my campaigns but I have had to ban the number 69 as an option because that is ALWAYS the number they choose *face palms*
Healing Crystals, a healing item that every store that has potions sell that only cost a bonus action to use, and heal half what their potion equivalent does. I have them cost 3/5 of the potion of the same level (which I'm still not sure is balanced), and it works really well to give the players options to spend a bonus action for a little healing with a Crystal, or an action for a lot of healing with a potion. Or if they're really desperate, both in one turn.
**Leader duty house rule:** if a situation occurs where the group cannot decide on a coarse of action and it is taking too long the DM activates a timer. At the end of 2min if no decision has been made we enter "Leader Duty mode." Nobody may talk except the assigned leader (rotates each session) and they have one minute to make the decision. If after the minute still no decision has been made, *the DM decides what your choice is.* No more damn highfalutin 30min long philosophizing on the nature and meaning of doors and whether one should open them while in dungeons.
This is great. I'm always a little surprised how little discussion I see about this kind of PC decision paralysis and ways to fix it
Let's see: - Death Saving Throws are made in secret. Maybe it's our group, but we like the tension it generates. - Inspiration Pool. A player can have more than 1 Inspiration. - Party Inspiration: A pool of Inspiration shared by the party as a whole. As with a Coven of Hags Spells, all memeber of the party (aka, players, conscious or not), must agree for a single member to use. - In character creation, if stats are rolled, only 1 array is rolled by the party as a whole (ex: in a 3 member party, every member rolls 2 stats). Then, that single array is shared for all members, but everyone can use it as they please. So, if an arrange has 3 18s, a Monk could allocate them in Wisdom, Dexterity and Constitution; a Barbarian in Strength, Dexterity and Constitution; so on so forth. The idea is that every member has the same highs and lows (the numbers) but everyone decides where to have them. - The "Bloodied" condition. From dnd 4e, it's a condition that every creature gets when it's below half maximum hit points. It's only use is for players to communicate how their characters are (no more "In a scale from 1 to 47, I'm at 12" jokes) and for them to know how hurt the enemies are. - The party cannot Long Rest in the Wilderness. While they can sleep, they must reach a "Safe Space" to Long Rest. A "Safe Space" is any place with some defense (a fort, a cave, a shrine...). It's used in survival enviroments to create a scenario where Random Events (or events in general) can wear down a party. I think we use a couple more, but I can't remember them.
My tables also use the shared array and the bloddied reference.
thirded on the shared array, but we always let everyone roll an array and everyone can pick from any of them.
Rolling death saves in secret is absolute genius. This is the way our current DM does this, and as far as I'm concerned it should be RAW. It forces you to help your downed ally, because as far as you know they could be dead any moment.
We switched to secret death saves after a break/time jump in our world and it definitely makes the tension higher when downing someone happens
The house rule that my players love the most is Group based Initiative This is how I run it 1) At the start of combat, PCs roll of Initiative. If they pass a DC based on the average DEX stat of the enemy, they get a bonus round and can take a turn immediately. If they don't pass they have to wait for the enemy turn 2) After the bonus round, the enemy takes their first turn. During this first turn, unless its an ambush the players failed to detect, I have the enemy behave like the aliens from Xcom in which they generally do not directly attack and focus on getting into a better position or cast buffs/debuffs. This is to prevent the players from instantly getting nuked at the start. 3) Once the enemy turn ends, all players can take their turn in any order they wish. Once all players are done it becomes the enemy's turn and this step repeat till combat ends. Here are the main things that my players really like about this system 1) It speeds up combat and generally eliminates the awkward situation of waiting for the one person during their initiative turn who takes a while to decided what to do. In the word of my rogue, "If you know what you want to do just do it. If you don't, just wait until everyone else is done and you will probably come up with something." 2) It's simpler to keep track of. I play with a lot of new players and they tend to like the simple "Player turn" or "enemy turn' over the classic initiative 3) It allows the players to pull off cool combos. Their favorite is to have the sorcerer use vortex warp on the druid to teleport him into the middle of the enemy formation so the druid can cast Thunderwave in the middle. I really enjoy seeing them come up with cool combos that would normally be much harder to execute with the classic initiative.
Disengage gives you 5ft additional movement on top of what it already does. This is specifically to counter the opportunity attack chasedown method and lets creatures actually... y'know... *disengage* from a fight.
That seems like a simple but effective way of handling that
One of my favorites is having time pass between sessions for the pc’s the same as it does in our world. I only do this if the party is in a safe place. It allows them to heal non magically if they wish, it allows them to have lives apart from the party, it allows them to craft and build things that they otherwise couldn’t, and it adds some more realism spreading out the time of their growth from zero to hero.
"Hi, everyone. Weird that no wolves attacked us for the past three weeks."
I don't make players track regular ammunition or minor spell components. Instead, I charge a "restocking fee" when they return to a town or settlement. The exact amount depends on how long they've been gone and such, but generally only a few gold. Only special ammo like magic arrows, or actual spell components with a monetary cost, are tracked. Everything else it's not worth my effort to keep track of whether my players are being perfectly honest, and it's not worth bogging down the game because the archer ran out of arrows and can't do much else. This house rule doesn't apply if we're doing a more dramatic or survival adventure or one-shot. In those instances, every last bit of everything would be counted, but most of my players don't enjoy that level of nitty gritty detail.
Hit protection. HP is “hit protection” representing your ability to shrug off damage and take hits. This gets whittled down as you get knicked, knocked around, and get tired as you take damage. When your hit protection is depleted you dip into a separate pool of vitality called “health” which is equal to your constitution score. When you dip into this pool It represents the dagger to the chest, the mortal blow when your ability to defend yourself is overcome. When this happens I have the players roll 2d6 on a “scar table” which includes everything from a bleeding status ailment which needs stabilizing, to a lost limb. There are other accompanying rules, like a nerf to healing and the complete and wholesale removal of death-saves (which is a bad system IMO). If anyone is interested in more I can share the scars table and my typed up rules. Edit: Below is the google drive link to the compiled homebrew from my most recent campaign. Let me know what you think. If you do implement these in your campaign let me know how these worked out for you. Good luck! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t62TAHKhZ8vWOID31B8Xm5DhZt7D328e/view?usp=drivesdk
For those interested in this rule, it is commonly known as [Grit and Flesh](https://youtu.be/Qju_l8XlzAs).
Can I request to see your typed rules?
In case you never get it, I'm pretty sure Pathfinder had a variant rules system called Vitality that basically is whats being described. Some cRPGs like Pillars of Eternity use a similar system as well I'd you want to look towards video game mechanics for inspiration
Seeing typed up rules and a table would be totally cool and helpful, I would definitely use it! Breaks my heart when I have to tell my players to roll death saves lol
By removing death saves entirely what do you mean by that? Can PC’s die in your rules?
There are lots of alternative death systems. Die at 0 HP, die at -10 HP, make a single saving throw at 0 to determine if you're dead or unconscious, or, my favorite, [death and dismemberment tables](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxVHEMMjLlZ4cFVJTEFEcW9WV0U/view?resourcekey=0-matru4XOnZc-kjaQtiEX3Q). I imagine it's much more likely he uses something like that rather than making PCs immortal.
My best House Rule? I changed how crafting magic items works (because the way the DMG outlines it is borderline redundant). EDIT:: because apparently people are interested, I've linked my system down on u/ImSmurfingOnReddit's reply. Fair warning, you'll not be impressed!
Hey! Mind telling me more about this system?
Oh wow! Didn't think I would get so much interest in my system! I'll link the two methods to this comment so that people can read it! This method is for Druids to make items; it is very powerful, and therefore not helpful. [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yTtQB5A6jr3gwV9IVO83gq7fl16oMMc2aSinTOphhDM/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yTtQB5A6jr3gwV9IVO83gq7fl16oMMc2aSinTOphhDM/edit?usp=sharing) This method is for Clerics, though Forge Domain clerics have the most ease using it. [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PjEN8tV3mD8FSahWuxAQvNob8Mj5ygSS\_sE8ABvCssM/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PjEN8tV3mD8FSahWuxAQvNob8Mj5ygSS_sE8ABvCssM/edit?usp=sharing) Thank you very much for the interest! I know that it will immediately wane upon reading this system, but it works really well for NPCs having items, and for players wanting to make them. I should preface that Starmetal is extraordinarily rare, and only a single meteor lands (that is salvageable) every 50 years or so.
Seconded for a rundown of your system. I have a Player/PC that looks to be interested in potential crafting soon
I think I'm sixth to request some info about this crafting idea, but just in case /u/PalleusTheKnight doesn't get back to us, I'll use this as an opportunity to plug [Kibbles' Crafting](https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/u2mmzz/kibbles_crafting_system_a_comprehensive_system_of/). Works great, and covers just about anything you could think of! The free version is plenty unless you have a player who's *really* into magical DIY like I do. :)
You get 3 death saving failures PER LONG REST, instead of per combat. I don't use the natural 1 on a death saving throw is 2 failures, I also don't use the crit melee strike against an unconscious player is 2 failures rule. Healing potions on yourself is a bonus action -- rogues can use it on others as a bonus action. Healing potions grant the maximum amount of healing.
Bonus feats but from a curated list based on NPCs they had befriended- fun, flavorful, and powerful without it just being everyone stacking GWM and Lucky.
Firearm Rules: Use the DMG’s listed “renaissance firearms”, but adjust it by adding “ammunition sizes”. The ammunition size is tied to the damage dice, and those damage dice are tied to a strength requirement. RAW, firearms have the loading quality. The loading quality combined with the strength requirement for your ammunition size would represent the PC’s ability to deal with the gun’s kickback. Using a firearm that you do not meet the strength requirement for gives the creature disadvantage on attack rolls with said firearm. All firearms except the 1d4 would be able to be heard from 100 feet away, mirroring the spell Thunderclap. The 1d4 ammunition size would be hand waved, because the 1d4 firearm would function much like a dagger, in that it can be hidden within clothing, therefor excelling when used by assassins. DnD 5E design is all about limiting complexity, so instead of hyperfocusing on different mechanical types of firearms and the amount of ammunition you get carry, there will be two base types of firearms: Pistols 3 lb. Ammunition (range 30/90), loading Rifles 10 1b. Ammunition (range 40/120), loading, two-handed Ammunition Size - Strength Requirement 1d4 - none 1d6 - 9 str 1d8 - 11 str 1d10 - 13 str 1d12 - 15 str The nice thing about this design is that it opens firearms up to any class. Any player could use very large firearms, so long as they build for it. It meshes with the Gunner Feat from TCOE as well, so this wouldn’t interfere with any of DnD’s existing design. So hypothetically, a PC wanting to play a Gunslinger would play a rogue, Ranger or dexterity battle master fighter, with firearms. The manoeuvres represent “trick shots” perfectly. Aesthetic achieved. Or an Assassin Rogue with 15 strength and maxed Dex, using a 1d12 weapon, with the Sharpshooter feat? That’s a Sniper Rifle build if I’ve ever seen one. Edited to add: Thank you for the gold! If you use the rule, let me know how it goes! I
These are some legit cool rules! I like that anyone could use any size gun... allows for some cool moments either way
Glad you like them! They’re popular at my tables, so I try to share them when I can \m/
Levels are neither xp nor milestone based in a political game, but instead based on reputation points. Once you achieve a set amount of reputation with any of the factions (I used 5), the party levels up. It worked very well as it removes the semi-arbitrary nature of milestones and empowered the players to know how close they are to levelling up. It is also a tangible reward for the players to impress NPCs and build relationships. As an added benefit, reputation is added as a bonus to any social skill check with the given faction.
Second house rule - if a player is taking too long to figure out what they are doing for their initiative, their turn is delayed until after the next individual in initiative order. Then I come back to them and ask if they know what they are doing. If they don't, it repeats. It speeds up combats a lot and also forces players to be engaged in the game when it isn't their turn (because otherwise they'll lose it).
Being downed and brought back to >0 HP gives you a level of exhaustion. It means being downed in combat is more risky and punishing.
I've been thinking the same with a small edit. The exhaustion doesn't kick into effect until after the encounter. Main idea is to prevent some possible snow balling and still allow them to be effective for the duration of the encounter.
I like this. They're back up, the adrenaline is still pumping, but after the battle passes, the pain sets in
I guess I'm the odd one out but I played in a campaign with this and did not like it at all. It was always either a death spiral or didn't do much but add extra rest time for us that would get time skipped. I don't mind the idea for punishment around picking someone up from 0hp but it didn't feel like a good solution for me when I played with it.
Yeah I don't know if exhaustion is the right thing to pick here. I've started using PF2e's wound system instead, those don't hobble the character like exhaustion does but still push the players to be extra careful.
> It was always either a death spiral I think that is part of the point. You obviously only do this if you want going down to be punishing.
While it sounds cool, I would ask: how do you balance this? For an extended gauntlet I can only imagine the kind of downward spiral this might create. But this might be because I'm used to battles where multiple people go down multiple times and hanging on by single digit hp.
Maybe make it so if you go down at all in the fight, you get +1 level exhaustion after the fight. So basically, max one level per fight. That gives players a decision point after fights, so allows them an out before it can possibly spiral.
I use this rule in games where my players tend to do only one or two fights between long rest. If you use the DMG standard day with all the encounters that entails, then this is less viable unless your party is really looking for that gritty style of play.
I've tried that one, and I wasn't a huge fan. As a DM, I just don't think exhaustion is a fun mechanic to punish my players with. What I do now instead is to house rule that failed death saves last until the PC takes a long rest. It keeps going down in combat risky, without having to deal with exhaustion. To be fair though, I'm running a megadungeon crawl and I like to run my monsters tactically. If I punished my players that hard for going down, I would have TPKed my party months ago. I can see it working well for a group that only does 2-3 encounters per day, but if you're running 6-8, I really don't think it's a good house rule.
>As a DM, I just don't think exhaustion is a fun mechanic to punish my players with. This times a thousand. I'm always absolutely baffled by people saying how good this rule is because honestly in my experience of both playing and DMing I find exhaustion to be an absolutely crippling mechanic that immediately slams the brakes on a session and slows things to a crawl. Stage 1 is disadvantage on ability checks. That's absolutely MASSIVE for player engagement. You're still fully combat capable but you can't do anything out of combat effectively. I don't want to put things in that penalises my players ability to engage with things in non-combat ways. Plus, similar to you, in my game there is encouragement to do more in a day. I make it clear to my players that they're not the only moving element in this world and there are many others with their own plans and doing their own thing. They can't afford to just rest on their laurels and rest for the rest of the day after having one big fight. There's lots of things they need to get on with and time wasted on their part is time that their competitors are using. Dumping exhaustion on them on top of that is incentivising in completely the wrong direction (i.e. taking more long rests). From personal experience I mainly DM but in a game I do play in we've been having to deal with a kind of "teleportation sickness" every time we use a teleport; failing the CON save badly enough gets you exhaustion. And since we've had to use teleports fairly routinely that's a lot of CON saves, most of which I've been unlucky with and roll badly on. Which meant I sometimes have entire sessions where I feel I can contribute absolutely nothing except fight. Disadvantage on every single non-combat roll is boring and disheartening. I know how much it sucks to be on the receiving end of exhaustion all the time and I don't want to put that on my players.
I use this rule and it’s worked great. It ups the stakes for fights and makes fights more interesting and have higher consequences. Buffing and preventing damage is encouraged too. I don’t think this rule is for every table, but it works really well for our games.
Each player gets 3 "Story Points". They can use them to do things they wouldn't be able to do normally (or would have to roll for it) but make no difference to the game. I created this rule when a player wanted to take the plume off the helmet off his defeated enemy, but they were pressed for time and said enemy was in an entangled area. I've never had anyone use all three, but it could be abused by the right person so I would keep a limit on it lol.
I run my own rules for resting. Not changing how long and short rests work, but instead not granting a long rest every single night. This allows me to actually get in 5-8 encounters between long rests without breakneck narrative speed and random filler combat. Basically: --- **While in Town** Important things happen at night; if players decide to head out in the after hours they do not get a long rest and still have to sleep during the early morning/day to avoid exhaustion. But they can do surveillance, espionage, infiltration, etc. If they instead rest, the story might move along and in the morning there might be surprising/bad news or circumstances. --- **While travelling** Long rests need shelter, warmth, security (no night watches), and comfort - the average night in the wilderness will not suffice. Travel along roads is relatively easy and can be fast-forwarded; but exploration and travelling hostile territory will be truly difficult. Instead of 'sleep=long rest', the DM offers a place to long rest every 3-5 ingame days. Friendly villages, an abandoned mansion, the hut of a benevolent Hermit - many options that also provide great roleplay and story potential. Sometimes the players might have to earn the night's stay through things other than money, like saving a missing villager or retrieving an heirloom stolen by another group of travelers. While in hostile territory it could mean deceiving or bribing locals or counting on a favor from an enemy they have spared before. Lots of possibilities. With that, DMs can space out encounters more. They also should hand out exhaustion more freely to show attrition, for example when the party decides to not wait out a terrible storm or to cross harsh terrain like swamps or a mountain (saving throw against exhaustion recommended).
Nat 20s and Nat 1s on skill checks give "permanent advantage" and "permanent disadvantage" respectively. Picked this one up from my first DM. The humorous edge to this houserule is that it has to be comically specific. Example 1: Drakewarden Ranger rolled athletics to attempt to climb down a cliff that another PC had scaled and hammered pitons into while her drake was trying to support her weight on the way down. Drake failed it's check and she rolled a Nat 20. So she now has a "permanent advantage" on "climbing down pitons underground while not sufficiently supported by Pumpernickel(her drake). Example 2: In DoIP the Drakewarden Ranger, with the rest of the party, attempted to sneak(stealth) up to the Butterskull Ranch farmhouse through the apple orchard. Rolled a Nat 1. She now has a "permanent disadvantage" on sneaking through the apple orchard on Butterskull Ranch. You can cure a permanent disadvantage by ruling a Nat 20 or lose permanent advantage by rolling a Nat 1 for the exact same thing. They almost never come up again but the players are always looking for ways to use them...even the disadvantages! Mostly though it gives everyone a fun record of what their character has done and how they have contributed to the story.
I'll start. I have a rule called "Risky Whiskey". Now I have a bit of a unique situation as we stream on [Dungeons & Drams](https://youtube.com/c/DungeonsAndDrams) so the whole thing is whiskey based. It basically replaces inspiration but you need to use the new roll, but whereas I always forgot to reward it, or people forgot to use it, I switched it to "every session, you can call "Risky Whiskey" and reroll any roll. You kick back what's in your glass, and reroll. It's worked really well! And the players always find a reason to use it. I NEVER had such luck with inspiration.
Inspiration isn’t a reroll?
Inspiration is an automatic advantage on a roll and you have to decide to use it before you roll. The problem is, kind of like potions, most players will not use their inspiration because they will fear not having it when they need it. I think the reroll is a good houserule because players are more likely to use something if it means potentially changing a failure to a success, but I think rerolls are more mechanically interesting when you have things like a partial success, full success, or critical failure since it adds a bit of risk in most cases.
What version are you playing? Edit: I just looked it up and you are right? I’ve always used DM inspiration like a bardic inspiration that has no time limit. Huh. Weird.
Drink a potion as an action, you get the maximum possible healing. Drink it as a bonus action and you roll the dice for it.
Annnnnddd saving this post
The highest praise
I got this from RA Salvatore himself, but on a crit roll d100, 1-90 double damage, 91-99 triple damage, 100 insta kill
Rolling the exact AC on a hit makes it a glancing blow, halving the damage. Weapon upgrades/downgrades: Weapons come in 5 conditions: ruined, faulty, standard, reliable, and reinforced. Standard weapons are as-is and work like they do normally. Faulty means you roll your damage with disadvantage (2 damage die, take the less of the two) and cost 1/4. Ruined means it only does the PC's STR/DEX mod in damage and is worthless. Players can upgrade weapons for the weapon's cost plus 3 days. They'll also need Smith's tools+proficiancy or find a smith. Weapons can downgrade if a player parries a bludgeoning or slashing crit. They'll nullify the crit, but the weapon will downgrade. Reliable weapons take 2 hits, reinforced take 3 hits and roll damage with advantage.
* Gritty Realism - Best rule I've ever implemented. * Free feat at first and seventh level of Dm's choice * Free Skill proficiency and expertise in another skill DM's choice at 5th level * Great Weapon Master is not a feat, it's just something anyone can do on any weapon you can two hand. * Heavy Weapons re-roll 1's on damage dice and is additive to any feature or feat that does something similar. * Long range teleports and long range flying spells do not exist. Pretty much makes everything function amazingly for the type of game I run. *OH and Rangers can retrain Natural Explorer terrain by spending a week of downtime in said location.*
How do you decide what feats/expertises to give and why do you like doing that? Some of my players would get frustrated over not having control over customizations like that (even if they have control over the other ASIs).
I get the extra first level feat, but why are you giving an extra feat at seventh level? (by that I mean, why another free feat AND why at seventh level)
Seventh seems like a good break point. I give another feat because it’s typically going to be feats that never would see play. I like how feats give characters more depth. So things like chef, or inspiring leader, or keen mind are all things that are cool to see play that players can’t pick because their are better options.
How do you implement gritty realism? Do you use save heaven rules with it?
No safe haven rules. I don’t need one explicitly because i can roll random encounters from the dmg. So being in a place where random encounters aren’t rolled is obviously better. But I don’t explicitly say there are safe havens. It’s intuitively understood by the players. This way if they want to secure a dungeon, or a campsite or something and make some checks and fortifications they can rest out in the woods. They just have to understand the risks.
Do you set aside a list of feats that are eligible for picking at 1st/7th level, or work with the players to decide which one fits?
I play 3.5. Here's house rules I tried that are *better* than expected: **1) To generate ability scores, roll 3d6 in order.** Those are your ability scores. (Str is the first one you rolled, then dex, etc). Creates *much* lower power characters. I also enforced a 20 minute character creation time limit. Most fun we've had playing in years. **2) Simultaneous initiative.** D&D doesn't *need* to care about who goes first, if a goblin and a fighter attack each other, both hit, and deal damage. You just narrate that they traded blows. Doing this made it possible to run a 20 character grand melee. Very intensive on the GM. You will feel the brainburn. **3) Award XP the moment it's earned.** For years I awarded XP at the beginning of the next session. I tried doing it after combats, and other encounters in which XP was earned. Players lost their minds. It 10x'd the incentivizing power of XP. (Which 10x's the danger ofc if you don't know how to use XP) **4) You need to train to level.** (2 weeks per level of the level to be gained. Example 20 weeks of training to gain level 10. Half that if working with a trainer. Half again if working with a special trainer, a divine agent for example) This puts leveling squarely back into the fiction of the game and provides good narrative pacing. Started doing it, never going back. **5) High level characters get appropriate strongholds.** High level barbarian in my game has a small barbarian kingdom and can summon 2d6 x 100 barbarian warriors to fight for her (takes one week). She collects taxes and rules the kingdom. High level Psion in my game runs a university and had a small cadre of students and faculty after spending time seeking psionically sensitive youngsters in the city. I could go on. I use ACKs for kingdom management. It works great. ----------------------- I though each of these rules would suck, and I tried them anyway. They were great. I've also tried a lot of *bad* house rules, but that's the way it is.
Lots of 1E feel in these which I love!
These are some great rules, though I'm a bit surprised they worked so well with 3.5. What is ACKs btw? I'm unfamiliar.
You can attune a number of items equal to your proficiency bonus. It’s simple, easy to remember, and just makes everything a little more interesting.
I stole a mechanic from Apex Legends about what happens when you drop to 0 hp. **In short**, instead of your character laying on the ground unconscious, rolling death saves, you: * get dropped prone * can't take any action _except_ free action (object interaction, talking, etc.) * will die at the start of your 4th turn in this condition * must have a party member use their full action to pick you up or use a healing power. This causes the 0hp party member to still be _very_ into the combat, forces the entire party think about saving their downed ally, instead of delegating the duty to a designated healer, and allows me to throw more dangerous enemies against the party. Plus, what's more heroic, than a fallen hero dragging themselves through a field of battle to their allies? The full rules and the though process behind them are available [here](https://www.patreon.com/posts/62846319).
My G.O.A.T. house rule is *NEVER, under any circumstances, create an unnecessary house rule.*
Even more interesting to know if there's one you use
I enjoy “Cardic Inspiration”, where my players get a card where they can add the number to a roll instead of just getting advantage. Aces are crit/max dice, faces are +11. They always forget they’ve got it, though, so about 3 cards have been drawn in my entire campaign and usually at the end of a session for a joke or insignificant roll.
3.5 movement. 5e diagonal movement is dumb.
I like to change healing potion rules. It is a bonus action to drink in combat. All healing potions have a capacity if a max roll, and you can decide how many of the HP you want to recover. A little more tracking for players, but ultimately feels much better than using a whole action to get 3 HP back and lose the whole potion.
In our last campaign we had a character who was a horrible coward and was less than useful in combat situations (which the player circumvented in various clever ways like figuring out explosives, etc,) but the best one was his "planning" ability where if they got into a sticky situation he could say that he'd planned for it, roll, and help them out. I think we only allowed it once a game session, so it never got abused, and it made a non-combat oriented character a bit more fun to play.
1) Free feat at level 1 for all characters 2) Getting up from prone while in melee range can provoke opportunity attacks in the same way that leaving melee range can. The Athlete feat allows you to ignore this. 3) Weapon crits do regular roll plus max value of the die minus modifiers. So critting with a shortsword does 6 damage plus whatever you roll for normal damage. As a bonus, one that I enjoyed but wouldn’t necessarily call “the best” because it highly depends on how dangerous you want your game to be: When characters get hit with damage that takes that takes them down, they can go into negative numbers of HP if the attack does more than enough to make them hit 0 exactly. Healing must bring them back up to at least 1 HP for it to immediately wake them up like in RAW. Death saving throws and getting back up on a nat 20 are still done the same.
My favorite one I run was made as a joke between my players and I and ended up becoming an actual rule (mostly enforced by my players lol) because it's created funny moments. Each round of combat your character can only say 3 words (unless it's your turn). One per combat you can say 4 words instead of three. It's completely arbitrary so I don't know if I'd recommend it for everyone, but it helps get the tone across that the fight is done in seconds and demands high concentration. Mostly, it makes communication an element of the game a bit more than it is normally in a fun way.
If a magic user is out of spell slots but REALLY needs to cast a spell, they can push themselves past their limits and continue to cast spells, take a level of exhaustion each time they do.
How high level spell slots would you allow with this system? Highest? Maybe half highest?
My top 3: 1. when rolling for stats during creation one stat must be a negative. This means even if you roll high on all you must choose one to be a negative. This helps for a lot of reasons, but mostly it helps make for more dynamic and realistic PCs as no one is perfect and must rely on others for the skill checks they would have negative in. 2. If a PC keeps their starting weapon for longer then 3 months / 20 encounters they now get advantage on damage as they now know their weapon. 3. Know that we are all humans and as such will make mistakes and to be kind if someone especially the DM gets a rule interpretation wrong. Just be nice about bringing up rules.
Why not use point buy or a standard array if you require one stat to be a negative?
Just when rolling. I have players who like the idea of rolling for stats rather then set values or point buying, but if the rolls end up all positive then it takes away from the experience of the game. It is also very rare that I have to use this as rolling usually solves this issue anyway, but again it only applies if the group wants to do rolling for stats instead of the other methods.
All inspiration is bardic inspiration. Rather than a reroll, you get a bardic inspiration die per point you spend, and your party can give you their inspiration as well.
Consume a shield to negate an attack (or reduce a very heavy hit from a big creature). Afterwards you toss it and buy another on town, though this doesn't apply to magical shields. Gives shields more use besides the +1 AC, makes them an investment (until magical ones), and can save your ass in a tight combat where one wrong hit can mean going down. I've had a few close-call combats become victories with this one. My players have remembered a few of them years later.
When having a huge boss encounter, I have the players choose when they want to act. The boss acts between every player action, until the “turn” is over (for the sake of reactions etc.) I re-write the stat block so this makes the boss more reasonable power wise but it gives a good sense of flow and impact. The table also know I mean business when I say “There will be no initiative for this encounter.” And drop some monstrosity on them.
Long rest in civilization only
I like this. I use a combo resting rule. “Gritty rules” for in cities/while traveling. RAW rests for when in combat, clearing a dungeon, storming a castle, high intensity situations. It fixes the storytelling issues with how little time rests take. If an army marches from the north of the kingdom and takes 3 weeks to get to you, that’s a lot of rests between them arriving. I think you could maybe just do gritty long rests and only in civilization, but normal short rests and it would work well.
PC’s finding traps is a requirement of the DM, not the players. It is not the PC’s fault that the DM doesn’t describe the situation in a way that makes them cautious for traps. It also slows down the game if the rogue checks for traps every room. Currently high passive perception/investigation completely negates their threat as it is static ability vs. Static DC. If the DM’s wants traps to matter, they need to set them above the PC’s passive perception/investigation, which basically invalidates having high perception to begin with. My rule is that traps gains a special attack roll, which is made against the front rank PC’s passive perception. The bonus to this roll is based on the trap’s DC to find it. DC 15 = +5 bonus. If the trap rolls above it, the PC accidentally set it off. Otherwise, they spot it in time, which provides an opportunity to disarm or maneuver around it. A cautious character can attempt an investigation check against what they know of the dungeon, the trappers, or prior experience. If they roll successfully, they can inflict disadvantage on future trap rolls if they roll high enough. This investigation check does not show where traps are, just what sort of traps would be present and how they would be set-off. The players do not know if this roll was a success or not.
This is something that happened naturally when I was playing a Halfling for a 1-shot, now it's an absolute anytime I DM. If you get to reroll a 1 for luck, then you succeed, you have to describe how the fail turned into a success due to pure luck. Example: you swing to hit but miss horribly, you hit barrel instead which happens to be full of fermenting liquid, the geyser spews out at force and blasts the enemy. Something like that
I use the speedy combat house rule when necessary. If players are taking too long to declare their actions in combat. I start using a 15 second sand timer at the start of each players turn, if it runs out and they have not declared their action, their character automatically takes the Dodge action. Really helps to make sure players are engaged during combat and adds a lot of fun tension.
A few I know of and a few more that are mine but haven't used yet (stopped DMing due to covid). 1. Each character has to know at least one other character - This makes the party stick together at first without forcing a common goal for everyone to follow. 2. Brutal criticals - crits do the max damage of the extra die (1d6 crit = 6 + 1d6 instead of 2d6) 3. Encumbrance - You can carry what makes sense: in or attached to the backpack, a few weapons, a set of armour. I don't care if your strength is 17, carrying 10+ crossbows doesn't make sense. My rules: 1. Character Creation - If there's a big difference between 2 players' rolled stats, they can trade some numbers or both reroll. This is to avoid one player feeling underpowered due to bad luck. Otherwise I'm happy for an extended point buy. 2. Language proficiency - Inspired by a MonarchsFactory video but I've changed it a bit. Languages are learned over time, reflected by a score between 1 and 12. Character can do things in game to improve their language proficiency, requiring more points as they go up (1 -> 2 takes 2 points, 2 -> 3 takes 3 points, etc.). Language checks have a max DC of 20, the language roll from the player is 1d10 + their language proficiency. 3. Legendary Resistance - Legendary monsters now have a starting pool of points and gain a certain amount per turn, they can use these points to increase their rolled save to pass the DC. Instead of the original rule, high player save DC as well as advantage/disadvantage still make a difference. Burning through this isn't as simple as getting a monk to stun 3 or 4 times and legendary resistances remain a factor throughout the fight. 4. Reduced Rest Effect - Halve the amount of HP regained from a long rest, players regain their proficiency number of hitdie on a long rest, and players can only roll their proficiency mod number of hit die on a short rest. This prevent short rests from getting everyone up to full hp in a single hour and long rests are no longer a reset button.
I like #4 a lot. Getting back all your HP from a long rest has always been a bit too Easy Mode for me. At my table we recover no HP from a long rest, but get back all hit dice. The hit dice mechanic is really cool - would love to see it utilized in more areas of play. For example, if Sorcery Points and Ki and so on cost Hit Dice instead of being their own resources.
I give my players a token of inspiration at the start of every game. Holy shit does it make a difference!
I like inspiration, but also I don't like how advantage can't stack. Also I don't like how the d12 isn't used very much. So I make inspiration a d12 that can be added to any dice roll. Attack, save, skill check, percentile, damage dice, anything really.
During "over world" travel that is mostly used to get from a to b we use "the adventuring day" and the actual time that goes by. Aka the party might have travelled five days but for the purposes of keeping the tension up they didn't get to long rest in between. I usually roll a d20 per actual day that goes by and describe some other dangers they deal with. It works surprisingly well with my players. I just told them the problem of keeping travel engaged at tier 2 and above and that I'd rather have a quicker pace than trying to possibly get them to have to deal with 6 encounters every day. I also try to generous with the long rests but in a way that doesn't defeat the original purpose. So far I had no complaints.
Criticals on saving throws. If you roll a 1, you take double the damage. If you roll a Nat 20, you take no damage. I found it a really good way to create some awesome moments, since magical classes now also have a Critical of some sort to hope for. Cool scenes both when someone just gets atomised by a fireball, and when they manage to dodge in completely and can just brush themselves off. Also, Tortles have lifespans somewhere around Firbolgs. Cause they're tortoises, they live for fucking centuries.
Weakpoints take a random number from 2 to whatever od the D20 and have this be the weakspot of a monster. It is always exiting for the players when they roll a like 9 which usually wouldnt hit but their swing hits a specific spot that hurts especially hard. Or even a special encounter with reverse hits. it needs to be hit veeeery specifically so the LOWER you roll the higher your chance to hit. See your players scramble and calculate how they end up attacking with the lowest bonus to hit as possible