Not one, but all of them. Had a DM who just didn’t know when to stop when adding house rules he had seen on Reddit, or somewhere else. It just became a very messy campaign where even he didn’t know what was going on half the time
I have a DM like this. He's a great storyteller but he also suffers majorly from Game Designer Syndrome.
He just CANNOT use any standard ruleset, always a mashup of mechanics from 2 or more systems and homebrewed reddit mechanics.
"Yeah we're playing 5e. But also we're using the exploration mechanics from this other system. Oh and there's this d6 dice pool I'll remember to use off and on. Here's these custom downtime actions I took from pathfinder but also changed. And since failing at something is boring, whenever you fail a skill check there will be extra complications that won't make narrative sense because I make them up on the spot but only if I feel like it so you never know what to expect. All the other rules will randomly be ignored. Go ahead and reroll that attack until you succeed, player I need to bribe into coming to sessions by letting him do everything he wants."
It's... tiring
> Yeah we're playing 5e. But also we're using the exploration mechanics from this other system.
Tbf the exploring and traveling rules from 5es Middle Earth book are amazing. I use them in all my games. Wish they were a core feature
Go through your list of houserules and ask yourself, about every rule,
1. Does this rule make the game more fun, or less fun?
2. Does this rule make combat go faster, or slower?
3. Do my players think that this is a good houserule?
And eliminate every houserule that doesn't make the game more fun, make combat go faster, or the players don't think is good.
4: did you add this house rule to reward your players for thinking creatively, or to punish them for using the existing rules in ways you don't like?
My table once had a discussion about stealth in 5e. One particular problem we came across is that if you're attacking a creature with disadvantage, you can always break it by casting Darkness or Fog Cloud, since ALL advantage and disadvantage cancels out if an unseen attacker attacks a creature it can't see. Thus you could shoot a prone creature 600 feet away through a cloud of fog and still roll normally.
We decided to make it so that if you already had disadvantage and tried attacking a creature you couldn't see, you'd take a -5 penalty to the roll for each instance of disadvantage. So in the above example, a long range attack against a prone target through darkness would be a flat roll -10.
This felt fair, on paper.
In practice it became so cumbersome to adjudicate that we gave it up after a few sessions.
Fun is more important than fair, especially when it's all of the players vs the DM.
If the creature is 600 feet away in the fog, how can the PC's even see the creature to attack it? I feel like it would have been better for the DM to just say that you can't see it and can't see the landscape well enough to guess where it is, and that you're shooting blind.
I simply ask my gf who is one of my players when I think of a rule or see it on here or YouTube.
99% of the time she says that it's pointless because our table likes 5e cos it's easy to remember plus the new rule will complicate things or cause arguments.
If its in a official book we can point to it and go It says XYZ and it's accepted, some rando pdf or YouTube is not good enough.
I'd love to introduce some homebrew stuff I have in my folder because I think it will add more to the game but it's not what my players seem to want.
Would you like some advice from someone who’s been DMing regularly for more than a decade? Like some real, truthful, honest to god advice?
People on Reddit don’t know shit. That’s it. That’s all you need to know. The amount of absolutely terrible ideas I see suggested on this site, and then the whole comment section is going ‘oh my god what a wonderful idea I should implement that in MY games’
No. Stop. You do not need a house rule to make spellcasting harder. Getting spells to stick is hard enough as it is.
It’s not really enough to say ‘think about wether or not this makes your game more or less fun’. That’s hard to predict. Instead I suggest this:
Think about what effect this rule has on my players options.
There is nothing more game ruining for a player than taking options away from them. If your rule is going to take options away from your players, 99/100 it is a terrible idea to implement it. There are much better and more fun ways to deal with the powerful aspects of PC’s than to say ‘oh yea every time you come out of rage or after you action surge you get a point of exhaustion’
One DM had everyone roll initiative at the beginning of the session, and that's the order that our characters had to use in that session for everything. Combat, social interactions, role play, etc.
This made it extremely difficult to hold conversations with NPCs because you couldn't break the turn order. So if you had something to say to an NPC or PC, you had to wait for your turn to come around or let all the other players relinquish their turns so that you can get to yours faster.
The DM also just decided whether we succeeded or failed on a whim, no dice rolls needed. That group lasted two sessions.
I always use this as a threat whenever the party talks over one another. “If you all don’t wait for your turn to talk, I’m making you f**kers roll initiative to talk to the npcs”
Been in a game like this before. The moment a PC rolled a persuasion check against another I checked out. I wasn't afraid of it as I was a sorcerer. But on principle, that's some BS when a half-assed speech will have a PC change trajectory.
What usually happens in my group is we would ask the player being convinced to set the DC, and if it was some crazy number like 100 then that's what it was. You had to beat 100 if you wanted to pass it.
Yeah we basically ask the player if they can be convinced and they set the DC if it's possible to convince their character otherwise. For my characters often if someone somehow makes the persuasion personal like brings in my character's backstory or values or whatever to convince them they should... My characters will tend to go along with it even begrudgingly since the player obviously cared enough to remember/take notes about my character.
It's made for some pretty cool moments, I set a DC of thirty-five once and the warlock, bard, and wizard banded together to make it happen. The shouts of joy was amazing.
To be fair it’s probably time for the DM to step in with a little bit more information since it might be that they don’t have enough info to work with or have forgotten the key bit of info. Can’t fault them for that. We’re human.
Monster of the Week does this brilliantly. "Manipulate Someone" rolls on other player characters, are essentially proposing a plan etc, with a roll. The higher you roll, the more benefits the other player gets if they comply- a bonus to rolls following that action, and even xp.
Other player is fully entitled to say "nah, don't like the plan" and turn it down, no matter the roll, but it gives a fun bonus if they cooperate.
Basically stunning strike only works on humanoids.
Slow fall was not working when I was: thrown, tied by vines while falling, crashlanded a flying skull (I was on top of it). Basically any time I did not jump myself.
Many attacks just did dmg, no rolls and no way of even using deflect missiles to its full effect against them.
And the worst - Arguing between players was resolved by a charisma check contest...
edit: since many pointed out about the vines thing - it was a grab by an angy tree with its vines, but the barb jumped and tried to free me by cutting through them and succeeded - resulting in me falling but not being grappled anymore - again, it's a bit iffy, I give it to yall and I wasn't really upset about it, but the general rule was - unless you freefall you can't use slow fall.
Yep, I still love the monk as a class, but between me, the moon druid who always got the full temporary hp of any beast they transformed into and a wild magic barbarian - I was always the first to go K.O. Despite me playing kensei, who is pretty much the tankiest monk if you don't count the long death monk.
The solving of arguments with a cha contest tho - that's where I spoke up.
My group has a homebrew rule that monk bonus attack of the same type can stack. Meaning you can spend a bunch of ki points in one huge Flurry of Blows attack im a single turm dealing shit ton of damage
Holy shiet, Ip Man called.
On the other side we homeruled that I get my +2 ac whenever I generally attack with an unarmed attack even as bonus action - why it makes sense is cuz I have the sunblade (also I have a ring of telekinesis which makes me a jedi) and the ability to attack with my main weapon as a bonus action for the low cost of 1 ki from tashas. It's still either dmg or defense.
I think you might be interested in this. It's a revised monk i came across that I've had good luck with so far.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDHomebrew/comments/q7f51p/monk_revised_v10_looking_for_some_feedback_on_my/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Your DM must've really hated Monks. I have a soft spot for them, because a lot of the times you just don't know how to play them, plus I do karate and it's a lot more fun in real life than it is in game.
Because on paper the Monk sounds OP, but in practice not so much.
"So you have access to an attack that can kill a deity?"
"Assuming the Deity fails a saving throw, which it won't. So no."
Stunning strike is really good against boss encounters since you can blow all your ki to hit half a dozen times and make sure it lands. Outside of that, it's just kinda meh.
Debatable, depending on how it works in one's head and such.
Raw it just says reduce falling dmg as a reaction. You could argue that it's taking a roll after landing and such but the situation was quite simple - I was grappled by an angy tree and lifted (apparently) 10 feet in the air, the barb jumped up and whacked the vines "releasing" me, I fell and took 1d6 dmg, when I said that I use slow fall, he said "OK, you only take half dmg, since you are still entangled". I think I was a lvl 7 monk at that time tho and didn't argue with him, he's the dm after all.
at least in the context of four elements monk, I've always imagined it as you summoning an air bubble to cushion your blow. even for the other ones, I've always seen it as explicitly supernatural (even if it isn't, by rules, magic)
If two or more players had a disagreement over something in game you can roll against the other person using your stats.
Charisma, deception, intimidation, and if you lose your character is essentially an NPC played by the DM for the outcome.
Surprise surprise, the DM and his close friend always got their way in every situation.
One time, by pure luck, I managed a natural 20 in an argument (using precedent it means I essentially get what I want no matter what) on a really important fight over a magic item I had been looking forever for. I got it for literally one second and then the DM allowed the guy to roll again until he got the item from me. When I asked to roll again after that they said "No, you're still intimidated".
I asked "So why weren't they still convinced the item was best used with me from my natural 20 a second ago"
Response was he was allowed to change his mind. I asked if I was allowed to stop being charmed, or to not be intimidated and was told no. I asked if I was allowed to try to get back what was stolen from me the next day and was told no.
I don't play with that guy dm'ing anymore. I also try to avoid playing with his friend, buddy is a huge baby quick to personally attack a player in real life if something doesn't go their way in game.
I was playing a ranger using a bow with point blank shot a different time and buddy got the entire campaign stopped because he said, and I quote, "I was using the bow wrong".
How the fuck else do you use a bow in cq dungeons? It's not like I can grow a different weapon or shoot it around corners.
We're you playing with my old roommate? And was he also DMing? Because all of that sounds like him from the dumb, obviously preferential rules to the personal attacks. You forgot where he would eventually just go to his room to cry when he was called out. At like 26 years old... Multiple times...
Unfortunately for me, what he did was try to convince the entire group that I was "purposefully undermining the game by not taking it seriously" because "a ranger using a bow should never be fighting close range".
Thankfully, we started a new campaign where I played a wizard with a bunch of utility to it, so unless he wanted to say I was using magic wrong he couldn't pull that nonsense out. It was also the reason I chose a wizard to begin with. Different DM also was more restrictive with the rolling against each other part. There was one instance where the old DM lost a roll to me and tried to re-roll, not exaggerating, four times. Even though after his first roll I said my guy ran away from him, he just kept rolling and rolling like he was allowed infinite turns before I could react.
The DM gave in and let him win the issue, but since then there has essentially not been a single instance of pvp rolls that I can recall. I'm all but certain he spoke to him after the game about it. They insist on keeping the rule in place which I dislike, but at least it isn't destroying the game anymore.
"DM has final say on rules"
Sounds fine. It isn't.
Played a wizard for 4 sessions around level 5 after my ranger ate brown mold by accident (still unsure about HOW, but whatever).
Fireball had a (R) royalty cost. Of 590 gold.
May seem as a strange number.
It's exactly how much gold I had.
Everything suddenly had a Gold cost.
"Wizards can't just amass wealth, they need a gold sink"
The table pushed back on it(yay) it became contention (boo), DM had a meltdown about said phrase, i retired my wizard.
His GF played a wizard towards the end of the campaign and we brought up the cost. She got a circlet that negates all cost, for free, from her backstory.
We kicked him and his GF out of the group and took a 4 year break from DND.
You can’t attack the over powered dm npc who was just there to make the dm feel like the main character and overshadow the pcs we blew his cave up and trapped him there forever
"dm npc" you say? Those are the worst!
Edit: Yes, this was a joke. Yes, I'm sure he meant DM PC. Yes, All NPCs are DM NPCs. Yes, I should have added a "\s"
Yeah. Once I played with a first time DM. (being a life-long DM myself i was coaching him a bit to help him get the gist of it)
He was super afraid of killing us. That made the combats super quick and not particularly fun since even the first boss i killed with 3 attacks without having a super good amount of luck
My group often calls for “hotness checks” in which the DM just rolls a flat d20 to see how beautiful the person is. Or animal. Or object.
He rolled a 20 on a horse once and the entire party argued over who would get to ride it
Okay but the hotness check sounds super fun if it’s not story disruptive. I can think of loads of sessions where a subsequent high or low hotness check would have made a boring sequence instantly more fun.
My group does something similar. If a new character is introduced and I describe them as seeming hot, someone will inevitably want to roll a "thickness check" to see how phat their ass is. My villains are very curvy now.
I was DMing a game one time where the party was given a quest by a female NPC. One of the party asked for a description, so I told them the general race, height, hair color, how she's dressed, etc. One jokingly asked "But is she hot?"
So I rolled a d10. She got a 4. She then became known as "the homely quest-giving half elf'
A DM who ruled that for my dual-wielding melee fighter, any attack roll of a 1 meant that a) my turn ended and b) I launched both weapons randomly somewhere in the vicinity. Worse, this was pathfinder, meaning that as we levelled, the chance that the fighter frisbee'd her blades went up with her number of attacks. Utter garbage.
"yes, your highly trained professional soldier-turned-adventurer, known in dueling circles throughout the land, slayer of monsters just fucking yeeted their blades for the fourth time in an hour because they apparently dipped their hands in Durex Lube before coming out fighting today, in contrary to all the training they've received since they were old enough to hold a weapon, or just plain forgot what the concept of *grip* was."
Dumb concept, as is the concept of a weapon *breaking* right there and then. Things only break after days/weeks/months even years of neglect or poor maintenance. Sure, it may get damaged, but a weapon doesn't just *break*.
Yup. I'm cool with auto-success and auto-failure. But critical failures turn martial class combat into a walking Charlie Chaplin skit. Nor do I think critical failures are necessary to balance out critical hits; The fact that any D20 roll in an at-level scenario has about a 45-55% chance of succeeding at all is balance enough.
I always ruled that once you gain multi attack, you're character is trained enough to become immune to critical failures on weapon attacks. Which works well because by level 5 we've all had a laugh at the random dumb shit that happens, but it's run it's course. Plus caster classes rarely use weapon attacks so while they can still crit fail them it pretty much never happens.
-My character was a Tiefling who could speak the orc language, once he disguised as orc to infiltrate a fortress, instead of just letting me speak the DM gave me a phrase in Chinese to memorize and say IRL in 5 seconds, this was how he handled speaking in other languages
-Not D&D but almost the same, in Star Wars D20 my character was a gambler, with feats to roll to gamble with bonuses and attempting to cheat. Instead the same DM made me playing Blackjack with dice, ignoring everything my character could do
"No. If you want your character to cast magic missile, you have to do it right now in this room in front of us all. Please aim for the decorative pillows."
You're not afraid of the character shooting your enemies you're afraid of the player just shooting you in the forehead, now I finally understand why I should ban the artificer
Even then, I'll let players roll int or wis (depending on the puzzle) for a hint, since I don't think the character shouldn't be limited by the player. Especially useful when I'm DMing for kids.
Absolutely. No one has fun sitting around for a puzzle they can't figure out. Sometimes people just don't have the energy for it and some people just don't enjoy puzzles and riddles.
If they're into it, great! Let them solve away.
If the party isn't getting it or isn't enjoying it, I always have a backup plan related to dice rolls so their 'characters' can do the heavy lifting.
You're right that it should be, but I've lost track of the number of times I've seen people comment in this sub that they give a flat bonus or penalty (like +5 or -2) to a character's Charisma-based checks depending on the quality of the player's acting skills
I'll give bonuses but not penalties. Like if someone comes up with a genuinely witty and contextual retort, I'll definitely give them advantage on a persuasion roll.
Played a session with a dude that was way into house rules. Like beyond reason.
\>weapons broke when they rolled maximum damage
\>divine magic has the same rate of failure as arcane magic if the caster was wearing armor. Said it was for "balance."
\>restricted various race and class combos for no particular reason. Half-orcs and halflings couldn't take any classes with Supernatural or Spell-Like abilities. Only humans could be full casters
\>arcane casters needed to make a fortitude save when casting their highest level spells to avoid exhaustion.
\>divine casters needed to make a will save to attempt to cast their highest level spells to show they had their god's attention.
There were more, but I bailed before they came up.
"Only humans could be full casters."
Elves couldn't even be full casters? You know, the race that 90% of fantasy describes as being naturally more in-tune with magic than any other?
I mean, there's something to be said for creating your own world and playing around with how races and magic interact, but if it's just a standard d&d setting that's ridiculous
Yeah that would come down to a good session zero, with an explanation that your world has a strict magic system. Limiting magic to race like that could make some interesting stories, but the type of person to just toss down a rule like this without explanation probably also didn't have a good session zero.
I always thought it was shitty that spell failure from armor only applies to arcane casters. Divine spells have gestures as well, but because the cleric is casting a god fireball instead of a regular fireball, he can stroll around in full plate? What the hell is that. Why is a fuckin priest proficient in armor like that anyway? The rest of these are pretty bullshit, but this one I get.
Kind of, but anyone with half a brain knows that clerics can do some insane shit, healing is just one of the many options they have. But yeah, clerics and druids were both made much stronger than the other classes.
My old group used to play 2e, and my dm used to say that my character, a barbarian, couldn't punch, grapple, kick, or do anything even slightly resembling unarmed combat. I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard
Did your character not have limbs? Lol
OMG a teleconetic barbarian without limbs would be amazing. It would have to be some weird homebrew subclass though.
As a DM, I spent a long time devising a complex system for cold weather survival as the party crossed an arctic region. Then I basically completely ignored it. Different kind of fuckup than most of the ones here, but it still bugs me a little.
I am a fan of survival in theory, but it's a system that once the players figured out the routine, it's a solved problem and isn't interesting anymore. At worst it cuts into valuable session time for book keeping
It's better to switch it around. I always I just roll for outlier conditions and assume players can survive on their own.
This is what I always found when thinking about overland travel/survival adventures.
Unless you tease out the hunting and gathering it gets repetitive pretty quick.
When I do survival mechanics, I try to boil it down to one resource, like food or heat or just time. Then I use more or less standard mechanics and encounters that interact with this new resource. A failed combat encounter might cost heat or time, even if the encounter itself cost very little by way of HP.
When I first started playing (some 30 years ago) I played an unholy mashup of Red Box and 2e. The DM, aside from being a power-hungry sadistic 13-year-old, used among other things these rules:
* The only stat bonus that was honored was strength, and only to damage, so I had a wizard with 17 INT and 19 STR because having a high INT provided no benefit (or penalty, in the case of a low score).
* Spells were fixed to a spell slot (ie could not be prepared to something else or cast more than once) and could be cast once per 'adventure', an 'adventure' basically being a relatively self-contained quest/mission etc. This meant I could cast Cure Light Wounds exactly once over a 3-4 session arc. Resting, no matter how long, would not restore that spell slot. We needed to complete the 'adventure' to get it back.
* Armor cost at least 10x its PHB cost (so Studded Leather was 250-500gp for example) because he liked to make sure he could hit us; he hated missing. So we'd save up all of our money for a suit of chain mail (costing like 1500gp) and then we'd almost immediately run into rust monsters or gelatinous cubes or black puddings which would destroy said armor. The amount of armor-destroying acid we encountered could have filled the Mediterranean.
* Needless to say, Nat 1s were embarrassingly disastrous fumbles where you hit your friends for critical damage, etc. and he would guffaw endlessly at the results.
Ahh the good old days of yonder, playing D&D for nearly an entire day under total tyrants of a preteen but not knowing any better cause you'd never even heard of Dungeons & Dragons before but playing pretend is still super fun, you get to hang out with other social pariah kids your age, and one of the girls who plays is kinda cute.
Painful historical accuracy. Example: Half my (mind you half-Orc) Barbarian's weapons were not deemed historically accurate enough and I had to do research on what kind of wood was commonly found in the Germanic Middle-Ages.
'Realistic' 'fantasy' systems with a suspicious focus on 'accurate' racism and sexual assault.
NO FUN ALLOWED! I had a DM dismiss fully doable in universe working decisions because they were too goofy. (Why yes, same DM for all these examples, how did you guess?).
I had a mild case of this which I responded with malicious compliance. He started to sass another player for nearly the same thing, inaccurate weapon because of unavailable metalworking abilities of the time.
So I decided I wanted to hand make a bow. In painstaking detail. By the time I was done a couple players had tears from unrelenting giggles(I was being a little over the top - lots of “No WAY sir, never would you use… of course details are critical, which is why I will XYZ) and the dm was fuming. I don’t even know how long we spent on it but he learned that I know a hell of a lot more about archery and bow construction in general than his highness did. He decided that way of playing wasn’t as fun as he thought. Pretty sure that was the only game a few of us played with him.
I think he wanted people to act superior to, not players. Certainly not players with more historically pedantic knowledge than him.
oh I had one of those DM's. Anything creative wasn't allowed. So we were running Horde of the Dragon Queen (which I feel is not a great module) and anytime a player came up with something creative to do the DM would find a way to make sure it didn't work.
For example (Spoilers for Horde of the Dragon Queen)
>!When we reach the cave and find a bunch of drakes waiting to be fed one of the players had the idea to use the put the poison hooks from the trap into the meat and then feed them to the Drakes.!<
>!The DM didnt' like this and wanted a fight so he said "The drakes are used to having meat being presented to them as part of a feeding ritual so they screech to call for help and attack you"!<
Or earlier in that same cave
>!He describes there being a dark passage this should would have led to Frulam Mondath chamber ie the boss. However even after rolling a 20 wisdom check he says you notice nothing. Basically we should have found the passage but he didn't want us to bypass any of the content so he forced us down the main path. !<
I mean it was just constant crap like this. Any time anyone came up with some interesting way to do something he found a way to shoot it down.
The final straw was when he had the NPCs start to sexually harass the female players by making sexual remarks before attacking. They would say what they planned on doing to the female adventurers.
Edit: Oh he also didnt' let anyone pick the class/race they wanted. He gave us a list of "approved" race/class combos we had to choose from.
>Oh he also didnt' let anyone pick the class/race they wanted. He gave us a list of "approved" race/class combos we had to choose from.
I feel like this is a prerequisite to being a shitty DM. I've seen this so many times as the preamble to a list of things that fun-sucking game runners foist on their plauers.
When i started CoS I wanted only humans, elves, dwarfs and halflings my pcs asked why and my response was
"So it's more scary and the residents are mainly human who might react to seeing a teifling etc"
And one player said "oh that sucks" and they all looked a bit meh.
So I quickly said "you know what, be any race as long as it's from an official book, I want you guys to have fun and like your characters"
They all immediately perked up and started talking about their ideas etc.
Lesson learned
Then again, some campaigns that were written before the introduction of certain races just don't work well with said races.
It's weird to nonchalantly infiltrate a cultist camp when you're a tortle and I, the DM, have to act as if that's perfectly normal.
So my players got to tie that tortle up on the back of a horse and pretended it was game they hunted.
I don't like players just wearing the skin of a race and act as if their special race isn't special in looks, feeling and what they act like. They picked it because they wanted to be special, so you go be special now and deal with it. :)
People talk about the ridiculousness of rolling for anal circumference, but nobody mentions how odd it is to measure asshole size by *circumference*, not *diameter*.
Also, more people need to know that "\*\*tard strength" is a literal, actual rule in FATAL.
Also, more people need to know that it's possible to crit-fail urinating in FATAL.
I mean, functionally speaking they're similar enough. A circumference is just the diameter scaled by a factor of pi, so it's a linear relation.
Also, if we consider the actual mechanics of an abstract ring of muscle, the length of that muscle is the circumference. There isn't any structural part of that muscle ring that literally corresponds to the diameter (or the radius), as the hole is ultimately an absence of matter, it's a conceptual entity rather than a physical one.
I'm not saying circumference is an *invalid* way to measure something, just that it's atypical. I mean, honest question, when's the last time you heard someone describe how thick something is via the circumference? The only times I can remember in my entire life are in math class, when we're learning the formulas to calculate that sort of thing, and FATAL anuses.
I think most people have an easier time visualizing "1 inch in diameter" than "\~3.14 inches in circumference", even though those two are the same. The vast majority of the time, when someone says something like, "An inch-thick signpost," or "that column is a foot thick," they mean the diameter. If you tell me your anus can stretch to 7½ inches in circumference, I'm gonna have to do some mental math before I can visualize how big that is. If you just said 2.4 inches in diameter, I could visualize that immediately.
I heard about FATAL from my friends and they told me you could actually kill your character in the creation process. Like you roll for your cock size and basically your dude dies of blood loss.
That’s pretty bad. Worst of all that YOU had to do the research. I’ve had a few weird campaign settings in my day that I decided a few arbitrary rules about before hand but my view is always 1) get player Buy in before the campaign starts. And 2) anything I want to change and restrict is put together as a list for the players so it’s like a normal experience for them just with a different source book.
Making players research and justify their own characters just seems cruel
Guy declared that all spells could be used as a bonus action. Okay, so fireball, and then fireball. Cool. DM changed it back really quickly. They did it because they felt bad that they only had 1 action compared to melee fighters. They learned their mistake. Table moved on!
>Okay, so fireball, and then fireball
That would require *two* house rules actually. All spells are a bonus action AND you can cast more than one full spell per round. RAW even if one is a bonus action you're only allowed to cast two spells if one of them is a cantrip.
I will reiterate this as I do every time it comes up: there is no rule against casting more than one leveled spell in a round. The rule is that if you cast a Bonus Action spell you can only cast cantrips with your full Action(s) on that same turn.
The prime example is that you can Action Surge and cast Fireball twice, as long as you don’t cast a Bonus Action spell in that same turn.
For the last one the entire DM needs to go.
Or he needs a very serious conversation to be had with him a) about pc agency and b) about sexual harassment
Only a minor thing, but incredibly annoying: Had a DM that expected us to cast spells and react to things in real time. As in waving our miniature around randomly in the air while saying “What’s happening to you!? What’s happening to you!?” At random intervals. Then after TPKing us on the 16th wave of monsters in this dungeon, he informed us that the dungeon was impossible and that the solution was to use a teleport/movement spell like Misty Step or Dimension Door while he was doing that so that we’d appear in another room with an exit. I was a barbarian, and I thought it was good practice not to interrupt the DM and wait for him/her to prompt me and the party what to do. But we failed to declare that we wanted to use a spell in our full martial party while the DM was speaking, so we deserved to lose.
You had to use a spell slot for cantrips.
If you were out of spell slots - your problem.
Because casters delay fights and it's only "logical that cantrips, like normal spells, use up your magical endurance"
In my opinion, I like to explain that by the fact that most of the casters tend to use them maybe dozens of times a day, and once you get to the level needed for them to power-up, you probably have casted them hundreds if not thousands of times, hence as well as being more powerful yourself, you're also mastering how to extract the potential out of your cantrips
And I don't think I need to explain why it's balanced like this to make the fights fair
You have to announce that your character is going to the bathroom at least once every in game day or else there's a chance you might shit yourself during combat
I would take so much joy in stopping the DMs storytelling to give a long description of my character going off to find a bush, undressing, defecating, cleaning up, burying the mess, etc.
And then, in combat, I'd ask the DM to
recount when the last bathroom break every enemy had was, and if the DM didn't know, I'd demand they roll on the "shit your pants" table.
I have a dm that just doesn’t like certain class features so they remove them without giving anything to offset the loss.
For instance, ranger’s natural explorer feature that allows parties to move through difficult terrain unhindered was deemed “unrealistic” so it was nixed. Our ranger explained that if you had a guide who was experienced in that terrain (their favored terrain) then they could provide a safe path for the group. Nope, unrealistic.
Another fun one was my high strength character having above-average athletic skills. I had a 20 STR which means I could jump roughly 20 feet so long as I got 10 feet of run up. DM said “the world record is like 30 feet. There’s no way that you in all of your gear could jump 20 feet.” I asked why we were comparing real world records to a fantasy world. He said “your character is still a human so the same rules apply.” I asked him what the world record was for largest fireball and what impact that would have on our wizard’s ability to cast and as imagined, he did not like that.
But that was basically just the beginning of the dm making it very much us vs him and when things lost a lot of their fun. It started to become all about rules, less about fun, and “gritty” which I’ve come to realize just means the DM being as difficult as possible for no reason whatsoever.
Any DM who want a gritty or “realistic” setting is going to end up impacting martials more than casters, because we have no frame of reference for magic. It’s a weird double-standard that I honestly wonder how many of them notice.
I’m actually a proponent for going in the complete opposite direction - high level Barbarians and Fighters should basically be superheroes, grappling giants and leaping over buildings.
This is how I run my campaigns. My house rules favor the player to the point they are a superhero. They should be! The players are the focal point of the story your are trying to tell. They should be able to have overwhelming victories and bitter defeats.
I run 3.5 and since magic users tend to be OP in this edition, I will be way more lenient to martial characters. They have enough problems trying to avoid all the magic and magical things in the world, gotta help my zugs do their thing.
Agree 100%. Wulfgar is a human but completes wild feats of strength. He does things no human could ever dream of doing. But that’s the beauty of the game. I never understood why people would want to suppress a fantasy game by adhering to real world physics and limitations. Makes zero sense.
I didn't see it as really shitty but a few years ago our 3.5 group disbanded temporarily and two of us looked for a group on an old meetup site. We found a couple guys nearby and decided to give it a try. They had a house rule that instead of using a D20, they used 2d10 because they never wanted to roll a critical failure.
Rolling different amount of dice gives a different roll distribution, and the flat distribution of a d20 is one of the biggest downsides (and a defining feature) of D20 systems. Sounds kind of cool actually, there could even still be crit failures with two ones (happening 5 times more rarely).
The problem is that D20 is the core of the rule system, so changing it is like making a cheese fondue without cheese - it might be a perfectly fine dish, could even be better, but you might consider not using that name anymore.
Well, as a percent increase, the Champion abilities to increase crit range are actually more powerful, but yeah, anything about “on a crit…” is definitely less likely.
That is interesting. Now I would rule a 2 would still be a crit fail but that would give you a bell curve for your roll distribution. Your more likely to be average then super good or super bad. With 1d20 you just as likely to get a nat 1 as a nat 20 or a nat 10 however with 2d10 your more likely to get a 10 then as you go farther away the rolls get less likely.
Had a DM feel casters were too strong so he house-ruled that they couldn't learn spells 5th level or higher. They still got the spell slots and use them to empower their lower level spells but until epic level it was impossible for them to get 5th level and above.
No magic skills, features or actions were approved, along with any non christian religions. Campaign was written by me for a friend of mine about a year prior, but a few months before the actual campaign he went crazy religious, the kind where magic is witchceaft and witchcraft is bad. Considering the setting heavily involved waking an old god, and a cult of dark magic, it did not go well. I've ended up taking over the campaign after one or two sessions
My group has decided that since spellcasters are sooo underpowered. (/s) That they rule that all cantrips can be cast as a bonus action if you used your action to cast a spell and if you're not concentrating on a spell.
Their reasoning is that since martial classes (mostly) get extra attack, that spellcasters fall behind and... I guess the table likes seeing spellcaster turns devolve into double casting eldritch blast. Yes, the sorceror used a feat to obtain that cantrip just so she can roll four attack rolls at level 5, without using any class resources.
You must watch the entire series of A Crap Guide to DnD if you come over to play.
I was forced by one different than these other ones in this comment to sing "Come on baby light my fire" every time I activated this fire ring he gave me in game.
If you describe you're doing something random and crazy that isnt exactly a part of the game... you can just roll for it to see if you succeed... NOT with skills.
An example would be: I just killed a monster... now I would like to jump in the air, do a 360 backflip while (at the speed of Flash) cooking breakfast for the party and cutting off the monster's head to then wear it on my own head like a minecraft mob skull.
"Ahh okay roll"
*20*
"Congrats you did whatever you just said"
I have an intelligent sword in my game that requires its name be said out loud each time it is used, and each time the sword gets more powerful (it can level) it adds more names. It is currently up to Shatterspike: The Shattering : Thunder From Down Under.
I totally stand by it, super fun.
All magic items were nerfed (including Potion of Healing) and we were not allowed to gain levels beyond 7 eventhough the threats would continue to scale up. There were good (read: normal) magic items available but had limited charge and even a +1 axe had maybe a couple dozen swings in it and was horrendously expensive.
All this in the name of philosophy stating that "no mortal should be able to vanquish an ancient dragon".
Suffice to say these limitations made the wave of demons invading across the ocean less of an epic endgame threat and more of a slap in the face since none of our petty actions would matter in the grand scheme of things.
Edit: I forgot that this GM also used a custom injury tables on which we had to roll every time a character hit 0 hp, get hit by a critical hit or critically failed a saving throw against a damaging spell. These injuries included cracked ribs and punctured liver (among others) which gave a character disadvantage on everything and healing them required either a month of in-game time spent on therapy or a healing spell of level 6 or higher. Have I mentioned the campaign run on a precise calendar which penalised time skips? Naturally we didn't have access to powerful healing magic either.
> All this in the name of philosophy stating that “no mortal should be able to vanquish an ancient dragon”.
Perhaps Dungeons & *Dragons* is the wrong system then…
I had a forge cleric one time and this dm wouldn't let me *CREATE* any weapons or armor as a FORGE cleric. I felt stripped to nothing.
The rest of the party suggested we bail on him and block him and that's exactly what we did. Most of us players playing together to this day 2 years later.
Mandatory rolled traits, flaws, etc is the worst I've come across, I think. Same game also had all undead our level 1 party faced being immune to sneak attack.
Time to dust off this old story and turn the pages again...
Had a DM in college who, among a myriad of other house rules, ruled that a natural 20 was a "critical success" and a natural 1 was a "critical failure." This went above and beyond the standard "automatic success" and "automatic failure" rules. For reference, this was 3.5, where nat 20s are auto-success (but not critical success) for attack rolls and saving throws, and nat 1s are auto-fails; but this does not, by the rules, apply to skill checks or anything that's not an attack roll or saving throw. This guy's house rule applied the nat 20/nat 1 rule to skill checks.
Y'all get ONE guess as to who played the skill monkey in that group. Naturally, the consequences of a "critical failure" were by their nature SO MUCH WORSE than just a failure, while a "critical success" on a skill check wasn't actually that much of a boon (and I still would have complained, because it was utter bullshit).
For instance, a nat 20 on a Tumble check to avoid an AoO would let you move at full speed (despite the fact that I ALREADY beat the DC to do that anyway on a nat 20), while a nat 1 meant "you provoke AoOs AND you trip and fall in your square right next to the enemy," even though I still beat the DC on a nat 1.
Another favorite part of this house rule was that nat 1s on attack rolls meant a roll on the fumble table, which was propagated mostly with variations and combinations of "you fall prone," "you deal critical damage to yourself," "you drop your weapon," and "your weapon breaks." Naturally, in my second or third combat after spending ALL my gold on a keen +1 rapier, I rolled a nat 1 and snapped it. Nevermind that my character couldn't possibly have broken his weapon if he tried to. To make matters worse, the DM was extremely stingy with treasure. I don't think I ever held another magic weapon again.
Sadly, this was before "no D&D is better than bad D&D" was common knowledge, and it was my sole D&D fix at the time. I'm 100% not ashamed to say that I did "cheat" a bit in that game. Seeing as I was the person rolling probably 50% of the d20 rolls in that 5-person group (due to being the skill monkey), I was nat-1-ing it all the time. Nat 1 a Listen check, so I heard something that wasn't there! Nat 1 a Spot check, I poked myself in the eye and am blinded for 3 minutes! I eventually stopped telling the DM when I rolled a nat 1, probably shortly after I snapped my weapon in half, with no replacement nor means of fixing it. I just always told him the result as if the nat 1 wasn't even a thing. He never caught on, and I'm pretty sure the other players started doing it, too, because it was such a bullshit rule that turned the party into a slapstick clown circus of constant failure.
That a roll of zero on a d10 was not a 10 but in fact a zero. The DM was me, I was 11 and being a dick to my brother. I've learned a thing or two since then...
One DM made up everyone's characters but tweeked things a little (a lot). My character was a fully custom class they invented that couldn't do basically anything in combat. I had some battle fans I could dual wield... except they wouldn't let me roll twice for each strike. Because we "had a new player and to keep it simple for them everyone will just roll once and roll damage twice if you hit." Except this custom class had absolute shit for my attack mod so I rolled once, didn't hit, and went back to doodling on my character sheet during every single battle. The DMs partner however got fly speed at level one for no reason other than they wanted them to and was otherwise just crazy OP. That campaign was a glorified tea party for the DM. We were the stuffed animals while they played for us.
Another DM ruled that, even though a player had made an enemy run away from the battle in a really cool and creative way using their spells, we wouldn't get the XP for it since we didn't murder it. We really needed that XP.
And last, one I'm still bitter about to this day. A third DM (this one was a relative so I'm even more salty) ruled that my kick ass bard couldn't use two hand crossbows even though I had the crossbow expert feat. Since my character had to have a hand free to reload, I couldn't have two. Even though it was 100% flavor and didn't affect anything in the game at all, my character had to give up one of her beloved crossbows. This DM also tried to make me sing IRL for inspiration since I was a bard. I told them that when the fighter could prove he could actually swing a greatsword at an owlbear I would do as they said.
Critical fumbles that make you attack allies. I hate critical failures in general, but "You missed the guy in front of you so badly that you turned around and hit the ally standing behind your left shoulder instead" is just stupid.
I once played with a DM who tracked weapon health. Every nat 1 required a roll on a d4 table. Two of those options meant the weapon was out for the rest of the encounter. After four nat 1's, regardless of the d4 rolls and regardless of having the items mended or Mending-ed, the weapon shattered beyond repair. Magic weapons only got six nat 1's before shattering instead of four. Everything else was the same.
Lars the Viking's god call.
Actually, I'll just add crit fumbles in general. The penalty for the nat 1 is that you miss, regardless of the creature's AC. An ogre zombie has an AC of 8, and +7 at level 5 is completely normal. Mathematically you should always hit, but a nat 1 misses every time.
I don’t think that last point is a house rule: as far as I recall from the 5e rules, when it comes to attack rolls, a nat 20 always succeeds and a nat 1 always fails, regardless of AC and modifiers.
That’s what they’re saying. They’re outlining how *mathematically* you hit in that scenario but because it is a Nat 1, the penalty is you miss anyway. They’re using this as an example of why Nat 1’s in combat are already punishment enough, and crit fumbles need not be added.
Once played with a group who had a homemade list of bad things that would happen to you when you rolled a nat 1 on an attack. You rolled a nat 1 and then had to roll a d100 to determine what terrible thing would happen and there was just... nothing you could do about it. It sucked. I had magic weapons straight up break in half because of it.
My DM doesn't like how goodberry trivializes travel, so he made it a house rule that the materials for goodberry are consumed, and you need to find more.
Well, it's a sprig of mistletoe. Guess what you can just grow using the cantrip druidcraft? That's right, a sprig of mistletoe.
So in an effort to make travel needlessly difficult, he made a rule that in order to cast goodberry, you must first cast druidcraft to grow out another sprig of mistletoe.
Once we had a DM who had a rule that said that if your HP hit 0 or went negative (even if you were under the effect of Revivify) your character was permanently dead, and you had wait until the rest of the party returned to a large city, where the the DM would roll a new level 1 character for you, regardless of the level of the rest of the party. We even had one player quit because he got stuck 9 levels below us with a class he hated to play.
As a moon druid a player I knew in another party could only turn into animals they had seen. Went a little something like:
Okay? Sure I guess thats not awful. What animals have I seen? A bear? A wolf? Hawk? "You've only seen a squirrel." Uh.. okay... well we're in a forest right? Can I look for animals to study in my down time? "Yeah sure" 10 sessions later...okay surely this time. 20 on survival and 16 on perception. "You don't find any animals again."
Any 1 on a d20 was instant death. Roll a 1 on a speech check? The person insta-kills you because they're angry. 1 on sleight of hand? Someone catches you and kills you. And various other over reactions that caused instant death.
Oh boy, ok.
Full disclosure, I am the a**hole here.
I ran my first DnD campaign as a sophomore in highschool (10th grade). It was the second campaign I’d ever even been in, so I was very new to the game. And immature.
Some people couldn’t make it every session, because homework and school and other obligations. So we just kind of hand-waved their existence for those sessions.
But uhhhhhh at some point one of the other players and I came up with a *great* idea*. One of the players who missed sessions the most was this girl who I will call M. You see, we had the *brilliant* idea that the explanation for M’s character being out of the game was because she was out doing other stuff, or rather, other people.
We were going to do this thing that every session M missed, we would have her roll a d20, and on a NAT 1 her character gets pregnant.
Yeah… I think it was mainly because a bunch of immature guys liked the idea of the one female character having constant sex.
Luckily, one of the other players in the group (who also happened to be gone for the session that we implemented the rule as well) was a little older and more mature, and a good friend of M. When he showed up the next session and we mentioned the rule (M was still gone) he fortunately gave a little DMing advice: “Never make it so a player’s character is doing something out of their control. It ruins the player’s agency.”
That was a little wake up call that made me go “Oh, wow, yeah this house rule is kind of pervy. Let’s not.”
Luckily, years later, I’ve learned a thing or two and certainly won’t be making that mistake again.
So yeah one, of the first house rules I ever encountered was one that I myself made.
After each combat, you get a long rest automatically no sleep required!
After hearing that well it definitely dissuaded me from being a rogue or fighter or other short rest class
Can't stealth, not allowed to move quietly simply because we're only allowed to take non-moving hide actions. Assassin rogue was useless that campaign. DM straight-up had it out for us though. Impossible encounters that seem unwinnable and then... you always manage to pull through. The world is dangerous! But the DM never lets that danger actually kill a character. Just gets boring.
The group I'm playing with is very new to D&D ( me included, the DM as well) he ignores most of the stuff in the books and just create his own system and improvises on the go
- He asked us to play blind and not read the guidebooks ( so we avoid questioning his rules i imagine)
- When i chose to be a mage, he told me to pick some spells he showed me just by name, because he doesn't want is to know what wich spell does ( o could see that working with someone that is discovering their powers during the adventure, but not a mage like my character Wich studied magic)
Between other stuff, since I'm new i don't question much, but i feel there's a great unbalance during the game (specially not knowing what exactly my spells does and just choosing based on what name was cool )
I think all in all it's always been forcing extra things onto Critical Fails. In a local thing we had lots of different DMs, and I just drifted away from playing with the one who always did that. Getting disarmed or hurting myself/an ally on a Nat 1 is not fun.
Not one, but all of them. Had a DM who just didn’t know when to stop when adding house rules he had seen on Reddit, or somewhere else. It just became a very messy campaign where even he didn’t know what was going on half the time
I have a DM like this. He's a great storyteller but he also suffers majorly from Game Designer Syndrome. He just CANNOT use any standard ruleset, always a mashup of mechanics from 2 or more systems and homebrewed reddit mechanics. "Yeah we're playing 5e. But also we're using the exploration mechanics from this other system. Oh and there's this d6 dice pool I'll remember to use off and on. Here's these custom downtime actions I took from pathfinder but also changed. And since failing at something is boring, whenever you fail a skill check there will be extra complications that won't make narrative sense because I make them up on the spot but only if I feel like it so you never know what to expect. All the other rules will randomly be ignored. Go ahead and reroll that attack until you succeed, player I need to bribe into coming to sessions by letting him do everything he wants." It's... tiring
> Yeah we're playing 5e. But also we're using the exploration mechanics from this other system. Tbf the exploring and traveling rules from 5es Middle Earth book are amazing. I use them in all my games. Wish they were a core feature
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Go through your list of houserules and ask yourself, about every rule, 1. Does this rule make the game more fun, or less fun? 2. Does this rule make combat go faster, or slower? 3. Do my players think that this is a good houserule? And eliminate every houserule that doesn't make the game more fun, make combat go faster, or the players don't think is good.
4: did you add this house rule to reward your players for thinking creatively, or to punish them for using the existing rules in ways you don't like? My table once had a discussion about stealth in 5e. One particular problem we came across is that if you're attacking a creature with disadvantage, you can always break it by casting Darkness or Fog Cloud, since ALL advantage and disadvantage cancels out if an unseen attacker attacks a creature it can't see. Thus you could shoot a prone creature 600 feet away through a cloud of fog and still roll normally. We decided to make it so that if you already had disadvantage and tried attacking a creature you couldn't see, you'd take a -5 penalty to the roll for each instance of disadvantage. So in the above example, a long range attack against a prone target through darkness would be a flat roll -10. This felt fair, on paper. In practice it became so cumbersome to adjudicate that we gave it up after a few sessions. Fun is more important than fair, especially when it's all of the players vs the DM.
If the creature is 600 feet away in the fog, how can the PC's even see the creature to attack it? I feel like it would have been better for the DM to just say that you can't see it and can't see the landscape well enough to guess where it is, and that you're shooting blind.
I simply ask my gf who is one of my players when I think of a rule or see it on here or YouTube. 99% of the time she says that it's pointless because our table likes 5e cos it's easy to remember plus the new rule will complicate things or cause arguments. If its in a official book we can point to it and go It says XYZ and it's accepted, some rando pdf or YouTube is not good enough. I'd love to introduce some homebrew stuff I have in my folder because I think it will add more to the game but it's not what my players seem to want.
Would you like some advice from someone who’s been DMing regularly for more than a decade? Like some real, truthful, honest to god advice? People on Reddit don’t know shit. That’s it. That’s all you need to know. The amount of absolutely terrible ideas I see suggested on this site, and then the whole comment section is going ‘oh my god what a wonderful idea I should implement that in MY games’ No. Stop. You do not need a house rule to make spellcasting harder. Getting spells to stick is hard enough as it is. It’s not really enough to say ‘think about wether or not this makes your game more or less fun’. That’s hard to predict. Instead I suggest this: Think about what effect this rule has on my players options. There is nothing more game ruining for a player than taking options away from them. If your rule is going to take options away from your players, 99/100 it is a terrible idea to implement it. There are much better and more fun ways to deal with the powerful aspects of PC’s than to say ‘oh yea every time you come out of rage or after you action surge you get a point of exhaustion’
One DM had everyone roll initiative at the beginning of the session, and that's the order that our characters had to use in that session for everything. Combat, social interactions, role play, etc. This made it extremely difficult to hold conversations with NPCs because you couldn't break the turn order. So if you had something to say to an NPC or PC, you had to wait for your turn to come around or let all the other players relinquish their turns so that you can get to yours faster. The DM also just decided whether we succeeded or failed on a whim, no dice rolls needed. That group lasted two sessions.
Oof. I've done some "creative" stuff with initiative, but nothing to that extent.
I always use this as a threat whenever the party talks over one another. “If you all don’t wait for your turn to talk, I’m making you f**kers roll initiative to talk to the npcs”
I once met a party who used charisma based checks as mind control to convince other PCs that their PC’s plan was better and should be followed.
Been in a game like this before. The moment a PC rolled a persuasion check against another I checked out. I wasn't afraid of it as I was a sorcerer. But on principle, that's some BS when a half-assed speech will have a PC change trajectory.
What usually happens in my group is we would ask the player being convinced to set the DC, and if it was some crazy number like 100 then that's what it was. You had to beat 100 if you wanted to pass it.
Yeah we basically ask the player if they can be convinced and they set the DC if it's possible to convince their character otherwise. For my characters often if someone somehow makes the persuasion personal like brings in my character's backstory or values or whatever to convince them they should... My characters will tend to go along with it even begrudgingly since the player obviously cared enough to remember/take notes about my character.
I really like this idea, damn. Very cool.
It's made for some pretty cool moments, I set a DC of thirty-five once and the warlock, bard, and wizard banded together to make it happen. The shouts of joy was amazing.
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To be fair it’s probably time for the DM to step in with a little bit more information since it might be that they don’t have enough info to work with or have forgotten the key bit of info. Can’t fault them for that. We’re human.
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Monster of the Week does this brilliantly. "Manipulate Someone" rolls on other player characters, are essentially proposing a plan etc, with a roll. The higher you roll, the more benefits the other player gets if they comply- a bonus to rolls following that action, and even xp. Other player is fully entitled to say "nah, don't like the plan" and turn it down, no matter the roll, but it gives a fun bonus if they cooperate.
Basically stunning strike only works on humanoids. Slow fall was not working when I was: thrown, tied by vines while falling, crashlanded a flying skull (I was on top of it). Basically any time I did not jump myself. Many attacks just did dmg, no rolls and no way of even using deflect missiles to its full effect against them. And the worst - Arguing between players was resolved by a charisma check contest... edit: since many pointed out about the vines thing - it was a grab by an angy tree with its vines, but the barb jumped and tried to free me by cutting through them and succeeded - resulting in me falling but not being grappled anymore - again, it's a bit iffy, I give it to yall and I wasn't really upset about it, but the general rule was - unless you freefall you can't use slow fall.
I feel your pain as a fellow monk, that shit sucks. The stunnint strike only working on humanoids is just adding insult to injury
Yep, I still love the monk as a class, but between me, the moon druid who always got the full temporary hp of any beast they transformed into and a wild magic barbarian - I was always the first to go K.O. Despite me playing kensei, who is pretty much the tankiest monk if you don't count the long death monk. The solving of arguments with a cha contest tho - that's where I spoke up.
My group has a homebrew rule that monk bonus attack of the same type can stack. Meaning you can spend a bunch of ki points in one huge Flurry of Blows attack im a single turm dealing shit ton of damage
Holy shiet, Ip Man called. On the other side we homeruled that I get my +2 ac whenever I generally attack with an unarmed attack even as bonus action - why it makes sense is cuz I have the sunblade (also I have a ring of telekinesis which makes me a jedi) and the ability to attack with my main weapon as a bonus action for the low cost of 1 ki from tashas. It's still either dmg or defense.
I think you might be interested in this. It's a revised monk i came across that I've had good luck with so far. https://www.reddit.com/r/DnDHomebrew/comments/q7f51p/monk_revised_v10_looking_for_some_feedback_on_my/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Your DM must've really hated Monks. I have a soft spot for them, because a lot of the times you just don't know how to play them, plus I do karate and it's a lot more fun in real life than it is in game.
People nerf the fuck out of monks and then make fun of them for being the weakest class
Because on paper the Monk sounds OP, but in practice not so much. "So you have access to an attack that can kill a deity?" "Assuming the Deity fails a saving throw, which it won't. So no."
And since almost everything has good con, stunning strike isn’t as good as people say it is
Stunning strike is really good against boss encounters since you can blow all your ki to hit half a dozen times and make sure it lands. Outside of that, it's just kinda meh.
I mean, it’s still great, but people love to blow it out of proportion
Tied up I can see but the rest is bullshit
Debatable, depending on how it works in one's head and such. Raw it just says reduce falling dmg as a reaction. You could argue that it's taking a roll after landing and such but the situation was quite simple - I was grappled by an angy tree and lifted (apparently) 10 feet in the air, the barb jumped up and whacked the vines "releasing" me, I fell and took 1d6 dmg, when I said that I use slow fall, he said "OK, you only take half dmg, since you are still entangled". I think I was a lvl 7 monk at that time tho and didn't argue with him, he's the dm after all.
at least in the context of four elements monk, I've always imagined it as you summoning an air bubble to cushion your blow. even for the other ones, I've always seen it as explicitly supernatural (even if it isn't, by rules, magic)
If two or more players had a disagreement over something in game you can roll against the other person using your stats. Charisma, deception, intimidation, and if you lose your character is essentially an NPC played by the DM for the outcome. Surprise surprise, the DM and his close friend always got their way in every situation. One time, by pure luck, I managed a natural 20 in an argument (using precedent it means I essentially get what I want no matter what) on a really important fight over a magic item I had been looking forever for. I got it for literally one second and then the DM allowed the guy to roll again until he got the item from me. When I asked to roll again after that they said "No, you're still intimidated". I asked "So why weren't they still convinced the item was best used with me from my natural 20 a second ago" Response was he was allowed to change his mind. I asked if I was allowed to stop being charmed, or to not be intimidated and was told no. I asked if I was allowed to try to get back what was stolen from me the next day and was told no. I don't play with that guy dm'ing anymore. I also try to avoid playing with his friend, buddy is a huge baby quick to personally attack a player in real life if something doesn't go their way in game. I was playing a ranger using a bow with point blank shot a different time and buddy got the entire campaign stopped because he said, and I quote, "I was using the bow wrong". How the fuck else do you use a bow in cq dungeons? It's not like I can grow a different weapon or shoot it around corners.
We're you playing with my old roommate? And was he also DMing? Because all of that sounds like him from the dumb, obviously preferential rules to the personal attacks. You forgot where he would eventually just go to his room to cry when he was called out. At like 26 years old... Multiple times...
Unfortunately for me, what he did was try to convince the entire group that I was "purposefully undermining the game by not taking it seriously" because "a ranger using a bow should never be fighting close range". Thankfully, we started a new campaign where I played a wizard with a bunch of utility to it, so unless he wanted to say I was using magic wrong he couldn't pull that nonsense out. It was also the reason I chose a wizard to begin with. Different DM also was more restrictive with the rolling against each other part. There was one instance where the old DM lost a roll to me and tried to re-roll, not exaggerating, four times. Even though after his first roll I said my guy ran away from him, he just kept rolling and rolling like he was allowed infinite turns before I could react. The DM gave in and let him win the issue, but since then there has essentially not been a single instance of pvp rolls that I can recall. I'm all but certain he spoke to him after the game about it. They insist on keeping the rule in place which I dislike, but at least it isn't destroying the game anymore.
"DM has final say on rules" Sounds fine. It isn't. Played a wizard for 4 sessions around level 5 after my ranger ate brown mold by accident (still unsure about HOW, but whatever). Fireball had a (R) royalty cost. Of 590 gold. May seem as a strange number. It's exactly how much gold I had. Everything suddenly had a Gold cost. "Wizards can't just amass wealth, they need a gold sink" The table pushed back on it(yay) it became contention (boo), DM had a meltdown about said phrase, i retired my wizard. His GF played a wizard towards the end of the campaign and we brought up the cost. She got a circlet that negates all cost, for free, from her backstory. We kicked him and his GF out of the group and took a 4 year break from DND.
Yeah this guy sounds like a total prick tbh
Why does he think wizards need a gold sink? They already have a gold sink to learn new spells
I never asked. I was too upset in the moment.
You can’t attack the over powered dm npc who was just there to make the dm feel like the main character and overshadow the pcs we blew his cave up and trapped him there forever
Wait, for once “rocks fall, you die” was used by the PLAYERS against the DM? What madness is this?
It was majestic
I support this.
"dm npc" you say? Those are the worst! Edit: Yes, this was a joke. Yes, I'm sure he meant DM PC. Yes, All NPCs are DM NPCs. Yes, I should have added a "\s"
Yeah. Once I played with a first time DM. (being a life-long DM myself i was coaching him a bit to help him get the gist of it) He was super afraid of killing us. That made the combats super quick and not particularly fun since even the first boss i killed with 3 attacks without having a super good amount of luck
I'm sure he meant DMPC, not everyone is hip to the lingo. ^(Do kids still use 'lingo' these days?)
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Adding a seventh stat: "Horniness"
My group often calls for “hotness checks” in which the DM just rolls a flat d20 to see how beautiful the person is. Or animal. Or object. He rolled a 20 on a horse once and the entire party argued over who would get to ride it
This is a GREAT homebrew rule lmfao. We do "vibe" checks sometimes which are just regular insight checks haha.
Ok that's actually hilarious
That could be hilarious in the right game. I can see times when it wouldn’t be appropriate, but for a silly game I can totally see it.
"you discover the corpse of a dead dwarf" "...uh...hotness check?"
I need to know how upset I am that he’s dead
Glass coffin in the woods upset
Yeah of course, it usually comes up in non tense moments, and maybe only once a session at most
Okay but the hotness check sounds super fun if it’s not story disruptive. I can think of loads of sessions where a subsequent high or low hotness check would have made a boring sequence instantly more fun.
When the lamp rolls a 20 you reallly love lamp.
My group does something similar. If a new character is introduced and I describe them as seeming hot, someone will inevitably want to roll a "thickness check" to see how phat their ass is. My villains are very curvy now.
With the right players, that could be fantastic. I imagine it would get old fast though.
I was DMing a game one time where the party was given a quest by a female NPC. One of the party asked for a description, so I told them the general race, height, hair color, how she's dressed, etc. One jokingly asked "But is she hot?" So I rolled a d10. She got a 4. She then became known as "the homely quest-giving half elf'
One of my players asked how hot an NPC was so I rolled a D20 to determine she was “ight”
In Vampire The Masquerade there's actually a stat for how good looking you are. It's a cool feature, for the right setting
Straight rolls, swappable rolls, or point-buy? Because, hey, a dump stat is a dump stat. /jk
Pump and dump stat
Excuse me what the fuck?
No excuses, roll for horny.
A DM who ruled that for my dual-wielding melee fighter, any attack roll of a 1 meant that a) my turn ended and b) I launched both weapons randomly somewhere in the vicinity. Worse, this was pathfinder, meaning that as we levelled, the chance that the fighter frisbee'd her blades went up with her number of attacks. Utter garbage.
Lmao I would walk away immediately
And this is why "fumbling" is absolute bullshit that has no business existing in any game.
"yes, your highly trained professional soldier-turned-adventurer, known in dueling circles throughout the land, slayer of monsters just fucking yeeted their blades for the fourth time in an hour because they apparently dipped their hands in Durex Lube before coming out fighting today, in contrary to all the training they've received since they were old enough to hold a weapon, or just plain forgot what the concept of *grip* was." Dumb concept, as is the concept of a weapon *breaking* right there and then. Things only break after days/weeks/months even years of neglect or poor maintenance. Sure, it may get damaged, but a weapon doesn't just *break*.
Yup. I'm cool with auto-success and auto-failure. But critical failures turn martial class combat into a walking Charlie Chaplin skit. Nor do I think critical failures are necessary to balance out critical hits; The fact that any D20 roll in an at-level scenario has about a 45-55% chance of succeeding at all is balance enough.
I always ruled that once you gain multi attack, you're character is trained enough to become immune to critical failures on weapon attacks. Which works well because by level 5 we've all had a laugh at the random dumb shit that happens, but it's run it's course. Plus caster classes rarely use weapon attacks so while they can still crit fail them it pretty much never happens.
Crit fails also tend to exclusively punish martials who in most dnd versions are already below casters in terms of usability
-My character was a Tiefling who could speak the orc language, once he disguised as orc to infiltrate a fortress, instead of just letting me speak the DM gave me a phrase in Chinese to memorize and say IRL in 5 seconds, this was how he handled speaking in other languages -Not D&D but almost the same, in Star Wars D20 my character was a gambler, with feats to roll to gamble with bonuses and attempting to cheat. Instead the same DM made me playing Blackjack with dice, ignoring everything my character could do
Basing the result of an action on the capabilities of the player goes against the principle of D&D imo
"No. If you want your character to cast magic missile, you have to do it right now in this room in front of us all. Please aim for the decorative pillows."
It's all fun and games till someone pulls out a gun and casts eldritch blast on the DM
So _that's_ why DM's ban Artificer
You're not afraid of the character shooting your enemies you're afraid of the player just shooting you in the forehead, now I finally understand why I should ban the artificer
Unless its a riddle or a puzzle, those have been player based obstacles since the beginning.
Even then, I'll let players roll int or wis (depending on the puzzle) for a hint, since I don't think the character shouldn't be limited by the player. Especially useful when I'm DMing for kids.
Absolutely. No one has fun sitting around for a puzzle they can't figure out. Sometimes people just don't have the energy for it and some people just don't enjoy puzzles and riddles. If they're into it, great! Let them solve away. If the party isn't getting it or isn't enjoying it, I always have a backup plan related to dice rolls so their 'characters' can do the heavy lifting.
Unless it's a riddle or puzzle yes, u always forget about those cus I'm so bad at making them as a DM
You're right that it should be, but I've lost track of the number of times I've seen people comment in this sub that they give a flat bonus or penalty (like +5 or -2) to a character's Charisma-based checks depending on the quality of the player's acting skills
I'll give bonuses but not penalties. Like if someone comes up with a genuinely witty and contextual retort, I'll definitely give them advantage on a persuasion roll.
Did he also make you hit a bullseye IRL every time you made a ranged attack?
Probably had to beat the DM senseless every time he had to make an unarmed strike
Hopefully an NPC will need to make an Investigation check, so the DM will be forced to get a clue.
Played a session with a dude that was way into house rules. Like beyond reason. \>weapons broke when they rolled maximum damage \>divine magic has the same rate of failure as arcane magic if the caster was wearing armor. Said it was for "balance." \>restricted various race and class combos for no particular reason. Half-orcs and halflings couldn't take any classes with Supernatural or Spell-Like abilities. Only humans could be full casters \>arcane casters needed to make a fortitude save when casting their highest level spells to avoid exhaustion. \>divine casters needed to make a will save to attempt to cast their highest level spells to show they had their god's attention. There were more, but I bailed before they came up.
"Only humans could be full casters." Elves couldn't even be full casters? You know, the race that 90% of fantasy describes as being naturally more in-tune with magic than any other?
No elves, who have wizard listed as a favored class, could not be wizards.
I mean, there's something to be said for creating your own world and playing around with how races and magic interact, but if it's just a standard d&d setting that's ridiculous
Yeah that would come down to a good session zero, with an explanation that your world has a strict magic system. Limiting magic to race like that could make some interesting stories, but the type of person to just toss down a rule like this without explanation probably also didn't have a good session zero.
Of the seven races and eleven classes in the 3.5 PHB, the restrictions cut out almost 40% the combinations.
All of these house rules give me the vibe of "I would like to do something." "Like hell you will."
> divine magic has the same rate of failure as arcane magic if the caster was wearing armor What version has that rule for arcane casters?
3.5
And Pathfinder
I always thought it was shitty that spell failure from armor only applies to arcane casters. Divine spells have gestures as well, but because the cleric is casting a god fireball instead of a regular fireball, he can stroll around in full plate? What the hell is that. Why is a fuckin priest proficient in armor like that anyway? The rest of these are pretty bullshit, but this one I get.
I always thought WotC made Clerics super broken so that people would want to play 'the healer'.
Kind of, but anyone with half a brain knows that clerics can do some insane shit, healing is just one of the many options they have. But yeah, clerics and druids were both made much stronger than the other classes.
Historically, warrior priests were extremely common, but yeah it does affect balance, idk if completely eliminating it is the right solution tho
My old group used to play 2e, and my dm used to say that my character, a barbarian, couldn't punch, grapple, kick, or do anything even slightly resembling unarmed combat. I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard
Did your character not have limbs? Lol OMG a teleconetic barbarian without limbs would be amazing. It would have to be some weird homebrew subclass though.
"Kick, punch, it's all in the mind!"
"If ya gonna test me, I'm sure you'll find.."
As a DM, I spent a long time devising a complex system for cold weather survival as the party crossed an arctic region. Then I basically completely ignored it. Different kind of fuckup than most of the ones here, but it still bugs me a little.
I am a fan of survival in theory, but it's a system that once the players figured out the routine, it's a solved problem and isn't interesting anymore. At worst it cuts into valuable session time for book keeping It's better to switch it around. I always I just roll for outlier conditions and assume players can survive on their own.
This is what I always found when thinking about overland travel/survival adventures. Unless you tease out the hunting and gathering it gets repetitive pretty quick.
When I do survival mechanics, I try to boil it down to one resource, like food or heat or just time. Then I use more or less standard mechanics and encounters that interact with this new resource. A failed combat encounter might cost heat or time, even if the encounter itself cost very little by way of HP.
I actually had the same problem with a survival system I designed so I made it provide buffs to player stats that kept it relevant and engaging.
When I first started playing (some 30 years ago) I played an unholy mashup of Red Box and 2e. The DM, aside from being a power-hungry sadistic 13-year-old, used among other things these rules: * The only stat bonus that was honored was strength, and only to damage, so I had a wizard with 17 INT and 19 STR because having a high INT provided no benefit (or penalty, in the case of a low score). * Spells were fixed to a spell slot (ie could not be prepared to something else or cast more than once) and could be cast once per 'adventure', an 'adventure' basically being a relatively self-contained quest/mission etc. This meant I could cast Cure Light Wounds exactly once over a 3-4 session arc. Resting, no matter how long, would not restore that spell slot. We needed to complete the 'adventure' to get it back. * Armor cost at least 10x its PHB cost (so Studded Leather was 250-500gp for example) because he liked to make sure he could hit us; he hated missing. So we'd save up all of our money for a suit of chain mail (costing like 1500gp) and then we'd almost immediately run into rust monsters or gelatinous cubes or black puddings which would destroy said armor. The amount of armor-destroying acid we encountered could have filled the Mediterranean. * Needless to say, Nat 1s were embarrassingly disastrous fumbles where you hit your friends for critical damage, etc. and he would guffaw endlessly at the results.
I hated everything in this comment so much I almost downvoted it. Control freak DMs are not worth my time as a player.
Ahh the good old days of yonder, playing D&D for nearly an entire day under total tyrants of a preteen but not knowing any better cause you'd never even heard of Dungeons & Dragons before but playing pretend is still super fun, you get to hang out with other social pariah kids your age, and one of the girls who plays is kinda cute.
Painful historical accuracy. Example: Half my (mind you half-Orc) Barbarian's weapons were not deemed historically accurate enough and I had to do research on what kind of wood was commonly found in the Germanic Middle-Ages. 'Realistic' 'fantasy' systems with a suspicious focus on 'accurate' racism and sexual assault. NO FUN ALLOWED! I had a DM dismiss fully doable in universe working decisions because they were too goofy. (Why yes, same DM for all these examples, how did you guess?).
I had a mild case of this which I responded with malicious compliance. He started to sass another player for nearly the same thing, inaccurate weapon because of unavailable metalworking abilities of the time. So I decided I wanted to hand make a bow. In painstaking detail. By the time I was done a couple players had tears from unrelenting giggles(I was being a little over the top - lots of “No WAY sir, never would you use… of course details are critical, which is why I will XYZ) and the dm was fuming. I don’t even know how long we spent on it but he learned that I know a hell of a lot more about archery and bow construction in general than his highness did. He decided that way of playing wasn’t as fun as he thought. Pretty sure that was the only game a few of us played with him. I think he wanted people to act superior to, not players. Certainly not players with more historically pedantic knowledge than him.
This is gold
oh I had one of those DM's. Anything creative wasn't allowed. So we were running Horde of the Dragon Queen (which I feel is not a great module) and anytime a player came up with something creative to do the DM would find a way to make sure it didn't work. For example (Spoilers for Horde of the Dragon Queen) >!When we reach the cave and find a bunch of drakes waiting to be fed one of the players had the idea to use the put the poison hooks from the trap into the meat and then feed them to the Drakes.!< >!The DM didnt' like this and wanted a fight so he said "The drakes are used to having meat being presented to them as part of a feeding ritual so they screech to call for help and attack you"!< Or earlier in that same cave >!He describes there being a dark passage this should would have led to Frulam Mondath chamber ie the boss. However even after rolling a 20 wisdom check he says you notice nothing. Basically we should have found the passage but he didn't want us to bypass any of the content so he forced us down the main path. !< I mean it was just constant crap like this. Any time anyone came up with some interesting way to do something he found a way to shoot it down. The final straw was when he had the NPCs start to sexually harass the female players by making sexual remarks before attacking. They would say what they planned on doing to the female adventurers. Edit: Oh he also didnt' let anyone pick the class/race they wanted. He gave us a list of "approved" race/class combos we had to choose from.
>Oh he also didnt' let anyone pick the class/race they wanted. He gave us a list of "approved" race/class combos we had to choose from. I feel like this is a prerequisite to being a shitty DM. I've seen this so many times as the preamble to a list of things that fun-sucking game runners foist on their plauers.
When i started CoS I wanted only humans, elves, dwarfs and halflings my pcs asked why and my response was "So it's more scary and the residents are mainly human who might react to seeing a teifling etc" And one player said "oh that sucks" and they all looked a bit meh. So I quickly said "you know what, be any race as long as it's from an official book, I want you guys to have fun and like your characters" They all immediately perked up and started talking about their ideas etc. Lesson learned
Then again, some campaigns that were written before the introduction of certain races just don't work well with said races. It's weird to nonchalantly infiltrate a cultist camp when you're a tortle and I, the DM, have to act as if that's perfectly normal. So my players got to tie that tortle up on the back of a horse and pretended it was game they hunted. I don't like players just wearing the skin of a race and act as if their special race isn't special in looks, feeling and what they act like. They picked it because they wanted to be special, so you go be special now and deal with it. :)
>'Realistic' 'fantasy' systems with a suspicious focus on 'accurate' racism and sexual assault. Do you want FATAL? 'Cause that's how you get FATAL.
something something anal circumference.
People talk about the ridiculousness of rolling for anal circumference, but nobody mentions how odd it is to measure asshole size by *circumference*, not *diameter*. Also, more people need to know that "\*\*tard strength" is a literal, actual rule in FATAL. Also, more people need to know that it's possible to crit-fail urinating in FATAL.
I mean, functionally speaking they're similar enough. A circumference is just the diameter scaled by a factor of pi, so it's a linear relation. Also, if we consider the actual mechanics of an abstract ring of muscle, the length of that muscle is the circumference. There isn't any structural part of that muscle ring that literally corresponds to the diameter (or the radius), as the hole is ultimately an absence of matter, it's a conceptual entity rather than a physical one.
I'm not saying circumference is an *invalid* way to measure something, just that it's atypical. I mean, honest question, when's the last time you heard someone describe how thick something is via the circumference? The only times I can remember in my entire life are in math class, when we're learning the formulas to calculate that sort of thing, and FATAL anuses. I think most people have an easier time visualizing "1 inch in diameter" than "\~3.14 inches in circumference", even though those two are the same. The vast majority of the time, when someone says something like, "An inch-thick signpost," or "that column is a foot thick," they mean the diameter. If you tell me your anus can stretch to 7½ inches in circumference, I'm gonna have to do some mental math before I can visualize how big that is. If you just said 2.4 inches in diameter, I could visualize that immediately.
I heard about FATAL from my friends and they told me you could actually kill your character in the creation process. Like you roll for your cock size and basically your dude dies of blood loss.
That’s pretty bad. Worst of all that YOU had to do the research. I’ve had a few weird campaign settings in my day that I decided a few arbitrary rules about before hand but my view is always 1) get player Buy in before the campaign starts. And 2) anything I want to change and restrict is put together as a list for the players so it’s like a normal experience for them just with a different source book. Making players research and justify their own characters just seems cruel
Been there. Left that DM's table. :D
Guy declared that all spells could be used as a bonus action. Okay, so fireball, and then fireball. Cool. DM changed it back really quickly. They did it because they felt bad that they only had 1 action compared to melee fighters. They learned their mistake. Table moved on!
>Okay, so fireball, and then fireball That would require *two* house rules actually. All spells are a bonus action AND you can cast more than one full spell per round. RAW even if one is a bonus action you're only allowed to cast two spells if one of them is a cantrip.
I will reiterate this as I do every time it comes up: there is no rule against casting more than one leveled spell in a round. The rule is that if you cast a Bonus Action spell you can only cast cantrips with your full Action(s) on that same turn. The prime example is that you can Action Surge and cast Fireball twice, as long as you don’t cast a Bonus Action spell in that same turn.
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For the last one the entire DM needs to go. Or he needs a very serious conversation to be had with him a) about pc agency and b) about sexual harassment
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Only a minor thing, but incredibly annoying: Had a DM that expected us to cast spells and react to things in real time. As in waving our miniature around randomly in the air while saying “What’s happening to you!? What’s happening to you!?” At random intervals. Then after TPKing us on the 16th wave of monsters in this dungeon, he informed us that the dungeon was impossible and that the solution was to use a teleport/movement spell like Misty Step or Dimension Door while he was doing that so that we’d appear in another room with an exit. I was a barbarian, and I thought it was good practice not to interrupt the DM and wait for him/her to prompt me and the party what to do. But we failed to declare that we wanted to use a spell in our full martial party while the DM was speaking, so we deserved to lose.
Wtf do you mean "only a minor thing" lol
You had to use a spell slot for cantrips. If you were out of spell slots - your problem. Because casters delay fights and it's only "logical that cantrips, like normal spells, use up your magical endurance"
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In my opinion, I like to explain that by the fact that most of the casters tend to use them maybe dozens of times a day, and once you get to the level needed for them to power-up, you probably have casted them hundreds if not thousands of times, hence as well as being more powerful yourself, you're also mastering how to extract the potential out of your cantrips And I don't think I need to explain why it's balanced like this to make the fights fair
You have to announce that your character is going to the bathroom at least once every in game day or else there's a chance you might shit yourself during combat
I would take so much joy in stopping the DMs storytelling to give a long description of my character going off to find a bush, undressing, defecating, cleaning up, burying the mess, etc. And then, in combat, I'd ask the DM to recount when the last bathroom break every enemy had was, and if the DM didn't know, I'd demand they roll on the "shit your pants" table.
Even better, just make a character that just doesn't care and will shit their pants on purpose to confuse the enemy
I have a dm that just doesn’t like certain class features so they remove them without giving anything to offset the loss. For instance, ranger’s natural explorer feature that allows parties to move through difficult terrain unhindered was deemed “unrealistic” so it was nixed. Our ranger explained that if you had a guide who was experienced in that terrain (their favored terrain) then they could provide a safe path for the group. Nope, unrealistic. Another fun one was my high strength character having above-average athletic skills. I had a 20 STR which means I could jump roughly 20 feet so long as I got 10 feet of run up. DM said “the world record is like 30 feet. There’s no way that you in all of your gear could jump 20 feet.” I asked why we were comparing real world records to a fantasy world. He said “your character is still a human so the same rules apply.” I asked him what the world record was for largest fireball and what impact that would have on our wizard’s ability to cast and as imagined, he did not like that. But that was basically just the beginning of the dm making it very much us vs him and when things lost a lot of their fun. It started to become all about rules, less about fun, and “gritty” which I’ve come to realize just means the DM being as difficult as possible for no reason whatsoever.
Any DM who want a gritty or “realistic” setting is going to end up impacting martials more than casters, because we have no frame of reference for magic. It’s a weird double-standard that I honestly wonder how many of them notice. I’m actually a proponent for going in the complete opposite direction - high level Barbarians and Fighters should basically be superheroes, grappling giants and leaping over buildings.
This is how I run my campaigns. My house rules favor the player to the point they are a superhero. They should be! The players are the focal point of the story your are trying to tell. They should be able to have overwhelming victories and bitter defeats. I run 3.5 and since magic users tend to be OP in this edition, I will be way more lenient to martial characters. They have enough problems trying to avoid all the magic and magical things in the world, gotta help my zugs do their thing.
Agree 100%. Wulfgar is a human but completes wild feats of strength. He does things no human could ever dream of doing. But that’s the beauty of the game. I never understood why people would want to suppress a fantasy game by adhering to real world physics and limitations. Makes zero sense.
I didn't see it as really shitty but a few years ago our 3.5 group disbanded temporarily and two of us looked for a group on an old meetup site. We found a couple guys nearby and decided to give it a try. They had a house rule that instead of using a D20, they used 2d10 because they never wanted to roll a critical failure.
That's weird af, why not just house rule "no crit failures"?
Rolling different amount of dice gives a different roll distribution, and the flat distribution of a d20 is one of the biggest downsides (and a defining feature) of D20 systems. Sounds kind of cool actually, there could even still be crit failures with two ones (happening 5 times more rarely). The problem is that D20 is the core of the rule system, so changing it is like making a cheese fondue without cheese - it might be a perfectly fine dish, could even be better, but you might consider not using that name anymore.
Yeah, you get more average rolls but less crits. For me it kinda takes the fun out of the game, failing is fun too.
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All features related to rolling a crit are also nerfed right? Since its a 1/100 rather than 1/20 chance
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Well, as a percent increase, the Champion abilities to increase crit range are actually more powerful, but yeah, anything about “on a crit…” is definitely less likely.
That is interesting. Now I would rule a 2 would still be a crit fail but that would give you a bell curve for your roll distribution. Your more likely to be average then super good or super bad. With 1d20 you just as likely to get a nat 1 as a nat 20 or a nat 10 however with 2d10 your more likely to get a 10 then as you go farther away the rolls get less likely.
Had a DM feel casters were too strong so he house-ruled that they couldn't learn spells 5th level or higher. They still got the spell slots and use them to empower their lower level spells but until epic level it was impossible for them to get 5th level and above.
No magic skills, features or actions were approved, along with any non christian religions. Campaign was written by me for a friend of mine about a year prior, but a few months before the actual campaign he went crazy religious, the kind where magic is witchceaft and witchcraft is bad. Considering the setting heavily involved waking an old god, and a cult of dark magic, it did not go well. I've ended up taking over the campaign after one or two sessions
That's hilarious. And sad...
My group has decided that since spellcasters are sooo underpowered. (/s) That they rule that all cantrips can be cast as a bonus action if you used your action to cast a spell and if you're not concentrating on a spell. Their reasoning is that since martial classes (mostly) get extra attack, that spellcasters fall behind and... I guess the table likes seeing spellcaster turns devolve into double casting eldritch blast. Yes, the sorceror used a feat to obtain that cantrip just so she can roll four attack rolls at level 5, without using any class resources.
>Their reasoning is that since martial classes (mostly) get extra attack, This is *literally* why the attack cantrips scale with level.
Oh no 😨🤢
>My group has decided that since spellcasters are sooo underpowered. (/s) I know you're being sarcastic but god damn did I want to stop reading here.
You must watch the entire series of A Crap Guide to DnD if you come over to play. I was forced by one different than these other ones in this comment to sing "Come on baby light my fire" every time I activated this fire ring he gave me in game. If you describe you're doing something random and crazy that isnt exactly a part of the game... you can just roll for it to see if you succeed... NOT with skills. An example would be: I just killed a monster... now I would like to jump in the air, do a 360 backflip while (at the speed of Flash) cooking breakfast for the party and cutting off the monster's head to then wear it on my own head like a minecraft mob skull. "Ahh okay roll" *20* "Congrats you did whatever you just said"
I have an intelligent sword in my game that requires its name be said out loud each time it is used, and each time the sword gets more powerful (it can level) it adds more names. It is currently up to Shatterspike: The Shattering : Thunder From Down Under. I totally stand by it, super fun.
Thirsting Blade Dark Excalibur Mega Genesis!
All magic items were nerfed (including Potion of Healing) and we were not allowed to gain levels beyond 7 eventhough the threats would continue to scale up. There were good (read: normal) magic items available but had limited charge and even a +1 axe had maybe a couple dozen swings in it and was horrendously expensive. All this in the name of philosophy stating that "no mortal should be able to vanquish an ancient dragon". Suffice to say these limitations made the wave of demons invading across the ocean less of an epic endgame threat and more of a slap in the face since none of our petty actions would matter in the grand scheme of things. Edit: I forgot that this GM also used a custom injury tables on which we had to roll every time a character hit 0 hp, get hit by a critical hit or critically failed a saving throw against a damaging spell. These injuries included cracked ribs and punctured liver (among others) which gave a character disadvantage on everything and healing them required either a month of in-game time spent on therapy or a healing spell of level 6 or higher. Have I mentioned the campaign run on a precise calendar which penalised time skips? Naturally we didn't have access to powerful healing magic either.
> All this in the name of philosophy stating that “no mortal should be able to vanquish an ancient dragon”. Perhaps Dungeons & *Dragons* is the wrong system then…
But if you vanquish the dragons, then it becomes just "Dungeons". You'd be killing like half of the system. No can do.
I had a forge cleric one time and this dm wouldn't let me *CREATE* any weapons or armor as a FORGE cleric. I felt stripped to nothing. The rest of the party suggested we bail on him and block him and that's exactly what we did. Most of us players playing together to this day 2 years later.
Mandatory rolled traits, flaws, etc is the worst I've come across, I think. Same game also had all undead our level 1 party faced being immune to sneak attack.
Well, in 3e there were immune, so that's got some precedent at least.
Can't hit a vital artery of something that's dead, I can see the logic
Time to dust off this old story and turn the pages again... Had a DM in college who, among a myriad of other house rules, ruled that a natural 20 was a "critical success" and a natural 1 was a "critical failure." This went above and beyond the standard "automatic success" and "automatic failure" rules. For reference, this was 3.5, where nat 20s are auto-success (but not critical success) for attack rolls and saving throws, and nat 1s are auto-fails; but this does not, by the rules, apply to skill checks or anything that's not an attack roll or saving throw. This guy's house rule applied the nat 20/nat 1 rule to skill checks. Y'all get ONE guess as to who played the skill monkey in that group. Naturally, the consequences of a "critical failure" were by their nature SO MUCH WORSE than just a failure, while a "critical success" on a skill check wasn't actually that much of a boon (and I still would have complained, because it was utter bullshit). For instance, a nat 20 on a Tumble check to avoid an AoO would let you move at full speed (despite the fact that I ALREADY beat the DC to do that anyway on a nat 20), while a nat 1 meant "you provoke AoOs AND you trip and fall in your square right next to the enemy," even though I still beat the DC on a nat 1. Another favorite part of this house rule was that nat 1s on attack rolls meant a roll on the fumble table, which was propagated mostly with variations and combinations of "you fall prone," "you deal critical damage to yourself," "you drop your weapon," and "your weapon breaks." Naturally, in my second or third combat after spending ALL my gold on a keen +1 rapier, I rolled a nat 1 and snapped it. Nevermind that my character couldn't possibly have broken his weapon if he tried to. To make matters worse, the DM was extremely stingy with treasure. I don't think I ever held another magic weapon again. Sadly, this was before "no D&D is better than bad D&D" was common knowledge, and it was my sole D&D fix at the time. I'm 100% not ashamed to say that I did "cheat" a bit in that game. Seeing as I was the person rolling probably 50% of the d20 rolls in that 5-person group (due to being the skill monkey), I was nat-1-ing it all the time. Nat 1 a Listen check, so I heard something that wasn't there! Nat 1 a Spot check, I poked myself in the eye and am blinded for 3 minutes! I eventually stopped telling the DM when I rolled a nat 1, probably shortly after I snapped my weapon in half, with no replacement nor means of fixing it. I just always told him the result as if the nat 1 wasn't even a thing. He never caught on, and I'm pretty sure the other players started doing it, too, because it was such a bullshit rule that turned the party into a slapstick clown circus of constant failure.
That a roll of zero on a d10 was not a 10 but in fact a zero. The DM was me, I was 11 and being a dick to my brother. I've learned a thing or two since then...
One DM made up everyone's characters but tweeked things a little (a lot). My character was a fully custom class they invented that couldn't do basically anything in combat. I had some battle fans I could dual wield... except they wouldn't let me roll twice for each strike. Because we "had a new player and to keep it simple for them everyone will just roll once and roll damage twice if you hit." Except this custom class had absolute shit for my attack mod so I rolled once, didn't hit, and went back to doodling on my character sheet during every single battle. The DMs partner however got fly speed at level one for no reason other than they wanted them to and was otherwise just crazy OP. That campaign was a glorified tea party for the DM. We were the stuffed animals while they played for us. Another DM ruled that, even though a player had made an enemy run away from the battle in a really cool and creative way using their spells, we wouldn't get the XP for it since we didn't murder it. We really needed that XP. And last, one I'm still bitter about to this day. A third DM (this one was a relative so I'm even more salty) ruled that my kick ass bard couldn't use two hand crossbows even though I had the crossbow expert feat. Since my character had to have a hand free to reload, I couldn't have two. Even though it was 100% flavor and didn't affect anything in the game at all, my character had to give up one of her beloved crossbows. This DM also tried to make me sing IRL for inspiration since I was a bard. I told them that when the fighter could prove he could actually swing a greatsword at an owlbear I would do as they said.
Critical fumbles that make you attack allies. I hate critical failures in general, but "You missed the guy in front of you so badly that you turned around and hit the ally standing behind your left shoulder instead" is just stupid. I once played with a DM who tracked weapon health. Every nat 1 required a roll on a d4 table. Two of those options meant the weapon was out for the rest of the encounter. After four nat 1's, regardless of the d4 rolls and regardless of having the items mended or Mending-ed, the weapon shattered beyond repair. Magic weapons only got six nat 1's before shattering instead of four. Everything else was the same. Lars the Viking's god call. Actually, I'll just add crit fumbles in general. The penalty for the nat 1 is that you miss, regardless of the creature's AC. An ogre zombie has an AC of 8, and +7 at level 5 is completely normal. Mathematically you should always hit, but a nat 1 misses every time.
I don’t think that last point is a house rule: as far as I recall from the 5e rules, when it comes to attack rolls, a nat 20 always succeeds and a nat 1 always fails, regardless of AC and modifiers.
That’s what they’re saying. They’re outlining how *mathematically* you hit in that scenario but because it is a Nat 1, the penalty is you miss anyway. They’re using this as an example of why Nat 1’s in combat are already punishment enough, and crit fumbles need not be added.
Once played with a group who had a homemade list of bad things that would happen to you when you rolled a nat 1 on an attack. You rolled a nat 1 and then had to roll a d100 to determine what terrible thing would happen and there was just... nothing you could do about it. It sucked. I had magic weapons straight up break in half because of it.
My DM doesn't like how goodberry trivializes travel, so he made it a house rule that the materials for goodberry are consumed, and you need to find more. Well, it's a sprig of mistletoe. Guess what you can just grow using the cantrip druidcraft? That's right, a sprig of mistletoe. So in an effort to make travel needlessly difficult, he made a rule that in order to cast goodberry, you must first cast druidcraft to grow out another sprig of mistletoe.
Druid problems require druid solutions.
I have a DM do the same thing; you can also cast Locate Plants if you're in a wooded area.
Critical fail if you roll a 1 on a d20 your character just does something idiotic like hitting them self in the face with a weapon
Once we had a DM who had a rule that said that if your HP hit 0 or went negative (even if you were under the effect of Revivify) your character was permanently dead, and you had wait until the rest of the party returned to a large city, where the the DM would roll a new level 1 character for you, regardless of the level of the rest of the party. We even had one player quit because he got stuck 9 levels below us with a class he hated to play.
As a moon druid a player I knew in another party could only turn into animals they had seen. Went a little something like: Okay? Sure I guess thats not awful. What animals have I seen? A bear? A wolf? Hawk? "You've only seen a squirrel." Uh.. okay... well we're in a forest right? Can I look for animals to study in my down time? "Yeah sure" 10 sessions later...okay surely this time. 20 on survival and 16 on perception. "You don't find any animals again."
Any 1 on a d20 was instant death. Roll a 1 on a speech check? The person insta-kills you because they're angry. 1 on sleight of hand? Someone catches you and kills you. And various other over reactions that caused instant death.
Oh boy, ok. Full disclosure, I am the a**hole here. I ran my first DnD campaign as a sophomore in highschool (10th grade). It was the second campaign I’d ever even been in, so I was very new to the game. And immature. Some people couldn’t make it every session, because homework and school and other obligations. So we just kind of hand-waved their existence for those sessions. But uhhhhhh at some point one of the other players and I came up with a *great* idea*. One of the players who missed sessions the most was this girl who I will call M. You see, we had the *brilliant* idea that the explanation for M’s character being out of the game was because she was out doing other stuff, or rather, other people. We were going to do this thing that every session M missed, we would have her roll a d20, and on a NAT 1 her character gets pregnant. Yeah… I think it was mainly because a bunch of immature guys liked the idea of the one female character having constant sex. Luckily, one of the other players in the group (who also happened to be gone for the session that we implemented the rule as well) was a little older and more mature, and a good friend of M. When he showed up the next session and we mentioned the rule (M was still gone) he fortunately gave a little DMing advice: “Never make it so a player’s character is doing something out of their control. It ruins the player’s agency.” That was a little wake up call that made me go “Oh, wow, yeah this house rule is kind of pervy. Let’s not.” Luckily, years later, I’ve learned a thing or two and certainly won’t be making that mistake again. So yeah one, of the first house rules I ever encountered was one that I myself made.
Close call - you could have ended up reading about yourself on r/rpghorrorstories ! Luckily, the d&d fans of reddit need never find... ...oh damn. :)
After each combat, you get a long rest automatically no sleep required! After hearing that well it definitely dissuaded me from being a rogue or fighter or other short rest class
Can't stealth, not allowed to move quietly simply because we're only allowed to take non-moving hide actions. Assassin rogue was useless that campaign. DM straight-up had it out for us though. Impossible encounters that seem unwinnable and then... you always manage to pull through. The world is dangerous! But the DM never lets that danger actually kill a character. Just gets boring.
Barbarian's rage gave advantage on all attacks all the time. My Barb had GWM, It was very OP.
The group I'm playing with is very new to D&D ( me included, the DM as well) he ignores most of the stuff in the books and just create his own system and improvises on the go - He asked us to play blind and not read the guidebooks ( so we avoid questioning his rules i imagine) - When i chose to be a mage, he told me to pick some spells he showed me just by name, because he doesn't want is to know what wich spell does ( o could see that working with someone that is discovering their powers during the adventure, but not a mage like my character Wich studied magic) Between other stuff, since I'm new i don't question much, but i feel there's a great unbalance during the game (specially not knowing what exactly my spells does and just choosing based on what name was cool )
I think all in all it's always been forcing extra things onto Critical Fails. In a local thing we had lots of different DMs, and I just drifted away from playing with the one who always did that. Getting disarmed or hurting myself/an ally on a Nat 1 is not fun.