D&D 5E Capricious Home Rules and DM Pet Peeves

MNblockhead said:

Interesting how many throw away alignment. I almost feel that in 5e alignment is just flavor text anyway. In prior editions there were spells to detect alignment and even alignment languages. In 5e, alignment is just part of background. The only way it ties into the game mechanics is for awarding inspiration.

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It's likely a lot of people had bad experiences with alignment, either players who used it as an excuse for poor play or DMs who used it to coerce players to behave a certain way.

In D&D 5e, I'd only care about alignment if I was running a game where it matters such as a Planescape game or maybe Ravenloft in which case I would award Inspiration for playing to it.

MNblockhead said:

Have you made capricious changes to a rule, just because the RAW annoys you?

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Here's some variant rules and houserules that i use in MY GREYHAWK campaign;

VARIANT RULES & HOUSERULES

- Ability Scores Maximum: A score of 18 is the highest that a person usually reaches, rather than 20, thus the normal range of ability scores is 3-18 without magic. (PHB171)
- Choose Race: The dragonborn, drow and tiefling are not allowed. The Variant Human Trait can be selected. (PHB09)
- Unearthed Arcana: The new class features from Unearthed Arcana: Kits of Old (Cavalier & Scout), Gothic Characters (Monster Hunter & Inquisitive), Waterborne (Swashbuckler), Class Design Variants (Ranger with no spells) are permitted. (UA_E)
- Villainous Class Options: The cleric death domain and paladin oathbreaker can be selected. (DMG96)
- Alignment: No evil alignment can be selected. (PHB122)
- New Languages: New languages that can be selected are ancient baklunish, flan, old oeridian, ancient suloise. (PHB 123)
- Starting Wealth By Class: The starting gold is determined either randomly or by class. If you use the optional rule from chapter 5 to spend coins on gear, you do not receive the starting equipment from your background. (PHB 125-143)
- Multiclassing: The ability score minimum to multiclass is 16 rather than 13. (PHB163)
- Wands That Don’t Recharge: Most magic staff, rod and wand are incapable of regaining charges. (DMG141)
- Slow Natural Healing: Characters don't regain hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead, a character can spend Hit Dice to heal at the end of a long rest, just as with a short rest. (DMG267)
- Healer’s Kit Dependency: A character can't spend any Hit Dice after finishing a rest until someone expends one use of a healer's kit to bandage and treat the character's wounds. (DMG266)

I have two house rules based on my pet peeves.

1. No evil characters at my table. You can be good or neutral, but not evil. I had too many adventures derailed by constant note passing and backstabbing. I didn't spend several hours preparing for game day so I could read everyone's notes about how they are going after each other. Granted, this was when I was was much younger that I had these problems. Though the rule still stands.

2. No firearms/black powder/explosives. I prefer my fantasy of the sword and sorcery variety. For whatever reason, having firearms in a fantasy game just annoys me to no end. Even in video games. I freely admit that it bothered me to have black powder weapons or rifles and grenades in video games like Grim Dawn or Pillars of Eternity, even though I love those games. My table is a firearm free zone. Bows and crossbows, sure have at it. Guns, that's a big nope from me.

I'll jump on the "no alignment" bandwagon, for pretty much the same reasons as everyone else.

No Variant humans, as I find the early feat to be game-warping.

No multiclassing

No arguments from realism. Basically this means if a player tries to argue that X entity couldn't attempt an action due to it being unrealistic they are ignored.

At least for the current campaign, all items are rolled naturally from the DMG tables.

No resurrection magic exists, save perhaps Wish/True Resurrection. This is both because of in-world concerns as well as increasing the permanence of death for players.

Darkvision has been stripped from most races save the ones that believably spend most of their lives underground.

Okay, here’s my list:

1: Firearms
I don’t know if that fits into “setting” or not, but I loathe most “official” – and homebrew – rules for firearms. The reason? The designers try to do that “realistic”. Which means that: either it’s about early firearms, with slow-but-powerful balancing, or modern-and-overpowered firearms. When questioned, those people will simply say “firearms are overpowered in real life”.
Thing is, I Just Don’t Care. I don’t want “realistic” firearms. I want a Final Fantasy-esque world in which Lightning (with her gunblade), Cloud (with his Buster Sword), Vivi (with his magic) and Yuna (with her Tiny Bees pistols) can actually get along in a party and be reasonably balanced, and I’ll stab Physics as much as I need to get that. Just to a point, I’m a Physics student, and I don’t want to talk about my college while playing a RPG.

2: Fairies
Or better yet, the lack of it. D&D has traditionally avoided the term “fairy” like the plague, and use other names such as “Pixie, Sprite, Atomie, etc.” These names in themselves are fine, but I want properly named fairies. Right now I’ll play D&D, so I guess I’ll just say “All those races are part of the large Fairy species”. Oh, and their size. Right now those “little” fairies – along with races like the Brownies, Leprechauns, etc. – are too much big in my opinion. Really, 45 cm high Tinker Bell? No, that’s not right. Classic small fairies are the way to go. Okay, they might get stuck in a bag, but that’s part of the show.
Also, my gaming world isn’t exactly a fairy-tale and much innocence, but I like to have many different elements in my game, and a Disney Tinker Bell would be nice to have.

3: Class overlap
Comparing myself with other DMs of my area, I’m quite permissive – most of them are Core only in pretty much any game – and I actually like tons of classes. Problem is, with so many classes, some of them will have “conceptual overlap” problems – which are basically they both do the same thing on the world. When that happens, something must change or a class will be banned. The most frequent offenders are: Druid and Shaman. Basically, I don’t know how to have “priest of a nature god” and “priest of the nature spirits” without making one of them redundant or useless. It’s already hard to have Cleric and Shaman in the same game, but I can do it. Druid and Shaman, however, are not so lucky.

4: Alternative names for devils, demons, angels, etc.
Do you know terms like “Baatezu”, “Tanar’ri”, “Aasimon”, “Yugoloth”, and others? I hate them with the fire of a thousand suns. Basically, if you’ll have creatures with blatant references to popular real-world religions, name them right. The idea of renaming them just to appease the PC patrol is loathsome to me.
And by the way, I’m Catholic, and I like much more when the terrible and scary monster I defeated is called “demon” or something alike. I have no problem with that.

I for one am not a fan of much DM tinkering with the game. If they're adding all new content/mechanics that didn't exist before, and it's done well, then awesome. But most nerf existing rules because "it doesn't make sense" or "it's not realistic" or "it's not balanced". IMHO they're right about 10% of the time and I can roll with it (like when we did Spell Points over Vancian back in the day). The other 90% of the time the DM is just blowing hot air because they want the PCs to fit into some round hole they insist on having that their square peg PCs don't work with. It's nearly always to benefit the DM's ideas and lends little support to the players' needs. Of course, YMMV.

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I don't know if this truly qualifies but there are no Decks of Many Things or Wands of Wonder to be had.

Too many campaigns trashed by the randomness.

I didn't like the methods of awarding XP offered in the DMG or PHB, so I'm experimenting with different ways to do that. What I have currently:

not-so-newguy said:

Life has gotten in the way of my DnD, so I'll need to wait even longer to try this. In the meantime ...I futz.

TL;DR I'm experimenting with a new way to calculate XP that involves exploration and loot with focus on the Isle of Dread module.

A character will level up when she/he/it receives Adventuring Experience 25 times. I will be adjusting the encounters to account for a group leveling from 3rd to 10th level, where the campaign is capped. A PC will need to receive Adventuring Experience 175 times to reach 10th.

A PC that dies will make a new 3rd level character. The new Character will be required to receive Adventuring Experience 10 time to gain a level, until he/she/it catches up with the rest of the group.

Receive Adventuring Experience for the following achievements:

• Cross 10 unexplored Hexes. There are over 670 unexplored hexes in the Isle of Dread module, which accounts for Adventuring Experience 67 times. Exploring friendly tribal islands and peninsula does not count towards Experience.
• Encounter a group of monsters 5 monsters or less = one group. Additional experience will be given for every five monsters beyond five with fractions rounded down. This assumes there are 5 PCs in the group.
• Find a permanent magic item There are 8 permanent magic items, not counting the book's suggestion to add more items in the dragon hoard. Everyone receives experience for finding 1 magic item. Consumable Magic is not counted towards Experience.
• Find loot totaling 2,000 gold pieces There's roughly 100,000 gp worth of loot in the adventure, which would account for Adventuring Experience 50 times. Everyone receives experience per 2,000 gold pieces gained. Grifting/Robbing the friendly natives will not be counted for Experience.
• Explore a structure Four rooms = Adventuring Experience. Fractions will be rounded up. Example, a five room cavern = Two points of Adventuring Experience
• Change attitude of a group from hostile to friendly. Improving attitudes works the same as encountering monsters. A "group" is considered 5 monsters.

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Some other stuff from my list:

Paladins
Don’t get me wrong, I love Paladins. LG-only Paladins, that is – this also shows that I actually like Alignment. But, recently and sadly, I’m thinking that they are weird. Why? Because of two points.
1. Too rigid rules. Basically, most rules are fine when they’re treated as an ideal to strive for. Of course, doing a stupidly evil thing needs punishment. However, the penalties for breaking even small rules are too heavy for me. Paladins are humans/mortals, after all; they make mistakes. And they should be allowed to mistake when things are fuzzy without losing all their powers just because the DM has a different opinion about that act. This part is too “Lawful Stupid”.
2. This is an interesting one. Looking from another side, I actually think they are not lawful enough. Let me explain: paladins basically act solely guided by their own code and consciousness, and by their god directly; and sometimes they don’t even need a god in the first place. That seems so un-lawful to me.
With that I can conclude that, my problem with classic paladins is not the alignment restriction or the overall theme. My problem is they’re basically more Lawful Stupid + Chaotic Good, instead of, you know, Lawful Good. Right now I’ll DM AD&D 2e, and put my plan to action. I’m lowering the penalties for breaking rules while also adding responsibility to a higher authority. I’m still working on it, but once it’s done, I may show up here at EnWorld.

Wish (and Limited Wish)
I’ll be honest; I hate the literal “gotcha” wish effects, with a red-hot passion. I prefer the Dragon Ball solution: it gives what you actually want, but it’s rarer and difficult to get. For my official campaign, I’ll make wishes and similar effects more reliable, while also making them rarer and have clear rules about what a wish can or cannot do. I prefer this than “haha I gotcha! You made a bad wish, muahahahahahaha!”