D&D 5E House Rules that Span Editions

[Ath-kethin]

Pants, dresses or skirts stay on when gaming. Nobody plays with their junk out at my table.

Now that's just unnecessarily restrictive. Maybe I should add this kind of tyranny to the "How Much is Too Much" thread.

 

[miburo99]

The OOC rule: If you are talking OOC, you put your hand on your forehead with an "O" sign (not "L" for Loser =P). It looks a bit silly at first, but we found this helps facilitate the divide between player knowledge and actual character roleplaying.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I don't track XP. We level as story, pacing, and PC accomplishments suggest. That's been the case for us since the genesis of 3E.

To be fair, that's no longer a house rule but a variant/optional rule--but it was a house rule.

 

[Rod Staffwand]

Pants, dresses or skirts stay on when gaming. Nobody plays with their junk out at my table.

That's one of the upsides of internet gaming...

My fairly consistent house rules:
1. No xp. Leveling up is by DM fiat based on narrative concerns and/or character achievement along with open communication and player buy-in. I have better things to do then count up xp. I don't like giving out xp for combat and most quest reward systems break down in play so it's gut feeling all the way.
2. No clerics/divine power source. I abhor clerics with every fiber of my being and I suspect I couldn't be fair to players of clerics in my games so I just ditch them entirely to avoid problems. If I include cleric-type stuff it's usually styled more as a white wizard type of thing. Also standard druids. Hate 'em.
3. No evil PCs. No evil players. Not worth the hassle.
4. I use the OD&D-era concept of tiers. Mid-level is 5. High-level is 10+. Whoa!-level is 15+. I stat monsters to reinforce this paradigm. I cut the HD of most animals in half and use weaker versions of monsters such as young dragons as stand-ins for the big boys. 20 levels is too much of a spread. 30 or 36 is insane.
5. I'm a toolbox DM. I see the rules as a toolbox. Spells are sample spells. Monsters are sample monsters. Magic items are sample magic items.
6. Fighters and fighter-types get an AC bump as they level. Scaling varies from edition to edition. Haven't figured out 5e's sweet spot yet. I'm not a medieval warfare fetishist so I don't really care too much about forcing martials to wear armor.
7. Polymorphing, wildshaping, et. al. never restores hit points.
8. If using summoning or shapeshifting powers you have 1 minute to look up the stats of whatever it is you are summoning or becoming. It will behoove you to have copies of all relevant stats on hand. Am I salty about the 3.5 druid taking 20 minutes on their combat turns? Yes...yes I am.
9. If magic items are being used in the setting I usually favor legacy gear that improves from story factors (a sword +1 becomes a frostbrand after freeing the Ice Queen) rather than rewarding new treasures. It cuts down on the total amount of magic items the party has access to and makes them more special.
10. The PCs can escape from a combat at any time--at any point in the initiative order and no matter the placement or status of combatants. It may lead to a dicey chase sequence, but it's always possible. It's the most effective defense against the TPK other than DM fiat.
11. Magic is always obvious, unless the specific point of the spell is to be unobtrusive. Spell effects are sparkles and lights. Charmed creatures have trippy eyes. Walls of force glow cyan (ALWAYS cyan). Even invisibility can't completely mask a person's shadow. Maybe it's too many Doctor Strange comics, but I like my magic flashy.
12. Magic always has mundane countermeasures. Lead blocks/dims divinations. Silver goes through wards. Iron manacles will prevent all spellcasting. That sort of thing. Most powerful monsters (dragons, demons, devils, etc.) have similar weaknesses.

 

[Jediking]

12. Magic always has mundane countermeasures. Lead blocks/dims divinations. Silver goes through wards. Iron manacles will prevent all spellcasting. That sort of thing. Most powerful monsters (dragons, demons, devils, etc.) have similar weaknesses.

I really like this one, thanks for the idea!

 

[Greg K]

Not all of these apply to every edition, but do span multiple editions.

1. Slower leveling (3e+)
2. no evil PCs
3. Humans get +2 to one ability score of player's choice (1e-3e). In 5e, will use the variant human rule
4. no dragonborn. Tieflings are NPC only
5. Abilities like dwarves stonecunning become skills or feats
6. all clerics and paladins must have a deity
7. clerics, paladins, and warlocks can have powers taken away by their deity/patron for transgressions (Evil deities, infernal patrons, etc. may actually kill a character, turn them permanently into some harmless animal (with mind of the animal), or something similar for transgressions. PCs .
8. clerics have tailored spell lists by deity
9. cleric class by default is not proficient is in armor or shields
10. by default most clerics do not have turn undead
11. Infernal and Star Pact Warlocks are NPC only unless I refluff as priests of deities for a given campaign or
12. skill points
13. Culture Lore (specific)*, Demon/Devil Lore, Dragon Lore, Fey Lore, Sprit Lore, Undead Lore are their own skills
14. certain spells don't exist (e.g. rope trick, prismatic spells, goodberry)
15. no exceptional strength for fighters (1e-2e)
16. Barbarians are proficient with "cultural weapons" similar to 1e Barbarian
17. anyone with appropriate con score receives the fighter hit point bonus (1e-2e)
18. no level drain
19. Critical hit if to hit roll falls in threat range and hits by 5 or more
20. Poison has onset time
    

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I'm a minimalist when it comes to house rules (meaning I have a very low tolerance point at which I go from "I'll use this system with a few house-rules" to "I'll just use a different system entirely.") so I don't have many house-rules to begin with. The nearest I've ever come to a house-rule that crossed edition barriers is this:

In AD&D/BECMI I gave ever character an additional 4 hit points at 1st level (HP still rolled as normal) so that it was significantly less likely that a single successful goblin attack killed a character.
In 3.X the spirit of this house-rule carried over, but the actual mechanic changed, such that I started campaigns at 3rd level (since the integrated critical hit rules that my players insisted we use, and monsters being given ability scores, meant low-level monsters were even more likely to outright kill characters on a single successful attack than ever before).

 

[Draegn]

In all games:

Adding additional stats.
Using a modified Shadowrun magic system.
Using the modified skills list from Talislanta.
Using the modified religion rules from Harn.

Play tests:
Substances which cause triple damage to various races. (Iron vs elves, Mistletoe vs Dwarves, etc)

 

[Warbringer]

Falling : xd6!, rather than xd6
Initiaitive: low is good:roll -dex;weapons d10,spell d4 (used to add weapon speed and segment for casting, +1 per 5 feet moved)
Re roll hit dice the following level to see if you get higher (keep highest)
Hit dice: average or roll

These have been fairly consistent since 80

 

[delericho]

As the OP notes, most of my house rules are pretty edition-specific, but I have a couple...

- Fixed hit points per level. This applied in 3e, SWSE, and now 5e, though the specific numbers have varied. (Though, actually, I'm considering reverting my next 5e campaign, if there is one, back to the same numbers I used for 3e.)

- Stat-generation: right at the end of my time playing 3e I hit on a system that I was finally happy with, after years of bouncing around (each player gets to choose random roll, or standard array, or point buy, none of which quite match the 5e PHB). I used that in my last 3e campaign, the SWSE campaign I ran next, and am now using it in 5e. I don't foresee it changing going forward - it's a little more powerful than the 5e baseline, but not so much as to cause any problems.