D&D 5E What are your favorite optional rules?

[Fauchard1520]

What optional rules do you guys play with? Which ones do you hate?

And on a highly personal note, do you allow for saves vs. death by massive damage?

(Comic related.)

 

[pogre]

Tying skill checks to other attributes based on the situation.

 

[Andvari]

I like average damage for regular foes and having players roll to defend instead of monsters rolling to attack. It's faster, reduces what I have to worry about and players like rolling more dice.

I also like not making players roll to see if they find something when they search an area. If they are willing to spend time, increasing the chance of a random encounter or moving the "doom clock", they just find the clues to what's hidden in the area they search. (A hollow sound as they knock on the back of the bookshelf could be the clue for the hidden tunnel behind it, for example)

 

[Voadam]

In 5e I am a big fan of the optional pass a failed skill check now for a complication later.

 

[Voadam]

And on a highly personal note, do you allow for saves vs. death by massive damage?

And no, I never called for those.

 

[ichabod]

Point buy with 31 points and you can buy a 16 for 12 points. It allows buying the median 4d6 drop low set.

Prices for magic items to give characters more agency in their items.

The one my players love is secret death saves. I tried it and was going to drop it because of the extra bookkeeping, but the players said they really like the tension it creates.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Off the top of my head, the current official optional/variant rules I use are:

-Multiclassing (discouraged though)
-Feats
-Skills with alternate ability scores
-Healer's kit dependency for short rest healing
-Slower natural healing (the one where you regain half HD but no hit points on a long rest)
-Combat Options: Climbing onto a bigger creature, Disarm, Overrun, Tumble, Shove Aside
-Technically Lingering Injuries (since it doesn't give you solid rules for when to make the roll, I came up with my own, and tweaked the permanence of the injuries), but it came up so rarely with my rules that it's only happened once in hundreds of hours of play (probably should have happened more but I don't remember to use it)
-NPC mob rules
-Automatic success on skill checks--but I tweaked this one to only apply if you are proficient

I used the variant Encumbrance rule (rather than the standard Carrying Capacity rule) at the start of my long campaign to make things a little grittier at level 1, and then switched to Carrying Capacity. This was actually a planned thing, rather than a change of mind.

There may be one or two more I'd find if I went through the books looking.

 

[Deset Gled]

Auto success on a natural 20 and auto fail on a natural 1, for saves.

 

[Oofta]

Optional rules or house rules?

About the only optional rule I use on a regular basis is gritty rest, a short rest is overnight and a long rest is up to a week. I find it helps with my pacing because I never really do dungeon crawls.

I occasionally use the "Climb onto a bigger Creature", even though I didn't realize I was using an optional rule.

 

[Paka]

We've been using the Bingo XP Variant and enjoying it.