D&D 5E "House" Rules

Not a big fan of changing DCs/AC overall, especially by flat numbers. I do agree that Magic Resistance should grant Disadvantage on Spell Melee/Ranged Attacks, just as I think that Dungeon Delver should grant Disadvantage to Trap Attacks, because it balances things out fairly well.

Critical Failure should only exist in combination with Critical Success. 5E only has Critical Hits, so there should be a critical miss. Unfortunately, unlike Critical Hits, there no easy solution for all attacks. I would find the simplest effect to be "the next attack against you before the start of your next turn has Advantage," representing that you put yourself open while making the attack.

I made a very quick rule change to make Identify worthwhile You can identify 1 item over a long rest, but if it requires attunement, you automatically attune to it if able. If you can't attune to it, you only learn non-attuned properties and what attunement requirements exist. Cursed abilities are never learned, except via use of Identify. Since I am fond of putting out a LOT of cursed items, this make Identify pretty important.

All-in-all, house rules are okay if the entire table is fine with them. Some of the things you propose wouldn't sit well with me as a player, but your group might be fine with them all. I certainly don't see anything here that would be game breaking.

In the game we play players and foes fail saves enough as it is. Remember that most characters will only be proficienct in two saves, and it is unlikely they will have more than a +2 or +3 in something they aren't proficient in. Most save DCs are already 10 or better, typically 15 or higher in many cases. Further along, DC's can top 20, so characters are unlikely to make much of those saves unless it happens to be something they are proficient in. Also, many foes don't have save proficiencies at all, although IMO they really should. I wouldn't be happy as a player in a game where the DCs are even higher even if it makes the math easier.

We play with critical failures. They are great and add some nice comic relief at time and suspence at other times. In fact, yesterday a hechman critically fumbled an attack roll and ended up hitting himself and knocking himself out! We all had a good laugh at that! Our game uses fairly simple mechanic, 3-step process:

1. You roll a 1 on an attack roll (melee, ranged, or spell) or on a skill check.
2. You make a new roll against a DC 15 using whatever modifier you used on the prior roll that was a 1. If you succeed, all is well. If you fail, a minor mishap occurs (dropped/thrown/stuck weapon, component pouch spills open, etc.). If you fail, you make another roll.
3. You make a final roll against a DC 15 again using the same modifier as before. Failure this time indicates major problem: weapon breaks, you hit an ally or yourself, your spell backlashes against you, etc.

Most of the time, you make the first check or the second, but sometimes you do fail both and something bad happens. Oh, and if you have any actions remaining and fail the first check, you lose them. It works both ways, and we haven't had any issues with it.

For spell resistance, you could apply disadvantage to the spell attack roll, just as the creature has advantage to the saves? +2 works fine as well, but it is another option.

Having some monsters not affected by sneak attack and crits is fine with me personally. Some of the creatures vunerable to such features never sat well with me or most of the others at our table.

Our DM really ramped up Identify by makeing the pearl consumed by the spell! Since there are a lot of magical items that don't require attunement, without Identify you can't know what many items do. Needless to say, my character typically has 3-5 100 gp pearls on her for Identify spells.

I'm not a fan of any of these house rules except the identification one.

As far as spell resistence, if I were to alter it to account for spells with attack rolls, I'd either have it impose disadvantage on the attack roll or have the creature take hald damge from the spell.

I'm not a fan of fumble rules, so there's that.

EVERYBODY said:

Identify

Click to expand...

Part of it is that I enjoy playing roguelikes and one thing I like about them is having limited identification resources and occasionally taking a risk with an attempt to "use-ID" an item, i.e. drinking a fizzy pink potion of who-knows-what or putting on that bone ring of I don't know what that ring is going to do my finger (one of the cursed items in my RPG SPLINTER is the "Ring of Oh-God-My-Finger!" which pretty much just slices off your finger when you put it on, but I digress) in a situation desperate enough for you to take that kind of risk. To my mind, making identification something any character can do with a short rest makes it a far duller process.

5E has kind of doubled down on cursed items being a thing, so this makes more sense to me now than ever. Also FWIW I have always let identify detect cursed items and have always thought it was the utmost nadir of Gygaxian BS in 3.5 where cursed items specifically identified as uncursed items. Eff that!

With cursed items around and it being the only reliable way to identify a spell, I think that Identify is great and in its way a very powerful spell. But when anyone can just know what a magic item is by taking a one hour nap (and incidentally, I've found that the adventures/modules where the time pressure is so great you think twice about taking even a SHORT rest are few and far between), Identify shouldn't even be a spell. When I played a wizard that both learned and prepared Identify, I had a couple of DMs just ask me for an Arcana check upon getting a magic item, without even the already-basically-meaningless short rest. Needless to say, this was vexing in the extreme. By RAW, Identify is a trap option and no one should ever take it. For my own game, I prefer having magic-item-identification be a resource to be managed, a la roguelikes. Like I don't even have a problem with it being a class tax, back in 3.5 I was fine with trying to decide whether to prepare identify or not, but with the way preparation works in 5E

As for the Save DCs...I am not a 100% believer in "Bounded Accuracy"...I have a rough understand of the concept...I've read its harshest critiques from its harshest critics...for the most part it seems to be working, but the Save DCs is an area I think they got it wrong. If a 2 point increase to save DCs causes it to be impossible for some non-proficient characters and a bad relevant stat to make a save...oh well? It also makes it impossible for a ton of monsters to make their saves against PC spells. And in either case, it's not actually impossible, right, because a natural 20 always succeeds a save so everyone's got a 5% chance to get lucky. (And in case "a natural 20 always makes a saving throw" is one of those things that I think is RAW but actually isn't, I'd put that in there as a house rule anyway. Even if I wasn't bumping up the save DCs. Which I am.)

Glad (and honestly...relieved) to see so many people agree that crit fails/fumbles are BS...does anyone like my idea of potentially-fatal-comedies-of-errors being able to happen to NPCs/monsters and not PCs?

Azzy said:

I'm not a fan of any of these house rules except the identification one.

Click to expand...

Well, kind of balances out most other respondents, who generally seemed to like everything but the identification house rule. : )

As far as spell resistence, if I were to alter it to account for spells with attack rolls, I'd either have it impose disadvantage on the attack roll or have the creature take hald damge from the spell.

Click to expand...

Ooh, I like that. I think I'm going to switch it to that. That's MUCH more symmetrical than a conditional +2 bonus to AC, especially since "AC vs. this as opposed to AC vs. that" is another thing 5E did a way with. It took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that there was no such thing as a touch attack in 5E. It still feels really weird to me that a Wizard throwing a Chromatic Orb of lightning is much less likely to hit a character in plate than in leather armor...but I understand why it's a huge step towards streamlining the game and making it more accessible, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

dnd4vr said:

All-in-all, house rules are okay if the entire table is fine with them.

Click to expand...

I really don't mean to sound like an elitist grognard jerkwad saying this but...I disagree with that generally on the basis that (at least in my current situation) I almost always have more experience GMing than everyone else at the table has with roleplaying combined. Usually, I have several time the combined roleplaying experience of every other player at the table. And--again, I know this makes me sound like a conceited prick and I assure you I'm not--I have developed a dozen tabletop RPGs and published six of them. Most of the time--with the dramatic exception of that one time that I playtested Systems Malfunction with Ron Edwards and Vincent D. Baker (this is a real thing that actually happened)--the rest of the table doesn't know much about game design and/or the opinions they have about game design are badong ("critical fumbles are great", "when I DM I have my own critical fumble tables", "I miss THAC0"). So no, I don't personally feel like I need the unanimous approval of every person at the table to make what are, to me, clear improvements to the game.

But don't get me wrong...DMs can (and have been for years) make house rules that are arbitrary, un-fun, and unfair and if any house rule I made caused a player to actually get upset, I would closely reexamine it. Incidentally, my table, or I should say my regulars, since it's a slightly different crowd every week, are all fine with these house rules FWIW.

Thing I Didn't Know: Save DCs "max out" at 20? Does anything else in the game max out like that? I also just noticed (wow am I slow on the uptake sometimes) that apparently all items that granted enhancement bonuses to ability scores have been removed from the game? So cloak of charisma, gloves of dexterity et al are gone?

Shiroiken said:

Critical Failure should only exist in combination with Critical Success. 5E only has Critical Hits, so there should be a critical miss.

Click to expand...

100% agree.
If you all want extra damage on top of always hitting when you roll a 20 (something that isn't anymore likely that rolling any other # on your d20 {or shouldn't be}), you should be fine with some kind of extra ill effect for rolling a 1.
Of course the debate comes in deciding what that ill effect is.... I think most of you over do it with having trained warriors throwing their weapons about, 5% of all bowstrings breaking, decapitations etc....

Shiroiken said:

Unfortunately, unlike Critical Hits, there no easy solution for all attacks.

Click to expand...

Sure there is. You just presented it:

Shiroiken said:

I would find the simplest effect to be "the next attack against you before the start of your next turn has Advantage," representing that you put yourself open while making the attack.

Click to expand...

This works well enough for most melee weapons. For ranged I'd suggest dropping the character to last in the next round of initiative as those characters aren't often in B2B contact with foes. Of course if they are, treat as you would for melee....

GlassJaw said:

100% agree on Critical Failures/Fumbles. They are absolutely awful. I hate to admit it but I think less of a DM that uses them. It indicates a lack of understanding of some of the core math of the system.

Click to expand...

And what bit of core math is handing out bonus damage 5% of the time?
1 always misses, but a 20 always hits AND does extra damage. I'm sorry, that's just rewarding you for no reason as you've the exact same odds of rolling any # on that d20 (and if you don't you're likely cheating).

Nope, sorry, in games I run you get a choice:
No crits of any variety, good or bad.
OR
1s always miss & grant your foes advantage until your next turn (or some other effect if that's not appropriate due to exact circumstance)
20s always hit & do double damage.

BTW, as a DM or player, I'm not a fan of crits of any variety.
But I recognize that others love crit success. Thus the choice when I DM.
As a player I'll play it however the DM wants.

My ruling is that the fiddling around with an item required to figure it out without identify, exposes the character to any potential negative effects. If the item is cursed, they're cursed. If the potion was poison, they sipped it and suffer the effects of that poison. As such, identify is a safer means to accomplish the same thing, but you don't need identify to identify items.

ParanoydStyle said:

I really don't mean to sound like an elitist grognard jerkwad saying this but...I disagree with that generally on the basis that (at least in my current situation) I almost always have more experience GMing than everyone else at the table has with roleplaying combined. Usually, I have several time the combined roleplaying experience of every other player at the table. And--again, I know this makes me sound like a conceited prick and I assure you I'm not--I have developed a dozen tabletop RPGs and published six of them. Most of the time--with the dramatic exception of that one time that I playtested Systems Malfunction with Ron Edwards and Vincent D. Baker (this is a real thing that actually happened)--the rest of the table doesn't know much about game design and/or the opinions they have about game design are badong ("critical fumbles are great", "when I DM I have my own critical fumble tables", "I miss THAC0"). So no, I don't personally feel like I need the unanimous approval of every person at the table to make what are, to me, clear improvements to the game.

But don't get me wrong...DMs can (and have been for years) make house rules that are arbitrary, un-fun, and unfair and if any house rule I made caused a player to actually get upset, I would closely reexamine it. Incidentally, my table, or I should say my regulars, since it's a slightly different crowd every week, are all fine with these house rules FWIW.

Thing I Didn't Know: Save DCs "max out" at 20? Does anything else in the game max out like that? I also just noticed (wow am I slow on the uptake sometimes) that apparently all items that granted enhancement bonuses to ability scores have been removed from the game? So cloak of charisma, gloves of dexterity et al are gone?

Click to expand...

I DM a lot more than play. I am fortunate this time that someone else is DMing. Sure, you can have house rules you like, but as a DM if you insist on using one that a player doesn't like and can express why, then you should also be willing to consider not using it. House rules are NEVER essential to a game. I guess it comes down to how you feel about losing a house rule or losing a player. Our DM has lots of house rules (less than some, more than others I imagine), but he always discusses them with us as a group. Most often we are willing to try them--some we keep, others we don't. Remember, its the players' game as much as the DM's.

And frankly, while many people claim to be part of developing this game or that, personally that doesn't mean anything to me. The vast majority of the games people are part of are something I've never even heard of. There have been so many games out there over the decades and a lot of them are pretty... well, let's just say they are very good IMO. So you can speak about experience all you want, but even brand new players have their one ideas/conceptions that can add to a game--even giving it a fresh perspective.

Anyway, there is no max out Save DC that I know of since several monsters have Save DC's for their features well into the 20's. I don't recall seeing any temporary boosting items, but permanent ones like the manuals, etc. are still around.

Save 8 vs 10.
For me nah... at low levels the magic is pretty weak. Saves not that tough. Only one single PC failed the Con12 saves last night. They then made the follow- up Cha save. So, no curse.

But at mid to higher levels, targeting a non-favored save, those checks become a lot more lopsided. It requires a bit of skill in choices to be able to go after the weak saves, but to me that is the point.

Besides, when I read "25-50%" is somehow a problem and then realize their fix is making it "15-40%" I just scratch my head at how serious that problem was that makes 40% right but 50% wrong?

Identify - I thought the point of identify was not getting cursed. Could be wrong. It's not that big if an idea.

Crit Fumbles - not a rule I use for saves or for to-hit rolls.

**If I did** it would be based on the core PHB rule for ability checks ehich says that any failed ability check (not just natural 1) can be "some progress with setback" instead of just "no progress."

There is such a rule in success at cost in the DMG for saves and attacks.

But I might consider making a natural 1 be a case for success at cost instead of the "missed by 1 or 2" if I wanted to make a 1 a thing.

But currently, I just narratively incorporate the fie into the description. A really bad role gets a more outlandish and grandiose failure described. A narrow miss is described appropriately.

A game I play in the GM does punish natural 1s. It's generally a groaner everytime it bites.

BTW, before I start empowering 1s, I am more likely to take away nat20.
If I did, I would replace it with say "beats DC by 10" or some other trigger that makes it a character trait not a bouncer dicey trait. I myself dont like empowering the dice instead of that characters.

I don't generally use critical failures with one exception: If a creature has advantage or disadvantage and rolls two 1s then something bad happens. Conversely, two 20s means something great happens.