D&D 5E What are your favorite/non-favorite house rules?

[dagger]

Favorite: changing the way xp works for 5E. Monster xp is cut in half, and various exploration and social encounters make up the difference, with possible quest xp for completing the objective. I feel a little bad about using this one as my favorite, because it's mine, but it's also probably because its from the most recent edition (I played with a LOT of houserules over the editions).

Least Favorite: Critical Hit/Fumble tables. Most people complain about the critical fumbles, but I hated the critical hits more. Dismemberment in AD&D was far harder to fix, and stupidly common with these charts. I remember one 2E game where my sword arm was cut off, with the sword knocked into a pit, so I had to pick up my own arm and beat the orc to death with it.

That’s sounds like a great story to me!

We use the critical hit card deck and it’s amazing.

 

[Blue]

Outside of flipping the switches of standard variants (feats=on, long rests variant=on, multiclass=on), I don't play with a lot of non-setting specific house rules. Is what books are allowed a house rule?

I don't consider things like "no evil characters" a house rule. We mutually agree on the type of game we want in session 0.

I have a tie for favorites that address very different things.

Favorite: Summons are played in combat by the other players. You can play a summoner, but the other players don't lose focus time in combat. Please make sure to have stat sheets to hand out for the common ones I may say arrive. (This doesn't apply to long term summons like Find Familiar or Find Steed.)

Favorite: Players award Inspiration to other players. Just makes it flow better. But I have mature players I've been gaming with for years.

Ultra-Bonus-Too-specific-to-win Runner Up: Wild Magic Sorcerer Tides of Chaos changes from "DM" to "DM or any other player" can activate. So yes, others can call for a surge if they think it's appropriate. Or funny. Or epic.

Least Favorite: Exhaustion on hitting 0 HP.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[Ath-kethin]

Hahaaha. Really? They didn't compare notes at all? What are the odds of that wow

I'm pretty sure they didn't even know each other! One other player was with me in both and I remember us rolling out eyes in sync when the second campaign started.

Must have been something in the water, or maybe just the zeitgeist. This would have been right when/just after Jurassic Park was in theaters.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

That’s sounds like a great story to me!

We use the critical hit card deck and it’s amazing.

What kind of effects are on the cards in your crit hit deck?

 

[pogre]

Favorite: Players award Inspiration to other players. Just makes it flow better. But I have mature players I've been gaming with for years. copy pasted from @Blue - but it is my favorite 5e houserule.

Least Favorite: I almost DM exclusively and limiting PC choices is something I used to do, but realized it took away some of the zaniness that is D&D and let it go. A couple of my players love to build unusual characters.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

My entire game is pretty much houserules so it's hard to come up with any particular one that's a favourite.

Houserule I dislike the most: any blanket rule against otherwise-reasonable and-or generally entertaining character types or activities that would otherwise be present and accepted within the setting. Some examples of what I mean that I've seen on this forum (!) over the years:

--- no evil characters
--- no chaotic characters
--- a ban on playing characters of a gender not your own
--- no in-party romances, flirtations, dalliances, etc.
--- no henches, adventuring hirelings, or secondary characters
--- no outright disagreement with another PC's suggestion or idea, no matter how dumb it is

Note that these are all different from setting-based houserules e.g. if a setting has no Elves in it then a houserule saying you can't play an Elf is fully justified. But every setting has evil and chaos in it, every setting has (at least!) two genders, every setting has romance, and so forth...and therefore it should all be playable.

My campaign is similar, pretty much houserules.

The only one on your list here that generally does apply in my campaign is no evil characters. I don't mind having evil PCs per se, but I can't stand poorly played evil characters. In addition, it has caused issues too often, and my players don't want to have evil PCs in the campaign. So that one is up to the table and usually falls on no evil characters.

So it's not really a ban, so much as it's an agreement between the players that they won't play evil PCs. Otherwise, there's quite a bit on your list that I would not only not ban, but I'd encourage them. Particularly romances, etc. and henchmen.

 

[MiraMels]

The one I've stuck with over multiple games and campaigns is that when someone is down and dying in combat, they aren't out cold. They can't speak or interact much (save for perhaps, a faltering word or two), but the character staying aware of what's going on around them stops players from needing to enforce some strict player/character knowledge separation during an already chaotic time.

 

[Nebulous]

Very much this. Nothing worse than seeing the excitement of rolling a nat 20 turn into the disappointment of rolling double 1s.

Adding to this, if someone rolls double crit on Advantage or Disadvantage, I'll give an extra set of max dice to add to the damage. It has actually happened once!

We max the first set of dice, then roll the weapon dice again on top. This has worked well for us. ONCE someone rolled a double 20, and we maximized everything, no dice rolled.

 

[Raith5]

I had a fumble/critical fail house rule in 3e and it was a critical fail