D&D 5E Your Favorite 5e Houserule

[Blue]

Favorite #1: 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 #2: Players award Inspiration to other players. Just makes it flow better. But I have mature players I've been gaming with for years.

As you can see, neither addresses mechanics. I do use some of the official variant rules like using different ability cores for skills. I have one mechanical houserule, but it doesn't come up often:

Wild Magic Sorcerer Tides of Chaos changes from "DM" to "DM or any player" can activate. So yes, others can call for a surge if they think it's appropriate. Or funny. Or epic. Did I mention funny.

I may have houserules and/or class/race availability to support a specific setting, but that's outside "favorite".

 

[aco175]

We play with flanking rules which has been discussed here before.

I also have the players roll saves for the monsters when they cast a spell and they also roll damage on themselves when a monster hits them. It lets players roll more dice per night and frees me up as the DM.

 

[Burnside]

Let the players dole out inspiration to each other.

Love this.

Mine:

• You can only help another character with a skill check if you're proficient in the skill.
• Rogues with the Thief subclass can use Fast Hands to drink a potion as a bonus action
• Warlocks can choose to designate Intelligence rather than Charisma as their spell-casting ability on character creation

 

[Seramus]

Object Interaction Rules: A reasonable amount.

 

[Arvok]

Ability score limitations (usually raising to 20 through an ASI, but also certain legendary items or artifacts) refer to the ability before racial adjustments. So a half-orc can use ASIs to raise his Strength score to 20, or a tiefling can raise his Charisma score to 22.

 

[Prakriti]

Simpler initiative tracking. Everyone rolls like normal, but then I call out “anyone higher than X”, X being what I rolled. So players have a bit more flexibility, and I don’t have to waste time going down all of the numbers. Then I go, then I call out everyone else can go.

This is very similar to Side Initiative, which I used for a while and liked quite a bit.

 

[Blue]

We play with flanking rules which has been discussed here before.

I also have the players roll saves for the monsters when they cast a spell and they also roll damage on themselves when a monster hits them. It lets players roll more dice per night and frees me up as the DM.

We played with Flanking and Spell Points. And stopped both of them. Easy and ubiqutous Advantage like that really weakened class features that granted Advantage. It also made solo foes even weaker, when 5e is already lousy at making them a serious menace.

(And that was before Elven Accuracy was a thing, I can picture how it would get abused now.)

 

[Blue]

• Warlocks can choose to designate Intelligence rather than Charisma as their spell-casting ability on character creation

I've played with this a bit. Bards being loremasters instead of storytellers by swapping out INT, and some Paladins it makes sense for (and makes a great gish platform).

 

[X13Phantom]

If a creature's AC is equal to the attack roll it takes 1/2 damage

 

[ScuroNotte]

Allowing

1. Homebrew (especially Ranger & Sorcerer)
2. Using a standard array of 17, 16, 15, 14, 12, 10, with no bonuses added from race. Earliest ASI bonus can be added is 4th level and only once (sorry variant human).