D&D 5E How many house rules?

[Flamestrike]

As a bit of a rules purist I find games with more than a few HRs to be massive red flags for a bad game.

I dont use many. I retain auto pass and fail saves on a 1 or a 20, shorten short rests to 5 minutes (max 2 per long rest) and rule once you've used sneak attack you can't do it again till the start of your next turn.

Thats really about it.

 

[turnip_farmer]

I don't think most players are qualified to vote in this poll, since they'd have to know what the rules in the book actually say

 

[Fanaelialae]

As a side note, sometimes people may not even realize they are using a house rule. For example, when I DM you roll damage individually for every magic missile, scorching ray, eldritch blast, or other multi-ray spell. This is technically a house rule if used with multiple targets (Under Damage Rolls, PH pg 196 - "If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target at the same time, roll the damage once for all of them".) So many tables that think they are playing by RAW actually have their own minor variations.

I'm moderately certain that this rule refers to spells like Lightning Bolt and Fireball, rather than those with individual targeting like EB and Scorching Ray. I thought I saw that clarified by the designers a while ago, though I confess I don't remember it well enough to say who or when or where that was, so it's possible I'm mistaken.

 

[Li Shenron]

I was a bit undecided, but went with "3-5" and "a few sentences".

For this purpose, I am considering "house rules" being actual rules changes. There was a time when "house rules" was mainly used as a term for stuff related to the game but outside the actual rules of how the game action itself is played (and typically not mandated by the books), such as what happens to an absent player's PC, how to distribute treasure, or what level do you create a new PC after you died. I am not going to consider this kind of house rules against the number here, because these are things that every group eventually has to decide one way or another.

Then, I also need to make a distinction between changes and additions. The latter rarely bother me... for instance, if you want to add more detailed rules on how different weapons & armors interact with each other, or rules for lingering wounds, or crafting rules and so on, usually I am OK with those "modular" additions. Whether they work well or not, we shall see, but in general I am not against using those as a way to characterize a campaign differently.

However, rules changes can be either done to give your campaign a twist (as in "let's try to see what happens if we change this", which is fine by me), or because of a perceived necessity to "fix" the game. If I get the feeling that the DM thinks they are better, and they are "fixing" the game, I would rather not play with them. And it is usually very easy to see when that's the case, because they are always very keen on explaining why they are changing those rules, typically because they say something is either "underpowered" or "overpowered". I'll still play if it's only a very small bunch of changes, but if it looks like I need a written list to remember them all, forget it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

There's no option for 'rewrite required', so I cannot participate.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I basically use two house rules:

1. Rest variants. Depending on campaign type.
2. Natural 1s allow "double or quits" - an optional reroll
   1. If you don't take the reroll you fail normally (same as a 2)
   2. If you take it and succeed you've succeeded
   3. If you take it and fail you've had a critical failure (DM's choice)

People who love fumbles get them. People who hate them never do. And some people only take them in high risk situations.

I consider this sort of length of house rules a pretty easy sell - but once you're in several paragraphs it becomes hard.

 

[Blue]

I'm moderately certain that this rule refers to spells like Lightning Bolt and Fireball, rather than those with individual targeting like EB and Scorching Ray. I thought I saw that clarified by the designers a while ago, though I confess I don't remember it well enough to say who or when or where that was, so it's possible I'm mistaken.

I agree, but the way it was written was overly broad. Thanks for the heads up; I'll look through SA/errata so I can remove that from my house rules list.

 

[slobster]

To be honest, I have no idea how many house rules my games have. I have a few written down (I have a wound system in my games, Inspiration does a lot more than RAW, Advantage/Disadvantage stack, a few other things). But then I also have a bunch of things that have collected over the years that adjust the RAW, except I don't even think about them anymore. Sometimes I'm honestly surprised to read something in the core rules and realize that I've been sort of unconsciously ignoring that for years in favor of my own table's houserules.

And that isn't even getting into all the monster stat block changes I've made that players take for granted now, like gelatinous cubes being resistant to most physical damage types. I assume those don't really count as "houserules" since they are limited to a single enemy type at a time, but in aggregate they change up how my players play the game as much as any of the big official "houserules".

So I mean you can fit the number of houserules I officially have on a single page sure, but if you wanted to document all the little unspoken houserules, whoof. I have no clue!

 

[Greg K]

Do the following count as house rules for this discussion?

Races

• banning specific phb races and/or specific PHB subraces
• allowing specific new races (thirty party and/or official supplemental)

Classes

• banning specific PHB classes and/or subclasses
• allowing specific supplemental subclasses
• adding specific new third party classes and/or subclasses

Backgrounds

• adding new backgrounds

Spells

• banning specific PHB spells
• adding specific new spells (thirty party and/or official supplemental)

 

[overgeeked]

Do the following count as house rules for this discussion?

Races

• banning specific phb races and/or specific PHB subraces
• allowing specific new races (thirty party and/or official supplemental)

Classes

• banning specific PHB classes and/or subclasses
• allowing specific supplemental subclasses
• adding specific new third party classes and/or subclasses

Backgrounds

• adding new backgrounds

Spells

• banning specific PHB spells
• adding specific new spells (thirty party and/or official supplemental)

Maybe? When I think of house rules it's more along the lines of the common "potions take a bonus action to use" and similar. Literally changing the rules of the game. But sure, a list of banned races, classes, feats, spells, etc could be considered a house rule. Likewise a list of allowed third party stuff. For the purposes of this, I'd consider the whole of that (banned, allowed, etc) as 1-2 house rules. Either one or all of that as a whole or one for the list of banned stuff and one for the list of third party stuff.