D&D General My House Rules (5E/2024), edited & updated

[toucanbuzz]

I went over the wisdom of some other DMs, reread my rules, and revised a 2024 House/Errata Ruleset from the previous post, updating rather than starting new posts. PDF, not edits, includes the April 16, 2025 errata release.

CHARACTER CREATION [this largely stays the same, errata added for feats from D&D Beyond]

Classes

• Cleric. Divine Intervention (10th) cannot be used to cast Hallow. Broken.
• Ranger. Can switch Hunter’s Mark as free action instead of Bonus Action.
• Warlock (A5E). Primary ability may be either Intelligence or Charisma, which becomes the spellcasting modifier ability and preferred saving throw. A5E also allows Wisdom, but we already have the cleric and druid.
• Wizard. Must use components to cast spells. Adds flavor.

Encumbrance, variant. Slot-based encumbrance sheets to track your gear. If it’s not listed on your slot sheet, you don’t have it with you. Use your character sheet inventory for stuff stored somewhere.

Feats

• Grappler (errata). Moving another creature doesn’t cost you extra movement. This replaces “Your Speed isn’t halved.”
• Poisoner (errata). Lasts until you deal damage (not hit).
• Polearm Master (modified). First use of reactive strike in a round doesn’t cost a reaction. See Opportunity Attack, Reach, for why.
• Telekinetic (errata). Also adds 30 ft. to distance hand can be away from you.

Species

• Goliath (errata). Powerful Build is checks, not saves, to end grapples.

 

[toucanbuzz]

COMBAT / EXPLORING [Grapple needs a major rules clarification or overhaul...I really like how Treatmonk resolved dragging things through Spike Growth, etc. I totally disagree with Crawford's old Twitter interpretation that you can Grapple and move stuff in excess of your Strength. Makes absolutely no sense and why use the specific game terms "drag" and "carry?" That said, DMs will need to guesstimate weights of targets.]

Critical Hits. First weapon damage roll is maximum damage.

Flanking. Flanked target has -2 AC against flanking attackers. Flanking attackers can connect an imaginary straight line between the two of them that passes through any part of their enemy. If no grid is used, then outnumbered 3-1 applies flanking.

Grappling, movable (major clarification). When you drag your target in a particular direction, the target controls where it is moved within the 90-degree spectrum behind you. It cannot choose a spot that would invalidate the grapple. See Treatmonk .

When you carry your target, you choose what square the target is deposited in when you end your movement. Carrying & dragging targets are subject to the Carrying Capacity rules (PHB 363), so you must be strong enough to move your target. The rules specifically use drag & carry, which are Capacity terms, no matter what Jeremy Crawford on Twitter said in 2017. If I can’t carry 500 pounds normally, why would I be able to do it while grappling something? Makes no sense. This should also “fix” unintended movement abuses such as Spike Growth shredding. .

Lingering Injuries (BAM Lingering Injuries, DM Guild). You receive a lingering injury based on the damage type received when you (1) take massive damage, (2) fail a death save by 5 or more, or (3) drop to 0 hit points for the third time in an encounter. The injury is randomly applied with a 1d6 roll after the combat encounter ends based on the damage type that triggered the lingering injury. Cantrips or minor effects (DM discretion) are a 1d3 roll instead. You only get the first triggered injury, not multiple ones, per combat.

Malnutrition (should be errata). Remove “eats but” from 2nd sentence.

Massive Damage (replaces default rule, A5E). Can kill you outright. If reduced to 0 hit points after taking damage = 20 + x3 your level, die unless make a DC 15 Constitution save. Even on success, suffer a Lingering Injury.

Opportunity Attack (clarification). Only usable against enemies. Vague wording suggests allies could be targeted with beneficial spells using War Caster feat, broken.

Opportunity Attack, Reach: if you have 10’+ reach or a Polearm Master (feat) weapon equipped (staff, spear, weapon with heavy + reach properties) and foe entering your threat zone does not, can make Opportunity attack.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Resting, “Safe Havens.” (A5E inspired). Exhaustion, Ability Score loss, and Undead drain are not removed unless the Long Rest is at a “Safe Haven,” which is a place to get a meal and full night’s sleep without reasonable risk of attack, or harm from the elements, such as an Inn, but not an open-air campsite or ship on restless waters.

Sacrifice Shield to negate Crit (A5E). As reaction, if shield proficient, sacrifice your equipped shield to turn a critical hit into a normal hit. The shield is ruined. Magical shields become mundane for 1 hour when used this way.

Stunlocking. If a creature failed a saving throw against any effect that, after failure, prevents the target from taking its Action, Bonus action, and Reaction all in a round, it has Advantage to its next saving throw against that same effect or until 24 hours has passed. This has no impact on attempts to break an existing effect (e.g. Hold Person), only on effects that have ended and are attempted to be reapplied.

Swimming (expanded). If no swim speed, reduce speed by 1/2 when wading/swimming and then apply difficult terrain.

• If not proficient in Strength (Athletics), must make DC 10 check to move in water.
• If swimming in armor, must (also) make Strength (Athletics) check each round (automatically failed if not proficient in that armor) to move.
• Failure means 0 movement and possibly sink. Light Armor = DC 8, no sink. Medium Armor = DC 12 and sink 10 ft. Heavy Armor = DC 16 and sink 20 ft. You can voluntarily sink each round based on the armor without counting against your movement.
• Add +2 to checks if in rough water, +4 if in stormy waters.
• For each hour of swimming, DC 10 Constitution saving throw to avoid gaining 1 level of Exhaustion. Add +1 to the DC for each consecutive hour of swimming. Must rest 1 hour before the DC resets to 10. The saving throw is every 30 minutes if in medium armor and every 15 minutes in heavy armor.

Swimming, deep water (Legendary Games). The pressure of deep water is exhausting. Traveling 100-200 ft. deep requires DC 10 Constitution save to avoid getting a level of exhaustion, with +1 added every 2 hours of travel. Over 200 ft. requires a check every hour. Unless a creature has cold resistance or is adapted to deep water, at these depths creatures take 1d4 cold damage each minute, a DC 10 Constitution saving throw negates.

Underwater Combat (expanded, A5E). All bludgeoning damage halved. If damaged while holding breath, Concentration check or immediately begin suffocating. A verbal spell uses up all held breath and at the start of the creature’s next turn, it begins suffocating.

Zero Hit Points, slowed condition. If at 0 HP and healed above 0 HP, until the end of your next turn, you are affected as if by the Slow spell (nonmagical, cannot be removed, cannot be negated by Haste, can stack with Slow magic): 1/2 speed, -2 AC, -2 Dex saves, can’t take reactions, on turn can only take an Action or Bonus action, only attacks once with Attack action, spells with somatic (S) component 25% to fail.

 

[toucanbuzz]

EQUIPMENT / WEAPONS / SURVIVAL

Food requirement (common sense). Medium creatures and higher double food required (e.g. 2 pounds for Medium, 8 for Large).

Shields (errata). Require Utilize action to don/doff.

Special Materials (separate handout, crafting or purchase). Some creatures can only be affected by special materials or very powerful magical weapons.

Unprepared target, weapon drawn. DM discretion applies. If your target is unarmed and unprepared for combat, you may use your Reaction to attack them before Initiative is rolled, consuming your reaction for that round. You must either (1) be adjacent with your melee weapon in hand, or (2) be within 30 ft. and able to aim without obstruction with a loaded crossbow or firearm. Such an attack has Advantage, ignores Disadvantage if ranged weapons are used adjacent to the target, and is treated as if dealing critical damage if no critical hit is rolled. Common situations would be “hands up” and the target tries to make a move anyways.

MONSTERS

The DM may spice up your monsters with “old school” immunities and powers that they possessed in original design.

SAVING THROWS

Death saves secret. Other players should not know whether you succeed or fail.

SKILLS

Helping Others. If you aren’t proficient in the skill/tool, you can’t help.

Take “10.” If there’s no stressful situation, you can forgo rolling a proficient skill check and call it a 10.

 

[toucanbuzz]

SPELLS [big review here, Emanations worried me, but upon closer reading, pretty much all clarify the foe only saves 1x per round against the spell, meaning they can only be impacted by it once. I adopted Treatmonk's math on Minor Elementals, the most worrisome of all, appreciate him crunching numbers. Also scoured errata.]

Conjure Minor Elementals (4th, Treatmonk fix). Reduce advance from 2d8 to 1d8 damage.

Conjure Woodland Beings (4th, errata, Treatmonk fix).

• Typo, higher slot should say “above 4” not “5.”
• House Rule: change to read “Whenever the Emanation enters the space of a creature you can see on your turn…”

Giant Insect (4th, errata). HP should read “30 + 10 for each spell level above 4th.”

Guidance (cantrip). Creatures limited to 1 benefit per short rest.

Hunter’s Mark (1st). A Ranger can switch targets as free action if the subject drops to 0 HP.

Leomund’s Tiny Hut. No force field barrier, keeps out environmental effects only. Counts as a Resting “safe haven” (see combat / exploring). Reverts to original design.

Raise Dead (Mercer rule). DC 10 check (cannot be affected by any spells or features) + 1 for each time previously raised. Player tracks on their sheet how many times. If fail, character’s soul is lost and permanently dead. Up to 3 friends can assist with skill checks (type and DC vary by DM discretion, such as Religion to offer a prayer). Each success adds +3 to the roll, each failure -1.

• True Resurrection or Wish bypass this check and can restore lost souls.
• Revivify triggers a roll, no assists. Failure adds +1 to future checks, but the spell works and the soul is not lost.

True Polymorph (9th, errata). Remove the line “The spell ends early on the target if it has no Temporary Hit Points left.”

 

[dave2008]

There's been several "house rules" posts over the years and some good stuff gets lost in the mix. Here's what I've been working on for a Seafaring Campaign (hence extra emphasis on water rules). If it's from another system, I listed it. If it's not credited, odds are I snagged it from some clever DM. If you see any improvements or problems, lemme know. We begin our pirate campaign in a few months!

CHARACTER CREATION

Cleric. Feature Divine Intervention (10th) cannot cast Hallow. Planar Binding caps at CR 5 or lower when used this way. Abusive otherwise.

Encumbrance, variant. Slot-based encumbrance sheets to track your gear. If it’s not listed on your slot sheet, you don’t have it with you. Use your character sheet inventory for stuff stored somewhere.

Feat, Polearm Master (modified). First use of reactive strike in a round doesn’t cost a reaction. See Opportunity Attack, Reach, for why.

Goliath (errata). Powerful Build is checks, not saves, to end grapples.

Multiclassing. Needs to make sense narratively (e.g. 2 level dips to abuse a mechanic is not roleplaying). Personally, would prefer avoiding.

Ranger. Can switch Hunter’s Mark as free action instead of Bonus Action.

Warlock (A5E). Primary ability may be either Intelligence or Charisma, which becomes the spellcasting modifier ability and preferred saving throw. A5E also allows Wisdom, but we already have the cleric and druid.

Wizard. Must use components to cast spells. Flavor.

Thank you for sharing!

 

[Ebony Dragon]

I like most of these a lot, with the exception of the polearm buffs and flanking. I'm not sure polearms actually need a buff - they are already great! And flanking is a huge nope for me in 5e - the basic movement rules in combat do not support it the same way they did in 3e or 4e, and bounded accuracy means you really shouldn't be just throwing extra to-hit bonuses onto things willy nilly. I will be stealing several of these for my list of what to use if I ever run a 5e game, though!

 

[MNblockhead]

Thanks for sharing. Curious on what your process is. Did you run the 2024 game RAW for a while first, or did you feel you are familiar enough with the game and how you wanted it to run that you were confident that you could create your homebrew by reading the rules and making changes before you started running games?

Generally I like to run the game RAW for a while before introducing changes. Then, most of my changes are additive rather than removing or changing existing rules. But now that I've run 5e for a decade, I think I would be more comfortable introducing changes from the get go when I get around to running a DnD '24 campaign.

Some questions about some of your specific rules:

Slot‑based encumbrance. Can you share more details on how you do this? I've played around with lots of encumbrance variants over the years, but whichever I choose I end up defaulting to a lot of fudge and just calling out when things get too silly. I'm actually more of a fan of weight based when using digital character sheets. It can be silly when you have very awkward and encumbering but not very heavy items, but I can just use DM and table discretion for edge cases.

WFRP 4e uses abstract encumbrance points, which I liked when I started running the game but it gets silly quickly with zero‑encumbrance items.

For slot based, how do you handle containers? Can some wearable give you additional slots (e.g. backbacks, belts and belt pouches, cloaks with inside pockets)? Do you ignore item attributes like weight and length entirely? I think slot based is good at modeling a more realistic sense of what you have ready, and how encumbering things can be when carried, esp. without proper wearable containers. But not so much when it comes to weight. E.g. carrying a laden chest with both hands versus a warhammer. The chest is going to be much more cumbersome.

Components. I'm a fan of making components matter, a preference many folks have strong feelings about (mostly against if my discussions on ENworld are representative). Do you allow a caster to use a focus instead of components or are components required in all instances? Do you require your players to acquire the components listed in the spell descriptions and track them on their character sheets? How I handle this depends on the campaign I'm running. I'm liking how spell ingredients are handled in WFRP 4e. You don't have to use ingredients to cast spells, but it makes casting the spells more dangerous. Rules for ingredients are more abstracted. You can just pay a flat cost for ingredients or make skills checks to gather ingredients. Players can flavor them however they want. I'm thinking of trying to come up with similar homebrew rules like this for D&D.

 

[Zardnaar]

I like most of these a lot, with the exception of the polearm buffs and flanking. I'm not sure polearms actually need a buff - they are already great! And flanking is a huge nope for me in 5e - the basic movement rules in combat do not support it the same way they did in 3e or 4e, and bounded accuracy means you really shouldn't be just throwing extra to-hit bonuses onto things willy nilly. I will be stealing several of these for my list of what to use if I ever run a 5e game, though!

It's a reasonable rules. Optional rules in 5E flanking grant advantage. It's terrible we tried it.

Might have to yoink some. Probably to manybtoo keep track of personally for me but smaller list is great for me.

 

[toucanbuzz]

I like most of these a lot, with the exception of the polearm buffs and flanking. I'm not sure polearms actually need a buff - they are already great! And flanking is a huge nope for me in 5e - the basic movement rules in combat do not support it the same way they did in 3e or 4e, and bounded accuracy means you really shouldn't be just throwing extra to-hit bonuses onto things willy nilly. I will be stealing several of these for my list of what to use if I ever run a 5e game, though!

With reach weapons, I was trying to come up with a mechanic that reconciled the advantage of longer weapons when you're trying to close ranks. It's just insanely difficult to safely close ranks with a short weapon vs. long weapon.

Flanking, tried the 5E "advantage" optional rule for flanking, and that was a disaster. I do feel that if you're outnumbered 3-1 or worse, you simply can't defend against that many attacks.