D&D General Rules that weren't...

[aco175]

We give rogues advantage on the first round of combat if they attack someone who has not gone yet. Not sure where that came from. Seems like a thing carried over.

We also play with flanking rules since it just carried over from 4e days. We have not started the new campaign with the 5.5e rules yet so I have not tried to stop the flanking part.

 

[Reynard]

We give rogues advantage on the first round of combat if they attack someone who has not gone yet. Not sure where that came from. Seems like a thing carried over.

That a 3.xism: combatants were flat footed until their initiative came up.

 

[Charlaquin]

I played 5e for years assuming that higher ground granted advantage, but eventually realized there isn't such rule . Then I played very little for a couple years in a row, and forgot about it, so recently once again I granted advantage for higher ground for a few sessions before having a second reckoning

Does something like that happened to other DMs? Is there any rule you could swear you saw in the books and then realized you made it up?

In your defense, DMs are intended to be able to grant circumstantial advantage and disadvantage whenever they want, and I think making ranged attacks from high ground is a perfectly reasonable circumstance to grant advantage got

 

[Charlaquin]

Regaining half your hit dice on a long rest. I knew the rule and ran it as such for a while. Somewhere down the line I forgot it and as a player I would regain all my HD on a long rest. When I was DMing it was never something I had to worry about. It randomly came up in conversation a couple years ago and I claimed that you get everything back. It'll be much harder to forget now.

To be fair, you do regain them all on a long rest in the 2024 rules.

 

[Charlaquin]

Also, are stairs difficult terrain? That is something i say sometimes while running but I don't actually remember where it came from.

I don’t think that’s a general rule, but it does make sense, since functionally half your movement is spent moving you up and the other half is spent moving you forward. I might actually start using that, as well as for slopes of ~45 degrees.

 

[Charlaquin]

In my home 5e(2014) campaign -- the one my co-DM learned from -- I had a house rule that you didn't regain any hp on a long rest, only all your HD. He repeating it (as a gamebook rule, apparently forgetting or having missed that it was a house rule) to a group of kids he was teaching to play the game. He apparently insisted it was a rule and was corrected by a 8-10 year old. He has forgiven me (mostly).

I ran it that way for a while too. Just made sense to me.

 

[Rabulias]

I don’t think that’s a general rule, but it does make sense, since functionally half your movement is spent moving you up and the other half is spent moving you forward. I might actually start using that, as well as for slopes of ~45 degrees.

Reminds me a little of the Staircase Paradox.

 

[el-remmen]

You can’t take a reaction before the first time you act in the first round of combat and attacks against a surprised opponent are made with Advantage.

I kept both even after discovering I was wrong.

 

[sevenbastard]

I don’t think that’s a general rule, but it does make sense, since functionally half your movement is spent moving you up and the other half is spent moving you forward. I might actually start using that, as well as for slopes of ~45 degrees.

If its not a rules ive always played that way but only going up stairs.

 

[Rabulias]

You can’t take a reaction before the first time you act in the first round of combat

If you're surprised, you can't move or take an action on your first turn of the combat, and you can't take a reaction until that turn ends.

It is kind of attractive as a general rule applied to reactions... kind of like "partial surprise."