5th Edition Book of Houserules

[Nebulous]

So yesterday I was posting in another thread, and I had the idea of "what if we compiled an Enworld compilation of houserules to use with D&D 5th edition?"

Imagine if the DMG had EVERY sort of optional rule you could imagine just all crammed in there. An Unearthed Arcana 3.x-style book of modular rules. Some of these would already be long playtested by DMs and their groups, so it's not exactly virgin territory.

Personally, I'd love to see a bunch of us contribute these ideas into a single thread and then have them all compiled into a PDF and shared for free with anyone interested.

Here are some ideas:

• Death & Dying Rules
• Healing options
• Class and subclass options
• Alternate skills
• Domains
• Pacts
• Combat options
• Spells / Rituals
  
  
  Does this interest anyone? Or are you happy with the STATUS QUO??? lol

 

[jodyjohnson]

For many of the options it is as simple as - if you like the way a previous edition did it, go ahead and do it that way.

When I look at the DMG there is a noticable absense of rules just reprinted from previous editions. I think they made a choice to provide inspiration for house rules rather than just cramming in (reprinting) ways the previous editions handled various mechanics. But that doesn't make those previous mechanics invalid for 5e.

I think Death and Dying is a great example. Characters still use Hit Points and 0 is still bad.

1e/BECMI: At 0 you die, end of story. Skip Death Saves, Spare the Dying, etc.

1e Option/2e: At 0 you are unconscious, at -1 to -9 you are dying. -10 is dead. Lose 1 per round until stable by healing, Heal check, or Spare the Dying. Healing starts from current HP.

3.x/4e: See above except futz with the Dead number, maybe negative Con, or -10 decreased by Con Mod, or negative Con plus Level, etc. Maybe toss in the Death save mechanic from 4e or 5e.

 

[Sadrik]

I think the first thing you have to do is set some standards and guidelines for the house rules of this. How fundamentally do they alter the core game? What is the best version a particular class of house rules, do you contribute every gradation or only the best, who decides what is best?

So (1)alternate rules, (2)add on rules/options, (3)additional spells/feats/backgrounds... These seem to be the major areas. 3 is easy, and it is already being done here on this site. I don't see the value there. for 1 and 2 these are valuable to DMs and Players who want to tweak the core of the game to fit the feel of a particular campaign setting. These I think would be highly valuable. One other thing, ala cart house rules often do not work, comprehensive house rules work better. Or at least, tell them to use option 1, 5, 12, and 42 and the game feels like this. Then the DM can say, I want to the game to feel like this and add on all of those options and get an expected feel.

 

[jodyjohnson]

There's 2 main categories: Core Rules and Character Options.
For core rules start with the ways previous editions including Pathfinder handle it. Include the Unearth Arcana rules from the edition - and likely from Pathfinder Unchained as well. Some of them may require slight modification (3.x skills using the 3.x DC scale skip the Proficiency bonus chart from 5e, but instead use the generic +3 for skilled (PF), or allow higher cap (3.0,3.5). Choose how to treat cross-class skills). These are more heavily tied to edition feel arguments. Specifically like world-sim vs. genre-sim, meat vs. mojo, PC rules for everyone, or Dissociative mechanics type of arguments.

Now character options can be voluminous like the the editions that inspired them (3.0,3.5,PF,4E). I think that may be too large a task. Many of the options will be shaped more by character balance issues - like LFQW or AEDU sameness. Thus they may quickly become embroiled in edition warring.

Maybe just label or acknowledge which rules might be a problem to adherents of the opposing side of the debate.

 

[Nebulous]

I think Death and Dying is a great example. Characters still use Hit Points and 0 is still bad.

1e/BECMI: At 0 you die, end of story. Skip Death Saves, Spare the Dying, etc.

1e Option/2e: At 0 you are unconscious, at -1 to -9 you are dying. -10 is dead. Lose 1 per round until stable by healing, Heal check, or Spare the Dying. Healing starts from current HP.

3.x/4e: See above except futz with the Dead number, maybe negative Con, or -10 decreased by Con Mod, or negative Con plus Level, etc. Maybe toss in the Death save mechanic from 4e or 5e.

Right, that's exactly what I'm talking about. In a homebrew document, we could clearly say: "If you want to emulate X edition of D&D, here's some options." And there's lots of people who started with 4th or even 5th who have no idea how older editions worked, so they might be interested to see a bevvy of options. I want to see just how flexible 5th edition is. It's modular design begs to be tinkered with and it hasn't been pushed that hard yet, it's too new still.

 

[Nebulous]

I think the first thing you have to do is set some standards and guidelines for the house rules of this. How fundamentally do they alter the core game? What is the best version a particular class of house rules, do you contribute every gradation or only the best, who decides what is best?

So (1)alternate rules, (2)add on rules/options, (3)additional spells/feats/backgrounds... These seem to be the major areas. 3 is easy, and it is already being done here on this site. I don't see the value there. for 1 and 2 these are valuable to DMs and Players who want to tweak the core of the game to fit the feel of a particular campaign setting. These I think would be highly valuable. One other thing, ala cart house rules often do not work, comprehensive house rules work better. Or at least, tell them to use option 1, 5, 12, and 42 and the game feels like this. Then the DM can say, I want to the game to feel like this and add on all of those options and get an expected feel.

Good ideas. Some kind of standard guideline would need to be established. Spells and backgrounds I don't think are necessary for a compilation like this. FEATS however, given the powerful nature and how they can fundamentally change the game in drastic ways, that might be worth another look. I don't personally feel qualified to create or balance new feats as I don't full understand the ramifications, but someone else probably does.

It's also worth noting that you could say, using X-Y-Z Feats will give you this kind of game.

 

[Nebulous]

First we would need to establish the broader categories, such as mentioned in my first post (as examples, not set in stone, but they're fairly inclusive):


Death & Dying Rules (0 hp, -10 hp, Con damage, etc)
Healing options
Class and subclass options (I know there's been some desire for more martial subclasses without magic)
Alternate skills (dd.stevenson had this very impressive thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?352467-Old-School-Exploration-in-5E-A-Dungeon-World-Hack

Domains (this might just be "more of the same" and not so much modular, so maybe skip it, unless it brought a new mechanic)
Pacts (same as above)
Combat options (This would have potentially a large amount of options.)
Spells / Rituals (Any spells that seem broken/weak? House rule 'em and explain why the change was made. Leave it up to the individual or DM to accept or decline.

 

[Nebulous]

Now character options can be voluminous like the the editions that inspired them (3.0,3.5,PF,4E). I think that may be too large a task. Many of the options will be shaped more by character balance issues - like LFQW or AEDU sameness. Thus they may quickly become embroiled in edition warring.

Maybe just label or acknowledge which rules might be a problem to adherents of the opposing side of the debate.

I think with some careful adjudication there won't be any edition warring in this. By its nature, it is handpicking elements from all editions, and introducing new ones that didn't exist before. Hell, if someone has invented a Skill Challenge adapted from 4e, I would love to see that in here as well. Perfect balance is not the end goal, and that would have to be made clear from the start. "Do not expect to use all of these options in your campaign without carefully considering the ramifications."

I think it is a better thing to cherry pick what one likes and doesn't like. Essentially it's like the last part of the DMG but expanded into more controversial territory.

 

[Nebulous]

Jester Canuck had this Commander subclass idea from this very thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?403259-Fighter-Subclass-Commander

 

[Nebulous]

Popcorn Initiative:

http://angrydm.com/2013/09/popcorn-...and-pathfinder-initiative-with-a-stupid-name/