D&D 5E Common house rules for 5e.

[Tutara]

• Free feat at first level.
• You can draw a throwing weapon as part of the attack.
• Initiative is done by allocating every participant a card, then shuffling the cards every round and picking them out one by one. If it's your card, it's your go. If you have advantage to your initiative roll, you get an extra card shuffled in. If you have +5 or more to Initiative, you get an extra card shuffled in for each complete +5. If you have more than one card in the shuffle, you can freely choose to go on your first or subsequent cards.
• Find Traps is a Perception boost equivalent to Pass Without Trace.
• Hexblade's Hex Warrior ability is moved to Pact of the Blade.

Probably some other ones, but those are the ones I can remember.

 

[Horwath]

There's a lot of Feats that it doesn't make a lot of sense to have to wait til level 4 for. I probably should curate the list to make sure people aren't always taking the best Feats, but so far I haven't run into too many problems. I have my eye on Heavy Armor Master though.

if you do not want to see that people only take the best feats, you need to buff up the horrible ones.

 

[James Gasik]

if you do not want to see that people only take the best feats, you need to buff up the horrible ones.

Seems like more work, when it's easier to just identify the proud nails. Not that I've needed to yet, but as I've said, there's at least one so far that seems a little too good for level 1. Polearm Master might be another one I should take a look at in the future, but so far it hasn't been an issue.

I've debated doing something about Two Weapon Fighting and thrown weapons, since no one has bothered with them, but I'm waiting for someone to ask about it (no sense fixing something that nobody is using).

Right now, I'm debating letting casters create scrolls so that they can have a little extra spell power on tap in case I overestimate their staying power.

 

[Bolares]

• Initiative is done by allocating every participant a card, then shuffling the cards every round and picking them out one by one. If it's your card, it's your go. If you have advantage to your initiative roll, you get an extra card shuffled in. If you have +5 or more to Initiative, you get an extra card shuffled in for each complete +5. If you have more than one card in the shuffle, you can freely choose to go on your first or subsequent cards.

This is so cool!!!

 

[Blue]

I use only two, and I think they are both out there that others use as well:

• Bonus action to drink a potion yourself. (Can still drink as an action if you used your bonus action.)
• Inspiration is a reroll, not advantage. (And the social contract other half that players can nominate another player for inspiration.)

And some official variants (milestone XP, feats, multiclassing, occasionally rest variants).

 

[Reynard]

• Inspiration is a reroll, not advantage. (And the social contract other half that players can nominate another player for inspiration.)

We do it this way too and it is much more valuable that way.

 

[Blue]

We do it this way too and it is much more valuable that way.

Psychologically it goes from inspiration often being forgotten until "dang I missed that" to a tool you can reach for after the fact, making it always useful to have. It just brings it to the fore so it's less forgotten and sidelined.

 

[cbwjm]

We also use the bonus action potion, though it takes an action to feed someone a potion.

I allow a focus to be used for S components regardless of whether or not a spell has M components.

Currently, I allow any spell to be cast after a bonus action spell.

Druids can turn into any CR 0 critter as soon as they gain wildshape, meaning a level 2 druid can become a sparrow or a trout.

These are the main houserules I can recall from our game, might be the only ones that come up regularly enough for me to recall them.

 

[Shiroiken]

The biggest ones not mentioned are to beef up sword & board and twf. It's only a bonus action to doff & don a shield, making it not suck during an ambush. All the 1d4 damage light weapons have the "Off Hand" property, which allows them to be used with any one handed weapon for two weapon fighting. This helps the damage curve when extra attack comes into play, and it makes sword & dagger style reasonable.

if you do not want to see that people only take the best feats, you need to buff up the horrible ones.

I've tried this, and it doesn't really work that well. I've combined feats together, but since you only get so many, the "power" feats are too defining to ignore. I think giving out some of the weaker feats at level 1 is the way to go, locking the better feats behind the ASI.

 

[TwoSix]

Some of our current ones:

-Flanking gives a +1d3 to the attack roll. If the 1d3 is a 3, and the attack hits, it becomes a crit.
-For hit points, you can reroll all your Hit Die every long rest, and maximize the lowest roll. (Then add Con.) If this is higher than your current maximum hit points, it becomes your new hit point total.
-Dual-wielding is no longer a bonus action. Instead, if you miss with your main-hand, you may roll again to hit with your off-hand, but don't add your stat mod to damage. (Two-weapon fighting style adds stat mod back to off-hand damage.)