D&D 5E Critical Failures & House Rules

[Erechel]

Hello, people, long time non reading you. Quick question: how much have you houseruled 5ed yet?
I know that the core material is awesome enough to play a full campaign, but this campaign will be better adjusted to a game in the Forgotten Realms world. Maybe you have been playin in Dark Suns, and you want some Psionics rules, not announced yet.
I've added several spells in my world (some of them posted in the Spells Database), and forbidden several others (like Flying), or at least restricted their availability. Also, I've added some backgrounds (I'm specially proud of the Shaman background in the Database)
I have tinkered two rules:
1) the rogue's Sneak Attack (which I have restricted to those enemies that the rogue actually knows how to attack; I give him an Arcana or Nature Skill Check to those enemies not humanoid)
2) In the line of the old & awful critical failure's lists, I've houseruled that every critical failure expose the attacker, giving their near foes an Opportunity Attack.
For ranged Critical Failures, I've houseruled that the weapon stucks in the equipment in some form. Maybe the bow or crossbow cord is cut, or the javelin cuts the quiver's cord and entangles with the clothes. Instead of giving an OA, the character lose their initiative, and goes last. If he was already last (an uncommon occurence, since RA usually depends on high Dex), the character loses a round.
Do you like these rules? Have you applied some minor (or major) ones?

 

[Paraxis]

Do you like these rules? Have you applied some minor (or major) ones?

No, and yes I do have house rules of my own.

Your sneak attack rule penalizes rogues way too much, and I have always hated any sort of fumble rule because of many reasons but mainly because they happen way too often and the better you get (ie more attacks per round) the more they happen.

My house rules mostly are ignoring rules like tracking ammo, encumbrance, and things like that. I roll individual initiative for each monster even if there is a group of them, I let people be creative with abilities and spell in the heat of the moment stuff like that.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

My house rule for sneak attacks (and smites) is that you have to declare them beforehand, so you can't wait to see if you crit first.

And I also hate any sort of critical fumble rule, because they affect players far more frequently than anyone else, and five percent is far too common to represent anything that's supposed to be rare.

 

[Bupp]

At my table you get Disadvantage on your next roll if you roll a natural 1.

As an alternate, sometimes I just make up something bad that happens is it strikes me. As two examples from recent games both involved skill checks.

First one the half orc barbarian wanted to jump up on a railing to attack a sahuagin, the player rolled a 1 on his Athletics check. I ruled that he fell, had him roll a d8 and consulted the old 1e grenade like missile scatter chart. He fell straight forward onto the sahuagin and the two of them tumbled down the stairs.

Second was the group was fighting some cultists in a room with a table. One of the cultists jumped on top of the table to attack. First one character got up to join him, just rolling a d20 to test for table breakage. I didn't have an exact idea of if the table would break, but she rolled high. Another character got up with the same result. When the 3rd jumped on (4 counting the cultist), and the player rolled a 1...the table collapsed dumping everyone. I had them all roll either an Athletics or Acrobatics check or be knocked prone.

 

[Blue]

My house rule for sneak attacks (and smites) is that you have to declare them beforehand, so you can't wait to see if you crit first.

What happens on a miss? Not expended so you can use it later in the round, or expended?

If expended it about halves the output of these and gimps both classes damage dealing. Also makes Divine Smite strictly worse than casting one of the Smite spells, because both take a slot but the spell is guaranteed to do it's damage.

I guess you could double the damage of SA and DS so they have the same expected damage as only using them on a hit as per the normal rules, but then your crits become huge.

Neither of those seem rather playable, so I'm assuming it's just not expended on a miss.

Was critting then declaring SA/DS such a problem at your table that this fixed a problem you were having, or is it an ideological fix to make something work more the way you want it to?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

What happens on a miss? Not expended so you can use it later in the round, or expended?

It's expended on the next hit. If you hit with the first attack, then it goes off immediately. If you miss with the first attack, then it goes off on the second attack.

Was critting then declaring SA/DS such a problem at your table that this fixed a problem you were having, or is it an ideological fix to make something work more the way you want it to?

Ideological. For Sneak Attack, you need to see the opening before you decide to exploit it, and you need to decide to exploit it before you know how successful it will be. Likewise with Divine Smite, you need to decide to activate your ability before you find out whether or not it's going to be successful; not only is the alternative (RAW) version non-sensical, but it also encourages a weird sort of power dynamic which is very game-y and counter to the type of play I want to encourage.

Honestly, I would like to house rule it even further, and have these abilities expended immediately (even on a failure) - specifically because the current method rewards dual-wielding disproportionately, at the cost of anything interesting that the rogue might want with a bonus action - but I'm afraid of altering the power balance too much.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Having your bow string snap 5% of the time is pretty high.

Having it snap almost twice as often because the opponent is in the dark or fog so is giving disadvantage doesn't make much sense, nor does being in a rage or attacking a prone target making your weapons almost never break from advantage make much sense either (this is about the billionth example of why adv/dis is a horrible mechanic).

With 1 attack a round at low level this won't come up much but at higher level when a fighter is attacking 5 or more times in a round it will happen a lot.

 

[Erechel]

You have to remember that the Sneak Attack can be used every single round, poviding that you have some advantage, and it is not really believable that you attack with such ability to, for example, a ghost or a purple worm (which you probably never faced before), only because you have some tanky companion near you. It is believable that you know how to exploit openings in an humanoid, and you know also how to deal more damage to one of them.
Also, I must say that most of my foes are humans or humanoids (and I came from AD&D school prior playing 5th ed, where there was no Sneak Attack but Backstab).
And, for the OA, you have to expend one reaction. If your reaction was expended before, you don't have an OA. And this affects both foes and characters. But, anyway, you are not playing in my table, so...

 

[Erechel]

Having your bow string snap 5% of the time is pretty high.

Having it snap almost twice as often because the opponent is in the dark or fog so is giving disadvantage doesn't make much sense, nor does being in a rage or attacking a prone target making your weapons almost never break from advantage make much sense either (this is about the billionth example of why adv/dis is a horrible mechanic).

With 1 attack a round at low level this won't come up much but at higher level when a fighter is attacking 5 or more times in a round it will happen a lot.

I don't see Adv/Dis as a horrible mechanic, but a intuitive, simpler one. And off course the rules are not written in stone. They are only applied when they have sense. I see a critical failure as an "opening", a mistake not that horrible that you deal yourself damage, but provide an opportunity to others to harm you.

Also, I see little reason to attack with a crossbow to a fog cloud, unless you have some serious archery battalion. Specially if your friends or allies are in the cloud too.

And, really? that big of a chance is 5%? When combat usually endures through 3/5 rounds?

 

[fuindordm]

So far, only setting-specific rules: no dragonborn, no sorcerers, all warlocks are genie pact (efreet=devil pact, djinni~fey pact), tieflings look mostly human, dwarves are denser than water and have disadvantage on swim checks.

We're eight sessions into a new cinematic campaign, and so far the only thing that I'm uncertain about is the whack-a-mole aspect of combat. But the players are trying to avoid getting down to 0 hp so I haven't felt the need to change it yet. No players have died yet, but three times someone has failed their second death save and been helped in the nick of time (once by an ally with a Wis penalty and healing untrained--but he was the only one near enough to do it!). I actually like the effect that HP represent your short-term combat stamina and defense, and can be refreshed fairly easily, but in a grittier campaign I would consider introducing slower HD recovery and lingering wounds.

Otherwise, I'm fiddling with more granular rules for magic item pricing and creation, and I've seen a few homebrew subclasses that I'd consider allowing.