Critique my House Rules

[Einlanzer0]

The problem goes back to the premise, which simply isn't suited to the way that 5E is written - the OP wants small races to be worse in a straight-up melee, and 5E wants all races to be comparable in all roles.

If that Con penalty wasn't there, then small races would be -4 Strength and +2 Dex, which is a pure boost to any Dex-based character. It would actually make small races better than medium ones, for the purposes of accuracy and damage and AC. A penalty to Strength doesn't factor at all into power balance for a melee character who uses Dex.

Even if you dropped the Con penalty to -2, then that would make it a more-or-less even trade-off. Small characters would be +1 to hit and damage and AC, at the cost of -1 HP per level. Small characters are different in melee, but they are purely worse, as is the desired case here.

Honestly, I think the best solution would be to get rid of finesse weapons. With those gone, you could give small races -4 Strength and +2 Dex and it would still achieve the desired goal.

I honestly feel like Finesse weapons should mean you use your Dex to hit and Str for damage, but I know that change would throw the whole system out of whack. It's silly to suggest that strength doesn't matter at all when you're attacking someone with a melee weapon.

Hmm.. I'm tempted to try this along with something totally random to compensate and see how it works out. Something like this : your critical threat range is improved by 1/2 of your Dex bonus. In addition, when you score a critical hit, you add both your Dexterity bonus and your Strength bonus to the damage. This gives you an incentive to not totally dump Str just because you're Dex based, and vice versa, which I think is a good thing.

edit: eh, probably an unnecessary complication, since finesse weapons are already balanced around their lower damage dice.

 

[Ganymede81]

Halflings and gnomes already have a huge penalty to their carrying capacity, and can't use the heaviest weapons.

 

[Ristamar]

I liked the Cloistered Cleric from 3.5 Unearthed Arcana, and I've been trying to pin down my own 5e variant. I was hoping one might drop from Mearls as part of the UA web series.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I honestly feel like Finesse weapons should mean you use your Dex to hit and Str for damage, but I know that change would throw the whole system out of whack.

Given the limited range of PC stats, it should be fine. If a rogue only does 1d4+1+3d6 instead of 1d4+5+3d6, then that's not much of a loss.

 

[Einlanzer0]

Given the limited range of PC stats, it should be fine. If a rogue only does 1d4+1+3d6 instead of 1d4+5+3d6, then that's not much of a loss.

Probably. Especially if I do what I mentioned above, which is make Dex impact critical hits. That would not only help eliminate the resulting gap, but it would give Str characters another use for Dex to match Dex users getting a lot of benefit from Strength.

I love the idea that all classes basically use one primary stat, with all 5 of the other stats being close to equally attractive.

Plus, it has the added bonus of being the best solution from a simulation point of view. All weapons use a combination of Str and Dex, but some disproportionately use Str while others disproportionately use Dex. I would also modify certain ranged weapons to work like finesse weapons (i.e. the longbow should get str to damage instead of dex)

 

[Gonat]

Nothing gamebreaking in my opinion. Some of the changes you made make sense in my campaign too.
Only exception is the -4 Con and the imbalance that create (as more then one person already pointed out).

How about... no CON modifier but the small races have to take the HD of the next lower size than the chosed class?
(An halfling fighter? D8; Halfling mage? d4; etc..) In this way it is a real malus (like you wanted) but only influence hp and recovery, not saves. And it's even in line with the basic idea of creatures hd (based on size).

 

[Lehrbuch]

In addition to normal racial bonuses, all small races receive -4 Str and Con, +2 Dex...

As others have commented this, including the extra features, doesn't seem balanced. But, if your goal is to not have any PC halflings, then it is probably mission accomplished. Otherwise, I would go for -1 STR, -1 CON, +2 DEX and drop the additional features. The features are mostly melee combat orientated and the whole point of these modifications seems to be to force small characters into long distance; so the features will hardly ever get used.

Fighters have a replacement 20th level ability - Veteran Warrior - all weapon attacks gain extra 1d4 damage. Once per turn, you can impose disadvantage on any attack that targets your AC, Str, Dex, or Con

Not entirely clear what an attack that targets STR, DEX or CON is meant to be. Attack rolls have a technical meaning that doesn't seem to involve this.

Inspiriation ... Only the DM can award inspiration...It can be saved, but can only be gained once per day by any individual player.

From experience, I think that it's a bad idea for Inspiration to be something that the DM has to worry about. Much too easy to forget. Better to have the players worry about it for you.

Also, I think it's a bad idea to limit to once per day. It should be earned whenever the player/PC does something inspiring (notwithstanding that it is binary). Also, there's no point having a rule about earning limits if the DM is the one awarding it. You can just decide not to award it once you think that the PCs have had enough.

Hero Points are reflavored into Tactical Points. Characters have 2+int mod TP, which recover at 1/2 per day, like HD. TP grants advantage/disadvantage to any one d20 roll and can be spent as a bonus action or reaction

Not really clear how these are "spent as a bonus action or reaction"? Do you mean that you expend a Bonus action or Reaction when you spend Tactical Points? Why? What happens when a player wants to expend a Tactical Point on a roll made during a bonus action or reaction?

 

[Rod Staffwand]

Have you thought about max Str & Con for small characters, rather than a penalty? Cap them at 15 or something. That way players don't have to invest a lot to get a decent stat and creates build flexibility, but they will never outshine a Medium race in these areas. I'd dropped the additional +2 Dex and make up the drawback with other features.

 

[Einlanzer0]

Have you thought about max Str & Con for small characters, rather than a penalty? Cap them at 15 or something. That way players don't have to invest a lot to get a decent stat and creates build flexibility, but they will never outshine a Medium race in these areas. I'd dropped the additional +2 Dex and make up the drawback with other features.

I did actually think about that, but I'm concerned with impacting the average rather than only the outliers. I think the -4 to str is pretty easy to justify, even with point-buy, because of the modification to item weights for small characters. Strength is generally not used in a relative fashion in D&D (if it was, larger creatures would not have dramatically higher strength scores the way they do), so it makes sense to penalize strength but give a racial bonus for certain types of strength checks that involve relative rather than absolute strength.

However, I'm obviously having a harder time justifying the con penalty because of just how many different things in impacts with no way to get around. I still like the idea of keeping it and just giving better features, so I'm going to keep thinking about that. However, barring that, perhaps dropping it altogether and instead lowering HD by 1 size is the most prudent choice.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Yeah, -4 to Str and Con is too nasty. You want to weaken the small races, not cripple them. I think you can rein in those numbers to retain the "feel" you are going for without impacting the game math quite so much.

I'd do: -2 Str, -1 HP/level, half carrying capacity. This makes the small races noticeably weaker and frailer than the big ones -- but not enough to gimp them. And instead of +2 Dex, which is really potent, I'd give +1 to attack and AC, due to size (the 3E rationale). That's still super awesome, but no longer feels unfair to rogues of other species. Basically, I think you should attempt the minimum ability score adjustments required to represent that "size matters."

I think giving a flat +1 to attack and AC is actually superior to +2 Dex, so I'd recommend against it. With the Dex bonus you simply reach the cap of 20 that much faster (which does admittedly free you up to potentially take feats if you're comfortable with where your other stats are at). However, a +1 to attack and AC is effectively almost as good as giving small sized races +2 Dex AND increasing the cap on Dex to 22. Admittedly, it doesn't give you everything that a high Dex gives you (bonus to Dex skills and initiative) but it gives you what is arguably the stronger part of Dex.