D&D 5E Failed House Rules

[clearstream]

Many of us have tweaked the game with house rules to fix issues, fit a setting, make things run more smoothly, or add something lacking. But those don't always work out. I'd love to hear house rules that you have put in place and the goal for adding them, and then why you removed them. Could be they didn't do what expected, or had other repercussions, or just weren't a fan of the players.

While trying to get rests cadence right for an open campaign, I switched to rests of one day (no distinction between short and long) but with rolling for recovery of short rest features or points toward recovery of long rest features. Looking back on that, what was I thinking!?

My current PHB RAI and house rules is version 2.3. I started at version 1.0 and ticked up 0.1 with each version... so they have iterated over about a dozen numbered versions (and many more emendations).

 

[JeffB]

Yes. It was fine on the DM side, but the players were all new to D&D when 4e came out. I thought it would help them learn to improvise, not so much. I think if I had given them a matrix of damage and effects it might have worked better.

I used Companion characters for the younger ones, and gave them a few extra powers than typical. Even as they grew into College Age kids, they still didn't want the hassle of full blown 4E characters. It worked great.


I wish I had seen this as well at the time- Basic 4E- it breaks the classes down to minimum, and has basic powers , that can be boosted to something the level of an encounter power, and then a daily power. Similar to what you are saying.

D&D Retroclones

Here is an overview over all the retroclones and OSR systems based on the various editions of D&D as well as other RPGs that are based in D&D in one way or the other. A thank you goes to the RPG.net...

taxidermicowlbear.weebly.com

Scroll down to the 4E section- its the first one.

 

[Ash Mantle]

We had a death rule, where instead of dropping to 0 hp on death and then rolling death saves thereafter and being taken out of the fight, we instead rolled a straight up Con mod then and there to see if we would drop to 0.
If we succeeded against the DC, we would instead remain at our current hp and be able to keep on fighting. But even a success would eat into our checks against death, which we had 5 of. A failure at the DC would still enable us to keep on fighting but would eat up two of our checks against death. It made for some thrilling combats!

 

[togashi_joe_enworld]

I had a house rule in 5e where players handed each other Inspiration tokens for "roleplaying" (which ended up being for the most ridiculous of reasons like "great way you rolled that 20 there Jim! Here's an Inspiration token!") rather than me giving them out as DM for actual roleplaying. After a few sessions, my players started to really game it and I got rid of that lol.

 

[Blue]

I had a house rule in 5e where players handed each other Inspiration tokens for "roleplaying" (which ended up being for the most ridiculous of reasons like "great way you rolled that 20 there Jim! Here's an Inspiration token!") rather than me giving them out as DM for actual roleplaying. After a few sessions, my players started to really game it and I got rid of that lol.

Heh, I've been doing that since 3.0 came out (though back then it was for bonus XP for good RP). Players gave them out and never abused it. That's across many campaigns and a good number of player. I was just clear to my group about my expectations and they acted like mature adults.

 

[Xenonnonex]

We had a death rule, where instead of dropping to 0 hp on death and then rolling death saves thereafter and being taken out of the fight, we instead rolled a straight up Con mod then and there to see if we would drop to 0.
If we succeeded against the DC, we would instead remain at our current hp and be able to keep on fighting. But even a success would eat into our checks against death, which we had 5 of. A failure at the DC would still enable us to keep on fighting but would eat up two of our checks against death. It made for some thrilling combats!

Is this really a failed house rule?

 

[clearstream]

Heh, I've been doing that since 3.0 came out (though back then it was for bonus XP for good RP). Players gave them out and never abused it. That's across many campaigns and a good number of player. I was just clear to my group about my expectations and they acted like mature adults.

When I think about that - how a rule can work for one group and not for another - it really helps understand some forum debates about rules. In this case, it could be that your group has some exogenous rule(s) like "don't game mechanical privileges" while another group does not. The existence of such an additional rule creates a context that enables the other.

 

[Nebulous]

Despite these boons, players still kept forgetting Inspiration was a thing. I've now been ignoring it from the game for about 2 years.

Exactly. We collectively forgot about it so much it eventually just disappeared from our game. Which is too bad, it's a good idea but needs way better implementation.

 

[pogre]

I had a house rule in 5e where players handed each other Inspiration tokens for "roleplaying" (which ended up being for the most ridiculous of reasons like "great way you rolled that 20 there Jim! Here's an Inspiration token!") rather than me giving them out as DM for actual roleplaying. After a few sessions, my players started to really game it and I got rid of that lol.

I use that rule now. My players game the heck out of it too. I don't care though because I always forget to award inspiration. In my group they typically get award each other for bad puns or even bringing a great snack - could be worse.

 

[erachima]

I wrote a set of rules for "minor enchantments" to improve found magic items that ended up just being a makework program for the party Artificer. Was the sort of customization that's very common in video games, but in a context where you're trying to work with multiple people over time rather than sitting alone experimenting, it turned out to be fiddly, very hard for everyone else to remember, and make magic items more, rather than less, boring.