D&D General Harshest House Rule (in use)?

[Stormonu]

Level drain, item destruction on failed save, and system shock-resurrection checks are all in my game, but not as house rules: they came in the tin with the rest of the game.

Probably the harshest actual house rule I have is that I make casters roll to aim or place their AoE spells; which means yes, those spells can be fumbled. We do have crits and fumbles on nat 20 and nat 1 respectively, but both need a bespoke confirm roll which reduces the frequency considerably.

@Stormonu - why would fumbles not apply to ranged combat? I mean, sometimes bowstrings can snap, missiles of any kind can hit an ally rather than a foe, the shooter or thrower can wrench a thumb in the process, etc.

Most fumble tables for ranged weapons I've seen from others usually end with the arrow in some ally's back and rarely have a direct affect applied to the attacker. I use a rule that generally ends in bad results for the ranged attacker, and "firing into melee" has a different rule for determining if an unexpected target is hit (generally, disadvantage to the attack, if the lower roll is a miss and the higher roll would hit an AC, it's hit a random target other than the one you were aiming at).

Also, I've been annoyed enough times by super-accurate attempts to place AOE's that it's standard practice to require a skill roll to place things so precisely (the scatter diagram gets a lot of use...).

 

[DragonLancer]

Personally I don't like fumble tables. They tend to be too harsh to the characters and often just feel unnecessary.

 

[pukunui]

I have long liked the idea of a “new characters always start at 1st level” house rule, but due to its obvious extreme harshness have never been bold enough to actually implement it.

Same. I know a guy who runs his games like that, and I've always been tempted to try it - I think it would make a lot of sense in low-level worlds like Eberron - but in actual fact, I don't like to let PCs fall behind even when their players miss a session or more, and new PCs are always the same level as all the others.


And yeah, critical fumble tables are generally pretty awful. I've used the Lingering Injury rules from the 2014 DMG to good effect, but for the most part, I don't like things that make competent people look incompetent (like a trained warrior impaling themselves on their own sword).

 

[cbwjm]

I don't think I've really played with any harsh house rules, I have been tempted to use level drain but ended up keeping it as the max hit point reduction. Most of my house rules help players though.

I was thinking about implementing scars when people drop to 0, but that was more of a story thing rather than a mechanical thing, sort of a track for players to say "Oh yeah, that was from when I got caught in a dragon's fiery breath, lucky to have survived that day." Scars might provide advantages or penalties in social encounters but I hadn't fully thought it out.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

For 5e: if you you're healed from 0 HP you're still unconscious for 1d10 minutes

 

[FrogReaver]

Death at 0 hp.

 

[pukunui]

I was thinking about implementing scars when people drop to 0, but that was more of a story thing rather than a mechanical thing, sort of a track for players to say "Oh yeah, that was from when I got caught in a dragon's fiery breath, lucky to have survived that day." Scars might provide advantages or penalties in social encounters but I hadn't fully thought it out.

Yes, I have done things like this as well. Like when one character got enveloped by a fire elemental and another one fell in lava. Both of them survived, but I don't like how 5e assumes that items being worn or carried by a PC are immune to damage, so in both cases, I ruled that the PCs' hair and non-magical clothing burned away and non-magical items were either destroyed or damaged. Magic items were fine, though.

We redid the former PC's picture to look more like Anakin after Mustafar. The latter PC's experience was more recent, so I used AI to generate a scarred, hairless dwarf. LOL.

I've also run games in which PCs lost limbs and eyes and such. One PC who lost an eye made a deal with a hag, who gave him her hag eye (unbeknownst to him) as a replacement.

I've never actually played Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but one of the things I like about the art is how it depicts some of the characters getting maimed during their adventures and then later art shows them with prosthetic legs, eye patches, missing fingers, etc.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Probably the harshest house rule I use is that, with a few exceptions, I only permit multiclassing when you create your character (I typically start them at 3rd level).

 

[Minigiant]

You are only a native speaker in one language.

When you use any other languages, You must choose a flaw:

1. elementary vocabulary
2. hard accent
3. illiteracy
4. sesquipedalian

No, I am not mad that I lost points on tests in school from missing accent marks.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

*I run a game for the player to do and figure out things...not the character.

*In general, unless your character discovers or figures something out in the game, I'm never going to tell the players anything about the game.

These two seem to be in conflict with each other. If you never tell the players anything about the game how do they figure things out?