House Rules and You: A survey

[dave2008]

Also, I think that the fact that disadvantage can negate a 20 seems lame, so our house rule is that if you roll a 20 with disadvantage, you still get it rather than having it stolen from you just because you rolled a 3 on the other die. That feels awful, and cheapens the excitement of rolling a 20 on something. But it doesn't remove the sting of, say, rolling a 2 and a 19 -- you still just get the 2 and have to deal with that.

Hmmm... Not too fond of this if the 20 still counts as a crit. If it just turns a miss into a hit I might be down with that

 

[Li Shenron]

How long before all your players create female characters? Or does that rule only apply to the players?

"Specifically directed" means because of them being women and children, and/or tailored to them being women and children, IYKWIMAITYD

 

[voodoo dummie]

if I can make some minor suggestion on your houserules, if such suggestions are still relevant after this time
For your elemental monk improvement, maybe replace the rather lightweight elemental Attunement and just give them the four elemental cantrips from elemental evil: Mold earth, control flame, gust and shape water. they do just a lot more, especially fluff wise.

as for the warlock blade pact, one idea I had a while back is an invocation that changes the type of damage of the weapon into any of the magical ones. being able to exploit monster weaknesses and avoid resistances

 

[Mercule]

One of my house rules involves cleric weapon proficiency: each of the gods in my setting has a favored weapon, which clerics are treated as proficient in, whether they normally would be due to race/class proficiencies or not. Not all clerics will make use of that proficiency necessarily, but it does make them stand out a bit and you can identify at a glance "oh that cleric with the war pick worships the Ebon Judge."

In thinking about it, I guess I do this, too. It isn't an issue with the current PC Cleric, but I've changed weapons on NPC Clerics to fit with their gods and wouldn't bat an eye if a PC Cleric chose a god with a particular favored weapon. I really like Clerics to not be samey-samey.

Otherwise, we're generally making an intentional effort to play by RAW. We "sat out" most of 4E and came back with LMoP to see how things had changed. LMoP was explicitly RAW and settingless. When we finished it, I gave the players the option of me creating a new home brew setting or using Eberron. Eberron won out, mainly because we're in a beer-and-pretzels mode. As others have said, 5E doesn't really need a lot in the way of house rules. The few we do have are generally to fit the setting:

* Eberron races are available and per the UA article. Other published races (genasi, goliath, etc.) are available, but generally rare and subject to strange looks even in Eberron. No drow. All starting PCs are still in play, so they're all from the non-optional PHB.

* All PCs start with one feat. This is either a conversion of 3E action points (which was explicit in Eberron) or a Dragonmark. I created a feat for this before the UA article went up. They're similar, but mine has more options, so that's what we use.

* The second UA Ranger (with 2d6 hit dice) is in use, but we nerfed Ambuscade some. The most recent Ranger is also available.

* The Mystic is available for play, but no one has done so.

* I converted the Sorcerer dragon bloodline to a Warlock pact to make my daughter's first character easier to play. It works well, FWIW, though the bonus to hit points, combined with a high Constitution and the Tough feat makes her substantially more durable than anyone else in the party, including the elven (dex-based) Battle Master.

* I bought several distinctive d20s -- one for each player. These are used to track Inspiration. When you use Inspiration, you must roll that special die for the bonus die, then turn it in to the DM (me). As a bonus, you can use Inspiration to create disadvantage when an NPC has to roll a save to resist an effect you create or when an NPC makes an attack roll against you (both declared in advance). I'm not sure why this is almost never used, but a couple of players have figured out that, because the player rolls the Inspiration die, I did that to explicitly give them a chance to gauge the strength of major foes and/or to verify the roll can't be fudged (not that I typically do that, but appearance matters).

 

[Plaguescarred]

Here are my current Variant & Houserules for my GREYHAWK campaign. I banned some races because they very rare or unknown to the Flanaess and some alignment as it didn't fit the style of game that was run. I added new languages tying in more to GREYHAWK. I limited ability scores to 18 post-magic, because its a number that matters to me since AD&D and it also let magic impact ability scores more, and tighten bounded accuracy slightly more. I use some Unearthed Arcana content, to allow more non-spellcasters options. I also opened up DMG options for the anti-paladin and the Death domain cleric to allow fallen paladin, or cleric of Wee Jas or Nerull. I gave the possibility to roll money instead of using default rule so that starting gear can be personalized more. I increased multiclass prerequisit to limit too many class dippings, which i dislike. I also perfer magic items that don't recharge daily, instead needing a spellcaster to do so like in AD&D. Finally, i use some rules to limit non-magical healing by having it expand ressource (HD or healer's kit use) to make it a little more gritty.




VARIANT RULES & HOUSERULES


- Ability Scores Maximum: A score of 18 is the highest that a person usually reaches, rather than 20, thus the normal range of ability scores is 3-18 without magic. (PHB171)
- Choose Race: The dragonborn, drow and tiefling are not allowed. The Variant Human Trait can be selected. (PHB09)
- Unearthed Arcana: The new class features from Unearthed Arcana: Kits of Old (Cavalier & Scout), Gothic Characters (Monster Hunter & Inquisitive), Waterborne (Swashbuckler), Class Design Variants (Ranger with no spells) are permitted. (UA_E)
- Villainous Class Options: The cleric death domain and paladin oathbreaker can be selected. (DMG96)
- Alignment: No evil alignment can be selected. (PHB122)
- New Languages: New languages that can be selected are ancient baklunish, flan, old oeridian, ancient suloise. (PHB 123)
- Starting Wealth By Class: The starting gold is determined either randomly or by class. If you use the optional rule from chapter 5 to spend coins on gear, you do not receive the starting equipment from your background. (PHB 125-143)
- Multiclassing: The ability score minimum to multiclass is 16 rather than 13. (PHB163)
- Wands That Don’t Recharge: Most magic staff, rod and wand are incapable of regaining charges. (DMG141)
- Slow Natural Healing: Characters don't regain hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead, a character can spend Hit Dice to heal at the end of a long rest, just as with a short rest. (DMG267)
- Healer’s Kit Dependency: A character can't spend any Hit Dice after finishing a rest until someone expends one use of a healer's kit to bandage and treat the character's wounds. (DMG266)

 

[Tormyr]

I do not generally house rule something to make it better (such as changing a feat so it is chosen more often). I usually put together a house rule or home brew thing to add a spot that is missing in the rules or to add some variety.
* A player wanted to play a half-gnoll paladin, the son of the the player's character in our last adventure and a female gnoll aasimar (a story unto itself). We worked together to choose the ability score bonuses and gave him the Rampage trait. It had a little less than the other races, but playing as a half-gnoll was a bonus in itself.
* The same player had the paladin leave the party for a while for story reasons. He will return in chapter 12, the final chapter. We put together a kobold bard, the favored pet of one of the great houses of Menzoberranzan. That PC died 3 days ago.
* The same player is bringing in a priestess of Lolth for the rest of chapter 11 to find out what happened to her favored pet.
* We are playing Age of Worms, a 3.5 adventure path, in 5e. There was a spot in the adventure path (3.5) that had a 30 foot jump. I reduced that to 25 feet and introduced a house rule that the Strength (Athletics) DC for a jump was its distance in feet.

 

[l0lzero]

Our group tends to houserule for two things; realism, and fun. If a system doesn't make real-world sense, we tweak it as little as necessary to make it more realistic, if a system bogs down game, we tweak it as little as necessary to speed it up. We don't like to change the rules unless there's a good reason to. Surprise was dumb (a pre-combat stealth skill challenge that awards no experience, has a slim chance of success depending on party build, and if it isn't passed by everyone then yields no benefits), so we changed it so that if you are hidden at the beginning of combat from all enemies, then you get advantage on your initiative, otherwise DM determines surprise (ambushes that rely on bait characters are literally impossible according to the rules, which I think is stupid, but that's me, and I digress) so that the stealth characters can still get SOME benefit from being hidden at the start of combat, laying in wait for an ambush, even if the "idiot fighters" (me, paladin, 10 dex, plate-mail, also our moon druid buddy) can't hide for crap, the monk and the rogue can still make use of their stealth to gain some benefit (both are leaned heavily melee, advantage on one ranged attack is kind of not much benefit), increasing the realism and fun (since our two characters' stealth are crap and all, we don't ruin their fun being tricksy).

Sometimes we housrule stuff for one-shots and side-games just to see what the effects are of changing something.

 

[ccs]

"Specifically directed" means because of them being women and children, and/or tailored to them being women and children, IYKWIMAITYD

So our mage Frank - who's played as hating children (reasons never revieled) - can't target them BECAUSE they're children.
But just indescriminatly farming them for xp like goblins is ok? Or being careless of the collateral damage from AoEs?

 

[The_Gneech]

My only fixed houserule is that I have players roll Perception checks instead of using their passive Perception values, and that we reroll 1's on hit dice and/or healing. In practice, we also tend to ignore encumbrance and ammunition as well, often by simply throwing a bag of holding and/or quiver of Ehlonna at the appropriate characters early on.

Beyond that, and selective allowance of 3pp character building materials for specific concepts, we pretty much stick to RAW when possible.

-The Gneech

 

[Li Shenron]

So our mage Frank - who's played as hating children (reasons never revieled) - can't target them BECAUSE they're children.
But just indescriminatly farming them for xp like goblins is ok? Or being careless of the collateral damage from AoEs?

First, there's a huuuuge range between a character who "hates children" and one who murders them, and I'd be worried if one of my players didn't understand the difference clearly.

Second, my point is that since a RPG is all fantasy that happens in your head and it's not real, you can play whatever you want, but you have to keep certain stuff in your head exactly. Some topics are just too sensitive to bring out "for fun", unless you are absolutely sure that nobody at the table may have had a personal issue with them.

I do not intend to discuss this further. If you are capable and willing to understand, you already have.