D&D 5E House Rules

[Oofta]

I think you misunderstand my position. It's not that D&D 5E is great, and house rules risk breaking it.

D&D 5E is fundamentally broken, out of the box. House rules are necessary to make it playable, for a serious campaign.

You're ... serious? Really?

Good to know that I'm not playing a serious campaign. Could have fooled me.

 

[Marc_C]

Whereas, even going back to early additions, I have always considered the implementation of official variants/options to be house rules, because you need to inform players that you are deviating from the default mechanic assumptions

Strictly speaking official material by TSR or WoTC are not house rules. House rules are create by amateur DM and players at home, and not by professional designers. ;-)

 

[Charlaquin]

Sounds like homebrew to me. Makes me wonder if people share my definitions or if I'm largely alone in them. For me, house rules change the mechanics of the game whereas homebrew adds something to the game that wasn't there, be it a class, spell, or monster.

That’s a distinction I’ve never consciously made, but makes a lot of sense. Under that definition I’d say I do a ton of homebrew and have only a few, very targeted, house rules. Again, I want to keep the way the game functions at a basic level as intact as possible. But I have a few specific things I want to change (e.g. separating race into lineage and culture, eliminating the whack-a-mole effect), and I love customizing things for my own world (e.g. monsters, equipment, etc.)

 

[Alexander Moonbeam]

I have a ton of house-rules for 5e, but not for the sake of fixing anything. There are a lot of things that the rules either don't cover or cover very nebulously.

Mass combat. Gaining XP for anything other than combat. Domain play of any kind. Naval combat (until Ghosts of Saltmarsh was released). Spelljamming. Acquiring and managing hirelings. These are things that have come up in my campaigns, and I had to decide on new rules for them.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I have seen a couple of people refer to a DM creating or mixing and matching monster parts/abilities as "house rules," which is weird to me, I think of that as just DMing. I mean, it is something that the DMG suggests (maybe not the 5E one, I haven't read all of that one).

Sounds like homebrew to me. Makes me wonder if people share my definitions or if I'm largely alone in them. For me, house rules change the mechanics of the game whereas homebrew adds something to the game that wasn't there, be it a class, spell, or monster.

Maybe this will help clarify (DMG p273):

Creating a Monster
The Monster Manual contains hundreds of ready-to-play monsters, but it doesn't include every monster that you can imagine. Part of the D&D experience is the simple joy of creating new monsters and customizing existing ones, if for no other reason than to surprise and delight your players with something they've never faced before.

 

[Alexander Moonbeam]

The 5e DMG has extensive guidance on how to adjust and create monsters. I would not call that a house-rule any more than I would call running an adventure you wrote yourself a house-rule.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Yes. House Rules are needed for every game...because every group is different. If I walk into someone's game and they have no House Rules, I get to worrying. The exception are "new DM's", because they don't have any idea what they are doing and would expect them to 'toe the party line', so to say. Once they get a handle on the rules, how they all interact, and all that other stuff that comes with experience, then they SHOULD be colouring outside the lines. If not...I wonder if DM'ing is really going to be their thing.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Flamestrike]

Wait, why does that change the value of a bonus feat?

For my group, the bonus feat is still in play even if you take VHuman, because playing a Dwarf is more fun for us if they can take a feat.

Custom lineage lets you play a dwarf. As do all the dwarves.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Custom lineage lets you play a dwarf. As do all the dwarves.

That isn't a response to what I asked. It's a non-sequitur, far as I can tell.

 

[ccs]

I question the judgment of anyone who claim to be very invested in the campaign they're running, but inexplicably chooses a broken system to run that campaign.

The next edition of D&D (or PF) that isn't broken in some way will be the 1st. Of those I'm willing to run, I merely use the one we like best & add house rules as needed.