D&D 5E How Close do you stick with the Game As Written?

[Sword of Spirit]

Rather not, thank-you... It sounds positively drastic. I did mangle 2E pretty well myself.

But I definitely fall in the category of "If the GM says «I've not run it yet, here's my house rules»" I don't walk away - I run away. Because, 99 of a hundred times, they are "fixing" things with patches more broken, and often fixing things that in fact are not broken at all. Especially when it's across-edition houserules.

I think there are very valid reasons for house-ruling before even trying something. It's not just about balancing perceived mechanical flaws in the system. In my experience (and this may just be the people I've played with) it's more about playstyle or setting elements. Maybe you despise the idea of characters healing to full overnight. Maybe you find the inability to learn more than a few of the simple magical abilities currently housed only in cantrips to be a drastic departure from classic D&D and unbelievable without changing how you view magic in the setting. Maybe you don't like the idea of a 3' halfling wielding a 3'+ sword in one hand, when a 6' human would have a difficult time wielding a 6'+ sword in two hands. (Those are some examples of situations I've actually house-ruled before I tried out the game, and having been DMing it since September feel pretty much the same as I did when I made the house rules.)

 

[Remathilis]

Interesting.

I've read many Enworld threads where people espouse their unique worlds and custom rules, and just wondered "Does anyone play this game by the book ever?" Not that changing things is good or bad, I just wondered how many people chose vanilla as their default flavor.

Apparently, alot.

 

[Hussar]

Rem, I think that there may be many votes in there like mine. Many people homebrew their campaigns. You've included flavour as part of Raw and I think that's skewing the results.

Compare my thread about do you consider flavour to be raw and the majority don't.

 

[Remathilis]

Rem, I think that there may be many votes in there like mine. Many people homebrew their campaigns. You've included flavour as part of Raw and I think that's skewing the results.

Compare my thread about do you consider flavour to be raw and the majority don't.

Partially why I kept hammering GAW (game as written) to show it encompasses fluff and crunch. If the poll is skewed, it's due to this confusion.

 

[KarinsDad]

Interesting.

I've read many Enworld threads where people espouse their unique worlds and custom rules, and just wondered "Does anyone play this game by the book ever?" Not that changing things is good or bad, I just wondered how many people chose vanilla as their default flavor.

Apparently, alot.

I'm not the DM, but we have 5 house rules (3 of them pro-PCs) in our game. They are mostly trivial, especially considering that there are hundreds and hundreds of actual rules. I've been in games (and ran games) with 3 or 4 pages of house rules.

I think that a lot of rules can go either way. Even many of the official ones in the book are because one game developer convinced the rest of the team that one way was better than another, but that doesn't mean that "one way" is best for all tables or even that good of an idea at all.

So, I think that 100% vanilla doesn't make sense for most DMs, but many games are 99% to 99.9% vanilla anyway.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I haven't played 5E yet, so I can't comment too much on that. I imagine I'll give it a go RAW first before I decide to make any house rules (and I may not).

In my 3.5E game I have about a dozen house rules. I used to have 2-3 times that amount, but I've gotten rid of most of them over time.

The ones I do have I think serve a purpose.

For example, one house rule is that Rogues get an automatic Search check when they come within 5ft of a trap if they are moving carefully (half-speed). This works the same way as the Elven ability to find secret doors.

I introduced that rule to stop the whole "I move 5ft, I check for traps." situation that can come up otherwise.

I swapped out Turn Undead for the Pathfinder ability Channel Energy simply because I find the Turn Undead mechanic a bit clunky and I like the Channel Energy ability better.

I don't allow Spiked Chains or Floaty Shields because I think they are broken.

For 20ft and 40ft area spread spells (i.e. Fireball), instead of picking an intersection for the middle of the spell, you instead pick a square on the battlemat and roll a D4 to determine from which corner of the square the spell originates from. This was to make placement of the larger spells slightly more random.

So each house rule serves a purpose, although the reasons for them are varied.

 

[Nebulous]

Interesting.

I've read many Enworld threads where people espouse their unique worlds and custom rules, and just wondered "Does anyone play this game by the book ever?" Not that changing things is good or bad, I just wondered how many people chose vanilla as their default flavor.

Apparently, alot.

I play mostly vanilla. At least for a while. I tweak little things here and there, but not too much. I tried to tweak 4e, but it was so hardcoded, it just didn't work. And in my experience, more complex houserules are ignored or forgotten by players if they can't flip to a page in the PHB and see it.

Here's an enduring house rules since 2nd edition they remember: you can't roll less than half your hit die when leveling up.

 

[Nebulous]

If there was ever an edition of D&D i would / could houserule the hell out of, it would be 5th edition. Not because i think anything is particularly wrong, it's the opposite actually, i think it gives me the room and the tools to improve and make it my own.

 

[Hussar]

Give you an example. I wrote a 4e dungeon crawl adventure recently. Fifteen encounters, both combat and non-combat, and not a single standard monster. I didn't even open the Monster Manual for any encounter. 25 (or so) completely self invented creatures. 4e makes it so bloody easy to do - you can fit the rules for monster creation on a bloody business card. It's that easy.

Now, am I playing GAW or not? The rules are right there for creating your own monsters. It's not like it's buried somewhere. Making your own monsters in 4e is not some bizarre activity that no one would ever try.

I wouldn't even consider this to be varying from the 4e rules at all. I have a dungeon with sliding floors and lots of construct type monsters. Fairly bog standard dungeon crawling fare. I mean, it IS a dungeon crawl after all, that's about as D&D as it gets.

But, that being said, not a single monster references anything in the Monster Manual. All 100% one offs.

 

[Remathilis]

Give you an example. I wrote a 4e dungeon crawl adventure recently. Fifteen encounters, both combat and non-combat, and not a single standard monster. I didn't even open the Monster Manual for any encounter. 25 (or so) completely self invented creatures. 4e makes it so bloody easy to do - you can fit the rules for monster creation on a bloody business card. It's that easy.

Now, am I playing GAW or not? The rules are right there for creating your own monsters. It's not like it's buried somewhere. Making your own monsters in 4e is not some bizarre activity that no one would ever try.

I wouldn't even consider this to be varying from the 4e rules at all. I have a dungeon with sliding floors and lots of construct type monsters. Fairly bog standard dungeon crawling fare. I mean, it IS a dungeon crawl after all, that's about as D&D as it gets.

But, that being said, not a single monster references anything in the Monster Manual. All 100% one offs.

Gaw. Since you didn't change any rules not did you invalidate what's in the books, you're adhering to the game still.