D&D 5E How many house rules?

[Oofta]

Let's see. I do use alternate rest rules from the DMG but also house rule that any spell that lasts more than half an hour gets duration multiplied by 5.

Others are pretty simple:

• Ability score adjustment items: add to, but do not replace ability scores. Anything that's capped at 20 max or less doesn't require attunement.
• Bag of Holding: require an action to retrieve an item.
• Bows: you can use either strength or dex, they are finesse weapons.
• Heward's Handy Haversack: retrieve items as normal.
• Potions: drinking a potion is a bonus action.
• Raise Dead/Resurrection: raise dead is not as simple as casting a spell, resurrection is practically unheard of. This is done mostly to keep in line with the Norse mythology where even gods can die.
• Thrown weapons: you can draw them for free and throw multiple every turn. I assume you have either a bandolier or quiver of some sort to hold them.

So that's it. Just convenience things that don't make much difference in actual play; bonus action to drink a potion probably has the biggest impact. The issue with a ton of house rules that change the nature of the game is that without a lot of playtesting you aren't going to really understand the impact. Even if it works for one group of people, it may not work for another. If I'm playing D&D I want it to feel like D&D, not someone's homebrew game system.

 

[dragoner]

3 and kiss is about my rules for everything, I am making a 5e adjacent sfrpg and I lose the proficiency bonus for skill ranks, so that skill level 1 is +d4, level 2 is +d6; I think rolling dice is more fun anyways.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Impossible and/or unnecessary to calculate an answer... because more often than not your game will never see 3/4ths of the house rules that were written ever actually come up during the game.

DMs are notorious for looking at a book, seeing hundreds of different rules and bits that make them go "WHAT?!? NO!!! NEVER!!!", then write down a "correction" that "fixes" the problem for them... but then once the game starts the situation never actually comes up. And all the hullaballoo the DM went through was unnecessary.

I mean really... how many DMs out there have spent long amounts of time coming up with better 20th level capstone abilities for all 12 classes because they think the ones WotC made all stunk... only to have less than half of those classes actually ever get selected by their players... and game itself never actually come close to reaching 20th level in the first place?

A house rule is merely a "Ruling" that you tried to jump the gun on. And if you'd never utter the phrase "I'm only going to make less than 12 rulings at the table during this entire campaign..." there's absolutely no reason to make the same statement about house rules.

 

[el-remmen]

Quality matters far more than quantity, I'm afraid. A small number of bad house rules can make me rethink participating, but a large number of good ones doesn't bother me at all.

Just seconding this.

I also don't believe the players or the even DM need to really know all the rules with perfect retention - just the most common ones with "good enough" retention - so for me the question about house rules in my current game is, does the house ruled situation come up enough to matter or is it a big deal enough even if infrequent to matter? Otherwise,

On the other hand, in the past I have had so many house rules (mostly for flavor and consistency between editions) that I had a whole binder and later a wiki for them. People who bought in didn't care. Those who didn't were annoyed by them.

 

[el-remmen]

BTW, I didn't vote because I found parsing the choices confusing on top of not believing there is a set number.

 

[tetrasodium]

Ironically 5e's lack of structure, over simplistic design, and natural language cherry on top makes house rules more difficult in 5e if you actually want to change anything because it creates a cascade of edge case things that need to be addressed now that you changed something. You can see evidence for this in the incomplete fix them yourself variant rules in the dmg where even wotc couldn't manage to make a simple optional rule that actually accomplishes the thing it sets out to do rather than inviting a parade of problems for the gm to finish.

edit: for example. If I want to lock in everyone's archetype at level 1 but give some of it early I'd need thirteen different subrules because classes start at 1 2 & 3 with different progression of class/archetype stuff. If I want to modify the rest schedule or what rests give I have a disaster because classes are pegged to different rests (often with literally the exact same abilities as a class with a different rest need). If I want to change what happens at zero hp... holy hell.... I need to rebuild the whole system.

 

[commandercrud]

The quantity of houserules is irrelevant. The more you add, however, the more you should rethink the system/edition you're playing.

 

[Dragonsbane]

As many as are needed to achieve the group's vision for the theme of the game. In my experience of D&D 5e, this hasn't been very many, perhaps less than half a dozen, including variant rules. At a certain point, enough house rules would encourage me to just use another system more suited for the vision of the adventure or campaign.

This. We switched to Cypher System after we had too many house rules, but run 5E and 3E modules.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

DMs are notorious for looking at a book, seeing hundreds of different rules and bits that make them go "WHAT?!? NO!!! NEVER!!!", then write down a "correction" that "fixes" the problem for them... but then once the game starts the situation never actually comes up. And all the hullaballoo the DM went through was unnecessary.

I feel called out.

 

[Blue]

I'm most comfortable with few house rules. Some customization and change to fit the table, but not enough that makes you go "why not just play another system".

That said, I personally differentiate between house rules to change the base game, and house rules to support the feel of a particular campaign. I'm fine with plenty of the latter.

For example, in a hexcrawl using a slow rest variant but not quite the one from the DMG, an extended exhaustion chart so it can be given out more frequently without it being so immediately punishing, a bunch of custom backgrounds, a new race, and the banning of a couple of races and subclasses that don't fit the world theme works fine for me, and hasn't touched the "house rules to modify the game" where I'd prefer few.

As a side note, sometimes people may not even realize they are using a house rule. For example, when I DM you roll damage individually for every magic missile, scorching ray, eldritch blast, or other multi-ray spell. This is technically a house rule if used with multiple targets (Under Damage Rolls, PH pg 196 - "If a spell or other effect deals damage to more than one target at the same time, roll the damage once for all of them".) So many tables that think they are playing by RAW actually have their own minor variations.

Which does feed into the poll. I use "drinking a potion yourself is a bonus action, inspiration is a reroll declared after seeing the die, and multi-ray spells roll damage individually" - I consider that "short and sweet" (and so voted) even though by the poll it's the next category up. Also when writing out house rules I would always share why the choice was made, so while I want it short and sweet, I want a few paragraphs.