D&D General How often do you use Homebrew in your own games?

[Azzy]

As often as not. It really depends if I need to fill a hole, so to speak, or not.

 

[Lanefan]

The whole game is homebrew. System, setting, cosmology, all of it.

My answer to the thread-title question, however, would not truly be 100% as I do on occasion use published modules largely as-written.

 

[the Jester]

I mainly use homebrew whenever the situation in a session calls for it. For example, the story includes the party fighting a monster not in the official books like a Skinwalker or Wendigo.

Or when my nephew wanted to use a spell to make his familiar cats into a sabertooth tiger. So I mutated the Find Steed spell for his Wizard Knight.

What about you. How and when do you use homebrew for your games?

Constantly. Probably as much or more as I use official material. I have tons of custom subclasses, spells, magic items, and monsters. At least one features in just about every session. More often, there are as many custom bits as official.

 

[jgsugden]

Half my content is homebrew or taken from 3rd party with which the players are unfamiliar ... because I want them to feel unfamiliar. I don't want the players to "know" what monsters always do because I want there to be a thrill of discovery.

This applies to monsters, spells, magic items, Gods, Archfiends, Elder Gods, clowns, and everything else.

 

[bloodtide]

All the time, endlessly.

If you want a dull, by-the-rulebook, type game you should play with another DM.

 

[Puddles]

When I’m the DM, I will use homebrew monsters and magic items all the time. Monsters taken from the MM usually have a homebrew twist too. I also have homebrew systems for things like encumbrance and survival.

For the players in my games however, outside of the magic items, they are usually ran vanilla.

So, vanilla PCs fighting homebrew threats and getting homebrew rewards is the easiest way to think of it.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Plots are 90% homebrew, with 10% being adventures I've found I can use with minimal effort.

Rules...closer to 95% by the book, with a few setting-specific changes that are usually very easy to express on a single sheet of paper but also impactful. (I.E. Dragonlance(ish) in the period without the gods where I limited spells to 2nd level or lower but people had the higher level slots they could use for upcasting) Maybe a few custom classes that show up at higher levels (I miss 3e PrCs)

Or I change the baseline of the rules to match the world. I.e. a shadowrun game set on Mars. A strength 3 (human average) martian can lift the same thing a str3 terran could do on earth. But a martian on Earth takes a strength penalty while terrans on Mars get a strength bonus. It's not physics, it's convenience.

Most creatures are bog standard. But I will recycle existing statblocks for custom creatures that fill a needed niche, or introduce variant creatures that are distinct from the "common" kinds. I believe outsiders and undead should have plenty of unique entities. 90% of them should be exactly what's in the books, but just enough oddballs to keep the players guessing. "Elder" variants, or some kind of special origin.

 

[Maxperson]

I mainly use homebrew whenever the situation in a session calls for it. For example, the story includes the party fighting a monster not in the official books like a Skinwalker or Wendigo.

Or when my nephew wanted to use a spell to make his familiar cats into a sabertooth tiger. So I mutated the Find Steed spell for his Wizard Knight.

What about you. How and when do you use homebrew for your games?

I make up stuff every campaign I run.

 

[Clint_L]

Almost every game.

 

[Sulicius]

Every session. I homebrew monsters & magic items mostly, but also I have a couple house rules.