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

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

In my most recent session about half of the monsters I used were homebrew. None of the party is of a homebrewed race, class, or subclass, but they do use homebrew magic items.

I have a ton of homebrew player options that I've made over the years, but my players are satisfied with the official options so we don't often use them.

I can't actually remember if we've ever used any homebrew spells.

So we constantly use homebrew monsters and magic items, but only rarely homebrew anything else.

 

[GrimCo]

Player options almost never.

Everything else, almost always. House rules, setting with all it's quirks, monsters (some of which are modified MM), items ( both mundane and magical). Only time i use only published stuff is when i need to cobble together one shot on short notice.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I can’t imagine DMing without homebrewing monsters and items and a handful of house rules and tweaks to published settings/adventures. But I do like to run a tight ship on player options as it simplifies my prep, adjudications, and, frankly, the players' grasp of the game mechanics, IME. I'm already surprised (especially looking at you Control Water) enough as it is by bog-standard published player-facing options - of which there are virtually unlimited permutations - I don't need anything homebrew messing with my workload, lol! Players have been very accepting of what could be perceived as "limitations" over the last decade of my 5e.2014 DMing tenure.

A nice side benefit: homebrewed monsters and items can keep things fresh for folks who have been around the D&D block a few times as they discover new things.

One minor "issue" I've run into with homebrewed items (or even items taken from, say, the KP Vault of Magic) is that players may ask if I've added said item(s) to DnD Beyond. I don't use DnDB any more and don't ever plan to go back to it. I fear our hobby is getting more and more reliant on it to the detriment of game flow... but that's a topic for another thread.

 

[sevenbastard]

You can play rpgs without homebrewing?

 

[Umbran]

I don't find this to be a D&D specific question.

It depends what you mean by "use homebrew". Like, I make up stats for monsters, both in premeditated and on-the-fly ways all the time. I create NPCs. I create an occasional faction here or there that's not in the official setting I'm using. For any given system I probably have a handful of interpretations or changes to rules that I use.

 

[Stormonu]

My RPG life is homebrew. I can't count the hours, ink and paper I've used up developing my own homebrew stuff. Even some of my own RPGs over the years. Just for 5E I'm sitting on 3 MM's worth of homebrew monster, a 600 page customized version of the 5E rules and about the same amount of pages of tweaked, imported from prior editions and homebrew spells. Then, there's the adventures I've done up.

It's just too damn fun not to.

 

[kermit4karate]

Resurrecting this old thread because I love homebrew!

Some of my favorite 5e rule changes:

• 5E 2014 racial ability score bonuses
• For stats, roll 3d6 six times and pick where to apply
• Double damage on nat 20 (x2 AFTER modifiers)
• Every time max is rolled on a damage die, roll another die of the same type and add the result

Little bit of reasoning behind the last one is that I like building in the possibility for anyone, given a lot of luck, to take down a dragon with a single well-placed blow. For instance, the farmer whose infant son was taken by a young green dragon. He tracks the dragon down in the woods, and not caring whether it's the last thing he ever does, heaves his axe. The gods take pity on him, and the axe finds its mark, digging deep into the dragon's eye, killing the beast instantly. Farmer rolls a nat 20 to hit (x2 damage), a 6 on d6 for the axe, followed by another 6, another 6, another 6, another 6, another 6, etc.

Unlikely? Yes, but possible. That's what I like. I've been using this mechanic for 30 years and highly recommend it!

 

[dave2008]

Constantly.

Same and I have since about 1985-86

 

[kermit4karate]

Constantly. I have a 500-page houserule document combining references to various sources I accept in my 5e-based games, including homebrew. Portions of that document make it into every game I run.

I can't tell you how much I respect that. I love homebrew rules. They are quite literally focus group tested! You should publish that thing! Honestly, I would pay for a good book of houserules.

The best D&D game I ever played in was a tiny convention in a mall comic book store in Redding, California about 20 years ago with some of the most amazing houserules I'd ever seen. Heavily influenced by the Arduin Grimoire if anyone's familiar with that masterpiece.

I stole a few of the rules I saw that weekend and never let them go!

 

[haakon1]

I guess it depends on what you mean by homebrew.

How often do I run precisely what someone else wrote with nothing in it tweaked by me? Never. Not one session.

How often do I run adventures within a setting I wrote every word of? Also never.