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

[kermit4karate]

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.

Bravo!!! I love that. I do it too for the same reason. So much better for drama and suspense too when the players don't know everything there is to know about something, like a kobold, for instance. So, maybe these kobolds have venomous bites, spit acid, or you get high if you touch their skin. Keeps the players guessing!

 

[Celebrim]

How and when do you use homebrew for your games?

My game is homebrew. Rules are just a launching point for that to reduce the amount of work I have to do to something closer to managable.

 

[SableWyvern]

I am very pleasantly surprised by all the answers on the first page showing people still have a willingness to make the game their own. Keep up the good work, people. (There may be similarly excellent answers throughout the thread, so I'm just as happy with anyone later on with a similar answer.)

 

[zarionofarabel]

Haha, then I guess I'm the oddball as usual!

With the singular exception of a special setting that I built off of a map I fell in love with. It is an island about the size of England (not the UK) that I used to develop a "bottle chronicle" for recurring use.

Other than that, I never homebrew anything. There is simply too many already existing things in published material that I have never found the need to homebrew stuff. I did a long long time ago in the late 80s/early 90s when I was new to the hobby. As I've collected more and more TTRPG materials over the years I found less and less need to do so as I found myself with an overwhelming number of things to use anyway. Heck, I don't even make "custom stat blocks" for singularly important NPCs as I just find it easier to make them feel special through narrative means as opposed to mechanical ones.

Wow I'm a weirdo in this hobby! Cheers!

 

[SableWyvern]

Haha, then I guess I'm the oddball as usual!

With the singular exception of a special setting that I built off of a map I fell in love with. It is an island about the size of England (not the UK) that I used to develop a "bottle chronicle" for recurring use.

Other than that, I never homebrew anything. There is simply too many already existing things in published material that I have never found the need to homebrew stuff. I did a long long time ago in the late 80s/early 90s when I was new to the hobby. As I've collected more and more TTRPG materials over the years I found less and less need to do so as I found myself with an overwhelming number of things to use anyway. Heck, I don't even make "custom stat blocks" for singularly important NPCs as I just find it easier to make them feel special through narrative means as opposed to mechanical ones.

Wow I'm a weirdo in this hobby! Cheers!

I support an informed decision to use existing material in preference to making your own, as long as its not based on some sense that published authors inherently deserve to exercise any special authority over you at your own table.

 

[Distracted DM]

Magic items and monsters, all the time. I don't create brand new classes/archetypes/ancestries etc. often because there's so much existing stuff to use. I'll make new features etc. by campaign when appropriate, like some mechanical feature from PCs getting titles or big story bumps.

Beyond that, I guess it depends on what you're calling homebrew? I never considered modifying a canned module/adventure "homebrewing," that's just.. running the game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is extremely important to distinguish the four following categories when answering this sort of question.

Houserules: Tweaks, modifications, or replacements of core systems, e.g., how the game as it already exists works. "Oh, for us, fall damage is d10 per 10 feet, not d6, up to a maximum of 100. Yes, you can take 500 damage from a fall if you fall far enough." These things don't truly "add" or "remove" anything, they're just realigning an existing element in some way.

Personal Homebrew: Genuinely brand-new content created by the GM herself for their game(s). Can run the gamut. Minor homebrew is stuff like "new monsters". Major homebrew is stuff like "new classes with distinct subclasses and signfiicantly new spell lists." Individual spells, items, backgrounds, species, etc.? Somewhere in-between.

External Homebrew: Anything that could've been in the previous category, but which the GM accepts in their game, for whatever reason.

3PP: Actually, formally published rules written by someone else. This includes non-WotC modules.

In my experience, almost all GMs use houserules and personal homebrew, regardless of edition. With 5e, it is extremely unusual to ever see external homebrew. 3PP comes in only three flavors: Absolutely Never, Modules Only, and With Approval Anything Goes. Modules Only is the most common, but it only barely edges out Absolutely Never.

But when you ask about "homebrew" without being specific in these categories, every 5e GM will say they're massively in favor of "homebrew", which gives the false impression that they are extremely welcoming to anything players might find interesting. IME, 5e GMs are very opposed external homebrew of any kind, even when they specifically admit that it looks reasonable.

 

[kermit4karate]

It is extremely important to distinguish the four following categories when answering this sort of question.

Houserules: Tweaks, modifications, or replacements of core systems, e.g., how the game as it already exists works. "Oh, for us, fall damage is d10 per 10 feet, not d6, up to a maximum of 100. Yes, you can take 500 damage from a fall if you fall far enough." These things don't truly "add" or "remove" anything, they're just realigning an existing element in some way.

Personal Homebrew: Genuinely brand-new content created by the GM herself for their game(s). Can run the gamut. Minor homebrew is stuff like "new monsters". Major homebrew is stuff like "new classes with distinct subclasses and signfiicantly new spell lists." Individual spells, items, backgrounds, species, etc.? Somewhere in-between.

External Homebrew: Anything that could've been in the previous category, but which the GM accepts in their game, for whatever reason.

3PP: Actually, formally published rules written by someone else. This includes non-WotC modules.

In my experience, almost all GMs use houserules and personal homebrew, regardless of edition. With 5e, it is extremely unusual to ever see external homebrew. 3PP comes in only three flavors: Absolutely Never, Modules Only, and With Approval Anything Goes. Modules Only is the most common, but it only barely edges out Absolutely Never.

But when you ask about "homebrew" without being specific in these categories, every 5e GM will say they're massively in favor of "homebrew", which gives the false impression that they are extremely welcoming to anything players might find interesting. IME, 5e GMs are very opposed external homebrew of any kind, even when they specifically admit that it looks reasonable.

I have a houserule to define homebrew however I want.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I have a houserule to define homebrew however I want.

I mean...you can elect to do that if you like.

It doesn't actually change what the thing is. I'm calling out these categories because people talk about how 5e is sooooo open to doing things with it, but when the rubber meets the road, anything the GM herself didn't personally create is very, very much more likely to get rejected than accepted.

It's just very frustrating to me specifically, because I've seen this bait-and-switch happen more than once. GM says they're cool with homebrew, and only clarifies that that means they're cool with personally creating homebrew, not with homebrew-in-general.

 

[SableWyvern]

My houserule is that only @kermit4karate's definition of homebrew applies, and determines exactly what it is.