D&D 5E My House rules for Crafting, Tools and other systems

[DanteVanDevva]

These are some some of the Homebrewed house rules I've come up with for a campaign I intend to start in the near future, wanted to get some feedback before I do, see what other people think and how can it be improved or changed, get a second perspective, etc...
These house rules include changes to:
Feats, Crafting, Wounds, Diseases, Curses, Experience system and Monsters' resistance and immunity system.
I wrote the changes in a Google Drive doc, and wanted to get it reviewed before making it a proper PDF.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/15M6ve-grjxOul9AjBtFEaht9PASwz96z-qxKZ4l1VsA/edit?usp=sharing

I am new to this forum, so I hope I didn't break any rules or anything by posting here :X

P.S. - if you spot any spelling mistakes in the document, let me know so I can fix it.

 

[Blue]

Some thoughts on reading through:

Removing Magic Initiate - removes the entire concept of a magical child/blessed by the fae/etc. if you make it part of a "profession".

Heavy Strike - this is the effects of the SS/GWM feats that gain the most attention as being broken. Giving them out to everyone using a weapon for free is a big power up for weapon users, and will probably skew character creation toward more high-chance-to-hit, extra attack classes (archers with the fighting style, barbarians, etc.) If you want it, I'd consider the damage bonus to be the same as the to-hit penalty (like the old Power Attack from earlier editions). Also I've seen people do -proficiency/+proficiency so it scales.

Cleave - is this a free action (like ranger's hordebreaker) or does it take a bonus action, like the feats grant it now? Does it apply to spell attacks? What if the attack applies a condition or other extra effect, does that take effect? can this crit, and if so what's the effect since it doesn't seem to have damage dice to double. If I hit something held that gave me auto-crit does the whole crit damage carry over? If I kill something, cleave and kill something, can I continue to cleave with the remaining damage? Not having to worry about losing "overflow" damage is a minor bonus to large weapons and those who do a lot of damage on one hit like rogues with sneak attack. It also removes a weakness that some characters ahve with hordes, because in this case you could potentially kill two (or more?) weak foes with each attack. This also gets multiplied by your heavy attack bonus, since extra attack means you're more likely to have some left over. I'm not particularly fond of this.

Literacy: I'd suggest you also make it a language choice to pick up.

Smith's tool. Interesting. Though having a way to add more damage to all weapon attacks plays into what I was talking about before with heavy attack and cleave.

Arcanist's tools - a tool proficiency giving a bit more then the Magic Initiate feat, and allowing it to grow more. Wow. At first I was skimming and though this was just for ritual spells and liked that arcana skill + tools = ritual caster feat, but that's just an extra bonus included. Quick nice.

Infuser's tools - these give out a lot of very powerful boons for just a tool pick. +2 AC that stacks with everything will help break bounded accuracy and minimize foe attacks. Unless foes have them as well in which case the players get even more of them when they kill them and in the meantime everyone misses alot which isn't fun. Being able to add an arbitrary amount of resistances and advantage on saves is very powerful. I don't know a caster who will be without a Con-save one in order to keep Concentration on spells. Granting +2 to an ability, a feat, or up to 80 temp HPs per long rest also are very powerful. Oh, and spells up to 4th level that recharge on a short rest. Suddenly the archer in back who doesn't get hit is casting bless or haste so the main casters can use concentration on something else. And then they can switch out to a new one for the next battle.

Really, gold costs to control character growth isn't part of this edition. These are very powerful. I'd suggest, well I'd suggest removing this entirely, but baring that I would suggest each taking up an item slot, and requiring attunement. Though they are still more powerful then most uncommon and many rare magic items.

Artist's tools - again allowing casting of spells.

To roubnd up on the tools, many of the suggested ones are a lot more powerful then the PHB tools, many are more powerful then what a PHB feat would give you. They add back in the gold can greatly enhance your character, dilute the pwoer of casters by giving out spells to more people, and just change the balance a lot. These will have a lot of both direct and ripple effects on your game.

Wounds - since foes often are just dead, this will mostly affect PCs.

XP - I like what you are giving XP for. If you avoid encounters by sneaking, distracting, using resources to get past, is that worth XP for the combat question?

Conclusion
Lots of bonuses for weapon wielders plus tools giving out ways to cast spells will make weapon a lot more prevalent. Characters in general will be significantly more powerful then base PHB, though wounds may gimp one character for a while and leave the player feeling like they aren't contributing to the session or sessions. The amount of power gain is not even, some classes will be left behind. Depending on availability, gold plus tool proficiencies (or NPCs) have once again become part of character power.

 

[DanteVanDevva]

Hey Blue, thanks for taking the time to read and respond, I really appreciate it.

Magic Initiate - You make a good point with the magic initiate thing, I'll probably change that.

Heavy Strike - in hindsight, I can recall a ranger I DMed for abusing this to great effect since his attack bonus was ridiculously high, he kept doing this, and would actually hit most of the time... that said I like the risk versus reward aspect here, so I am not sure what to do about it. leaving it as a feat could just work since it's an ability people have to "purchase". and you suggestions sounded quite good too... ~still unsure, but I appreciate your response on this.

Cleave - I intended for it to be just like the feat, I see that my description of the ability was lacking, I will add the parts that are missing, but it is basically supposed to be exactly like the feat.

Literacy - I like what you are saying, the problem I have with that though is how to decide what languages you are literate in and how many languages can you be literate in? is it based on how many of those skills you have, i.e if you have only proficiency in medicine you can be literate in only one of the languages you know, but if you have expertise in medicine or proficiency in medicine and nature, you can be literate in two languages? What would you suggest?

Smith's Tools - I get why this might be a problem if we account for the way I originally intended to do Heavy Attack, and the way I was lacking in my explanation on Cleave - however, now that I might change those two and dial them down a bit, is adding damage to weapon this way is still a problem, and if so what would you suggest? how would you go about representing mechanically that "this weapon is enchanted with fire"?

Arcanist's/Artist's Tools - considering what you said about Magic Initiate I am now thinking removing the ability to cast cantrips from the Arcane Tomes... or find another way to make them more controlled. However it is important to note that as a DM I get to decide how much magic the players get by limiting the books and scripts they can find.

Infuser's Tools - I did make a disclaimer in parentheses that says these require attunement, and the same goes for Arcane Tomes, and Items crafted with Crafter's Tools or Smith's Tools. GP to buy power in the game can be a problem, but then again as a DM I am the one to determine how much gold they find and what type of materials they find...

Wounds - was made in mind to only affect PCs anyway, wounds on enemies rarely makes sense as most time the group will either kill an enemy or die trying, enemies getting away is not something that usually happens, at least at the campaigns that I've ran.

XP - hmm... that would depend on the specific scenario, this doesn't happen very often - at least not to me as a DM, so I can't really tell. My general response would be no, you avoided the risk of fighting (if they stealthed for example) so you don't get exp, but then again if the situation is different... it depends, context is key.

The main idea of the way I wanted to do professions was to make it so player might have a motive to explore more, if they want to improve in their profession that is. giving the player an Arcane Tome will suddenly make the a collector of spells, giving them alchemy will make them interested in finding books and recipes, etc...
I can see the power unbalace you are talking about, and appreciate your feedback. I'll think about the changes I want to make to tune down some of the overpoweredness that might come as an implication from this... I have toyed around with the idea of making these Tool and Professions more of Prestige class or make them Feats instead of just a tool proficiency, but I am still not sure...