D&D 5E Optional or homebrew rules

[toucanbuzz]

I'm considering the following changes to the rules in an impending Dark Sun (apocalyptical desert world) campaign using a homebrew conversion. Wondering if anyone has already done any of this and seen success, failure, or something in between.

Feats: Prohibited - Sharpshooter, Great Weapon Master, & Racial Feats (Xanathar’s Guide). Errata: Lucky applies after you pick the die for advantage or disadvantage, not before. I've seen significant criticism of the first two feats, though no one in 5 years of play has ever taken them in my groups. Dark Sun doesn't fit the traditional racial feats, so I'm removing them for flavor, not game design, and Lucky comes from the Crawford RAI replies.

Hit Points: rolled after 1st level. You may reroll once but must accept the 2nd roll, even if lower. HP rolling can affect how you design and play your character.

Healing: slow natural healing variant from DMG. Instead of regaining all HP at end of a long rest, you spend Hit Dice. With a grittier setting, wanted grittier healing, which I hope will lead to more creative ideas when approaching a situation. I fear D&D's design may encourage players to simply assume "kill everything" is the way to go, whereas AD&D, which had substantial penalties for dying and numerous creatures and spells with "instant kill" features, would lead players away from "kill everything" mentalities and towards innovative solutions to avoid battle, when possible.

Critical Hits: maximum damage on the base weapon dice. One of the most popular homebrews out there.

Tougher Resurrection: the [edit] Mercer homebrew or the AD&D table for resurrection survival % chance. Coming back from the dead should be a huge deal, and no guarantee. Colville's homebrew was a check that could be influenced by other players to convince the spirit to return.

Reach AoO: as in 3rd edition, if a creature without Reach enters the threat zone of a creature with Reach (10'+), it can take an AoO. Designed for recognizing how tough it can be to get past reach and close ranks.

Survival rules: starvation loophole closed and increasing food for medium creature to 2lbs (on Earth, a normal adult needs 3-5 lbs of food to survive, not 1).

Encumbrance: slot encumbrance sheets (using variant rule under Strength). A visual homebrew system where equipment has to fit somewhere, a pic of the body with slots for what fits in your hands, your back, etc. that matches the STR rules. You may say you've got a 10' pole, a grand piano, and 10,000 coins, but where on your body are these going to fit? So far, players love it (a player did our graphic sheet for equipment) as yeah, it makes sense and doesn't involve heavy math.

Spells: Dark Sun is a survival world, so in the default homebrew rules spells like Goodberry are banned (not sure they have mistletoe anyways) and others heavily modified. Otherwise, if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. Above and beyond that:

• Banned: Healing Spirit (Xanathar’s Guide). We tried this spell. It's absurd how much it can heal, especially if boosted to a higher slot, relative to any other healing. Off the top of my head I'm not sure I've seen a more unbalanced spell.
• Altered: Conjure spells may only create 1 or 2 creatures, not 4 or 8. Too many creatures to track; simply a way to speed up gameplay.
• Altered: Stoneskin requires no concentration. No one takes it. Given the non-refundable cost, Concentration seemed too high a price atop it all.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The only one of these rules I use is the healing variant.

At lower levels, it is brutal in my experience, if players are in fights on a daily basis. Long breaks, like a week of travel with no encounters, makes it less impactful, but your players will notice the strain on their healing. As a DM, I try to keep it in mind until about level 5, simply because they can quickly end up entering every fight injured or low on spell slots.


I would also recommend allowing Potions to be drank as a bonus action. In my experience, no one uses potions in combat because they are poor action economy, and with low duration on some of them (such as lasting only a minute) they won't get used before most combats either, leading to them just being forgotten. Using a potion on another player is still an action though.

 

[Sadras]

Survival rules: starvation loophole closed and increasing food for medium creature to 2lbs (on Earth, a normal adult needs 3-5 lbs of food to survive, not 1).

I like the increased food requirement but what loophole exists? I haven't checked it out.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I like the increased food requirement but what loophole exists? I haven't checked it out.

The rules have some issues.

You need 1 lb of food per day. 1/2 lb counts as missing half a day.

You can go without any food for 3+con mod days, only gaining exhaustion if you go over that point.

A normal day of eating resets the counter back to zero.

So a person with +2 con mod can go five days without eating, eat a single pound of food, then go another five days without eating with no penalty.

 

[Shiroiken]

Feats: Prohibited - Sharpshooter, Great Weapon Master, & Racial Feats (Xanathar’s Guide). Errata: Lucky applies after you pick the die for advantage or disadvantage, not before. I've seen significant criticism of the first two feats, though no one in 5 years of play has ever taken them in my groups. Dark Sun doesn't fit the traditional racial feats, so I'm removing them for flavor, not game design, and Lucky comes from the Crawford RAI replies.

We've been using SS and GWM for quite some time, and while I think SS is slightly OP (I double short range and reduce cover penalty by 2), we've not had any real issue with them. Unless a character has a regular way of gaining advantage, the chance of a miss is significant except against well known low AC creatures (many of which have very high HP). I see nothing wrong with removing them, I just wanted to give another view on them. IMO they are the gold standard of what feats SHOULD be to make up for the loss of +2 to your primary ability score, which is the assumed opportunity cost to take a feat.

Tougher Resurrection: the Colville homebrew or the AD&D table for resurrection survival % chance. Coming back from the dead should be a huge deal, and no guarantee. Colville's homebrew was a check that could be influenced by other players to convince the spirit to return.

I tried to get my group to use something like this, and the backlash was severe. Many players hate the idea of permanent, unrecoverable death. With so many resurrection spells, this is very uncommon once the party hits about level 5, so your players may push back against this.

Reach AoO: as in 3rd edition, if a creature without Reach enters the threat zone of a creature with Reach (10'+), it can take an AoO. Designed for recognizing how tough it can be to get past reach and close ranks.

If you're going to do this, you might as well ban Polearm Master, since that's one of its primary features.

• Banned: Healing Spirit (Xanathar’s Guide). We tried this spell. It's absurd how much it can heal, especially if boosted to a higher slot, relative to any other healing. Off the top of my head I'm not sure I've seen a more unbalanced spell.

Yeah, this was a wtf spell. When used in combat, it's perfectly fine, but outside of combat it's stupid powerful. I tried to find a way to balance it, and I just couldn't do it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, this was a wtf spell. When used in combat, it's perfectly fine, but outside of combat it's stupid powerful. I tried to find a way to balance it, and I just couldn't do it.

I haven't had any issues with it myself. Generally just letting it affect a single person at a time instead of the whole party helps a lot.

 

[Shiroiken]

I haven't had any issues with it myself. Generally just letting it affect a single person at a time instead of the whole party helps a lot.

Yeah, that kinda works. It heals about 35 HP over 1 minute as opposed to about 51 HP over 10 minutes with Prayer of Healing. Upcasting benefits PoH more (1d8 vs. 1d6), but the 10 minute casting time makes up for it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I have got some own homebrew rules.

Allegiances can be combined with aligment, even when they may opposite (for example a sheriff who breaks rules to defend the law (chaotic align + law alleg.) or a zealot, with evil alignm but good alleg.) and powers can hurt enemies with same alignment but different allegiance (for example a drow cleric vs a orc shaman).

And I have added two new abilities scores: Acuity (perception + astuteness) and spirit (courage, but also hope, faith, and maybe karma/luck/fate/guardian angel/divine grace).

 

[toucanbuzz]

We've been using SS and GWM for quite some time, and while I think SS is slightly OP (I double short range and reduce cover penalty by 2), we've not had any real issue with them...

Good points. I have zero experience with these feats. I may be overreacting to posts justifying it as overpowered.

...Many players hate the idea of permanent, unrecoverable death....

Another good point. It's fun to have a roll...until it doesn't go in your favor.

Yeah, this was a wtf spell. When used in combat, it's perfectly fine, but outside of combat it's stupid powerful. I tried to find a way to balance it, and I just couldn't do it.

The player who wanted to use it is new (less than 1 year to D&D) and even he knew it sounded a bit powerful. He asked if we should nerf it. We tried Crawford's suggestion (# of dice healed = 2x Wisdom modifier), but even then, when boosted a level, it insanely outpaced any other healing spell.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Feats: Prohibited - Sharpshooter, Great Weapon Master, & Racial Feats (Xanathar’s Guide). Errata: Lucky applies after you pick the die for advantage or disadvantage, not before. I've seen significant criticism of the first two feats, though no one in 5 years of play has ever taken them in my groups. Dark Sun doesn't fit the traditional racial feats, so I'm removing them for flavor, not game design, and Lucky comes from the Crawford RAI replies.

Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master are considered more powerful than many other feats for martial characters. However martial characters with those feats are not considered overpowered compared to spellcaster characters.

Healing: slow natural healing variant from DMG. Instead of regaining all HP at end of a long rest, you spend Hit Dice. With a grittier setting, wanted grittier healing, which I hope will lead to more creative ideas when approaching a situation. I fear D&D's design may encourage players to simply assume "kill everything" is the way to go, whereas AD&D, which had substantial penalties for dying and numerous creatures and spells with "instant kill" features, would lead players away from "kill everything" mentalities and towards innovative solutions to avoid battle, when possible.

This will increase emphasis on magical healing. It will also considerably increase the power of arcane-type spellcaster characters.
(Due to martials tending to take damage more, so their resources (HP) as well as healer-type characters' spell slots being depleted more by this style of play. It will encourage more common long-resting, which will seriously increase the relative power of non-healer spellcasters.)

Tougher Resurrection: the Colville homebrew or the AD&D table for resurrection survival % chance. Coming back from the dead should be a huge deal, and no guarantee. Colville's homebrew was a check that could be influenced by other players to convince the spirit to return.

Is Revivify included?

Survival rules: starvation loophole closed and increasing food for medium creature to 2lbs (on Earth, a normal adult needs 3-5 lbs of food to survive, not 1).

As well as removing Goodberry and similar spells, I'd suggest taking at look at and changing/banning the Outlander background.