D&D 5E Tweaking 5E: Your knobs, dials and switches.

[Reynard]

I am curious how folks go about changing 5E to suit their personal tastes. What optional rules do you use? What "dials" and "switches" do you incorporate to change the the way the game plays or feels? What rules do you toss out completely, change or double down on.

I'm no so interested in major overhauls of the 5E core assumptions or systems. Rather I am curious how those that have a problem here or there with 5E, or prefer a certain playstyle that isn't quite supported, make 5E work for them.

Thanks.

 

[iserith]

How Inspiration is awarded and spent is a really easy place to start adjusting the dial. A couple of recent examples:

For Eberron, I changed Inspiration so that when you spend it you add 1d6 after the d20 roll rather than just had advantage. This was to be reminiscent of the D&D 3.5e version of Action Points that were introduced with that Eberron campaign setting. It also allows for hitting DCs one would not normally be able to hit which is good for trying some superheroic thing from time to time. Inspiration works otherwise as I've laid out in The Case for Inspiration.

For Planescape, I added alignment descriptors as specifically defined by the rules (e.g. lawful good is "I can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society...") and put that in the Ideal personal characteristic. So this gave the players 5 ways to achieve 4 Inspiration per session (personality trait, ideal, ideal (alignment), bond, flaw). If they joined a faction, then I'd add a specific faction Bond as well, making it 6 ways to gain 4 Inspiration per session. This helped incentivize playing to alignment and joining factions and living up to their duties which supports the Planescape theme.

For Tales from the Yawning Portal, I did it like Eberron in that you added a d6 after the roll rather than roll for advantage but you could only add Inspiration to someone else's d20 roll. The concept was that your inactive (backup) character was in the Yawning Portal telling the story of your active character in the adventure. So when the active character fell short, the players would all jump in and try to be the first to say "That's not how I remember it!" and add a d6 to the roll, as if the character in the tavern were disagreeing on how the story goes.

Whether or not downtime activities are used and which of those activities are available also helps support the campaign theme. I sometimes use them, sometimes don't. If I do use them, it's usually for a city-based campaign.

As well, in general, what races, classes, backgrounds, and whatnot are permitted in the campaign are the most recognizable dial. Same deal with what gets awarded experience points or character advancement.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

For Planescape, I added alignment descriptors as specifically defined by the rules (e.g. lawful good is "I can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society...") and put that in the Ideal personal characteristic. So this gave the players 5 ways to achieve 4 Inspiration per session (personality trait, ideal, ideal (alignment), bond, flaw). If they joined a faction, then I'd add a specific faction Bond as well, making it 6 ways to gain 4 Inspiration per session. This helped incentivize playing to alignment and joining factions and living up to their duties which supports the Planescape theme.

Nice. Good stuff as usual [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION]!

How about 7 ways to gain inspiration? PHB 123: "Give your character two personality traits." I hadn't noticed this bit until this year!

I also allow inspiration to stack at our table. Up to 3. And I let players vote for an inspiration award at the end of each session. The inspiration mechanic RAW requires the roll to be ahead of time, but I allow it (as I suspect many tables do) to be used after a failed roll. I might rethink that one in my next campaign.

As for another dial: we tried out the optional flanking rules and found them a bit gamey. My go-to for replacing this is that once three PCs are engaged in melee against a common enemy, I'll start dishing out advantage. Maybe adjusted for the size of the creature, maybe not. I suppose this really just comes under the advice on p 239 of the DMG, but it provides at least some baseline criteria though which the players can aim for advantage.

Another tweak our table has enjoyed is magic items which level up with the character. A +1 longsword found at 4th level might grant an extra 1d6 radiant damage vs fiends and undead at 8th level, become +2 at 12th level, and allow a 1/long rest casting of compelled duel at 15th level, etc. Inspired by Starwalker Studio's Relics of Power.

I've introduced an enemy spellbook rule, too. Copying out of a spellbook is the same as copying from a scroll. The pages will disintegrate after the (attempted) copying. It also prevents multiple wizards at the table from strategically picking different spells to double their pleasure, double their fun. Wait, what? Yeah, no copying out of spellbooks with impunity.

Multiclassing is an optional rule that is always on at our tables. Only 2 out of 32 players I've DMed for have done it, though.

Good thread!

 

[iserith]

Nice. Good stuff as usual @iserith!

How about 7 ways to gain inspiration? PHB 123: "Give your character two personality traits." I hadn't noticed this bit until this year!

Thanks. Yeah, technically it's a house rule of mine to just list one personality trait. Having a second one and then doing Inspiration as I do means 5 ways to gain 4 Inspiration. I just think 4 ways to earn 4 Inspiration over a 4-hour session is easier to remember and makes the occasions in which you have extra chances to earn them more special.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Some small house rules I incorporated.

1. Having more advantage than disadvantage means you are advantaged. Similar in the other direction. I don't like the idea that 6 advantages would be cancelled by a single disadvantage.

2. Anytime you use your action to roll to do something you have a passive score in (Perception usually) the WORST you can get for your result is Passive Score+1. Spending an action shouldn't make you worse at something than you are at all times.

3. Morganti blades (from the Jhereg series of books) always exist in my universe so that there is a danger in a world with affordable resurrection magic. They are basically soul-destroying weapons but not necessarily super magically powerful. Possession of one is a capital crime.

4. I use levels of fatigue a LOT to represent the tiredness of long distance travel. I am not going to make the party roll 500 climb checks to get over that mountain range, but when they camp after the descent they are going to be REALLY fatigued. I find being fatigued is scarier to a player than just having some HP damage.

5. Similarly I may describe a couple of encounters versus a bear or some goblins to a mid level party but not actually go through the effort of running the battles. Instead I fast-forward time by having the characters loose X amount of Hit Dice or Spell levels to represent the drain on daily resources without having to take hours of real time to do a battle I know they are going to win.

6. We never track individual arrows, rations, or similar unless the adventure at hand stresses the lack of access to these things as part of the setting.

7. We never really bother to track who is holding the torch or where it is during combats. Everyone just sees.

DS

 

[Oofta]

I have very minimal house rules or restrictions. I allow people to buy bows that use strength for example, and if you have a rogue that wants to back stab with a war hammer I don't care.


A couple other things are more thematic and campaign based such as limitations on long distance teleportation, plane shifting and limited raise dead. Resurrection is pretty much unheard of. I use the alternate rest rules where a short rest is overnight and a long rest is a week or more. Races are limited to ones that make sense to my world and I don't allow evil or chaotic insane characters.


I think the bigger impact is probably on rulings and style of play. I like to run descriptive games with a lot of focus on RP and story and I'm less concerned about the letter of the rules. As an example, I had a PC who wanted to play a tinker gnome that relied on "inventions". The artificer hadn't come out yet so his wild mage sorcerer used devices to cast "spells". He had a gun he would load with magic crystals for some spells, other spells like fireballs were grenades, in other cases "potions".


So while I more-or-less stick to the rules, fluff is pretty open. Having said all that I don't always say "yes". The world still needs to make sense to me and fit with the theme of the campaign and I think working around limitations can add to the game. But if you want to run a crazed tinker gnome lobbing fireball hand grenades we can probably work something out.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I am curious how folks go about changing 5E to suit their personal tastes. What optional rules do you use? What "dials" and "switches" do you incorporate to change the the way the game plays or feels? What rules do you toss out completely, change or double down on.

I just don't opt into Feats or Multiclassing - unless running AL, which I haven't for a couple years, now.

I like to run more or less off-the-cuff, keeping most of it behind the screen. I like & encourage the "play loop," want to hear actions declared, not skills or die rolls shouted out, I don't quite insist on goal + method, but mainly because I don't often remember to in the moment, IMHO, it's a solid idea. I've got a little table 'rule' (of thumb) about piling on checks: if one character declares an action, and others jump in wanting to try the same thing, especially with knowledge/perception & the like, then it becomes a group check. Been using that since late 4e.

Mostly, though, it's whatever works at the time. Don't let the rules hold you back. Don't even glance at 'em if you have a good idea.

 

[Gradine]

Only really conscious houserule I use is that I give barbarians a rage damage die instead of a flat rage damage bonus.

 

[Salamandyr]

Been a while since I've run a 5e game. I tried a lot of things; some were dials, some were house rules.

1) proficiency dice rather than a flat bonus
2) I instituted a level of success for every 5 points one beat the DC of an action; for instance in combat you got to roll another die of damange for every 5 points you beat the DC of an attack.--this replaced criticals, rewarded expertise, and helped get rid of the armored pillow fight
3) no rolls for monsters/npc's--the DC was usually their attribute number; for instance, if you were making a wrestling check your DC was the monsters 17 STR, not 13.
4) Perception worked like a save.

Things I'd like to do...
fewer class abilities, more game abilities
alchemy
re-work the fighter and warlock so that short rests could be eliminated
come up with an interesting mechanical replacement for the race section
greater verisimilitude in the armor and weapons table
kill feats--more game abilities
more interesting mechanical choices with non-magical flavor.
a barbarian subclass that actually feels like it could be used to represent Conan, or Thongor.

 

[Shiroiken]

1) There are no multiple attempts. If a check is made, it represents your ability to succeed or fail at the task. Unless a significant change of events occur, you can't try again for a better roll.

2) Passive checks are not comparing static numbers. I roll for the trap/hazard/etc against the passive score as the DC. This prevents an auto-success/auto-fail scenario in adventure design. In addition, since I roll for each player, it's possible for someone with a high score to fail, while someone with a low score might get lucky.

3) I added several weapon properties in order to balance the weapons. Off Hand was by far the easiest, used on 1d4 light weapons to allow them to work with non-light one handed weapons for two weapon fighting (e.g. longsword & dagger). Grapple allows a character to make a grapple attempt with the weapon as the required hand, but it can't be used against another target until the grapple ends. Brutal adds damage on a critical hit, but it can't be used to subdue.