D&D 5E Weirdest House Rules You've Encountered in the Wild

[billd91]

Weirdest house rule I ever encountered had nothing to do with a misread or any poorly understood rule. But PCs could attack the DM and, if they killed him, the campaign was over. The players could also award the DM XPs for particularly good encounters or sessions and the DM could gain levels (making him harder to kill and thus end the campaign).

 

[commandercrud]

Weirdest house rule I ever encountered had nothing to do with a misread or any poorly understood rule. But PCs could attack the DM and, if they killed him, the campaign was over. The players could also award the DM XPs for particularly good encounters or sessions and the DM could gain levels (making him harder to kill and thus end the campaign).

So he was a character like in the cartoon?

 

[Oofta]

Weirdest house rule I ever encountered had nothing to do with a misread or any poorly understood rule. But PCs could attack the DM and, if they killed him, the campaign was over. The players could also award the DM XPs for particularly good encounters or sessions and the DM could gain levels (making him harder to kill and thus end the campaign).

I've disagreed with my DM now and then, but never enough to actually kill them!

 

[Charlaquin]

Weirdest house rule I ever encountered had nothing to do with a misread or any poorly understood rule. But PCs could attack the DM and, if they killed him, the campaign was over. The players could also award the DM XPs for particularly good encounters or sessions and the DM could gain levels (making him harder to kill and thus end the campaign).

That’s actually pretty cool. What were the DM’s stats like to begin with?

 

[billd91]

So he was a character like in the cartoon?

Not literally in the sense that he wasn't present as a character walking around. But he was a... presence... in the campaign that could be targeted by a PC.

 

[billd91]

That’s actually pretty cool. What were the DM’s stats like to begin with?

The DM started at 1st level and had some single hit die worth of hit points, but that's all I remember of the specifics. Players who wanted the campaign to continue could defend the DM by parrying the attack and, if successful, the DM survived and the campaign continued.

 

[Shiroiken]

Had a weird group that had "bod-e-man," that were amorphous humanoid beings with 1 HP and could not attack in any way. The PCs could just pick them up and they would periodically die off. They served no real purpose, except to ignore encumbrance. Of course players, being players, starting figuring out ways to use them to great advantage without them ever officially making an "attack." For example, the tinker gnome made the equivalent of a steamroller that could be driven by a bod-e-man because avoiding the damage was a saving throw, not an attack. When we got a lot of them, they became "trapfinders," leading the party down into the dungeons. The DM greatly regretted the incorporation of the bod-e-man, but his brother adamantly forced him to keep them for the campaign (this was in high school).

 

[Weiley31]

Odd house rules: When you went down a level (in a dungeon) you automatically went up a level (in character). Which isn't the odd part.

The odd part is that the reverse was also true.

That always killed me when a video game did that. I don't know how I'd be able to deal with something like that in a Pen and Paper rpg.

 

[Guang]

A player could use half of his accumulated lifetime XP and gold, and half of everything else he had, to begin to create a setting of his own. Once the setting was completed, he got all of his XP and gold and such back again.

 

[Minigiant]

A barbarian could instead of Rage, could go into other extreme emotionial states like Horror or Joy.
Just not Calm as it would turn you into a monk.