D&D 5E What are your 5e houserules

RoughCoronet0

Dragon Lover
A few more house rules I’ve thought of….
  • Flanking gives advantage on attacks.
  • Wizards gain a language called Arcanic. Another language added to the game is Necral, the language of necromancers, undead, and creates of shadows.
  • Spells and abilities that allow you to read any language only work on normal text. There are ways to block access to certain written works from those that don’t fully know a particular language (Arcanic, Druidic, and Thieves Cant being common ones that get warded to prevent outsiders from reading what is written)
  • Not all diseases are curable with a restoration spell.
  • Monsters have effects that trigger when they hit the bloodied condition (half health), Some are minor effects, while some can drastically change a fight.
 

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cbwjm

Seb-wejem
A few more house rules I’ve thought of….
  • Flanking gives advantage on attacks.
  • Wizards gain a language called Arcanic. Another language added to the game is Necral, the language of necromancers, undead, and creates of shadows.
  • Spells and abilities that allow you to read any language only work on normal text. There are ways to block access to certain written works from those that don’t fully know a particular language (Arcanic, Druidic, and Thieves Cant being common ones that get warded to prevent outsiders from reading what is written)
  • Not all diseases are curable with a restoration spell.
  • Monsters have effects that trigger when they hit the bloodied condition (half health), Some are minor effects, while some can drastically change a fight.
I'll often add the bloodied condition trigger to monsters, make them a little more interesting. Sometimes it's an aura effect that hinders or harms the PCs other times its an immediate attack that interrupts initiative. It was one of the best things to steal from 4e.
 

House rules for our Curse of Strahd/Ravenloft West Marches campaign:

1. Death save failures only reset upon a long rest, healer's kit use, three successful death saves, or nat 20 on a death save. In other words, magic does not reset death save failures.
2. Players award their own inspiration (ala @iserith)
3. Paladins must announce Smite before their attack roll (if it is a miss, the spell slot is not consumed, though)
4. Cinematic advantage
 


jgsugden

Legend
Very, very few - and they're mostly 'add ons' rather than changes.

Vision: Rather than just darkvision, I have Darkvision, Low Light Vision (dim light = bright light, an area of dim light exists in double the normal dim light radius), Infravision (think Predator), and Ultravision (very narrowly tailored and useful primarily for arcane purposes).

Flanking: I don't grant advantage for flanking - that is too easy. Instead, flanking is a lockdown maneuver.If you flank an enemy, that enemy provokes OAs whenver theymove (not just when they leave reach). There is a caveat where they can avoid this penalty by giving one of the flankers a free attack (no reaction requirement), but that is there to prvent the 'trivial flank'.

Invisibility: Most effects that grant invisibility also grant the receipient the ability to do a stealth check as a free action when they turn invisible. This is an effective rule change, but not a true one, as I introduce it by creating alternative versions of these invisibility granting abilities and spells.

Potions: Drinking it yourself is a bonus action. Giving it to another is a (standard) action. You can pop potions in your mouth and then swallow them later as a free action, although if they're still in the container, it may cause issues (damage, delays in taking effect, etc...) and you can't talk while it is in your mouth.

Touches: No, not touch spells. Certain things leave a permanent stain on the soul. Death leaves a Deathtouch on the soul. Traveling to a plane leaves a touch on the soul (Going to the Shadowfell leaves you Shadowtouched, the Feywild leaves you Feytouched, the Hells will leave you Helltouched), etc... These touches do not directly impact PCs, but there are a lot of spells, monster abilities, etc... which change if these touches are on you. There is no way to remove any of them - not even Wish.
 
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SkidAce

Legend
Supporter
Touches: No, not touch spells. Certain things leave a permanent stain on the soul. Death leaves a Dethtouch on the soul. Traveling to a plane leaves a touch on the soul (Going to the Shadowfell leaves you Shadowtouched, the Feywild leaves you Feytouched, the Hells will leave you Helltouched), etc... These touches do not directly impact PCs, but there are a lot of spells, monster abilities, etc... which change if these touches are on you. There is no way to remove any of them - not even Wish.
Fascinating...something similar about binding to a plane has been floating in my thoughts, but this is neat!
 

Jahydin

Hero
When rolling hit points, you can use the number you rolled on the die or the average roll for that die, whichever is best.
We tried that for our first campaign, but buy 10th level the HPs were skewed so high I couldn't drop a character to save my life!
 




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