Level Up (A5E) What are your common house rules?

[Piperken]

One change I made to Exhaustion was to use the 2024 5E penalties to d20 tests and movement speed reduction, but kept the additional A5E Fatigue effects at particular levels (e.g. Cannot Sprint or Dash, changes to travel pace, HD reduction, etc.)

 

[Verall]

We played a lot of 4e back in the day, so initiative rolls can be Dec or Wis by default.

 

[Morrus]

We played a lot of 4e back in the day, so initiative rolls can be Dec or Wis by default.

They already can. Initiative in A5E can be any check the Narrator calls for. So this is not a house rule I’m afraid—it’s the actual rule.

 

[Verall]

They already can. Initiative in A5E can be any check the Narrator calls for. So this is not a house rule I’m afraid—it’s the actual rule.

I can appreciate that, you’re definitely correct.
For our group you can roll Dexterity or wisdom as a default (no narrator intervention required) as long as the narrator hasn’t called for another stat. Probably not much of a house rule in any case

 

[someguy42]

I would treat it the other way round. Inspiration should not be something that you are desperately holding onto in case you need it. Better if it refreshes once per long rest. And that way, it is not a game balance issue how often the destinies trigger inspiration.

Our GM lets us hold a number of inspiration equal to our PB so hoarding inspiration wasn't a thing for us. It was just the fact that we had one player who's destiny was constantly providing benefits every single session while the rest of us had ours come up so few. It didn't mater if it provided inspiration or whatever it was just the disparity between all the other destinies for us. Didnt help that we are terrible rollers as a party ( I swear roll20 is rigged).

 

[someguy42]

I can appreciate that, you’re definitely correct.
For our group you can roll Dexterity or wisdom as a default (no narrator intervention required) as long as the narrator hasn’t called for another stat. Probably not much of a house rule in any case

The roll20 character sheet defualts to wisdom so we used wisdom for a good year before i read the part about it being the DMs call. At that point we all agreed hey we have been using wisdom for this long lets just stick with it. Idk if that counts as a house rule.

 

[Tessarael]

Yes. The destinies vary significantly in how often they would be triggered to provide inspiration. The idea is good, but it doesn't seem that well-balanced. Handing out inspiration on a more consistent regular basis (e.g., long rest) avoids this problem.

We used Dexterity for initiative in Fantasy Grounds, as that is the default to my knowledge. I wasn't even aware that A5E had an alternative, to be honest, having come from a 5E D&D background to A5E.

 

[Selganor]

Specific house rules for artificer:

• If there aren't that many magic items available give "free" schematics every level up (like wizards get free spells into their spellbook)
• instead of having to have separate schematics for every variation of magical weapons (one schematic for a +1 dagger, another for a +1 sword, ...) there are 3 schematics (+1 magic weapon, +2 magic weapon, +3 magic weapon)
• since it isn't that easy for magical armor I split it into rarity (and maybe limit cost), so instead of +1 breastplate, +2 padded cloth and +2 chain shirt (which are all uncommon armor for 500 gp) you'd get an "uncommon magic armor (up to 500 gp)" schematic. If you just have an "uncommon magic armor (up to 250 gp)" schematic you'd pay half for that but you could only enchant +1 cloth brigandine, +1 chain shirt and +1 hide armor.

Another rule at tables where I play is the "player version" of the "Enchanting Gear" rule from AG p. 349:
- Enchanting Gear explains that an npc can transfer an enchantment from a magical item to a nonmalgical item for 1/3 of the cost of the item.
If a capable PC (I'm looking at you Artificer, Wizard, ...) wants to do so they can do for a cost of 1/4 of the item (so an NPC still would earn something for doing so) in appropriate materials.

 

[noodohs]

Specific house rules for artificer:

If you haven't already, you might want to check out the revised artificer, which I believe addresses at least the first point (it was a big sticking point for me that he thankfully fixed). It's called Advanced Artificers, technically it's 3PP but it's the same guy who wrote the original A5e artificer for the GPG. Went through a lot of community feedback and updated it to make a much, much better version (IMO).

 

[Waller]

If you haven't already, you might want to check out the revised artificer, which I believe addresses at least the first point (it was a big sticking point for me that he thankfully fixed). It's called Advanced Artificers, technically it's 3PP but it's the same guy who wrote the original A5e artificer for the GPG. Went through a lot of community feedback and updated it to make a much, much better version (IMO).

If I were the company which hired him to write the material I’d be discussing that with my lawyer.