D&D 5E What House Rules Can You NOT Live Without?

[DND_Reborn]

We I first tried 5E, I played without any house rules for the first three months (levels 1-5) and it worked well enough. Since then, I've gone back and forth on house-rules and what I really want and what I can choose to live with. So, curiosity compelled me to ask the forum:

What house-rules do you use in 5E that you really wouldn't want to give up? What house-rules do you feel are essential to 5E to make it the game you want to play?

Note: if you want to include a variant rule already in the core game, please feel free do include it.

EDIT: Please don't include things you've added as homebrew or third-party material. I am truly interested in house-rules that change an existing mechanic or rule. Thanks.

 

[jmartkdr2]

The only house rule I've kept and argued for after playing with it is "bonus action to drink a potion." It just makes potions so much more usable since they don't cost, in effect, a whole turn to drink.

Every other houserule I've tried has turned out to not be worth it: the added confusion of the change was greater than any improvement to actual play.

Note: I'm excluding homebrew content from houserules - we use homebrew and UA and third party stuff all the time and it's rarely an issue. I'm also excluding one-off rulings and Rule of Cool. To me, houserules means changing the existing framework - and 5e's framework is pretty darn good most of the time, to the point where long-term changes aren't worth the effort.

 

[NaturalZero]

Retraining.
You picked an ASI and want a feat later? Swap it. Your spells didn't work out and you need to swap a bunch but the book only lets you switch like one? Who cares? Swap it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If you consider using a Variant Rule in the books as a "house rule", then the one I will always use when feasible is the "Alternative Ability Score" variant for ability checks. I always want to be able to give the player an appropriate ability check for what they wish to do, and allow them to add their proficiency bonus to the roll if they are proficient in a skill that should apply... regardless of what ability score the base game assigns to the skill.

Besides this one... I also will almost always add and subtract skills from the skill list we use based upon the campaign we are playing.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Critical successes and failures on saving throws and ability checks. Spectacularly timed natural ones and twenties make for many of the most memorable moments in the game, and for saving throws they actually help maintain bounded accuracy by keeping there from ever being unsaveable or unfailable effects.

 

[NaturalZero]

If you consider using a Variant Rule in the books as a "house rule", then the one I will always use when feasible is the "Alternative Ability Score" variant for ability checks. I always want to be able to give the player an appropriate ability check for what they wish to do, and allow them to add their proficiency bonus to the roll if they are proficient in a skill that should apply... regardless of what ability score the base game assigns to the skill.

Yes! I remember the playtest when this was presented as how it might work. I think having all of the skills and tool profs decoupled from ability scores adds a ton of depth to the game.

 

[commandercrud]

Lingering injuries and gritty realism variants.

 

[DemoMonkey]

Opportunity attacks against targets getting up from prone or picking up a weapon off the ground. It makes actions that disarm an opponent or knocks them prone more viable, and lends a nice little extra tactical consideration.

(As an aside, having played every edition, I find 5E is the one where I feel the need to make the fewest tweaks).

 

[Shiroiken]

Nothing makes it unplayable, but there are a lot of nice things to fine tune it for our group.

Official Variants
Feats, Variable Skill Attributes, and Grid Diagonals. Feats add so much to the game, and while some are really good and others are garbage, their inclusion overall improves the game. Variable Skill Attributes keeps the DM from being trapped into either not allowing an appropriate skill or forcing an inappropriate ability. Grid Diagonals are because I hate firesquares.

Pure Houserules
Blindness doesn't negate blindness. If you can't see the attacker, and they can't see you, the attack is still at disadvantage, not normal. This means that swinging blindly at each other is really a bunch of wild misses, which is realistic.

All 1d4 Light weapons have a property called Off Hand, which allows them to be used with any other one handed weapon for two weapon fighting. This allows the typical sword & dagger to exist, since if you have the feat you can just use two longswords. It mathematically improves two weapon fighting once you get to the extra attack, preventing it from falling too far off from sword and board & great weapon.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think my only absolute must-have is skills with different ability scores, and specifically I call for ability checks and allow the player to decide if one of their proficiencies is applicable. Everything else I can take or leave, and while I enjoy tinkering with house rules a lot, when it comes down to it I tend not to use that many house rules.