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

[DND_Reborn]

Actually, that was kind of my experience as well. Long story but in the last game we rolled one person rolled incredibly well (multiple 18s, nothing below 14) while another person rolled a single 14, a 10 and everything else below. The person with the super high stats felt guilty and committed suicide by goblin.

Man, the goblin must have felt so incredible!---until the party killed it, too.

 

[Oofta]

Hexes make it more difficult to gang up on a single foe as only 6 opponents can surround a target.

That's why they just swap out and one take the opp attack.

It works out to the advantage of team PC because I have at most 6 PCs and they're never all melee. It's also pretty rare that I'm going to have enough monsters to do that, I tend to go with mobs if it's a large number.

 

[The Green Hermit]

For simplicity we just keep diagonals at 5-feet each, but alternating 5/10 isn't hard IMO.

We do the same.

 

[The Green Hermit]

I'm probably an outlier, I've just gone to hexes instead of squares. Works more logically for my brain.

I use hexes for wilderness and squares for buildings.

 

[Oofta]

I use hexes for wilderness and squares for buildings.

I've thought of doing that, but basically I'm not a stickler for staying exactly in a hex in a building. The hexes are used to measure distance, nothing more. Generally speaking if there's half a hex you can stand there and we just use our judgement to see if squeezing should be involved.

Seems to work well enough. I don't do dungeon crawls, but I do have a heavy mix of urban and wilderness encounters.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don’t really find that anything is required for 5e to be the game I want to play, other than things in the realm of player options, and things that add some DM-side complexity that makes scenes more fun.

I really enjoy flanking, level 1 feat or supernatural gift, +1 stat when class grants a feat, and either rolling or using a slightly higher point buy, but none are super important. The level 1 feat is the most important of those, but I’d still enjoy the game without it.

It’s funny to me to compare this to 4e, my other favorite edition, where the good news was that I only wanted to change 3 things, and the bad news was those things were the basic PC math progression, monster HP, and to make most stacking bonuses no longer stack. An undertaking large enough I never actually did it.

 

[renbot]

Added a "breather", a 5-minute rest where all you can do is spend a number of hit dice equal to your proficiency modifier. Limit once per short rest

Reroll ones for any kind of healing if you have a d6 or d8. Reroll ones and twos if you have a d10 or d12

 

[Stormonu]

You can use a bonus action as a standard action.

Open-ended ability, saves and attacks rolls (roll nat 20, roll again; that roll can nat 20 and spring another roll; same for nat 1). This replaces crits, and add fumbles. On saves, with a nat 20 if it's a save for half, you can save again for none. Otherwise you can give a nearby ally affected by the same thing the chance to reroll a failed save. If neither apply, you can force the attacker to save against their own effect (indicating some sort of backlash, accident or whatnot).

Potions can be drunk as bonus action.

Inspiration point grant automatic success or a "yes,but..." story change. Only way to regain an inspiration is to invoke your flaw, which requires automatic failure on a check.

 

[Horwath]

For simplicity we just keep diagonals at 5-feet each, but alternating 5/10 isn't hard IMO.

 

[Azuresun]

I think the big one is "short rests take 5-10 minutes, but you can only benefit from two between long rests". It just feels so much more natural (patch yourselves up and get going), and makes short rests things that players actually do, even if they don't get anything but healing from it.

Druids can get the equivalent of metal armours from magically treated wood or stone, or armour made from the bodies of impressive monsters.

Object interactions and spell components work on a system of "just don't take the mickey".

I also give a bonus feat at level one, from a limited menu that is basically "feats that I've never seen in an internet build".