D&D 5E What houserules do we assume is common in the community?

[ECMO3]

Yeah, I hate handling luck, as well as the "lucky" feat. I think they are bad for the story and actively make the game less fun. We love natural 1s at my table.

Halfling lucky has almost no effect on the story RAW. A "natural 1" almost never has story implications RAW. A natural 1 fails to hit on all attacks but a 1 succeeds on both checks and saves if the bonuses push it over the DC. In this respect it is just another number, 5% worse than a natural 2. So RAW from a story perspective a "natural 1" is only significant on an attack roll and only then if it is something that could otherwise hit if AC is low enough.

In this respect a ring of protection has more impact on the story than Halfling Lucky. So does a racial skill proficiency at level 1 or the guidance spell or a host of other things widely available to 1st level characters.

Now if you are playing with critical failures (my scorching ray hits an ally or my sword breaks) or if you play a houserule that a 1 always fails a check or save regardless of DC. Then yes there are significant story implications to halfling lucky. But I specifically suggested halflings as a counter to those house rules for players who do not like them. This brings the game back in line with RAW and overcomes the very story implications that the DM is introducing with houserules.

 

[Lanefan]

I used to make jokes about "Beer Hats" for potion-drinkers.

View attachment 287871

Clearly someone's not using the potion miscibility rules from 1e...

 

[Clint_L]

Halfling lucky has almost no effect on the story RAW. A "natural 1" almost never has story implications RAW. A natural 1 fails to hit on all attacks but a 1 succeeds on both checks and saves if the bonuses push it over the DC. In this respect it is just another number, 5% worse than a natural 2. So RAW from a story perspective a "natural 1" is only significant on an attack roll and only then if it is something that could otherwise hit if AC is low enough.

Of course we play with natural 1s meaning critical failures! Because we play for fun, and critical failures are fun, even more so than critical successes. We've had whole story arcs come out of critical failures. Plus, including them makes dice rolls way more exciting.

So I also ban the lucky feat and Halfling luck. They are fun regulators.

 

[MNblockhead]

There are some popular houserules, like handwaving Ammo and carrying capacity,

VTTs and digital character sheets make this trivial to track, so I enforce them. When I was playing in person with pen and paper, I just applied a loose reasonableness test.

that the D&D community kinda assumes is common enough that if you were to walk into a random table, you could expect not to run the rules RAW.

I don't walk to any random table with expectations regarding house rules. There is too much variability among DMs. The only situation where I think expecting game to be run RAW is in organized play games like Adventurer's League.

What are those houserules and what do you think about the idea of houserules so common that you don't even ask your DM/tell your players about it?

For me, personally, none. As a DM I clearly lay out the campaign world and any home rules, reserving the right to adjudicate on the fly. I've been playing with the same group for years and we generally decide on the campaign and house rules by consensus.

When joining another groups campaign or playing in a convention game, I roll with whatever the DM decides.

In my experience the house rules that most players prefer, if not expect, is a certain amount of hand waiving on encumberance, ammo, and spell components. I large number of players just detest granular resource management.

Regarding components in general, this is a case-by-case home rule situation for me. I generally try to support the players' character concepts. I have no issue with weapons or shields being treated as foci and that the movement of the weapon or shield being treated as somatic components of the spell. Its cool, make in-world sense (to me), and of all things that get me concerned about balance, this is gives me no concerns. The one exception is verbal components. It is difficult to cast spells with verbal components without other noticing. I want things like Sorcerer's subtle casting to mean something. I might allow players to make a deception or performance check while casting spells when they don't want others to detect that their characters are doing so, but it is very situation specific.

I have a campaign on the back burner that would be a wizard focused campaign in a low magic setting where I would not allow magic foci and material components would be tracked and be a big part of the quest lines. But my current group of players aren't interested in it. In an old post in EN World a few years ago I was actually accused of being a bad DM for thinking about enforcing that (as well is limiting character and race options).

It seems most of the players I have interacted with REALLY hate having to track or even think about spell components. I have to find those folks who spend hours collecting herbs, fungus, and butterflies in Skyrim. I can't be the only one, right?

I house rule light mostly for my own sanity because it is a pet peeve of mine how torches are depicted in games and media. Since I've moved to a VTT, however, vision and lighting have come back to being played pretty much RAW as the software takes care of it and has cool graphic effects when you are using dark vision versus lighting. I've long escaped the verisimilitude trap and am no longer a jerk about torch smoke, time for eyes to adjust to darkness, etc. During times when I run things by theater of the mind, I just fudge and describe things in a way that feels right.

 

[Stormonu]

I would also like to ask:

How would you, as a DM, feel if a player was upset that you weren't using a certain common houserule?

And how would you feel as a player if a DM doesn't use a houserule that you were used to?

"Get over it"

 

[billd91]

Of course we play with natural 1s meaning critical failures! Because we play for fun, and critical failures are fun, even more so than critical successes. We've had whole story arcs come out of critical failures. Plus, including them makes dice rolls way more exciting.

So I also ban the lucky feat and Halfling luck. They are fun regulators.

Wow. That would be some super alien thinking among the groups I game with. Aside from us not using combat fumble rules (which really are fun killers for fighters), my players cheer when halfling luck gets triggered.
Plus the cries of dismay when the halfling rolls a 2 (aka, the halfling "one") just get me to trot out the Nelson Munz "HA ha!" response.

 

[Stormonu]

Not according to the rules on spellcasting for spells with somatic components.
"...the caster must have free use of at least one hand to perform these gestures."

If you have a shield equipped and are holding a weapon you do not have a free hand.

We use this houserule of not having to "have a free hand" in my games, and my friends use it in their games.

We figure the cleric/paladin/druid/bard/ranger* either stuffs the weapon under their arm to cast, or uses the hand behind the shield to do any finger-wiggling. We allow wizards/sorcerers/warlocks to do similar while keeping wands and/or daggers in their hand without having to put them away.

Now, if the character specifically had their hands bound or otherwise restrained, we don't allow S spells to be used.

* Not allowing it really hurts rangers using bows

 

[AmandaBarbarian]

The easy fix for this is to play a Halfling.

This houserule makes the Halfling the most powerful race, especially on a martial. When your DM asks why you have a party of 5 Halflings tell him, we never want to fumble but we want to take advantage of the enemy fumbling. This will tilt the game so heavily in your favor it is likely the DM will change the rule.

funny thing, the one time I met a DM who wanted to do 'critical fumbles' I did this to be able to reroll 1s and he freaked out after a few times of it working.
I was not asked back to that game.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

* Not allowing it really hurts rangers using bows

Don't most people rule that you only need one hand to hold a bow? You only need two to shoot it.

 

[jmartkdr2]

We use this houserule of not having to "have a free hand" in my games, and my friends use it in their games.

We figure the cleric/paladin/druid/bard/ranger* either stuffs the weapon under their arm to cast, or uses the hand behind the shield to do any finger-wiggling. We allow wizards/sorcerers/warlocks to do similar while keeping wands and/or daggers in their hand without having to put them away.

Now, if the character specifically had their hands bound or otherwise restrained, we don't allow S spells to be used.

* Not allowing it really hurts rangers using bows

For example, RAW, a warlock cannot use a rod of the pact keeper to cast eldritch blast. They hold the rod in their off hand and the rod adds power to the spell, but the spell cannot be cast through the rod per se, it's just their while the spell is cast freehand.