D&D 5E What Houserules Do You Use?

[iserith]

From my campaign forum:

Inspiration
Since I will not be able to keep track of 16+ individual personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, it will be on you to claim Inspiration whenever you play these out. I will always assume you are making a good faith claim. So if you have a personality trait that says, for example, "I idolize a particular hero of my faith, and constantly refer to that person’s deeds and example..." and you actually do that, say "I'm taking Inspiration for that." Or just output the personal characteristic into the chat. Then mark Inspiration on your character sheet.

The only limitation I'm placing on this is that you can't gain Inspiration for playing the same characteristic twice in a session. If, for example, you've claimed Inspiration for playing to your bond, you cannot earn Inspiration for playing to your bond again this session. You therefore have the opportunity to gain Inspiration four times during a given session.

On top of this, I added the following for my current campaign as I'm making alignment more relevant to the theme:

Alignment
Copy and paste the appropriate alignment for your character in the Ideal section of your personal characteristics. You can claim Inspiration for either your Ideal or your Alignment. This effectively gives you 5 different ways to achieve your 4 Inspiration for the session.

• Lawful Good. I can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society.
• Neutral Good. I do the best I can to help others according to their needs.
• Chaotic Good. I act as my conscience directs, with little regard for what others expect.
• Lawful Neutral. I act in accordance with law, tradition, or personal codes.
• Neutral. I prefer to steer clear of moral questions and don’t take sides, doing what seems best at the time.
• Chaotic Neutral. I follow my whims, holding my personal freedom above all else.
• Lawful Evil. I methodically take what I want, within the limits of a code of tradition, loyalty, or order.
• Neutral Evil. I do whatever I can get away with, without compassion or qualms.
• Chaotic Evil. I act with arbitrary violence, spurred by my greed, hatred, or bloodlust.

 

[flametitan]

Most of them are setting specific, but two I want to apply universally are: Beastmaster pet gets proficiency bonuses applied to all saves, revised ranger or no; and that the first person to come up with a recap of the last session gets an Inspiration.

I might also allow Inspiration to be rolled after the roll, but before the effects are applied.

 

[GlassJaw]

I stack levels of classes that have the extra attack feature, up to the lowest variant of extra attack between their classes. In example, fighter stacks with Barbarian/Ranger/Paladin for determining the level 5 extra attack feature, but you must be a full-fledged level 11 Fighter to get the third attack.

I like this concept because I feel multiclassing actually needs a boost but I would simply your implementation a bit. To determine Extra Attack, use your full Fighter level and half your Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger levels (don't round). You must have more fighter levels than level of another class to gain Extra Attack (2) and (3).

I make ASI character level based instead of class level based. My players really love this one, and 5E is so ridiculously easy to balance monsters to player capacity, who cares right?

I've thought about this but I wonder if it goes too far in boosting multiclassing. It also results in dead levels for classes when multiclassing (I assume you remove them from class progressions).

Proficiency Dice instead of a flat bonus. (More on this one, I also allow for an 'Expert Attack' or 'Expert Defense.' The player can opt out of rolling their proficiency dice on attack rolls to add it to damage instead, or to add one-half of their proficiency result to AC for 1 round).

Again, interesting, but I'm not sure more swinginess - especially on the player side - is an improvement. What was your goal for implementing?

 

[Satyrn]

From my campaign forum:

I just noticed something a little odd about your inspiration rule - a character has two personality traits but you're only letting them claim inspiration for one per session. Was this intentional?

 

[GlassJaw]

I have recently taken away twf bonus action and made it attack with the off hand once per turn

I like this but I would make it part of the Dual Wielder feat:

"When wielding two weapons and taking the Attack action, you may make an extra attack for free with your off-hand weapon (instead of a bonus action).

The Dual Wielder feat needs a boost anyway.

 

[iserith]

I just noticed something a little odd about your inspiration rule - a character has two personality traits but you're only letting them claim inspiration for one per session. Was this intentional?

I clipped off a little bit of the end which says only one characteristic per category. So characters will only have one personality trait.

 

[Nebulous]

Customized Initiative Deck.

Critical hits - maximize the first damage die (10 points on a d10) then roll a d10 and add it.

 

[Xaelvaen]

I like this concept because I feel multiclassing actually needs a boost but I would simply your implementation a bit. To determine Extra Attack, use your full Fighter level and half your Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger levels (don't round). You must have more fighter levels than level of another class to gain Extra Attack (2) and (3).

Sounds like it'd work pretty swell.

I've thought about this but I wonder if it goes too far in boosting multiclassing. It also results in dead levels for classes when multiclassing (I assume you remove them from class progressions).

I do not - a Fighter is intended to have more, so I just treated it like 3.5/PF; 'bonus feats' and ran with them at the level they'd get them. In truth, it mostly stems from how long we played 3.5 and we just like character level and class level being separated. I've noticed zero balance impact.

Again, interesting, but I'm not sure more swinginess - especially on the player side - is an improvement. What was your goal for implementing?

I had that exact same thought at first as well, but my players -feel- it is the exact opposite. More often than not, a high proficiency dice will save a crap d20 roll and still allow the character to perform what they are attempting (especially early on when you're talking 1d4 and 1d6). Obviously, as it goes with statistics, you'll get the low d20 and low proficiency, but that's actually fairly rare in practice. I just use flat numbers as a DM, because I don't want the monsters to have the same luxury of exceeding their bounded accuracy.

As far as my goal, we honestly tried it during the D&D Next playtest, and fell in love with it, so when the final rules released, we just tried it anyway and it worked phenomenally.

 

[flametitan]

Customized Initiative Deck.

I've been meaning to borrow that rule at some point. Hard part is thinking of which world to add it to. As I said before, I like trying to customize the house rules to capture a specific tone from my setting, and I don't know which yet best fits the more chaotic combat.

 

[Ed Laprade]

As I play a pretty loose version of 5e I set down a few at the start of my game.

Everyone gets a Feat at 1st level. (Some Humans get two.)
Roll for HP, but if you get less than half the die, it bumps up. (But we forget that one half the time.)
The big one is more than one background. Not everyone starts adventuring at 18, so I put in a rule for getting a second one if it fit the character. (Say, you're a street urchin, then you get a break and are apprenticed to a Wizard. That sort of thing.)
Critical Hit: max die roll plus a normal roll. (Plus stat mod., of course.) Another one we forget about half the time.
And there are a few more minor ones.