D&D 5E What Houserules Do You Use?

[cbwjm]

I've given up on house rules. It's just too much work to balance and then rebalance things. Make a tweak here, and you have to make five tweaks elsewhere, that snowballs into more and more tweaks.

So I stopped working on my houserules. This is what I got up to by the time I abandoned it: http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HJNivZ4Ag

Small wonder you gave up, that looks like way too much work. For me any house rules would be only 1 or 2 pages if that.

 

[Xaelvaen]

Your talent system sounds interesting and I would expect that that would allow for a lot of customisation of each character.

For the custom background requirement, what if someone wants to use one of the backgrounds in the book? Like, if I want to be a sage, would I have to create it or could I just use the sage background.

My players tend to use the written backgrounds as a sort of guide, but I turn the backgrounds more into the back -story- of the character. If they wanted to just have all the exact qualities of the Sage, that's not an issue, I'd just want them to fill in the blanks for how they were a sage, why, and all the other juicy character involvement. I in no way use it to hinder or repress the characters into not being able to use something that inspires them, as long as they shape it to that particular character - take it and make it their own, so to speak.

As for the talents, I believe there is a pdf on the DM's Guild for around $10 that someone did a similar idea. I'm not sure they're exact system or the balance or anything like that - I might make a list of the ones I use here on En World sometime, if I get the time.

 

[Li Shenron]

What kind of houserules have you all been using for 5E? One of my favorite parts of D&D is houseruling and customizing the game for my particular group or campaign.

I tend to run Eberron, so I've houseruled that everyone gets a feat at first level, so characters can have a dragonmark from the beginning. I'm also pondering adding in 4E-style action points that can be spent for a second action, once per long rest.

I also use a ton of DM's Guild content for my game: warforged, a revision of the artificer, stuff like that.

If you mean modifications or additions to player characters material or actual rules of the game, I am using zero House Rules.

If you mean the metagaming kind of House Rules, I am mainly using two:

- allowing a player to choose an alternative fate in case her character dies
- vetoing intra-party violent conflicts, such as stealing or trying to kill another PC

 

[Jester David]

1) Slower natural healing. The PCs only heal 1/4 when resting in an unsafe place (dungeon) and half in a safe but less comfortable place (camp). They only heal to full by resting for 24-hours in an inn.

2) Fate dice. Each player rolls 2 Fudge or Fate dice when making an attack or occasional ability check. On ++ something positive happens. On -- something negative happens.

 

[Tormyr]

One other house rule I forgot. Because I run adventures that are not necessarily combat heavy and can include lots of opportunities for rest, 8 hours sleep does not necessarily equate to a long rest. I instead work with the pacing of the adventure. For those of you familiar with chapter 1 of Zeitgeist, the party can have a short rest during Act 1, a long rest after Act 1, and then each night's rest on the island is a short rest. After the intermission between Acts 1 and 2, there is no long rest until the end of the chapter.

 

[hejtmane]

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.

I thought about that but this also rewards the rogue for going into melee, so melee rogues get a little buff instead of standing at range in safety. Then the Ranger does not have to dip into a feat

 

[GlassJaw]

I'm really surprised to see lots of house rules on slower natural healing or exhaustion when dropping to 0. That has to really slow the game down and be frustrating for the players. Players don't want to constantly enter combat at less than full strength. Players will simply spend more time resting and not adventuring. It also greatly increases the need for a dedicated healer.

D&D isn't the type of game for this level of real-world simulation. If you want an additional "burden" on players, I recommend enforcing the lifestyle rules and placing requirements on maintaining a certain lifestyle level to gain the benefits of healing.

 

[smbakeresq]

Many off the top of my head:

1. Crits do max damage then whatever the player rolled. Makes crits feel special, but watch out as it benefits monsters also.
2. Med kit is d6+hit dice +Medicine skill. Make medicine skill count for more.
3. Jumping is str or dex. Speed affects running jumps, every 5' of speed adds a foot to jump distance. Look at long jumpers and hurdlers and high jumpers, they are not strength behemoths, but they are fast.
4. Mob rules. They are good. Also for big groups, I just have half the minions use help action for the other half, so half rolls with advantage.
5. Don't use flanking - while its good the monsters outnumber your PC's greatly in most cases.
6. Combat maneuvers - Sure, the more PC get creative the better it is. Trips, disarms, etc. Monsters use them also. Its also a great way to keep PC's alive when they get low. I was having giants throw and boot PC's way before SKT.
7. Feats - they are optional but everyone uses them. Hey monsters get them also in certain cases, the PC who chooses SS and CE might see a hobgoblin specialist archer doing the same thing, or even worse a Storm Giant using SS at 1800 feet range.
8. The PC stuff - PC have optional type stuff from UA, that's ok by me after I look it over.
9. Size - I modify this, if you have large build trait I will let you use it in combat too, for example, a large build shield master can prone Huge creatures. You will also get an increase in die size for weapons. It should be more as a hook.
10. Reputation and Notoriety - sure. PC are heroes, they should be famous also.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I'm really surprised to see lots of house rules on slower natural healing or exhaustion when dropping to 0. That has to really slow the game down and be frustrating for the players. Players don't want to constantly enter combat at less than full strength. Players will simply spend more time resting and not adventuring. It also greatly increases the need for a dedicated healer.

D&D isn't the type of game for this level of real-world simulation. If you want an additional "burden" on players, I recommend enforcing the lifestyle rules and placing requirements on maintaining a certain lifestyle level to gain the benefits of healing.

While I haven't altered the rest/recovery mechanics at all, I do grant a level of exhaustion when a PC is knocked to 0HP. I find that this adds a certain gravity to going down that is otherwise not there. It also reduces the "whack a mole" effect that sometimes happens as a healer gets the fighter on his feet so he can attack and then go down again when a monster hits him, then the healer gets him back up, and so on.

It works quite well for our group. Time spent resting has not increased at all. There are usually time concerns involved that make the PCs press on rather than extending rest for days on end. Because exhaustion is such a potentially debilitating condition, the players are very careful about limiting it. No one's gone above level 2 exhaustion due to this rule.

 

[Yes]

I use the following houserules:

1 - Exhaustion

When a player gains a level of exhaustion, he/she chooses one of his stats and suffers a disadvantage penality to all related rolls (skills, saving throws, attacks...). If all her/his stats are affected, he dies.

I was reluctant to give players levels of exhaustion with the original table, because I felt like the first penalty litteraly ruined the game for the player affected. Disadvantage to all ability checks is way too harsh. If you have one player with a level of exhaustion in the groupe, he/she has to leave everythings that's not monster bashing to the other players and is probably not having a good time.

I felt like this solutions is a bit more interesting, realistic, and leaves a choice to the player. A seasoned warrior suffering from exhaustion might start by thinking less, or get a bit grumpy... but will still be able to lift the heavy stuff. Whereas a tired wizard might first become physically weak.

With this rule, I have less hesitation to give my players levels of exhaustion. Wich brings me to the second house rule

2 - Death and Exhaustion

To avoid players healing a few hp to a downed friend only to keep him up for a round, and not caring wether he/she gets knocked out again, when a player gets to 0 hp, and comes back to consciousness, he/she gains two levels of exhaustion.

This way, getting knocked out feels a little bit more dangerous, since you need a long rest to recover from a level of exhaustion. Three downs means death. And if you get knocked out two times, you better rest instead of going adventuring the day after.

But even with four level of exhaustions, the player can at least keep his/her main stats working... though admittedly, he/she won't be any good at anything else.


3 - Dungeons and rest

When players get into a dungeon situation. A closed building or underground caves, with lots of danger, I use the quicker rest rules from the DM's Guide : 5 minutes short rests, and 1 hour long rests. But at a price. When they get out of the place, and the tension drops, exhaustion catches up to them. They get one level of exhaustion for each short rest they took after the first, and two levels for each long rest. They can't accumulate more than 5 levels this way, or by being knocked down. If a player tries to rest in this state, he might simply fail gain any benefits, or collapse for a few days.

I use this rule to prevent dungeon camping. It doesn't feel right to have players stop for 8hours in a den full of monsters. I felt like this rules adds tension, players are less resting than mustering all their inner rescources to keep going.