D&D General what is the worst homebrew you have seen?

[CleverNickName]

The first four letters are the key: "home." This is a rule that was written for someone's home game...it was created by a particular person, to be used by a specific group of players, for a specific reason. Saying "this stuff is the worst LOL" without knowing anything else about it (especially who it was written for and why) is kind of rude. I'm not gonna crap all over someone else's table.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox. In the spirit of the thread:

The worst "homebrew" rule I've ever seen was last year, in our Eberron game. We were on a mission in the Demon Wastes, and our Dungeon Master was getting frustrated with the cleric, the paladin, and my wizard all using Banishment on his demons. So in the middle of combat, when the cleric cast that spell and one of his demons failed the save throw, the DM blew a fuse and declared that the Banishment spell no longer exists in the world. "It's gone okay? New rule, no more Banishment! You have to prepare a different spell for once and I swear if you start spamming it in every battle, I'll ban it also!"

We thought he was kidding, but nope. He was serious. I had to replace Banishment with Polymorph before the game could continue. (sad trombone)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The first four letters are the key: "home." This is a rule that was written for someone's home game...it was created by a particular person, to be used by a specific group of players, for a specific reason. Saying "this stuff is the worst LOL" without knowing anything else about it (especially who it was written for and why) is kind of rude. I'm not gonna crap all over someone else's table.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox. In the spirit of the thread:

The worst "homebrew" rule I've ever seen was last year, in our Eberron game. We were on a mission in the Demon Wastes, and our Dungeon Master was getting frustrated with the cleric, the paladin, and my wizard all using Banishment on his demons. So in the middle of combat, when the cleric cast that spell and one of his demons failed the save throw, the DM blew a fuse and declared that the Banishment spell no longer exists in the world. "It's gone okay? New rule, no more Banishment! You have to prepare a different spell for once and I swear if you start spamming it in every battle, I'll ban it also!"

We thought he was kidding, but nope. He was serious. I had to replace Banishment with Polymorph before the game could continue. (sad trombone)

man I wish I could say I have never seen this (not with banishment but I have seen these)

 

[jgsugden]

Probably the stuff we came up with when we were 9-12 years old.

Oh so this right here ^!

I see out of balance, poorly thought out and offensive stuff all the time when I dredge through D&DBeyond Homebrew or other free resources to see if someone already built something I want to add to my setting (or to give me a starting point on updating something I had years ago in a prior edition). In the end, the worst of those are the ones that are almost good because I spend more effort to determine whether to use them or not - and get no benefit from it. But still - just a few moments of my time are lost.

On the other hand, there are decisions I made when I was very young that highly influenced my campaign world in ways that would persist for DECADES and brought nothing but frustration, and sometimes well deserved mockery. Some of them were whimsical attempts at humor. Some of them were my implementation of things that looked cool on film. Some of them were me thinking I was sooooooo clever - but wasn't. Some of it was a real balance issue. It wasn't all bad - but DANG IT some of it was icky. And, because I built it, implemented it and worked it into my campaign in a meaningful way, I was stuck with it and had to live with it because I've always considered it unfair to pull the rug out on players - once I add it, it stays unless the story takes it out.

There is no pain like self inflicted pain.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

there is a youtube video that is reviewing the most down voted ones on D&D beyond and I found a 9th level spell I am refluffing as a 10th level rituel and going to use... Destroy Universe.
Aarau's destroy universe

 

[SkidAce]

The worst "homebrew" rule I've ever seen was last year, in our Eberron game. We were on a mission in the Demon Wastes, and our Dungeon Master was getting frustrated with the cleric, the paladin, and my wizard all using Banishment on his demons. So in the middle of combat, when the cleric cast that spell and one of his demons failed the save throw, the DM blew a fuse and declared that the Banishment spell no longer exists in the world. "It's gone okay? New rule, no more Banishment! You have to prepare a different spell for once and I swear if you start spamming it in every battle, I'll ban it also!"

We thought he was kidding, but nope. He was serious. I had to replace Banishment with Polymorph before the game could continue. (sad trombone)

I mean I understand their plight, but nuking it from orbit was a bit overkill. lol.

 

[SkidAce]

Oh so this right here ^!

I see out of balance, poorly thought out and offensive stuff all the time when I dredge through D&DBeyond Homebrew or other free resources to see if someone already built something I want to add to my setting (or to give me a starting point on updating something I had years ago in a prior edition). In the end, the worst of those are the ones that are almost good because I spend more effort to determine whether to use them or not - and get no benefit from it. But still - just a few moments of my time are lost.

On the other hand, there are decisions I made when I was very young that highly influenced my campaign world in ways that would persist for DECADES and brought nothing but frustration, and sometimes well deserved mockery. Some of them were whimsical attempts at humor. Some of them were my implementation of things that looked cool on film. Some of them were me thinking I was sooooooo clever - but wasn't. Some of it was a real balance issue. It wasn't all bad - but DANG IT some of it was icky. And, because I built it, implemented it and worked it into my campaign in a meaningful way, I was stuck with it and had to live with it because I've always considered it unfair to pull the rug out on players - once I add it, it stays unless the story takes it out.

There is no pain like self inflicted pain.

Yeah, i.e. my penchant for naming things by spelling them backwards...looking at you "Drolkrad"

 

[Ancalagon]

There is no bottom, stop trolling for it. The worst attempt at homebrew is more creative than clickbait slagging it.

Nah.

Exhibit 1:

 

[mamba]

I mean I understand their plight, but nuking it from orbit was a bit overkill. lol.

add more demons, give them a legendary resistance, which they then use on the first Banishment…

 

[RangerWickett]

Worst thing I've personally written and implemented?

I'm currently running a game with mindscape psychic shenanigans, and I did a Matrix-esque 'training montage' to instruct both players and PCs on how to fight in the mindscape. One player pointed out that I'd basically created a whole new combat system that operated in parallel to the physical one, and that there was nothing stopping a party of 5 PCs from spamming 'stunlock' abilities in the mindscape as bonus actions, then running up and stabbing the helpless enemy in reality with their normal actions. So I changed that.

Alternately, it was the time we all got super drunk and I tried to invent a new game system on the fly, using coins to represent how 'popular' you were, for an adventure with the premise that terrorists were attacking our colleges fraternities and sororities. You could pay other people coins to make them do things. For one thing, it was just a bad system (e.g., "I use my popularity to tell the terrorist he's a poser and should just die"). But for another, one of the players found my coin jar and I was too drunk to notice him stealing a pile of coins so he had nigh-infinite popularity.

Worst thing I've personally published?

Admiral o' the High Seas, a ship combat system I designed for 4e that fell into the unfortunate middle ground of 'too mechanically dense to be fast' but also 'not mechanically nuanced enough to really make your tactics matter much.' It was the RPG equivalent of 'this meeting could have been an email.'

Since then I've made a much superior version, learning from the lesson of AotHS, which runs a lot faster.

 

[CleverNickName]

add more demons, give them a legendary resistance, which they then use on the first Banishment…

Oh we wear down those legendary resistances early in combat: our monk would start the ball rolling with stunning strike + flurry of blows, then the bard would cast Hold Monster, then my wizard would cast Banishment, then the cleric would cast Banishment, then the paladin would cast Banishment. If the monster still had any LRs remaining, we would do it again on Round 2, then Round 3, upcasting it as needed if we started running low on slots. Because come hell or high water, we were going to banish that demon.

So yeah, I understand how annoying that can be. But in our defense?

They're demons, for crying out loud. The only reason they exist at all is to be summoned and then banished. Also: when you tell the party they are going to a place called "The Demon Wastes," then tell them that the big-bad is a big ol' demon, and then give them literally nothing but demons to fight for eight straight gaming sessions (I'm not exaggerating), you can't act surprised when your players make heavy use of Demon-Be-Gone^TM.

If I had been the DM? I would have added in a couple of non-demon cultists...human fanatics who can cast Counterspell a lot. Or maybe I would create a custom demon that can cast Counterspell as a legendary action. (It's no coincidence that Banishment and Counterspell have the same range.) But there are lots of other choices...liches, beholders, dragons...