D&D 5E What Is Your "Must-Have" House-Rule (If Any)?

[Shiroiken]

Hard to say, as I use a lot of houserules (sometimes I forget which is RAW, RAI and mine).

As a DM, I think the addition of resurrection penalties to Revivify. It's just better than all forms of resurrection if cast within 1 minuite, which isn't that harsh.

As a general rule, we allow 1d4 light weapons to be used with any other one handed weapon for Two Weapon Fighting. This pushes the damage to 1d8, 1d4, which is a flatter curve. In addition, once you add extra attack, it keeps TWF closer to the average damage.

 

[Iry]

Everyone starts with a feat at 1st Level.
There is no variant human.

 

[Bacon Bits]

• It is the player's responsibility to make a character that (a) is interested in cooperating with the rest of the party, and (b) is interested in going on any adventures presented. This was my only written house rule for a very long time and it was caused by a disastrous one-shot I ran in high school. Or, rather, tried to run in high school.
• Surprise rounds instead of 5e surprise. This one is mainly because nobody seems to remember how 5e surprise works. 5e surprise is much more nuanced than it needs to be and I don't want to explain it to the whole table for the 50th time. I want to have the ambushing side take their turns and then move to normal combat. 5e surprise is not a horrible system, but it's a needless change of a perfectly adequate system that everyone seems to intuitively understand.
• You can draw as many sheathed weapons as you have attacks. Because, come on, do we really need to nerf thrown weapons and two-weapon fighting even more? Do we really need feat benefits like "you can draw two weapons instead of one!" Ugh.

 

[Dausuul]

Short rests are 5 minutes. You are allowed two short rests between long rests.

I have other house rules, but this is the one that I find indispensable as both player and DM.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, my first houserule in any D&D edition is to get rid of the alignment and the second is to severely limit the resurrection magic.

 

[Coroc]

Silver standard for vanilla worlds instead of gold.
Quarter staff is 1d6 two handed use only.
No leather whatever armor, you got padded and brigandine. Btw. what is ring mail (It does not exist in my campaigns of course, like it never did exist IRL)?
No long sword. There is arming sword bastard sword and two handed sword (which is also named long sword in history).

These equipment houserules apply for all campaigns which i DM which are "standard" worlds e.g. like FR, GH.
I am a bit pedantic on the realism of weapons, armor and currency - to enhance my personal make believe.
I discuss other things with my players but these are my rule zero.

Game mechanic wise, i rule that on a nat 1 i can get creative as a DM (if i want to ), This applies for players as well as for monsters, of course.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Silver standard for vanilla worlds instead of gold.

You presumably mean directly replacing GP wit SP, effectively dividing the prices by ten? I tend to do that too, it is utterly absurd that a short sword would literally cost its weight in silver.

No leather whatever armor, you got padded and brigandine.

It would be weird to just directly replace studded leather with brigandine though. Brigandine is definitely not a light armour, it is very similar to lamellar.

 

[Nitrosaur]

Rangers are prepared casters the same way paladins are. I can't imagine why WotC didn't make them. That way to begin with.

 

[TheSword]

No Leomunds Tiny Hut, no Rope Trick.

Simples

 

[Weiley31]

For now, I'll list a few that come to my mind as the others are all in a notebook that I don't have on me right now.

-Players don't roll for HP. Instead they get max HP each level up.(So Fighters get 10hp each level up, Barbarians get 12hp each level up, etc)

-Warlocks get their Patron Spells added to their spell list automatically once they hit the levels they become available in the Class List feature and they don't count towards their spell list limits.

-Everybody starts off with a feat/super natural gift at Character Creation.

-We don't do Nerfs at the table. Example: Ancestral Barbarian gets to keep its D8.

-Noble(not the background but the class) gets an HP upgrade to D8 instead of D6.

-Critical Hit Damage: First die is ALWAYS maxed damage while the second die is rolled for damage. I rebuke having a Crit Hit only having the ability of doing 1+1 damage and then I roll an 8 on a 1D8 for a longsword and a non Crit Hit ends up doing more damage.