What's Your Favorite House Rule?

[Irda Ranger]

Rolling for Hit Points. Every time you level up, you roll your entire Hit Dice pool. (e.g., at 10th level a Fighter might roll 10d10+30). If the new total is higher than your current Max HP, take the new total. Otherwise you get +1 HP from your previous Max HP.

The benefit of this system is that you're not stuck with rolling 1 HP for the rest of the character's life. A bad HP roll is only with you until you level up again, then you get another shot.

Over the long term, Max HP converges pretty close to the mean, since it's hard to roll straight 10s with large dice pools. But even if you do roll straight 10s at, say, 12th level, you'll probably never do that again and just get +1 HP for a while until your Max HP reverts to the mean again.

 

[Razjah]

How do your players like this? I've seen house rules like this before, but I don't recall seeing how the players found the experience.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Rolling for Hit Points. Every time you level up, you roll your entire Hit Dice pool. (e.g., at 10th level a Fighter might roll 10d10+30). If the new total is higher than your current Max HP, take the new total. Otherwise you get +1 HP from your previous Max HP.

I think that's the default rule in... Hackmaster, I want to say? It's definitely a book that I looked through, at some point, and remembered that as one of its few good ideas.

 

[GMMichael]

Just to point out - any rule is valid for use as a house rule, even rules from other games. In fact, since good ideas are often published ideas, other games are a great place to find house rules.

By the way, I would probably be too lazy to count 10d10 and just take the +1.

 

[Silver Moon]

Hehe.... We have a really, really silly house rule. If anyone, or any reason rolls 00-07 (007) on %, instead of saying what their % is they have to play the James Bond theme on their phone. Also the DM will roll again to see if he gets plus or minus 7 of 07 (00-.14) - if THIS happens they now have "a licence to kill", redeemable once. The licence can be given to any law enforcement officer, any judge, justice or magistrate, even to a King or Emperor in exchange for clemency for a death they have caused which may be something the authorities might have a problem with.

Love it!

A few from our group:

If a dice accidentally falls onto the floor you can keep the roll instead of having to re-roll it if it lands on the highest number.

Experienced players can begin new characters at 2nd Level, but with zero experience points. That way they still need the same experience points to reach third, but have a better chance to actually get to that point.

If a player is absent from a game and their character is being played as an NPC then the character cannot be killed (maimed and unconscious is fine).

 

[Sadras]

Favourite house rule: 4 out of the 5 players can make the time & date = confirmed gaming session

Given everyone's busy schedule, this is our no.1 rule.

 

[Spookykid]

Initiative on the 2nd and later rounds of combat is in random card draw order.

 

[Emirikol]

Every system that I've ever run:
1. Death is permanent. Always have a back up character. To help you if you don't know where to start, I've created a random character generator (Excel or Google Sheets) for every game we play.

2. Hero points/Action points/Inspiration/whatever it is in this system: You can only use them in SPECIAL ways if you have a reason. These include things like Story-Edits and Re-Rolls (beyond the simple +1 or 'advantage roll)
Examples:
* You can use a limited amount of reasons from the crappy, orphan-murder-hobo, 22-page background you wrote (keep writing..it doesn't matter to me)
* You can invoke actual scenario experiences your character has had during leveling
* Some games lend themselves better than others: D&D has soooooooooooooooooooooo much combat, that we usually don't bother allowing "story edits" or re-rolls. We just use the meaningless inspriation/+1/etc.

3. Fumbles: My fumble rules, all games, work like this: You can drop yoru weapon out of reach, or you can do a crit on what you're fighting, but your weapon breaks (or becomes damaged)



..

 

[Xaelvaen]

Plot Points Every player begins each session with 3 plot points. A plot point is used to redirect the direction of the story or softly alter a situation. In example, an acrobatic rogue is stuck in an ally with two different factions of enemies closing in on him from each side. Because we use theatre of the mind a lot, he decides that just because I -didn't- mention a stack of crates to one side doesn't mean that there isn't a stack of crate to one side. He gives me his plot point (which goes to a DM pile) and thus, the stack of crates has always been there. He scrambles up them, onto the roof, and takes off running to avoid a nasty situation. In practice, though, it seems my players use them most when they forgot something. Two days into overland travel: "Oh, here's a plot point, I forgot to buy rations." or similar things. I normally don't make them nitpick their inventory, but they're a great group of micro-managers, so they pay attention to the little details... when they remember.

Danger Like others have said, we don't use resurrection magic - death is death. However, we compound this further. I've divided hit points (DnD 5E) into Vigor and Health. Vigor is your stamina - losing this does nothing but make you winded. It represents not an enemy's hammer hitting you and doing nothing, but rather a defense maneuver that leaves you winded and gasping for air. With a Long Rest, it comes back completely. Health, however, represents real physical injuries, and with a long rest, you only get back an amount equal to your Constitution Modifier. Hit Dice work like normal, but a long rest only restores half your maximum hit dice (rounded up). Suffice it to say, it's rather easy to die in our more dungeon-crawl type campaigns, and that's just the way we bloody like it.


I know you asked for favorite, but these are tied for my favorite, so here you go.

 

[Emirikol]

Great rule about "play as long as x number players can show". Ours is 3 players minimum.
Another is : No player holds the game hostage. Your character is somehow important to the story? To bad. You're not here. You not get xp. Your character disappears POOF. Fighting a dragon next session and the fighter is gone? Awww shucks.

No electronics for ftf games. Step away if you gotta text/phone. No computer rulebooks. Similar distraction rule: Game sessions are not therapy sessions. Yes, we're friends and we're here to game, not be your therapist and hear endless details about how your week was. Save the therapy for after the game.