D&D 5E Your Favorite 5e Houserule

[miggyG777]

One of my favorite things to do as a DM is to fiddle with the RAW to adjust them to my liking. And I am sure that most of you do too. I always like to hear what other people come up with in that regard. It is great inspiration and sometimes you find a well thought out houserule that you ask yourself how you could have ever played without it.
Therefore I want to ask you, what your favorite 5e houserule is, that you just can't live without anymore.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Alternate Ability Scores for skill checks.

Although technically it's a Variant rule that WotC actually wrote into the game so I don't know if it's falling within your definition of "house rules"... but I still count it and think it's the most necessary rule change I need for my game.

 

[cbwjm]

Most of my house rules are just small tweaks. One of my favourites is allowing sorcerers to choose any spell that suits their bloodline no matter which class spell list it's from.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Two of the few house rules I use:

1 - No dice rolls against other PCs. I don't want to spend an hour refereeing PvP because the rogue decided that they had to steal the barbarian's greatsword, watching bad blood steadily build in the adventuring party. It creates a few weird situations, but on the whole it heads off more problems than it causes.

2 - Passive Initiative for monsters. This was something Jeremy Crawford talked about, and it saves some time and brainspace when I can pre-calculate their initiative.

 

[TwoSix]

1) Plot coupon: If there's something special about your character, let me as the DM know and we'll work it in. Maybe you have a fairly heirloom sun blade. Maybe your character has 2 different subclasses. Maybe he's a cat who can wild shape into a wizard. Whatever, talk to me and we'll make it work. (This is a rule specifically to let my players know to not be afraid to go off the rails when making a character. I value fun, crazy concepts over absolute balance.)

2) Free feat at 1st level. Just opens up so many concepts, and a lot less people play VHumans.

3) For stats, 2d6+5 five times. Then sum and subtract from 76 to get your 6th stat.

4) After a long rest, reroll all your hit die and maximize one die. This is your new hit point total, if it's higher than your current hit point total.

 

[Olrox17]

Multiclassing is an optional rule. As such, the DM is allowed to nerf any unforeseeable overpowered multiclass combination at a moment's notice.
An example: in my game, eldritch blast scales on warlock levels, not character levels.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Simpler initiative tracking. Everyone rolls like normal, but then I call out “anyone higher than X”, X being what I rolled. So players have a bit more flexibility, and I don’t have to waste time going down all of the numbers. Then I go, then I call out everyone else can go.

 

[Nikosandros]

Short rest take five minutes. You can only take a rest once per hour and no more than three times per day.

 

[pogre]

Let the players dole out inspiration to each other.

 

[dave2008]

My group will never play another D&D game without using some variant of our hit point and armor house rules:

• HP and AC are calculated and used per the standard rules. No change.
• Additionally, each player gets a separate pool of bloodied hit points (BHP). BHP = [STR mod + CON mod] x Size (Medium = 1). The only way to increase this is with the Tough feat (1 BHP per 5/levels) or through magic or a charm, blessing, or boon.
• You take damage to BHP after your HP = 0. We have an optional rule to have critical hits apply to BHP, but it was too brutal for our group so we stopped using it. We might look at trying this again but requiring a confirmation roll on the crit (for the BHP part only)
• When you would take damage to your BHP, you first reduce the damage by your armor's DR. So if an attack does 10 damage and your DR is 5, you only take 5 damage.
  • Armor DR = armor AC-10
• When you are at 0 BHP you die.
• You regain HP normally, but you regain BHP at the rate of 1 BHP per extended rest (which is a week in our game) and the use of a healer's kit (for each point of recovery). With a successful medicine check (DC = 25-remaining BHP) you can gain an extra point of BHP or reduce the rest length to a typical long rest. And of course magic works too.