What are some odd house rules your DMs have/had (you're the player)?
I had a DM at the beginning of the campaign say that characters could die, and we should consider backup characters. I asked him later on if a particular race was allowed for my backup character and he practically jumped down my throat saying he had a rule not to discuss backup characters. He's the one who told us we needed one...not sure how he expected me to work on the concept if he wouldn't answer a question about it.
A DM that I no longer play with had a few weird ones. (Parenthesis will include my thoughts.)
If your character wasn't proficient with a skill then any roll above a 10 counted as a 10. An exception was made for physical skills such as Athletics and Acrobatics. (You know, the two of the four proficiencies a monk is going to have.)
You could not obtain the benefits of a long rest unless you were in an inn. (No Tiny Hut didn't count.)
It was a sandbox game. You could do anything you wanted, but you would not advance a level without advancing his story line. (Good luck finding the next part!)
After letting him know I took the spell, he angrily let me know that if I attempted to use Tiny Hut in a dungeon to take a rest he would have a monsters burrow in below to interrupt the rest. (No idea why he didn't ban the spell.)
You couldn't just create a character and backstory. You had to do it step by step with him, choosing the race, class and background with him, then rolling from the Xanathar's tables for your character's age and backstory.
He was also the type that wanted you to have a backup character.
I've mostly been the DM, so in clearly not going to think my rules are strange 😆
Probably the strangest was that Knock required a roll. Basically, I was spending a spell and spell slot to change the ability modifier from Dexterity to the spellcasting modifier. Pretty frustrating for my Wizard when we had a Rogue who could roll just as well but without spending spells or resources on it.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
No Halfling Divination Wizard. You could be a Halfling. You could be a Divination Wizard. You just couldn’t be a Halfling Divination Wizard.
Great Weapon Master feat not allowed. Sharpshooter was allowed.
Wow. That reminds me, and this happened with 2 DMs: It was ok to use custom stats (from Tasha's) to change the WIS bonus on a race to INT or CHA (i.e. for a Loxodon)...but they had to approve each time though because they didn't believe in something like...a very smart orc wizard. They were holding on to the racial stereotypes from 2E....something D&D is trying to get away from.
Oh, I've seen that with feats. Like...pole arm master is not allowed but everything else is.
They were holding on to the racial stereotypes from 2E....something D&D is trying to get away from.
It seems weirder to believe that a halfing and gnome can be just as strong (without magical items) as a much larger orc or ogre. So their "holding on" doesn't seem weird to me. But this is the first time I've seen "lore mechanics" referred to as "stereotypes".
Honestly it's to the point where the race/species/lineage should just be "flavor text" and every PC should just get +2/+1, no darkvision and choose two languages, one skill, one tool and one starter feat. Then add whatever your background, career and specialization gives you.
D&D is moving away from preset stats. For now, you can go kender or autognome and choose your bonuses....but i prefer just going with Tasha's and choose your own for any race. Just make a background explaining it. :) No reason an orc can't be a genius wizard...just handle it in their background. :)
I've always just let my players add up all the racial stat bonuses and place them wherever they wanted. A human gets six points (so could take a 14 up to a 20). A mountain dwarf gets four points. Most get three. And variant human gets two. I call it the "Special Snowflake" rule because an adventurer obviously stands out from the standard.
So come to think of it, that's one of the "weird rules" that I use.
I had one prospective GM back during 3.5 edition days who started off by announcing that he had a bunch of house rules. When I asked if there was a list of what they were so that I didn't build a PC in a way that would run afoul of his rules, he called me a cheating rules-lawyer munchkin. Then was incredibly shocked when I told him to get bent and spent weeks after that trying to convince me to join his game, alternating between attempting empty flattery about how much he respected me and wanted me in his game and insulting me for being too dumb to know how awesome a chance I was missing out by refusing to be part of his super awesome game. Needless to say, it was not an effective strategy on his part.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I had one prospective GM back during 3.5 edition days who started off by announcing that he had a bunch of house rules. When I asked if there was a list of what they were so that I didn't build a PC in a way that would run afoul of his rules, he called me a cheating rules-lawyer munchkin. Then was incredibly shocked when I told him to get bent and spent weeks after that trying to convince me to join his game, alternating between attempting empty flattery about how much he respected me and wanted me in his game and insulting me for being too dumb to know how awesome a chance I was missing out by refusing to be part of his super awesome game. Needless to say, it was not an effective strategy on his part.
For sure, if he said he had character creation rules, and wouldn't tell me what they are, I'd be out. I'm not spending my time creating a character to find out I need to start over because he nixed a key part of my concept.
I did end up finding out what one of his rules was since I sat in for his first game (he was running it at the FLGS): for ability score generation, you were given fifty points to be divided up among your stats, all of which started at zero by default. He claimed this was "balanced" because he gave everyone a +1 to the stat of their choice at every level. Per 3.5 edition rules, if your character's stats were less than 72 when added together, they were considered unplayable and you should reroll stats. Which meant that in his game, a 20th level character barely had stats that were high enough to be considered acceptable for a 1st level character under PHB rules (after taking in the +1 to one stat every four levels that were already in the rules).
He also had everyone start with no equipment, except that the party wizard (very coincidentally played by his wife) got her spellbook, a spell components pouch, a dagger, and a sling.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
My group is chock full o' strange rules -- trying to say which is the strangest is hard. We some strange people. We play this game called Dungeons and Dragons, y'see...
Not sure if it is still in force, but I think the strangest one was a ban on naming characters Bob. Applied to NPCs, too.
Now, I am a DM who prefers to make character creation a part of the Zero session. Not so I can tell folks how to do it, but so I can get info on the characters for imbroglios.
I have a set rule that any House rules have to be written out for my game. Which explains why I have a book dedicated to just players for their characters, since I have a crap ton of original creations for my next campaign. The only thing I actively try to keep my players out of is certain "secrets of the world" that will ultimately end up revealed to them since they poke their damn noses into everything, and monsters. But the monsters is more about the fun of figuring them out and being surprised.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
You could not obtain the benefits of a long rest unless you were in an inn. (No Tiny Hut didn't count.)
This one I will defend although from the others it sounds like your DM might have had different reasons.
The rest mechanics in 5e are not well designed to handle adventuring days with very few or very many encounters. You can adjust difficulty somewhat to compensate, but the classic example is overland travel - normally you'd travel for a couple weeks and maybe run into 1-3 random encounters during that time (more than that starts to take away focus from your quest and have players start asking, "What are we doing again?"). As written, the party has had a full rest between each of these encounters and just steamrolls them because they have all their stuff and they know they can use it all. Or you ramp up the difficulty to challenge them and end up with the weird situation where the random creatures you fought to get to the dungeon were somehow more dangerous than most of the stuff in the dungeon.
All this to say that sometimes it makes sense to condense several days into one adventuring day. I do this by requiring "civilization" for a long rest so that travel, seafaring, etc ends up being one adventure day. Conversely, if I want to do a long dungeon or a dungeon immediately after travel with no civilization in between, I'll have a fountain or rescued NPC or something else that grants the party the benefits of a long rest so they can take on more than the usual share of encounters between long rests. As a side benefit, this also takes care of the parties who try to long rest between every battle.
It's admittedly a bit clunky, but as a DM who wants to present challenges to my party and have not-too-hard-but-not-too-easy encounters during travel without completely taking the focus off the main narrative, this is the best solution I've come up with.
You could not obtain the benefits of a long rest unless you were in an inn. (No Tiny Hut didn't count.)
This one I will defend although from the others it sounds like your DM might have had different reasons.
Nice to hear your experience. I've been wanting to implement this as a rule at by table: "you must sleep in a bed to get the benefits of a long rest" - so Magnificience Mansion works but Tiny Hut doesn't, though they could try to be creative with Portable Holes or specialially designed carriages, but I've been nervous to introduce it. So far, I've just designed the world so that there is generally a settlement every day's worth of travel down the roads, and the campaign has mostly focused on inhabited areas.
You could not obtain the benefits of a long rest unless you were in an inn. (No Tiny Hut didn't count.)
This one I will defend although from the others it sounds like your DM might have had different reasons.
Nice to hear your experience. I've been wanting to implement this as a rule at by table: "you must sleep in a bed to get the benefits of a long rest" - so Magnificience Mansion works but Tiny Hut doesn't, though they could try to be creative with Portable Holes or specialially designed carriages, but I've been nervous to introduce it. So far, I've just designed the world so that there is generally a settlement every day's worth of travel down the roads, and the campaign has mostly focused on inhabited areas.
here is no reason for it. If they use the tiny hut where monsters are (that they would have encountered on a long rest without the hut)....the monsters mass outside spell/missile range and wait....and maybe call backup.
You could not obtain the benefits of a long rest unless you were in an inn. (No Tiny Hut didn't count.)
This one I will defend although from the others it sounds like your DM might have had different reasons.
Nice to hear your experience. I've been wanting to implement this as a rule at by table: "you must sleep in a bed to get the benefits of a long rest" - so Magnificience Mansion works but Tiny Hut doesn't, though they could try to be creative with Portable Holes or specialially designed carriages, but I've been nervous to introduce it. So far, I've just designed the world so that there is generally a settlement every day's worth of travel down the roads, and the campaign has mostly focused on inhabited areas.
here is no reason for it. If they use the tiny hut where monsters are (that they would have encountered on a long rest without the hut)....the monsters mass outside spell/missile range and wait....and maybe call backup.
dm: "your tiny hut is surrounded by local monsters plus backup." players: "we march out, burn all our best spells to murder them, and then long rest in a tiny hut." dm: "okay. the next day, more monsters and more backup." players: "we march out, burn all our best spells to murder them, and then long rest in a tiny hut." dm: "okay. the next day, more monsters and more backup." players: "huh. infinite monsters. must be no plot this way. let's go back to the village and draw a few cards off that deck of many things."
You could not obtain the benefits of a long rest unless you were in an inn. (No Tiny Hut didn't count.)
This one I will defend although from the others it sounds like your DM might have had different reasons.
The rest mechanics in 5e are not well designed to handle adventuring days with very few or very many encounters.
No, you pretty much nailed his mentality on the subject. There's just no challenge to those random encounters and who wants a party going into the "dungeon" with full resources? The problem I have with this is it prioritizes the classes that get their resources restored on a short rest. (Which they got after resting in the wilderness for eight hours.) And a Barbarian who frenzy raged never gets to clear their exhaustion during the adventure. Anyways, here's basically what happened:
"Why are you going back to town? You just reached the dungeon."
"The bard, cleric and wizard are now completely out of spell slots after fighting this last encounter. The rogue does have magic initiate for Goodberry in case one of us goes down, but they only last 24 hours and he cast it three days ago so they're all gone. At this point any level appropriate encounter will kill us. So we're going back and letting them know the quest can't be done. Do they have anything in town available? Or within 12 hours of it?"
But hey, the DM needs to have fun too. And that's how he had fun. If that's how you have fun too, then you keep doing you!
dm: "your tiny hut is surrounded by local monsters plus backup." players: "we march out, burn all our best spells to murder them, and then long rest in a tiny hut."
DM:"The monsters were holding their attacks. As you exit, you're hit by...."
Players:"Ok, we call down an AoE to kill them."
DM:"You're welcome to use your AoEs but they knew there was a caster in the group because of the Tiny Hut. They're not all grouped up."
dm: "your tiny hut is surrounded by local monsters plus backup." players: "we march out, burn all our best spells to murder them, and then long rest in a tiny hut."
DM:"The monsters were holding their attacks. As you exit, you're hit by...."
Players:"Ok, we call down an AoE to kill them."
DM:"You're welcome to use your AoEs but they knew there was a caster in the group because of the Tiny Hut. They're not all grouped up."
"the beatings will continue until morale improves!!" :D
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
"the beatings will continue until morale improves!!" :D
lol "Why is no one having any fun? I specifically requested it."
Personally I've never seen the issue with Tiny Hut. The spell was intended to give the characters a safe, comfortable place to rest. If that breaks your campaign then the problem isn't with the spell itself.
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What are some odd house rules your DMs have/had (you're the player)?
I had a DM at the beginning of the campaign say that characters could die, and we should consider backup characters. I asked him later on if a particular race was allowed for my backup character and he practically jumped down my throat saying he had a rule not to discuss backup characters. He's the one who told us we needed one...not sure how he expected me to work on the concept if he wouldn't answer a question about it.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
A DM that I no longer play with had a few weird ones. (Parenthesis will include my thoughts.)
He was also the type that wanted you to have a backup character.
I've mostly been the DM, so in clearly not going to think my rules are strange 😆
Probably the strangest was that Knock required a roll. Basically, I was spending a spell and spell slot to change the ability modifier from Dexterity to the spellcasting modifier. Pretty frustrating for my Wizard when we had a Rogue who could roll just as well but without spending spells or resources on it.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
No Halfling Divination Wizard. You could be a Halfling. You could be a Divination Wizard. You just couldn’t be a Halfling Divination Wizard.
Great Weapon Master feat not allowed.
Sharpshooter was allowed.
Wow. That reminds me, and this happened with 2 DMs: It was ok to use custom stats (from Tasha's) to change the WIS bonus on a race to INT or CHA (i.e. for a Loxodon)...but they had to approve each time though because they didn't believe in something like...a very smart orc wizard. They were holding on to the racial stereotypes from 2E....something D&D is trying to get away from.
Oh, I've seen that with feats. Like...pole arm master is not allowed but everything else is.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
It seems weirder to believe that a halfing and gnome can be just as strong (without magical items) as a much larger orc or ogre. So their "holding on" doesn't seem weird to me. But this is the first time I've seen "lore mechanics" referred to as "stereotypes".
Honestly it's to the point where the race/species/lineage should just be "flavor text" and every PC should just get +2/+1, no darkvision and choose two languages, one skill, one tool and one starter feat. Then add whatever your background, career and specialization gives you.
D&D is moving away from preset stats. For now, you can go kender or autognome and choose your bonuses....but i prefer just going with Tasha's and choose your own for any race. Just make a background explaining it. :) No reason an orc can't be a genius wizard...just handle it in their background. :)
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
I've always just let my players add up all the racial stat bonuses and place them wherever they wanted. A human gets six points (so could take a 14 up to a 20). A mountain dwarf gets four points. Most get three. And variant human gets two. I call it the "Special Snowflake" rule because an adventurer obviously stands out from the standard.
So come to think of it, that's one of the "weird rules" that I use.
I had one prospective GM back during 3.5 edition days who started off by announcing that he had a bunch of house rules. When I asked if there was a list of what they were so that I didn't build a PC in a way that would run afoul of his rules, he called me a cheating rules-lawyer munchkin. Then was incredibly shocked when I told him to get bent and spent weeks after that trying to convince me to join his game, alternating between attempting empty flattery about how much he respected me and wanted me in his game and insulting me for being too dumb to know how awesome a chance I was missing out by refusing to be part of his super awesome game. Needless to say, it was not an effective strategy on his part.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
For sure, if he said he had character creation rules, and wouldn't tell me what they are, I'd be out. I'm not spending my time creating a character to find out I need to start over because he nixed a key part of my concept.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
I did end up finding out what one of his rules was since I sat in for his first game (he was running it at the FLGS): for ability score generation, you were given fifty points to be divided up among your stats, all of which started at zero by default. He claimed this was "balanced" because he gave everyone a +1 to the stat of their choice at every level. Per 3.5 edition rules, if your character's stats were less than 72 when added together, they were considered unplayable and you should reroll stats. Which meant that in his game, a 20th level character barely had stats that were high enough to be considered acceptable for a 1st level character under PHB rules (after taking in the +1 to one stat every four levels that were already in the rules).
He also had everyone start with no equipment, except that the party wizard (very coincidentally played by his wife) got her spellbook, a spell components pouch, a dagger, and a sling.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
My group is chock full o' strange rules -- trying to say which is the strangest is hard. We some strange people. We play this game called Dungeons and Dragons, y'see...
Not sure if it is still in force, but I think the strangest one was a ban on naming characters Bob. Applied to NPCs, too.
Now, I am a DM who prefers to make character creation a part of the Zero session. Not so I can tell folks how to do it, but so I can get info on the characters for imbroglios.
I have a set rule that any House rules have to be written out for my game. Which explains why I have a book dedicated to just players for their characters, since I have a crap ton of original creations for my next campaign. The only thing I actively try to keep my players out of is certain "secrets of the world" that will ultimately end up revealed to them since they poke their damn noses into everything, and monsters. But the monsters is more about the fun of figuring them out and being surprised.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
This one I will defend although from the others it sounds like your DM might have had different reasons.
The rest mechanics in 5e are not well designed to handle adventuring days with very few or very many encounters. You can adjust difficulty somewhat to compensate, but the classic example is overland travel - normally you'd travel for a couple weeks and maybe run into 1-3 random encounters during that time (more than that starts to take away focus from your quest and have players start asking, "What are we doing again?"). As written, the party has had a full rest between each of these encounters and just steamrolls them because they have all their stuff and they know they can use it all. Or you ramp up the difficulty to challenge them and end up with the weird situation where the random creatures you fought to get to the dungeon were somehow more dangerous than most of the stuff in the dungeon.
All this to say that sometimes it makes sense to condense several days into one adventuring day. I do this by requiring "civilization" for a long rest so that travel, seafaring, etc ends up being one adventure day. Conversely, if I want to do a long dungeon or a dungeon immediately after travel with no civilization in between, I'll have a fountain or rescued NPC or something else that grants the party the benefits of a long rest so they can take on more than the usual share of encounters between long rests. As a side benefit, this also takes care of the parties who try to long rest between every battle.
It's admittedly a bit clunky, but as a DM who wants to present challenges to my party and have not-too-hard-but-not-too-easy encounters during travel without completely taking the focus off the main narrative, this is the best solution I've come up with.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Nice to hear your experience. I've been wanting to implement this as a rule at by table: "you must sleep in a bed to get the benefits of a long rest" - so Magnificience Mansion works but Tiny Hut doesn't, though they could try to be creative with Portable Holes or specialially designed carriages, but I've been nervous to introduce it. So far, I've just designed the world so that there is generally a settlement every day's worth of travel down the roads, and the campaign has mostly focused on inhabited areas.
here is no reason for it. If they use the tiny hut where monsters are (that they would have encountered on a long rest without the hut)....the monsters mass outside spell/missile range and wait....and maybe call backup.
Food, Scifi/fantasy, anime, DND 5E and OSR geek.
dm: "your tiny hut is surrounded by local monsters plus backup."
players: "we march out, burn all our best spells to murder them, and then long rest in a tiny hut."
dm: "okay. the next day, more monsters and more backup."
players: "we march out, burn all our best spells to murder them, and then long rest in a tiny hut."
dm: "okay. the next day, more monsters and more backup."
players: "huh. infinite monsters. must be no plot this way. let's go back to the village and draw a few cards off that deck of many things."
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
No, you pretty much nailed his mentality on the subject. There's just no challenge to those random encounters and who wants a party going into the "dungeon" with full resources? The problem I have with this is it prioritizes the classes that get their resources restored on a short rest. (Which they got after resting in the wilderness for eight hours.) And a Barbarian who frenzy raged never gets to clear their exhaustion during the adventure. Anyways, here's basically what happened:
But hey, the DM needs to have fun too. And that's how he had fun. If that's how you have fun too, then you keep doing you!
"the beatings will continue until morale improves!!" :D
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
lol "Why is no one having any fun? I specifically requested it."
Personally I've never seen the issue with Tiny Hut. The spell was intended to give the characters a safe, comfortable place to rest. If that breaks your campaign then the problem isn't with the spell itself.