Hey, just wondering what you guys uses as house rules for 5e and why you did it ?
Heres mines...
- dc starts at 10, not 8. This makes cc spells and abilities easier to land for pcs and monsters alike. Players likes it a lot.
- sleep spell checks for hit dices, not total hp. This makes sleep a much better spell that barely fails against minions.
Thats the only thing i have up to this point.
What do you guys have ?
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Inspiration stacks and functions like non-renewable Luck Points (see the Lucky feat).
If you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you automatically succeed. If you would have succeeded anyway, you critically succeed. If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you automatically fail. If you would have failed anyway, you critically fail. This replaces the normal rules for critical success and failure.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
If you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you automatically succeed. If you would have succeeded anyway, you critically succeed. If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you automatically fail. If you would have failed anyway, you critically fail. This replaces the normal rules for critical success and failure.
How do you combine this with features such as Rogue's Reliable Talent, a Fighter's Indomitable feature, a Barbarian's Indomitable Might, or a Halfling's Lucky feature?
Im trying to incorporate misses without having tables and i already have crit fail and crits on checks and saves. But yeah im also wondering how you deal with those ? I also wanna know what you mean by fail anyway ? Isnt the roll already deciding that ?
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If you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you automatically succeed. If you would have succeeded anyway, you critically succeed. If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you automatically fail. If you would have failed anyway, you critically fail. This replaces the normal rules for critical success and failure.
How do you combine this with features such as Rogue's Reliable Talent, a Fighter's Indomitable feature, a Barbarian's Indomitable Might, or a Halfling's Lucky feature?
Lucky, Reliable Talent, and Indomitable override the d20 roll, so they bypass this automatic failure to the appropriate degree. Indomitable Might, on the other hand, overrides the total, so this automatic failure still applies.
I also wanna know what you mean by fail anyway? Isn't the roll already deciding that?
Suppose you're a 9th-level bard with +13 to Persuasion making a DC 10 Persuasion check and you roll a 1. Your total is 14, so you would succeed, but you rolled a natural 1, so you fail. If it had been a DC 15 check, you would have failed even without the rule about automatically failing on a natural 1, so you would critically fail.
Is that helpful?
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Here are the house-rules my group has settled on using for all our 5th edition campaigns:
The Climb onto a Bigger Creature, Disarm, Overrun, Shove Aside, and Tumble actions from the DMG are available.
Cleaving Through Creatures rules from DMG are in use.
Mixing Potions rules from DMG are in use.
Scroll Mishap rules from DMG are in use.
Mob Attack rules from DMG are in use.
When gaining hit points for rising in level, you can choose to take the listed flat value after you have rolled.
Nonmagical ammunition is not tracked - you are assumed to have plenty, unless you have gone an extended period of time without opportunity to replenish your stock or your equipment has specifically been made unavailable to you.
Encumbrance is not tracked - so long as you can answer "how are you transporting that?" reasonably, you can take something with you.
Equipment that does not have a specific mechanical effect attached to it (clothes, blankets, tents, other camping gear, and so on) does not need to be individually purchased or tracked on the character sheet. Instead, the characters' current quality of lifestyle is tracked and covers having all that sort of equipment. Quality of lifestyle also alters the benefits of completing a long rest; wretched gains only 1/4 hit dice, squalid only 1/3, poor provides the normal 1/2, modest gives 1 additional, comfortable gives 2 additional, wealthy gives 3/4, and aristocratic provides restoration of all hit dice. The players simply deduct appropriate funds to pay for their lifestyle in one month increments as play goes along - the characters being assumed to pick up provisions and replacements for their gear when they have opportunity in town. Like with ammunition, if the party has gone an extended period of time without visiting anywhere appropriate to resupply or if specific circumstances have taken their comforts away, quality of lifestyle may become limited.
No inspiration - and personality traits, bonds, ideals, and flaws are replaced by the "This is Your Life" section of Xanthar's Guide.
Hero Points from the DMG are in use.
And we also have two house-rules that are still in the experimental phase, so we are monitoring their impact to later decide to keep them or change them:
All material components with specific costs, even if consumed in casting the spell they are needed for, are treated the same as material components without cost that are not consumed - so they can be replaced with a spell component pouch or spellcasting focus.
The restriction on what level of spell can be cast in the same turn as a spell cast as a bonus action does not apply.
@AaronOfBarbariaI I also use a few of those optionnal rulings, but i didn't count them as homebrew since they are mentionned in the DMG. I like some of yours too.thinking about it, heres what i use in game... - DC are 10+proficiency+bonus - Sleep spell uses hit dices not HP. - Potions are bonus action to drink. - Nonmagical ammunition are not tracked (yeah forgot that one which i do use already) - Encumberance is not tracked (i too use that because i hate maths mostly, but seriously this is more for coins then anything else, i do tell them, your bag is full now once in a while.) - No Inspiration at all (inspiration is bullshit and only forces players to always get advantage on everything) - Ressurection used to take a Constitution point away, now i use matt mercer ressurection ritual rules.
I'm thinking of removing the limit on second spell cast. but it makes certain spells very very strong. but the loss of spell slots seems worth it and balancing it too, so i don't know. I don't like the idea of removing the component material from the spells, seems to me like some big spells are too strong. like greater restoration or even the ressurections spells which are becoming less then legendary. unless i didn't understand your homebrew too well which is possible too.
aside from those, interesting points people, keep it coming, i like these suggestions.
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*Battlerager Barbarian - Instead of spiked armor being medium it is heavy and they can do an unarmed attack for 1d4 piercing damage + strength or 1d6 piercing damage + strength from head spike, and if they charge the target the headspike does 3d8 + strength bonus attack made with disadvantage, since they have their head down as they charge. They can make one of these attacks as a bonus action. (I felt this fits better with the idea of a battlerager like Thibbledorf Pwent.)
*Wizard Bladesinger - Can use Int modifier for attack and damage roles with their weapon (similar to hexblade with cha), moved song of defense to 14th and gave them war magic at 10th instead of song of victory. (This gives the bladesinger a bit more of a melee feel).
*All races can choose 1 feat from the racial feats from Xanathar's at 1st level. I get surprisingly few players choosing humans, so variants aren't really an issue.
*Self potions are bonus actions.
*I use Matt Mercer's resurrection rules.
*Max hit points til 3rd level.
*Players can alternate the way spells look according to the component (IE they can change the color of the spell to suit their character. Blue fireballs, red lightning, black firebolts and so on.)
*Magic items have to be identified, you can still use it not knowing what it does, but that could be dangerous. Take it to a professional and find out what it is. (I don't like the idea of bob the orc fighter being able to meditate for 30 mins and find out what those 'boots of awesomeness' are also be nice to your local mages so they tell you everything. Don't belittle him in the bar and throw him through the window only to find out he runs the desk at the local mages guild and all identify requests go through him, he might leave off the cursed part off the next item--I'm looking at you Landon!)
*Reasonable encumbrance rules - how is that 8 strength rogue carrying all the party loot and his gear?
*No insight checks on other players- If you believe them or not is due to your interaction with them and how good they lie.
*You can critically fail on skills you are NOT proficient in or when you have disadvantage on skills you are NOT proficient in.
There are a few from the above posts I may "borrow".
No insight check on players is a bit whack to me... How do you stop the metagaming of them not trusting a player you just took away to get a secret ? Over time i had to enforce stats on players because people were ignoring them. I mean if that high charisma bard is able to talk his way out of situations why couldnt he from players ? Even more as not everyone can actually play their stats. Aka a high intellect wizard yet the player is average iq. Hard to play the tactician at that point.
Magic items works normally from me.
Short rest allows you to attune. If attunement is required... Beware of curses though. Identify identifies the item as long as its very rare and lower. But as mentionned... Curses cannot be detected by any means. Identify does say it cannot find curses. Artefacts and legendary items all have a few hidden abilities i always keep secret.
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I mean if that high charisma bard is able to talk his way out of situations why couldnt he from players ?
Because then you're taking away agency from players. If I'm playing a character, it needs to be my decisio to trust someone or not, whether it's an NPC or a fellow PC. If a player makes a decision like that based on meta knowledge and it's a problem, then they should be spoken to or removed from the game.
So your players are totally forced (aka no agency to them) to play themselves when speaking to other players ? do you realise that by not using the stats on the sheet you also remove player agency because you are actually forbidding them to play their character while talking to other players ? because if say that bard is a such a sweet talker yet the player can't there is no way that player can actually sweet talk his way to other players. meaning he cannot play his character with other players unless it is absolutely against NPCs.
what i do instead of removing that... i'm allowing them to use both, they will need to talk their way out, but if conflict arises, which happens often because players apparently never want to be mislead by other players, i do use the roll in order to settle it if they can't between themselves. player agency is also removed by charms and other effects of the sort, are you telling me you dont allow these in your games because it removes player agency as well ? there are many things you cannot stop when you consider the game mechanics. player agency is one of those things. i understand your point and its fine as long as all players are fine with it. but to me last time i tryed to con a player to get info out of him he simply decided that whatever i did he wasn't gonna do anything. that is ridiculous when your character apparently can tell a guard he's been fired from the ranks out of nowhere and yet all of the characters around him can apparently read him like an open book in common. at some point there is a disparity.
that's why i preffer to use both methods at once. its also why i never alow just a roll from a player. you have to at least say something or do something for the roll to happen. what i suggest to people is to not play characters they cannot role play well.
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I use both of Mathias' rules. I make healing a little harder. Long rests return all of your hit dice, but none of your hit points. You can spend hit dice at the beginning and end of a long rest.
The benefits of spending your hit dice vary with the lifestyle condition you are in, with every hit die yielding at least 1 hp plus your constitution bonus:
Interesting concept... but it leads me to a few questions about it. the first would be, doesn'T that makes your players always craving for more hit dices ? exemple: we just got into a fight, we use all of our hit dices to heal up after a long rest. next fight i have to make a long rest again to get some heals ? in the end it feels like players never have hit dices at all. so short rest cannot heal them either. so it makes the game much more relying on very very pricey potions of healing and the actual healing classses. how do you cope with that ?
the second question, doesn'T that make your players much more cowardly because they fear dieing too much ? Back in 3e when you healed 1hp per day. my players were very very very cowardly. they'd skip pretty much all battles simply because they wanted to do more per day then just fighting and then losing multiple days to heal. led my players to buy wands of healing and not just one at it. they had a whole bag of holding of wands of healing with them. now with 5e being much much less cash giving... isn't it very hard for players to heal and get the job done ?
Thinking about it, i have a third question, but its about the lifestyle thing which i like a lot... isn't it a little bit too easy to just live an aristocratic lifestyle and have the hit points at all times ? i mean, even with 5e diminished cash inflow... 10 gold per week seems very very very easy to accomplish except for a few level 1-2 players.
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So your players are totally forced (aka no agency to them) to play themselves when speaking to other players ? do you realise that by not using the stats on the sheet you also remove player agency because you are actually forbidding them to play their character while talking to other players ? because if say that bard is a such a sweet talker yet the player can't there is no way that player can actually sweet talk his way to other players. meaning he cannot play his character with other players unless it is absolutely against NPCs.
I'm not going to derail this thread by having a discussion or argument about this. You clearly have a different idea of what agency is than I do, so I'll just leave it at that.
Interesting concept... but it leads me to a few questions about it. the first would be, doesn'T that makes your players always craving for more hit dices ? exemple: we just got into a fight, we use all of our hit dices to heal up after a long rest. next fight i have to make a long rest again to get some heals ? in the end it feels like players never have hit dices at all. so short rest cannot heal them either. so it makes the game much more relying on very very pricey potions of healing and the actual healing classses. how do you cope with that ?
the second question, doesn'T that make your players much more cowardly because they fear dieing too much ? Back in 3e when you healed 1hp per day. my players were very very very cowardly. they'd skip pretty much all battles simply because they wanted to do more per day then just fighting and then losing multiple days to heal. led my players to buy wands of healing and not just one at it. they had a whole bag of holding of wands of healing with them. now with 5e being much much less cash giving... isn't it very hard for players to heal and get the job done ?
Thinking about it, i have a third question, but its about the lifestyle thing which i like a lot... isn't it a little bit too easy to just live an aristocratic lifestyle and have the hit points at all times ? i mean, even with 5e diminished cash inflow... 10 gold per week seems very very very easy to accomplish except for a few level 1-2 players.
It does make hit dice more scarce during short rests, but you're also getting ALL your hit dice back during a long rest, so they're not as scarce as you might think. If you're down half your hit points, and you burn half your hit dice to restore them, you still have half your hit dice to spend on short rests, the same as you'd be in under the regular rules.
Regarding an aristocratic lifestyle and having all your hit points all the time, that's not really true. You're pretty much always going to have all your hit points when you're in town staying at the Four Seasons or whatever anyway. And if you're huddled in a dark, cold cave when you use your hit dice, I'm going to call that wretched, squalid, poor, or modest depending on the exact conditions no matter what you spend on your "in town" lifestyle.
-Players gain xp toward leveling up from all sources and the xp is shared between everyone. Level ups are party wide.
-reroll 1s and 2s when rolling for stats and hp during level ups.
-rapid drinker feat (see tal’dorei campaign guide)
-players do not roll their own initiative, we use the encounter plus app. Player may reroll their initiative once if they don’t like the auto roll however they must keep the result no matter what.
-original variant human is banned
-until DnDB we used the proficiency die but have now switched back.
-I am working on a new standard array for players which will make character building easier when aim am not around to witness stat rolling
I will go with two house rules the next time I run. Mostly little nitpicks that shouldn't have much of an impact.
- Two weapon fighting changes so that a character may use any one handed melee weapon in their main hand. The secondary weapon must be light and you cannot add ability modifier to damage. Doing this so a character does not have to take a feat just to fight with a long sword or rapier and dagger. Historically the most common form of two weapon fighting and debatably the only practical way to fight with two weapons.
- Adding a new weapon called a war spear (one handed martial melee 1d8 piercing, thrown 15/45). Again because the spear historically was on par with one handed swords or axes and really should be a relevant weapon option for PCs.
Overall I am pretty happy with 5E. The only major gripe I have is I would like to customize skills in a fashion similar to 3.x. Personally, I didn't find spending skill points each level a chore and I find 5E skills vastly oversimplified.
@themakokid its not derailing at all. Im just trying to understand your ruling in case i want to use it in my games to better have fun. Thats entirely what this thread was all about from the beginning.
Just to be clear... Player agency is players choice and decisions that are theirs and not forced onto them. Exemple... The player has a choice of corridor. He chooses to go back instead. His choice, his decision.
Now charm person, dominate monster, hold person, and basically all enchantment spells removes player agency by strickly changing a player style of play. Why, because they literally force players into playing wrong choices. The same is true for any plot that involves you capturing them. Players will mostly fight till death if you capture them. Because they dont wanna be locked up and lose their player agency. Aka losing freedom of actions.
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-I use most of the DMG action options less mark, which is irritating to track. I've included the "climb onto a bigger creature" option as part of the Grappler feat, replacing the useless third bullet along with the ability to grapple targets two sizes larger. These two additions make the feat powerful, but the grappling play style is niche enough to make it balanced, IMO.
-I've also slightly revised the grapple rules to clarify forced movement.
"Moving a Grappled Creature. When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you. As you move, you may reposition the grappled creature into any unoccupied space within your reach that does not contain a hazard."
This allows a grappler to move a grappled creature into any unoccupied adjacent space, while still ensuring that the creature gets some sort of roll to prevent being knocked into a pit.
-Further, I've ported some equipment from 3e, including spiked armor and shields, a spiked chain, smokesticks, thunderstones, etc. I generally create new weapons by starting with RAW weapons, changing damage types, and swapping any weapon properties for a damage die boost or another property. For instance, take the whip, scrap finesse, bump up the damage to 2d4 (equivalent of two good properties), add two-handed (a negative property), swap the damage type to piercing, and you've got my 3e spiked chain equivalent. Of course, you'll want to make sure the changes are reasonable.
-A last thing I'm working on is the idea of double weapons, which essentially allows a character to two-weapon fight with some two-handed weapons. For instance, a quarterstaff could include this property to allow an extra attack (without ability bonus) as a bonus action. Of course, each attack would be made as if they were with a single-handed weapon (ruling out higher damage from versatile). I don't think it's terribly powerful, because bonus actions are precious for monks (for flurry of blows, martial arts, etc.) who find quarterstaffs useful.
- Two weapon fighting changes so that a character may use any one handed melee weapon in their main hand. The secondary weapon must be light and you cannot add ability modifier to damage. Doing this so a character does not have to take a feat just to fight with a long sword or rapier and dagger. Historically the most common form of two weapon fighting and debatably the only practical way to fight with two weapons.
- Adding a new weapon called a war spear (one handed martial melee 1d8 piercing, thrown 15/45). Again because the spear historically was on par with one handed swords or axes and really should be a relevant weapon option for PCs.
I agree with you spear criticism. Your option is fine because you've essentially just reskinned the longsword with piercing damage, swapping versatile for thrown. I might do something similar, swapping versatile for reach. You should also check UA 15 for a feat that makes the RAW spear very worthwhile.
*Battlerager Barbarian - Instead of spiked armor being medium it is heavy and they can do an unarmed attack for 1d4 piercing damage + strength or 1d6 piercing damage + strength from head spike, and if they charge the target the headspike does 3d8 + strength bonus attack made with disadvantage, since they have their head down as they charge. They can make one of these attacks as a bonus action. (I felt this fits better with the idea of a battlerager like Thibbledorf Pwent.)
*Wizard Bladesinger - Can use Int modifier for attack and damage roles with their weapon (similar to hexblade with cha), moved song of defense to 14th and gave them war magic at 10th instead of song of victory. (This gives the bladesinger a bit more of a melee feel).
*All races can choose 1 feat from the racial feats from Xanathar's at 1st level. I get surprisingly few players choosing humans, so variants aren't really an issue.
*Self potions are bonus actions.
*I use Matt Mercer's resurrection rules.
*Max hit points til 3rd level.
*Players can alternate the way spells look according to the component (IE they can change the color of the spell to suit their character. Blue fireballs, red lightning, black firebolts and so on.)
*Magic items have to be identified, you can still use it not knowing what it does, but that could be dangerous. Take it to a professional and find out what it is. (I don't like the idea of bob the orc fighter being able to meditate for 30 mins and find out what those 'boots of awesomeness' are also be nice to your local mages so they tell you everything. Don't belittle him in the bar and throw him through the window only to find out he runs the desk at the local mages guild and all identify requests go through him, he might leave off the cursed part off the next item--I'm looking at you Landon!)
*Reasonable encumbrance rules - how is that 8 strength rogue carrying all the party loot and his gear?
*No insight checks on other players- If you believe them or not is due to your interaction with them and how good they lie.
*You can critically fail on skills you are NOT proficient in or when you have disadvantage on skills you are NOT proficient in.
There are a few from the above posts I may "borrow".
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Hey, just wondering what you guys uses as house rules for 5e and why you did it ?
Heres mines...
- dc starts at 10, not 8. This makes cc spells and abilities easier to land for pcs and monsters alike. Players likes it a lot.
- sleep spell checks for hit dices, not total hp. This makes sleep a much better spell that barely fails against minions.
Thats the only thing i have up to this point.
What do you guys have ?
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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And that's all I have to say about that.
Im trying to incorporate misses without having tables and i already have crit fail and crits on checks and saves. But yeah im also wondering how you deal with those ? I also wanna know what you mean by fail anyway ? Isnt the roll already deciding that ?
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
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--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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Here are the house-rules my group has settled on using for all our 5th edition campaigns:
And we also have two house-rules that are still in the experimental phase, so we are monitoring their impact to later decide to keep them or change them:
@Matthias_von_Schwarzwald i like it a lot !
@AaronOfBarbariaI I also use a few of those optionnal rulings, but i didn't count them as homebrew since they are mentionned in the DMG.
I like some of yours too.thinking about it, heres what i use in game...
- DC are 10+proficiency+bonus
- Sleep spell uses hit dices not HP.
- Potions are bonus action to drink.
- Nonmagical ammunition are not tracked (yeah forgot that one which i do use already)
- Encumberance is not tracked (i too use that because i hate maths mostly, but seriously this is more for coins then anything else, i do tell them, your bag is full now once in a while.)
- No Inspiration at all (inspiration is bullshit and only forces players to always get advantage on everything)
- Ressurection used to take a Constitution point away, now i use matt mercer ressurection ritual rules.
I'm thinking of removing the limit on second spell cast. but it makes certain spells very very strong. but the loss of spell slots seems worth it and balancing it too, so i don't know. I don't like the idea of removing the component material from the spells, seems to me like some big spells are too strong. like greater restoration or even the ressurections spells which are becoming less then legendary. unless i didn't understand your homebrew too well which is possible too.
aside from those, interesting points people, keep it coming, i like these suggestions.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Few Homebrew changes
*Battlerager Barbarian - Instead of spiked armor being medium it is heavy and they can do an unarmed attack for 1d4 piercing damage + strength or 1d6 piercing damage + strength from head spike, and if they charge the target the headspike does 3d8 + strength bonus attack made with disadvantage, since they have their head down as they charge. They can make one of these attacks as a bonus action. (I felt this fits better with the idea of a battlerager like Thibbledorf Pwent.)
*Wizard Bladesinger - Can use Int modifier for attack and damage roles with their weapon (similar to hexblade with cha), moved song of defense to 14th and gave them war magic at 10th instead of song of victory. (This gives the bladesinger a bit more of a melee feel).
*All races can choose 1 feat from the racial feats from Xanathar's at 1st level. I get surprisingly few players choosing humans, so variants aren't really an issue.
*Self potions are bonus actions.
*I use Matt Mercer's resurrection rules.
*Max hit points til 3rd level.
*Players can alternate the way spells look according to the component (IE they can change the color of the spell to suit their character. Blue fireballs, red lightning, black firebolts and so on.)
*Magic items have to be identified, you can still use it not knowing what it does, but that could be dangerous. Take it to a professional and find out what it is. (I don't like the idea of bob the orc fighter being able to meditate for 30 mins and find out what those 'boots of awesomeness' are also be nice to your local mages so they tell you everything. Don't belittle him in the bar and throw him through the window only to find out he runs the desk at the local mages guild and all identify requests go through him, he might leave off the cursed part off the next item--I'm looking at you Landon!)
*Reasonable encumbrance rules - how is that 8 strength rogue carrying all the party loot and his gear?
*No insight checks on other players- If you believe them or not is due to your interaction with them and how good they lie.
*You can critically fail on skills you are NOT proficient in or when you have disadvantage on skills you are NOT proficient in.
There are a few from the above posts I may "borrow".
No insight check on players is a bit whack to me... How do you stop the metagaming of them not trusting a player you just took away to get a secret ? Over time i had to enforce stats on players because people were ignoring them. I mean if that high charisma bard is able to talk his way out of situations why couldnt he from players ? Even more as not everyone can actually play their stats. Aka a high intellect wizard yet the player is average iq. Hard to play the tactician at that point.
Magic items works normally from me.
Short rest allows you to attune. If attunement is required... Beware of curses though. Identify identifies the item as long as its very rare and lower. But as mentionned... Curses cannot be detected by any means. Identify does say it cannot find curses. Artefacts and legendary items all have a few hidden abilities i always keep secret.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
So your players are totally forced (aka no agency to them) to play themselves when speaking to other players ?
do you realise that by not using the stats on the sheet you also remove player agency because you are actually forbidding them to play their character while talking to other players ? because if say that bard is a such a sweet talker yet the player can't there is no way that player can actually sweet talk his way to other players. meaning he cannot play his character with other players unless it is absolutely against NPCs.
what i do instead of removing that... i'm allowing them to use both, they will need to talk their way out, but if conflict arises, which happens often because players apparently never want to be mislead by other players, i do use the roll in order to settle it if they can't between themselves. player agency is also removed by charms and other effects of the sort, are you telling me you dont allow these in your games because it removes player agency as well ? there are many things you cannot stop when you consider the game mechanics. player agency is one of those things. i understand your point and its fine as long as all players are fine with it. but to me last time i tryed to con a player to get info out of him he simply decided that whatever i did he wasn't gonna do anything. that is ridiculous when your character apparently can tell a guard he's been fired from the ranks out of nowhere and yet all of the characters around him can apparently read him like an open book in common. at some point there is a disparity.
that's why i preffer to use both methods at once. its also why i never alow just a roll from a player. you have to at least say something or do something for the roll to happen. what i suggest to people is to not play characters they cannot role play well.
DM of two gaming groups.
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--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
I use both of Mathias' rules. I make healing a little harder. Long rests return all of your hit dice, but none of your hit points. You can spend hit dice at the beginning and end of a long rest.
The benefits of spending your hit dice vary with the lifestyle condition you are in, with every hit die yielding at least 1 hp plus your constitution bonus:
wretched -3, squalid -2, poor -1, modest +0, comfortable +1, wealthy gives +2, and aristocratic +3.
Interesting concept... but it leads me to a few questions about it.
the first would be, doesn'T that makes your players always craving for more hit dices ?
exemple: we just got into a fight, we use all of our hit dices to heal up after a long rest. next fight i have to make a long rest again to get some heals ? in the end it feels like players never have hit dices at all. so short rest cannot heal them either. so it makes the game much more relying on very very pricey potions of healing and the actual healing classses. how do you cope with that ?
the second question, doesn'T that make your players much more cowardly because they fear dieing too much ?
Back in 3e when you healed 1hp per day. my players were very very very cowardly. they'd skip pretty much all battles simply because they wanted to do more per day then just fighting and then losing multiple days to heal. led my players to buy wands of healing and not just one at it. they had a whole bag of holding of wands of healing with them. now with 5e being much much less cash giving... isn't it very hard for players to heal and get the job done ?
Thinking about it, i have a third question, but its about the lifestyle thing which i like a lot...
isn't it a little bit too easy to just live an aristocratic lifestyle and have the hit points at all times ?
i mean, even with 5e diminished cash inflow... 10 gold per week seems very very very easy to accomplish except for a few level 1-2 players.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Current homebrew rules we use
-Players gain xp toward leveling up from all sources and the xp is shared between everyone. Level ups are party wide.
-reroll 1s and 2s when rolling for stats and hp during level ups.
-rapid drinker feat (see tal’dorei campaign guide)
-players do not roll their own initiative, we use the encounter plus app. Player may reroll their initiative once if they don’t like the auto roll however they must keep the result no matter what.
-original variant human is banned
-until DnDB we used the proficiency die but have now switched back.
-I am working on a new standard array for players which will make character building easier when aim am not around to witness stat rolling
Dungeon Master for Heroes of Agarra
I have a growing library of Homebrew: Subclasses | Races | Feats | Items
You check out my newest Homebrew: Doctor - The Survey Corps - Order of the Shadow Master
I will go with two house rules the next time I run. Mostly little nitpicks that shouldn't have much of an impact.
- Two weapon fighting changes so that a character may use any one handed melee weapon in their main hand. The secondary weapon must be light and you cannot add ability modifier to damage. Doing this so a character does not have to take a feat just to fight with a long sword or rapier and dagger. Historically the most common form of two weapon fighting and debatably the only practical way to fight with two weapons.
- Adding a new weapon called a war spear (one handed martial melee 1d8 piercing, thrown 15/45). Again because the spear historically was on par with one handed swords or axes and really should be a relevant weapon option for PCs.
I also have a home brew ranger I would probably try to get someone to play test for me. https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/homebrew-house-rules/5344-rate-my-homebrew-ranger
Overall I am pretty happy with 5E. The only major gripe I have is I would like to customize skills in a fashion similar to 3.x. Personally, I didn't find spending skill points each level a chore and I find 5E skills vastly oversimplified.
Current Characters I am playing: Dr Konstantin van Wulf | Taegen Willowrun | Mad Magnar
Check out my homebrew: Items | Monsters | Spells | Subclasses | Feats
@themakokid its not derailing at all. Im just trying to understand your ruling in case i want to use it in my games to better have fun. Thats entirely what this thread was all about from the beginning.
Just to be clear... Player agency is players choice and decisions that are theirs and not forced onto them. Exemple... The player has a choice of corridor. He chooses to go back instead. His choice, his decision.
Now charm person, dominate monster, hold person, and basically all enchantment spells removes player agency by strickly changing a player style of play. Why, because they literally force players into playing wrong choices. The same is true for any plot that involves you capturing them. Players will mostly fight till death if you capture them. Because they dont wanna be locked up and lose their player agency. Aka losing freedom of actions.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
-I use most of the DMG action options less mark, which is irritating to track. I've included the "climb onto a bigger creature" option as part of the Grappler feat, replacing the useless third bullet along with the ability to grapple targets two sizes larger. These two additions make the feat powerful, but the grappling play style is niche enough to make it balanced, IMO.
-I've also slightly revised the grapple rules to clarify forced movement.
"Moving a Grappled Creature. When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you. As you move, you may reposition the grappled creature into any unoccupied space within your reach that does not contain a hazard."
This allows a grappler to move a grappled creature into any unoccupied adjacent space, while still ensuring that the creature gets some sort of roll to prevent being knocked into a pit.
-Further, I've ported some equipment from 3e, including spiked armor and shields, a spiked chain, smokesticks, thunderstones, etc. I generally create new weapons by starting with RAW weapons, changing damage types, and swapping any weapon properties for a damage die boost or another property. For instance, take the whip, scrap finesse, bump up the damage to 2d4 (equivalent of two good properties), add two-handed (a negative property), swap the damage type to piercing, and you've got my 3e spiked chain equivalent. Of course, you'll want to make sure the changes are reasonable.
-A last thing I'm working on is the idea of double weapons, which essentially allows a character to two-weapon fight with some two-handed weapons. For instance, a quarterstaff could include this property to allow an extra attack (without ability bonus) as a bonus action. Of course, each attack would be made as if they were with a single-handed weapon (ruling out higher damage from versatile). I don't think it's terribly powerful, because bonus actions are precious for monks (for flurry of blows, martial arts, etc.) who find quarterstaffs useful.