House rules, what has worked for you

[MrStabby]

Used only once, but I still think is a good idea. Wisdom-based initiative. The master that suggested it said it was based on the idea that the initiative was more about being quick thinking and having good insight than with a good coordination, but also admitting it was mainly to reduce the "god-stat" status of Dexterity.

Interesting you chose wisdom for this - I tried the same with Int. It seemed solid enough. It made wizards a bit good though.

[Mith]

Interesting you chose wisdom for this - I tried the same with Int. It seemed solid enough. It made wizards a bit good though.

A good balance I have heard if you do roll and announce every time is that high dexterity goes first, but you announce general intention from loeest to higher Intelligence.

[snickersnax]

Club, quarterstaff, sling, whip, blowgun and unarmed strike are non-lethal weapons, monks can choose lethal for their unarmed strikes and monk weapons.

Longsword is versatile when used two handed.

Heavy crossbow has advantage on damage rolls (roll 2d10 take the highest).

+1 point of exhaustion when reduced to 0 hit points.

Critical hits that reduce a character to 0 hit points or critical hits to a downed character result in a lingering injury (from DMG table)

[PhantomSoul]

Longsword is versatile when used two handed.

I'm not sure what you mean by this (it already has the property) -- do you mean it counts as Two-Handed when wielded with two hands (instead of Versatile)?

[micahaphone]

Club, quarterstaff, sling, whip, blowgun and unarmed strike are non-lethal weapons, monks can choose lethal for their unarmed strikes and monk weapons.

That's already true in the rules, RAW.

Knocking a Creature Out
Sometimes an attacker wants to incapacitate a foe, rather than deal a killing blow. When an attacker reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack, the attacker can knock the creature out. The attacker can make this choice the instant the damage is dealt. The creature falls unconscious and is stable

So it's a tiny buff to blowgun, I always felt like blowgun was missing a poison coated dart option, fleshed out somewhere.

[DarknessEternal]

Blowguns in the real world weren’t historically poisoned. You don’t usually want to poison your food.

If you’re going to claim blowguns deliver poison a lot in fiction, so does basically any weapon.

Also, blowguns and slings being non-lethal is highly suspect. Those weapons are definitely designed for killing, and only for killing. You may as well blanket all weapons as non-lethal capable. That would at least be consistent.

[Reevh]

Blowguns in the real world weren’t historically poisoned. You don’t usually want to poison your food.

If you’re going to claim blowguns deliver poison a lot in fiction, so does basically any weapon.

Also, blowguns and slings being non-lethal is highly suspect. Those weapons are definitely designed for killing, and only for killing. You may as well blanket all weapons as non-lethal capable. That would at least be consistent.

All melee weapons are currently capable of non-lethal damage per RAW. I guess the designers decided it's easier to crack someone across the skull with the butt of a melee weapon than it is to perfectly land an arrow or bolt or bullet just right so that it knocks an enemy unconscious without killing them. Kind of makes sense.

[micahaphone]

Blowguns in the real world weren’t historically poisoned. You don’t usually want to poison your food.

Projectiles include seeds, clay pellets, and darts. Some cultures dip the tip of the darts in curare or other arrow poisons in order to paralyze the target. Blowguns were very rarely used by these tribes as anti-personnel weapons, but primarily to hunt small animals such as monkeys and birds.

You can use poisons for hunting, it depends on the poison and how much care you take around the hunting wound when dressing/butchering the animal. Take the Ainu culture of northern japan for example, they used several lethal toxins on their arrows.


I guess I want more fleshed out rules for poisoning weapons/ammo in general. Blowguns could have a cool niche of being extra stealthy - you'd notice a bolt/arrow sticking out of a person, but a small enough dart can be a much more subtle delivery system.

[Theodoxus]

With critical fumble rules, a 20th level fighter is much more likely to break his weapon/injure himself or whatever than a first level wizard with a Strength of 8 swinging a greatsword. As you roll more D20's, you get more chances to screw up.

Basically, critical fumble rules mean that as you gain martial prowess, you also become more likely to hurt yourself with your weapon. That makes no sense. And no one ever thinks to institute a similar system for spellcasters.

I did, but the implementation was meh.

Basically, my "melee critical fumble" rule allowed your opponent to make a OA against you with disadvantage.
My "magic critical fumble" granted vulnerability if it was a 1 on a save (fireball, sacred flame, etc), or if it was a status effect, it automatically failed the following round (so, Hold Person would last at least 2 rounds on a roll of a 1) or would extend an extra round for a 1 round effect, like Stunning Strike.

I never really got a decent idea for rolling a 1 on a ranged attack that didn't feel hokey though.

[Gignere]

I did, but the implementation was meh.

Basically, my "melee critical fumble" rule allowed your opponent to make a OA against you with disadvantage.
My "magic critical fumble" granted vulnerability if it was a 1 on a save (fireball, sacred flame, etc), or if it was a status effect, it automatically failed the following round (so, Hold Person would last at least 2 rounds on a roll of a 1) or would extend an extra round for a 1 round effect, like Stunning Strike.

I never really got a decent idea for rolling a 1 on a ranged attack that didn't feel hokey though.

You shoot a party member if one can even be reasonably be shot. That’s how we roll. In fact range attacks is the only time we have critical fumbles.

[Whit]

No multi class and and strict vision rules. Humans and light. Darkvision as its suppose to be

[Theodoxus]

You shoot a party member if one can even be reasonably be shot. That’s how we roll. In fact range attacks is the only time we have critical fumbles.

But why a party member? I could see rolling a d3 or d4 and shooting an unintended target in that direction (basically, the arc in front of you), but even then, a you re-rolling to see if you hit? Or is a 1 as good as a 20, and is an autohit, just against your buddy (sans crit, of course).

I'll never be a fan of critical fumbles though... a horrible gamist spin on a game that's pretty gamey already.

[Gignere]

But why a party member? I could see rolling a d3 or d4 and shooting an unintended target in that direction (basically, the arc in front of you), but even then, a you re-rolling to see if you hit? Or is a 1 as good as a 20, and is an autohit, just against your buddy (sans crit, of course).

I'll never be a fan of critical fumbles though... a horrible gamist spin on a game that's pretty gamey already.

We just say it hits the closest friendly. I did it as a joke on a NPC a while back, but for whatever reason my players found it hilarious and so they decided to stick with it.

[cullynthedwarf]

We just say it hits the closest friendly. I did it as a joke on a NPC a while back, but for whatever reason my players found it hilarious and so they decided to stick with it.

Well, if it works...

[Vegan Squirrel]

I've never used critical fumble rules, but I do have an idea to mitigate the problem of master warriors making more mistakes. Critical fumbles only occur if every attack taken that turn (or as part of that attack action) is a natural 1. This way, any class with extra attack would become less likely to fumble, as they'd need to critically fail twice or more in a row in order to fumble. I still don't love it, but it's an option that I haven't seen mentioned before and I know some players love them some fumble rules. Personally, I think a 1 is a good opportunity to playfully describe a comically bad miss, but there's no need for further mechanical consequences.

One ruling I'll probably use if a player decides to try a called shot, like hitting a basilisk's eyes to blind it or damaging a flying creature's wing to limit its flight, is to roll 2d20. If either is a natural 20, you pull off the shot (9.75% chance of pulling it off; alternatively, maybe a hitting PF2-style crit of AC+10 would also work). If not, treat it as a normal attack at disadvantage, using the lower d20. This is up to the DM's discretion on whether it can be attempted and what kind of consequences are achieved. The idea is it takes a critical-level effect to do a special attack like this, but this way you can up your chance of the critical effect, at the expense of the effectiveness of your attack if you miss.

[Damon_Tor]

Basically, critical fumble rules mean that as you gain martial prowess, you also become more likely to hurt yourself with your weapon. That makes no sense. And no one ever thinks to institute a similar system for spellcasters.

You could have a penalty for whenever concentration breaks on a spell. Some spells (Haste, Demon Summoning, Arguably Flying just because gravity) already have one built in. Build that into more spells. Break concentration on invisibility? You're blinded for 1d4 rounds. Bless: becomes curse (and vice versa). I'm sure you could be creative.

[PhantomSoul]

One ruling I'll probably use if a player decides to try a called shot, like hitting a basilisk's eyes to blind it or damaging a flying creature's wing to limit its flight, is to roll 2d20. If either is a natural 20, you pull off the shot (9.75% chance of pulling it off; alternatively, maybe a hitting PF2-style crit of AC+10 would also work). If not, treat it as a normal attack at disadvantage, using the lower d20. This is up to the DM's discretion on whether it can be attempted and what kind of consequences are achieved. The idea is it takes a critical-level effect to do a special attack like this, but this way you can up your chance of the critical effect, at the expense of the effectiveness of your attack if you miss.

Any planned interaction for with Advantage/Disadvantage?

[cullynthedwarf]

Something an old group of mine tried and it was good for 3.5 game was a nat 1 resulted in a - 10 to your roll so while you might not hit the giant dragon the kolbold army would still be fair game. Not sure how something like this would play out in 5e

[CheddarChampion]

Something an old group of mine tried and it was good for 3.5 game was a nat 1 resulted in a - 10 to your roll so while you might not hit the giant dragon the kolbold army would still be fair game. Not sure how something like this would play out in 5e

As in you take the 1, add your bonuses, then subtract 10 and see if you still hit?
In 5e a level 20 fighter with a +3 bow, +5 Dex, and the archery fighting style has +16 to hit. Rolling a 1 normally results in automatic failure but with this rule it'd be a total roll of 7 (which would probably miss as well).
This might be more applicable in the case of a paladin rolling a charisma save (they can get up to +17 with 20 Cha) or the like, since base rules don't have those as automatic failures.

[Sparky McDibben]

I don't use initiative. Players act before monsters, unless they are surprised.

Also, if you roll a nat 1 on a saving throw, the damage is doubled. But, if you roll a nat 20, the damage is quartered (if success would halve). It adds more crits and is a lot of fun.

[MrCharlie]

Basically, four initiatives in complex fights. Party rolls, we determine if initiative will go clockwise or counterclockwise from highest to lowest initiative. Enemies roll, we determine if any enemy beat entire party; I sort them into high and low enemy initiatives.

Assuming party wins
Party High (first half of party, starting with highest party initiative)
Enemy High (First half of enemies)
Party Low (Second half of party)
Enemy Low (second half of enemies

Reset.

The reason I do this is because I have run eleven person groups before, which was @#$%ing chaos.

Otherwise:
You can hide only if you've broken line of sight, and are automatically seen if you are ever not obscured to a creature-but can still be hidden from other creatures (house rule or not depends on your rule interpretation)

You automatically succeed checks where there is no time constraint, no penalty for failure, and a chance of success. Unless I want to add some comedy, which depends on time constraints.

It's possible to swim in armor, but tiring. Water breathing also protects you from pressure. If your flying with magic, the same is true when flying.

Crafting magic items can be sped up tremendously with appropriate reagents.

If you crit fail bad things can happen, situational to what's around you. If you somehow crit fail into the negatives, hold on, it's gonna be a wild ride! And if you crit fail on a check you cannot fail, there is a consequence to your success.

The duration of a short rest is determined by the orbit of the planet Dungeonins Masterous Fiatius, with an extremely eccentric and wobbly orbit that takes it through three black holes, a negative space anomaly, and three portals into the past. Basically, if you have an hour you can short rest, but if you have a break I'm not timing you.

Also, as a corollary, you can walk during a short rest.

Passive insight is also my friend as a DM. I also allow passive stealth's even if the party is not explicitly using the ability; otherwise, all stealth is a group check, or simply triggers initiative rounds.

You can force feed potions, cover fallen allies with your body from at least one enemy at a time (granting them full cover with your action), and occupy a fallen allies space (but if you fight in it, they have disadvantage on death saves because you are stepping on them).

You can't ask an extraplanar creature for it's True Name just because it follows your commands. If you charm it, on the other hands...

Dominated players maintain control of their character-they just have to interpret what I've said for them to do.

Edit: Also, some more dramatic things I've done in the past.

Feats are an appropriate reward for roleplaying.

I can increase a players attributes if I wish to in a similar vein.

If you want just a class feature from another class, and it's not a cheese tastic bit of nonsense, I might allow you to take it as a feat, or sub an appropriate class feature from your class in for it.

If there is a spell which is thematically appropriate for the character but not on your list, you gain access to it. Also, Sorcerer's can experiment with learning spells from other sources, and sometimes get spells for free (on list+known). Finally, if a spell is on your list and you get it from a racial feature or some other method, you can cast it with your own spellcasting class.

(Further, there is some Eberron specific stuff I've done with the above; I'd already implemented Rising from the Last War's dragonmarks with the Wayfinder's Guide spells, and a spell from a dragonmark counted as a spell on any appropriate list; Abberant marks could also be triggered for all spells)

[Mith]

On the subject of critical success and failures, I like the idea of a critical being AC+10 (crit failure as AC -10). Though I personally don't like crit failure for attack rolls. Apply this to saves, and perhaps you can save for quarter damage or take double damage. Skill checks, this works for any series of checks (3 successes/3 failures), beat by 10 counts as two successes, lose by 10 2 failures.

[Vegan Squirrel]

Any planned interaction for with Advantage/Disadvantage?

It's strange that I didn't really think about that, since I spent quite a bit of time thinking about that ruling. Human brains!

Spoiler: Thinking out loud, really

Show

Advantage
Okay, so part of me wants to say add an extra d20 for advantage, but take the middle one if none of the three crits. Increases the crit chance while approximating the canceling out of advantage and disadvantage on a non-crit. But that seems pretty fiddly.

Another option, simply roll 1d20, but crit on an 18–20. Gives you a 15% chance of a crit, better than my original rule, while canceling out disadvantage. I like the result, but it seems too different from the normal ruling.

Disadvantage
I suppose just rolling with disadvantage as normal, achieving the called shot only if both dice roll crits (a poor option, with a 0.25% chance of critting, but at least it wouldn't hurt your chance of hitting). Or, since this is all about being a choice, you can choose to roll 3d20, taking the lowest roll unless 2 dice crit (0.72% chance). Pretty bad option.

Alternate rule
Or, just scrap the original ruling I liked, because it's too weird with dis/advantage. Instead:

• Make a called shot by rolling for a 19–20 special crit. (10% crit chance)
• If you fail to hit this special crit range, then roll a second d20 and take the attack at disadvantage.
• If you have advantage or disadvantage, roll the first roll with advantage or disadvantage, taking the better or worse d20, as normal, and comparing it to 19–20. (advantage: 19% crit chance; disadvantage: 1% crit chance)
• Then, if you didn't crit, compare that die to a third d20 for the final attack result, at canceled advantage or extra disadvantage (but by player choice, at least!).

On Topic
Since I've now posted multiple times about a prospective rule (to be fair, it was in response to the discussion of other house rules), I'll add what we've actually used in our games.

• Start every session with 1 inspiration, and I hand out little tokens both to keep track and more importantly to give us all a visual reminder that inspiration's a thing, otherwise I'd forget to keep rewarding it.
• Roughly 30 minute short rests. Makes it feel like less of a delay than a full hour, but still requires you to take a break.
• Reroll any 1s for healing or leveling HP.

That's really about it (we had more when we played 3rd edition, not that I remember them all now). Haven't been any problems, but they're pretty straightforward and common house rules.

[Draconi Redfir]

not sure how it'd apply for 5th edition, but in a pathfinder game i played, our DM implemented a system for enchanting weapons that i thought was pretty neat.


Effectively you exchanged the gold-cost of an enchanted weapon for Experience points. Say a +1 weapon cost 2000gp, then instead you could pay 2000xp for the +1 weapon.

if you were to upgrade that +1 weapon to a +2 though, you would subtract your previous expenses. So a +2 weapon costs 4000gp, and you already spent 2000xp on it to make it +1. So you'd instead spend only an additional 2000gp the seccond time you enchanted it.

it was a bit complex and took me awhile to understand, but it was a fun addition that allowed me to fully customize my character's gear. there were some caveats though. Anyone can enchant an item/weapon due to the magic being a piece of their soul melding with it rather then actual magic enchantments. Only one person could enchant one item, If A enchants a sword and gives it to B, then B can not enchant it further then it already is. Enchantments / upgrades could only happen during "periods of extended rest" which was a bit vague, but mainly ended up being a week or more of in-game time spent not adventuring. And at any time you could "bank" some experience points to spend later. You could never Bank / spend enough experience points to de-level you, but your Banked XP had no limit, so by banking a few thousand XP every so often, you could have tens of thousands stored up in there for one big enchantment.

This didn't end up under-leveling you either. i was pretty much the only one to make use of the system and i was at MOST one or two levels under the highest-leveled player in the group. But by this time i was walking around with a +2 called, ghost-touch bastard-sword and a set of +1 shadowed ghost-touch armor.

[crayzz]

On the subject of critical success and failures, I like the idea of a critical being AC+10 (crit failure as AC -10). Though I personally don't like crit failure for attack rolls. Apply this to saves, and perhaps you can save for quarter damage or take double damage. Skill checks, this works for any series of checks (3 successes/3 failures), beat by 10 counts as two successes, lose by 10 2 failures.

This is roughly similar to what Pillars of Eternity uses for attack resolution, only they expand resolutions to miss, graze (half damage/half spell effect duration), hit, and critical hit (extra damage/extra spell effect duration).

It's kinda nice cause its generally very difficult to get criticals against enemies with defenses on par with your attack bonus, but crits can become reliable if you can debuff them to weaken their defenses (which is a feature 5e lacks in some areas AFAIK: I cant think of any ways to reduce enemy AC).

[Mith]

This is roughly similar to what Pillars of Eternity uses for attack resolution, only they expand resolutions to miss, graze (half damage/half spell effect duration), hit, and critical hit (extra damage/extra spell effect duration).

It's kinda nice cause its generally very difficult to get criticals against enemies with defenses on par with your attack bonus, but crits can become reliable if you can debuff them to weaken their defenses (which is a feature 5e lacks in some areas AFAIK: I cant think of any ways to reduce enemy AC).

Since 5e does more advantage/disadvantage, you can really only boost your attack bonus higher with Bless/Inspiration Dice, rather than lower defences.

The only thing that comes to mind is poisons to attack Dex, but that's probably homebrew territory.

[Phhase]

I ban witch bolt.
It is a big trap for characters.

Witch Bolt actually does have one good application - if you allow it to target objects. It's great at destroying emplacements, barricades, and other occluding things while minimizing attrition, since you can channel it for up to 10d12 damage to whatever inanimate thing needs breaking.

Blowguns in the real world weren’t historically poisoned. You don’t usually want to poison your food.

Ehhhh, gonna call bull on that one. Injury and ingestion poisons are actually as different in life as they are in the game. Hell, look at snake venom. If it gets into your bloodstream, you're gonna have a bad time. But drinking it is not only safe (I think...), it's part of the cure. Furthermore, if you carefully measure the amount of poison you use to the body weight of your prey, it's likely there won't even be much left in the body to be dangerous anyway - poisons are dangerous because of how they react in the body, but this process also consumes the poison.

[CheddarChampion]

Witch Bolt actually does have one good application - if you allow it to target objects. It's great at destroying emplacements, barricades, and other occluding things while minimizing attrition, since you can channel it for up to 10d12 damage to whatever inanimate thing needs breaking.

Using a 9th level spell slot will deal 10d12 if you hit, then 1d12 on subsequent turns as only the initial damage increases.

Using a 1st level spell slot deals 10d12 lightning damage over a minute. 9th gives 19d12 total. Using two 1st level slots might be more efficient.

[Hytheter]

Ehhhh, gonna call bull on that one. Injury and ingestion poisons are actually as different in life as they are in the game. Hell, look at snake venom. If it gets into your bloodstream, you're gonna have a bad time. But drinking it is not only safe (I think...), it's part of the cure.

Drinking venom is safe as long as you are totally healthy, but if you have a stomach ulcer or some internal opening then it could get into your bloodstream that way and cause problems.

Venom isn't part of antivenom though. It's used in the process but there's none in the end product. You also don't drink antivenom, it's an injection.

[Luccan]

Witch Bolt actually does have one good application - if you allow it to target objects. It's great at destroying emplacements, barricades, and other occluding things while minimizing attrition, since you can channel it for up to 10d12 damage to whatever inanimate thing needs breaking.



Ehhhh, gonna call bull on that one. Injury and ingestion poisons are actually as different in life as they are in the game. Hell, look at snake venom. If it gets into your bloodstream, you're gonna have a bad time. But drinking it is not only safe (I think...), it's part of the cure. Furthermore, if you carefully measure the amount of poison you use to the body weight of your prey, it's likely there won't even be much left in the body to be dangerous anyway - poisons are dangerous because of how they react in the body, but this process also consumes the poison.

Doesn't it only target creatures?

Since this is a thread on houserules, how about Witch Bolt damage as a bonus action? Too much or too little? Free seems too far, even though it is concentration. It would be like hitting a foe with a great axe every turn, while getting to hit them with other things.