I thought for the longest time healing word did take an action and was just a worse version of Cure Wounds. Now it makes sense why they are the same level spell.
From the original AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide: “It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule books upon you, if it goes against the obvious intent of the game (Gygax, 1979, p. 230).”
And that's great. But the whole point is that some house rules are broken and wildly unbalanced, and people need to be careful about what they implement
Define Irony: D&D Players arguing they don't need to follow the letter of the book, by providing the letter of the book, which says they don't need to follow the letter of the book.
I feel like it is a pretty commonly accepted thing when it comes to infinite ammo that you are adopting the 'we don't talk about it' approach. You don't bring it up, and I just assume you always have another arrow and filled up when you went to town last time. No shenanigans.
So here's the thing with that: arrow use stacks up FAST even at mid level. A ranger or fighter going for a machinegun build absolutely SHITS arrows. A quiver holds 20 (don't @ me about this number. Different editions use different numbers. I don't care). You have to have a quiver to shoot, so once you burn through 20 arrows, you either need another quiver which means unequipping this one, fumbling through your bag of holding for another one, and equipping another one. Further, the little hamlets and villages you travel through probably doing have 20 arrows they'd even be willing to part with. Arrows are a logistical headache. Arrow counting is specific to counting this sort of behavior.
My fav house rule in my group: 5e healing potions: If you take a potion as an action, you get full healing. Because you are making sure you drink the whole thing by using your action. So 2d4+2=10 healing. If you take a potion as a bonus action, you roll like normal. Because you’re drinking it in a rush, so some could spill out rather than getting to drink all of it. Now you could still roll good, which is the equivalent of you drinking it fast but you managed not to spill any.
Found this one recently. Haven’t had much opportunity yet to use it (RP sessions, am I right?), but the next dungeon they delve into, I’m sure it’ll get its use
We do this, and include the rule that feeding a potion to another character is always a full action with the usual die roll. It’s harder to give it to someone else without spilling =)
I've played with a DM whose house rules made me design a character specifically around not interacting with the rules he had. I dont want to have to roll to see if I run out of arrows 4 times in a turn as a fighter, or have to worry about buying random spell components every time I go to town. As a DM, some rules that I've used - If you counterspell a counterspell, all parties involved roll on the wild magic table. - If you make the DM laugh with viscous mockery, you add 1d4 damage - Cinematic advantage: in combat, if you do something cinematic (swing on a chandelier, intimidate an enemy with a flourish) accompanied with a successful appropriate ability check, you gain advantage on your next attack.
Very cool rules! i think the third would unfairly benefit rogues though, as they heavily rely on advantage and are great at skill checks(same goes for bards and sometimes rangers)
We have one that is similar to your Vicious Mockery one - if the player makes the DM laugh with it, the target autofails the save. We've also taken flanking away in favor of doing cool stuff for advantage, similar to your third rule.
my long time Gm implement a house rule that later came out as optional rules in later books. he was really happy that one of his house rules showed up in a book felt it proved him right.
A house rule I tried out some years ago in a campaign showed up in Pathfinder 2e. I was pleased to see it. (characters start with a racial HD worth of hit points on top of what the get for their 1st level class. It's no fun to have your character 1-shot-ed on the very first round of combat in the very first combat of that character's career. In practice, it just means that character's identical twin shows up, because basically no one wants to do the work of making another character that soon after the game starts).
@@jetvulcan2020 yea, I've been using that house rule basically since I started house ruling dnd. I always feel like it's a bit odd that we've kept the "everyone's basically a human" thing and still call different types of people races and then proceed to give people benifits based on their race. It'd be different if it was different species or cultures or something but we also roll culture up into race which is like, why?
My tables all have one house rule: We don't start on 1s. No matter how funny a fail can be, it really sucks to start the night on a 1 for a skill check. And then last night my players learned that it applies to the DM as well!
@@Maninawig It's usually just a reroll. We treat it as if the 1 never happened. It only applies to D20s, such as skill checks, and if it was at advantage or disadvantage, it only comes into play if both were 1s. Then it's only one die rerolled.
As someone who does a lot of homebrew (though not a ton of house rules) I found your tips to be ones that apply really well to homebrewing too, especially in terms of balancing. Great stuff, and really well researched.
I really only have one house rule, and that involves crits. I had some players complain that so many times when you crit and either roll double dice, or just multiply your dice roll by two, you get low rolls that are still worse than your average damage. So I implemented a rule that on a crit you calculate your maximum damage with modifiers, then roll your damage as normal and add them together. This way your crit is at least 1 more than your normal maximum, and it feels impactful. I also warned my players ahead of time that if they agreed to using this house rule, I would also be applying it to the enemies that they faced. So it's a boon for everyone. They agreed, and we have really enjoyed it so far.
@@mojojojoplus2 You would still calculate max damage for both sneak attack and smite, as both are dice rolls. Then roll their damage as normal, adding both together.
We use this as well. It makes them feel like they did a ton of damage. And it makes the Grave Cleric even more helpful when he cancels out my crits as the DM
Favorite house rule I've implemented at my table; flanking only gives advantage if the target is isolated (as in no other enemy is within melee range of either of the flankers or the target). In a big brawling battlefield, this rarely happens, but it incentivizes a tactical approach, and frequently gives them an edge against the bigger individual enemies where they need it.
Most people: House rules are controversial and need to be examined. Me and the other DMs in my group (about 1/2 of us): I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter them further* *After due discussion with players
Most people: My house rules are a slightly tweaked spell and +2 for something Me and the other DMs in my group: So the next game will be caster only, all cleric spells won't work because of the lore, I will add those two mechanics stolen from an entirely different system, all skills are changed, the progression will be gold for xp and the items and values will be from this homebrew book
Great video! I've personally started walking away from tables that are insistent on playing with the "roll a natural 1 on attack/skill checks and the gm takes liberty with extra negative consequences" house rule. Sounds fun until you realize your rogue with a billion points in slight of hand will trip over his own shoelaces trying to steal a pack of gum 5% of the time, or your fighter or monk actually gets penalized for leveling up/spending ki on flurry of blows. I forget the exact numbers but a high level fighter that spends an action surge to do two rounds of attacks had like a 33% chance of screwing up. I'm leary of any house rules that compromise the basic competency of your characters. Let your player characters at least be able to do the basic thing they've presumably trained to do their entire lives!
I've always seen it as, even the most well trained people can fuck up sometimes. I like to roll another d20 to see exactly how bad the nat 1 is, so it's only REALLY catastrophic and humiliating on a second nat 1 in a row, which is a much lower chance. Higher rolls might mean its not even the character's fault: "Your arrow sails through the air, but one of the feathers was crooked, and it takes a sharp turn into the dirt.", "You swing your axe, but the tough ogre bats it aside." "You throw the javelin, but in the heat of the moment, it awkwardly slips from your grasp, landing on the ground just below where you were aiming." Whereas not hitting the AC would involve the enemy dodging or parrying or blocking in some way.
My current house rules: Healing potions always heal full amount - they're valuable so can't have that many of them.. Still action to make it a more tactical choice in combat Flanking gives +2 to attack Multiple sources of advantage/disadvantage add +2 or -2 to attack Secret death saving throws (Curse of Strahd, fits the horror theme) Considering Medicine check to stabilize an unconcious player works like having them roll another Death Saving Throw, risking to make it worse or even get them back to alive with a nat 20 The rule you mentioned about hitting armor class giving resistance to the damage. Matthew Mercers rules for skill challenge to resurrect a dead PC
My favorite house rule that I implement in my games after having another DM introduce it to me is: journal entries allow the player to start the session with Inspiration. Essentially players can write a journal entry from their characters perspective of things during the week (before the next session starts), which the DM and (usually) other players can view on an online forum of some sort. I love this because it helps me get to know the player's characters better, their intentions, plans, ambitions, as well as indirectly what the players themselves want to see happen in the game. Additionally it also allows the other players to also learn this and even figure out their own characters better. Granted it gives players with more time and investment an advantage (which seems fair to me lol).
@@obsidiannightwolfe13 Good luck! Hope they like it/use it. (And remember you can still give out Inspiration for other things, this is just a way for them to guarantee they get one at the start of the session).
I go over my house rules in Session Zero, and I explain why I have them. If adding a new house rule later on, I'll explain the idea to the players and we discuss it before we start actually playing D&D (in other words, I don't interrupt the game for this discussion.) If the players agree to the new rule, we'll "play-test" it for one or two sessions, then we'll discuss if the rule did what we expected, if it needs tweaked, or simply dropped.
Quiver of returning arrows (capacity 5) Bind 5 nonmagical arrows to this item, when these arrows are removed and fired, they are magically warped to the quiver once the attack is resolved. (5 slots in case arrows are broken or if you have multiple types of arrows) This solves so much and opens people's minds to the possible applications of archery based innovations.
Great for things like: Whistling arrow - sound signal Nonmagical burning/glowing arrow - light/tracer/signal Poison arrow - assassin's best friend? Armor piercing arrow - tough targets Serrated arrow - make em bleed Also great for Attachment deliveries - the arrow is returned, but something clipped to it is not... Darkness/fog cloud/silence pendant - hard CC Grappling hook - a classic Delayed fireball rune - an achievement Trip wire posts (twin arrow delivery)- traps at a distance! Teleport rune - now you're thinking with portals! Booming arrow - stun grenade anyone?
@@vn0688 I wouldn't put an arrow meant to be set aflame in this. It would warp back while still burning. Troublesome for the shooter and specifically for all the other arrows in the quiver. Also, while the serration would not help much (because the bleeding-inducing moment, i.e. the pulling out, is skipped), basically all of the arrows that would warp back would induce quite some bleeding (because the arrow acts as a stopgap in the wound, but would not do that in this case), but wouldn't be able to hinder the shot character's movement (because they aren't there). Also, might bring some issues with some kinds of Rapid Fire where 5 may very well not be enough, especially if only 1 or 2 were the standardly shot ones.
@@Alche_mist admittedly I thought of this being utilized more by a rogue... So 1 aimed shot typically... For a ranged fighter, yeah I would expect this to be for the special utility shots and whatever bog standard arrow they might want to spam would be carried in bundles with their own quiver. And the flame arrow, yes, treat with caution. I was imagining an oil rag tied to it, but the teleport would leave the rag behind... But I was imagining a bright fluorescent or neon glow from a non-flame source as possible light alternatives.
90% of my “house rules” are things i misspoke or forgot about and then decided to make official lol. and it’s almost always in the players favor. Edit: I am now realizing this is a big problem. :/
GOD when I was a beginner DM I didn't understand how attack of opportunity worked so I was the jerk DM who got rid of it for the first few sessions... then I was able to connect the dots and felt SO BAD for getting rid of it!! g r o w t h
man, attacks of opportunity suck, though. they discourage tactical movement and usually slow the game down. very sad. well. not opportunity attacks full stop, but provoking them by moving away. if someone has a specific ability, they're always looking to use it, so there's no need to worry about that.
My major house rule I play with is the re-roll 1's on critical damage outcomes, as it feels bad that when you roll that Nat20, only to roll snake eyes for damage output. I do convey that this is a two-way road, and that enemies/NPCs will get this as well, but honestly I more often than not just leave their rolls as is. I also have a self-limiting rule to myself that NPC's will be at minimum 1 level lower than the players, just so it doesn't feel like I'm doing self-inserts and hogging the spotlight.
I guess the self-limiting NPC rules doesn't apply to characters that are intentionally above (often far above) the party in levels - Illuminati in RP sessions, Big Bad, Even Bigger Bad and other characters that are more of a Plot Device than a skill/dicerolling target (i.e. combat, persuasion, etc.). Because otherwise, those valuable story characters would be sorely missing. I know it's a different system, but just look at Elders and Methuselah in Vampire: the Masquerade. Most player characters get no chance at all against them, but they serve the story. Obviously, you must always be careful with such characters - you rightly identified that it's easy to make them Mary Sue with all the (harmful and dangerous) consequences.
Got a house rule that players start with standard array, but get both ASI and Feats on appropriate levels. Going from 1-20 with the exact same stats feels weird. With the math, it works out fun! 🤗
I've been thinking about this but maybe with just 1 point. Really I would switch the characters to the 3.5 system of a feat every 3 levels and 1 stat point every 4 levels, but that's more complicated and people don't always pay attention. XD Maybe when they make new characters...
@@matthewlangley3089 for sure! I calculated it out, and even doing both you would at most get a player with two 20 stat scores by level 20. How it is with rolling stats is usually players already have a 20 stat at level 1. It's a better progression in my opinion I may make a video about it in a few weeks
In my game, I give out "Yippideedoos" when people do awesome stuff, rather like Inspiration. Collect 20, and you can trade it in for a Feat. When leveling up, we stick with the stat improvements, so a good player can have top-stat PCs AND great feats. Yes, I do have to adjust the balance in the modules, but it's so much more fun that way. People will do so much for a Yippideedoo.
The biggest thing about house rules is clearly and concisely explaining them at Session Zero. Walk through the house rules in very specific detail, that way everyone can voice their concerns. I think we talked about Choking for 30 minutes to understand how you can chocke or be choked.
I've been playing for long enough to see both sides of this spectrum, and sometimes it got ugly. I had a game that was more house rules than actual rules in Pathfinder, and that was an absolute mess. Anyone who knows Pathfinder knows why. But I had some very inconsequential but fun house rules come out, like that Tabaxi get darkvision or Tortles live the same length of time as dwarves
One idea I heard a while back was for the DM to make perception/investigation/stealth rolls for the players - makes it more realistic as if you personally were looking for something or trying to be stealthy, you wouldn't necessarily know how well you were doing and increases the tension because players won't know if they are being stealthy or if they missed an enemy up ahead on a bad perception roll.
This is actually how Pathfinder 2e handles that stuff by default. If you’re rolling a stealth check, the GM is the one who rolls the dice for you and you have no idea how stealthy you’re actually being outside of an educated guess from your modifier. Likewise if there’s some bad guys hiding up ahead in an ambush, the GM will roll their Stealth Checks against the party’s Perception DCs (think Passive Perception in 5e, PF2e tried to remove opposed rolls entirely) so the players don’t even know any checks were made.
I had a DM do this and it took away a lot of the fun for the players. It was frustrating to try to do something in game and just be told "you don't see anything". I think it's that thing of it being okay to fail something but it being upsetting when someone fails on your behalf. I also think that that particular DM used it far too frequently and potentially was sketchy about it, amongst other things, so we sort of lost faith in him 😬
I think this is only a good idea if you have problem players who meta-game perception information for their character's benefit. Good players will lean into failed perception checks and roleplay being at a disadvantage, rather than trying to game the system.
I absolutely despise the idea of the DM making rolls for my character. I wouldn't play in a game that did that, and I'm a Forever DM who jumps at any chance to play a character.
@@futuza I had to push that in a beginner's game when I was first learning 5e. I had played AD&D and some WoD before. I failed my Perception, and one of the players argued if I should be just walking into the room. I pointed out that everyone that had looked failed, and my character thinks it's safe. Someone has to set off the trap, and my character would be the normal choice to go first anyways. Immediately attacked by a Grey Ooze. But I saved us from several minutes of metagaming.
Ginny, I love your dice. Also this is a great video. House rules are everything you’ve said here. They aren’t for all tables, they don’t apply everywhere, but can still be essential to balancing the game. Great job in making a difficult topic easy.
On the one about removing attacks of opportunity Interestingly PF2 almost does have no attacks of opportunity. The fighter and the champion (Paladin) get them and other martials can pick it up as a feat. Same goes for monsters, only usually "boss" monsters can attack of opportunity. I honestly prefer this 1000x. We get fights with players constantly running up slopes and diving over enemies, sliding past enemies down a hill, monks and rouges flipping over enemies etc. Absolutely love it
For the sake of anyone else reading this - only the Fighter gets it for free at level 1, every other martial can grab it as a 6th level class feat (but they typically have some pretty stiff competition at that level) and it’s not so much bosses that have it as mostly enemies who could be considered heavily-trained soldiers (Hobgoblin Soldiers have it, for example) but these are still in the considerable minority of enemies in the bestiaries. And I *love* this! There’s more design space for interesting Reactions, fights get more mobile since you’re no longer locked into melee for fear of getting smacked with an AoO, and just makes the fights more dynamic and lets the party more easily shift gears and react to changing circumstances.
@@michielbrouwer-cummins8703 If you mean the Disengage action in 5e, that's still costing either your action or your bonus action (and I'm pretty sure most 5e characters who aren't Rogues are stuck with the former). A PF2e character can spend one of their three actions to just walk away, then still have two more actions for other stuff (like casting a spell, making an attack, etc). Between this and the Action Economy you can do some proper hit-and-run tactics - one action to move in, second to strike, third to move away. Hell; it's actually a foundational tactic of a lot of Monks - stride into melee, one action for Flurry of Blows (to land two attacks), then one action to move away to safety before your turn ends.
Whenever I find a house rule I think would improve the game, I have my players vote on whether or not we add it. They’re also free to suggest any house rules at the start of each session and feedback at the end
As a game design alumni who wants to go into TTRPG's eventually, homebrew rules are super important to me and my games. I have an entire channel in my D&D discord dedicated to my house rules, most of them are minor tweaks on RAW, like uncapping fall damage, variant attunement timing, and a different method for DM inspiration, but others are completely new mechanics like upcasting using a spell slot and levels of exhaustion combined to be able to cast a spell at the combined total's level (level 4 spell slot + 2 levels of exhaustion = level 6 spell slot). A few of the 18 rules in there right now are just explaining things like rule of cool, HDYWTDT, you can certainly try, that kind of stuff, cause my players are generally new and I find it helpful to write these things down for them. And any rule that's potentially too powerful in any direction (like the one that makes crits do max die damage + roll + modifier) are listed as subject to change and I have made it very clear I could get rid of or change them at any time if it feels unfair. Then even some rules are completely irrelevant during gameplay and deal with character creation like my own method of rolling for stats that makes the characters more powerful (meaning I can throw more challenging things at them and they can feel more heroic) and making Intelligence more useful outside of Artificers and Wizards, giving them proficiency and expertise in different skills based on their INT modifier. A lot of my house rules are really focused on empowering my players, now that I think about it. 😅 I also find that despite the fact that they're all listed and readily available, my players will often forget about the more obscure rules (which is to be expected, we play like once a month and they're mostly all new players), so it's invaluable that I remember them and can remind my players of them mid-game. If we played in person I'd probably make up a 10 commandments style graphic to hang on the wall about my homebrew rules lmao. (Also a lot of these rules are taken from XPtoLevel3, with some minor tweaks here and there)
One of my favorite house rules that I've used every game/group for ages. Critical hits do Max damage+a damage roll. So if you attack with a weapon that does D8 damage, and score a crit, you do 8+D8 damage, plus any other mods. This way a critical hit is always better than any regular hit could be. No chance of doing just 2 points of damage on a critical hit.
Hi Ginny! You along with other D&D TH-camrs (tik tokers) have really helped me put learn and expand my knowledge of D&D house rules, homebrew designing (classes, subclasses, crafting, etc) and DMing! Thank you alot!!
Most of my house rules are just "I've reviewed this subsystem someone made for XYZ and I'm using it". Like crafting, or harvesting dragon parts and what you can do with them.
my table is mostly casters and we decided to ignore required materials for spells, but materials they grab on the way can be used to expand a spell. our barbarian was in favor as well so it goes well for us. one player is a druid so she collects lots of fun things to use
My favorite and most common house rule is when you roll a natural 20 on a hit, you automatically do max damage and then roll damage and add modifiers. I absolutely hate it when I roll a critical hit but then roll low on the damage. This rule makes these hits actually feel damaging. And it applies to both players and the DM.
I do the same, because it sucks for a critical hit being like 7 damage. My question for you, is it just the base damage or is it additional damage say from sneak attack that is maxed too?
@@nebless-clem Now that is a challenging question that I don’t fully have an answer for. I’m still a relatively new DM who picked this rule up from my dad. For now, I think I’ll just keep it at base damage and work it from there.
@@nebless-clem The way I've seen it is that it applies to *all* dice, including Sneak Attack, Divine Smite, Hunter's Mark, etc. For example, suppose a level 3 rogue crits with a rapier and gets Sneak Attack damage. A normal hit would do 1d8 + 2d6 + Dex damage. Using this rule, a crit would do 8 + 6 + 6 + 1d8 + 2d6 + Dex.
This gets out of hand very quickly with crits from sources like divine smite that the player cannot miss, so I personally run the house rule as only the WEAPON damage dice is maximized. This is coming from me, a Paladin, critting for over 60 at level 3 and realising "wow this is kinda unfair" 😅
My problem with variant crit rules is that they get unwieldy when they interact with stuff like a barbarian's Brutal Critical or a half-orc's Savage Attacks, which add extra dice that *aren't* maxed. You have to work out the max of your normal dice, then roll them along with your extra dice, then add everything together. Much simpler to just build up a big handful of dice, chuck 'em, and add them up. And, even if you get some 1s and 2s, it's still fun to roll a whole load of dice.
Great, really in depth video :) Thanks I've got a very important rule of thumb to add to the list. If or when you want to change something in the game, keep in mind that is is generally better to BUFF something than it is to NERF it. No one likes it if something is taken away from them, while helping someone who needs it is great for the entire table.
In the campaign I’m currently playing, the DM said to us we must add both a feat and an ability score improvement every time we reach the levels we must choose for one of those. Looking at it bluntly, that makes all the characters insanely overpowered if they go for a strong build, but the DM says he loves seeing strong characters in game. But we’ve had a lot of fun thinking of fun builds together with the DM, so I’d say it’s not a bad thing if we’re enjoying the game more because of it!
My first dnd campaign I was ever in, one of the final fights took place on a frozen lake that was slowly melting and breaking apart. we were facing two scaled up were-polarbears and were on the brink of death for nearly the whole fight. The map was constantly changing and we had to plan our routes and move quickly before the ice broke too much to traverse and we all plunged into the frozen lake. It was an incredibly fun combat, and we felt so pwerful when we won.
I love Ginny so much. As a dm I find her videos informative and easy to follow and I suggest her to my players as the best place for easy to follow and creative tips and info ♡ I have a basic house rule - its for everyone, npc pc or enemy, if you roll their ac exactly you hit them. Also no really a rule more advice from a dm pov - but my player was looking for water so I made her a bag of sweets that replenished her fluids for 24 hours and rolled a dice to see how many sweets she got. She now has 5 days worth of water she can fit into a tiny pouch rather than having to carry 5 days worth of liquid around with her. My advice is - it's okay to use or modify existing things or create new things, at the end of the day as long as you are all having fun thats what matters. My player is level one so I also moded a animated armour to be so Rusty his move speed was 10ft and he can't move his arms more than 45% so he can't lift his arms due to rusting. You are not trying to kill your players right off the bat, let them earn their death. In our first session the player wanted to jump out a tree but the fall damage would have killed her right out so I didn't let her do it. If your players are new to dnd be forgiving while they learn the ropes. I've been into dnd for years but this is my players first campaign so I want to ease her in and in my opinion we will all get more out of the game this way. At the end of the day you are playing to have fun ♡ just enjoy yourselves.
For that arrow one, making it a magic quivver that provides unlimited arrows, but the arrows disappear 8 seconds after being removed, is what I would do. That way, they always have arrows to use, but can't use them for traps or sell them. (Note to self, make "Quiver of vanishing arrows")
Man, I use so many houserules which I set out in a session 0 when appropriate, but your video did remind me that I had introduced one just yesterday to a home game (extending the audible range of thunder spells) without really talking it through with my players. Thanks for this video, reminding me to keep good practices, even with my home games.
Thank you so much for these videos- very informative! I have learnt so much. I have been trying to learn about D&D but some parts are confusing- but i am getting some ideas - like “story telling”, “stats that are implemented”. Because i have been making my own game in an effort to understand.
The two most common house rules I've encountered as a player are: not keeping track of ammo/common components and not tracking weight. Cause no one in my friend group wants to pause the story to do math. Lol Completely unrelated, I love your shirt.
I have a general rule of "your characters aren't idiots". Basically that these characters exist in this world, so they know how things work. They'll stock up on supplies when they're in town. They'll replace stuff that gets worn out or broken. etc So players don't have to waste time on trivial things and quest rewards get spent on interesting things rather than having to kill a bunch of gnolls just so you can afford lunch.
A house rule my players have loved is grazing. If you miss a target's AC by 1 you graze them for half damage. This really helps players who are down on their luck get some hits in and it helps them figure out the target's AC and use that information however they wish. Not to mention this also makes all combat go faster, as there's more damage all around. Of course this also applies to enemies to make it fair and speeds up combat further
I've found that creative players can break anything in game. I absolutely love having them come up with something I didn't think of. Of course, I do have a house rule of veto rights. If something they want to do is way beyond scope I can say no.
the first house rule my brother established in the game he ran for our family was "the verbal component to magic missile is yelling magic missile in a silly voice and you have to do it or the spell doesn't work"
In our game, during initiative rolls, if you roll a Nat 20 you get an extra action during the first round, and if you roll a Nat 1 you lose your action or bonus action for the first round. Adds a little fun when you roll a Nat 20 and still come in behind the rogue!
As someone who house rules at the professional game developer level I must commend you for a very sober and sensible set of guidelines. The only thing I would even add is to watch out for adding unofficial books/material to your game. Even the few that have done a good job of developing their material (which is rare) they never line up well with your core game.
At my table, we have a House Rule regarding Critical Hits. Instead of rolling double the damage dice, you roll the normal damage dice and add the maximum. Crits are supposed to be huge, devastating blows, and I think this helps to show that. Nothing suck quite like scoring a crit and then rolling all 1s. Example: Crit with Longsword = 8 + 1d8 + Str Mod
The Star Wars campaign I've been in the past couple years had a house rule implemented after the first four months because of me. I had taken the observant feat, and so every perception check I did was with advantage. Since I was the best eyes/ears of the party, I did this very often and kept 2 D20s for quick grabbing to just roll at the same time with advantage. Now I, like many others, prefer to "charge" my dice. (For those out of the loop, this means I leave the maximum number on a dice facing upward). What happened pretty regularly was my two dice came up the same number. Which pretty much makes any roll of advantage useless. After seeing my disheartened response too many times, either another player or our DM mentioned how they had seen a house rule before where if you roll the same numbers when rolling advantage/disadvantage, your roll will count as a CRIT SUCCESS. After my double rolls happened a few more times, the DM decided to put it in, but we spent the next few sessions working out the finer details. I'll list them below. 1. When rolling dis/advantage, if you roll the same number on both dice, that's a CRIT SUCCESS and will be counted like when rolling d20s. 2. Conversely, if you roll 1 on both your dice, that is still a CRIT FAILURE (it might even be a worse failure than a CRIT 1, although I might be remembering that wrong). 3. Double rolls will not count as CRITS on either attack rolls or saving throws. The frequent ways this could be abused was too much and we all agreed that it wouldn't be fair to the DM. (I mean, I play a Rogue, I frequently roll with advantage and extra ways to CRIT will make my sneak attack dice way more over powered than they are already.) We included saving throws because it balanced the rule out even more, plus the Bless spell focuses on attacks/saving throws, so it was easy to group them in our mind. I don't remember if there were other rules to do with it (we've been on break for quite a while and it doesn't even come up every session), but that's the basics for how we balanced it. Since we've implemented the rule, I've gotten CRITS a bit more frequently, and so have the other players (and the DM once or twice as well). While my party doesn't freak out that much on NAT20s like the folks on Critical Role or Dimension 20 do, we go feral when someone pulls a surprise double CRIT. We're all having fun, and that's what's most important to my DM (hell, once I pulled off an awesome stunt and got a NAT20 sneak attack. After I rolled 7 dice for damage and 5 of them came up as 1s and 2s, he leaned forward past his screen, saw the dice, and told me to reroll them. Sure the dice tell the story, but a little nudge here or there makes the game a bit more fun)
One of the more tense and exciting rules my DM added was better criticals. Where you add a flat max dice roll on top of a standard damage roll + modifier. So a crossbow bolt deals 8+1d8+1 from the attack bonus. This also applies to enemies and it makes any criticals terrifying or amazing depending on who rolls it
Target AC half damage - aka glancing blows is something we enjoy. As well as we just straight up made all opportunity attacks disadvantage, it screws with a couple of feats etc but we chose to accept the funk in place of having movement in combat, because otherwise nobody ever moved except the monsters.
@@mickeysmagic89 oh no not tanking capability that would be slightly troublesome at lvl9 and firepower thats easily comparable to the party's caster and itd entite turn can be negated if the party has subtle counterspell or 2 counterspellers! Look at the Ancient Black Dragon. You dont see Ancient black dragon needing a small army just to be an adequate challange.
I mean let's be honest, if you're not homebrewing monsters for a high level party then it's probably not going to be much of a challenge when the party can pump our 200-300 damage per turn. Unless you're willing to do many high level encounters per adventuring day. I might be wrong but this has been my experiance with running high level dnd a couple campains.
@@solsystem1342 well, define “homebrew.” The Lich’s entry in the MM advises that it has many additional spell books and magic items to draw from, things that aren’t mentioned in its stat block proper. Is it homebrewing to add these items or change their spells prepared? I don’t believe so
We had a game (modern-day) where you got a bonus if you physically made the action of pumping a round into your shotgun before combat, the drawback was we players kept forgetting we had already done that and ended up wasting ammo, we kept strick counts on ammo.
I have a house rule that each of my players got to roll for a random feat when making characters. My game featured rival characters that I also rolled random feats for too. I used a table of feats to pick from. If the player rolls a feat that they can't use because of their race/class, they re-roll until they get one that they can use.
A house rule I implement in most of my games is that regardless of the class and level I will allow a player to invent new things whether it be a spell (must be of a class and level your character has access to) or a weapon (same requirements as spells), or even a tool (trickier) however I require them to go over it with me so as to hopefully not break the game. I have had a bard player ask to combine a rapier and a lyre into 1 object that we added a few complications to and another time we made a spell to summon some constructs like any of the conjure lesser whatever spells. We also use the nat 1 random tables and nat 20 special effects (like make them blind for a couple turns by going for their eyes)
I feel like the "less is better" idea is probably true for most tables but when I decided to finally write the houserules we use I noticed the sheer extent that my friends and I love houseruling/hacking the rpgs we play. I know "generally" was a key word but I just wanted to throw out there to not be afraid of going with a bigger list. Because it can be suuuper fun fine-tuning things for specific experiences with your group!
I think some of the principles of agile software development work pretty well when applied to house rules, you can have a massive list of house rules, but be sure to add them incrementally in small amounts over time, testing to ensure it doesn't break the prior existing status as you do.
There were a few changes I made in my current campaign, but I'll just talk about three and why I made them: 1) Resurrection and other life restoring magic don't always work. I really wanted there to be some urgency and drama in the combats. If you can resurrect someone and it always works, I feel like a lot of that gets lost. I've been running for over a year and only one person has had to be raised, but I feel like it still impacts how the players play throughout. 2) I am one of the people you mentioned that use the exhaustion for being knocked to zero rule. I wanted to avoid the wack-a-mole effect and make combat a bit more challenging. 3) Asymmetrical advancement was the most controversial. The basic idea is that at the end of the session, I don't distribute xp or mark off milestones, I give out individual levels. The order of precedence for who get the levels is: #1 lowest level characters get a level first; #2 martial characters get levels before casters (three tiers: martial, partial casters, and casters ... so a ranger would be a partial caster) #3 random distribution for those who tie for precedence. Also, a character can only receive one level per session. There were a few things I was hoping to do with this one. First, I knew that rules one and two would affect martial classes more, so I wanted to give them something to balance things out a bit. Second, it gives a way for me to let the party advance almost every session without everyone leveling super fast. Third, it helps move the spotlight around since different people (normally) would get levels each session. Fourth, casters tend to get the coolest stuff with their levels, and I thought that giving martial classes a faster advancement would help offset that and give it a bit of an old school feel (xp charts were different for each class in 1st edition, allowing some of the more "basic" classes to advance faster). Most people were okay with it, some had concerns but were willing to give it a try. One player basically threw a fit over it. He was a martial class and didn't like the idea of being higher level than most of the other party members. Normally, I probably would have fought more for my ideas, but in the middle of a pandemic, working 12 hour shifts, I was tired so I gave up and let it go. It's been okay. I still would have liked to see how that would have worked out, and maybe someday I'll get a chance to really try that out.
In my group, we have a house rule for skills checks on conversations. before we roll the dice we are going to have a conversation, if you want to deceive someone, you are going to have a full conversation, after the entire table will discuss how good was it. if it was a good conversation he will have advantage, if it was bad it was going to have disadvantage
We have a house rule for crits - instead of dealing double damage dice, you deal regular damage + max. So if you crit on an attack that deals 1d6+2 damage, you would deal 1d6+2+6 instead of the RAW 2d6+2. This eliminates the let-down from critting and then rolling 1s on the damage dice - the "extra" dice always deal the max damage. Applied evenly to PCs and DM - PC crits are badass but now the monsters really pack a punch too.
My table usually has a house rule where, if a caster learns a new spell they think will be cool or useful but then never finds an opportunity for it, they can drop it in favor of another spell. However, if they've used it even once, it's locked in since it's now "canon" to the campaign
I DM'd for a table of 12 new players for a few weeks in school. Dice going of the table was constant when rolling, so I implemented a temporary house rule to try to remind them to roll a little softer, and that any dice that land off the table was a natural 1. However, I would forgive this often, as it happened way less when the rule was implemented. I don't think I actually had to reinforce it, because after it was mainly actual accidents.
At our table we have tried many house rules over the years. The best that we have come up with that have proven good and make the game more fun for us are: if you drink a potion as an action during combat you also take the Dodge action and if you really not 20 with an attack roll your damage dice is maximized for the initial dice, not the bonus dice.
I started DMing two years ago The first thing i did was "homebrew-fixing" the classes my players chose... Of course i did it with the player Today we have a lot of house rules that we think make the game better/easier We don't play 5th edition we play OUR edition
Can't remember many of our house rules off the top of my head. But we do use the one that makes health potions a bonus action to use for yourself (but still an action to "feed" to unconscious party members) I think we were considering exploding dice at one point, but decided against it specifically because my gunslinger's pistol rolls 3d10, and their rifle rolls 3d12. all thanks to a homebrewed special metal that they found that adds an extra damage dice to a weapon. she's also a forge cleric, so can make upto 20 pieces of ammo a day, so ammo tracking at this point is almost redundant (I still do it because i think it's fun.)
Favorite house rule: The rule of cool! At least to an extent :) Based on the weight calculation, could you really push that giant rock off a cliff? No. But you did roll a 20 and have a +7, so hell yeah you can!
What I really try to implement at the table is, that there is no strategy discussion while in combat to make the combat feel more imersive. I mean you can't just start talking tactics for minutes while you fight someone... you can give commands or ask something, but the other character should be able to decide for himself to follow your bidding
@@chrisstoltz3648 Short agreements are fine and stuff, but arguing 10 minutes about how to proceed does take quite a lot out of the experience in my opinion. You are playing an p&p with some action and not chess (don't get me wrong, I like chess, but it's something differen)
The house rule that used are Enhanced Hit Dice : Basically spell casters can spend hit dices to regain spell slots. For example spending two hit dice to regain a level 2 spell slot or to regain two level 1 spell slots. It makes Hit dice more useful and gives spellcasters a little more longevity in drawn out quests. Now spell casters have to decide be spending hit dice on regaining health or regain some spell slots.
I came up with simplified rules for scrolls, because dang! The RAW are so confusing, I can't keep track of them all, and I have enough on my plate. Likewise for alchemy, herbalism, medicine, and poison kits. We're more casual players, and we just want to have fun, not rules-lawyer, so simplified rules work well for us. Although, there have been times I've been tempted to up the challenge, by saying, "You need to gather and use the specific ingredients for spells!" That urge passes quickly, though, as soon as I consider my group. Maybe one member would actually do that.
So I am pretty new to dnd and so my parties dm, and he says if you can think of a use for something that breaks the game that I haven't thought of go for it, he regrets it every time but its hilarious and makes for so much fun
The only thing I consistently house rule is diagonal movement: *At least in Pathfinder 1e which my group plays,* the rules as written say your first diagonal space each turn costs 5ft of movement and every diagonal space thereafter costs 10ft. This means moving 4 diagonal squares on the map costs 35ft. But if we were to actually measure the space moved, each diagonal space on a 5ftx5ft grid would be slightly over 7ft. So I house rule that every diagonal space alternates between 5ft and 10ft, so moving 4 spaces would cost 30ft, not 35ft. I'm also a bit loose on keeping track of ammo, but I don't exactly come out and house rule that everyone just has unlimited arrows. I heard that someone counted all the arrows shot by an archer character in the Critical Role series, and it totaled around 200gp worth of ammo over the course of a 1st-to-20th level campaign. That just becomes an uninteresting level of minutia to worry about, especially when a competently built character is going to have the skill needed to craft more ammo during downtime. So I usually only start paying attention to ammo remaining when circumstances demand it (say the player has missed their last 10-20 shots and the party hasn't had a lot of downtime, then I'll start questioning how many arrows the archer has left). I figure food is similarly uninteresting to track unless the party hasn't been near a settlement for a while.
The best house rule we use is that you need to train or hae a story reason for feats you take. If you want to take sharpshooter at lvl 4, better spend at least a bit of your downtime at lvl 3 practicing shooting the weapon you have.
Yeah. Writing down your house rules for all to see either at or before session 0 is my standard go to. Mostly because I have in my campaign overhauled both sorcerers and wizards. Because our party thought both classes were kinda lacking that certain something. Besides that my campaign usually suffers from an abundance of home brew races, subclasses and classes (I may have problem)
Not D&D but another tabletop RPG that I played allowed people with certain movement skills to use their movement as an attack, I realize this after I based my entire character on being a speedster. Now, in that game it means every time you level up your speed ability you gain another movement per turn! Since I also spect into the ability "carry" I could carry other characters along with me with no debuffs. As you might guess the end results were a little bit ridiculous when I could perform seven attacks just for movement as well as my own normal attacks as well as carrying my party member and in-game partner to add additional attacks and since her animal companion also attacked anytime that she did we pretty much always got to attack 9 or 10 times when every other pair got to attack twice 😂😂😅 or even just grab enemies, carry them off a cliff, drop them and return while still having enough movements to do it two more times in a single turn. That was pretty fun when our party had a civil war.... The game master soon put a stop to this LOL but he let us do it till the end of the session. After that, we agreed that that particular hero had gone on to do bigger and grander missions and I used a backup character with a more reasonable skill set for the remainder of the game.
To date, I've made 17 house rules - some of which are multiple-page-long mechanical bundles, such as my Resistance overhaul, Luck stat implementation (think Pulp Call of Cthulhu), and Planeshifting rules. We've had *7* sessions so far. Send help. PS: It's fine though... for now - I'm DMing for a single player and he DMs for me in two other campaigns, with another one still in the planning phases.
I've used a few house rules in different campaigns ie. Dismemberment in a sea fairing campaign for the whole wooden limb, eye patch aesthetic Or Crit fails in the game I run for my little brothers for a sillier tone.
My biggest house rule is me removing spell components simply because I hate them with a burning passion. Another one I have is quick stops where you don't spend the 1 hour of a short rest but they get to use their hit dice to heal for that rest but don't get anything else for short rests, this is something that works for those people that want to go after someone but they just took quite a bit of damage. My DM for another campaign is starting to implement the death saves in secrets which won't do much because all our character sheets are online so I can just look and see what it is to help them. But a good healer would stabilize or heal their party member when they are down which I what I normally tend to do anyway.
Love being the one who rolls death saves for my players. The tension they feel makes them act like an actual person would if a friend fell in combat rather than gaming the system and letting their friend continue to bleed out.
Since I play online, I have the opportunity to experience rolling my own death saves privately in the chat, but then keeping my mouth shut as my character slowly bleeds to death and the others are deciding what to do XD extra fun when I have my microphone muted and I can talk to them from my unconscious state without them hearing me.
I usually house rule revives, both from death and from knockout. Having ANY healer completely removes the impact of death or even just getting knocked in combat. Tension is key to making combat thrilling, so I always reccomend houserules that allow people to get back in the fight quickly (for fun) but with difficulty (for tension).
Mine is: every time someone comes up from 0 hp due to magical healing in combat, they take a level of exhaustion, due to the stress on the mind and body from violently going back and forth between consciousness.
One possibility you could do is nick the dying mechanics from Pathfinder 2e. It works a bit like if failed death saves didn’t reset when you got healed back above zero. So you get knocked out in PF2e you gain the Dying 1 condition and have to make a roll each turn to see if you stabilise or get worse, with fails dropping you down to Dying 2, Dying 3, and then killing you if you hit Dying 4. If you get healed up then you lose that condition but replace it with the Wounded condition at the same value Dying was at when you got healed, so if the Cleric got you back after you hit Dying 2 then you’re now Wounded 2. Wounded doesn’t do anything until you go down again, at which point it sets what your Dying condition starts at which then goes up by one because you just got KO’d (so if the Wounded 2 character goes down again he’s starting off at Dying 3). Your Dying condition starts off one higher too if you went down to a crit, so if you’re at Wounded 2 and you get knocked out with a crit, you immediately jump up to Dying 4 and are now flat-out dead.
We had a house rule for an older edition. Nat 1's were -10 and Nat 20 was +10. Logic for this was at higher level play a level 15+ character shouldn't instantly fail or die from a one. (Ex. Nat 1 on a Listen check when you have +22 it'd be 12 instead of absolute fail) This was back in 3.5/3.75 days when you could be epic level and have lots of bonuses added.
hasn’t come up yet, but i rule that pcs are in shock instead of unconscious when rolling death saves. they can’t do something like give useful information to another party member, and they might not be fully aware of what’s going on, but i prefer it for flavour.
My husband's house rule when he DMs is: "You describe your nat 20s; I describe your nat 1s." No matter the outcome, it's brought some serious laughs to our table!
In standard DND and pathfinder your only supposed to gain your level as hp ie level 3= 3hp/8 hours of rest. Most people skip over this rule and just give max hp which is fine. But my current group wanted this campaign to be a little more challenging. So I implemented a healthy medium. The house rule is you roll half your hit dice back as hp per 8 hours of rest + con mod. This has brought a healthy balance of hp regained while still holding to realism and fantasy elements.
A simple house rule I like is the addition of a d8 finesse slashing weapon. Because sometimes people don’t want to use rapiers but also don’t want to get stuck behind with a d6 scimitar. Another I like is always taking max health. It leads to stronger players, but also the monsters get maxed health as well.
@@Leith_Crowther It hasn’t caused much problems for any parties ive seen, be they my games or my other friends who use the same rule. I suppose it could make it drag, but the Pcs in games with this rule tend to be really strong. It just makes the enemies just as threatening, I suppose.
@@Leith_Crowther At least from my own experiences, I can say it allows players to endure tougher combats longer. A lot of these games have been played in 3.5 which is a much more numbers heavy game, so that might also have an effect. I’ve only used the rule once in a 5e game and the game didn’t last long enough to really get an idea of how good or bad it was for all involved.
House rule: when rolling initiative a nat 20 will allow you to chose where you want to be in initiative. That way players can get excited by a nat 20 in initiative and it has some strategic elements.
So my biggest house rule involves Rolling up initial characters. Make a 3X3 grid for each player and label the columns with your physical stats (STR, DEX, CON) and the rows with mental stats (INT,WIS, CHA). Then the DM rolls 4d6, drops the lowest and everyone puts that number on their grid. Once a number is placed it can not be changed. Once all 9 squares are filled you select your stats from the numbers available in each stats row or column, but each number can only be used once (So if you have a 18 at STR x INT you can use it for Strength or Intelligence, but not both. This tends to make more internally balanced parties but with out each person using the exact same numbers.
I feel if you're going to add house rules, they should add something to the game. I'm starting an Old School Essentials (a B/X D&D retroclone) campaign soon and I have three house rules; maximum hit points at 1st level (since you're supposed to roll), instead of dying at 0hp, you roll on injury chart (since the players aren't old school and I want to give them a little more leeway, while still making combat highly dangerous) , and a stress/sanity system I created since it's also a horror game.
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congratulations of almost reaching 300k, just 1k to go!
I liked this video just off of the title, and I am sorry for what ever happens in the comments.
I thought for the longest time healing word did take an action and was just a worse version of Cure Wounds.
Now it makes sense why they are the same level spell.
I've already pledged. And figured you need some nice shiny math rock altars. *grin*
I love your dice....
From the original AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide:
“It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule books upon you, if it goes against the obvious intent of the game (Gygax, 1979, p. 230).”
Hear Hear!
Was just having a conversation about this today and a friend cited this haha
If only the people who upheld older editions and RAW both as gospel hadn't skipped over that statement from the man himself, eh?
And that's great. But the whole point is that some house rules are broken and wildly unbalanced, and people need to be careful about what they implement
Define Irony: D&D Players arguing they don't need to follow the letter of the book, by providing the letter of the book, which says they don't need to follow the letter of the book.
My main house rule today is : "Ginny that shirt is AMAZING"
THANKS! It's from Morningwitch!
Very true
I want a shirt like that too, let's see if they sell it in mens pattern XXL ^^
Just went to the comments for this specifically, the hair-shirt combo is phenomenal 👌
It has strong bisexual energy and I want it
I feel like it is a pretty commonly accepted thing when it comes to infinite ammo that you are adopting the 'we don't talk about it' approach. You don't bring it up, and I just assume you always have another arrow and filled up when you went to town last time. No shenanigans.
So here's the thing with that: arrow use stacks up FAST even at mid level. A ranger or fighter going for a machinegun build absolutely SHITS arrows. A quiver holds 20 (don't @ me about this number. Different editions use different numbers. I don't care). You have to have a quiver to shoot, so once you burn through 20 arrows, you either need another quiver which means unequipping this one, fumbling through your bag of holding for another one, and equipping another one.
Further, the little hamlets and villages you travel through probably doing have 20 arrows they'd even be willing to part with. Arrows are a logistical headache.
Arrow counting is specific to counting this sort of behavior.
My fav house rule in my group: 5e healing potions:
If you take a potion as an action, you get full healing. Because you are making sure you drink the whole thing by using your action. So 2d4+2=10 healing.
If you take a potion as a bonus action, you roll like normal. Because you’re drinking it in a rush, so some could spill out rather than getting to drink all of it. Now you could still roll good, which is the equivalent of you drinking it fast but you managed not to spill any.
I’m stealing this.
Found this one recently. Haven’t had much opportunity yet to use it (RP sessions, am I right?), but the next dungeon they delve into, I’m sure it’ll get its use
Just implemented this, it’s great. I combined with with drinking a healing potion is a bonus action (but no other potions)
We do this, and include the rule that feeding a potion to another character is always a full action with the usual die roll. It’s harder to give it to someone else without spilling =)
@@rmonogue Same here, it just makes sense. ☺️
I've played with a DM whose house rules made me design a character specifically around not interacting with the rules he had. I dont want to have to roll to see if I run out of arrows 4 times in a turn as a fighter, or have to worry about buying random spell components every time I go to town.
As a DM, some rules that I've used
- If you counterspell a counterspell, all parties involved roll on the wild magic table.
- If you make the DM laugh with viscous mockery, you add 1d4 damage
- Cinematic advantage: in combat, if you do something cinematic (swing on a chandelier, intimidate an enemy with a flourish) accompanied with a successful appropriate ability check, you gain advantage on your next attack.
I LOVE the first two!
Very cool rules! i think the third would unfairly benefit rogues though, as they heavily rely on advantage and are great at skill checks(same goes for bards and sometimes rangers)
Maybe allow other classes expertise in 1 skill to balance it out?
I love all of these, adding them to my DM repertoire.
We have one that is similar to your Vicious Mockery one - if the player makes the DM laugh with it, the target autofails the save. We've also taken flanking away in favor of doing cool stuff for advantage, similar to your third rule.
my long time Gm implement a house rule that later came out as optional rules in later books. he was really happy that one of his house rules showed up in a book felt it proved him right.
Which rule
A house rule I tried out some years ago in a campaign showed up in Pathfinder 2e. I was pleased to see it. (characters start with a racial HD worth of hit points on top of what the get for their 1st level class. It's no fun to have your character 1-shot-ed on the very first round of combat in the very first combat of that character's career. In practice, it just means that character's identical twin shows up, because basically no one wants to do the work of making another character that soon after the game starts).
@@cyborglion4179 the racial stat bonus for years they thought it was limited and let players move the bonus to the stats they wanted for their class
@@jetvulcan2020 tbf its a good change in this day and age
@@jetvulcan2020 yea, I've been using that house rule basically since I started house ruling dnd. I always feel like it's a bit odd that we've kept the "everyone's basically a human" thing and still call different types of people races and then proceed to give people benifits based on their race. It'd be different if it was different species or cultures or something but we also roll culture up into race which is like, why?
My tables all have one house rule: We don't start on 1s. No matter how funny a fail can be, it really sucks to start the night on a 1 for a skill check. And then last night my players learned that it applies to the DM as well!
That's a nice one! I will start using that at our table as well.
It became a nat 20 didn't it
More details please... Is it boosted to a 3? When does this apply?
@@satiricalsatyr9463 It did actually lol. It was perfect.
@@Maninawig It's usually just a reroll. We treat it as if the 1 never happened. It only applies to D20s, such as skill checks, and if it was at advantage or disadvantage, it only comes into play if both were 1s. Then it's only one die rerolled.
"Ginny spells out good DM advice that it took me years to learn and I wish I'd known as a new DM" is my favorite genre of video.
As someone who does a lot of homebrew (though not a ton of house rules) I found your tips to be ones that apply really well to homebrewing too, especially in terms of balancing. Great stuff, and really well researched.
I really only have one house rule, and that involves crits. I had some players complain that so many times when you crit and either roll double dice, or just multiply your dice roll by two, you get low rolls that are still worse than your average damage. So I implemented a rule that on a crit you calculate your maximum damage with modifiers, then roll your damage as normal and add them together. This way your crit is at least 1 more than your normal maximum, and it feels impactful. I also warned my players ahead of time that if they agreed to using this house rule, I would also be applying it to the enemies that they faced. So it's a boon for everyone. They agreed, and we have really enjoyed it so far.
How does that interact with things like sneak attack and smite?
@@mojojojoplus2 You would still calculate max damage for both sneak attack and smite, as both are dice rolls. Then roll their damage as normal, adding both together.
I've used the same rule for a few years now. It works pretty well and makes crits feel more like CRITS!
I do the max weapon damage on a crit, but I don't make any other damage max, like sneak attack or smite.
We use this as well. It makes them feel like they did a ton of damage. And it makes the Grave Cleric even more helpful when he cancels out my crits as the DM
Favorite house rule I've implemented at my table; flanking only gives advantage if the target is isolated (as in no other enemy is within melee range of either of the flankers or the target). In a big brawling battlefield, this rarely happens, but it incentivizes a tactical approach, and frequently gives them an edge against the bigger individual enemies where they need it.
Most people: House rules are controversial and need to be examined.
Me and the other DMs in my group (about 1/2 of us): I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter them further*
*After due discussion with players
I’ve always got a heckton of house rules in my games xD.
Most people: My house rules are a slightly tweaked spell and +2 for something
Me and the other DMs in my group: So the next game will be caster only, all cleric spells won't work because of the lore, I will add those two mechanics stolen from an entirely different system, all skills are changed, the progression will be gold for xp and the items and values will be from this homebrew book
Great video! I've personally started walking away from tables that are insistent on playing with the "roll a natural 1 on attack/skill checks and the gm takes liberty with extra negative consequences" house rule. Sounds fun until you realize your rogue with a billion points in slight of hand will trip over his own shoelaces trying to steal a pack of gum 5% of the time, or your fighter or monk actually gets penalized for leveling up/spending ki on flurry of blows. I forget the exact numbers but a high level fighter that spends an action surge to do two rounds of attacks had like a 33% chance of screwing up.
I'm leary of any house rules that compromise the basic competency of your characters. Let your player characters at least be able to do the basic thing they've presumably trained to do their entire lives!
I've always seen it as, even the most well trained people can fuck up sometimes. I like to roll another d20 to see exactly how bad the nat 1 is, so it's only REALLY catastrophic and humiliating on a second nat 1 in a row, which is a much lower chance. Higher rolls might mean its not even the character's fault: "Your arrow sails through the air, but one of the feathers was crooked, and it takes a sharp turn into the dirt.", "You swing your axe, but the tough ogre bats it aside." "You throw the javelin, but in the heat of the moment, it awkwardly slips from your grasp, landing on the ground just below where you were aiming."
Whereas not hitting the AC would involve the enemy dodging or parrying or blocking in some way.
The shirt and the hair go PERFECTLY together.
Also cute shirt
My current house rules:
Healing potions always heal full amount - they're valuable so can't have that many of them.. Still action to make it a more tactical choice in combat
Flanking gives +2 to attack
Multiple sources of advantage/disadvantage add +2 or -2 to attack
Secret death saving throws (Curse of Strahd, fits the horror theme)
Considering
Medicine check to stabilize an unconcious player works like having them roll another Death Saving Throw, risking to make it worse or even get them back to alive with a nat 20
The rule you mentioned about hitting armor class giving resistance to the damage.
Matthew Mercers rules for skill challenge to resurrect a dead PC
My favorite house rule that I implement in my games after having another DM introduce it to me is: journal entries allow the player to start the session with Inspiration. Essentially players can write a journal entry from their characters perspective of things during the week (before the next session starts), which the DM and (usually) other players can view on an online forum of some sort. I love this because it helps me get to know the player's characters better, their intentions, plans, ambitions, as well as indirectly what the players themselves want to see happen in the game. Additionally it also allows the other players to also learn this and even figure out their own characters better. Granted it gives players with more time and investment an advantage (which seems fair to me lol).
I'm gonna ask my players if they'd like to implement this one.
@@obsidiannightwolfe13 Good luck! Hope they like it/use it. (And remember you can still give out Inspiration for other things, this is just a way for them to guarantee they get one at the start of the session).
I give players inspiration at the start of a session for recapping the previous session for me, it makes players pay more attention to what happened.
I go over my house rules in Session Zero, and I explain why I have them. If adding a new house rule later on, I'll explain the idea to the players and we discuss it before we start actually playing D&D (in other words, I don't interrupt the game for this discussion.) If the players agree to the new rule, we'll "play-test" it for one or two sessions, then we'll discuss if the rule did what we expected, if it needs tweaked, or simply dropped.
Quiver of returning arrows (capacity 5)
Bind 5 nonmagical arrows to this item, when these arrows are removed and fired, they are magically warped to the quiver once the attack is resolved. (5 slots in case arrows are broken or if you have multiple types of arrows)
This solves so much and opens people's minds to the possible applications of archery based innovations.
Quiver magically produces non magical ammunition that disappear after 1 minute if it's more than 5ft from the quiver.
@@rarrmonkey Yeah, in game mechanic terms, I've made quivers and bullet pouches enchanted with creation to make temporary non-magical ammunition.
Great for things like:
Whistling arrow - sound signal
Nonmagical burning/glowing arrow - light/tracer/signal
Poison arrow - assassin's best friend?
Armor piercing arrow - tough targets
Serrated arrow - make em bleed
Also great for Attachment deliveries - the arrow is returned, but something clipped to it is not...
Darkness/fog cloud/silence pendant - hard CC
Grappling hook - a classic
Delayed fireball rune - an achievement
Trip wire posts (twin arrow delivery)- traps at a distance!
Teleport rune - now you're thinking with portals!
Booming arrow - stun grenade anyone?
@@vn0688 I wouldn't put an arrow meant to be set aflame in this. It would warp back while still burning. Troublesome for the shooter and specifically for all the other arrows in the quiver.
Also, while the serration would not help much (because the bleeding-inducing moment, i.e. the pulling out, is skipped), basically all of the arrows that would warp back would induce quite some bleeding (because the arrow acts as a stopgap in the wound, but would not do that in this case), but wouldn't be able to hinder the shot character's movement (because they aren't there).
Also, might bring some issues with some kinds of Rapid Fire where 5 may very well not be enough, especially if only 1 or 2 were the standardly shot ones.
@@Alche_mist admittedly I thought of this being utilized more by a rogue... So 1 aimed shot typically... For a ranged fighter, yeah I would expect this to be for the special utility shots and whatever bog standard arrow they might want to spam would be carried in bundles with their own quiver.
And the flame arrow, yes, treat with caution. I was imagining an oil rag tied to it, but the teleport would leave the rag behind... But I was imagining a bright fluorescent or neon glow from a non-flame source as possible light alternatives.
We have a house rule that you get to speak up to 10 words per round in combat! 10 words in 6 seconds also makes sens!
90% of my “house rules” are things i misspoke or forgot about and then decided to make official lol. and it’s almost always in the players favor.
Edit: I am now realizing this is a big problem. :/
GOD when I was a beginner DM I didn't understand how attack of opportunity worked so I was the jerk DM who got rid of it for the first few sessions... then I was able to connect the dots and felt SO BAD for getting rid of it!! g r o w t h
man, attacks of opportunity suck, though. they discourage tactical movement and usually slow the game down. very sad.
well. not opportunity attacks full stop, but provoking them by moving away. if someone has a specific ability, they're always looking to use it, so there's no need to worry about that.
My major house rule I play with is the re-roll 1's on critical damage outcomes, as it feels bad that when you roll that Nat20, only to roll snake eyes for damage output.
I do convey that this is a two-way road, and that enemies/NPCs will get this as well, but honestly I more often than not just leave their rolls as is.
I also have a self-limiting rule to myself that NPC's will be at minimum 1 level lower than the players, just so it doesn't feel like I'm doing self-inserts and hogging the spotlight.
using sidekick rules from Tashas can be good for NPCs
I guess the self-limiting NPC rules doesn't apply to characters that are intentionally above (often far above) the party in levels - Illuminati in RP sessions, Big Bad, Even Bigger Bad and other characters that are more of a Plot Device than a skill/dicerolling target (i.e. combat, persuasion, etc.).
Because otherwise, those valuable story characters would be sorely missing. I know it's a different system, but just look at Elders and Methuselah in Vampire: the Masquerade. Most player characters get no chance at all against them, but they serve the story.
Obviously, you must always be careful with such characters - you rightly identified that it's easy to make them Mary Sue with all the (harmful and dangerous) consequences.
Our table for critical damage does max damage, then roll normally. So a greatsword would do 12 + 2d6
@@hannahcullen196 dam, brutal
Got a house rule that players start with standard array, but get both ASI and Feats on appropriate levels. Going from 1-20 with the exact same stats feels weird. With the math, it works out fun! 🤗
Very interesting.
I've been thinking about this but maybe with just 1 point. Really I would switch the characters to the 3.5 system of a feat every 3 levels and 1 stat point every 4 levels, but that's more complicated and people don't always pay attention. XD
Maybe when they make new characters...
@@matthewlangley3089 for sure! I calculated it out, and even doing both you would at most get a player with two 20 stat scores by level 20. How it is with rolling stats is usually players already have a 20 stat at level 1. It's a better progression in my opinion
I may make a video about it in a few weeks
Sounds cool
In my game, I give out "Yippideedoos" when people do awesome stuff, rather like Inspiration. Collect 20, and you can trade it in for a Feat.
When leveling up, we stick with the stat improvements, so a good player can have top-stat PCs AND great feats.
Yes, I do have to adjust the balance in the modules, but it's so much more fun that way. People will do so much for a Yippideedoo.
The biggest thing about house rules is clearly and concisely explaining them at Session Zero. Walk through the house rules in very specific detail, that way everyone can voice their concerns. I think we talked about Choking for 30 minutes to understand how you can chocke or be choked.
Kinky
I've been playing for long enough to see both sides of this spectrum, and sometimes it got ugly. I had a game that was more house rules than actual rules in Pathfinder, and that was an absolute mess. Anyone who knows Pathfinder knows why. But I had some very inconsequential but fun house rules come out, like that Tabaxi get darkvision or Tortles live the same length of time as dwarves
One idea I heard a while back was for the DM to make perception/investigation/stealth rolls for the players - makes it more realistic as if you personally were looking for something or trying to be stealthy, you wouldn't necessarily know how well you were doing and increases the tension because players won't know if they are being stealthy or if they missed an enemy up ahead on a bad perception roll.
This is actually how Pathfinder 2e handles that stuff by default. If you’re rolling a stealth check, the GM is the one who rolls the dice for you and you have no idea how stealthy you’re actually being outside of an educated guess from your modifier. Likewise if there’s some bad guys hiding up ahead in an ambush, the GM will roll their Stealth Checks against the party’s Perception DCs (think Passive Perception in 5e, PF2e tried to remove opposed rolls entirely) so the players don’t even know any checks were made.
I had a DM do this and it took away a lot of the fun for the players. It was frustrating to try to do something in game and just be told "you don't see anything". I think it's that thing of it being okay to fail something but it being upsetting when someone fails on your behalf. I also think that that particular DM used it far too frequently and potentially was sketchy about it, amongst other things, so we sort of lost faith in him 😬
I think this is only a good idea if you have problem players who meta-game perception information for their character's benefit. Good players will lean into failed perception checks and roleplay being at a disadvantage, rather than trying to game the system.
I absolutely despise the idea of the DM making rolls for my character. I wouldn't play in a game that did that, and I'm a Forever DM who jumps at any chance to play a character.
@@futuza I had to push that in a beginner's game when I was first learning 5e. I had played AD&D and some WoD before. I failed my Perception, and one of the players argued if I should be just walking into the room. I pointed out that everyone that had looked failed, and my character thinks it's safe. Someone has to set off the trap, and my character would be the normal choice to go first anyways. Immediately attacked by a Grey Ooze. But I saved us from several minutes of metagaming.
Ranger: Time to become a infinite arrow salesman
DM: Did somebody say ingame Hyperinflation?
Infinite arrows? Cookfires and bonfires now require only one archer in the party!
Just have them disappear 2-3 minutes after leaving the quiver
Ginny, I love your dice. Also this is a great video. House rules are everything you’ve said here. They aren’t for all tables, they don’t apply everywhere, but can still be essential to balancing the game. Great job in making a difficult topic easy.
On the one about removing attacks of opportunity
Interestingly PF2 almost does have no attacks of opportunity. The fighter and the champion (Paladin) get them and other martials can pick it up as a feat.
Same goes for monsters, only usually "boss" monsters can attack of opportunity.
I honestly prefer this 1000x. We get fights with players constantly running up slopes and diving over enemies, sliding past enemies down a hill, monks and rouges flipping over enemies etc.
Absolutely love it
TIL 5e doesn't have the tumble mechanic to not provoke AoOs. I guess I'm adding a house rule for tumbling to avoid AoOs.
For the sake of anyone else reading this - only the Fighter gets it for free at level 1, every other martial can grab it as a 6th level class feat (but they typically have some pretty stiff competition at that level) and it’s not so much bosses that have it as mostly enemies who could be considered heavily-trained soldiers (Hobgoblin Soldiers have it, for example) but these are still in the considerable minority of enemies in the bestiaries.
And I *love* this! There’s more design space for interesting Reactions, fights get more mobile since you’re no longer locked into melee for fear of getting smacked with an AoO, and just makes the fights more dynamic and lets the party more easily shift gears and react to changing circumstances.
@@matthewlangley3089 disengage
My last comment was ment for @@procrastinatinggamer
@@michielbrouwer-cummins8703 If you mean the Disengage action in 5e, that's still costing either your action or your bonus action (and I'm pretty sure most 5e characters who aren't Rogues are stuck with the former). A PF2e character can spend one of their three actions to just walk away, then still have two more actions for other stuff (like casting a spell, making an attack, etc).
Between this and the Action Economy you can do some proper hit-and-run tactics - one action to move in, second to strike, third to move away. Hell; it's actually a foundational tactic of a lot of Monks - stride into melee, one action for Flurry of Blows (to land two attacks), then one action to move away to safety before your turn ends.
Whenever I find a house rule I think would improve the game, I have my players vote on whether or not we add it. They’re also free to suggest any house rules at the start of each session and feedback at the end
As a game design alumni who wants to go into TTRPG's eventually, homebrew rules are super important to me and my games. I have an entire channel in my D&D discord dedicated to my house rules, most of them are minor tweaks on RAW, like uncapping fall damage, variant attunement timing, and a different method for DM inspiration, but others are completely new mechanics like upcasting using a spell slot and levels of exhaustion combined to be able to cast a spell at the combined total's level (level 4 spell slot + 2 levels of exhaustion = level 6 spell slot).
A few of the 18 rules in there right now are just explaining things like rule of cool, HDYWTDT, you can certainly try, that kind of stuff, cause my players are generally new and I find it helpful to write these things down for them. And any rule that's potentially too powerful in any direction (like the one that makes crits do max die damage + roll + modifier) are listed as subject to change and I have made it very clear I could get rid of or change them at any time if it feels unfair.
Then even some rules are completely irrelevant during gameplay and deal with character creation like my own method of rolling for stats that makes the characters more powerful (meaning I can throw more challenging things at them and they can feel more heroic) and making Intelligence more useful outside of Artificers and Wizards, giving them proficiency and expertise in different skills based on their INT modifier. A lot of my house rules are really focused on empowering my players, now that I think about it. 😅
I also find that despite the fact that they're all listed and readily available, my players will often forget about the more obscure rules (which is to be expected, we play like once a month and they're mostly all new players), so it's invaluable that I remember them and can remind my players of them mid-game. If we played in person I'd probably make up a 10 commandments style graphic to hang on the wall about my homebrew rules lmao.
(Also a lot of these rules are taken from XPtoLevel3, with some minor tweaks here and there)
One of my favorite house rules that I've used every game/group for ages. Critical hits do Max damage+a damage roll. So if you attack with a weapon that does D8 damage, and score a crit, you do 8+D8 damage, plus any other mods. This way a critical hit is always better than any regular hit could be. No chance of doing just 2 points of damage on a critical hit.
Hi Ginny! You along with other D&D TH-camrs (tik tokers) have really helped me put learn and expand my knowledge of D&D house rules, homebrew designing (classes, subclasses, crafting, etc) and DMing! Thank you alot!!
Most of my house rules are just "I've reviewed this subsystem someone made for XYZ and I'm using it". Like crafting, or harvesting dragon parts and what you can do with them.
my table is mostly casters and we decided to ignore required materials for spells, but materials they grab on the way can be used to expand a spell. our barbarian was in favor as well so it goes well for us. one player is a druid so she collects lots of fun things to use
My favorite and most common house rule is when you roll a natural 20 on a hit, you automatically do max damage and then roll damage and add modifiers. I absolutely hate it when I roll a critical hit but then roll low on the damage. This rule makes these hits actually feel damaging. And it applies to both players and the DM.
I do the same, because it sucks for a critical hit being like 7 damage. My question for you, is it just the base damage or is it additional damage say from sneak attack that is maxed too?
@@nebless-clem Now that is a challenging question that I don’t fully have an answer for. I’m still a relatively new DM who picked this rule up from my dad. For now, I think I’ll just keep it at base damage and work it from there.
@@nebless-clem The way I've seen it is that it applies to *all* dice, including Sneak Attack, Divine Smite, Hunter's Mark, etc. For example, suppose a level 3 rogue crits with a rapier and gets Sneak Attack damage. A normal hit would do 1d8 + 2d6 + Dex damage. Using this rule, a crit would do 8 + 6 + 6 + 1d8 + 2d6 + Dex.
This gets out of hand very quickly with crits from sources like divine smite that the player cannot miss, so I personally run the house rule as only the WEAPON damage dice is maximized. This is coming from me, a Paladin, critting for over 60 at level 3 and realising "wow this is kinda unfair" 😅
My problem with variant crit rules is that they get unwieldy when they interact with stuff like a barbarian's Brutal Critical or a half-orc's Savage Attacks, which add extra dice that *aren't* maxed. You have to work out the max of your normal dice, then roll them along with your extra dice, then add everything together.
Much simpler to just build up a big handful of dice, chuck 'em, and add them up. And, even if you get some 1s and 2s, it's still fun to roll a whole load of dice.
Great, really in depth video :) Thanks
I've got a very important rule of thumb to add to the list. If or when you want to change something in the game, keep in mind that is is generally better to BUFF something than it is to NERF it. No one likes it if something is taken away from them, while helping someone who needs it is great for the entire table.
In the campaign I’m currently playing, the DM said to us we must add both a feat and an ability score improvement every time we reach the levels we must choose for one of those.
Looking at it bluntly, that makes all the characters insanely overpowered if they go for a strong build, but the DM says he loves seeing strong characters in game. But we’ve had a lot of fun thinking of fun builds together with the DM, so I’d say it’s not a bad thing if we’re enjoying the game more because of it!
My first dnd campaign I was ever in, one of the final fights took place on a frozen lake that was slowly melting and breaking apart. we were facing two scaled up were-polarbears and were on the brink of death for nearly the whole fight. The map was constantly changing and we had to plan our routes and move quickly before the ice broke too much to traverse and we all plunged into the frozen lake. It was an incredibly fun combat, and we felt so pwerful when we won.
I love Ginny so much.
As a dm I find her videos informative and easy to follow and I suggest her to my players as the best place for easy to follow and creative tips and info ♡
I have a basic house rule - its for everyone, npc pc or enemy, if you roll their ac exactly you hit them.
Also no really a rule more advice from a dm pov -
but my player was looking for water so I made her a bag of sweets that replenished her fluids for 24 hours and rolled a dice to see how many sweets she got. She now has 5 days worth of water she can fit into a tiny pouch rather than having to carry 5 days worth of liquid around with her.
My advice is - it's okay to use or modify existing things or create new things, at the end of the day as long as you are all having fun thats what matters.
My player is level one so I also moded a animated armour to be so Rusty his move speed was 10ft and he can't move his arms more than 45% so he can't lift his arms due to rusting.
You are not trying to kill your players right off the bat, let them earn their death.
In our first session the player wanted to jump out a tree but the fall damage would have killed her right out so I didn't let her do it.
If your players are new to dnd be forgiving while they learn the ropes.
I've been into dnd for years but this is my players first campaign so I want to ease her in and in my opinion we will all get more out of the game this way.
At the end of the day you are playing to have fun ♡ just enjoy yourselves.
For that arrow one, making it a magic quivver that provides unlimited arrows, but the arrows disappear 8 seconds after being removed, is what I would do. That way, they always have arrows to use, but can't use them for traps or sell them.
(Note to self, make "Quiver of vanishing arrows")
Man, I use so many houserules which I set out in a session 0 when appropriate, but your video did remind me that I had introduced one just yesterday to a home game (extending the audible range of thunder spells) without really talking it through with my players.
Thanks for this video, reminding me to keep good practices, even with my home games.
Thank you so much for these videos- very informative! I have learnt so much. I have been trying to learn about D&D but some parts are confusing- but i am getting some ideas - like “story telling”, “stats that are implemented”. Because i have been making my own game in an effort to understand.
Oh hey first to see your lovely face! This is a great video!
The two most common house rules I've encountered as a player are: not keeping track of ammo/common components and not tracking weight. Cause no one in my friend group wants to pause the story to do math. Lol
Completely unrelated, I love your shirt.
I have a general rule of "your characters aren't idiots". Basically that these characters exist in this world, so they know how things work. They'll stock up on supplies when they're in town. They'll replace stuff that gets worn out or broken. etc So players don't have to waste time on trivial things and quest rewards get spent on interesting things rather than having to kill a bunch of gnolls just so you can afford lunch.
A house rule my players have loved is grazing. If you miss a target's AC by 1 you graze them for half damage. This really helps players who are down on their luck get some hits in and it helps them figure out the target's AC and use that information however they wish. Not to mention this also makes all combat go faster, as there's more damage all around. Of course this also applies to enemies to make it fair and speeds up combat further
I've found that creative players can break anything in game. I absolutely love having them come up with something I didn't think of. Of course, I do have a house rule of veto rights. If something they want to do is way beyond scope I can say no.
the first house rule my brother established in the game he ran for our family was "the verbal component to magic missile is yelling magic missile in a silly voice and you have to do it or the spell doesn't work"
I replay this video again and again just to hear Ginny Di say "Today, I woke up and chose violence." It makes my day.😂
In our game, during initiative rolls, if you roll a Nat 20 you get an extra action during the first round, and if you roll a Nat 1 you lose your action or bonus action for the first round. Adds a little fun when you roll a Nat 20 and still come in behind the rogue!
As someone who house rules at the professional game developer level I must commend you for a very sober and sensible set of guidelines.
The only thing I would even add is to watch out for adding unofficial books/material to your game. Even the few that have done a good job of developing their material (which is rare) they never line up well with your core game.
At my table, we have a House Rule regarding Critical Hits. Instead of rolling double the damage dice, you roll the normal damage dice and add the maximum. Crits are supposed to be huge, devastating blows, and I think this helps to show that. Nothing suck quite like scoring a crit and then rolling all 1s.
Example: Crit with Longsword = 8 + 1d8 + Str Mod
The Star Wars campaign I've been in the past couple years had a house rule implemented after the first four months because of me. I had taken the observant feat, and so every perception check I did was with advantage. Since I was the best eyes/ears of the party, I did this very often and kept 2 D20s for quick grabbing to just roll at the same time with advantage. Now I, like many others, prefer to "charge" my dice. (For those out of the loop, this means I leave the maximum number on a dice facing upward).
What happened pretty regularly was my two dice came up the same number. Which pretty much makes any roll of advantage useless. After seeing my disheartened response too many times, either another player or our DM mentioned how they had seen a house rule before where if you roll the same numbers when rolling advantage/disadvantage, your roll will count as a CRIT SUCCESS. After my double rolls happened a few more times, the DM decided to put it in, but we spent the next few sessions working out the finer details. I'll list them below.
1. When rolling dis/advantage, if you roll the same number on both dice, that's a CRIT SUCCESS and will be counted like when rolling d20s.
2. Conversely, if you roll 1 on both your dice, that is still a CRIT FAILURE (it might even be a worse failure than a CRIT 1, although I might be remembering that wrong).
3. Double rolls will not count as CRITS on either attack rolls or saving throws. The frequent ways this could be abused was too much and we all agreed that it wouldn't be fair to the DM. (I mean, I play a Rogue, I frequently roll with advantage and extra ways to CRIT will make my sneak attack dice way more over powered than they are already.) We included saving throws because it balanced the rule out even more, plus the Bless spell focuses on attacks/saving throws, so it was easy to group them in our mind.
I don't remember if there were other rules to do with it (we've been on break for quite a while and it doesn't even come up every session), but that's the basics for how we balanced it. Since we've implemented the rule, I've gotten CRITS a bit more frequently, and so have the other players (and the DM once or twice as well). While my party doesn't freak out that much on NAT20s like the folks on Critical Role or Dimension 20 do, we go feral when someone pulls a surprise double CRIT. We're all having fun, and that's what's most important to my DM (hell, once I pulled off an awesome stunt and got a NAT20 sneak attack. After I rolled 7 dice for damage and 5 of them came up as 1s and 2s, he leaned forward past his screen, saw the dice, and told me to reroll them. Sure the dice tell the story, but a little nudge here or there makes the game a bit more fun)
One of the more tense and exciting rules my DM added was better criticals. Where you add a flat max dice roll on top of a standard damage roll + modifier. So a crossbow bolt deals 8+1d8+1 from the attack bonus. This also applies to enemies and it makes any criticals terrifying or amazing depending on who rolls it
Target AC half damage - aka glancing blows is something we enjoy.
As well as we just straight up made all opportunity attacks disadvantage, it screws with a couple of feats etc but we chose to accept the funk in place of having movement in combat, because otherwise nobody ever moved except the monsters.
Bonus Action healing is what makes in-combat healing worthwhile in my opinion. I can't imagine getting rid of it.
"The most controversial dnd topic"
Finally, time for people to realize Liches are just frail wizards in make up and cant compare to cr21 monsters!
Vampires should be a lower CR as well!
You’ve been playing Liches wrong, my friend
@@mickeysmagic89 oh no not tanking capability that would be slightly troublesome at lvl9 and firepower thats easily comparable to the party's caster and itd entite turn can be negated if the party has subtle counterspell or 2 counterspellers!
Look at the Ancient Black Dragon. You dont see Ancient black dragon needing a small army just to be an adequate challange.
I mean let's be honest, if you're not homebrewing monsters for a high level party then it's probably not going to be much of a challenge when the party can pump our 200-300 damage per turn. Unless you're willing to do many high level encounters per adventuring day.
I might be wrong but this has been my experiance with running high level dnd a couple campains.
@@solsystem1342 well, define “homebrew.” The Lich’s entry in the MM advises that it has many additional spell books and magic items to draw from, things that aren’t mentioned in its stat block proper. Is it homebrewing to add these items or change their spells prepared? I don’t believe so
We had a game (modern-day) where you got a bonus if you physically made the action of pumping a round into your shotgun before combat, the drawback was we players kept forgetting we had already done that and ended up wasting ammo, we kept strick counts on ammo.
I have a house rule that each of my players got to roll for a random feat when making characters. My game featured rival characters that I also rolled random feats for too. I used a table of feats to pick from. If the player rolls a feat that they can't use because of their race/class, they re-roll until they get one that they can use.
Sure, Ginny's videos are amazing, but is NO ONE GOING TO TALK ABOUT HOW AMAZING THAT MINTY LOOK IS?
KEEP SERVING SIS
A house rule I implement in most of my games is that regardless of the class and level I will allow a player to invent new things whether it be a spell (must be of a class and level your character has access to) or a weapon (same requirements as spells), or even a tool (trickier) however I require them to go over it with me so as to hopefully not break the game. I have had a bard player ask to combine a rapier and a lyre into 1 object that we added a few complications to and another time we made a spell to summon some constructs like any of the conjure lesser whatever spells. We also use the nat 1 random tables and nat 20 special effects (like make them blind for a couple turns by going for their eyes)
"Look, if she didn't want me to buy stuff, she shouldn't put her wallet in the same bag as her dice." Legendary! :D
Ginny's ads are so good and you got love the characters of pink and blue D20
Listened to this one before doing our session zero tonight. It was a big help! Especially, the pull a string here cause a change there idea
I feel like the "less is better" idea is probably true for most tables but when I decided to finally write the houserules we use I noticed the sheer extent that my friends and I love houseruling/hacking the rpgs we play.
I know "generally" was a key word but I just wanted to throw out there to not be afraid of going with a bigger list. Because it can be suuuper fun fine-tuning things for specific experiences with your group!
I think some of the principles of agile software development work pretty well when applied to house rules, you can have a massive list of house rules, but be sure to add them incrementally in small amounts over time, testing to ensure it doesn't break the prior existing status as you do.
There were a few changes I made in my current campaign, but I'll just talk about three and why I made them:
1) Resurrection and other life restoring magic don't always work. I really wanted there to be some urgency and drama in the combats. If you can resurrect someone and it always works, I feel like a lot of that gets lost. I've been running for over a year and only one person has had to be raised, but I feel like it still impacts how the players play throughout.
2) I am one of the people you mentioned that use the exhaustion for being knocked to zero rule. I wanted to avoid the wack-a-mole effect and make combat a bit more challenging.
3) Asymmetrical advancement was the most controversial. The basic idea is that at the end of the session, I don't distribute xp or mark off milestones, I give out individual levels. The order of precedence for who get the levels is:
#1 lowest level characters get a level first;
#2 martial characters get levels before casters (three tiers: martial, partial casters, and casters ... so a ranger would be a partial caster)
#3 random distribution for those who tie for precedence.
Also, a character can only receive one level per session. There were a few things I was hoping to do with this one. First, I knew that rules one and two would affect martial classes more, so I wanted to give them something to balance things out a bit. Second, it gives a way for me to let the party advance almost every session without everyone leveling super fast. Third, it helps move the spotlight around since different people (normally) would get levels each session. Fourth, casters tend to get the coolest stuff with their levels, and I thought that giving martial classes a faster advancement would help offset that and give it a bit of an old school feel (xp charts were different for each class in 1st edition, allowing some of the more "basic" classes to advance faster). Most people were okay with it, some had concerns but were willing to give it a try. One player basically threw a fit over it. He was a martial class and didn't like the idea of being higher level than most of the other party members. Normally, I probably would have fought more for my ideas, but in the middle of a pandemic, working 12 hour shifts, I was tired so I gave up and let it go. It's been okay. I still would have liked to see how that would have worked out, and maybe someday I'll get a chance to really try that out.
In my group, we have a house rule for skills checks on conversations. before we roll the dice we are going to have a conversation, if you want to deceive someone, you are going to have a full conversation, after the entire table will discuss how good was it. if it was a good conversation he will have advantage, if it was bad it was going to have disadvantage
We have a house rule for crits - instead of dealing double damage dice, you deal regular damage + max. So if you crit on an attack that deals 1d6+2 damage, you would deal 1d6+2+6 instead of the RAW 2d6+2. This eliminates the let-down from critting and then rolling 1s on the damage dice - the "extra" dice always deal the max damage. Applied evenly to PCs and DM - PC crits are badass but now the monsters really pack a punch too.
My table usually has a house rule where, if a caster learns a new spell they think will be cool or useful but then never finds an opportunity for it, they can drop it in favor of another spell. However, if they've used it even once, it's locked in since it's now "canon" to the campaign
I DM'd for a table of 12 new players for a few weeks in school. Dice going of the table was constant when rolling, so I implemented a temporary house rule to try to remind them to roll a little softer, and that any dice that land off the table was a natural 1. However, I would forgive this often, as it happened way less when the rule was implemented. I don't think I actually had to reinforce it, because after it was mainly actual accidents.
DAMN Ginny. There are sacred goats all over.
But the reasonable agreement? Well, there we are.
At our table we have tried many house rules over the years. The best that we have come up with that have proven good and make the game more fun for us are: if you drink a potion as an action during combat you also take the Dodge action and if you really not 20 with an attack roll your damage dice is maximized for the initial dice, not the bonus dice.
I started DMing two years ago
The first thing i did was "homebrew-fixing" the classes my players chose... Of course i did it with the player
Today we have a lot of house rules that we think make the game better/easier
We don't play 5th edition we play OUR edition
my artificer has a pet rat she stole from a swarm in battle that rides her homunculous as a mount
Can't remember many of our house rules off the top of my head. But we do use the one that makes health potions a bonus action to use for yourself (but still an action to "feed" to unconscious party members)
I think we were considering exploding dice at one point, but decided against it specifically because my gunslinger's pistol rolls 3d10, and their rifle rolls 3d12. all thanks to a homebrewed special metal that they found that adds an extra damage dice to a weapon. she's also a forge cleric, so can make upto 20 pieces of ammo a day, so ammo tracking at this point is almost redundant (I still do it because i think it's fun.)
Favorite house rule: The rule of cool! At least to an extent :) Based on the weight calculation, could you really push that giant rock off a cliff? No. But you did roll a 20 and have a +7, so hell yeah you can!
What's better then a video with Ginny Di? A video with 2 Ginny Di's!
I'm sure rouges love the exploding damage die rule, when you just roll ten million dice for sneak attack
What I really try to implement at the table is, that there is no strategy discussion while in combat to make the combat feel more imersive. I mean you can't just start talking tactics for minutes while you fight someone... you can give commands or ask something, but the other character should be able to decide for himself to follow your bidding
@@chrisstoltz3648 Short agreements are fine and stuff, but arguing 10 minutes about how to proceed does take quite a lot out of the experience in my opinion. You are playing an p&p with some action and not chess (don't get me wrong, I like chess, but it's something differen)
The house rule that used are Enhanced Hit Dice : Basically spell casters can spend hit dices to regain spell slots. For example spending two hit dice to regain a level 2 spell slot or to regain two level 1 spell slots.
It makes Hit dice more useful and gives spellcasters a little more longevity in drawn out quests. Now spell casters have to decide be spending hit dice on regaining health or regain some spell slots.
I came up with simplified rules for scrolls, because dang! The RAW are so confusing, I can't keep track of them all, and I have enough on my plate.
Likewise for alchemy, herbalism, medicine, and poison kits.
We're more casual players, and we just want to have fun, not rules-lawyer, so simplified rules work well for us.
Although, there have been times I've been tempted to up the challenge, by saying, "You need to gather and use the specific ingredients for spells!" That urge passes quickly, though, as soon as I consider my group. Maybe one member would actually do that.
So I am pretty new to dnd and so my parties dm, and he says if you can think of a use for something that breaks the game that I haven't thought of go for it, he regrets it every time but its hilarious and makes for so much fun
The only thing I consistently house rule is diagonal movement:
*At least in Pathfinder 1e which my group plays,* the rules as written say your first diagonal space each turn costs 5ft of movement and every diagonal space thereafter costs 10ft. This means moving 4 diagonal squares on the map costs 35ft.
But if we were to actually measure the space moved, each diagonal space on a 5ftx5ft grid would be slightly over 7ft. So I house rule that every diagonal space alternates between 5ft and 10ft, so moving 4 spaces would cost 30ft, not 35ft.
I'm also a bit loose on keeping track of ammo, but I don't exactly come out and house rule that everyone just has unlimited arrows. I heard that someone counted all the arrows shot by an archer character in the Critical Role series, and it totaled around 200gp worth of ammo over the course of a 1st-to-20th level campaign. That just becomes an uninteresting level of minutia to worry about, especially when a competently built character is going to have the skill needed to craft more ammo during downtime. So I usually only start paying attention to ammo remaining when circumstances demand it (say the player has missed their last 10-20 shots and the party hasn't had a lot of downtime, then I'll start questioning how many arrows the archer has left).
I figure food is similarly uninteresting to track unless the party hasn't been near a settlement for a while.
The best house rule we use is that you need to train or hae a story reason for feats you take. If you want to take sharpshooter at lvl 4, better spend at least a bit of your downtime at lvl 3 practicing shooting the weapon you have.
Combat isn’t enough training?
@@pallasproserpina4118 If it would be, everyone with that weapon would get that.
Yeah. Writing down your house rules for all to see either at or before session 0 is my standard go to.
Mostly because I have in my campaign overhauled both sorcerers and wizards. Because our party thought both classes were kinda lacking that certain something.
Besides that my campaign usually suffers from an abundance of home brew races, subclasses and classes (I may have problem)
Not D&D but another tabletop RPG that I played allowed people with certain movement skills to use their movement as an attack, I realize this after I based my entire character on being a speedster. Now, in that game it means every time you level up your speed ability you gain another movement per turn! Since I also spect into the ability "carry" I could carry other characters along with me with no debuffs. As you might guess the end results were a little bit ridiculous when I could perform seven attacks just for movement as well as my own normal attacks as well as carrying my party member and in-game partner to add additional attacks and since her animal companion also attacked anytime that she did we pretty much always got to attack 9 or 10 times when every other pair got to attack twice 😂😂😅 or even just grab enemies, carry them off a cliff, drop them and return while still having enough movements to do it two more times in a single turn. That was pretty fun when our party had a civil war....
The game master soon put a stop to this LOL but he let us do it till the end of the session.
After that, we agreed that that particular hero had gone on to do bigger and grander missions and I used a backup character with a more reasonable skill set for the remainder of the game.
To date, I've made 17 house rules - some of which are multiple-page-long mechanical bundles, such as my Resistance overhaul, Luck stat implementation (think Pulp Call of Cthulhu), and Planeshifting rules.
We've had *7* sessions so far.
Send help.
PS: It's fine though... for now - I'm DMing for a single player and he DMs for me in two other campaigns, with another one still in the planning phases.
I've used a few house rules in different campaigns ie. Dismemberment in a sea fairing campaign for the whole wooden limb, eye patch aesthetic
Or
Crit fails in the game I run for my little brothers for a sillier tone.
Oooo, how did you run losing limbs? I've only seen the grimhollow system for it.
My biggest house rule is me removing spell components simply because I hate them with a burning passion. Another one I have is quick stops where you don't spend the 1 hour of a short rest but they get to use their hit dice to heal for that rest but don't get anything else for short rests, this is something that works for those people that want to go after someone but they just took quite a bit of damage. My DM for another campaign is starting to implement the death saves in secrets which won't do much because all our character sheets are online so I can just look and see what it is to help them. But a good healer would stabilize or heal their party member when they are down which I what I normally tend to do anyway.
Love being the one who rolls death saves for my players. The tension they feel makes them act like an actual person would if a friend fell in combat rather than gaming the system and letting their friend continue to bleed out.
Since I play online, I have the opportunity to experience rolling my own death saves privately in the chat, but then keeping my mouth shut as my character slowly bleeds to death and the others are deciding what to do XD extra fun when I have my microphone muted and I can talk to them from my unconscious state without them hearing me.
I usually house rule revives, both from death and from knockout. Having ANY healer completely removes the impact of death or even just getting knocked in combat.
Tension is key to making combat thrilling, so I always reccomend houserules that allow people to get back in the fight quickly (for fun) but with difficulty (for tension).
Mine is: every time someone comes up from 0 hp due to magical healing in combat, they take a level of exhaustion, due to the stress on the mind and body from violently going back and forth between consciousness.
One possibility you could do is nick the dying mechanics from Pathfinder 2e. It works a bit like if failed death saves didn’t reset when you got healed back above zero.
So you get knocked out in PF2e you gain the Dying 1 condition and have to make a roll each turn to see if you stabilise or get worse, with fails dropping you down to Dying 2, Dying 3, and then killing you if you hit Dying 4. If you get healed up then you lose that condition but replace it with the Wounded condition at the same value Dying was at when you got healed, so if the Cleric got you back after you hit Dying 2 then you’re now Wounded 2. Wounded doesn’t do anything until you go down again, at which point it sets what your Dying condition starts at which then goes up by one because you just got KO’d (so if the Wounded 2 character goes down again he’s starting off at Dying 3). Your Dying condition starts off one higher too if you went down to a crit, so if you’re at Wounded 2 and you get knocked out with a crit, you immediately jump up to Dying 4 and are now flat-out dead.
In our games, when dropping to 0 you roll on the Greivous Injury table from grimhallow
We had a house rule for an older edition. Nat 1's were -10 and Nat 20 was +10. Logic for this was at higher level play a level 15+ character shouldn't instantly fail or die from a one. (Ex. Nat 1 on a Listen check when you have +22 it'd be 12 instead of absolute fail) This was back in 3.5/3.75 days when you could be epic level and have lots of bonuses added.
Raise Dead requires skill checks. Banishment is a sixth level spell. Taking more than half your HP in damage requires a CON save vs Stunned.
hasn’t come up yet, but i rule that pcs are in shock instead of unconscious when rolling death saves. they can’t do something like give useful information to another party member, and they might not be fully aware of what’s going on, but i prefer it for flavour.
My husband's house rule when he DMs is: "You describe your nat 20s; I describe your nat 1s." No matter the outcome, it's brought some serious laughs to our table!
In standard DND and pathfinder your only supposed to gain your level as hp ie level 3= 3hp/8 hours of rest. Most people skip over this rule and just give max hp which is fine. But my current group wanted this campaign to be a little more challenging. So I implemented a healthy medium. The house rule is you roll half your hit dice back as hp per 8 hours of rest + con mod. This has brought a healthy balance of hp regained while still holding to realism and fantasy elements.
A simple house rule I like is the addition of a d8 finesse slashing weapon. Because sometimes people don’t want to use rapiers but also don’t want to get stuck behind with a d6 scimitar.
Another I like is always taking max health. It leads to stronger players, but also the monsters get maxed health as well.
@@Leith_Crowther It hasn’t caused much problems for any parties ive seen, be they my games or my other friends who use the same rule. I suppose it could make it drag, but the Pcs in games with this rule tend to be really strong. It just makes the enemies just as threatening, I suppose.
@@Leith_Crowther At least from my own experiences, I can say it allows players to endure tougher combats longer. A lot of these games have been played in 3.5 which is a much more numbers heavy game, so that might also have an effect. I’ve only used the rule once in a 5e game and the game didn’t last long enough to really get an idea of how good or bad it was for all involved.
House rule: when rolling initiative a nat 20 will allow you to chose where you want to be in initiative. That way players can get excited by a nat 20 in initiative and it has some strategic elements.
So my biggest house rule involves Rolling up initial characters. Make a 3X3 grid for each player and label the columns with your physical stats (STR, DEX, CON) and the rows with mental stats (INT,WIS, CHA). Then the DM rolls 4d6, drops the lowest and everyone puts that number on their grid. Once a number is placed it can not be changed. Once all 9 squares are filled you select your stats from the numbers available in each stats row or column, but each number can only be used once (So if you have a 18 at STR x INT you can use it for Strength or Intelligence, but not both. This tends to make more internally balanced parties but with out each person using the exact same numbers.
I feel if you're going to add house rules, they should add something to the game. I'm starting an Old School Essentials (a B/X D&D retroclone) campaign soon and I have three house rules; maximum hit points at 1st level (since you're supposed to roll), instead of dying at 0hp, you roll on injury chart (since the players aren't old school and I want to give them a little more leeway, while still making combat highly dangerous) , and a stress/sanity system I created since it's also a horror game.