House Rules That Will Transform Your D&D Campaigns
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2024
- House rules can really give your RPG campaigns the right style to fit your tastes and your campaign setting. Here is what I’m currently using for 5e D&D to hit a mythic tone, increase the tension and challenge a bit, and improve overall cohesion.
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About the XP System, I cover it in detail in this video: th-cam.com/video/ZxKWDaJHUDc/w-d-xo.html
Myriad Legends (community campaign): More on this to come in the near future. It is a big West Marches-style mega campaign with lots of players and GMs. Each GM controls a small region of the world. I'll be putting out calls for GMs and players in the upcoming months.
Cool
I don't especially want to make my campaigns more gritty or realistic, but if I was going to those injury and long rest rules are the simplest and most elegant ways to do that I think I've seen.
This video is strangely painful to watch. Not like uncomfortable painful, but wistful.
I’m an older guy who gave up on the game around the time 2e came out, got back in at 3.5 and washed my hands of it again when it became clear that there was no way I was going to find a DM or a group of committed players who were as you describe here.
My first DM was exactly like you…I mean scary-type exactly like you. That was 40 years ago, and he didn’t have nearly the resources you have today, but the passion was there, and the personality too. You couldn’t help but be swept along by his enthusiasm, or be amazed by his attention to detail. He was a friend’s dad, and sadly he passed suddenly not a year into my playing days.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to recapture that magic, and the best I can do is experience it vicariously through your content…which I only recently discovered. And that’s sort of where the wistful sentiment comes from. I’d give a lot to sit at your playing table, and take this old dog back to moments long ago and far away…as it were.
Anyway, a big thanks for doing what you do. It touches people in more ways than I think you might imagine or appreciate. Keep it up.
This really popped in my feed instantly, wow. Also I love rough house rules that make things gritty.
I bought the rules compendium for D&D 3.5 and I love using rules from it for my D&D 5e games! Some examples: characters die at -10 HP (each round you lose 1 HP so if you suddenly drop to -8 your friends need to save you fast!).
I also use opportunity attacks from 3rd edition. Casting spells in melee is dangerous and you bet you opponents will try to knock out that healing potion from your hands (allowing healing potions as a bonus action is completely insane to me :D).
In general a lot of the 3E stuff translates beautifully into 5E and you don’t need to spend so much time thinking about house rules.
Maybe it's not technically a house rule, but i've found that actually tracking time and dates for the adventures and having a running calendar has been super cool for the immersion for the players and moreso for me as a DM as a tool to track and plan events that happen in the world
Fantastic information. Thank you for setting the time aside to present this.
From how you described it; Hykoros seems created for OSR and AD&D 2e. And thats nice!
When I was at culinary school my first chef instructor was THE subject matter expert on French cuisine in the United States. When other students would tell him about some crazy recipe they had made before that was a variation of a French classic he would always reply, "You can, but why?" Change for change sake is schlock. Just as there has to be purpose in your recipe, so to does there have to be purpose in your homebrew rules.
This is an interesting video. Love it! I love hearing more of campaign setting specifics & i'm looking forward to the community campaign as well!
Thank you for the great explanation, Esper! These rules sound really cool and I hope they serve you well!
We actually had just started using the plus two to hit for flanking and I am playing a multi-class wizard artificer, my go to move being cast faerie fire and wade into melee combat and provide a flank for it plus two and advantage
Lots of good ideas, ive gone the OSR route but appreciate what your doing here. One thing i can suggest instead of exp I use a % system when you reach 100 you level up and it resets. Super easy and a better way to run it in my eyes
Oh wow, a west marches game. Recently been working on for a discord group but seeing you start one, I might put that on hold so i can experience being a player, lol. Totally snatching the long rest rules, really love that "cant sleep every injury off" feeling.
You are looking radiant Esper. Strong spirit
There always seems to be one player, who wants to bring Chad McFaceSmasher! 😅
I really appreciate my group's Chad McFacesmasher, but he's usually pretty good about at least trying to make Chad make sense in whatever campaign we're playing, heh heh
@@ZendikarMage42750they're everywhere and when!
@@ZendikarMage42750 That's fair I guess.
it feels like you're bringing back that #ThacoRules grittiness of AD&D
This is what I have been looking for!
I am struggling recently to challenge my players without just throwing more monsters at them and to get the danger of the world across to them.
Definitely going to incorporate some of these rules into my next campaign.
And I am really looking forward to the community campaign. A campaign with everybody onboard to tell a good story will be quiet the event!
I approve of every rule except the xp system and level penalty. If a player character perishes, losing the character is enough of a punishment. Further penalizing their replacement character with a handicap just unfairly singles them out. In that same vein, I still intend on rewarding xp even for failing the objective. Getting out of the dungeon with treasure and minimal wounds is enough of a reward. I still want character progression to occur even when things go poorly.
In this case, you would have the adventure goal be: Acquire the dungeon treasure. Thus it doesn't matter how the characters fared in the battles, or even if they fought at all (they could have slipped past monsters, distracted or tricked them, etc.). That's a perfectly cool way to award XP.
In terms of the replacement character having half XP, that works better for this kind of persistent world, west marches style campaign. For a typical D&D campaign with a set group and 1 DM, it might not be the best option.
Thanks for your great content once more!
Injuriy and rest rules are really well thought out. The hallmark of any good resource management system is scarcity. "I wish I had more x", "I don't know if I can afford to use x". Making hit dice such a resource, is just brilliant.
Also,
"Our barbarian has 3 points of exhaustion already, someone else need to front line." (looks at wizard)
Having to adapt combat strategy, will create new, interesting situations.
Unlike many rules for making things gritty, this doesn't make the PCs into cripples, or makes them go on sick leave for 3 months after every combat.
---
Also, I hate some of the rules. As it should be.
The thing I have been thinking about with XP is that the Characters Earn it as Normal, but Up to Level 10, they have to be taught by a Higher Level Character in that Class in order to Level Up. After 10, they can teach themselves, basically representing the level of Master in their trade. One of my other ones is that players have to learn spells from either Mentors, Finding them off their defeated enemies, or doing magical research making their own spells. And if they are a Caster who is granted their spells, I as the DM will have final say as to if they get it. They can ask, but I will make the final call.
I really like these grittier rules. The group I played with are good people, but we had a campaign where we had a minor deck of many things. And some sessions were literally just the others pulling cards out of the deck for hours on end. We literally pulled every card twice as one card resets the whole deck and that card disappears. We've had two war ships appear out of thin air and multiple people turn into buckets. I would like to play a game more in line with lotr in tone or moreso dark fantasy, rather than whacky high magic DnD.
Esper- I hope that this note finds you well!
I know that this is an odd request- and if it falls out of your comfort zone- then think nothing of this. However, many years ago- you had uploaded a "2012 In Review" video that was partially your account of the year 2012, and partially a quasi-inspirational speech to the rest of us.
I watched that as I was going into my last year of high school and it has stuck with me ever since. If you don't mind uploading it again, I would be ever grateful. I'd like to re-watch it and reflect on all of the changes that have occurred in my personal life, since I took that in.
Study hard 🤘
- Eric // Stardust the Monk
Excellent video!
I'm hyped for the community campaign! I wonder what books will you use in game. Also I love all the rules and the tone guidelines you have for it.
Solid stuff. One small point. The rule where you only get half of your hit die back on a long rest is actually not a house rule. That’s RAW.
Correct. I was just clarifying you still get back 1/2 hd and can spend them (thus the word "still", as in, like usual).
@@esperthebard Ah I must have missed that. Good shout.
I actually really like these rules. You would need the right table.
Some house rules I use:
Eldritch Knights can use their bonded weapon as a spellcasting focus. RAW, they don't get the option to use one. Naturally, Arcane Tricksters can use one as well. In addition, a multiclass character with multiple forms of spell focus (I.E. Cleric's Holy Symbol, and a Druid's staff) can lump them together. Makes things easier
Every source of advantage beyond the first gives a +1 per source. Same with disadvantage, but a -1.
Goodberry consumes the material components NOSPELL FOCUS UTILIZATION FOR SUCH A GAME BREAKING SPELL
One of my own rules is that when a water level is high enough to be rough terrain but not enough for the characters to swim, creatures such as tritons, sea elves and water genasi are still able to move in it like it's normal terrain.
The way I see it is, a swimming speed is such a rarely used ability. And if anyone would be proficient in moving in that kind of terrain, it would be those three. It's a good way to throw my players a bone when they want to play a swimming character.
Sounds like a decent plan. There's a lot of creatures that get access to swim speed via Amphibious as well, so allowing most creatures with a swim speed to ignore Difficult Terrain caused by water effects remains niche but useful.
Really like the armor and xp rules.
These are some good house rules. I might ask my players how they feel about incorporating some into our own game.
>asking players how they feel
lol
Lmao even
I use one rule that sounds draconic and evil, but actually makes the game better.
Timer to write your basic turn plan at start of initiative. No note on time, the PC is confused. (There's a 5E condition for that)
In the same time, I write the plans for each of my creatures.
Then the notes are resolved in initiative order. Rapidly.
In 2 campaigns of 3 years + each, I had 1 late note. So the time obviously was adequate.
combat took just a few minutes per round with 9 players. Combat was exciting for everyone, not a trudging bore. No 20 minute wait for the player of the wizard to read up and find a spell. No long discussions of the exact best moves for each PC.
Drop to zero, avoid exhaustion by not getting up and acting in combat for 10 game minutes.
* usually long enough that the current combat ends but not so long that the next combat starts.
Not quite as punishing and makes it a choice they can take in a boss fight, or hoping for a long rest after the fight.
Each time they go to 0 again, they again have the same choice. Getting back up repeatedly is a really bad idea.
Cool stuff man.
I can’t wait to play in this ! Monstrous heroes are allowed right now?
TBH, 90% of the session-to-session ones I really like, as not only does it remove some of the major or minor hangups of core 5th, it builds onto the existing systems and mostly just tweaks them to be sensible. The only one that really grants me pause is the Long Rest change, as I can somewhat picture a situation where you can quickly start to run on a die deficit if you're stuck on multiple days of long rest during an active dungeoneering. On the other hand, this also further encourages returning to a safe zone or base camp and thus also encouraging some downtime actions to build up your reserves, so I can still see the value in this as an option!
I really like the long rest rule conceptually, but that's true that it's hard to judge how punishing it would be in practice. If it needed softening, maybe you could increase the number of hit dice a long rest recovers. One thing it does is make out-of-combat healing magic more valuable, since spending hit dice won't always be an option.
@@BuddhaMonkey7 the upcoming update for 5.5/OneDnD is looking at doing full hit die recovery on long rest, which certainly could be a good enough solution for this. Half hit die does still keep up the tension and encourages downtime activities or light duty so I'm not entirely against it. I just can also picture a scenario where, say, a party gets trapped at the bottom of a dangerous situation (a bridge fell out that plunges them into an ancient ruin for example) that makes long rests far more risky while simultaneously taking away that light duty option. Which admittedly could be someone's jam too, so no shame in that!
Have you thought about making a discord channel Esper?
8:00 I wonder if the minimum of +3 is counting the negative modifiers, I suppose the adjustment is supposed to be done within reason but otherwise you could get a couple 18 scores off some low scores.
@Kakerate2 I've had one for years. Link is in the video description.
This is absolutely comical. I've been running with most of these EXACT rules for years! How reassuring for someone so much more experienced than I to concur to this degree.
I'm just wondering how the massive community campaign will be posted. Will each dungeon master have their own separate livestreams or will everything be on your TH-cam channel? I also just hope it won't be challenging running a bunch of players, maps and other things on your end. Hopefully your computer has enough ram to handle everything... So excited for the first episode!
I love you, Esper!
Don’t be crass; this isn’t Starbucks! Lol
Thanks esper
Gritty campaigns ftw
4:37!!!! THIS. This is my problem with modern day fantasy. For some reason, everything thats been releasing recently feels like Modern-day people in fantasy costumes. I watched the D&D movie and couldn't put into words what problems i had with it but i think this is it! Same goes for the Rings of Power. I don't understand the thought process behind it but i definitely hate it.
What's this megacampaign thing? I'd love to contribute
More on that to come. We're getting into the first couple pilot sessions next week. It will be a big West Marches style community campaign with lots of players and GMs. Each GM will control a small region of the world. I'll be putting out calls for GMs and players in the upcoming months.
Cool rules!
Edit: I have a question, why are tolkein and Martin considered classic fantasy if lovecraft and howard came before them?
Lovecraft and Howard are considered part of the "Horror" genre. Whereas Tolkien and Martin (quite a difference there) are considered more "Fantasy" writers.
It has to do with style, not when the person published. Tolkien and Martin both have grounded, medieval fantasy world with a classic tone and old-world language. Lovecraft is horror, weird fiction, and dark fantasy, essentially pulp short stories that rarely, if ever, have a classic medieval-inspired style. Howard also wrote pulp short stories, with Conan as a wandering barbarian-reaver-thrillseeker antihero venturing to strange locations.
Gotta be honest I hate almost all of these. Except flanking, which I'd prob just play without instead of either rule. I think what's really telling (flanking included as flanking is heavily in monsters favor 100% of the time) is how every single one of these rules is designed to simply be more punishing for players. There's no positives, no upsides on any of these. Bet monsters don't get lingering injuries if they ever survive a combat encounter in the first place, bet ya a nice lucky contagion on the big bad doesn't stick around for the whole campaign because every day they had a minion try to remove it and they failed the check and you now 10-15 long rests later (so maybe 5 failed checks, totally possible) are still stuck with a BBEG who gets stunned every time he takes damage
Telling someone they don't get to heal, permanently have disadvantage from a lost arm or eye, have crippled movement speed, or having to start at level 4 in a level 8 campaign makes things harder/just take way longer for no discernable benefit, i.e. ok now we have to long rest twice in a row because I rolled 5 hp restored on that long rest or failed to get rid of feeblemind and now am a vegetable for another full day. You don't actually play that day because you are completely useless. You just are forced to say yep, going back to bed for another 24 hours, thanks and hit fast forward again. Sounds extremely unfun and just likely to push players towards max optimization to try and avoid being punished as much as possible which hurts roleplay. Or they just become potion addicts and buy/make 100 potions which they chug out of combat after every fight and add logistical hassle of buying/making all those potions to effectively getting the exact same healing as would've come from the rest.
No offense but why not just run encumbrance too to be more gritty and realistic and power trip over your players with realism some more? It's a bit silly that a gnome can carry a few hundred pounds of armor too, no?
The answer is probably bc it would suddenly be as much of a hassle for you as you are arbitrarily making for everyone else
It's fantasy. In a magic world. Realism is overrated because realistically every time you get hit with any attack you should be crippled or dead. And taking 2 days to recover from getting stabbed in the throat instead of 1 isn't truly any more realistic
Tips for PLAYING that will Transform Your D&D Campaign:
Find a less controlling DM
You're so right! Look, there's an invitation for you right here:
《Opens door to the cold night》
Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out! Bye now.
Chad McFacesmasher!
Great rules overall - and I understand that you're showing your face now to up connectivity or whatever -- but would it not be more helpful to make simple, near-effortless infographics or simple jpeg screens like Runesmith to help viewer retention? It's hard to stare unblinking at a person's face for 15+ solid minutes with only a word or three on the screen every several seconds. Just trying to help, best of luck my guy 🤙
I must have missed this. What is this all about? Are you doing another online campaign?
1.) The character creation rules make sense. They keep anyone from being too tough/weak.
2.) I like the ruling about diseases, poison and curses. I didn't like how they nerfed this in 5e.
3.) We do flanking like you do, but it's +2 from the side and +4 from the rear.
Sometimes I just do -3 for the flanks or rear for simplicity's sake.
4.) For injuries, we give disadvantage on all their rolls. You roll a D8 for reaching zero HP and a D8 for each death save you fail. This is the total number of days that your character is "wounded/injured" and suffers disadvantage.
5.) I like the Long Rest Hit Dice rules.
6.) The magic thrown weapon rule idk. I can see that there might be some magic thrown weapons that return and some that don't. Here tjere would be a difference between a "quick and dirty enchantment", say something that a hedge wizard or other spellcaster might do in combat (e.g. Clerics or Druids might "bless" a weapon, sorcerers or wizards might do a quick and dirty enchantment, bards might convince a character that, "this arrow/spear/axe is 'lucky'!", a ranger might tell you to "aim for the chinck in its scales!", etc. whatever) these would be "quick and dirty" or battlefield/ combat enchantments that would give the PC a bonus to hit and or damage, but would NOT make their weapon Thor's hammer. A more deliberate/permanent magic weapon with the "thrown" or "return" attribute/function/dweomer/enchantment/whatever would likely have this power.
7.) The disadvantage on swimming in armor makes sense. I think I just would have a "sink to the bottom" feature for any heavy armor and disadvantage for leather. Cloth would give you disadvantahe the first few rounds and then after that would give you the "sink to the bottom" power. 😂
8.) The exp. rules make sense.
See the pinned comment about the community campaign. Good considerations for your house rules there. I'm trying to keep them relatively easy to implement in my set.
The flanking tweak is a neat extra addition, as it also more incentivizes the flanker and is a better synergy for skirmisher characters, while still meaning someone is got the full attention of the enemy target. While it also makes sense that a character attacking a flanked enemy would have a bonus too, it just doesn't quite feel like good gamefeel in comparison.
Ive only played in one campaign where we used xp. And we changed to milestone after the 3rd play session. Its just overly complicated, its way easyer to lvl up wjen the dm tells you you get to lvl up. It also makes it easyer for the dm to make encounters and challenges
Particulaly I would just go to another system, but I guess everyone is annoyed from this kind of comment by now.
The house rule where you have to make your replacement character half the XP of your previous one is extremely unfair. If I were to be hit with that, I'd quit the game.
My players start over from level 1, every single time
As DM, I informed my players and got their consent, that should they replace their character or have one die and roll new, that new character will begin 2 level lower than the current party. However, that new character will level up more quickly to reach the party as they adventure together.
I know it’s not for everyone, but works for our games.
@@Shamrock797 Having the new char levelling up faster to compensate is fair.
I completely agree. If I end up dming I intend on asking esper for permission to house rule it differently.
You are honestly worse than Ed Greenwood with Elminster. I think a lot of these rules show a VERY ONE DIMENSIONAL VIEW of table top gaming.
Why do we need cohesion between everyone playing? That's arbitrary and doesn't necessarily make a campaign better.
Conflict is what drives stories and dynamics between players.
Or what about challenge and tension? What do these have to do with each other? Tension is a storytelling thing. Challenge comes from mechanics.
I dont' see how they are related besides being similar feelings.
And whats wrong with being a modern day person in a D&D setting? What does that even mean? Do you hate Mystara and Heavy Metal or something?
Does that mean my character sheet has to be diagetic TO the campaign, which seems arbitrary and not necessarily better, or are you saying I have to do a stupid voice when talking that I'm not comfortable with? Because if its the latter that's REALLY exclusionary. Some people aren't comfortable. These rules are starting to delve into "play my way" quite rapidly.
And lastly, one of the most egregious... Why do I have to act in a way that earns players trust? One of my favorite D&D memories is a friend trying to steal from me, and me killing him. lol
You do realize the point of playing with other humans is free will. If you want to write a book where everyone acts how YOU want, you could always do that.
Conflict and discord between players is a bad thing. I try to promote cohesion and trust between the players. Now conflict between the characters, that can lead to some interesting moments.
There's no wrong way to play except to be rude and disrespectful to the other players or the GM.