Questions tagged [house-rules]
House rules are small fan-created additions and replacements to core rules in a rules set, and this tag should be used when there are locally-created rules at the core of the question. In most cases, they are not officially sanctioned by the designer, in contrast to optional rules (see the [optional-rules] tag). For creation of substantial new content or rules subsystems, use the [homebrew] tag instead.
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How do you help players not focus on the rules?
Background — My Group's Gaming Style
When I GM, I run games loosely from a rules standpoint, and do not feel bound to adhere to what the rulebook says when it doesn't make sense in a given situation. ...
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3d6 vs a d20: What is the effect of a different probability curve?
What is the effect on game play of replacing d20 rolls with 3d6 rolls in a D&D 4e campaign?
I started thinking about this after reading this question where the example was given of playing a d20 ...
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I dislike how players accurately place fireballs. Is there an alternative?
I'm running 5e on a grid with minis. The one thing that I hate is when sorcerers or wizards cast a fireball that perfectly hits enemies in the AOE. The player counts the squares on the grid to ...
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Do 10 second turns/60 second rounds make spellcasters horrible?
My DM insists on the combat being 10 seconds per turn and the round time to be the sum of all turn times (so a minute for 6 participants, for example). I am aware that this is not how turn/round time ...
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Is there a D&D 5e equivalent of the e6 variant style?
Now that 5e's been out for a few years, has anyone found a point past which characters have a significant jump in power and developed a set of rules for capping levels below that, similar to the "E6" ...
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How can I, as DM, avoid the Conga Line of Death occurring when implementing some form of flanking rule?
I’ve heard this phrase being thrown around sometimes on other game tables. Apparently, it describes a straight line of melee combatants on a grid, alternating between members of two opposing groups. ...
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Using downtime activity to research spells
I run a D&D 5E campaign. I have a player who is playing a wizard. This player would like to use his downtime to learn new spells. Specifically, he doesn't want to create any new spells of his ...
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What balance problems arise by allowing grappling as an option for an Opportunity Attack?
In our last session (with me as the DM), a creature was surrounded by the party and was trying to flee. She cast Levitate on herself to try to float up and get away. As she was going up and thereby ...
user37158
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Making aging relevant: How can I translate premature aging into a mechanical effect?
My group is about to come across a haunted sunken keep with an adversarial Ghost mini-boss. Being mostly composed of Humans (because who doesn't want a free feat?), I expect them to be particularly ...
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What overpowered combinations would be available if I allow a bonus action to be used in place of a standard action?
It has come up in game a couple of times that a player might want to cast a spell that has a casting time of 1 bonus action using their "main" action (if they have another bonus action they also want ...
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What would be the game balance implications for using the Gygax method for applying falling damage?
According to the rules, at the end of a fall, a creature takes 1d6 bludgeoning damage for every 10 feet it fell, to a maximum of 20d6.
However, way back in Dragon Magazine #69, D&D co-creator ...
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Would it hurt racial balance if every PC gets a bonus feat at level 1?
I am thinking of giving the PCs of my new campaign a bonus feat at level 1, to allow some more customization and to reflect the fact that they are graduating from a very stellar college of... ...
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How do I avoid micromanaging character creation?
What aspects of character generation should the DM limit?
I'm a new DM starting a new campaign with 6 players that have no previous Dungeons and Dragons experience. I've played before; they haven't. ...
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How can a Hobgoblin Captain be used as a player character?
On my last session as DM, a party of five level 3 players managed to make a Hobgoblin Captain become friendly with them and ultimately join them.
There's a new player who'd love to take the ...
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Would allowing a Thief (with Fast Hands) to use the Healer feat's tending action as a bonus action be balanced?
Related: usable objects with Fast Hands
The Healer feat states:
[...] As an action, you can spend one use of a healer’s kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6 + 4 hit points to it, plus ...
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How to introduce the levelless, cost-based spells of Cthulhu d20 into D&D 5e
Cthulhu d20 has a magic system in which spells aren't tied to classes nor to levels. Anyone can learn and use a spell, if they're willing to pay the price, which usually comes in the form of a ...
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Looking for an alternative to my DM's favorite fumble table
I've been playing in a new D&D 3.5 game for a few weeks, and it's going pretty well, with one major exception. The DM is a huge fan of critical hits and critical fumbles, and he has found the ...
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How to allow cantrips to be changed
The wizard in my game has requested the ability to change out his cantrips similarly to his higher level spells. His justification is that every other wizard spell is memorizable, so having fixed ...
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Would allowing barbarians to maintain rage as an action be unbalanced or permit shenanigans?
A barbarian's Rage ends early
if your turn ends and you haven't attacked a hostile creature since your last turn or taken damage since then.
Players of barbarians, including those in my own play ...
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Balancing Spellcasters; Spontaneous Casters versus Prepared Casters
So ask any optimizer and they'll almost always tell you the same thing: in 3.5 classes that prepare spells are better than spontaneous spellcasters. It's generally not thought of as even a contest. ...
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How to handle the magical girl genre in Fate Core?
I'm a newcomer to Fate Core, and working out a magic system is daunting. I have read over the core and glanced through the system toolkit as well, but some experience-based advice would be helpful (...
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Assassin using Arcane Trickster's Mage Hand: Is it Unbalanced?
So a friend of mine for an upcoming campaign was going to be a rogue, specifically arcane trickster. However, he has changed his mind and now is going to be assassin and cross class to wizard.
That's ...
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Respawning mechanics for quick and easy recovery from death
The standard means of recovering from death in 5e mostly require the use of spells like revivify, raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection that are all costly to varying degrees in terms of time and ...
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Does allowing death saving throws after being stable break the game?
After you roll three saves on a Death Saving Throw, you are stable and do not make other death saves. However, one of my player pointed out that if they keep rolling death saves, they might get a 20 ...
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Which balancing issues, if any, would arise from allowing PCs to spend actions on bonus action features?
I understand that RAW, features/spells/etc. that require a bonus action (e.g. Bardic Inspiration or Healing Word) cannot be used with a regular action instead (see this question).
However, what would ...
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Would limiting Paladins to 1 Divine Smite per turn make them weaker than other classes?
It's no secret that paladins have a very high burst damage thanks to Divine Smite (and the ability to use it on every melee weapon attack as long as you have spell slots to burn), but this has proven ...
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What is a decent dice rolling strategy for partial/half advantage?
I understand that 5e is all about advantage and cancelling, etc. I understand advantage well, and the statistics. I was hoping there would be a commonly known dice rolling strategy with similar ...
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Does rolling AC to oppose an Attack Roll impact game balance?
I really like the concept of rolling d20 against each other during ability checks like grappling, etc. I want the same thing for normal attacks, so the defender would also roll a d20 + (AC-10).
Would ...
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What do I do about a game-breaking ruling on how summoning works?
I'm playing in a 5e campaign, and one of the other players convinced the DM to let him summon animals inside of other animals - for example, summoning a wolf inside of a cow.
The player has exploited ...
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What if my Apocalypse World doesn't have cars?
Vehicles show up in a lot of places in Apocalypse World. The Driver. The Chopper and their gang. The Hardholder's garage. Several playbooks' advances. The road war moves. Heck, optionally, everyone ...
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What Are Freedom of Movement's Limits?
What conditions and effects does the spell freedom of movement [abjur] (PH 233) overcome?
I want a fair, reasonable, and consistent method to determine what spells and conditions are overcome by the ...
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Is this houserule preventing effects from dropping creatures to below 1 HP if they make their save exploitable or broken?
I'm playing with the idea of adding a new house-rule to my sandbox-style game.
The rule is as follows:
If you succeed on a saving throw against an effect, that effect cannot make you drop below 1 ...
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Allowing Disengage for free
I'm the DM, and I'm concerned that combat feels pretty static.
As I understand it in RAW:
Once you've reached melee range, moving further away will provoke an opportunity attack, unless you disengage
...
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Are there serious balance implications to permitting Bonus Actions to be Readied/Prepared?
My Ancients Paladin is commonly stymied by the limitation on Readied Actions, in that Bonus Actions cannot under any circumstances, per RAW, be "prepared".
For example, suppose a Paladin wished to ...
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How do I tweak this crouching rule to balance it?
My ranger uses light crossbow. A few sessions back, he flavored his movement and attack as "I move there, and crouch before attacking." In character, previously he taught the others that it ...
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Would this house rule on initiating combat be balanced?
My question is similar to this question about a house-rule that the initiator of combat acts first but skips their first turn in initiative, but about the opposite situation. The author of that ...
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What are the consequences of removing the potential for critical hit extra damage on spell attacks?
Current table has a house rule that spells attacks can not deal extra damage through critical hits. They have the rule that you can critically succeed or fail on a natural 20 or 1 on saving throws.
...
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Is it unbalanced to allow a player to move the tiefling's +1 Int bonus to a different ability score?
I'm in the planning phases of a campaign for D&D 5e, but using the Planescape setting. Since this setting is the one which introduced tieflings, I sent the table of potential tiefling traits to my ...
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House rules for a new player's Ranger character; are they balanced?
I've managed to convince my GF to try out a simple campaign. She is new to tabletop gaming. Knowing her, I decided to have her play a ranger with a pet (she loves her dog, a lot). I designed some ...
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How can I convert D&D 5e Saving Throws into Defences?
In D&D 5, the saving throws for spells has the following formula:
The DC is set to 8 + prof bonus + magical stat bonus.
The target then makes a saving throw, adding their stat bonus and hoping ...
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What are the balance implications of allowing Forge Clerics to gradually create items worth over 100gp with multiple uses of Artisan's Blessing?
I am currently DM'ing a campaign, in which one of the PCs is a Forge Cleric.
Artisan's Blessing lets Forge Clerics conduct a ritual to craft non-magical items worth no more than 100gp. Raw materials ...
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Spaceship Combat in Fate Core
I'm trying to run a space-opera RPG in Fate Core, and ship-to-ship combat is a central focus. I'm looking to emulate the kind of fighting we see in Star Wars, Wing Commander, FreeSpace, etc, but ...
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Rules for Stranglers
Does anyone have any play-tested house rules for dealing with attempts to strangle a (not helpless) creature to death?
Suffocating, per the rules
As far as I see, the only guidance in the rules would ...
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Are there any balance issues with familiar from the Find Familiar spell to be of the elemental creature type (instead of celestial, fey, or fiend)?
The spell find familiar allows a character to summon a familiar, which is a spirit of creature type celestial, fey or fiend. From the spell's description (PHB, p. 240):
You gain the service of a ...
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How should I handle movement when one character isn't engaged in combat yet?
How should I handle movement when one character isn't engaged in combat yet?
Our house rule is that if you're not in combat or if the DM isn't having you move at your character's speed (like in a ...
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How do we deal with my DM's house-rule about critical damage?
In the campaign I'm playing in, our DM has set a house-rule for critical damage. So, we do
maximum damage for one set of dice, roll the second set and add modifiers at the end
instead of the typical ...
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What issues could arise with this Advantage/Disadvantage Variant?
Background
In the Player's Handbook, it is specified that Advantage and Disadvange sources effectively "cancel out" regardless of how many there are of each:
If circumstances cause a roll ...
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Why is allowing players to stack their skill proficiency bonus overpowered?
I am the DM for a campaign and play with the following house rules:
When gaining proficiency in any skill (during character creation, taking the Skilled feat, etc.), you may choose a skill more than ...
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Will allowing a wizard to cast spell without preparation be unbalanced?
A wizard complained that preparing spells every long rest seems a very tedious task, and asked me if he could trade his ability to copy new spells with the ability to cast any spells he knows without ...
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Would a cleric's domain ever preclude them from casting a general cleric spell?
First time player playing as a tempest cleric.
As I understand the rules, a cleric of any domain has access to all the general cleric spells (i.e. not the ones that are only accessible to certain ...
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