New answers tagged house-rules
3
Don't punish your bard for knowing how to play, uplift the other players by helping them with the rules. If they want to kick ass like the bard but are unwilling to invest a little time learning the rules.. well that's on them
One thing I did for a group was stop at level 3 and make sure everyone was happy with their choices, if not they could change. That ...
15
Don't change the rules to accommodate an individuals choices
This is a frame challenge, from one of your comments:
Because - in my head at least - a Bard should not be the party tank. Since the Bard also gets more spells than the Ranger, and many of the Ranger's unique skills are highly situation-specific, keyed to certain enemies or terrain, it would seem ...
34
It changes things substantially
Firstly, weapon attacks don't get DEX bonus to their damage. You've already mentioned this affected the party's combat abilities:
it just gives the party a marginally lower damage output
I tailor the encounters accordingly
I have to say this change affects not "the party" as a whole — it nerfs particular characters,...
9
You are going to have problems if the Warlock takes Agonising Blast, and has a cantrip that deals 1d10+cha as that is about twice the damage of the ranger or bard.
The damage that spells deal is written assuming that weapons will get stat to damage.
I would tell your players that you misremembered rules, and offer them the chance to re-stat their characters ...
3
It becomes immediately apparent that the wand sheath being exclusively for warforged is not a matter of balance, but of flavor when one regards the fact that the item is simply a compartment inside the warforged body. Just as an arm blade is warforged only for flavor elements, not mechanical ones. The Warforged race is already balanced with other races ...
3
Things that require or modify melee attacks
Swashbuckler Rogue's Fancy Footwork
Echo Knight Fighter’s Unleash Incarnation
Shadow Monk’s Shadow Step
Mobile Feat
Slow
Kocking Creature’s Out (If you can damage with a Grapple/Shove)
Marking (optional rule)
Things that require or modify attacks
Aasimar Transformations (If you can damage with a Grapple/Shove)
...
-2
Few feats and features triggers will change
Basically, Grapple and Shove are melee attacks which can't hit.
That means these requirements can't be satisfied anymore with shove and grapple:
"when smb. attacks"
"when smb. makes a melee attack"
On the other hand, the following triggers remain unchanged:
"when smb. hits with an attack&...
0
These are only the effects off the top of my head - there are bound to be more
Rage
A Barbarian's rage requires that they attack or they take damage (not just an attacked, the attack has to hit them).
Your rage lasts for 1 minute. It ends early if you are knocked Unconscious or if Your Turn ends and you haven't attacked a Hostile creature since your last ...
-1
Possibly not, but you would likely need to playtest it
I am not averse to homebrew rules, but this seems to be changing a pretty important aspect of rage and I am not sure if the rule exists for flavour reasons or balance reasons.
My suspicion is that the rule only exists for flavour reasons, so it is not likely to cause much of an issue beyond possibly ...
10
It would break concentration by never breaking concentration.
This is the biggest concern. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I will echo Ruse's response to this question - Is this barbarian Rage Mage subclass balanced compared to the official barbarian subclasses and the eldritch knight?:
The fundamental problem with casting spells while raging is ...
6
Your question also contains the part "Am I missing something?!"
Yes you are missing some nice effects that RAW Holy water has. Not super significant but worth noting. These points are specific to LMoP, there might be more in general. I try to keep spoilers to a minimum.
As BBeast answered in the comments to your question, the radiant damage of ...
1
If you like making things more complicated (and some of us do), have the damage of holy water scale with the level of the cleric who made it.
If the local priest is third level, his vials do 3d6. But the next time the party goes through a big city, they learn the Reverend Mother is 8th level, so they stop by and make a donation.
When it comes time to take on ...
4
If you want players to use something, it has to not be obviously worse than their other options.
Your options are;
It's more likely to hit than their regular attacks (this is what pathfinder/3.5 did, basically).
It does more damage than their regular attacks.
It affects a type of foe (such as an incorporeal enemy) that their regular attacks don't affect.
...
5
I think you need to make it more effective; somehow
You have correctly identified that holy water is essentially useless, so making a useless item cheaper just means you party can have more useless items. There are all sorts of consumable items that are similar, most poisons, alchemists fire and acid off the top of my head - all of which could benefit from a ...
9
Rather reduce the cost
There are not many uses for money in 5e. In every game I played, the party had more money then uses for very soon. This means that reducing the cost will get them holy water a bit sooner, but the point where it is available in large quantities already comes sooner rather than later.
Improving the effect on the other hand is somewhat ...
22
Let's look at what you're asking here:
In summary, I want to implement a house rule where a player can use green flame blade with a single available opponent, applying the complete damage to that opponent. Would this be gamebreaking if the player has to use a wish spell to enable the change?
It seems like you have 2 possible approaches: simply implementing ...
-3
Broadly speaking, it's not game breaking, because you're not increasing the overall damage dealt.
Concentrating damage onto one opponent could be useful for reducing enemy numbers or killing an enemy who threatens your space, but routinely damaging two opponents on your turn can also be useful. This sounds to me like a creative, but not game-breaking use of ...
6
Volo's Guide to Monsters actually suggests that for Kobolds the GM should not group initiative rolls as usual and instead split the group of kobolds up so as to replicate a swarm attack and not give the players a chance to regroup or act as one.
So at least one occasion of RAW being not to do this. In the Kobolds: Little Dragons - Tactics section of Volo's ...
1
It is not game breaking
It is not even a house rule. Rolling initiative for each participant explicitly described in the PHB:
When combat starts, every participant makes a Dexterity check to determine their place in the initiative order
The PHB also adds that
The DM makes one roll for an entire group of identical creatures
So if creatures are identical, ...
14
In Virtual Tabletops (VTT), it's the standard.
If you play in on-line or virtual environments, like Roll20, this is usually the norm. I use tools that roll initiative for everything simultaneously and the Initiative Tracker points to which specific token is playing now. Makes the game less swingy (as turns are usually evenly distributed across both sides) ...
5
Game breaking in the sense of making the game much harder or easier for the players?
No.
Game breaking in the sense of the DM's brain hurting?
For sure, as soon as you have more than a handful creatures in combat. The rule exists because most people can't (or don't want to) track 15 mostly identical creatures in combat.
Individual initiative for more than 5 ...
27
I usually do this, but it can become difficult when the enemies are numerous.
This is what I usually do for initiative, and most of the time, it causes no issues at all. It is when the number of NPC combatants gets to be large that individual initiative starts to get cumbersome.
I once ran a battle against four NPCs with 8 bears and rolled them all ...
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