DM's House Rules, Homebrew and Rule Clarifications
I try to play the game as close to the actual rules-as-written (RAW) 5e Ruleset as I can, but there are a few notable clarifications and tweaks.
First - the difference between House Rule and Homebrew: In this context I'm using the term House Rule to apply to rule clarifications and modifications only, and Homebrew to apply specifically to non-canonical content - monsters, magic items, spells, etc.
House Rules
Character Ability Scores and Skills
- Use standard or point buy rules when rolling a new character. The house rule here is just that ad-hoc rolling up the character isn't allowed. Since we're not all rolling together, this avoids all the "But seriously I rolled all these 18's!" argument - but more to the point, where your dump stat is may be more important to the game and your playing experience than where your keystone skill is, and how you make point trade offs and decisions is the first step in real character development. The restrictions give it shape.
- Passive scores represent repeated attempts over time, calculated by 10 + all bonuses. This is the rule as written, but the example given in the PHB of 'noticing a hidden monster' is not great because passive doesn't always apply to that scenario. Passive scores are not a fallback if you roll lower than your passive when making an active check. They come into play when you have all the time in the world to try something, repeatedly if necessary, and may apply in some - but not all - scenarios where the threat or result itself is passive. Meaning that spotting a hidden door in your own room at an inn is almost guaranteed, but snatching a coin thrown through the air requires an active check. A mimic or roper that will just sit there forever, passively unseen can use a passive score for detection but looking for the Goblin who just used a hide action behind a row of boxes that block your line of sight will require an active check to find.
- Who calls for active skill check rolls? Yes. You can ask to make a roll and are encouraged to do so in the course of describing what your character is doing. I will suggest rolls or call for rolls as well, depending on the circumstance. I try to apply an 'is this reasonable?' framework when DMing and will never penalize players/PC's in the form of "well, you were creeping slowly down the dark hallway but you didn't ask to make a perception check so the blade trap cuts off your head." The reason you're going slowly is because your PC is already more aware of potential dangers, so it's not reasonable that you would have no chance to find a thing - unless the DC is so high that even a 20 won't be enough. The active Perception roll itself represents not only whether your character notices a thing, but also if your character is even aware enough to look for a thing in the first place.
- Your character may be stronger, more agile, more robust, smarter, more savvy, and sexier than you. You may always fall back on your character's skills and ability scores when presented with a challenge or puzzle that you yourself can't figure out. This is also RAW, but for some reason DMs will often let the beefy goliath knock down a door that the player could never smash with an athletics check, but they don't let the brainy Wizard solve the puzzle required to unlock that same door with an Insight check. Of course it's more fun if you puzzle through it and come up with an answer - especially because yours may be better than what I had in mind, so let's do that instead! Part two of this is that in cases where the consequences would be negative in the extreme, and your character has a high Intelligence or Wisdom score, I might intervene and suggest you roll a save on that ability to give your character a chance to avoid the mistake that you the player are about to make. This is subjective, however, and bodies teach lessons; maybe the next character you roll up won't make that same mistake.
- Your character's consistent personality is not more important than other players' enjoyment of the game. Falling back on "But it's what my character would do" in a way that obviously has a negative impact for another PC or the whole party just means you made a shitty character. You have the power to make your character do anything you decide, and we're not writing the next Lord of the Rings here. Anti-social orphan and loner edgelord characters can always go play Vampire: The Masquerade :)
Critical Rolls
- Crits apply to combat and death save rolls only, not ability or skill checks or other saves. This is the actual rule in 5e, and is very important to game balance, but it is very commonly overlooked. If you roll a 1 on a DC10 dex save or check but have a +9 bonus to dexterity, you make the save. If a DC is 25 and you only have a +2, there is no possibility of your PC succeeding (and generally I won't even bother having you roll unless I'm hiding the DC for some reason).
- Sleeping creatures are considered to have the 'incapacitated' condition, not the 'unconscious' condition. This is an edge case ruling that may be counter-intuitive based on how we use the word 'unconscious' in normal life, but the 'unconscious' condition in D&D is never negated by combat - while sleeping creatures are described as "They awaken if they are attacked or otherwise disturbed" (Hold of the Storm Giants, ch 10, Rm 29 'Sleeping Guards" as one of many examples). This is important because a hit on an unconscious creature is an automatic critical hit, but the incapacitated condition just means the creature can't take actions or reactions that turn. So, if you come across your enemy while asleep
Magic Items/Cursed Items/"Identify" spell
- Per the 5e rules, handling a magic item is enough to identify that the item has magical properties. This may mean the item is a magically enchanted stone used as a simple key, or the item is a long-lost artifact, however; the only ways to identify the nature and degree (and school if the DM knows it, lol) of magic involved is by focusing on one magic item for the duration of a short rest (with the odd note that the PC has to be "in physical contact with the item"). It then takes ANOTHER short rest to attune to the item, assuming it needs attunement and your PC meets any other class restrictions, etc. See the 'short rest' section for a few other pointers.
- Identify has been changed to have a casting time of 1 action and a duration of 1 minute, requiring concentration to maintain for subsequent rounds. The DMG explicitly states that an Identify spell can't tell if an item is cursed or not so all it can do is speed up the ID process. The PHB spell description gives it a full minute to cast, and is 'instantaneous' meaning it can affect only 1 object. So in practice, the normal spell is a contrivance at best or a pointless waste of level 1 spell slots. This modification of the rule makes it a viable spell even in combat (remember, it's able to be cast on creatures too) though almost certainly it's a bad idea to choose Identify rather than a combat-related spell. Actually Identifying an object counts as a full-action, 'interaction with an object' meaning up to 9 items can be identified in 60 seconds (the caster used their action to cast it in the first place), 1 per round after the casting.
- Cursed items take effect as soon as they are handled/touched/interacted with. Cursed items are exceedingly rare, because they tend to get stuck to a person and not get back out into circulation on a regular basis. They do exist, however, and whomever messes with the item first will be stuck with it. The edge case here is, what if a caster uses Identify before anyone else touches the item? Then the caster, unfortunately, is the first one to interact with it. Personally I never liked the cursed item or the Mimic or Doppleganger mechanics, all of which are holdovers from earlier editions where DM's delighted in breaking trust with their players and no one cared so much if their player died on an adventure, as long as it was fair. A notable exception though are cursed scrolls; any magic-user canny enough to trap their spells on a piece of vellum can be assumed to be canny enough to add a ward or curse for anyone audacious enough to read it.
Potions
- Potions can (only) be consumed as a bonus action in combat. In the official rules, potions require a full round to use. As a result, pretty much no one in 5e uses potions. I changed this to a bonus action instead, like it is in Baldur's gate 3, for instance. In the turn-based videogame it makes a huge difference at low levels and is balanced by the fact that PCs only get one bonus action per turn, so a potion cannot be consumed in the same turn if you have already used your bonus action. Administering a potion to someone else is still a full action, however.
- Potions cannot be administered to unconscious characters/PC's in death save mode. Once a PC drops into the Unconscious state they cannot move, so they cannot open their mouth or swallow. However if you're that close and can make a successful DC10 medicine check, you can try to stabilize them so they at least won't have to keep making death saves.
- Proficiency with an Herbalism kit is required to make your own healing potions and antitoxins. Since using potions is a full action in normal 5e this is an obscure rule to most, but an alchemy kit won't make healing potions or antitoxins, or poisons (at least not the kind that can slip by undetected).
- "A little taste" is all that's needed to tell what a potion is and does. A little taste of most poisons will cause damage or death, but a little taste of other potions doesn't invoke their properties. Since I encourage potion use, look for lots of homebrewed potions in your adventures.
- Potion abuse is not really a thing in D&D the way it is in other games. The soft rule is, if a PC takes more than one potion and the durations of the effects overlap, roll on the 'potion miscibility' table for a hilarious outcome. For instance, if your PC used a Potion of Animal Friendliness (Duration 1 hour) and also took a healing potion before the hour was over, that would invoke a mishap. This also means you can take multiple healing potions as back to back bonus actions in subsequent turns if you have them, as they take effect instantaneously.
XP Awards
- XP is awarded for challenges that are eliminated, not for combat only. This too actually IS the rule, but too often XP is misinterpreted and limited to kills in combat alone. If a PC can talk their way out of a fight, or someone figures out a non-combat strategy to overcome a monster, the same XP is awarded as if the monster was killed. Traps have a CR based on their perception and disarming DC's and deadliness, and are calculated like monster CR in the same way if the challenge is eliminated. It's in the name, right? EXPERIENCE points, not kill points.
- Additional XP is awarded on a 1:1 basis for damage received, and a boost to the total pool for healing given. This is total house rule but it does a lot for just a few points. PC's taking 28 damage over a game night will get a 28 point xp boost when XP is awarded. Damage healed is not subtracted from the XP, but damage mitigated by resistance or other sources isn't added, as it's technically never received. The in-game reasoning is that when you get hurt, you tend to learn from that experience. I don't award points 1:1 for healing but I do add a boost for it to the total pool. Damage is your PC's individual award for risking death in defense of the party, while healing benefits everyone. The meta of this is that I want to pay close attention to damage in order to not have characters dropping in battle unexpectedly. The monsters may be trying their best to kill your PCs, but I am only a neutral referee; I want to avoid having monsters piling on one PC and leaving others out, and ideally before a PC drops, I can see it coming.
- Additional XP is awarded for progressing the story forward or overcoming advanced challenges. This bonus XP doesn't always come into play, but the inherent risk of simply navigating a stretch of wilderness or a dangerous chasm even without specific monsters or traps carries XP value for PCs.
- XP is awarded by player, not by character. This allows the potential for running multiple characters without penalizing other players' share of the XP.
- XP is awarded after the end of the night, and after the end of any fight, to the survivors of the fight. If we break for the night in the middle of combat, the XP is held over till the fight ends in the next week. If everything goes exactly as I had planned, I can often award PC before we go home for the evening, but usually things aren't exactly as I had expected so I'll need to do some revised math first. I'll post it in the Discord Text Channel xp-awards.
- I'll keep a tally but you should award the XP in DNDBeyond. That way you can also update your sheet with any items or other things you didn't have time in the game to do, and you can be sure you're leveled up.
- Actively attacking, fighting, or working against another PC carries serious XP deduction penalties. In the RAW there are some brutal incentives to let other characters die to get a larger share of the XP; and everyone has either been the victim, the annoyed bystander, or perhaps the actual asshole when one character tries to pickpocket another one. The gp value of anything stolen from another player's character in your party will be deducted from the stealing PC's experience points, any damage done will be deducted from your PC's XP, and if your actions willfully result in the death of another PC, the merciful outcome is that your character will lose XP equivalent to whatever XP total that PC had, dropping to whatever level that puts the PC back to, and needing to be re-earned as usual. The more likely outcome is simply that you will be kicked from the group and banned from D&D Rec League.
Comments