Stuff I Stole! (Favourite House Rules by Other People) || D&D with Dael Kingsmill

This time on MonarchsFactory we get into some of my favourite homebrews and houserules for Dungeons and Dragons I've nicked from other people around the internet.

LINKS!

Angry GM's "Click Rule":

Carrying Capacity/Character Inventory:

Tales at the Campfire:

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Twitter: @DailyDael
Instagram: @daeldaily

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[enricomigliorini]

One idea I came out with, and that my players absolutely loved was to introduce a fae merchant whom the party could contact every once in a while. This fae offered a range of services, from equipment to information to serendipitous items (a one-time occurrency where you just have the item you needed, X gp worth or less) to lucky rerolls.
The twist was that this merchant didn't accept gold or equipment, they accepted stories, speeches and personal details. To get the location of a foe they were hunting, each had to share their greatest tragedy. To obtain the weapon of her dreams, the barbarian needed to share three insecurities gnawing at her. And in order to have a very specific and rare spell taught to her, the wizard had to argue convincingly in favor and against a point of political philosophy.
The players felt it was a great, organic way of sharing part of their backstory or thoughts and talking about it later.
Sorry if it feels like I'm blowing my own horn, but I was proud of how engaged they were.

[anmimc]

One of my favorite things I have stolen was letting the players do the recap before the session begins. It allows me as the DM it get a sense of what the players thought was important. I basically know where the plot is and what’s coming next, but they happened to mention that Red Wizard for the third time after leaving her behind five games ago. It’s a nice indication that the players think she was an important ncp and should maybe make a return. It also let you mine the players imaginations on what comes next, which often leads to the players having more fun.

[matteorunchi]

The Han Solo-Lando Rule, or I Know a Guy Rule.

When the party is getting to a new town a member of the party can say "Hey, I know a guy in that town" even if he did not specified it in his background. Then he rolls a Charisma check (or better the GM rolls it in secret) to determinate what's the relationship between the player character and the NPC.
If the roll is high the NPC is a good friend of the PC or is in debt with him, if the roll is low the party is going to be stab in the back.

This makes the city more realistic, because no background can ever describe every sigle person the character has met in his life, particularly if the character is an 100 years old elf or gnome.

It could be difficult for some GMs to improvise a brand new npc in a few minutes so this rule could be "dangerous".

[SuperEpic]

Never thought I'd be taking notes out of the YouTube comments section, but here I am. 😂

[phatkin]

"a story of love, a story of pain, a story of loss, a story of gain"

THAT'S AMAZING!

[wisemoon]

I like the concept of travel montages from 13th Age. So often in D&D, play slows down during travel, and most DMs either gloss over it, or don’t know how to make travel interesting even if they go through the motions of checking for monsters or whether the party gets lost. In the travel montage, the DM turns to the player on their left or right, and says “tell me one challenge or problem you had on the journey.” Then the player next to the first describes how their character did something to solve that problem or meet that challenge. That same player describes the next problem or challenge. You go around the group until everyone has described a problem and also a way their character did something clever or cool to get everyone out of the jam they go into. It goes quickly, it gives players a chance to fill out the world and/or their backstory, and as a side effect it helps build relationships between the characters as they tackle problems during their journey.

[TheOMGJames]

My house rules:

-Rumours (stolen from Will Wheaton iirc). I get the players to come up with rumours about their characters before their first session. They need enough to Equal the number of players in the party including them plus one. So I have a party of 5, they call come up with 6 rumours. 1/3 to 1/4 depending on party size (in this instance I say 2 out of 6) are false. The rest are true. I them distribute these among the players to encourage intrigue, backstory and keep them guessing. It develops interesting dynamics

-Called shots: if a player says they'll try to take a shot at a particular part of the enemy (say the eye) I will make a secondary AC number in my head that's higher than their regular AC. If the player beats the regular AC but not the second, they hit the target but not specifically where they want. If they hit both, they have a specific impact say stabbing an eye will blind, a hamstring will cripple them.

[christianwood]

My biggest hangup with starting a character was "my character is from the city, but I don't know any cities in the campaign I'll be playing. I feel too weird to make up a city and compel the DM to put it in their world." So in the handout I gave to the players, I gave them a choice of starting towns. Each town had a different kind of people in it. If they chose to be from the frigid villiage of Easford, they would automatically gain +1 to their Constitution score, since the people that live there are hardy and weathered. If they chose to be from Adwick, a shady city full of gamblers and dishonest merchants, they would get +1 to their Charisma score, since they would need to be more aware of how to get by in that kind of system.

[brandoncarruth]

One of my favorite RP / character building mechanics my DM used is similar to the campfire stories idea. Every other time we took a long rest we share "the first time I..." stories relevant to what was happening around us. Session one was "the first time I slept outside". After fighting goblins it was "my first fight" stories. It was a great way to learn more about the other characters and really helped flesh out who we were traveling with.

[gagelong]

I don't like my players to start knowing every single language ever. Also, the game assumes you either know a language or you don't. That's almost never the case irl.

Languages exist on a percentile die. A player’s base language automatically starts at 100%. Other languages after that will exist somewhere else on the scale which may be rolled for upon character creation. In order to become better at a certain language, you need to spend 1 day + one GP to gain 1 percentile (using either a teacher or a book of some kind).
So if a player is 30% proficient in Elvish, they will need to spend 50 days and 50 Gold Pieces in order to become 80% proficient with the language.
During an encounter, a player can make an Int check to try to pick up some of the language, if they succeed, they gain 1 percent proficiency in it without having to spend the gold.
Whenever attempting to speak the language, a player will role a percentile dice. In order to succeed at getting their idea across, they simply need to role within their percentile score.

[doctorpound]

I bought a pound of dice that came with 2 d30s. My DM decided to incorporate them into our campaign. Once per session, we can choose to replace any d20 roll with the d30. All the players must unanimously agree to use it. Skill/Ability Checks and Saves add their bonuses as normal. If used on an Attack Roll, anything 20 or above counts as a crit. Nothing will beat the time we were on trial, trying to convince a council of elders why our sorcerer should keep this valuable artifact he had. He made a long speech and it all came down to 1 Charisma roll. We decided to use the d30 and he rolled a NATURAL 30! We got to keep the artifact.

[zacharytoth]

Being professional? That's not how things work around here. Being a scrub? That's how we roll.

[lordlol]

So a fun little "minigame" I decided to use in my games is one for lockpicking.
As far as I am aware it's not posted anywhere so this is how it goes: It's actually the "mechanic" used in a drinking game called Bus Driver. You put 5 cards in a row face up and then the person picking the lock has to guess if the card you pull from the top of the deck is going to be higher or lower than the card on the table. If they guess correctly you move to the next card and so on untill you guess all 5 cards. If the number is the same just make them guess again for that card. But if they guess wrong then they fail to pick the lock or whatever you chose to happen.


Each card kinda represents one of those little pins you have to position correctly in a padlock for example. But if you want to make the lock easier or harder to pick just tweak the number of cards they need to guess.


Idk if this is already a common rule so I decided to share here.

[basbarbeque]

"I have to go to a music recital of questionable quality" is something I imagine a parent would say about their child behind their back.

[joereilly]

I have a house rule. The DM may from time to time pass you a note. You are free to read the contents of the note to anyone BUT you MAY NOT EVER show them the note. The note may or may not have anything written on it. Sometimes they are just nonsense like "you saw a crow land on a branch", sometimes it just says "Please respond to this note". Since the players can never show the note they can claim that it says whatever they want and it builds a certain level of paranoia while keeping information that would legitimately be private to a player actually private. If I need to tell a player something long I just take them to another room but I don't like doing that as it leaves most of the players just sitting. You should also prepare notes prior to the game when possible to speed things up.

[Calcifer]

One house rule that I do is that during character creation I have my players choose what month they are born in and that gives them a +1 to a specific ability score and proficiency in a skill.
Another rule is that I award inspiration points where my players can use them to "buy" feats which its price will go up exponentially for every feat they buy. Like, 1st feat = 5 points, 2nd feat = 25 points and so on. This is addition to the normal 5e feat rules, not a replacement. Both of these rules together can make for some really themed characters.

[rionadsett]

So what I do when I run, for AC, I'm not big on the all or nothing aspect of it, so I tell players that if they're attacked and their AC is say, 15, and the creature attacking them rolls a 15, then that attack glances.
When it glances, it only kind of nicks or grazes you, and so only does half damage, and it helps new players who don't know what happens if their AC is met.
Also in the last game I ran, I had the party sit under the stars and roll a CHA saving throw and the person who rolled the lowest was most in Awe of the night sky and started to talk about themselves and their past more and that really drew out some good baclstory for the characters.

[jmacrac]

Homebrew Epic Death
So in DND a game of Heroes, nobody wants to die ... unless it's awesome.
During a tough story boss fight a player fails drops to 0 hp. On his second failed death save, I give them the choice: You can risk dying and hope your fellow team mates pull together enough coin to maybe wish you back ...


OR you get to go out in a blaze of glory, no resurrection, few dice, all narrative.

I generally have a song i associate with each on of my player characters. That song is that players 4 minutes and I generally throw something in that lets to go a little super sayin. Describe how you beat the boss, slump to the ground and give a heart felt goodbye to your companions. Then your song ends ... and your character is gone but no one will forget them !

[stevenneiman]

I use Matt Colville's trick of assigning a player damage tracker. I'm not sure if you'd call that a house rule or more of a lifehack, but it makes my life easier and I think it makes it easier for the tactician players in my group to strategize.
I also have something that I'm not sure if I stole it from somewhere and forgot or if I was just inspired by FATE, but every campaign I choose some broad topic that I expect the party to be learning about or dealing with a lot over the course of the story, and then I ask every player to send me at least one (though more are welcome) rumor that their characters have heard about that topic. I then spin any that strike my fancy into quests, setting elements, etc. And the best part is, because the players don't know the reliability of the rumors, they can't metagame. Even if they get clear confirmation that their rumor is grounded in reality, they have no way to tell what parts are exaggerated or flat out wrong. And I think it's also fun for a player to know that something they did helped me tell them a cool story.

[thebpphantom]

"...Or do I put me figuring out that I wasn't using a mic, then setting up the mic, and asking Rhys what I should do actually IN THE VIDEO?" Honestly, you went with the best option.