(Bibliographic Note, two or three of these came from here originally. Another recurring theme is that the optional rules Tasha’s Guide to Everything are good, and fix up several problems)
It’s a break from what I normally blog about, but I thought I’d share my D&D house rules. These rules aren’t going to be appropriate for everyone. Some of them are probably appropriate for no one, although none of them have broken the game on me yet. I put them out there in the spirit of conversation starters. I firmly believe D&D is meant to be hacked, pulled apart, and reassembled to taste, and that every good dungeon master- and to a degree, even every good player, must also be part game designer. This is just my small offering to that realm of infinite permutations which is house ruling. Most of them are designed to address balance. Some are designed to let players play out certain ideals or fantasies that they’ve always wanted to play out a little better while keeping things within the bounds of narrative and mechanical balance. Let a thousand flowers bloom, etc. etc.
We use the optional rules for each class in Tasha’s guide. It gives every class some buff but definitely strengthens the weaker classes quite nicely.
Anytime a character would gain expertise they instead gain one extra skill proficiency and one extra tool proficiency or language. Why? Because having Bards, Lore Clerics and Rogues be the only classes that, comparatively speaking, ever get to be really, really good at something is frustrating and immersion-breaking- and I say this as someone whose favorite class is Bard.
Every sorcerer subclass that doesn’t already get them, gets ten “free” known spells, generally, two of each spell level, levels 1-5- similar to the aberrant mind or clockwork origin sorcerer bonus spells. The spells must be chosen to match the theme in some way. For example, a sorcerer with Red Dragon ancestry might take 1. Burning hands, Command 2. Dragon’s breath, Scorching Ray 3. Fear, Fireball 4. Flame-shield, Wall of Fire 5. Legend Lore, Immolation. A shadow sorcerer might get 1. Disguise self, Silent image 2. Darkness, Pass without trace 3. Fear, Summon undead 4. Greater invisibility, Dimension door 5. Negative energy flood, Mislead.
Clerics, druids of the land, and other classes that get a list of “bonus spells” can negotiate to somewhat alter the list to better reflect a character concept. As a rule of thumb, I allow 3 swap-outs, and they all have to be for something that’s thematic for the character and subclass.
The following spells are banned. Counterspell, wall of force, force cage. Simaculurum is allowed, but only with a gentleperson’s agreement, it won’t be abused or overused. If a player wants to take Healing Spirit, we negotiate a debuff. Other spells are on a “pretty much fine but keep a bit of an eye on” list including feeblemind and polymorph, shape change, and true polymorph.
Because banning counterspell seriously nerfs the abjurer (no more proficiency bonus to counterspell at level 10), to compensate they gain the following benefit at level 10, in addition to the buff to their dispel magic. “As a reaction, so long as you have these spells prepared, you may cast Shield or Abjure Elements on a creature other than yourself that you can see.”
If you use Wish to do something other than duplicate a spell of level 8 or below, so long as you can convince me that what you’ve done is very much in line with the general power level of an existing spell of level 8 or lower, and not game-breaking, you don’t incur a risk of never being able to cast wish again. For example, suppose you wanted to create a talking pet rock using wish- it would be absurd to say that this imposes a one-third chance of never being able to cast wish again. It’s probably best to only use this optional rule with players you trust, who will accept your rulings and not try to break the game.
I find that monsters that are immune to non-magical damage are often not fun for a lot of the party early in the game, so I either A) don’t use them B) change their immunity to resistance, or remove it entirely or C) include other monsters in the encounter that aren’t immune. In any case, immunity to non-magical damage often doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sure a wererat is very tough, but it’s only flesh and blood- if you whack it over the head with a giant mallet, it’s going to hurt.
You can move your racial attribute bonuses around. Want to be a weakling half-orc with genius intellect or a boring but perceptive half-elf? Go for it. Or you can use the more specific alternate race rules in Tasha’s guide (did I mention I like that book?)
Half-elves need nerfing and I say this as a habitual half-elf player. “Your Charisma score increases by 2, and two other ability scores of your choice increase by 1.” is changed to “Your Charisma score increases by 2, and one other ability score of your choice increases by 1.”
More of a tip than a rule: generally challenge ratings overestimate the difficulty of encounters, especially for experienced players.
This has only ever come up once, but I would consider letting a player from class X, archetype Y, take a feature from archetype Z as a feat so long as it wouldn’t unbalance the game. The time it came up a Circle of Land druid wanted to take the 14th level Circle of the Moon archetype feature Thousand Forms (cast alter-self at will) as his 16th level feat. I thought it was a cool idea and I allowed it.
All classes can add half their proficiency bonus to saves they’re not proficient in. At higher levels, making a saving through for an attribute you lack the proficiency in is all but an automatic failure, this is intended to mitigate that.
Now we consider the compensation of classes the above rule weakens in a relative sense, including Monks and Rogues. It weakens Monks because it in a sense “halves” the value of Diamond Soul and it weakens Rogues because it “halves” the value of Slippery Mind. To compensate, at level 14, Monks add twice their proficiency bonus to dexterity saves and the same for rogues starting at level 15.
Warlocks, Bards, and Monks get to negotiate an alternative level 20 capstone with the DM. Their existing capstones are too weak. Ideally, preexisting well-designed homebrews, highly regarded by the homebrew community, are used for this.
For a Cleric of level 10-19, the probability of divine intervention working is equal to 2x level. This moves it from “a very long shot” to “improbable but quite possible”. This is partly because I think the divine intervention feature is surprisingly weak as written in practice, and partly because this ability can provide awesome game-play hooks when it goes off. It still can’t be used too often, since it can, at most, be used once a week.
I go back and forth on nerfing the Druid capstone for Circle of the Moon Druids. Make up your own mind on this thorny (pun intended) question.
Very experimental- not sure if it will work yet and haven’t applied it in a game: Legendary resistance fills a necessary role but can be very frustrating. As a compromise, creatures with legendary resistance can use it any number of times a day. However, every time they use it they lose a number of hit points equal to 10% of their hitpoint maximum, rounded up “swallowing” the effect at personal cost.
Players can ask for approval to take a different casting stat other than the one their class usually uses, so long as it’s another mental stat (Charisma, Intelligence, Wisdom). A learned folklorist bard might cast from intelligence instead of Charisma, for example. The swaps have to make sense- if you want a Wizard that casts from Charisma for example, you’d best have a very good argument.
Very experimental, but I’m toying with the idea of initiative bonus = Dexterity modifier+Intelligence modifier, to save intelligence from being the worst stat in the game. It kind of makes sense, because in the real world there is some evidence that intelligence is linked to reaction time.
If you don’t like the above experimental rule, try the rule mentioned here- you get one extra language or tool proficiency for each point your intelligence modifier goes up. Another option is to let players create “lores”- areas of knowledge more specific than normal skills- and let them take one for each point of intelligence modifier. Possible “lores” include architecture, orcs, elves, fungus and logistics. Suppose you wanted to know about the history of a building, didn’t have the history skill, but did have the architecture lore- you could role with proficiency. Or suppose you didn’t have the Nature skill, but did have the fungus skill, and wanted to know whether a particular mushroom was poisonous- again, you could role with proficiency.
Advice rather than a house rule but: if at least one of the following criteria is met, allow home-brew that you personally consider balanced. 1. if you’re an experienced DM OR 2. If you trust the player enough that if something is getting too strong, they’ll negotiate to tweak the rules and tone it down, and you warn them this in advance.
After the initiative is rolled and players know where they each stand in the order relative to one another, players have one chance to say that they would like to go down the initiative order. The readied action system is confusing and unsatisfying, this is a compromise that brings it a little closer back to 3.5.
If any of the above rules really don’t gel with a player or potential player, be open to renegotiating them. It’s not about pedantry, it’s not about who is in charge, it’s about building comedies, tragedies and triumphs with your friends.
Thanks for the rules. A number of these will probably end up getting incorporated into my next campaign.
Thanks for sharing! I play 5e with friends and like the system a lot, I'll think these over since I'm planning on running my own campaign at some point.