My 16 (new) Homebrew Rules for D&D 5e

My table adds proficiency to weapon damage

my fave homebrew: when you crit you get to describe what happens based off your damage and the situation. The DM just hands over the mic basically

My rolls are so subpar for the majority of sessions that I was happy when my character died. It was a relief that my chunky barbarian that was only good for combat couldn't land a hit and when he did crit it was for 8+2+3 with a maul that I realized, I shouldn't be playing a game with large "variations" and no guarantees.

Wow can't believe Jacob would endorse THIEVERY

Jacob: Taking turns from your players sucks and should be avoided if possible!

Also Jacob: If the monster hits my players too hard sometimes they just go unconscious or die!

An action to attune? THAT is stupid.

Player 1 "Wow, I picked up this sword. It seems pretty cool, I wonder if it's a magic sword."
Player 2 (Wizard being a team player): "I'll cast Iden-"
Player 1"I attempt to attune to it. Wow, I know exactly what this item does and that it has 10 charges left, also I have to say "quiblerinio" in order to activate it"


Everything else. Was nice. The last one, fucking epic! THAT is how you do rule of cool.

Lossing levels to save someone is the most giga chad thing I've heard in dnd.

What is the music used in the "Flanking" segment?

For the inspiration coins, I like to make the coins a player pool they can use together (I have nice players who don't hog the uses), but when I flip the token as a dm, I add some kind of new challenge or complication. For example a fire might spread in a way that gets in the way of the players, or more enemies might show up, or a lockpick might break after a fail, or an enemy might pull out a strong healing potion or other potion, and I'll flip however many coins of theirs I feel match the new obstacle.

5e has pros and cons, as any other edition.
5e main problem come from its best feature: it's too straightforward.
you almost never have a good enough reason to raise a non main stat.
like a battlemaster has 0 use for intelligence (or any othe mental stat, but especially for int). like litearally no benefit. you could have 2 identical BM characters, but one has a 18 int and the other 10. it almost doesn't matter.
in 3.5, int gave you precious ability points. Minmaxing a pc was not the objectively best choice.
there were also many different ways to build a pc in the same class. eg: you could do a combat optimized rogue with maxed out dex and just 10 int. Or the opposite was also totally doable, with an incredible skill monkey rogue, who's just okayish in combat.f you really wishs
even a strength based rogue made sense! because finesse and ranged weapon did not add dex mod to damage, so if you wanted a brawler rogue, you needed str. see what i'm talking about?
in 5e you always have a rogue with 2 asi in dex, then a feat, usually mobility, the build is so streamlined that the only way to personalize a bit your pc is by multiclassing, obivously this simplicty ha its perks and let you do coo things in other departments. but this is one of the parts in which 5e imho is severely lacking. why 6 stats if you always only need 1 + constituion

More of a house rule for casters that need to prepare spells.
You still need to prepare your spells, but they only count for combat encounters.
Outside of combat you can pick any spell you know from your list to use, preventing you being cough with your pants down, or missing a perfect opportunity for that one situational spell you did not choose today as you did not think a opportunity would present itself.

It will keep the flow of combat okay as you still only have your limited list of prepared spells, but outside of combat you don't have to miss out on great or creative interactions due to a limited spell-pool.

I like to give players unique player focused unique slot cursed items.

I had a ranger player get a nose ring that gave him scent 30 feet but all lycans smelled him as their opposite kill on sight lycan.

A rogue who slept around wanted a prince Albert of protection from disease, it's curse was he had to soak it in milk every week and make him the cheese from grew overnight if he was protected from a disease that week and have bad breathe for 3 days.

I like bloodied, but I roll a d20. If it's odd, subtract that amount of HP from half the monster's total and that's the new hidden "bloodied" thresholds. If it's even, add it. Helps reduce metagaming which is my biggest issue with the condition

Giving up levels to accomplish a goal so personal is the coolest thing I've ever heard.

A counter point to your flanking rule: Knowing about something doesn’t mean you can stop it. Say a warrior literally has eyes on the back of their head. Even if they know someone’s behind them, they’re seeing they’re behind them. If they’re currently engaging with someone else, blocking, clashing, etc, they still can’t do anything against the person behind them, even if they know. No amount of knowing who’s behind you can help you if your hands are full.

what I do for crits is the normal rules plus a status condition based on the weapon they were hit with such as blind an enemy that was hit with a crit arrow.

"something lost, something gained" only works with an extremely reasonable table of players.

Anyone trying to game the system would try to abuse it to high heaven, causing you to constantly have to adjust the rule.

I often do something I call "more dynamic combat"

If a character crits it can reposition themselves and the enemy they crit (only in melee) 5ft. Both can only move 5ft but individually so if you move 5ft back the enemy has to follow you so he is still engaged in combat with you. It makes the combat more fun especially with classes that crit often because you can say that they stumble and you follow them. Maybe pin them against the wall using shove action with advantage. Just thinking logically what could happen if the players use the enviroment and this rule makes it cool and fun.

My brain is overreacting to hearing 50 HP is more than half of 100.

Something my Dad did for the Rolemaster system that I carried over to Dnd 5e (and I'll admit, it's much stronger in Dnd than Rolemaster (3d6 stats vs 1d100 stats)) is what I've dubbed Heroic Rolls. For stat rolls, you roll stats as you please (I do 4d6 drop the lowest number). But, you roll 12 stats instead of six. Then take any 6 you want (though, preferably the highest for reasons explained later) and apply them as you wish. I love the idea behind it, because my Dad basically said: "These characters are the heroes of the story. They specifically are being sent out on an adventure, so they should be a cut above the rest".

this is very cool

For encumbrance I go with squared, so 1 lb for 1 strength 4 lbs for 2 strength, .. 100lbs for 10 ... 400 for 20. Seems most realistic to me

I love crunchy Crit...I'm currently using it. Yes it can be op but rolling a 1 on Crit is so disappointing

For shared initiative, Elemental Yarn made a really cool vid a while ago titled "Can combat be tactical AND dramatic?" in which he detailed the initiative system he made up for his own ttrpg, which basically groups everyone involved in a battle into units of allied fighters, and the initiative is decided between those units, so that every one of their members get to act during the same turn. That way, players can plan and coordinate much better, and even make crazy team maneuvers. I really love that concept, so I'm definitely gonna be trying it out whenever I get to GM anything

quick attunement doesn't sound like a good idea, theres a good reason as to why powerful magical items require attunement, and that's because you're creating a magical bond to that weapon, you learn everything about that weapon in the process. you might know that a weapon is magical, but you don't know how till you find a way to identify it, attuneing to it tells you what it's magical properties are, and anything else useful, like how to activate certain abilities. Quick Attunement bascially let's you pick up a magical item in the middle of combat, and start using it right away as if you've had it the entire time, that makes no sense at all. how about this, instead of having quick attunement be for every weapon, instead you make it a property that certain weapons can have. So, let's say the players are running away from a powerful creature that they can't defeat on their own, then they run into a sentient weapon with a benevolent spirit, the weapon understanding what's happening, begins to speak to one of the players, telling them to hurry and pick them up so that they can attune, and beat back the monster. Now one of your players have found a friend, or maybe they just became a god's champion, or maybe the magical item wasn't benevolent at all, and was actually cursed, so it seized the opportunity to claim another host. It shouldn't be so easy to pick up any magical item and immediantly start using it without some type of reason as to why.

A solution to both massive damage and lingering injuries would be the Role Master crit tables. They are brutal and add a new level of consequence to combat.

I actually want to do a variation of your Intelligence rule, inspired by Star Wars Saga Edition. They say every character gets 1 + Int mod languages at the start.

Fun rules. Milestone item sound like adding a new dimension of side quest. The palidin thing though... that was epic... what a crazy cool idea.. 🤯

I like how you say 'bee holder' instead of 'beholder.'

We use chunky crits but we also double damage modifiers, so the damage output is even crazier.

I'd like to hear more about how the optional tcoe racial rules can lead to broken characters.

I love the last one. I did that with my campaign prior. My players wanted to save another from an Adult Blue Dragon which would have been just instant death and I offered them a deal of trading their inspirations for it. (I play inspiration different in my games. It's basically a, "You can do anything really cool so long as it makes sense" button.) Don't worry, they got their inspirations back in a few sessions afterwards since I liked giving it after some fun interactions and/or events. I had actual divine intervention come in which made sense for that chara lore-wise.

Idk, I'd argue that you "could" flank a beholder but it's just very unlikely.

Achievement weapons, huh? "Pick 5 prickly pears and you can unlock +1 damage to Eldritch Blast." Congrats, you've truly turned D&D into an MMO.

Actually, though, MMO-style quests suck and I hate this idea.

Love how 5e requires so much extra work from the dm and homebrew...

The sound design on this video is FANTASTIC.

I use a similar system to crunchy crits, but instead of it just being a D6, it's anything. You rolled a crit? The first damage roll does max damage, the second one you roll for. This has turned my party's paladin into a POWERHOUSE that two-shot a planned reoccurring villain. But it makes crits feel so much more awesome and my table always gets hype for each other when the dice gods roll in their favor.

The single most Paladin thing I think any of us will ever hear.... that was incredible

👏👏👏👏👏

a year later, I hope your sister returned your book <3

We emphasise critical rolls. We play nat1-s on attack rolls as critical failures that give you lingering injuries (for example your firebolt explodes in your hand and you lose a finger ), on saving throws you get double damage if you roll nat1 and zero damage if you roll nat 20, also if you crit you just roll normal damage, add the multiplier, and simply multiply the result by2, this doubles EVERYTHING, even feat damage from great weapon master and the modifier. It Gives more agency to dice rolls

I have the sword you used during the Bloodied and Mortal section. That is a really cool sword!

Our new house rule that we have is that death saves don't reset when you stand up and instead you have to take a short rest, long rests are more restrictive in our game as a result. because our group had a slight issue where we abuse healing word and don't take short rests despite having half the party being short rest classes

Rule of cool let me move like 2million mph so 👍🏻 and my Dm let me out crit from it

I've long used a variant of inspiration tokens that I cribbed from Shadowruns Edge system.

PCs get a bunch of tokens at the start of an adventure which they can expend to influence events in a minor fashion. Think re-rolls or modifying downward the DC of a check. These points are recovered at the end of the adventure (or can be rewarded by DM for good RP, stolen direct from SR).

The fun part of this system is what SR called 'burning' Edge. Consuming a point permanently, never to recover. The classic use of this is to avoid PC demise, but the most 'fun' uses are when someone burns edge to attempt a roll that I told them they could not try.

I've rewritten a bunch of arcs on the fly due to burning Edge, sometimes they make the check and kill god or whatever, but it's just as fun when that roll goes splat.

This mechanic arose at my table because I tend to crunchy high-risk, the chance you need to tweak a roll to avoid being obliterated are fairly high

if i ever dm SPEAR HAVE REACH

I have one for Critical Hits. I hate it when you roll the damage of a crit and it's shit, it feels awful, so I made a rule that if the total damage rolled for a crit (without modifiers) is the same or less than the maximum number of your original damage die, then you get to roll in a table of conditions that are applied to that enemy.

Opinions on the concept of Rolling with Emphasis? It was brought up on dimension 20 and the concept is a neutral version of advantage or disadvantage rolling. You roll 2 d20 and take the number farthest from the middle (10)

I used a luck deck and had the same problem. I started using good boy/bad boy cards from Sanspantsradio. Added more things and got rid of the "add +4 to a roll"

The items that level up are just more flexible Legacy Items. Just... just call them that, there was a whole book on it back in the day.