D&D rules I don't like (and how I fix them)

well well look who's on the floor again now before we start talking about rules i wanted to let you guys know that i am doing a book doing writing a book creating a book it's called the questonomicon and the kickstarter launches in september it's a book with a bunch of one shots for fifth edition that have all different types of themes and customizations and villains the one shots can also be extended out to two or three shots if you want to stay updated with it there's a link in the description but also in the description is a link to the kickstarter that launched this week dungeons of drakenheim which was written by the dungeon dudes so also go check out their thing it's really really cool it's an adventure set in a world that they created called drakenheim there's a substance called delirium and it's like post-apocalyptic and super creepy go check it out it's really really awesome rules rules are like milk in ice cream or butter on a grilled cheese sandwich because some people like sherbet and also you could use mayo was a terrible metaphor rules and d d are like the foundation of the game you get like two camps of people though one side being like ah rule of cool is the best rule and we don't really follow all the rules and then the other camp that's like if you break any of the rules this is a disingenuous role-playing game why did i make my strength at 20 if it's not even gonna matter i kind of sit in the middle of these two camps but if there's any side i kind of lean on um rules good i like structure but i also like bending that structure to make players think and make decisions i know there's a lot of systems around that are like very loosey-goosey in the rules and those can be very fun that doesn't mean i don't like role play you know you can be in both camps i feel like i feel like strict rules can sometimes make for really interesting role play okay but sometimes there are rules that i do not like and actively try to avoid them and or change them an honorable mention would be invisibility doesn't give you advantage on stealth checks it just makes you fully obscured meaning people can't see you so technically you're always succeeding stealth roles while you're invisible to be seen but you still have to roll on them to be heard i hm i guess it kind of makes sense but then i guess it's like what if people could see your footprints i i guess you would just think that if you were in a situation with footprints okay it makes sense kind of okay actual rules i dislike that was more of an honorable mention flanking i think we all know i don't like flanking it's the first time i was on the floor i was talking about flanking and by golly gee we're talking about it again ever since i've made that video in my games we don't use advantage on flanking and you know what it is freaking fantastic players have to earn advantage and it's great we use plus two for flanking instead but in my games you can't flank a creature that has like more than one eye like if it has really good perception then it kind of just knows where you are like you can't flank a beholder because it has mega vision or like creatures with blind sight they would just like know you're there frightened i think frightened is really dumb i really just don't like how it works as a mechanic because it's supposed to make your character feel afraid like they just feel mortal fear so do you know what they do they just don't move closer to a thing and have disadvantage on attacking it it's either one of two things too debilitating in certain situations or way too good for other situations a scared mage can just cast a fireball and that's okay but an afraid fighter just has to sit in a corner and not get any closer to the thing they're afraid of and also differentiates from character to character like me jacob personally i have a genuine phobia of spiders when i see a spider i either want to kill it immediately or i want to run as far away from it as possible which is a super cool fancy term you may have heard of before called the flight or fight response or the fight or flight response in scientific terms also known as the acute in scientific terms it is also known as the acute stress response so smart so i actually developed a system to make it work like that and i'm using it in my fallout rpg game that we're running on arcane arcade basically if you get frightened you get to choose whether you fall into fight or flight fight means the only thing you can do on your turn is try to kill the source of your fear it's like when you walk up to somebody and you scare them and then they punch you in the face it's another form of stress response that all people have it's the immediate want to be away from the thing that they're afraid of so one way of doing that is killing the thing the other one is flight the only thing you can do on your turn is run away from the source of your fear which in turn does suck but to me makes much more sense in role play because in the current d d system and from what i've seen with most players there's more of a like frozen in fear type of thing where the player wants to get closer to the bad guy but they can't get closer but they don't want to move away so they just kind of stay there which i guess does make sense like being frozen with fear but that isn't the same thing for every single person and i guess you could say that the frightened system in d d already just allows you to have that choice to begin with you can run away you can be frozen or you can try to fight but you're gonna have disadvantage which i would say yes that is true but to me there's no immediate feedback it's like you tell your player hey you're frightened and they're like okay what does that do and you're like well you can't move closer and you have a disadvantage on your attacks and they go hmm what do i want to do when in reality your character would probably be immediately acting in that moment to do something that's almost out of their control because the acute stress response is almost involuntary so i think putting it in terms like fight or flight at least gives players an idea of what their character is feeling but if you fail by five or more on this version you basically are forced into flight and you have to run away because you're so afraid but yeah i just don't like the default frighten system i think it just it's far too limiting for certain classes and not limiting enough for others in this respect at least it's all the same so that if your character is frightened perhaps they do everything in their power to kill the thing that's in front of them into the detriment of themselves and others maybe or they just run away and try to get out of the battlefield either way they're acting like they're afraid it's not a rule it's really stupid falling damage being capped at 10d6 why uh but jacob there's terminal velocity uh there's only a certain amount of speed that you can be falling are you telling me that anybody with more than 60 hp can fall a thousand feet and just be alive maybe monks that's fine that's okay but i just think it's so much more satisfying to be like if you fall this 300 foot cliff you're gonna take 30 d6 damage because maybe you hit stuff down along the way whatever it is unlike fall damage being capped at a certain amount of dice i think that's ridiculous long rests long rests are amazing they make you feel good they give you back your health you get back your spells they're fantastic but do you know what sucks about long rests is that you can sleep for eight hours no matter where you are and get back all of your abilities now for certain games this kind of ruins a lot of tension because sometimes dungeon master wants to be like haha you can't rest in this place because it's dangerous or it takes forever to rest or there's monsters prowling about so you can't do so but sometimes there are more stressful situations than just being in castle ravenloft i really think it's just too easy to long rest and gain everything back again i like to change rules to make my players think and make decisions i actually use the rules from the adventures in middle earth players guide unfortunately this book isn't really being sold anymore so it's kind of hard to find so sorry but it's got really great rules for traveling you have to like plan out distances players get certain roles there's table events that can happen it's really really fun but one of my favorite parts about it is that you can't long rest until you get to a safe place basically a safe place being like a city or a base of operations or anything like that camping out in the middle of the road doesn't replenish all of your abilities so throughout your journey you have to decide when you're going to use all of your abilities you can't just cast good berry every single day and you can't be healing after every single combat you might want to avoid combat or stay in places that have cover because the encounters you have out on the road can be detrimental to the rest of your journey but simply adding the rule of not allowing long rests until you're in a safe place or maybe even like a dungeon i guess that would be fine too is like so it's crazy how much it's changed our games your players actually strategize and think about where they're going to go my players began like planning out routes and trying to find the easiest possible way to get places instead of just being like i would just walk it'll be fine whatever and travel became so interesting it became an integral part of the game that wasn't just something we'd skip over and do a montage for so i highly recommend it highly recommend doing that with your long rests it's a lot of fun and the last two i've talked about them in other videos but let's just rope them up into this one because this is the rule hating video now inspiration i've talked about that i use kartik inspiration in my games which is basically like you have a deck of cards and you pass them out to your players and they can put it on any one d20 roll the entire game or a friend's d20 role and it's aces crits and it's whatever the numbers are on the front of the cards and the face cards are tense anyways i use that because i don't like the bass inspiration in the game the bass inspiration in the game is like if your player is role playing well you can give them an inspiration point and then they can use it to gain advantage on a roll this rule sounds fine on paper you're encouraging your players to role play and that's a very good thing to do but picking one person out of the party and be like you get an inspiration point and you have been rewarded for your good deeds of playing d d just ends up making the other players feel bad i don't know i don't think rewarding players by playing up their flaw with an advantage point is necessarily the best way to get them to continue role-playing what i like to do instead whenever players do something that isn't necessarily going to have any sort of benefit on the game like give the party a pep talk and they don't have that cool feat or sing a little song or buy everybody a round of ale i give everybody in the party like a little bit of temporary hp to give a physical bonus on their character sheets but also to say hey you made everybody feel really great and they're a little inspired by what you did and the final rule i don't like is the default treasure tables why i know that all these magic items are just probably just written up and just like oh just put them on a table because people are going to want to roll on a random loot table we do like rolling on random loot tables it's easy but i don't like that on some of these tables it's like you get a punch and you get a scroll or at this table is you get a potion or you can get a portable hole these tables have been affecting so many dvd games by dms just being like oops here's an apparatus a qualish and not even all the items are on these tables sometimes there's just missing items and so they never end up in games and dm's are like huh i never decided to read through all of the actual magic items why why not tier all of the items into an easy listing category so that certain levels can only be accessed to certain items but if you want to scale it up you can if you want to scale it down you can't it doesn't make any sense oh wait i made that i made that in this video over here i have my own treasure tables that you can go check out we really reiterated a lot of stuff on this video how am i supposed to award players with art items what are they gonna do carry around the mona lisa as they're leaving a dungeon oh maybe that's what the portable hole is for

Channel: XP to Level 3

Views: 609,359

Keywords: dnd, d&d, dungeons and dragons, how to, tutorial, funny, monk, fighter, 5e, player, book, dm, dungeon master, roll, ranger, rogue, paladin, cleric, barbarian, bard, wizard, sorcerer, warlock, artificer, mystic, skits, idea, character, stats, build, new, tips, gm

Id: Jv-QhIwQR7I

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021