Five Simple House Rules for Better Combat in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

a professor once told me we teach you all of the rules so that you know how to break them properly and in the world of Dungeons and Dragons most of the rules can be bent and some can be broken depending on the play style you're looking for at your table now the rules of Dungeons and Dragons are part of what makes it a game as opposed to just an exercise in improvise collaborative storytelling but the rules can be hacked changed or modified by us and our play groups to play the game that we want to play and to tell the stories that were most interested in my name is Monty Martin and I'm Kelley McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we discuss everything Dungeons & Dragons including advice for DMS and guides for players we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe so that you never miss an episode today we are taking a look at five very simple house rules that you can apply at your game for better combat these rules are ones that we've implemented in our own games they don't break the gameplay or disrupt the table too much they're just there to make more tactical fun during combat at your table they're easy to remember and they have some great outcomes that yield better tactical combat more exciting dramatic moments in play make things a little bit more convenient for the players and make a few things more manageable for the dungeon master there's a lot to discuss so let's get rolling the first house rule we're going to talk about today is for better criticals because nothing feels worse than landing a critical hit and rolling Snake Eyes on the damaged dice this house rule actually comes to us from fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons and for many iterations of the play test of Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition while those and next it was the rule for critical hits so much so that when the rules actually came out we were surprised that it changed it took us a solid year before we realized that we were actually playing with the incorrect rules for critical roles having now played for several years both with and without using this rule I think Kelly and I are both an agreement that playing with this makes critical hits into the bone-crunching damage-dealing powerhouses that they absolutely should be how does the real work Kelly the rules quite simple when you score a critical hit roll for damage normally then determine the maximum damage you can roll with your attack before applying any modifiers combine the maximum result with your roll damage and then add any modifiers this is your critical hit damage so as an example if you're a fighter with a 16 strength score attacking with a longsword and you score a critical hit to calculate your critical hit damage you would take the damaged eye of the longsword which is d8 maximized so that's eight points of damage then you roll a d8 and add the result and then add your strength modifier or any other magical or damaged modifiers that you would add to the roll the important thing is that the modifiers are only added once to the maximum plus the roll and that gets your total damage it's a pretty simple house rule but it really means that your critical hits are going to matter because we have found that in the rules as written in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition critical hits do have a small chance of being pretty meager attacks yeah it's totally possible for that same fighter to score a critical hit and end up rolling Snake Eyes and they've got a five damage critical hit which doesn't feel very satisfying to us so on the flip side with this house rule the minimum damage that critical hit could deal would be twelve points of damage which is more than the fighter could do otherwise in any circumstance which seems appropriate for rolling that natural twenty yeah now that said this rule does make paladins and rogues and other classes that have the ability to apply a whole bunch of damaged dice to their critical hits into super monstrous damage dealers when they score critical hits I think in the case of these classes though it works out pretty well and I mean nothing feels better than a rogue landing a sneak attack critical and one-shotting an enemy yeah it feels good for the player and I would I think that it's just appropriate to allow that at your table yeah you may want to rule that with this rule extra damage isn't multiplied or that it is always rolled and it isn't automatically maximized if you feel that the numbers get too big but having played this rule with a campaign that had high-level rogues and high-level paladins it worked out well for us and of course it goes the other way around so it means that monsters critical hits against the players are pretty nasty as well the next rule that we're looking at is for better healing potions because like the critical hit rules potions can have a tendency to be pretty meager with the amount of hit points that you regain yeah you might down a healing potion on the front lines of battle and what it restores is not enough to save you from the next attack coming in I feel that potions should be a little bit more worthwhile in this respect so I've applied a similar rule to the critical hits to my healing potions in my game here's how it works when you would normally roll one or more die to restore hit points with a healing potion you instead use the maximum result of each die this is how many hit points the potion restores so for example a potion of healing which normally restores to d 4 + 2 hit points under this house rule always restores 10 hit points this is an easy way to make sure that a healing potion is easy and dependable it's less work for the dungeon master it's less work for the player and they know that they're gonna get a good amount of hit points when they down that healing potion because healing potions are a consumable item you can balance this house rule by determining how many potions are available to your player characters and I especially like using this house rule for parties that don't have a dedicated healer along with a reasonable availability of potions from shopkeepers or vendors throughout the campaign world so typically I charge 50 gold pieces for a healing potion a hundred gold pieces for a potion of greater healing or 500 for a potion of superior healing which restores 40 hit points under this house rule but whenever my player characters roll into town to buy potions I roll a d6 to determine how many potions are available for sale so they can never stock up with hundreds of potions and toss them in their bag of holding and never have to worry about healing again the other important thing with this house rule that we're implementing is that if you use the house rule that allows players to drink a potion as a bonus action during combat this might be a little too powerful if your using that other house rule yeah so I would implement one or the other has rule depending on your preference my personal preference is that I like potions to be a tactical decision so I want my player characters to have to retreat or use their action to drink them I'm not a very big fan of potions as a bonus action I feel it leads to a kind of video game ii style of play where players are chugging back potions while swinging their sword with the other hand it's like pausing your game to eat eight loaves of bread in the middle of a boss battle so that you can regain hit points this next rule is not so much a house rule as it is an optional rule found on page 251 of the Dungeon Master's guide that we've modified just a little bit and that is the rules for flanking flanking has been part of Dungeons & Dragons through 3rd and 4th edition and the rule was well loved for how it added a tactical element to positioning in combat the rules for flanking were removed from the players handbook in Dungeons & Dragons 2 edition but they do appear again in the Dungeon Master's guide on page 251 and we quite like the flanking rules we haven't used them in recent campaigns but I definitely think we're gonna start using them again because we do enjoy the tactical element they bring into combat here's how they work when a creature and at least one of its allies are adjacent to an enemy and on opposite sides of the enemy space they flank that enemy and each of them has advantage on melee attack roles against that enemy when in doubt about whether two creatures flank an enemy using the grid trace an imaginary line between the centres of the creature spaces if the line passes through the opposite sides of the enemy space the enemy's flank you could also use your best judgement in theater the mind play to determine when flanking implies a creature can't flank an enemy that it can't see it also can't flank well it is incapacitated a larger larger creature is flanking as long as one part of its face qualifies for flanking so what are the common criticisms of this implementation of the flanking rule in Dungeons & Dragons fourth edition is the granting advantage on melee attack roles based on clever positioning is quite generous so one easy way to modify the flanking rule is to reduce it from advantage to simply a +2 bonus on rolls this is consistent with how flanking was implemented in third and fourth edition of dungeons dragons this makes the flanking rule similar to how cover works in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition cover granting a bonus to your AC depending on how much cover you have this one grants a bonus to attack roles based on your positioning in combat I like the interplay between combat and flanking and how that influences the gameplay of ranged and melee combatants ranged characters have to deal with cover and concealment melee combatants have to deal with the risks of getting outflanked both of these rules operating as a +2 bonus or in the case of 3/4 cover a +5 bonus to a creatures armor class are pretty easy to remember and implement in play so it actually makes me surprised that flanking wasn't included as a core rule especially considering the way cover was implemented in the fifth edition rules to me the idea that adding one small little bonus makes the rules to mathematically complex is a little bit of an oversimplified argument because the rules of fifth edition D&D are still filled with tons of examples of little +1 +2 or other type bonuses to attack role saving throws and ability checks so why there wasn't one for flanking really kind of mystifies me it could be interesting as well if you wanted to homebrew this even further if you look at cover having the option of a plus 2 or +5 depending on how much cover you have you could say that if two characters are flanking a creature they gain plus 2 if three characters are flanking a creature maybe they gain plus 5 that would be an interesting way to make getting surrounded by multiple enemies super dangerous and I think that by using the flanking as a plus 2 bonus it allows other creatures that have abilities like PAC tactics to still have a meaningful benefit from those powers the next rule we're looking at is one that Monty and I have both carried over from fourth edition that we both just love to use and that is the bloodied condition the bloodied condition is a fantastic descriptive tool but one that can also have a little bit of rule significance depending on how much homebrew you want to add to the experience it's a very simple rule to remember character is bloodied when the characters hit points are equal to or less than 1/2 the character's maximum hit points rounded down 1/2 the character's maximum hit points rounded down is referred to as the character's bloodied value for example a character that has 50 hit points has a bloodied value of 25 and that character is considered bloodied whenever their hit points are below 25 this is a pretty simple rule to implement and it can be used for a lot of really interesting things but honestly my favorite thing that it's used for is just description to the characters to know that they're making progress in battle as a player I really enjoy hearing the DM announce the creature is now bloodied it lets me know that I can continue to fight even if I'm wearing thin on abilities or hit points because maybe I can push a little further to slay this monster also in the game of Dungeons & Dragons which exists mostly within our imagination it really helps to have a visual aid to tell you oh the monsters looking hurt it's looking injured and we can just push through and kill it using the bloody condition is a great way to trigger a descriptive moment because the attack or spell or whatever caused that character to become bloodied can now be described as a connecting blow that wounds the creature in some way the great sword that crashes down against the creatures chest or the Maul that hits them in the side of the face or the spell that leaves them burned across their body they're now visibly wounded in some way and the fight is now getting serious another great way to even enhance the blighted condition even further is to say that creatures that have rechargeable abilities automatically recharge them when they become bloodied another way to expand this rule would be to homebrew feats spells class abilities or even monster powers that only work or can only be used when a creature is bloodied or can only be used against a creature that is bloodied there's a lot of creative ideas that you can find in the pages of the fourth edition monster manuals if you're looking for inspiration I think this is a great rule and I'm surprised that the mechanics of the game don't use it more because you can see in the monster manual there's a few creatures that had the vestigial traces of an ability that was meant to get powered up when they were bloodied and I would love it if the rules expanded on this some more because it's a really wonderful condition and a really cool gameplay mechanic that is really underutilized in 5e it's also just terrifying to imagine that Dragons will get their breath weapons back when they get bloodied in play I also like to use glass beads to mark characters that are bloodied so I love the visual of looking down across all the miniatures and seeing all these bloodied tokens and seeing the blood flowing on the battlefields and finally another rule that we love to carry over from fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons is the minion rule which is great for all of your cannon fodder monsters because there's nothing harder for a DM than having a table full of a hundred little monsters that you have to keep track of each and every one of them the minion rule was one of my favorite monster building rules for Dungeons & Dragons for the dition and I was really disappointed that it didn't make its way into fifth edition and so I have modded a plethora of creatures - minion eyes them so I can use them in my combat encounters because straight up I'm not interested in tracking hit points for more than four or five monsters I find that really bogs play down for myself and I often lose track of how many hit points monsters have so knowing that I can put a bunch of monsters on the board that only have one hit point is really really easy for me to use in play and that's the essence of the minion rule here's how it works meaning creatures only have one hit point a missed attack never damages a minion and when a minion is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a saving throw to take only half damage and instead takes no damage if it succeeds on the saving throw minions always deal average damage and never have legendary or Lair actions minion monsters can be matched up against the player characters four to one we've made a handy chart using the rules from Zanna thar's guide to everything and the various encounter building building rules in the dungeon masters guide that shows you the approximate challenge rating of minions that are appropriate for player characters of varying levels minion rule is really easy to apply to any monster you just find a monster of the appropriate challenge rating and give them only one hit point and this minion rule in their stat block when you're choosing a monster - minion eyes you want to avoid choosing a monster that has the multi attack trait the spell casting abilities or any other really complex powers or abilities you want to choose simple monsters for your minions that's why they never have legendary or lair actions either a legendary minion is a strange idea by using swarms of simple creatures that only have a single hitpoint there's far less for you to track as a DM they use average damage so you can roll their damage and groups you can just pick up a fistful of D 20s and roll for attack rolls all at once in my opinion this rule out of all the ones that were mentioning today I almost deem essential if you are doing large-scale combat encounters I have run so many combat encounters that I want to feel like they're up against an army but when they are up against an army especially at higher levels let's say that the party is going up against an army of cultists but they're now high enough level that cultists would probably die in one or two hits anyway minion izing them means that me as a DM just has so much less to worry about and I can focus on the key monsters that they are facing to really drive home how intense those creatures are without having to do all this scribbling on my paper as they hit each individual creature around the boar this is important because there are monsters that are appropriate for millions that are really annoying in the number of hit points they have for example the basic bandit or cultist has 11 hit points which means that there's a good chance that a longsword attack won't kill them in one hit there's a bunch of monsters that are challenge rating one and two that would be great to use in droves against player characters but they have 30 or 40 hit points which means that even if they fail they're saving throw against a fireball they don't die to it the minion rule means that you can use these creatures make them pose a rather significant threat to the party but you don't have to worry about the bookkeeping of exactly how many hit points they have especially when you're using them in groups of 6 7 8 or more and at the end of the day I would rather focus on role playing and making the game exciting than all the bookkeeping that I have to do with a table full of a hundred monsters and indeed adding minions to a combat encounter is a great way to make it a bigger threat as well often times the players need to be outnumbered just a little bit by the monsters in order to not walk all over anything time and time again players destroy single monster encounters but by just adding five six or ten minions to the battle you can really change the circumstances of it you may notice that a lot of the rules we've talked about today are borrowed from fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons and for all its flaws these are among some of the gems that we found there I enjoyed playing for a D&D but I really loved 5th edition and these are just a few of those small tweaks that bring the tactical combat elements that I really loved about fourth edition into the narrative framework that makes fifth edition tons of dragons shine so brightly I love using these at my game table I will say that they've gone through the wringer as far as house rules go and these are ones that you can really confidently implement during your game because they're in widespread use at many tables and they work for many other players in Dungeon Master's and I think that that's the best thing about a good house rule is it's one that enhances the game that really has that stamp of approval that battle-tested reputation to be used in many tables enjoy them so this has been a look at five simple house rules for better combat in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition if you've used any of these or have others that you love tell us about them in the comments below if you're enjoying the show please consider supporting our work on patreon you can find out how you can help the channel by following the links in the description below don't forget to check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs Tuesday nights from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we've got more on house rules and home brewing for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition right over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon you

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 724,822

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, books, book

Id: xAO1aYhWZl0

Length: 19min 44sec (1184 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Trompdoy]

I was on board with the critical hit house rule until they said they think it's fine maximizing smite and sneak attack damage or other such effects. That's totally fucking crazy, lol. No way I'd allow that. Yeah it's fun for the rogue or paladin to one shot an enemy, but is it fun for the rest of the table?

[u/JasonPrimus]

I always ask my players, if I'm DMing, if they want to use the max crit role. If they get to use it so do the "monsters".

I've had to many "yay! Crit!" Moments ruined by my friends terrible rolls. They need all the help they can get.

[u/__pannacotta]

Personally, I enjoy having advantage and disadvantage stack, even though it's probably not the best idea. Who doesn't love rolling more dice?

[u/intermedial]

We created this short video summarizing five house rules we pilfered from D&D 4e and use now in our D&D 5e campaigns. We find they lead to richer tactical combat, more exciting and dramatic moments in battle, and make life easier for the Dungeon Master, too.

Bookmarks for each of the rules discussed in this episode:

• 1:25 Better Critical Hits
• 4:32 Better Healing Potions
• 7:02 Flanking
• 10:38 The Bloodied Condition
• 13:45 Minion Monsters

We've also prepared a handy Google Doc with the full text of the house rules presented in the video.

[u/Snikhop]

Balance wise - and there's a chance nobody cares about this - it's likely to turn the Champion into even more of a meatgrinder. Improved Critical at level 3 means a crit one time out of ten. Intelligent use of advantage, extra attack, maybe two weapon fighting as well, that's going to be a lot of crits, so the advantages of your Better Critical Hits are amplified for the Champion.

Obviously the flipside to that is that Champion is incredibly dull to play so I guess you gotta throw people a bone.

[u/Anusbambanus]

While I like the idea of nitpicking 4th edition mechanics, in my experience they do not always fit into 5th edition. Specifically the minion rule. While most classes had some sort of AOE or multi-attack in 4th, there are several classes that have no such abilities in 5th.

This means that if you're playing a battlemaster or a rogue with one attack, minions are gonna feel much more deadly as opposed to a wizard that can kill any 3 minions with a level 1 magic missile.

While I like the concept as a dungeon master, I do not like it as a player and it also felt too "meta" for me. As in, it feels too much like I'm playing a video game when I hit an ogre for 5 damage and he falls flat.

Maybe it just takes some getting used to, but I tried the minion rule after watching a Colville video and it didn't stick.

[u/westerchester]

The potions rule exists if you have a cleric in your party already; see: Beacon of Hope.

[u/DilettanteJaunt]

1, Maximized Crits. I think what I'd be inclined to do for criticals is not to do maximized+plus, but instead calculate what max damage for a normal hit would be and reroll if your crit does less than that. Alternately, maximize the attack, and then roll a single die and add it on top. Your rule, as is, just seems too extreme for some classes/monsters.

2, Maximized Healing Potions. I agree that bonus action potions is a little much, and that 5e healing potions don't really feel very impactful. But, that's 5e healing in general. I feel like I'd sooner make healing potions cheaper/easier to acquire than I'd increase how much they heal. I wouldn't want them to make healing magic feel piddling by comparison. One thing I do do, is sell rather cheap salves that take 1 minute to apply and let a PC spend a hit die. Just for times the players need healing but don't want to take the time to fully short rest.

3, Flanking. I'll be honest, I feel very, very negative about flanking in 5e. Advantage, definitely not as it directly conflicts with or minimizes so many abilities of both PCs and monsters. Even a +2 bonus though, I think, is unwarranted in 5e. It made sense in 4e, as the movement rules were so different. Any unprotected movement in attack range provoked an opp attack, and instead of the Disengage action you would Shift one square to move protected. In 5e, however, all you need to do is walk to the other side. You had to be a lot more strategic in 4e to acquire combat advantage through flanking, while in 5e it's often trivial. I kind of miss 4e positioning strategy.

4, Bloodied Condition. 100%, I wish the bloodied condition was a genuine condition. 5e already talks about 1/2 hit points as a marker for when a creature is visibly showing injuries. So, in a way 5e already has the bloodied condition. I agree that there are a lot of monster abilities that could get tied to it, but there are pretty much only creatures who have effects that trigger off of their own bloodied condition. Furthermore, you could have creatures that don't show off injuries or have flagging energy such as undead/constructs/elementals/plants be immune to the Bloodied condition and therefore not trigger bloodthirsty effects. I see why the 5e designers would avoid it, though, as it makes it something that you have to track for every creature and potentially slow things down, especially for those who play Theater of the Mind.

5, Minions. I've used minions in 5e, but only in very specialized situations. One of the things I like about 5e is that weak enemies can stay relevant, and minions kind of break the verisimilitude that 5e brings. So, I wouldn't necessarily do 1hp minion goblins, orcs, or cultists. Though, I have done a similar thing where, say, I'm using 12 hp monsters and keep in mind that if a PC deals 12+ damage, they instantly die, and if they deal less, than I marked the creature as bloodied so any additional damage will kill it.

As far as 1 hp minions I've used, what I've felt positively about are 1 hp zombies who still have Undead Fortitude. So, it still matters how much damage the PCs do to it, as it'll make a saving throw to survive based on it, but I don't have to track their HP. For these masses of zombies specifically, I also give them a +1 to attack, damage, and grapple/shove checks for each other zombie adjacent to the target PC, to easily emulate the classic zombie scenario of dozens of weak walkers cornering, grabbing, pulling down, and killing someone.

[u/mrdeadsniper]

I'm not a big fan of the flanking bonus as it props up the already (borderline?) problematic great weapon master feat. Now they are getting a -3 to hit for +10 damage..