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

none of you asked but i'm gonna yell at you about a bunch of homebrew rules i use in my dnd games i made a video just like this about two years ago and it is not up to date anymore i don't use half the rules in that video anymore because we used them and they were poopy but i'm going to go over a bunch of rules that i said i used and then don't use anymore and why i don't and what i changed them to and just generally give you an up-to-date download on what i use for d d homebrew rules but yeah all these rules i've used in my games a lot like a lot a lot and my players like them so maybe yours will too and if they don't then you can blame me so let's get started but before we do let's hear a word from our sponsor ghostfire gaming and their new adventure citadel of the unseen sun citadel of the unseen sun is the first ever grim hollow adventure using their new platform fables fables is a subscription service that gives you an episodic adventure each month an all-in-one 5th edition adventure each episode includes digital maps tokens and all the tools you need that are all in one place there's a link down below inspiration tokens i stole this rule from other ttrpgs but modified it a bit originally i wrote it for our fallout ttrpg that we're running on our cane arcade where they use bottle caps but i decided to try to use it for d and d and so far i love it way more than cardig inspiration karnik inspiration was getting a little stale and really overpowered since you could stack multiple cards on other people's roles and it also got really random when you can draw anything from an eight to a plus ten to a crit to a four handing these out as rewards felt way too strong and most of the time players would just save them for when they really needed them and then there would be no tense situations whatsoever this new coin system is different every game you start with a coin and i actually got these cool like class tokens from doi's demos on etsy so you could also get these if you wanted to give them to everybody who has a class but i also have these gold coins that work well too at the beginning of every game you get a coin and it starts upright any time during the game you can flip it to get advantage on a d20 roll or you can use it as a re-roll but if you re-roll you have to take the new roll it stays flipped for the rest of the game until you roll a natural one or i roll as the dm a crit against you then you can flip it back over i as the dm can also flip your already flipped token to give you disadvantage on a roll or to give me advantage on a roll against you and so throughout the game you're going to slowly be flipping it over and over again and you can also award it as like an inspiration token if like a character does something really cool but you don't want to be like you'd suddenly have a potion of healing instead you can just flip their coin for an inspiration token you want to be careful with this one too because you don't want to be mean to your players by constantly giving them disadvantage on things they maybe want to succeed just to flip their coin or you also don't want to be doing it too much so that your players are begging for disadvantage on random roles so that they can get their coin flipped what i tend to do is flip it on a character who's succeeding a lot so that they get a little bit of like a low point but then they get to have that point for later or on a character who isn't succeeding a lot and give them disadvantage on maybe like a meaningless role so that they can have that inspiration coin for future use you could also just do it in case of like super bad luck so if characters are constantly failing all the time you just be like you know what flip your coin you can have a little bit of success in the future which in my experience has been working really really well [Music] massive damage let's say you're just a little guy and uh tmatt uh hits you with all of her breath weapons you only have 100 health she does 50 damage to you that's more than half of your hit points you have to succeed a constitution saving throw of 15 or else you take system shock system shock is a little table in the dms guide that has a few things that can happen to you from losing your reaction to becoming stunned to actually going unconscious as you reel from the sheer amount of pain that your body just endured let's say you're at 50 hit points and out of your 100 you take 50 damage and you hit zero you still have to make a constitution saving throw however instead of system shock because you hit zero you take a lingering entry which i use xanathar's lost notes to everything else this really awesome book which you can get on dm's guild has an entire list of extended lingering injuries it comes with a bunch of other injuries that are not as mean as the dmg ones and also have some really interesting ones in here as well like getting your teeth knocked out or an item of yours breaks you could even get a skull fracture broken ribs ringing ears you can lose fingers toes it's awesome but yeah if you hit zero and you fail that con save your you might lose a toe whenever you level up and roll your hit dice for health you can re-roll once unless it's a one then then you unfortunately get a two i no longer allow xanathar's guide level one racial feats at first they were a good idea they were pretty fun but they ended up for some really powerful character builds so we don't do it anymore we just follow the normal ability score improvement leveling racial feat and normal feat options and if you're wondering jacob that's not the xanathar's guide that's the player's handbook that's because my sister stole my xanathar's guide to everything and i haven't got it back yet maddie [Music] i only use this rule for one of my games which is even fall which he live stream on our can arcade every other friday but it's called crunchy crits i stole this from the dungeon dudes i wanted to try it to see how it would work and so far it's been pretty fun but i don't think i'll use it again for another campaign but if you want to hear my feedback on it it's pretty fun basically if you roll a d6 basically if you roll a d6 for your damage you roll the d6 and then you add the maximum that that dice has for your damage roll along with your modifier so if your modifier is plus three and then you roll the three you get six and then you get the maximum dice number which is six which is twelve and this leads for some pretty explosive combat scenarios more specifically when certain characters get it like a rogue or maybe somebody with a really powerful magic item or a really powerful spell it's almost instant kills for bad guys but the bad guys can get it too and it makes the combat really tense but um sometimes some characters get to be a little bit more overpowered than others and if you don't want that then don't use this rule [Music] if you ever below half your health you are considered bloodied and if you are below 10 hp you're considered mortal there are certain abilities that i give people and certain conditions that can happen to certain monsters when they are immortal and or bloodied but it's also just a really good indicator on where monsters are in the battle and what their health is without giving them the actual hp number [Music] this isn't really a homebrew rule this is just a magic item that i made that you could totally steal for your games if you want to these are level uppable magic items a better name for them is probably milestone magic items or maybe achievement magic items that's kind of what they are effectively it's a magic item that a party member gets that has certain things they have to accomplish in order to unlock a new ability for example this one is for kia who is spencer's character in our game even fault and one of hers is cast sending to the queen five times this is like an in-character thing that she's already doing but it motivates her just a little bit more and the reward she gets is she learns a terrible secret or another one which is subconscious attack a total of four surprised creatures and if she does this then she can cast detect thoughts three times per long rest they're just cool ways for you to motivate your players and characters to do things have goals to accomplish outside of the main plot and then they get to get cool stuff in return which of course is always decided by you magic item points if you're a new character coming into the game and everybody's got magic items and you don't i give that character points that they can spend to get magic items in the dungeon masters guide one point being for common two points being for uncommon three being for rare four being very rare and five being legendary i tend to give about three to five depending on what level the party is and it's an easy way for characters to get magic items really quickly and you can just denote how many points they got to spend in order to get items so if they got five points they got to get one legendary item or maybe two uncommon items in a rare item it's really up to you shared initiative if you roll a 15 on your initiative and another person rolls a 15 on their initiative you guys go at the same time this can be kind of fun because the two players can organize their turns together and coordinate and plan and like team up during their turn and have their actions go in between one another and coordinate and then sometimes they just go you go first i'll go after you and you can do whatever you want and uh nothing happens but either way it's the character's choice if you ever roll the same initiative as a bad guy though uh the bad guy always goes last after after the players no matter what their dexterity is if you ever cast grease it isn't this big it's this big also it's flammable much akin to baldur's gate 3. if you're in it when fire damage touches it you take 1d6 fire damage i normally enforce various encumbrance in my rules because i think it's a little bit more realistic and i still like the rule unless i'm running for newer players or everybody's got paper character sheets i don't like you being able to hold a grand piano in your backpack but i mean the calculation for it is a little jarring and i gotta wish you this times eight instead of five but that's a dumb calcula uh if you have a positive intelligence score you can use your modifier as points to add extra proficiencies so if you have a 15 intelligence giving you a plus two modifier you can get insight proficiency or a new language you can also use three of these points to get expertise in something just to make intelligence a little bit better [Music] taking an hour to attune to something is silly in my opinion and in my games it only takes you an action to attune to a magic item but to on a tune from a magic item it takes one minute flanking you get a plus two to your attack rolls if you are on opposite sides of a dude which means you have to be like here or here or here you can't be like this you can't be like this and you can't be like that however you do not get a flanking bonus if a creature has a passive perception above 18. basically they can see all around them they have really good senses and being flanked doesn't really hinder them all that much that also applies to any creatures with blind sight or any creatures that can realistically see in more places than one so um you can't flank a beholder [Music] death saving throws they're just like any other saving throw you can add bardic inspiration to them paladin aura effects can affect them you can even use your inspiration token on them but they're always secret nobody's allowed to look except for the dungeon master oh and the person who rolled it and at the end of the day rule of cool is the most used homebrew rule in any of my games if you want to do something and it's not in the rules i will do my best in order to let you try to do it unless it breaks the rules just a little too much i want my players to have fun and if they want to do something that's outside the norm well gosh diddly darn it i'm gonna let them most of the time when there is something that somebody wants to do that completely breaks the rules i normally have them give up something and i really owe it to my good friend jack for really stressing me as a dm on this rule of cool which i'm now going to aptly name something lost something gained in our last game of even fall spencer's character kia was dying and there was a mind flayer tadpole infecting her and jack's character laszlo had pretty much no way to save her and looked at me and said how many paladin levels do i have to give up give holiday i am using all of my divine keeper bestowed power to rip this parasite out of her head destroy it entirely even if it means giving up a part of myself are you sure you want to do this is there another way nope i'll do it so yeah we ran with it and i made sure that he knew that he was going to sacrifice something pretty crazy what ended up happening is i cut all of his levels in half he was okay with that so long as kia lived this is by far one of the main reasons why i love dungeons and dragons and um i plan to implement more of it into my future games if you ever want to do something crazy but you're willing to sacrifice something huge for it i'm gonna let you do it anyways that was uh the homebrew video that's all the homebrew it's most of the home brew so there's a lot of little tiny homebrew things that i do that i didn't feel like were worth mentioning and if you're like hey jacob uh in your other video you use this rule and then you don't bring it up in this video it's because i don't use it because i ended up not liking it and there's not much more to it than that why don't you tell me some homebrew rules you guys like in the comments because i would love to read through them and then commit theft as i steal all your ideas tarzan and dragons we are thieves but it's fun so it's okay it's not don't steal work that people have put their time and effort into make sure to credit people don't don't i'm not endorsing thievery okay the video's done

Channel: XP to Level 3

Views: 730,921

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: ml6n_LDCEj4

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 03 2021