- Hello, and welcome back
to Lunch Break Heroes. You might be looking at
me right now and thinking, dang Steve, you look different, sharper. I can almost see the pores
in your alabaster skin. I can almost reach out and, all right, maybe your thoughts
aren't quite that creepy. But hey, I got a new
camera and some new lights, and a whole bunch of other
stuff that goes along with them. I had some extra budget
at the end of the year, and I had to blow it or pay taxes on it. And seeing this stuff come in
was like a second Christmas. And then a third, and then
a fourth, and then a fifth, because with all the shipping delays, of which I think we need
to be understandable, everything came in and multiple shipments over the course of like two weeks. But now it's here, and
everything looks great, and I'll shut up now,
because I could go on and on about my new, super cool camera, and that's not at all
what you're here for. So let's go ahead and get started and talk about some of the
homebrew rules that I like best. And I think we'll be
totally great in your game. (deep breathing) (air whooshing) During an intense combat session, there are few things more exhilarating than rolling a natural 20
and scoring a critical hit against the bad guys. Yes. I get to roll twice for damage. And there are a few things more deflating than rolling a one for damage both times. Son of a- To eliminate this disappointment, rule that all critical hits receive whatever damage
to the player's rolled plus modifiers, plus the
full damage of their weapon. So if the pallet and scores a critical hit with her great sword, she's
got an extra 12 damage, that's 2D sixes, on top
of her normal damage. With this rule, every
critical hit is guaranteed to deal more damage than a normal attack, and really feel like it's
doing critical damage to the enemy. (air whooshing) Every once in a while, players
will run into a brick wall, sometimes literally, but
more often figuratively. Maybe they don't know where to go, or they don't have the
right MacGuffin for the job. In these cases, they
might spin their wheels, trying to figure out how to progress, losing whatever narrative
momentum they built up. Rather than let that
happen, allow your players to spend a point of inspiration and go, aha, I know a guy or I
have just the thing for this. In those cases, either an
NPC of the players design can come to their aid and give them help, or the information that they need, or they can pull a mundane
item out of their packet that they just happen to have, which will get them moving forward again. Not only does this help keep
your game moving forward, but it also gives the players
a small hand in world building by letting them create
an NPC of their very own. Speaking of homebrew stuff, we're all about adventures
and storytelling here at Lunch Break Heroes, and as a dungeon master
and a content creator, I know that coming up with
stuff, especially on the fly, it can be super difficult. So I came up with something
that helped me and you create adventures whenever you need them. It's the deck of many quests. Inside this attractive box with its super sexy magnetic
clasps are 200 cards, 50 quest cards, 75 creature
cards, and 75 item cards. Start by drawing a quest card and then reading it, Madlibs style. Fill in the blanks for creatures
and items with other cards from the deck to create one of over 200,000 unique adventures. Mixing some of your own imagination for something that is
entirely unique for your game. If you're in the United States, you can get this over on Amazon.com, or if you're anywhere else in the world, or simply just don't wanna
fatten Jeff Bezos's wallet, you can pick it up over
on Lunchbreakheroes.com. I'll put a link in the
description down below. (air whooshing) The rule state that it takes a full action to drink a potion. And from a realism perspective,
I suppose that makes sense. I mean, if I have to pull a bottle out, uncork it and chug its contents, it's gonna take me a handful of seconds. But as realistic as that is, it really sucks from a
gameplay perspective. And since we're playing a game, I think that fun and game play
take precedence over realism. Basic healing potions only heal for 1D four hit points. If you've got a spell caster
or are a spell caster, that same action can be
used to cast healing word for 1 to 4, plus your
spell casting modifier, or even better cure wounds
for 1D eight hip points. So right there, the usefulness of healing
potions is limited. Aside from having
superior healing methods, the rules are asking you
to sacrifice your action, which would otherwise be
used to attack your enemy, and all of that in order to
heal a few measly hit points, which after a certain point are less than the average damage
output of your enemies. Now I'm all for difficult
choices in games, but this one feels like a hard choice for the sake of a hard choice. In fact, it nullifies the usefulness of healing potions entirely. So in order to keep
healing, potions useful, let players sloppily chug them
during their bonus action, like a bunch of toddlers that
just discovered Kool-Aid. (air whooshing) I don't know about you, but I'm not at the table to count beans, unless it's an adventure
that involves magic beans, giants golden gates,
whatever, not the point. I'm at the table to tell
a story with my players and have fun. And for me, keeping track of
something like encumbrance just gets in the way of that. I don't care if you're
carrying 50 different items with no backpack or how much
gold, silver and copper way. If Link can carry all that crap he carries in the Zelda games,
you can do it at my table. Granted, I do expect my
players to keep what they carry within reason and not take advantage. just because there's no encumbrance, doesn't mean you could walk around with six sets of plate
armor in your inventory or a solid gold door. Ain't happening. So don't be stupid. And I don't care what you're carrying. Along a similar vein, I don't
care for tracking ammunition. How many arrows do you
have left? I don't care. Maybe you do, but I don't. If a player wants to track ammunition for the sake of their character
or emotion, then so be it. But this is just one of those things I cannot be bothered to care
about, much less enforce. (air whooshing) This one is unbalanced. And I fully admit that. Persuasion is the only skill where I rule that if you perform
at well enough in real life at the table, then you
don't have to roll for it. It's not like when I
asked for strength checks and if the player can bench
300 pounds, I go, yeah, yeah, you scaled that cliff no problem. Way to go Beefcake. But for this, if the
player talks to an NPC and makes such a compelling
argument that I as a DM are both convinced and impressed, no check needed, Pascoe collect that $200. The world is your oyster,
you silver tongue devil. And if you can bench 300 pounds, yeah, no you can do whatever you want to. (air whooshing) This one feels like a gimme, but I'm gonna include it anyway. Who isn't familiar with the rule of cool? And who doesn't include
it in one way or another? If your players come up with something that isn't quite in alignment with the rules or it's
in a gray area, or heck, even if it breaks the rules, if it would create an
amazing, awesome epic, or just plain old funny moment, consider letting it happen. Push the rules aside for one brief moment and embrace the cool and the absurd. Squish the bad guys by
dropping a polymorph elephant on their head. Grab onto an enemy Dragon's
back and ride it into the sky. Challenge the goblin king for leadership, just be cool and have fun. (air whooshing) Flanking is an optional rule that I've had in every
single one of my games. It has a tiny bit of tactics to combat that is otherwise
a generic slug fest, and gives advantage to the flankers. Unfortunately, giving
continuous advantage to players who are on either side of an enemy, it can make combat a little too easy. With advantage, you're
basically doubling your chances of being able to hit the enemy, and with two players on either side that enemy's chances of being
hit by either are quadrupled. Is my math, right? I think so. I don't know.
I kind of suck the math. Anyways, it's a huge bonus
against a single enemy. If you wanna lessen that bonus a bit, but still reward players
for using tactics, give the players who are
flanking the enemy up, plus two to their hit roll instead, or plus four, whatever you want. Now this can stack with
other existing bonuses, making it pretty significant, but still not quite as significant as doubling or quadrupling
the chance to hit. (air whooshing) I like tension in my game. There's nothing better than ending combat and having everyone heave
a collective sigh of relief because they weren't sure
they were gonna make it out. And when a character
drops to zero hit points and drops to the floor, that's
when tensions really rise up. Do the other players go and heal them or do they stay focused on the enemy? But that tension disappears real quick. When the down player starts
rolling successful death saves and announcing to the party, oh, he's got two successes,
nothing to worry about. Charge! Having that information in
front of all of the players really destroys the tension
of having a down player, and it introduces a lot of
opportunities for metagaming even from those who typically
don't do that sort of thing. To alleviate all of that, either, have the player roll death saves in secret or what the DM roll them. In the latter case, even the down player doesn't know if their
character is gonna die, and come on, that's kind of fun. I mean, at least for me, I don't know about you or
the player, but I dig it. (air whooshing) Holy crap, rolling a one on your hit dial, when you level up, sucks. Like seriously, all that
time spent adventuring and fighting monsters, only to get a measly fricking one? terrible, just terrible. Give your unlucky players a break, let them reroll those
ones during a level up, or at least give them the
option to take the average If they roll below that. I had one player who rolled a
one for four levels in a row. That's astonishingly unlucky. And you know what, on that last time I had him rear roll it because
the guy needed a break. He rolled another one.
