"Don't break the game, idiots" is the best five word rule to give to your players: it solves simulacrum, wall of force, twinned polymorphs, moon druid, conjure animals, and so much more. This works best at a table with a shared vision of what counts as "breaking the game," but even at a table where nobody knows each other, a little discussion can get that vision mostly aligned.
I have a player at my table who loves doing the "break the game" stuff... once, and warns me beforehand. So we remember that single battle where the summoned fairies polymorphed the whole party into T Rexes. It was fun. But we also had an understanding that the party wouldn't be doing it again.
Another adage that includes your sentiment is "RPGs aren't games you're trying to beat" - an unfortunate side effect of video games, where all of the rules must be prescribed .
One solution I've found to the summoning creatures debacle is just using Matt colvilles minion rules when they want to use a lot of creatures. Especially with group attacks because it drastically speeds up play
Players going, "You're just nerfing stuff, players like stuff being overpowered," should really DM once in a while. Although I appreciate your gentle approach with the 2nd document, I still find it _demeaning_ that one would have to rewrite common-sense changes to badly designed spells, just because the players might perceive them adversarially. If a player can't be bothered to think like a designer, they should butt out of game design.
My fix for arcane eye would be like the flashback mechanic you have talked about before. Instead of explaining everything up front, describe what they saw through the arcane eye before they move into the next area.
100% agree with almost all of this. On the point of player receptivity/perception of nerfing, for every time I nerf something I also try to find areas to empower the players - a good example is allowing Inspiration to reroll (this reflects how players think of it already IME) & expanding Inspiration to include flashbacks and other narrative uses. Also, to get buy-in I’ll sometimes share dramatic changes to spells across editions - Tiny Hut is a prime example of a spell that was not a force field before and which progressively became more powerful & delimited.
I agree for using inspiration to do a flashback. In the same way that in Blades in the Dark, the DM determines how much of the resource (stress in BitD) must be spent by the PC. I'm using 'luck points' from Tales of the Valiant to replace Inspiration, and therefore can choose anywhere from 1-6 luck points (inspiration equivalent) must be spent for the flashback. Last week, we had a moment where the drow smuggler employing the party asked if they had found a gnomish body on their adventure, and thus the Rope of leviation they knew they carried. The player at first lied to them rolled mediocre and stared in contemplation. Before success/fail was determined, he chimed in that really his character wouldn't have lied as he is committed to joining the smuggling operation. He decided the character would show them the item they found on the body, then spoke out of character and told the players that his character was going to tell the drow what they found. I suggested the flashback to rewind his lie (which would break the trust the would party has been trying to establish);but it would cost him all his luck points (1), and then we RP'ed from there. This was an in the moment flashback, but flashbacks can be helpful to avoid disaster for the PCs, or helpful for pre mission preparations,. As the DM I like that they are spending their resources instead of me 'giving in', or 'going easy on them' for something their character would have known, or prepared. In summary, spending inspiration for a flashback is working for me!
I'm not happy about current advantage/disadvantage rules. I feel it's silly that a ranger who would get disadvantage on long range can just step into the fog and roll straight. That a restrained blind prone kobold is still alright as long as he has a friend nearby. Somehow it's harder to shoot a prone t-rex than a rat at the same distance (unless rat is also prone).
That gives me the idea that a possible solution for tiny hut is the classic Minecraft "you cannot rest while there are monsters nearby" it seems reasonable to say that the constant interruptions make proper sleep unattainable, only getting short rests and risking exhaustion Good thought provoking video
This is very interesting. Here are some of my thoughts. - these are great. The important of these are that they are in conversation with the players. The details aren't the most important. They will be different from group to group. The important thing is that and how you talk about them. - as someone that has been more into playing OSR style games than 5e style games that fact that these are considered nerfing is kinda funny. Those games have things like (almost) no darkvision, tracking supplies and you only heal 1hp/level per 'long rest'. :) - for the summoning house rule maybe you could consider some sort of 'swarm' or 'pack' rule. So you can still have the fun of summoning 8 wolves or dozens of gnats to flood the battle field. But to speed up play they count as a single entity. For example the wolves roll a single attack roll for all attacks or the swarm of gnats just does 1 dmg to everyone in the area per round. - for my fixes; whenever I see people play DnD they have complicated systems for tracking iniative that seem to be kinda time sinks. So I would probably simplify Iniative. For example using the card system from Forbidden Lands or (i think this was a runehammer idea) just go in table seating order and let the players arrange their seating in a way they think is advantages for them.
Rather than cap shield at 21, cap shield at 20 + the level of the spell slot. If someone wants to blow a 9th level spell on a 29 AC shield spell, go nuts.
As a past frustrated Monk player, I winced every time you mentioned Stunned or Stunning Strike. If I had a GP for every ki I've spent to watch a monster pass their CON save ... I'd have nicer Monk Weapons. I haven't tried this, because I usually run DDAL, but a house rule I'd consider is (1) on hit, spend 1 ki on Stunning Strike, the target is instantly stunned (no save), granting advantage on subsequent attacks. (2) At the start of the target's turn, they make a CON save. On success they're no longer stunned and get a normal turn. On failure they remain stunned until the end of your next turn.
Touching up any aspect of Stunning Strike is problematic because of how tied to the monk's class power budget it is. Nerf it, and the class goes from "among the worst in the game" to "garbage"; buff it, and you encourage a really disruptive and annoying playstyle - not even casters, for all their undeserved favoritism in the rules, can rattle off so many disabling effects in such quick succession. _That_ is why SS only works ~35% of the time. Mike's fix in the 1st draft does lessen the game disruption problem, but it also makes monks worse when they really don't deserve it, poor things. That said, I really like effects lasting until the start of a creature's turn. I had a boss monster who applied paralysis until the start of a target's turn; it was nerve-wracking when it used legendary actions to attack (and crit) paralyzed creatures, but it didn't remove any autonomy from the players.
When I last played 5e, these were the houserules I ran with: Once per long rest, you can use an action to gain all the benefits of a short rest except for regaining hit points. [Design intent: Many times you end up having only one or two big fights per long rest, which makes nova classes shine but it makes short-rest based classes seem much weaker.] Shield spell can't increase your AC over 20. Counterspell always requires a check - no more auto-counter if you cast it at a particular level. [That said, I prefer A5e's version now that I've heard of it.] You can summon as many monsters or companions as you like, but in any given round you can only control up to two of them. The rest don't get any action, reaction, or movement. [Two taken from treantmonk:] When you make a weapon or unarmed attack as part of the attack action, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to hit and gain a +10 bonus to damage if that attack hits. [Design intent: makes SS and GWM less mandatory, makes dual weapon / sword + board / unarmed attackers more viable, but without SS or GWM it only applies to the attack action, not bonus action or reaction.] You cannot cast a spell gained from a class if you are wearing armour (or shield) that the class does not have proficiency in. [Design intent: powerful casters were designed to have weaker defences as a trade-off. Let's avoid circumventing that tradeoff with just a 1 level class dip. Say no to wizards in heavy armour!] On the GM's side: The use of legendary resistance always requires some resource expenditure from the monster, usually HP.
The book is too difficult for newcomers. I don't think d&d lifers realize how impenetrable and confusing it feels to someone opening it up for the first time. When I play with my sons, all they want is HP, AC, and damage. So the beauty of d&d is, that really is all you need, but when you crack open any rulebook from any edition, it is hard to even see at a glance how much stuff you need to know to go through character creation in your first game ever. It's not even that character creation takes too long, it's that there is no way for the beginner to know how much time it will take and when it will end. So what I propose is: a five page or less primer to making a character and starting a campaign. Just say, "determine your stats, attach racial bonuses, pick your weapons, and go!" And to the GM, say: "All you have to do is pick monsters, npcs, treasure, and have some sort of dungeon or environment. Boil everything down to either telling players their attempt succeeds OR making them roll for it vs. a difficulty number or whatever. Go!" You could literally explain all of that in just one page. Then, the rest of the book could be added levels of complexity for after the new players and new GMs get bored with the starting knowledge and want more. Even the starter's set is not that simple. So my proposal: Make. It. Simple. Knave already showed you how. Just determine AC and damage and dive in. My kids don't even want stats! We play for hours without stats! You don't even need them. But the current player's handbook is so impenetrable to the newcommer, they will have you believing, not only do you need stats, you need to read pages and pages of information before you even know what direction you want to take your character in. But you could literally say: Want to be an Elf? Okay, you're an Elf. You get a free cantrip but you cannot touch steel. It could be that easy. (Sorry for writing such a lengthy post about brevity, ha ha. I am fully aware of the irony here.)
This is what I do with goodberry. I use the "lembas bread" analogy where Sam is just sick of eating it, only in the case of goodberries it's even worse.
I do the same thing, by each additional goodberry they ingest (so more than 1), they have to make a DC 10 Con save or gain the poisoned condition. The save DC increases by 5 for each additional Goodberry.
I love a lot of these ideas for fine-tuning the PHB. I love that you are calling out that “beating” the monster/game/DM constantly sucks all the fun and pacing right out of the game, in the context of spells/abilities that can do that so easily.
Just my personal alternative; solo monsters get multiple turns, and hard CC effects always disappear after one turn. Legendary resistances not a thing any more. Love the force cage change btw.
When it comes to my players using animate objects or conjuring anything more than one “thing” my house rule is that whatever is conjured uses the Swarm-tag. 20:03 Also, Counterspell cannot be upcast. 😅
PF2 solves the spell issue you are having with the "incapacitation" trait. Spells with that have a very hard time affecting higher level enemies so they are not much use against bosses. It's a bit "gamey" but it is clear, and no awkward conversations required.
I am in 100% in agreement with all of these house rules, especially the spell changes. I abhor Tiny Hut, Pass Without Trace and Goodberries for the detrimental effect they have on the game. In one of my Rime of the Frostmaiden campaigns I ran last year Tiny Hut ruined a really big climactic fight and made the end of the campaign a downer. Of course I would discuss with my players these changes but I think most of my groups would be receptive to them, similarly as how years ago I talked to them about not playing summoners or agreeing to summon only one or two monsters (as opposed to pixie/giant snake spam) and they saw why that would benefit the game.
Anything that says "after making the roll but before you know the result" is disruptive, especially when playing online with lag. But even in person. Either everyone rolling is aware and waits after every roll to see if anyone wants to interrupt, or sometimes the moment to use your interrupt ability passes too quickly and there's nothing you can do. I'm currently playing a Divination wizard in a game and Portent is like this. Sometimes I just know anyway. The DM may roll to hit and say, "the monster rolls a 23, that hits!" What am I supposed to do?
I love this approach to house rules! I run for a 6-player group, so pace-of-play and spotlight time are really important and where I try to focus my own 5E house rules. One thing I cover with my players that you didn't cover here is the difference between active and passive Wisdom (Perception) ability checks: Active Wisdom (Perception) ability checks generally require a specified target or area of focus and take in-game time. Searching a door or chest takes 1 minute, searching a standard-sized room takes 10 minutes. Passive Perception checks are "always on" and take no in-game time. That and some session zero conversation about how I use things like traps and ambushes only when they fit the story or present a diverse challenge to share the spotlight and not as a "gotcha" helps prevent constant player-driven Perception rolls that can really slow down exploration.
Funny you bring up Counter Spell and abilities that auto-stun enemies. Had a boss battle the other night that was really trivialized by those. Took a while creating these leaders of a whole faction and they got shut down round after round, leaving the action economy totally lopsided dispite having tons of minions. While its cool for the players to do this once in a while, it's also boring as a DM. And we're players too. So that's my answer to anyone that says, "well you're taking fun away from the players." Those spells and abilities are taking the fun away from the DM too, which should be considered when WotC designs spells and abilities. I like how you mentioned the agreement of "I won't counter spell all of you if you don't try to do that to me." Basically there are things one can do as a DM that would make the game a slog, a bore, or take away players turns. But we don't if we want to keep the game fun. A good player will be mindful that it is true for them too. The golden rule applies here, "Do unto the DM as you would have the DM do to you."
Treantmonk's Temple, an optimization channel that some of your viewers will know, had a "3 House Rules Video" about a year back that I rediscovered earlier this month. Whereas your rules seemed DM focused, his rules seemed somewhat geared towards opening up player options by eliminating the illusion of choice (people seem to often focus on the same build features, resulting in some character similarity). But there is some overlap in impact, where not forcing certain mechanical decisions (like eliminate shield so it is not a must have spell that people multiclass to get) helps out the dm.
Yep, I highly recommend this channel. I think Mike has expressed a certain amount of disapproval (or maybe just disinterest?) in optimization focused content in the past, but Treantmonk does a really great job of promoting optimization as a player empowering activity that doesn't (or at least, shouldn't) create an adversarial relationship between the DM and player, or the optimizing player and the other players.
I really like your ideas here, and will be adopting most of them at least. I'm mostly a GM, but am currently playing a wizard in a friend's game, and I've fought the temptation to take Arcane Eye, do the microwave combo, and other things wizards can do that would just feel meh if it happened in my game.
Shield has a Somatic component. This requires warcaster feat tax. 2 feats only before 12th level...that's expensive. 4 1st level slots a day. So 4 rounds of combat, plus a feat, just to protect HP's which you can get back on a shortrest...resource management for PC's is real. High AC? Stink saves. Low HP? more spells. heaps of skills? usually less impact in battle. Players juggle the whole time. How often after a combat does one or two of the players call for a short rest? they might be tapped. These particular players may vary after each combat depending on how it transpires. There is a micro-management level of playing PC's that DM's don't have an equivalent requirement, not denigrating DM's here; stunning strike targets Constitution, and costs a Ki, that's a real cost to any monk with NO feat options to max out dex and wis, wis increasing the stunning DC against a very high save on average. So, your monk 'might' land a stun, for a round...or might not, spending ki to disengage or dodge if it fails, that's an expensive round. How often can that 7th level monk try the trick with 'get outta town if it fails ki cost', twice, maybe 3 times per short rest.
I use a similar exhaustion mechanic in my game with some changes. You die once you reach 6 levels of exhaustion. Each level applies -1 to attack rolls, ability checks, saving throws, and your spell save DC. In addition, your speed is reduced by 5 feet for each level of exhaustion.
I really like the movement reduction, it seems so fitting. It feels like Sly Flourish's list could use the reduction fo spell save DC. In my experience caster's just don't care as much about exhaustion otherwise and remain as effective as they are without.
Not exactly in the PHB, but the whole school of Illusion magic is kind of in a weird place - there are no rules on how it works and it just expects you to work with it: - do they provide cover, both for line of sight and for AC purposes? - can it block movement? - why does only Phantasmal Force "rationalize" the outcome of interaction (note that this is not the interaction action to reveal the illusion)? - do you rationalize others interacting with the illusion in an unlikely manner or comprehend the illusionary nature without the action? - if you 100% know of the illusionary nature, do you still need the action? - at which point is it metagaming to ignore what is written in the spell? Example time. You are in a hallway, chased by a bunch of smart wizards able to recognize any spell you know. You cast a Silent Image of a wall behind you, blocking the path. Can they a) run through, as they know the illusion spell and the spell not mentioning anything about blocking paths? Or does b) at least one of them make sure that it is an illusion by spending their action before walking through, so everyone else sees one wizard walk THROUGH a wall after RAW? Or do c) all of them have to use their action to make sure cause their brains otherwise instinctively slow their steps to avoid running into a wall despite not being explained in every spell? None of this explained, it just says "Here's an illusion spell, have fun!".
I combine it with divination, which imo also solves the problem of why people don't just completely rely on divination: because it *might* be an illusion.
There is some ambiguity, and I agree that the books could go into a bit more detail, and give a bit more guidance on how to adjudicate them. But I think a lot of it covered by the idea that the general rules apply, and exceptions to those rules are explicit. Spells and other features which create exceptions to the rules only do what they say and nothing more. Of course, it's often up to the players and DM to understand the implications and knock-on effects of the explicit effects that spells, features, and character actions have. But I think the portion of PHB that explains the "exceptions based design" could also do with a rewrite to make some of this clearer. >do they provide cover, both for line of sight and for AC purposes? It depends on what the spell says. If you generate a visual illusion that is opaque and large to entirely prevent one creature from seeing another, then that would prevent line of sight. Creatures that can't see through the illusion would treat creatures on the other side of the illusion as being heavily obscured (effectively, invisible). If the illusion spell doesn't create actual material substance, it can't create cover and doesn't affect AC. >can it block movement? Not unless the spell or effect says it does, or that's a natural conclusion of other effects explicitly described by the spell. If you use Silent Image to create an illusion that a doorway has been bricked over, that's not going to stop someone who actually tries to walk through it (it could stop them from trying though, especially if they have no reason to doubt the reality of the illusion). But you were a School of Illusion wizard who used the Illusory Reality feature on the spell effect, then it would block movement, because that's what a real brick wall would do. >why does only Phantasmal Force "rationalize" the outcome of interaction Because that's how the spell works. Phantasmal Force is an illusion planted directly into the mind of the target and the target is usually _meant_ to interact with the illusion. With many other illusions, the point is to trick people into behaving a certain way based on the assumed reality of the illusions, and as the caster you don't want creatures to physically interact with the illusion because that's often going to give away the illusion and render it ineffective. Phantasmal Force trades being able to trick/affect multiple creatures for being able to actually affect a single target, and preventing the target from realizing the true nature of the illusion while they are being affected by it. Unlike 3rd edition, there are no general rules for different types of illusion that you are meant to reference to determine how specific spells and effects work. Instead, each spell (along with the general rules for spellcasting) tells you how it works and when you're trying to determine how one spell works, you shouldn't bring in assumptions that are based on how other spells work. >if you 100% know of the illusionary nature, do you still need the action? The rules for Silent Image say: "Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, because things can pass through it." This could do with some clarification, but the way I interpret this is that if you witness solid objects passing through what is ostensibly another solid object, then the illusion is revealed to you. Taking the action to investigate the illusion is another way that an illusion can be revealed for what it is (useful if you don't _want_ to physically interaction with the illusion, such as if you're paranoid about traps), but it's not the only way. But I would rule that you can't just "know" something is an illusion just because it popped into existence following someone casting a spell, because for all you know, it could be a conjuration. But there are a number of ways you could test the illusion, or that it could be subsequently confirmed to be an illusion. Here's an example scenario: A wizard uses Silent Image to create the illusion of a brick wall between him and your PC, and the illusion is wide enough and tall enough that you can't see around it from your current position, and you either can't or don't want to leave your current position. You guess that it's an illusion and decide that you still want to try to attack him with your bow. Unless the wizard also took the Hide action, you can guess his location so you can attack him, but you can't see him so the attack would be made with disadvantage. Hit or miss, the illusion would be revealed by the attack, because the arrow went right through it and you were in a perfect position to notice that. If you had the means to make additional attacks (Extra Attack, Action Surge, whatever) then you could make those attacks without disadvantage because the wall would be rendered see-through to you. Whether or not the illusion would be revealed to other combatants is less clear. Were they paying enough attention notice the arrow go through the "brick wall?" The rules don't have a clear answer for that one. They could've seen it happen, but combat is hectic and distracting, and it would also be reasonable to rule that other combatants may not have noticed it. As a DM, I would be inclined to have enemies not notice the arrow/wall "interaction" unless they were particularly on-the-ball, and allow other PCs to notice the illusion by spending their reaction to pay specific attention to the arrow shot. >a) run through, as they know the illusion spell and the spell not mentioning anything about blocking paths? Yes, though it's up to the DM to decide how exactly the wizards behave. This is the real sticking point with illusions, it is up to the DM to operate in good faith and have NPCs respond reasonably to them, instead of meta-gaming them into irrelevancy. Xanathar's Guide to Everything gave rules for identifying spells (you can do it as a reaction when the spell is cast, or as an action in the subsequent turn) so if the wizards knew that you just cast an illusion, they might be able to run headlong straight through it. But they might also hesitate, especially if they didn't or failed to identify the spell with a check. They may know that it's probably an illusion, but that doesn't mean that it'd be easy for them to just run straight into it, because there's a natural psychological resistance to running into things that look like brick walls. So I might rule that they slow down a bit, shaving off 5 or 10 feet of movement as they all instinctively slow down a bit. But after the first wizard passed through, they would all recognize it as an illusion.
I preferred your first document. I made basically all of those same changes to the game, albeit in different ways for a few of them. I appreciate that the second approach works for house rules where you can just talk to your players about problematic gameplay elements, but for the idea of what I'd change about the game itself, I'd use the first document. Players can say 'no' when you ask, so you don't ask about this kind of gamebreaking nonsense. You say, "this is how it is". Again, for house rules, your second document works, but for game rules there will always be players who think it's fun to "break" the game and the RAW needs to be ironclad for the GM's sake. One thing I'd suggest to you, and which has worked well for me, is to say that long rests can't be taken in dangerous areas. You can rest for 8 hours if you want, but you'll only get a short rest unless you're somewhere safe and comfortable. A real, restful break is impossible to achieve in a half-flooded sewer that reeks worse than an outhouse and is full of unnerving noises from pests and monsters in the area. Additionally, GMs shouldn't feel constrained by monster stat blocks, especially if it leads to the threat of the enemies being reduced. If a bunch of wraiths are allowed to hover over the hut, let them do things to the characters that aren't contained within any single action. The characters might feel cold in spite of the comfortable temperature inside the dome. They'll constantly be waking in a cold sweat from horrible nightmares; getting irritated at each other for minor things like accidentally bumping them as they try to get comfortable; and descending into delusions that they know are delusions and they know are irrational but that still affect them anyway, like thinking that the big, ugly half-orc is breathing too much and the air in the dome will run out. Even worse, as the party studies the wraiths that linger, they will get the sense that they're getting more distinct and more malevolent the longer they're able to lurk. In fact, the GM can decide that the wraiths can feed off the characters, bumping up their hit points within the range of their CR. With any luck, players will pick up the roleplaying opportunity and decide their characters succumb to infighting before it becomes problematic to the gameplay, but GMs shouldn't be afraid to make adjustments if the issue isn't remedied and the alternative is that players can make the adventure just a cheap experience.
Some of the rules I hate are the handling of spell components and spell focuses. I think they are too restrictive and confusing, with no real payoff in terms of game balance or verisimilitude. Specifically, I hate the ruling that you can only use the hand that's holding a spell focus to perform a somatic component if the spell focus can replace the material components for the spell you're casting, which means that it's harder to cast a spell with only a somatic component than it is to cast a spell with both a somatic and material component. Nonsense. Here are my house rules: * A spell focus or component pouch can replace any material component that does not have a cost specified, even if that component would be consumed. (The spell focus or component pouch is not consumed.) It's assumed that wear and tear on the spell focus, or consumed components in the pouch will be addressed during downtime via upkeep costs. * The hand that's holding a spell focus can always be used to perform somatic components. * If your class grants you the ability to use a spell focus, you can use the spell focus to cast any spell that you know, from any spell list, even if that spell does not have a material component. (Normally there is no benefit to this, though it does fix an issue with the Spiritual Focus feature of the College of Spirits Bards doing almost nothing, and probably not working as intended. It also prevents multiclassed characters from having to juggle spell focuses, which just feels silly to me.) * All magic staffs, wands and rods can be used as an arcane spell focus, and often as a druidic focus as well. (This is more of a clarification than a house rule.) * A magic item that functions as spell focus can be used to replace material components with a cost of 100 gp or less, as long as the component is not consumed; this is mostly a small perk/QoL thing to make spells like _chromatic orb_ easier to cast. Also, so far I am really liking the way the playtest is addressing damage imbalances between builds, specifically the way those -5/+10 damage perks are so dominant in vanilla. Any character option that it feels bad _not_ to choose is a badly designed option. As for your house rules, I'm fine with giving bosses ways to overcome hard crowd control, especially when it costs the boss something (like an attack or use of legendary resistance). But I would not put _charm person_ in that category. That spell has a truckload of limitations as is and in the best case it will prevent the monster from attacking the caster only, not their allies. That's not hard CC, it's fine, as long as you are not running _charm person_ as the equivalent of _dominate person_. I agree with regard to the _shield_ spell. Maybe have it so it can only boost your AC above 21 with respect to the attack that provided the spell for the reaction trigger, but also, maybe remove _shield_ from all of the class spell lists, and instead have learning _shield_ be a level 5 class feature for the classes and subclasses that normally get access to it (keep it as a 1st level spell though). That's not too huge of a nerf of characters who commit to such a class, since _shield_ isn't fantastic at the lower levels anyway. I also agree with regard to the _arcane eye_ spell. It's also an issue with familiars, especially warlock Pact of the Chain familiars. It's a cool ability that I don't like taking away, but the table dynamic just isn't fun. With regard to the _goodberry_ spell, I see where you're coming from, but don't like the specific solution. Goodberries _should_ be _good_. If you want to run your players through some sort of brutal survival scenario, then just say there's a curse over your wasteland region or dungeon that prevents the spell from being cast at all, or have it yield just a single goodberry per casting, maybe with a 50/50 chance of failing entirely. Or, have it so the spell works by enhancing a real berry or other fruit with the qualities of goodberry, with the requirement that the fruit be picked within the last 24 hours. That way the spell works as a way of enhancing foraging instead of completely replacing it. My issue with _goodberry_ is the interaction with the Life cleric Disciple of Life feature that makes it a ridiculously efficient healing spell; it boggles my mind that Jeremy Crawford gave that interpretation his blessing. I house rule that out. I think _pass without trace_ is fine as long as, as you say, you respect rules as enforce the general limitations on hiding. It's a powerful spell sure, but it's also an iconic one, like _fireball_ so it should be powerful. I think reducing it to a +5 bonus would be fine though on top of the other benefits would be fine though. I don't care for making it grant advantage because I'd prefer for it to stack with methods of gaining advantage. The way I see it, on top of automatically covering your tracks, the main value it should have is to bring the whole group up to at least _average_ when it comes to stealth ability, while making stealth specialists even (though not necessarily untouchable).
My "fixes" would focus on things I perceive that are missing. I would like to see a simple mass-combat mechanic - i find its absence a big hole in my game. I also would like some more hexcrawl mechanics/tables for when players go overland (bring back wilderness adventure guide), similar for underground/underdark too with rich random encounter tables. My personal pet peeve on existing mechanics revolves around hit points and healing and unconsciousness. My house rule is short rest heals 1 hit point, long rest heals a rolled hit die of damage. No almost dying yesterday and 100% healthy today. I also have unconsciousness at 0 to -9 and at -10 is the normal death saves. It really gives the players to option to try to knock out opponents rather than kill them.
With Boss Monsters, I could totally see having charm "work", but only to push the boss to ~2-3 rounds of dialog, that allows the party to position or heal, but depending on the level they "failed" in the charm they are sensitive to movement aggressiveness. Walking to an ally and casting a healing spell is non-aggressive, suddenly casting a healing spell on yourself, digging in your pack for a potion might set them off. Force shield could be a massive display of force and the creature is winded and starts talking as it catches its breath. It'll pick back up if it's attacked, but the players can recover and reposition for a couple rounds.
If you run Charm Person as written it won't even do that much. It's one of the weakest and most toothless conditions/spells in the game. Immunity to the charmed condition is only really needed for boss enemies because it would protect them from more powerful effects that some spells and abilities impose against the target "while charmed," e.g. the Hypnotic Pattern and Dominate Person type spells.
The only one I personally wouldn’t touch is pass without a trace, but that’s because I actively want to encourage city as a favoured terrain choice in my games.
That initial list of nerfs is just fine. Just pair it with guidance on the role of the DM and the player to have fun together. The DM is also a player.
Carry weight and encumbrance rules both suck. No one remembers them, and they don't accomplish anything. They need a simple fix, but I don't have one that I like. Here's a thought: Are we really happy with everyone carrying a backpack into battle? Personally, I find that a little stupid, and you almost never see it depicted in character art. You definitely never hear it described in game. Rations suck. Most groups don't seem to track food at all -- so they don't need rations. The groups that do, are poorly served by rations. They keep forever, they're cheap, they have no downsides and you start with a ton of them. Horrible. Remove it. Remove Curse sucks. Everyone seems to agree that curses should be more resilient than this. Plus, there's no story to it, and curses should be broken narratively. Detect Evil, Protection from Evil, these need to do what the name suggests. Same with Find Traps. Charming spells need to not be detectable if they succeed. Then their levels need to be adjusted to allow for this.
Why not have a "fool me once" style approach to some of the more powerful effects? The boss can be stunned.... once. Let the players know too so that single stun will be an important part of their strategy. If I were codifing it in the rules I'd add a special sort of tag to monsters and/or items (for heat metal) that certain spells/effects only work once. The same can go for players too with resistances. They can be resistant to the first poison of the encounter, but the buildup of toxins overcomes that resistance the second time.
We changed rests. Long rests can only happen in the safety of town. Don’t take tiny hut; it doesn’t work. Also, you must spend a hit die during a short rest to receive any benefit of that short rest.
One of the rules that I think makes the game cumbersome to run is initiative. There are many common fixes for it. May favorite is simply: who ever rolls highest goes first, then just go around the table after that.
I like most of your suggestions, especially the tweaks for spells. I would probably give the arcane eye a high stealth score to give it a bit of a middle ground. Tiny hut definitely needs some way to disrupt it. I would also reduce movement by 5' for each level of exhaustion. I think one issue is the action economy. Just move to a three action economy and limit certain ones to 1/turn (like attacks and spells) or 2/turn (moves). Multi-attack would just increase the number of actions that you can use for attacks instead of attacks per action. Cunning action just up you to 3 moves per turn (if used for movement) I realize that there may be some edge cases that require tweaking and that some class abilities might be undermined, but I think this would smooth things out. Movement is another place I would like to see a tweak. Instead of things adding to your base move (wood elf, barbarian, monk) or multiplying it (haste spell), just have it give you bonus movement to your first move. That would keep a lot of movement stacking from getting out of hand and still give most of the utility of these abilities. Magic item rarity needs to be tweaked. There are several things that just don't line up. Attunement is a bit wonky too. And either just say that there is no crafting magic items or give better rules for crafting magic items. There are other things that I would (and have) changed for my games ... like making life-restoring magic sometimes fail, leaving a character permanently dead. But that is more about the flavor I want for a game than a fault of the game itself.
Mike, I laughed SO HARD at your Indiana Jones gun story. Now I actually want to see a parody done like that. That would be hillarious!!! (But I get and agree with your point of course)
Feat and Multiclass was made as optional and they where never properly integrated in the core game system. They where intended to give the player extra options, but. some of those option are so strong that the become automatic choice. I don't have a good fix other than don't play with Feat and Multiclass, but it's often something that the players enjoy and can be very fun if used as intended. Maybe just ask the players play what they want to play and not don't just go for the most powerful and obvious choice.
Great vid, borrowing a bunch of these. But got to ask, I’m playing an 11th level monk. What kind of encounters are you running that your monks EVER land a stunning strike, much less having it be a problem? 😂
Give rangers a d12 hit die and monks a d10. Have rangers apply their PB to damage against favored enemies. Redesign their spellcasting feature to function like the paladin's. Have rangers use primeval awareness differently. have spears work as reach weapons when used with both hands. Redesign many of the cantrips and balance their availability across all classes. Divorce invocations from their dependence on eldritch blast and provide more invocations to play well with other cantrips. Redesign the rate at which players gain experience points and level up upon a foundation of fair math. Delete the variant human option and provide more explicit encouragement for GMs to offer feats as quest rewards.
Also redesign the save or suck method of condition imposition to a graduated rate of bad stuff, I.e the petrified condition doesn't happen immediately or upon the next turn but fully occurs after three or four turns, increasing in effect over the course of the duration.
Easily couched in-universe with a jeweler who says "What, you think you're the only adventurers that use that trick? And by the way, if I ever manage to actually find an emerald, the market run has put them at 500 gps now. You'd think it was a reserve currency or something."
For forcecage: I would nail on the cost. Your players may have all the money in the world, but rubies don't grow on trees. And also, don't let them hoard it! People around the world is probably not gonna like that any given party is gathering every ruby in the world. Supply and demmand stuff. I mean, it's kind of boring and accounting economy shit, but so is forcecaging everything. If it gets to this, it's probably worth a talk out of game. Fits for other costly spells too. Also, it's worth noting that a creature can be huge and be higher than 20 ft, so it doesn't fit the cage. Also, for bosses: High saves, magic resistance, counterspell or certain condition immunities can go a long way. And even before you get to legendary resistances.
Haven’t watched through all of it yet, but my one suggestion for increasing the duration of play through later levels and for making tense gameplay throughout is to dramatically lower the hit points of everything by reducing all hit dice for hp to 1. First, I eliminate all extra hit die from creatures-anything in a stat block with n + dn loses those hit dice. That means that creatures with no native hit points and just dn get 1 hit point. Yep, kobolds and goblins have 1 hit point. But they do the same damage they normally do! By the same token, player characters get their full hit dice and CON at first level, and then 1 hp + CON every level thereafter. Technically this is possible with AWFUL die rolls in the base game, but now what it does is reward anybody who maxed out CON (martials) and take less damage (barbarians in particular). Fights are fast and deadly just as normal in the first levels, but enemies ramp up in difficulty as players progress. Magic users have to protect their teammates with scrying and ranged characters have to provide cover fire. Yes, healing exists, so paladins who can heal themselves are hugely important and clerics necessary. The dungeon is dangerous and players shouldn’t be able to shrug off a Power Word Kill after half their level progression. Higher level enemies actually don’t do that much extra damage compared with midrange enemies and having less HP bloat makes everybody slow down to the same pace combat normally takes in 5e. It’s just, now everybody is absolutely worried about every single action they take rather than just tanking the damage because it can’t outpace the HP bloat.
My mainly used house rule i always fall back on is "It has to make sense." I'll never have to worry about a coffee lock, or a shielding plate wearer, unless their character has spent significant time studying into the arcane before multiclassing. I've found at least with my 12-14 players across three campaigns, can't justify any of the broken multi-class go-to multiclasses; anybody who puts in the roleplay to put both their character and more importantly the player in the headspace of a paladin delving into the arcane, or a warlock who develops natural sorcerous potential and its part of the story? it feel smuch better. And--in those cases, good for them, they figured out something unique and actually made it make sense.
Mike, you’re a reasonable guy, certainly a helpful guy, and I can’t imagine anyone not agreeing that you’re a friendly guy! Do you mean to tell you that the knuckleheads on the internet come after you for offering your helpful advice on the net for free? I really hope not, I hate the idea of people being that lame to you! You do so much work to help others, I’d think they can disagree without coming after you like that!
About the whole "summoning a gajillion creatures" thing, it depends on what they're being summoned for, and it depends on the player DM relationship. If the creatures are being summoned for utility, I usually allow them to summon the whole neighborhood of animals. I just say "they do the thing", and then the duration is up. If it's combat, my players usually know that a couple of meatier creatures are more useful than 8 lizards or whatever, and so they stick to that anyway. It especially helps because I usually ask the player what their intent for the creatures are, and then I just roll attacks and saves with supersonic speed and resolve the summons asap.
-The AC limit on Shield is a major nerf for Eldritch Knights whose spellcasting limitations are already quite punitive. -As for Heroes' Feast, granting resistance to poison damage and saving throws is fine, but retaining the immunity to the poisoned condition may be a fair compromise. -For Goodberry, it may be better to introduce a limit on its repeatability than to ban its exploration usage entirely. As in using Goodberry for nourishment for [X] days in a row results in a level of Exhaustion that remains until non-magical nourishment is obtained. A party with a druid or ranger won't starve to death, as it should be, but they'll still want to find real food to eliminate that -1 to all their rolls. -Your initial rule about Tiny Hut having 25 points of damage reduction seems good to me as the baseline, but maybe it could be up-cast for more reduction?
@@gvanbooven not for an Eldritch Knight it isn’t. I’ve played two EKs in the past and my AC was routinely 21 even before applying Shield (Plate 18 + actual shield 2 + Defense fighting style). Shield is one of the few spells that is worth it for an EK to cast, but with Mike’s nerf I wouldn’t bother.
@@ryanroyce remember it's V,S so there's the warcaster feat tax for an EK, or anyone for that matter. Only 5 ASI's or feats, one for warcaster is expensive. EK's are third casters too, so spell slots run out...using bladeward at 7th as a cantrip and attacking as the bonus action can help 'tank'. However, shield is good, broken for 4 uses a day? nah.
@@samuelbroad11I've played an Eldritch Knight twice - even made it from 1st to 20th with one of them - and I can say with absolute confidence that Shield is one of the best spells they have (they don't have many; you can ignore nearly all of the Evocation spells as a waste of resources). With easy access to ~21AC, they're already very hard to hit... being able to pump that to 26+ on the rare occasion that someone gets above 21 is a great feeling. Nerfing Shield so that EKs no longer benefit from casting it is a terrible feeling. Fighters have seven ASIs, BTW, not five, and Warcaster is a great feat for EKs for several reasons, not just the use of weapons as an arcane focus.
I think nerfs (i.e. house rules) are fine if players are aware of what they are before the start of an adventure/campaign. The players can always choose not to play in a game and find another table. I think the approach in either document presented could he useful. I don't allow multiclassing or use feats, so many problems at other tables aren't relevant at mine. That said, ~90% of the issues at my table come from the spells (the Monk's stun, Paladin's smite, and a couple other features account for the other 10%). I use a combination of banning certain spells (e.g., Silvery Barbs, Forcecage, and Guidance--which is super disruptive to game play) and using the revisions in Level Up A5e (Banishment, Heroes' Feast, Tiny Hut, Wall of Force, etc) and TCE (summoning spells to replace the PH ones).
Why not give Arcane Eye a restriction similar to x-ray vision or passwall. The connection to arcane eye gets weaker through layers of solid earth, stone, or metal. Like player level in feet of total thickness or something. That way they can scout ahead a bit, but not an entire fortified dungeon/castle.
It’s not a perfect fix, but I handle the issue of summon+mount+conjured/animated like this: your character can only command/exert their will on one other creature at a time, so if you want to summon that elemental, your familiar is going to take the dodge action and run away until they’re out of combat
Sly, for Pass Without Trace, what are your thoughts on its usage in an actual tactical context, such as an individual using it to infiltrate or sneak inside of a castle or a keep, rather than a group? for balance, I can see how a group would be restricted to environments that are not enclosed, but how about 1-2 people?
Since Goodberry breaks exploration, do you just ban Create Food and Water? I fix those spells by adding a material component that gets consumed. As for the other spells, you should check out how Pathfinder 2e fixes them. Tiny Hut only provides protection from weather and Wall of Force has an AC and hit points, with a damage threshold which I think is better than your change because players can get a sense of the wall weakening before it breaks…
i agree with the thinking around summons. i get why smite and stunning strike are lumped together but they should not be. without smite palis are still pretty good, with stunning strike, monks are still underwhelming. nerf something like that, need to give a buff somewhere else. bosses being basically immune to control spells sounds incredibly lame out of context of what it's like to play in your game. hard to judge if that's good or not. nerfing pass without a trace is rough on rangers. id rather leave it the same and just make it ranger only. not like they get a lot of good spells, dont take one of the few they get. biggest thing i like about this discussion, being up front about how the rules actually work. i have never played in a game where the gm uses the light rules. darkvision is always "can see perfectly in complete darkness". i'm a bit shocked someone does it by the book.
Death Saves: There's no reason to have them. They can leave the player in a state of limbo as they spend their time rolling to simply stay alive, a roulette isn't much fun. SImple Fix: Get one save when reaching 0HP, if you succeed stabilize, if you roll a Nat20 revive with 1HP. If you fail (including Nat1), you die, and give the other players 1 more round to try and administer a Medicine DC (not heal spell) to staiblize the player (throwing game battle plans out the window to save a fellow player), or be considered dead and done.
The boss monster thing is a case where you might take a look at what PF2e does. PF2e has the "incapacitate" trait put on spells like sleep, death spells, hold person, etc. This makes them less effective on monsters that are more than twice the level of the spell cast - basically, the monster has to critically fail its save or if its an attack it has to be a critical hit to get the normal effect, and the normal critical effect doesn't happen to the monster. One way to do this without adding critical save fails to 5e would be to add some kind of lesser effect to all the save or suck spells that normally happens even on a successful save. Monsters that have a CR twice or more the spell level would take the lesser effect on a failed save (e.g. maybe "Sleep" causes Fatigue) and no effect on a successful save. Some of the save or suck spells already have a consolation prize effect on a successful save, but I haven't taken a look at how many. I'm personally probably going to graft PF2e's degrees of success/failure into 5e next time I run it. I get that this is more work than a lot of people want to do.
While I would love for 5e to have the same gradation of effects PF2e has (and it already does use "fail the save by 5+" in a few places), this is just _a lot_ of work. I'm wary of reworks that would be extensive enough to change underlying assumptions in the system, because: a) this just added a lot of hours to campaign prep, and b) at that point, every session is playtesting. If you have any amount of self-reflection, you would never be comfortable with your first-draft math in play, and that's added stress to a system that's already quite laborious to run. I really like Mike's first document - it addresses most of the major pain-points in the system, and does so swiftly and efficiently.
I really like some of the optional rules from the DMG that make thinks more likeable to me, even if DnD is absolutely not my preferred system: Cleaving through creatures - this is fun for melee characters and lets them feel mighty, it also encourages tactical positioning and fighting against hordes. Skills with different abilities - Because it encourages to try something, even if you are not ideal for the job Spell points - because I absolutely hate the spell slot system Proficiency dice - More dice, more fun, more drama Things that I do not use because it annoyes me: Optional encumberance - I hate to calculate weight and keep track of, this does not benefit gameplay to me
I appreciate this discussion. Here are a few of my thoughts: 1. Have the duration of Arcane Eye just be 1 minute. They can explore _the next_ dungeon room thoroughly, or a few hallways, but not an entire hour’s worth of dungeon. 2. I only allow a long rest if the players sleep in a safe, comfortable bed. Otherwise, it’s a short rest. It is _so_ much better when the players have to reserve their resources during a long trip instead of day to day, because otherwise daily encounters are completely trivial. They can just disintegrate or fireball all the orcs and sleep to get the slots back, instead of being motivated to bribe them away or flee or hide so they can conserve their resources for the dungeon they’re en route to. 3) I’m experimenting with changing “save or suck” spells so that they’re like the “half damage on a successful save” damage spells. It could be satisfying for a boss monster to succeed on a save against polymorph, but instead turn into an animal hybrid for 1 turn in which all they could do is attack and not use any spells or special abilities. Banishment could make them ethereal for 1 turn, sealing half damage, moving half speed, and having resistance to all damage. That helps wizards not feel like they’re wasting an entire turn when a cool spell gets wasted and does absolutely nothing. I want every spell to be a good choice, not just the ones that do something reliable and safe.
The fact that half the initial home rule sheet is just spells explains why I don't like 5e - it's a game about casters where you can be a non-caster if you don't want to be playing as much of the game.
This spell is unlikely to come up in most campaigns because it is high level...but go to the page with the spell "Simulacrum," and cross it out. It is busted.
yeah. I agree. Luckily I've not seen it in use. I would let a player use it but only if the simulacrum goes off and does something else other than being a copy of you.
Can you explain the "It was probably fun, but not ideal" statement in the Tiny Hut/Wight story? Isn't "fun" the ideal? That sounds like a great encounter to me. And since they have to kill 16 hours before they can take another long rest, the immediate long rest again thing simply does not work.
Love most of your stuff! But a lot of these house rules seem to indicate that the DM is telling the players that the way they want to play is not the right way, and that the players should change what they think is fun. If the spell/feature is causing multiple people at the table to lose enjoyment, then i think it merits looking at changing, but otherwise, I'd generally be against changing something just because the DM doesn't like how it affects the story they are trying to present.
Okay, what if for Arcane Eye you provide the player with a version of the dungeon map with npcs on there and they then have to relay the information without showing the map. And for summoning groups of creatures, what if you were to use horde rules from MCDM or other folks with number of creatures as "ticks" to health?
How about using counter spell to diminish the spell? The "Wizard battle" could result in the spell being dispelled completely, (maybe causing backlash?) or the spell goes off, but the damage is lower or some of the effects are disabled?
Do you want to do that much game design mid-session? 5e doesn't have any support for partial successes. What's the appropriate amount to lower the damage of a spell? What do you replace a debilitating effect with? What's the "lesser" version of stunned, or frightened, or paralyzed? These are good questions, and systems like PF2e have answers to them, but it's not something you want to worry about in the middle of a battle, when you're already spinning so many plates.
One of the things that has made a huge difference in the way 5e runs for me is that I have become militant about enforcing a full adventuring day. My players know for certain that they will need to endure 6-8 combat encounters per day. They know that I won't allow them to cheat with Rope Trick or Leomund's Tiny Hut. They get a rest when they've earned a rest by completing encounters. It's amazing how much better the system is when spell casters actually have to ration their resources. Shield (like all problematic spells) is much less of a problem when spell slots are tight. Fighters actually get to shine in encounter 6, 7, and 8; meanwhile the Wizard is gassed out.
I'd like to know your secret: how do you manage to fit so many encounters in a single adventuring day? I realize it solves a lot of 5e's problems, but I've been struggling to imagine a campaign structure (short of a megadungeon crawl) that even explains why so many battles are happening in such quick succession. Did you lengthen the adventuring day? Is the campaign taking place in war-torn wilderness or something? How do enforce it during adventures that, like, take you to a farm, or take place in a city? If I'm designing, let's say, an attack on a thieves' guilt hideout, I'll run out of plausible encounters after the 3rd or 4th, and short of "the leader gets away," there's nothing stopping the players from just calling it quits after battle #2 and going back to the inn to rest.
@@ikaemos Yeah, I almost never want to structure my adventures in a way that has more than like three encounters per day. I think about the only thing you can really do is be kind of arbitrary about when the party can enjoy the full benefits of a long rest, and not worry about it following any kind of really consistent in-world rationale. You can handwave it a bit and say characters are more likely to enjoy magically recuperative sleep if they push themselves and face many trials, for psychological reasons, because it garners the favor and interest of Fate and other gods and spirits, etc. It probably won't make total sense but I think that's kind of okay because who says we need a consistent rule that's well understood in-universe about how often spellcasters and other people with supernatural powers can use their more powerful abilities? Magic in D&D is already probably too predictable, making it so recovering the ability cast powerful spells doesn't work like literal clockwork could be an improvement to the fiction and setting. Out of game, you can be straight with the players and say that they won't qualify for the benefits of a long rest until they've had at least encounters, and by being transparent with them about how close they are when they ask.
Also, is Shield that overpowered that people multiclass it? And is the issue the high AC, or the fact that it causes the players to turtle and then fights take longer? I've only DMed for a year, but like if a Fighter/Rogue/Barbaian multiclasses to Sorc, they only get 2 chances to shield per long rest. Other classes that can innately cast can cast it more, but then they're using up slots that could go to other spells, right?
2d10 for skill checks. One of my core dislikes of dnd in general is failing at things my character is supposed to be good at. 2d10 skill checks isn't a perfect solution, but it's a really simple thing to implement that doesn't require other adjustments.
Opportunity attacks ruin 5e’s combat. Everyone’s afraid of getting hit so they either play a rogue or they get used to fighting like rock em sock em robots.
The bonuses from a shield, shield spell, and shield of faith do not stack. I think this is a more elegant solution than setting an arbitrary cap of 21.
1hr short rests were a poor implementation. Have been using 10 minutes with a min of 1hr between for a few years now and it pretty much solves the SR issues.
Mike: Quick answer to your question... nothing is so broken that I can not run with this edition for another 10 years. Longer answer...WotC is attempting to make some things better, funner (not a real word), cooler and I applaud their attempt. They want to sell millions of more books and I wish them well. If I come to the conclusion that I absolutely need to buy the new PHB, I probably will.
Perhaps we can summarize the quite real problems Mike outlines as roll playing > role playing. In my game, the players, well, one player who roll plays more than any other, will cry holy hell if the monsters ever roll play over role play. Patience required.
Even with all these fixes we all know when the new stuff hits the market people will go out and get it. I did it from the beginning but realized my income level would never support the expansion of the game. So, I played the first edition, 3.5, and now 5th. I will not be investing in any new expansions from Hasbro and their subsidiaries (Wizards of the Coast) because of the whole OGL. That is my call and mine alone to make for me and mine. As for the rest, rely on what is out there, explore the resources for the games you have, and let your imagination take hold!
Perhaps I am too late seeing this for my comment to have helped someone watching this, but regarding Pass Without Trace being used and seen as a Mass Invisibility spell for the party(which I have encountered often), This is how I have handled this problem: Remind the player casting it that it only gives the bonus to those they choose WITHIN 30ft of them. *NOT* at the time of cast or anything like that, the target being Self supports this. This means if you wanted a party of 4-5 to all have the bonus as they sneak through a castle or city, I let them know that a big huddled party of 4 adventurers have a MUCH better chance of passing any type of stealth check if they were not huddled together in a 30ft zone. A stealth check for a single passerby versus a group basically goes up in difficulty exponentially. I feel that makes sense and the players I've had have agreed and ended up using it as you described - in the wilderness and to not be tracked. Edit: +10 is absurd, but I reason that it's most likely a Druid or Ranger casting this and it takes their concentration, so... yeah anything less is trash.
Your Tiny Hut talk, I can't disagree more. The entire point of the spell is to give you a safe place when there isn't already a safe place. And the DM having to change their plans due to player choices is... I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't that why we GIVE players choices? If they can't throw us for a loop, what do we need them for? We could just write a book.
Why in the world would a TTRPG whose only detailed subsystem simulates gradual descents into ever-increasing peril give you a perfect, comfortable, unbreachable "safe place" that you can deploy anywhere with just 10 minutes to spare and no resource cost? What choice are you expecting the players to make here? Why should we gauge how far our resources will take us, and how close we are to running out, and whether we should retreat and prepare better... when we can just log off the server for 8 hours, thereby completely negating the attrition-gameplay that's at the core of 5e. Yes, you're right about "the entire point of the spell" - that's why it's a badly thought-out spell in need of fixing or removing. It gives the players something we shouldn't get to have.
@@ikaemos my working theory is that the illusion of simulating a gradual descent into ever-increasing peril, paired with the actual triviality of winning in an arena where you never have the number of encounters you're "supposed" to have, is a major factor in the edition's success.
17:07 "You think you do, but you don't" but actually accurate.
I love the exhaustion mechanic you use, it actually makes me willing to exhaust players as a dm lol
"Don't break the game, idiots" is the best five word rule to give to your players: it solves simulacrum, wall of force, twinned polymorphs, moon druid, conjure animals, and so much more. This works best at a table with a shared vision of what counts as "breaking the game," but even at a table where nobody knows each other, a little discussion can get that vision mostly aligned.
I have a player at my table who loves doing the "break the game" stuff... once, and warns me beforehand. So we remember that single battle where the summoned fairies polymorphed the whole party into T Rexes. It was fun. But we also had an understanding that the party wouldn't be doing it again.
Another adage that includes your sentiment is "RPGs aren't games you're trying to beat" - an unfortunate side effect of video games, where all of the rules must be prescribed .
One solution I've found to the summoning creatures debacle is just using Matt colvilles minion rules when they want to use a lot of creatures. Especially with group attacks because it drastically speeds up play
Great idea! I am stealing this
Players going, "You're just nerfing stuff, players like stuff being overpowered," should really DM once in a while. Although I appreciate your gentle approach with the 2nd document, I still find it _demeaning_ that one would have to rewrite common-sense changes to badly designed spells, just because the players might perceive them adversarially. If a player can't be bothered to think like a designer, they should butt out of game design.
My fix for arcane eye would be like the flashback mechanic you have talked about before.
Instead of explaining everything up front, describe what they saw through the arcane eye before they move into the next area.
Brilliant.
100% agree with almost all of this. On the point of player receptivity/perception of nerfing, for every time I nerf something I also try to find areas to empower the players - a good example is allowing Inspiration to reroll (this reflects how players think of it already IME) & expanding Inspiration to include flashbacks and other narrative uses. Also, to get buy-in I’ll sometimes share dramatic changes to spells across editions - Tiny Hut is a prime example of a spell that was not a force field before and which progressively became more powerful & delimited.
I agree for using inspiration to do a flashback. In the same way that in Blades in the Dark, the DM determines how much of the resource (stress in BitD) must be spent by the PC. I'm using 'luck points' from Tales of the Valiant to replace Inspiration, and therefore can choose anywhere from 1-6 luck points (inspiration equivalent) must be spent for the flashback.
Last week, we had a moment where the drow smuggler employing the party asked if they had found a gnomish body on their adventure, and thus the Rope of leviation they knew they carried. The player at first lied to them rolled mediocre and stared in contemplation. Before success/fail was determined, he chimed in that really his character wouldn't have lied as he is committed to joining the smuggling operation. He decided the character would show them the item they found on the body, then spoke out of character and told the players that his character was going to tell the drow what they found. I suggested the flashback to rewind his lie (which would break the trust the would party has been trying to establish);but it would cost him all his luck points (1), and then we RP'ed from there. This was an in the moment flashback, but flashbacks can be helpful to avoid disaster for the PCs, or helpful for pre mission preparations,. As the DM I like that they are spending their resources instead of me 'giving in', or 'going easy on them' for something their character would have known, or prepared.
In summary, spending inspiration for a flashback is working for me!
I'm not happy about current advantage/disadvantage rules. I feel it's silly that a ranger who would get disadvantage on long range can just step into the fog and roll straight. That a restrained blind prone kobold is still alright as long as he has a friend nearby. Somehow it's harder to shoot a prone t-rex than a rat at the same distance (unless rat is also prone).
The Raiders of the Lost Ark metaphor was brilliantly on point.
That gives me the idea that a possible solution for tiny hut is the classic Minecraft "you cannot rest while there are monsters nearby" it seems reasonable to say that the constant interruptions make proper sleep unattainable, only getting short rests and risking exhaustion
Good thought provoking video
The shield max AC cap is a change I'm implementing in my own rewrite. Shield is disruptive when stacked with armour and shields, not in isolation.
This is very interesting. Here are some of my thoughts.
- these are great. The important of these are that they are in conversation with the players. The details aren't the most important. They will be different from group to group. The important thing is that and how you talk about them.
- as someone that has been more into playing OSR style games than 5e style games that fact that these are considered nerfing is kinda funny. Those games have things like (almost) no darkvision, tracking supplies and you only heal 1hp/level per 'long rest'. :)
- for the summoning house rule maybe you could consider some sort of 'swarm' or 'pack' rule. So you can still have the fun of summoning 8 wolves or dozens of gnats to flood the battle field. But to speed up play they count as a single entity. For example the wolves roll a single attack roll for all attacks or the swarm of gnats just does 1 dmg to everyone in the area per round.
- for my fixes; whenever I see people play DnD they have complicated systems for tracking iniative that seem to be kinda time sinks. So I would probably simplify Iniative. For example using the card system from Forbidden Lands or (i think this was a runehammer idea) just go in table seating order and let the players arrange their seating in a way they think is advantages for them.
Short rests take 10 mins. Add the dungeon-crawling structure from OD&D. Include reaction rolls.
What's the dungeon crawling structure from OD&D?
@@MagiofAsura Away from books right now. Please Questing Beast's video on it. Completely changed how I think about exploration.
Rather than cap shield at 21, cap shield at 20 + the level of the spell slot. If someone wants to blow a 9th level spell on a 29 AC shield spell, go nuts.
As a past frustrated Monk player, I winced every time you mentioned Stunned or Stunning Strike. If I had a GP for every ki I've spent to watch a monster pass their CON save ... I'd have nicer Monk Weapons.
I haven't tried this, because I usually run DDAL, but a house rule I'd consider is (1) on hit, spend 1 ki on Stunning Strike, the target is instantly stunned (no save), granting advantage on subsequent attacks. (2) At the start of the target's turn, they make a CON save. On success they're no longer stunned and get a normal turn. On failure they remain stunned until the end of your next turn.
I really like this fix.
Playing an 11th level monk right now and for sure I feel you brotha… 😂
Touching up any aspect of Stunning Strike is problematic because of how tied to the monk's class power budget it is. Nerf it, and the class goes from "among the worst in the game" to "garbage"; buff it, and you encourage a really disruptive and annoying playstyle - not even casters, for all their undeserved favoritism in the rules, can rattle off so many disabling effects in such quick succession. _That_ is why SS only works ~35% of the time. Mike's fix in the 1st draft does lessen the game disruption problem, but it also makes monks worse when they really don't deserve it, poor things.
That said, I really like effects lasting until the start of a creature's turn. I had a boss monster who applied paralysis until the start of a target's turn; it was nerve-wracking when it used legendary actions to attack (and crit) paralyzed creatures, but it didn't remove any autonomy from the players.
When I last played 5e, these were the houserules I ran with:
Once per long rest, you can use an action to gain all the benefits of a short rest except for regaining hit points. [Design intent: Many times you end up having only one or two big fights per long rest, which makes nova classes shine but it makes short-rest based classes seem much weaker.]
Shield spell can't increase your AC over 20. Counterspell always requires a check - no more auto-counter if you cast it at a particular level. [That said, I prefer A5e's version now that I've heard of it.]
You can summon as many monsters or companions as you like, but in any given round you can only control up to two of them. The rest don't get any action, reaction, or movement.
[Two taken from treantmonk:] When you make a weapon or unarmed attack as part of the attack action, you can choose to take a -5 penalty to hit and gain a +10 bonus to damage if that attack hits. [Design intent: makes SS and GWM less mandatory, makes dual weapon / sword + board / unarmed attackers more viable, but without SS or GWM it only applies to the attack action, not bonus action or reaction.]
You cannot cast a spell gained from a class if you are wearing armour (or shield) that the class does not have proficiency in. [Design intent: powerful casters were designed to have weaker defences as a trade-off. Let's avoid circumventing that tradeoff with just a 1 level class dip. Say no to wizards in heavy armour!]
On the GM's side:
The use of legendary resistance always requires some resource expenditure from the monster, usually HP.
The book is too difficult for newcomers. I don't think d&d lifers realize how impenetrable and confusing it feels to someone opening it up for the first time. When I play with my sons, all they want is HP, AC, and damage. So the beauty of d&d is, that really is all you need, but when you crack open any rulebook from any edition, it is hard to even see at a glance how much stuff you need to know to go through character creation in your first game ever. It's not even that character creation takes too long, it's that there is no way for the beginner to know how much time it will take and when it will end. So what I propose is: a five page or less primer to making a character and starting a campaign. Just say, "determine your stats, attach racial bonuses, pick your weapons, and go!" And to the GM, say: "All you have to do is pick monsters, npcs, treasure, and have some sort of dungeon or environment. Boil everything down to either telling players their attempt succeeds OR making them roll for it vs. a difficulty number or whatever. Go!" You could literally explain all of that in just one page. Then, the rest of the book could be added levels of complexity for after the new players and new GMs get bored with the starting knowledge and want more.
Even the starter's set is not that simple. So my proposal: Make. It. Simple.
Knave already showed you how. Just determine AC and damage and dive in. My kids don't even want stats! We play for hours without stats! You don't even need them. But the current player's handbook is so impenetrable to the newcommer, they will have you believing, not only do you need stats, you need to read pages and pages of information before you even know what direction you want to take your character in.
But you could literally say: Want to be an Elf? Okay, you're an Elf. You get a free cantrip but you cannot touch steel.
It could be that easy.
(Sorry for writing such a lengthy post about brevity, ha ha. I am fully aware of the irony here.)
This is what I do with goodberry. I use the "lembas bread" analogy where Sam is just sick of eating it, only in the case of goodberries it's even worse.
I do the same thing, by each additional goodberry they ingest (so more than 1), they have to make a DC 10 Con save or gain the poisoned condition. The save DC increases by 5 for each additional Goodberry.
I love a lot of these ideas for fine-tuning the PHB.
I love that you are calling out that “beating” the monster/game/DM constantly sucks all the fun and pacing right out of the game, in the context of spells/abilities that can do that so easily.
Just my personal alternative; solo monsters get multiple turns, and hard CC effects always disappear after one turn. Legendary resistances not a thing any more.
Love the force cage change btw.
When it comes to my players using animate objects or conjuring anything more than one “thing” my house rule is that whatever is conjured uses the Swarm-tag. 20:03
Also, Counterspell cannot be upcast. 😅
Counterspell can 100% be upcast
@@louismuir9485 RAW but we’re talking house rules… or were you confused as to what this video was about?
PF2 solves the spell issue you are having with the "incapacitation" trait. Spells with that have a very hard time affecting higher level enemies so they are not much use against bosses. It's a bit "gamey" but it is clear, and no awkward conversations required.
I am in 100% in agreement with all of these house rules, especially the spell changes. I abhor Tiny Hut, Pass Without Trace and Goodberries for the detrimental effect they have on the game. In one of my Rime of the Frostmaiden campaigns I ran last year Tiny Hut ruined a really big climactic fight and made the end of the campaign a downer. Of course I would discuss with my players these changes but I think most of my groups would be receptive to them, similarly as how years ago I talked to them about not playing summoners or agreeing to summon only one or two monsters (as opposed to pixie/giant snake spam) and they saw why that would benefit the game.
Anything that says "after making the roll but before you know the result" is disruptive, especially when playing online with lag. But even in person. Either everyone rolling is aware and waits after every roll to see if anyone wants to interrupt, or sometimes the moment to use your interrupt ability passes too quickly and there's nothing you can do.
I'm currently playing a Divination wizard in a game and Portent is like this. Sometimes I just know anyway. The DM may roll to hit and say, "the monster rolls a 23, that hits!" What am I supposed to do?
I love this approach to house rules! I run for a 6-player group, so pace-of-play and spotlight time are really important and where I try to focus my own 5E house rules. One thing I cover with my players that you didn't cover here is the difference between active and passive Wisdom (Perception) ability checks:
Active Wisdom (Perception) ability checks generally require a specified target or area of focus and take in-game time. Searching a door or chest takes 1 minute, searching a standard-sized room takes 10 minutes. Passive Perception checks are "always on" and take no in-game time.
That and some session zero conversation about how I use things like traps and ambushes only when they fit the story or present a diverse challenge to share the spotlight and not as a "gotcha" helps prevent constant player-driven Perception rolls that can really slow down exploration.
Funny you bring up Counter Spell and abilities that auto-stun enemies. Had a boss battle the other night that was really trivialized by those. Took a while creating these leaders of a whole faction and they got shut down round after round, leaving the action economy totally lopsided dispite having tons of minions. While its cool for the players to do this once in a while, it's also boring as a DM. And we're players too. So that's my answer to anyone that says, "well you're taking fun away from the players." Those spells and abilities are taking the fun away from the DM too, which should be considered when WotC designs spells and abilities. I like how you mentioned the agreement of "I won't counter spell all of you if you don't try to do that to me." Basically there are things one can do as a DM that would make the game a slog, a bore, or take away players turns. But we don't if we want to keep the game fun. A good player will be mindful that it is true for them too. The golden rule applies here, "Do unto the DM as you would have the DM do to you."
I really like using the immunity score mechanic that the DM liar developed :)
Treantmonk's Temple, an optimization channel that some of your viewers will know, had a "3 House Rules Video" about a year back that I rediscovered earlier this month. Whereas your rules seemed DM focused, his rules seemed somewhat geared towards opening up player options by eliminating the illusion of choice (people seem to often focus on the same build features, resulting in some character similarity). But there is some overlap in impact, where not forcing certain mechanical decisions (like eliminate shield so it is not a must have spell that people multiclass to get) helps out the dm.
Yep, I highly recommend this channel. I think Mike has expressed a certain amount of disapproval (or maybe just disinterest?) in optimization focused content in the past, but Treantmonk does a really great job of promoting optimization as a player empowering activity that doesn't (or at least, shouldn't) create an adversarial relationship between the DM and player, or the optimizing player and the other players.
Very very nice video, addressing indeed big issues.
I really like your ideas here, and will be adopting most of them at least. I'm mostly a GM, but am currently playing a wizard in a friend's game, and I've fought the temptation to take Arcane Eye, do the microwave combo, and other things wizards can do that would just feel meh if it happened in my game.
Shield has a Somatic component. This requires warcaster feat tax. 2 feats only before 12th level...that's expensive. 4 1st level slots a day. So 4 rounds of combat, plus a feat, just to protect HP's which you can get back on a shortrest...resource management for PC's is real. High AC? Stink saves. Low HP? more spells. heaps of skills? usually less impact in battle. Players juggle the whole time. How often after a combat does one or two of the players call for a short rest? they might be tapped. These particular players may vary after each combat depending on how it transpires.
There is a micro-management level of playing PC's that DM's don't have an equivalent requirement, not denigrating DM's here; stunning strike targets Constitution, and costs a Ki, that's a real cost to any monk with NO feat options to max out dex and wis, wis increasing the stunning DC against a very high save on average. So, your monk 'might' land a stun, for a round...or might not, spending ki to disengage or dodge if it fails, that's an expensive round. How often can that 7th level monk try the trick with 'get outta town if it fails ki cost', twice, maybe 3 times per short rest.
I use a similar exhaustion mechanic in my game with some changes. You die once you reach 6 levels of exhaustion. Each level applies -1 to attack rolls, ability checks, saving throws, and your spell save DC. In addition, your speed is reduced by 5 feet for each level of exhaustion.
I really like the movement reduction, it seems so fitting. It feels like Sly Flourish's list could use the reduction fo spell save DC. In my experience caster's just don't care as much about exhaustion otherwise and remain as effective as they are without.
Not exactly in the PHB, but the whole school of Illusion magic is kind of in a weird place - there are no rules on how it works and it just expects you to work with it:
- do they provide cover, both for line of sight and for AC purposes?
- can it block movement?
- why does only Phantasmal Force "rationalize" the outcome of interaction (note that this is not the interaction action to reveal the illusion)?
- do you rationalize others interacting with the illusion in an unlikely manner or comprehend the illusionary nature without the action?
- if you 100% know of the illusionary nature, do you still need the action?
- at which point is it metagaming to ignore what is written in the spell?
Example time.
You are in a hallway, chased by a bunch of smart wizards able to recognize any spell you know. You cast a Silent Image of a wall behind you, blocking the path.
Can they a) run through, as they know the illusion spell and the spell not mentioning anything about blocking paths?
Or does b) at least one of them make sure that it is an illusion by spending their action before walking through, so everyone else sees one wizard walk THROUGH a wall after RAW?
Or do c) all of them have to use their action to make sure cause their brains otherwise instinctively slow their steps to avoid running into a wall despite not being explained in every spell?
None of this explained, it just says "Here's an illusion spell, have fun!".
I combine it with divination, which imo also solves the problem of why people don't just completely rely on divination: because it *might* be an illusion.
There is some ambiguity, and I agree that the books could go into a bit more detail, and give a bit more guidance on how to adjudicate them.
But I think a lot of it covered by the idea that the general rules apply, and exceptions to those rules are explicit. Spells and other features which create exceptions to the rules only do what they say and nothing more. Of course, it's often up to the players and DM to understand the implications and knock-on effects of the explicit effects that spells, features, and character actions have. But I think the portion of PHB that explains the "exceptions based design" could also do with a rewrite to make some of this clearer.
>do they provide cover, both for line of sight and for AC purposes?
It depends on what the spell says.
If you generate a visual illusion that is opaque and large to entirely prevent one creature from seeing another, then that would prevent line of sight. Creatures that can't see through the illusion would treat creatures on the other side of the illusion as being heavily obscured (effectively, invisible).
If the illusion spell doesn't create actual material substance, it can't create cover and doesn't affect AC.
>can it block movement?
Not unless the spell or effect says it does, or that's a natural conclusion of other effects explicitly described by the spell. If you use Silent Image to create an illusion that a doorway has been bricked over, that's not going to stop someone who actually tries to walk through it (it could stop them from trying though, especially if they have no reason to doubt the reality of the illusion). But you were a School of Illusion wizard who used the Illusory Reality feature on the spell effect, then it would block movement, because that's what a real brick wall would do.
>why does only Phantasmal Force "rationalize" the outcome of interaction
Because that's how the spell works. Phantasmal Force is an illusion planted directly into the mind of the target and the target is usually _meant_ to interact with the illusion. With many other illusions, the point is to trick people into behaving a certain way based on the assumed reality of the illusions, and as the caster you don't want creatures to physically interact with the illusion because that's often going to give away the illusion and render it ineffective.
Phantasmal Force trades being able to trick/affect multiple creatures for being able to actually affect a single target, and preventing the target from realizing the true nature of the illusion while they are being affected by it.
Unlike 3rd edition, there are no general rules for different types of illusion that you are meant to reference to determine how specific spells and effects work. Instead, each spell (along with the general rules for spellcasting) tells you how it works and when you're trying to determine how one spell works, you shouldn't bring in assumptions that are based on how other spells work.
>if you 100% know of the illusionary nature, do you still need the action?
The rules for Silent Image say:
"Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, because things can pass through it."
This could do with some clarification, but the way I interpret this is that if you witness solid objects passing through what is ostensibly another solid object, then the illusion is revealed to you. Taking the action to investigate the illusion is another way that an illusion can be revealed for what it is (useful if you don't _want_ to physically interaction with the illusion, such as if you're paranoid about traps), but it's not the only way.
But I would rule that you can't just "know" something is an illusion just because it popped into existence following someone casting a spell, because for all you know, it could be a conjuration. But there are a number of ways you could test the illusion, or that it could be subsequently confirmed to be an illusion.
Here's an example scenario:
A wizard uses Silent Image to create the illusion of a brick wall between him and your PC, and the illusion is wide enough and tall enough that you can't see around it from your current position, and you either can't or don't want to leave your current position.
You guess that it's an illusion and decide that you still want to try to attack him with your bow. Unless the wizard also took the Hide action, you can guess his location so you can attack him, but you can't see him so the attack would be made with disadvantage. Hit or miss, the illusion would be revealed by the attack, because the arrow went right through it and you were in a perfect position to notice that. If you had the means to make additional attacks (Extra Attack, Action Surge, whatever) then you could make those attacks without disadvantage because the wall would be rendered see-through to you.
Whether or not the illusion would be revealed to other combatants is less clear. Were they paying enough attention notice the arrow go through the "brick wall?" The rules don't have a clear answer for that one. They could've seen it happen, but combat is hectic and distracting, and it would also be reasonable to rule that other combatants may not have noticed it. As a DM, I would be inclined to have enemies not notice the arrow/wall "interaction" unless they were particularly on-the-ball, and allow other PCs to notice the illusion by spending their reaction to pay specific attention to the arrow shot.
>a) run through, as they know the illusion spell and the spell not mentioning anything about blocking paths?
Yes, though it's up to the DM to decide how exactly the wizards behave. This is the real sticking point with illusions, it is up to the DM to operate in good faith and have NPCs respond reasonably to them, instead of meta-gaming them into irrelevancy.
Xanathar's Guide to Everything gave rules for identifying spells (you can do it as a reaction when the spell is cast, or as an action in the subsequent turn) so if the wizards knew that you just cast an illusion, they might be able to run headlong straight through it.
But they might also hesitate, especially if they didn't or failed to identify the spell with a check. They may know that it's probably an illusion, but that doesn't mean that it'd be easy for them to just run straight into it, because there's a natural psychological resistance to running into things that look like brick walls. So I might rule that they slow down a bit, shaving off 5 or 10 feet of movement as they all instinctively slow down a bit. But after the first wizard passed through, they would all recognize it as an illusion.
I preferred your first document. I made basically all of those same changes to the game, albeit in different ways for a few of them. I appreciate that the second approach works for house rules where you can just talk to your players about problematic gameplay elements, but for the idea of what I'd change about the game itself, I'd use the first document. Players can say 'no' when you ask, so you don't ask about this kind of gamebreaking nonsense. You say, "this is how it is". Again, for house rules, your second document works, but for game rules there will always be players who think it's fun to "break" the game and the RAW needs to be ironclad for the GM's sake.
One thing I'd suggest to you, and which has worked well for me, is to say that long rests can't be taken in dangerous areas. You can rest for 8 hours if you want, but you'll only get a short rest unless you're somewhere safe and comfortable. A real, restful break is impossible to achieve in a half-flooded sewer that reeks worse than an outhouse and is full of unnerving noises from pests and monsters in the area.
Additionally, GMs shouldn't feel constrained by monster stat blocks, especially if it leads to the threat of the enemies being reduced. If a bunch of wraiths are allowed to hover over the hut, let them do things to the characters that aren't contained within any single action. The characters might feel cold in spite of the comfortable temperature inside the dome. They'll constantly be waking in a cold sweat from horrible nightmares; getting irritated at each other for minor things like accidentally bumping them as they try to get comfortable; and descending into delusions that they know are delusions and they know are irrational but that still affect them anyway, like thinking that the big, ugly half-orc is breathing too much and the air in the dome will run out. Even worse, as the party studies the wraiths that linger, they will get the sense that they're getting more distinct and more malevolent the longer they're able to lurk. In fact, the GM can decide that the wraiths can feed off the characters, bumping up their hit points within the range of their CR. With any luck, players will pick up the roleplaying opportunity and decide their characters succumb to infighting before it becomes problematic to the gameplay, but GMs shouldn't be afraid to make adjustments if the issue isn't remedied and the alternative is that players can make the adventure just a cheap experience.
Some of the rules I hate are the handling of spell components and spell focuses. I think they are too restrictive and confusing, with no real payoff in terms of game balance or verisimilitude. Specifically, I hate the ruling that you can only use the hand that's holding a spell focus to perform a somatic component if the spell focus can replace the material components for the spell you're casting, which means that it's harder to cast a spell with only a somatic component than it is to cast a spell with both a somatic and material component. Nonsense. Here are my house rules:
* A spell focus or component pouch can replace any material component that does not have a cost specified, even if that component would be consumed. (The spell focus or component pouch is not consumed.) It's assumed that wear and tear on the spell focus, or consumed components in the pouch will be addressed during downtime via upkeep costs.
* The hand that's holding a spell focus can always be used to perform somatic components.
* If your class grants you the ability to use a spell focus, you can use the spell focus to cast any spell that you know, from any spell list, even if that spell does not have a material component. (Normally there is no benefit to this, though it does fix an issue with the Spiritual Focus feature of the College of Spirits Bards doing almost nothing, and probably not working as intended. It also prevents multiclassed characters from having to juggle spell focuses, which just feels silly to me.)
* All magic staffs, wands and rods can be used as an arcane spell focus, and often as a druidic focus as well. (This is more of a clarification than a house rule.)
* A magic item that functions as spell focus can be used to replace material components with a cost of 100 gp or less, as long as the component is not consumed; this is mostly a small perk/QoL thing to make spells like _chromatic orb_ easier to cast.
Also, so far I am really liking the way the playtest is addressing damage imbalances between builds, specifically the way those -5/+10 damage perks are so dominant in vanilla. Any character option that it feels bad _not_ to choose is a badly designed option.
As for your house rules, I'm fine with giving bosses ways to overcome hard crowd control, especially when it costs the boss something (like an attack or use of legendary resistance). But I would not put _charm person_ in that category. That spell has a truckload of limitations as is and in the best case it will prevent the monster from attacking the caster only, not their allies. That's not hard CC, it's fine, as long as you are not running _charm person_ as the equivalent of _dominate person_.
I agree with regard to the _shield_ spell. Maybe have it so it can only boost your AC above 21 with respect to the attack that provided the spell for the reaction trigger, but also, maybe remove _shield_ from all of the class spell lists, and instead have learning _shield_ be a level 5 class feature for the classes and subclasses that normally get access to it (keep it as a 1st level spell though). That's not too huge of a nerf of characters who commit to such a class, since _shield_ isn't fantastic at the lower levels anyway.
I also agree with regard to the _arcane eye_ spell. It's also an issue with familiars, especially warlock Pact of the Chain familiars. It's a cool ability that I don't like taking away, but the table dynamic just isn't fun.
With regard to the _goodberry_ spell, I see where you're coming from, but don't like the specific solution. Goodberries _should_ be _good_. If you want to run your players through some sort of brutal survival scenario, then just say there's a curse over your wasteland region or dungeon that prevents the spell from being cast at all, or have it yield just a single goodberry per casting, maybe with a 50/50 chance of failing entirely. Or, have it so the spell works by enhancing a real berry or other fruit with the qualities of goodberry, with the requirement that the fruit be picked within the last 24 hours. That way the spell works as a way of enhancing foraging instead of completely replacing it.
My issue with _goodberry_ is the interaction with the Life cleric Disciple of Life feature that makes it a ridiculously efficient healing spell; it boggles my mind that Jeremy Crawford gave that interpretation his blessing. I house rule that out.
I think _pass without trace_ is fine as long as, as you say, you respect rules as enforce the general limitations on hiding. It's a powerful spell sure, but it's also an iconic one, like _fireball_ so it should be powerful. I think reducing it to a +5 bonus would be fine though on top of the other benefits would be fine though. I don't care for making it grant advantage because I'd prefer for it to stack with methods of gaining advantage. The way I see it, on top of automatically covering your tracks, the main value it should have is to bring the whole group up to at least _average_ when it comes to stealth ability, while making stealth specialists even (though not necessarily untouchable).
My "fixes" would focus on things I perceive that are missing. I would like to see a simple mass-combat mechanic - i find its absence a big hole in my game. I also would like some more hexcrawl mechanics/tables for when players go overland (bring back wilderness adventure guide), similar for underground/underdark too with rich random encounter tables. My personal pet peeve on existing mechanics revolves around hit points and healing and unconsciousness. My house rule is short rest heals 1 hit point, long rest heals a rolled hit die of damage. No almost dying yesterday and 100% healthy today. I also have unconsciousness at 0 to -9 and at -10 is the normal death saves. It really gives the players to option to try to knock out opponents rather than kill them.
With Boss Monsters, I could totally see having charm "work", but only to push the boss to ~2-3 rounds of dialog, that allows the party to position or heal, but depending on the level they "failed" in the charm they are sensitive to movement aggressiveness. Walking to an ally and casting a healing spell is non-aggressive, suddenly casting a healing spell on yourself, digging in your pack for a potion might set them off.
Force shield could be a massive display of force and the creature is winded and starts talking as it catches its breath. It'll pick back up if it's attacked, but the players can recover and reposition for a couple rounds.
If you run Charm Person as written it won't even do that much. It's one of the weakest and most toothless conditions/spells in the game. Immunity to the charmed condition is only really needed for boss enemies because it would protect them from more powerful effects that some spells and abilities impose against the target "while charmed," e.g. the Hypnotic Pattern and Dominate Person type spells.
The only one I personally wouldn’t touch is pass without a trace, but that’s because I actively want to encourage city as a favoured terrain choice in my games.
"Goodberry can keep you alive, but it doesn't mean you aren't always hungry"
Idk man, this stuff all in black and white like this makes me wonder if it's worth saving a game that needs this much tinkering to not be busted
If it's tinkering then it's not busted. You need more than tinkering to fix something that is truly busted.
That initial list of nerfs is just fine. Just pair it with guidance on the role of the DM and the player to have fun together. The DM is also a player.
Carry weight and encumbrance rules both suck. No one remembers them, and they don't accomplish anything. They need a simple fix, but I don't have one that I like. Here's a thought: Are we really happy with everyone carrying a backpack into battle? Personally, I find that a little stupid, and you almost never see it depicted in character art. You definitely never hear it described in game.
Rations suck. Most groups don't seem to track food at all -- so they don't need rations. The groups that do, are poorly served by rations. They keep forever, they're cheap, they have no downsides and you start with a ton of them. Horrible. Remove it.
Remove Curse sucks. Everyone seems to agree that curses should be more resilient than this. Plus, there's no story to it, and curses should be broken narratively.
Detect Evil, Protection from Evil, these need to do what the name suggests. Same with Find Traps.
Charming spells need to not be detectable if they succeed. Then their levels need to be adjusted to allow for this.
Why not have a "fool me once" style approach to some of the more powerful effects? The boss can be stunned.... once. Let the players know too so that single stun will be an important part of their strategy. If I were codifing it in the rules I'd add a special sort of tag to monsters and/or items (for heat metal) that certain spells/effects only work once. The same can go for players too with resistances. They can be resistant to the first poison of the encounter, but the buildup of toxins overcomes that resistance the second time.
We changed rests. Long rests can only happen in the safety of town. Don’t take tiny hut; it doesn’t work. Also, you must spend a hit die during a short rest to receive any benefit of that short rest.
One of the rules that I think makes the game cumbersome to run is initiative. There are many common fixes for it. May favorite is simply: who ever rolls highest goes first, then just go around the table after that.
I just go by the biggest to smallest attack roll.
Slows the game down? Chapter 5: Equipment. Shopping drives me bonkers as a DM.
I like most of your suggestions, especially the tweaks for spells. I would probably give the arcane eye a high stealth score to give it a bit of a middle ground. Tiny hut definitely needs some way to disrupt it.
I would also reduce movement by 5' for each level of exhaustion.
I think one issue is the action economy. Just move to a three action economy and limit certain ones to 1/turn (like attacks and spells) or 2/turn (moves). Multi-attack would just increase the number of actions that you can use for attacks instead of attacks per action. Cunning action just up you to 3 moves per turn (if used for movement) I realize that there may be some edge cases that require tweaking and that some class abilities might be undermined, but I think this would smooth things out.
Movement is another place I would like to see a tweak. Instead of things adding to your base move (wood elf, barbarian, monk) or multiplying it (haste spell), just have it give you bonus movement to your first move. That would keep a lot of movement stacking from getting out of hand and still give most of the utility of these abilities.
Magic item rarity needs to be tweaked. There are several things that just don't line up. Attunement is a bit wonky too. And either just say that there is no crafting magic items or give better rules for crafting magic items.
There are other things that I would (and have) changed for my games ... like making life-restoring magic sometimes fail, leaving a character permanently dead. But that is more about the flavor I want for a game than a fault of the game itself.
Mike, I laughed SO HARD at your Indiana Jones gun story. Now I actually want to see a parody done like that. That would be hillarious!!! (But I get and agree with your point of course)
Thanks for the video! I really enjoyed it.
Feat and Multiclass was made as optional and they where never properly integrated in the core game system. They where intended to give the player extra options, but. some of those option are so strong that the become automatic choice. I don't have a good fix other than don't play with Feat and Multiclass, but it's often something that the players enjoy and can be very fun if used as intended. Maybe just ask the players play what they want to play and not don't just go for the most powerful and obvious choice.
Great vid, borrowing a bunch of these. But got to ask, I’m playing an 11th level monk. What kind of encounters are you running that your monks EVER land a stunning strike, much less having it be a problem? 😂
Give rangers a d12 hit die and monks a d10. Have rangers apply their PB to damage against favored enemies. Redesign their spellcasting feature to function like the paladin's. Have rangers use primeval awareness differently. have spears work as reach weapons when used with both hands. Redesign many of the cantrips and balance their availability across all classes. Divorce invocations from their dependence on eldritch blast and provide more invocations to play well with other cantrips. Redesign the rate at which players gain experience points and level up upon a foundation of fair math. Delete the variant human option and provide more explicit encouragement for GMs to offer feats as quest rewards.
Also redesign the save or suck method of condition imposition to a graduated rate of bad stuff, I.e the petrified condition doesn't happen immediately or upon the next turn but fully occurs after three or four turns, increasing in effect over the course of the duration.
Tiny Hut: requires the use of a 50 gp sapphire that is consumed in the casting. DM can easily control the supply of such gems in the world.
Easily couched in-universe with a jeweler who says "What, you think you're the only adventurers that use that trick? And by the way, if I ever manage to actually find an emerald, the market run has put them at 500 gps now. You'd think it was a reserve currency or something."
For forcecage: I would nail on the cost. Your players may have all the money in the world, but rubies don't grow on trees. And also, don't let them hoard it! People around the world is probably not gonna like that any given party is gathering every ruby in the world. Supply and demmand stuff. I mean, it's kind of boring and accounting economy shit, but so is forcecaging everything. If it gets to this, it's probably worth a talk out of game. Fits for other costly spells too.
Also, it's worth noting that a creature can be huge and be higher than 20 ft, so it doesn't fit the cage.
Also, for bosses: High saves, magic resistance, counterspell or certain condition immunities can go a long way. And even before you get to legendary resistances.
I would absolutely change the following mechanics:
- Stealth
- the Help action
- Cones
This is great dude, thank you!
Haven’t watched through all of it yet, but my one suggestion for increasing the duration of play through later levels and for making tense gameplay throughout is to dramatically lower the hit points of everything by reducing all hit dice for hp to 1.
First, I eliminate all extra hit die from creatures-anything in a stat block with n + dn loses those hit dice. That means that creatures with no native hit points and just dn get 1 hit point. Yep, kobolds and goblins have 1 hit point. But they do the same damage they normally do!
By the same token, player characters get their full hit dice and CON at first level, and then 1 hp + CON every level thereafter.
Technically this is possible with AWFUL die rolls in the base game, but now what it does is reward anybody who maxed out CON (martials) and take less damage (barbarians in particular). Fights are fast and deadly just as normal in the first levels, but enemies ramp up in difficulty as players progress. Magic users have to protect their teammates with scrying and ranged characters have to provide cover fire. Yes, healing exists, so paladins who can heal themselves are hugely important and clerics necessary. The dungeon is dangerous and players shouldn’t be able to shrug off a Power Word Kill after half their level progression. Higher level enemies actually don’t do that much extra damage compared with midrange enemies and having less HP bloat makes everybody slow down to the same pace combat normally takes in 5e. It’s just, now everybody is absolutely worried about every single action they take rather than just tanking the damage because it can’t outpace the HP bloat.
My mainly used house rule i always fall back on is "It has to make sense." I'll never have to worry about a coffee lock, or a shielding plate wearer, unless their character has spent significant time studying into the arcane before multiclassing. I've found at least with my 12-14 players across three campaigns, can't justify any of the broken multi-class go-to multiclasses; anybody who puts in the roleplay to put both their character and more importantly the player in the headspace of a paladin delving into the arcane, or a warlock who develops natural sorcerous potential and its part of the story? it feel smuch better. And--in those cases, good for them, they figured out something unique and actually made it make sense.
Mike, you’re a reasonable guy, certainly a helpful guy, and I can’t imagine anyone not agreeing that you’re a friendly guy! Do you mean to tell you that the knuckleheads on the internet come after you for offering your helpful advice on the net for free? I really hope not, I hate the idea of people being that lame to you! You do so much work to help others, I’d think they can disagree without coming after you like that!
About the whole "summoning a gajillion creatures" thing, it depends on what they're being summoned for, and it depends on the player DM relationship. If the creatures are being summoned for utility, I usually allow them to summon the whole neighborhood of animals. I just say "they do the thing", and then the duration is up. If it's combat, my players usually know that a couple of meatier creatures are more useful than 8 lizards or whatever, and so they stick to that anyway. It especially helps because I usually ask the player what their intent for the creatures are, and then I just roll attacks and saves with supersonic speed and resolve the summons asap.
-The AC limit on Shield is a major nerf for Eldritch Knights whose spellcasting limitations are already quite punitive.
-As for Heroes' Feast, granting resistance to poison damage and saving throws is fine, but retaining the immunity to the poisoned condition may be a fair compromise.
-For Goodberry, it may be better to introduce a limit on its repeatability than to ban its exploration usage entirely. As in using Goodberry for nourishment for [X] days in a row results in a level of Exhaustion that remains until non-magical nourishment is obtained. A party with a druid or ranger won't starve to death, as it should be, but they'll still want to find real food to eliminate that -1 to all their rolls.
-Your initial rule about Tiny Hut having 25 points of damage reduction seems good to me as the baseline, but maybe it could be up-cast for more reduction?
Shield is nerfed if you get AC 21? I don't think so. As Mike said, 21 is a really high AC. I like that fix.
@@gvanbooven not for an Eldritch Knight it isn’t. I’ve played two EKs in the past and my AC was routinely 21 even before applying Shield (Plate 18 + actual shield 2 + Defense fighting style). Shield is one of the few spells that is worth it for an EK to cast, but with Mike’s nerf I wouldn’t bother.
@@ryanroyce remember it's V,S so there's the warcaster feat tax for an EK, or anyone for that matter. Only 5 ASI's or feats, one for warcaster is expensive. EK's are third casters too, so spell slots run out...using bladeward at 7th as a cantrip and attacking as the bonus action can help 'tank'. However, shield is good, broken for 4 uses a day? nah.
@@samuelbroad11I've played an Eldritch Knight twice - even made it from 1st to 20th with one of them - and I can say with absolute confidence that Shield is one of the best spells they have (they don't have many; you can ignore nearly all of the Evocation spells as a waste of resources). With easy access to ~21AC, they're already very hard to hit... being able to pump that to 26+ on the rare occasion that someone gets above 21 is a great feeling. Nerfing Shield so that EKs no longer benefit from casting it is a terrible feeling.
Fighters have seven ASIs, BTW, not five, and Warcaster is a great feat for EKs for several reasons, not just the use of weapons as an arcane focus.
Rangers- double amt of favored enemies and terrains, give adv to hit favored enemies, and make Hunter's Mark a class feature w/o concentration.
I think nerfs (i.e. house rules) are fine if players are aware of what they are before the start of an adventure/campaign. The players can always choose not to play in a game and find another table. I think the approach in either document presented could he useful.
I don't allow multiclassing or use feats, so many problems at other tables aren't relevant at mine. That said, ~90% of the issues at my table come from the spells (the Monk's stun, Paladin's smite, and a couple other features account for the other 10%). I use a combination of banning certain spells (e.g., Silvery Barbs, Forcecage, and Guidance--which is super disruptive to game play) and using the revisions in Level Up A5e (Banishment, Heroes' Feast, Tiny Hut, Wall of Force, etc) and TCE (summoning spells to replace the PH ones).
Why not give Arcane Eye a restriction similar to x-ray vision or passwall. The connection to arcane eye gets weaker through layers of solid earth, stone, or metal. Like player level in feet of total thickness or something. That way they can scout ahead a bit, but not an entire fortified dungeon/castle.
It’s not a perfect fix, but I handle the issue of summon+mount+conjured/animated like this: your character can only command/exert their will on one other creature at a time, so if you want to summon that elemental, your familiar is going to take the dodge action and run away until they’re out of combat
Sly, for Pass Without Trace, what are your thoughts on its usage in an actual tactical context, such as an individual using it to infiltrate or sneak inside of a castle or a keep, rather than a group? for balance, I can see how a group would be restricted to environments that are not enclosed, but how about 1-2 people?
Since Goodberry breaks exploration, do you just ban Create Food and Water? I fix those spells by adding a material component that gets consumed.
As for the other spells, you should check out how Pathfinder 2e fixes them. Tiny Hut only provides protection from weather and Wall of Force has an AC and hit points, with a damage threshold which I think is better than your change because players can get a sense of the wall weakening before it breaks…
i agree with the thinking around summons. i get why smite and stunning strike are lumped together but they should not be. without smite palis are still pretty good, with stunning strike, monks are still underwhelming. nerf something like that, need to give a buff somewhere else.
bosses being basically immune to control spells sounds incredibly lame out of context of what it's like to play in your game. hard to judge if that's good or not.
nerfing pass without a trace is rough on rangers. id rather leave it the same and just make it ranger only. not like they get a lot of good spells, dont take one of the few they get.
biggest thing i like about this discussion, being up front about how the rules actually work. i have never played in a game where the gm uses the light rules. darkvision is always "can see perfectly in complete darkness". i'm a bit shocked someone does it by the book.
Death Saves: There's no reason to have them. They can leave the player in a state of limbo as they spend their time rolling to simply stay alive, a roulette isn't much fun.
SImple Fix: Get one save when reaching 0HP, if you succeed stabilize, if you roll a Nat20 revive with 1HP. If you fail (including Nat1), you die, and give the other players 1 more round to try and administer a Medicine DC (not heal spell) to staiblize the player (throwing game battle plans out the window to save a fellow player), or be considered dead and done.
The boss monster thing is a case where you might take a look at what PF2e does. PF2e has the "incapacitate" trait put on spells like sleep, death spells, hold person, etc. This makes them less effective on monsters that are more than twice the level of the spell cast - basically, the monster has to critically fail its save or if its an attack it has to be a critical hit to get the normal effect, and the normal critical effect doesn't happen to the monster. One way to do this without adding critical save fails to 5e would be to add some kind of lesser effect to all the save or suck spells that normally happens even on a successful save. Monsters that have a CR twice or more the spell level would take the lesser effect on a failed save (e.g. maybe "Sleep" causes Fatigue) and no effect on a successful save. Some of the save or suck spells already have a consolation prize effect on a successful save, but I haven't taken a look at how many.
I'm personally probably going to graft PF2e's degrees of success/failure into 5e next time I run it. I get that this is more work than a lot of people want to do.
While I would love for 5e to have the same gradation of effects PF2e has (and it already does use "fail the save by 5+" in a few places), this is just _a lot_ of work. I'm wary of reworks that would be extensive enough to change underlying assumptions in the system, because: a) this just added a lot of hours to campaign prep, and b) at that point, every session is playtesting. If you have any amount of self-reflection, you would never be comfortable with your first-draft math in play, and that's added stress to a system that's already quite laborious to run. I really like Mike's first document - it addresses most of the major pain-points in the system, and does so swiftly and efficiently.
I really like some of the optional rules from the DMG that make thinks more likeable to me, even if DnD is absolutely not my preferred system:
Cleaving through creatures - this is fun for melee characters and lets them feel mighty, it also encourages tactical positioning and fighting against hordes.
Skills with different abilities - Because it encourages to try something, even if you are not ideal for the job
Spell points - because I absolutely hate the spell slot system
Proficiency dice - More dice, more fun, more drama
Things that I do not use because it annoyes me:
Optional encumberance - I hate to calculate weight and keep track of, this does not benefit gameplay to me
I appreciate this discussion. Here are a few of my thoughts:
1. Have the duration of Arcane Eye just be 1 minute. They can explore _the next_ dungeon room thoroughly, or a few hallways, but not an entire hour’s worth of dungeon.
2. I only allow a long rest if the players sleep in a safe, comfortable bed. Otherwise, it’s a short rest. It is _so_ much better when the players have to reserve their resources during a long trip instead of day to day, because otherwise daily encounters are completely trivial. They can just disintegrate or fireball all the orcs and sleep to get the slots back, instead of being motivated to bribe them away or flee or hide so they can conserve their resources for the dungeon they’re en route to.
3) I’m experimenting with changing “save or suck” spells so that they’re like the “half damage on a successful save” damage spells. It could be satisfying for a boss monster to succeed on a save against polymorph, but instead turn into an animal hybrid for 1 turn in which all they could do is attack and not use any spells or special abilities. Banishment could make them ethereal for 1 turn, sealing half damage, moving half speed, and having resistance to all damage. That helps wizards not feel like they’re wasting an entire turn when a cool spell gets wasted and does absolutely nothing. I want every spell to be a good choice, not just the ones that do something reliable and safe.
The fact that half the initial home rule sheet is just spells explains why I don't like 5e - it's a game about casters where you can be a non-caster if you don't want to be playing as much of the game.
This spell is unlikely to come up in most campaigns because it is high level...but go to the page with the spell "Simulacrum," and cross it out. It is busted.
yeah. I agree. Luckily I've not seen it in use. I would let a player use it but only if the simulacrum goes off and does something else other than being a copy of you.
Can you explain the "It was probably fun, but not ideal" statement in the Tiny Hut/Wight story? Isn't "fun" the ideal? That sounds like a great encounter to me. And since they have to kill 16 hours before they can take another long rest, the immediate long rest again thing simply does not work.
This is very similar to my house rules. Heat metal only causes Disadvantage for 1 turn. Not the whole duration of the spell. Still a brutal spell.
Love most of your stuff! But a lot of these house rules seem to indicate that the DM is telling the players that the way they want to play is not the right way, and that the players should change what they think is fun.
If the spell/feature is causing multiple people at the table to lose enjoyment, then i think it merits looking at changing, but otherwise, I'd generally be against changing something just because the DM doesn't like how it affects the story they are trying to present.
Okay, what if for Arcane Eye you provide the player with a version of the dungeon map with npcs on there and they then have to relay the information without showing the map.
And for summoning groups of creatures, what if you were to use horde rules from MCDM or other folks with number of creatures as "ticks" to health?
How about using counter spell to diminish the spell? The "Wizard battle" could result in the spell being dispelled completely, (maybe causing backlash?) or the spell goes off, but the damage is lower or some of the effects are disabled?
Do you want to do that much game design mid-session? 5e doesn't have any support for partial successes. What's the appropriate amount to lower the damage of a spell? What do you replace a debilitating effect with? What's the "lesser" version of stunned, or frightened, or paralyzed? These are good questions, and systems like PF2e have answers to them, but it's not something you want to worry about in the middle of a battle, when you're already spinning so many plates.
One of the things that has made a huge difference in the way 5e runs for me is that I have become militant about enforcing a full adventuring day. My players know for certain that they will need to endure 6-8 combat encounters per day. They know that I won't allow them to cheat with Rope Trick or Leomund's Tiny Hut. They get a rest when they've earned a rest by completing encounters.
It's amazing how much better the system is when spell casters actually have to ration their resources. Shield (like all problematic spells) is much less of a problem when spell slots are tight. Fighters actually get to shine in encounter 6, 7, and 8; meanwhile the Wizard is gassed out.
I'd like to know your secret: how do you manage to fit so many encounters in a single adventuring day? I realize it solves a lot of 5e's problems, but I've been struggling to imagine a campaign structure (short of a megadungeon crawl) that even explains why so many battles are happening in such quick succession. Did you lengthen the adventuring day? Is the campaign taking place in war-torn wilderness or something? How do enforce it during adventures that, like, take you to a farm, or take place in a city? If I'm designing, let's say, an attack on a thieves' guilt hideout, I'll run out of plausible encounters after the 3rd or 4th, and short of "the leader gets away," there's nothing stopping the players from just calling it quits after battle #2 and going back to the inn to rest.
@@ikaemos Yeah, I almost never want to structure my adventures in a way that has more than like three encounters per day.
I think about the only thing you can really do is be kind of arbitrary about when the party can enjoy the full benefits of a long rest, and not worry about it following any kind of really consistent in-world rationale. You can handwave it a bit and say characters are more likely to enjoy magically recuperative sleep if they push themselves and face many trials, for psychological reasons, because it garners the favor and interest of Fate and other gods and spirits, etc.
It probably won't make total sense but I think that's kind of okay because who says we need a consistent rule that's well understood in-universe about how often spellcasters and other people with supernatural powers can use their more powerful abilities? Magic in D&D is already probably too predictable, making it so recovering the ability cast powerful spells doesn't work like literal clockwork could be an improvement to the fiction and setting.
Out of game, you can be straight with the players and say that they won't qualify for the benefits of a long rest until they've had at least encounters, and by being transparent with them about how close they are when they ask.
Also, is Shield that overpowered that people multiclass it? And is the issue the high AC, or the fact that it causes the players to turtle and then fights take longer? I've only DMed for a year, but like if a Fighter/Rogue/Barbaian multiclasses to Sorc, they only get 2 chances to shield per long rest. Other classes that can innately cast can cast it more, but then they're using up slots that could go to other spells, right?
Move magic items from MM to PhB. Players want to see the cool stuff they can get
2d10 for skill checks. One of my core dislikes of dnd in general is failing at things my character is supposed to be good at. 2d10 skill checks isn't a perfect solution, but it's a really simple thing to implement that doesn't require other adjustments.
I use a pretty heftily homebrewed version of 5e, since many many aspects of the design bother me a lot.
Opportunity attacks ruin 5e’s combat. Everyone’s afraid of getting hit so they either play a rogue or they get used to fighting like rock em sock em robots.
Also: the fact that Druid's wildshape does not include ANY beast stats.
I fixed a lot of long rest shenanigans by reminding players they can only get one long rest a day.
The bonuses from a shield, shield spell, and shield of faith do not stack. I think this is a more elegant solution than setting an arbitrary cap of 21.
Is there a way to speed up combat by adapting the sly flourish method of running hordes for running summoned creatures?
What do we think of the Handling Mobs rules on page 250 of the DMG? That seems like pretty quick resolution for groups of summons.
HI Mike, is there somewhere where I can get a download of your 5E house rules page ?
1hr short rests were a poor implementation. Have been using 10 minutes with a min of 1hr between for a few years now and it pretty much solves the SR issues.
Mike: Quick answer to your question... nothing is so broken that I can not run with this edition for another 10 years. Longer answer...WotC is attempting to make some things better, funner (not a real word), cooler and I applaud their attempt. They want to sell millions of more books and I wish them well. If I come to the conclusion that I absolutely need to buy the new PHB, I probably will.
Perhaps we can summarize the quite real problems Mike outlines as roll playing > role playing. In my game, the players, well, one player who roll plays more than any other, will cry holy hell if the monsters ever roll play over role play. Patience required.
Even with all these fixes we all know when the new stuff hits the market people will go out and get it. I did it from the beginning but realized my income level would never support the expansion of the game. So, I played the first edition, 3.5, and now 5th. I will not be investing in any new expansions from Hasbro and their subsidiaries (Wizards of the Coast) because of the whole OGL. That is my call and mine alone to make for me and mine. As for the rest, rely on what is out there, explore the resources for the games you have, and let your imagination take hold!
Perhaps I am too late seeing this for my comment to have helped someone watching this, but regarding Pass Without Trace being used and seen as a Mass Invisibility spell for the party(which I have encountered often), This is how I have handled this problem:
Remind the player casting it that it only gives the bonus to those they choose WITHIN 30ft of them. *NOT* at the time of cast or anything like that, the target being Self supports this. This means if you wanted a party of 4-5 to all have the bonus as they sneak through a castle or city, I let them know that a big huddled party of 4 adventurers have a MUCH better chance of passing any type of stealth check if they were not huddled together in a 30ft zone. A stealth check for a single passerby versus a group basically goes up in difficulty exponentially.
I feel that makes sense and the players I've had have agreed and ended up using it as you described - in the wilderness and to not be tracked.
Edit: +10 is absurd, but I reason that it's most likely a Druid or Ranger casting this and it takes their concentration, so... yeah anything less is trash.
Your Tiny Hut talk, I can't disagree more. The entire point of the spell is to give you a safe place when there isn't already a safe place. And the DM having to change their plans due to player choices is... I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but isn't that why we GIVE players choices? If they can't throw us for a loop, what do we need them for? We could just write a book.
Yeah I agree. I also still don't agree with his opinion on Shield. I feel extremely glad when my spellcasters or an eldritch knight uses it.
Agreed. Better to just scrap the spell than make these changes imo.
Why in the world would a TTRPG whose only detailed subsystem simulates gradual descents into ever-increasing peril give you a perfect, comfortable, unbreachable "safe place" that you can deploy anywhere with just 10 minutes to spare and no resource cost? What choice are you expecting the players to make here? Why should we gauge how far our resources will take us, and how close we are to running out, and whether we should retreat and prepare better... when we can just log off the server for 8 hours, thereby completely negating the attrition-gameplay that's at the core of 5e. Yes, you're right about "the entire point of the spell" - that's why it's a badly thought-out spell in need of fixing or removing. It gives the players something we shouldn't get to have.
@@ikaemos my working theory is that the illusion of simulating a gradual descent into ever-increasing peril, paired with the actual triviality of winning in an arena where you never have the number of encounters you're "supposed" to have, is a major factor in the edition's success.
Mike its time you fully convert to Level Up . We have so mush cool stuff . Join us , Dew it ! :)
You have a link to your house rule document?
I'm stealing these rules...