Any homebrew rule that is kept secret until triggered. DMs, be honest with yourself, if you actually thought your homebrew rules where good, you would not feel the need to trick your players into engaging with them.
In my experience, it's either "I don't like how rules work in this case so I won't use them", without ever thinking it through beforehand, or the GM giving negative amount of f-s about the game in general (never announcing rules - not even house rules, it was his own system and we didn't know how it worked - was the least of problems)
Everyone I know in the RPG Community absolutely refuses to play in any game where ALL the Rules aren't put on the Table before Character Generation begins so everyone know what to expect...any D/GM that springs a "Surprise" Home-Rule on the Group mid-Campaign, tends to get VERY rudely told off and the Campaign ends right then and there... Exceptions are made ONLY when the D/GM talks to the entire group explaining what new Rule they want to implement and why, usually to deal with a problem that happened in-game, if the entire Group hashes out and accepts the new Rule, then it's accepted as if it existed from Day 1...and sometimes it's a Player, not the D/GM that asks for a new Rule and explains why they believe it's needed, again, if everyone agrees, it's in...
I feel this with a passion, so I'm trying to avoid it myself. However, I'm planning on going for a more buckwild game, with fewer restrictions than standard dnd. Listing them all out as individual rules seems like a bad way to convey it though. I'm thinking of just listing examples instead so that people have an idea of where the line is. Like -if you want to give up a weapon to "wield" two shields? I'll help you with that and do tweaks to the loot so you regularly get some cool "shields" where I just swapped out the weapon or armor stats for shield ones. -if you want to change your spell/weapon's damage type before the game starts or even on a long rest we can work with that. Scribe wizards still have their niche of switching damage types during combat. -If a 2014 version of a spell like true strike is useless RAW or RAI we can go with the 2024 version or tweak it ourselves to make it work. -You want to do something in-flavor like backflipping off a platform or sliding down the rail when you've got plenty of movement to take the stairs? I won't make you roll for that. Have fun. -You've got an idea for a monk uses X weapon but monk rules say you can't use it? I'm fine with okaying the weapon. As long as people don't go full coffeelock levels of disruption to the narrative and the table's collective fun I'm fine with dropping small restrictions here and there. But listing every single example would take ages and no one wants to read all of that. If you've got some alternative ideas I'd love to hear them.
@@TheMightyBattleSquid The most recent example I had was warlock spells and invocations that don't fit the theme of the patron are banned, but the only way to find out which are banned, you have to experiment. you can't pick spells after level 1 anyway, you have to earn them in game. Other classes got some abilities extra instead.
I was about to play an artificer with guns and then my dm told me that in her homebrew before every attack with a firearm you should throw a d20 without modifiers and if you get something below 10 your gun explodes in your hands, dealing damage to you...
Guns aren’t for every D&D game so fair if a DM doesn’t want them but there might be a better way to communicate that 😂 Also does this apply to NPC’s and enemies as well? 🧐
every time i see someone bring an artificer to the table, i inwardly groan, because i know they're gonna do some crazy broken thing bringing real world knowledge and engineering or physics into the game. . .
@@Femaiden I’ve never played one but if I did I would have the companion subclass so I can have a big red panda robot. For some reason everyone overlooks it and the iron man suit and just want guns.
Critical Fumbles unnecessarily penalise martials who use more attack rolls, and make zero sense since as you get more skilled as an adventurer you become MORE likely to make a critical fumble.
My recommendation is, if you like critical fumbles, use a chart where the chance of bad outcomes is reduced at higher levels so as to reflect the growing skill of the player characters. That way you at least dodge the stupid "high level characters somehow fumble more" nonsense.
My homebrew rule that my players adore is, if you two or more pc are next to each other in initiative, I'll let them take actions together, meaning, oh fighter has to fly to pursue the bbeg but he has no fly spell??, well, the wizard has the "same" initiative, he can cast the stupid spell before he jumps even if it isn't his turn just yet.
Interesting, I usually just have whoever has the highest modifiers go first and if that's a tie too, then I just let the players pick. But then again, I have very flexible rules about reserved actions. I let people reserve some or all of their actions, so they can already combine turns basically. My only condition is that they have to state aloud very specific triggers for said actions (which I typically write down) and if their next turn comes around without the triggers occurring they lose the held actions.
The worst homebrew rule I've ever seen is a GM who in 5th edition HATED bonus actions or reactions, so he just didn't allow them. I left after the first combat session.
I can see being against that theoretically, but then don't play 5e. The action economy is set up the way it is. Imagine how utterly lopsided class and monster encounter balance goes if you remove half of players' abilities. Absurd.
That one can at least be justified (some players, when they get "bored" of a character or don't like how something went, will just off their character in that moment regardless of the consequences it'd have for the story or party, and then pull out a new character with a customized list of abilities suited for the new situation). Not something to worry about with most parties, but if you have a player or players that (outside of that) haven't given you reason to kick them out, it keeps them from trying to treat their characters like disposable pokemon that lack investment in the story & party.
@DBArtsCreators What you're describing sounds frustrating but if a player has to start at level one they may as well leave the campaign. Even if the rest of the party is only level three you're operating at like half the health and with no class features, if the party is past level five you're completely useless.
@@joep2999 It can depend. Specification is on "death" after all; assuming the DM isn't an ass, then working with the DM to organically walk-out your character would mean you get to start with a character that would be at the party level (alternatively, work with the DM to have a pre-made backup character that is an NPC / DMPC until you need it). Or, other alternative: you start at the party level, but all your levels are in essentially side-kick levels or NPCs levels (just extra HD / proficiency bonus / skills). As the party gets long rests, the new character gets to exchange NPC levels for class levels.
@@MS-jp3opeh, it depends. I've had a new player join a campaign as an underleveled character, but nobody even noticed an imbalance because they were a wizard in a party of non-optimized martials, they were arguably more powerful even at lower level. Another player I had wasn't underleveled, but it wouldn't even matter if they were, since they solved their first couple encounters by using batman prep, equipment and environment. In the next campaign I'm planning to start one player at a higher level than the rest of the party, since he doesn't enjoy low levels and struggles to build for them, while other players would be overwhelmed if I tasked them with making a higher level characters. I'm fairly confident I can give everyone an appropriate challenge for their power. It does help that I have underleveled party members level up significantly faster until equalized. So yeah, it works, but I would never go as far as starting at lv1, that power difference is too significant.
OK, and if everyone else is Level 16+, how exactly does your new Level 1 Character survive the first round of Combat when the Enemy Arrows/Spells start flying? I can see your new Character being up to 5 Levels lower than the rest of the Party (your Level should catch up fairly quickly due to your Bonus XP from being under-leveled for the Encounter), that's survivable if you play smart, but possibly 12+ Levels under the Party Average, not survivable at all unless the DM is fudging the Enemy Attack Rolls against you (their Base Attack alone would be high enough that they should miss ONLY on a Nat. 1 or 2, everything else would result in a To Hit Roll more than high enough to beat your AC since you'd only have basic 1st Level gear/Armour...ye GOD'S that was an Insane Rule...I'd have Noped the HELL out of that Game and refused to ever accept that Person as D/GM ever again when I heard that one... [Shudder]... Lunacy doesn't BEGIN to describe it... 😄😁😆😅😂🤣
I had a GM who had just finished playing Secret of Evermore on the SNES. You know what he loved most about that game, apparently? Having to pay for spell components in order to use magic. He revealed this only AFTER I had rolled up a wizard. Suddenly the text of "Spell Component Pouch", where it automatically provides any component without a listed cost, didn't exist. I was expected to buy every single component and keep track of the contents of my pouch on a separate sheet. Every adder's stomach and pinch of colored sand. Anytime he, personally, didn't like a spell, suddenly its components were no longer available. I took the Eschew Materials feat with my very next level. It didn't matter. He assigned costs to every component that didn't have one, nullifying the feat.
@@jdizzy192 This was 3.0, mate. They didn't exist. And he would have ignored that too, because they do the exact same thing as a spell component pouch.
Then it was past time to swap the Eschew Materials Feat with the Eschew DM Feat and find a new game...😄😁😆😅😂🤣 I've done that a couple of times and bluntly (but Politely) told the DM EXACTLY why People don't want to play in their Games...so far only one actually listened to what I was saying and didn't take it as a Personal Attack/Insult...they got better as a DM and now have a stable Group that enjoys the game...the others either stopped DMing and are strictly Players now, gave up RPGing entirely or left the City and I don't know if they're still trying to DM or not... At the moment, there are 2 People I will NEVER accept as D/GM and one of them I simply will NEVER Game with (they are a horrible "Do it MY way EXACTLY or I kill your Character!" GM and FAR Worse, a Power Gamer/Min-Maxer/Rules Lawyer as a Player)...to Paraphrase Rob from Karma Comment Chameleon, "Screw You Kat!" The first one is just a bad GM that doesn't know how to put together or properly run a Campaign, their fine as a Player... There was a 3rd person on my Not as a GM but OK as a Player List but unfortunately, he Passed Away not that long ago so now my List has 2 names on it...
The absolute worst rule was a character creation one. You use a d20 to roll for stats, no re-rolls, and it was straight down the stats. Additionally you had to have a minimum 13 in a stat order to take classes, basically the rules for multi-classing ie you have to have a 13 in Dex to be a Rogue. The issue was if you didn't roll higher than a 11 then you don't have a class. The highest I rolled was a 10. I would have to wait until level 4 in order to get a class if I got the ASI but would actually have to wait another level because I would be 'multi-classing'. This was my first DnD game, I am veteran TTRPG player. I noped out of that game because it was going to be a miserable experience.
@@arcturuslight_ They probably invented a "peasant" class, akin to Onion Knight in Final Fantasy 3 or the Freelancer in Final Fantasy Tactics. If I had to work with a system like that, I would've borrowed the concept of "Level 0" characters (I think Greyhawk invented it) as people who could learn multiple class features before dedicating themselves to a full class. So, you could have a fighter that knew mage and cleric cantrips as well as some light rogue skills. I'd also personally rule that anyone who had _no_ stats over 13 could raise at least one to 17 automatically.
There are some hardcore RPGs like that out there. IIRC, the Judge Dredd game has rules like that, but there's the possibility of death in character creation too, so I probably would've "killed" that character and re-rolled until I got something semi-decent. After six or seventeen characters run screaming at the monsters equipped with nothing but a dagger and insatiably bloodlust, leaving the rest of their generated fortune to my next character each time, I think the DM would've reversed the whole "stick with what you roll" rule before I got rich enough to buy a mercenary army large enough to take out the entire campaign.
@@HappilyHomicidalHooligan yeah but they mentioned that you can somehow get an ASI to then be able to take a level in a class, but ASI is a class feature, so it looks like they invented some classless class
Ok, so you know one of the big features of the fey Wanderer ranger is that you can ADD your wisdom to charisma skills (mainly persuasion and deception)? Well my DM thought THAT was too OP and demanded I choose either wisdom or charisma as the stat for those rolls instead. Yeah, he thought the main feature of the subclass was too powerful. Also he banned rogue/bard builds and hated moon druids.
@@tehrulefoo In theory, I can kind of understand his logic that being able to add *two* stat modifiers to a skill roll would be OP, but at the same time, between your main attacking stat, CON to not die, and WIS for your spellcasting, you're MAD enough that there should be no way you'll have a high charisma on top of all that.
TBH: The problem with 5e isn't that healing word brings up a party member (it's part of it, but not the whole thing) it's the fact that a 5th level cure spell at level 9 is *just* as good at letting the target take exactly one more hit as healing word at 1st is. The way 5e is designed most things are set up to deal lots of damage, but the damage outpaces the healing so there's no real point in doing anything but wait until down to heal.
Yes. This also leads many GMs to impose penalties such as exhaustion or lingering injuries when PCs are downed , which has two problems: Firstly, you're punishing players for doing what the rules incentivise and also, you're using an 'All Stick and No Carrot' situation. You're not giving any benefits for people doing it differently so they're either punished for doing what the game rules expect, or forced to play spending all their spells on an uphill struggle to stop PCs falling over when the mechanics work against that.
The system of pf2e to combat this is pretty nice imho. It needs to be put into the context, that in pf2e, armour is there to prevent crits from happening, as a +2 weapon doesn't do +2dmg, but +2 DICE. So, basically you'll almost never out heal crits.
@@amorencinteroph3428 You're not wrong, but the problem is exasperated by the fact that you don't heal nearly as much damage as being dished out, combined with not going to negative hit poins....
During a modern campaign, I homebrewed that firearms would inflict a small radius of thunder damage whenever they were fired in confined spaces. It was annoying to implement, so I dropped it before the end of its introductory session.
Honestly, the only place where I'd implement damage from being next to the gun would be standing next to firing artillery (because those are big guns) or if someone shoots in melee range (because even if blank, it's still a stream of hot gasses at high pressures)
To be honest, I haven't shoot in real life (maybe airgun at some point, but it doesn't count), but... Do modern firearms straight up hurt you when you shoot? I know they could affect your hearing (perhaps con save against deafness if you don't wear ear protection), but I wouldn't interpret anything less than risk of breaking your wrist as thunder damage. Early firearms on the other hand...
@@nabra97 if by hurt you mean things like garand thumb - yes, but only if you're not paying attention or you put your hands in stupid places. If not, then anything handheld is not strong enough to do such things.
Before I reply to everyone at once, I'm going to clarify a bit of my thought process. 5e did a terrible job naming the damage type as "thunder" damage. A lot of spells and effects that inflict thunder damage are doing so with vibrations, which is the primary component of sound. I find it weird that they called it thunder damage, instead of carrying the name from 3e D&D that Pathfinder also uses: sonic damage. With that out of the way... @Jfk2Mr It was a 5ft area, and 1 singular point of damage. I only activated it when the hallways (or cave branches) were roughly 5 feet wide, and made of materials that are known to resist certain forces. I dropped the rule when my players came upon a slanted hallway and I was thinking about how the soundwaves might bounce to affect enemies around a corner. I knew then that I was focusing on emphasizing the wrong aspects of the game. @nabra97 Even with suppressors, firearms are very loud. In an open area, or in an area that is made of materials that can absorb the energy from a shockwave, it's not so bad. The wave either has a place to go, or it will lose enough energy. In a place like a rock wall or concrete bunker, though, those waves are going to be bouncing around until they find an unprotected eardrum. And at 600 mph, they WILL find some eardrums. @brandonturner4113 Forget players tuning out; **I** was tuning out. That's when I knew I had a bad rule: it wasn't fun for anyone, even me. Final words: Prioritize fun over immersion or realism, even if you or your players demand more of the latter. It was a lesson I learned the hard way, but that's okay. Failure is the best teacher, whether that be mine or any of the people reading this. You'll know what to not do going forward. Sometimes that can be just as important as knowing exactly what to do.
I had a DM rule that any critical hits against us would result in our armour breaking, while critical misses we made would result in weapons breaking. This might not have been so bad, except we were constantly starved for gold. He also deliberately broke the barbarian's shield because, and I quote, "Barbarians with shields are just too OP". The rule was especially daft when he gave the ranger a suit of adamantine chainmail, the special effect of which is to prevent critical hits. When this was pointed out, he grudgingly said it would take three crits to destroy the armour instead of the usual one.
i had a DM impose the "on nat 1, your weapon breaks" on us. . .dropping the bomb suddenly , mid combat, 4 sessions in, right after same DM had just given my character a custom tailored homebrew magical weapon , made for my character. . and of course, i rolled a 1 and my weapon broke. .. the most annoying part of it was the DM not telling us beforehand or laying it out in session zero, but rather dropping it on us mid session, but in all fairness, the DM was new and i don't think they did it out of malice, just inexperience and they wanted to try something new. The had literally just thought of it during that session. also, when i asked the DM if my item was fixable, they said yeah, but i have to go on a quest for it, so i agreed to it thinking that could be a clever way to do a side quest story. because otherwise it made no sense that the DM went out of their way to homebrew a special magic item themed around my character, only to have it break the very first time i used it. The DM realized this and was going to set up a special quest for me but then everyone just stopped showing up to sessions for whatever other real life reasons and the dampaign dissolved, so i never got to see how it played out
You can exchange your movement to take another action. (A rule I actually used for a while before realizing how dumb it is) Sneak Attack was its own move, not bonus damage on an attack. Everything besides attacking provokes attacks of opportunity from nearby enemies. Any rule that's made specifically to make your thing not work.
I've actually wanted to have there be something one could use excess movement for in combat; it sucks to have a resource just sit there unused. Something like "you can spend 5 points of movement to boost your attack rolls, damage rolls, saves or AC by +1 until the start of your next turn" or something like that. Only issue I have with implementing such is that it's more for players to juggle and remember, resulting in more of the game just being bogged down every turn.
@@DBArtsCreators Why not use flanking rules? it at least encourages players to "fix" their positions. It's true that most of the time you just stand in front of the enemy and hit, but that's a 5e thing that requires way more effort to fix
For the movement, I feel like that's only something that can work if its baked fully into the system. Pathfinder does this pretty well as it does away with movement and bonus actions. Instead, you have 3 actions, but its balanced because things like casting spells costs 2 actions. Though i do understand that changing systems over just this is a big ask.
@@Lilith_Harbinger Regular flanking is too strong (free Advantage); the common homebrew swapping it to a flat bonus is better. Neither solves the mobility issue though, since positions don't need to change once characters are in position (and it's usually an excessive advantage regardless, not worth the effort).
Oh, I have a worse one. Nat1 and your melee attack hits you, and your ranged attack hits a random ally within range NO MATTER THEIR POSITION. Meaning, you can hit *SOMEONE BEHIND YOU* or even *SOMEONE WHOS BEHIND A FULL COVER*. THERE IS NO SAVE AGAINST IT.
Depends on the circumstance in my opinion for hitting an ally. If it could feasibly be done. Like a ranged attack as the barbarian is running towarzs the target. Or you back swung to hard and smacked your buddy in the face behind you.
@@Meme-Weeb-Dweeb The problem is it is punishing martial classes, and the stronger they get, the worse they become at fighting. "Noodlefist is one of the greatest martial arts masters in the world. He can move faster than the naked eye can see, pluck arrows out of the air and stopped visibly aging. He also hits an ally twice per minute. Nobody believes him he is doing it by accident."
Mine are any changes/nerfs to sneak attack because they almost always result from the same thing, "The Rogue got a crit and one shot my bbeg. Theyre too strong"
Can mitigate this by using something I made called shielded HP. The boss has a number of charges that have an HP amount tied to them, if the party does enough damage in a round a charge is removed and only one charge can be lost per round. This rule makes bosses tanker, means you have to remember a much smaller number, and prevents aforementioned one shots on said bosses while still letting the rogues attack give the party an advantage.
Sounds to me like here it was a problem not with the concept, but with the implementation: too high of a chance for too negative of results. 1-3 on a d20 being a storm that could get you struck by lightning (I imagine doing significant damage) seems like a bit much. Done wrong, these things could *very* easily end up feeling like "time to roll your daily random debuff tables!"
One of my worst mistakes as a GM was to sum up the experience from a combat encounter and apply it to every party member, without dividing it. This made them incredibly powerful per encounter completed and made every other source of exp trivial in comparison. This campaign also happened to involve the Four Horsemen, which is why they grew so powerful so quickly.
One DM I played with ruled that we couldn't just move where we wanted to in Darkness effects because we couldn't see where we were going. So he rolled a d6 to see if we veered left or right in the darkness for every square we moved. It took a while to roll and seldom made that much of a difference. It was just annoying. And this was a Drow-Themed game, so this terrible homebrew came up fairly often.
"No, in my campaign there's no such thing as proficiency in Charisma checks: if you want to convince the guard, you'll have to do it by talking to me" "Also, we won't use Xanathar."
I had a dm who tweaked Divine Smite and was adamant it was a buff. Divine Smite no longer used spell slots, instead you could use it up to your proficiency bonus per long rest. it's damage scaled with your spell level (except they forgot level 5 so it was dealing a whole d8 less by level 17) and it didn't deal extra damage to undead and fiends. the reason the dm was adamant it was a buff was because *drumroll*..... you could choose to deal necrotic or psychic damage instead of just radiant
It’s not bad, just needs tweaking, just fix the d8 loss and the extra damage to undead and fiends and it is still good while also having its own unique limitations.
The worst rule I played with (for like a session cause the campaign stopped after that), was when my dm said that during combat, if you wanted to talk, you could only have 6 seconds to do so, cause that’s how long it took for a turn
Early on I had a DM who decided that projectile weapons shouldn't have an upper limit to their range. I have NO clue why he thought this was a good idea; it was just my second campaign, and even I knew this could only end disastrously. So I set out to make sure it did, just to prove my point. I rolled up a ranger with a bow and arrow, and the first chance I got I set about rounding up and drilling archers from the military of a nation we were allied with. The plan was simple: fire volleys of arrows over the horizon in the direction of the enemy country until we wiped out their population, knowing that we had no range limit and that the law of averages would give us at least one kill for every twenty arrows shot. There were THOUSANDS of archers, each with an extra quiver to double their 30 arrow ammo capacity. Guess how long the campaign lasted.
@@minaashido518I'm pretty sure what it actually meant was "the range of any ranged weapon is the whole battle scene, because nobody wants to measure it". If OP didn't like it, they could try to find middle ground or just leave (I have a grudge against interpreting sphere as a cube, so I can understand that), and if they wanted it to be specifically clarified, they could just ask. Using arrows as ballistic missiles to prove a point isn't a good solution in any of these cases
I played a ranger with firearms once on a oneshot, and everything was fine, then when I decided to play this character again in a campaign the DM, very same who I played forementioned oneshot with, decided that reloading this gun is gonna cost me an ACTION, after EVERY attack, and my ability to ignore loading property with a feat (which I already had on the oneshot and used without any issues) doesn't work. I tried to argue that this is a bad rule, in a discussion that lasted multiple hours of online discussion over an entire week, and in the end DM stood by his original ruling because "it's more realistic, these are times of flintlock not modern weapons so what else are you expecting? Just use a different weapon if you don't like it". I ended up never participating in that campaign. That gun dealt only 1d10 damage btw, and was an important backstory item for my character.
Some genius out there came up with an idea about just spending a few feet of movement to reload the gun depending on the time it would logically take to reload, which I think makes a lot more sense. So like you could spend 5ft of movement if you reloaded a colt pistol or a hunting rifle, either spent reloading it behind the cover before or while you moved around the battlemap. Made things much more fun.
@@DavidJoshua-zc8df That'd also open up the possibility of being able to get an ability that lets your character reload on the move, to either minimize or negate the movement cost of reloading.
People get weird about a lot of random stuff. The fact that crossbows, longbows, and eldritch blast exist in this universe probably wouldn't dissuade the guy. If your gun is literally just a loud crossbow when examined mechanically, and he's still giving you a bad time about it, then he's just unfit to make such decisions. If he's imposing illogical rules he pulled from his rear like that, that would indicate he's not qualified to GM. In the past when I've had GMs who played targeted homebrew games like that, the campaign was unpleasant in a LOT of other ways. You were right to bail. (I've been banned from playing a fighter because the GM believed that fighters are OP & lame and I should play a wizard instead; ended up as one of the worst D&D games I've ever played)
first table i ever played dnd at, the DM used critical fumbles on a nat 1. it wasn't that bad, just "you dropped you weapon and now have to waste a turn picking it back up", but the thing was that for the entirety of playing 2e, i didn't realize it was a homebrew rule and thought it was a real rule, so i imposed it on my players when i DM'ed. .
The dm decided that if a race has a dedicated god, then all clerics of that race has to be a cleric to that god and be a cleric of their domain (ie Gruumush is the god of orcs and has the domains of war and tempest, so all orc clerics have to be war/tempest clerics of Gruumush) He didn’t tell me that until after he kicked me out for making a dragonborn death cleric, and his only argument is that “Tiamat isn’t a death god you should know this”
I had a game where we used "realistic" injuries and stuff. The problem I had with it was my character got a major wound, and was laid up for weeks in game (and technically out of game) so the DM literally just had me make a new character because mine needed to stay behind and recover. And then my first character got kidnapped. I use something akin to Rogue Trader, where if you ever fall unconscious, you'll get a trauma. That trauma will give you a debuff until you either get some form of healing magic (a lesser restoration removes 1, a greater removes 3), or until you have a long rest. Sure a long rest shouldn't fix everything but it's a game, and I need to keep things moving.
@@TheRoseWolfLike what Nettle said, the entire idea of "going prone" is to make yourself a smaller target against ranged weaponry. Militaries across the globe do it. Tell me, which one is easier to snipe: a tall, 6 ft target with arms and legs, or a really thin line less than a foot tall? For melee, it's obvious that you'd get advantage since your target is in, well, a disadvantageous position for melee combat.
I think the worst one I've not only had happen to me, but also read multiple horror stories about WHY it's so awful, is any time a DM rules that if a PC is attempting to persuade another PC, then they just have to roll a persuasion check. *Especially* when the PC they're attempting to persuade doesn't get an opposed check to resist.
The worst rule I've seen is applying the automatic fail of the Nat 1 attack and the automatic success of the Nat 20 attack to skill checks. It's not a deal breaker mind you, but it tends to be frustrating for both DM's and PC's. It means no matter how trained you are in a certain skill, you can always fumble it like a commoner, on the other hand things that are supposed to be really difficult can be resolved simply because a character got lucky and rolled a Nat 20. Unless the D.M. and the group are prepared for the utter chaos that a 5% chance of stats not meaning anything for every role made, it will be frustrating. Even when you are prepared for it, you are knowingly giving murphy's law free reign over the campaign. Which means that it's never a matter of if, but when your rolls hit those numbers that the story can shift dramatically.
11:00 i like initiative every round its an interesting idea but dnd is not designed for changing initiative. even hold turn which was common in older stuff cant exist in 5e because of it. spells ending on your next turn or opponents turns or whatever mean shifting initiatives can massively break the game. iv tried to come up with solutions to this for various reasons over the years but it always comes down to the moment initiative changes for any reason spellcasters and effects become wonky fask
I had a DM who decided he wanted to take inspiration from dark souls and make a boss fight where the boss had insane movement, was practically invulnerable on half of all turns, and hit like a truck. His thought process was that we would have to strategically target it on the "vulnerable" turns, which were in fact just normal health mechanics, and somehow try to defend or avoid it otherwise. I'd just rolled a new character after an honestly fun and interesting death that I hadn't minded. I got one-shot by a damage over time effect - from full health to negative half my hit points in one turn, with more coming on the next turn. DM ruled I survived nonetheless because he didn't want my new character gone literally the scene it was introduced. Only reason we won the fight was because a friend who wasn't in the campaign joined for the one session. Friend was a huge power gamer so was dealing damage on a hit or a miss and was very hard to hurt, especially since he was given all the gear he needed because he was a one off character anyway. Still friends with the DM, he's a fantastic guy, but everyone left that session frustrated and I think he was a little hurt by our reactions.
Back in the day of 3.5 DND, I was with a friend who was taking part of my evil drow campaign at a local shop to get another players handbook, because honestly having only one was not the best for a table of six players. When we overhear a conversation of another player saying that their DM lets them spend skill points to buy feats, at a rate of three points per feat. Now, my friend here is very new to the game, but out of his mouth comes a "Isn't that incredibly overpowered?" and I could not stop a mighty, villainous guffaw! With me saying "Out of the mouth of a newb no less!"
I can guess where this came from; "there is a feat that gets you +3 on a skill, so why not the other way around?" Except that's not how min-maxing works. That feat is only worth it when that skill is really important for your build.
Ok, before i continue watching (im on the image of knight with the video title) i made a rule that i actually thought was litterally real because that's how games like fire emblem worked: you kill the enemy, you get the exp it alots. You could see where this went. One PC overpowering the others because they were able to get the last swing on an enemy, and inevitably overshoot a PC in 1 or 2 levels after a few sessions. I only did this rule because I didn't know the experience gain rules, who reads the DMG?
I used to have a DM who ran a session where all the players in the group were split up in different places in the world, usually in pairs, but never more than that. There were seven of us, the DM not included, and I was a Chronomancy Wizard, travelling with another Wizard (I forget their specific subclass). We didn't last very long, since I was the only one who brought a healing spell between the two of us, and it was False Life. A different DM had an arguably *worse* rule, which was that if I get 3 successful rolls for a stat in a row, I get to increase that stat by +1. If I get 3 unsuccessful rolls for that stat in a row, it decreases by -1. If that wasn't bad enough, all the stats started at around 8 or 9, so I wound up getting more failures than I did successes, tanking my stats. I brought this up to the DM, asking if it would be possible to maybe get a bit of leeway in terms of rebuilding the stats that I've lost, since otherwise I'd eventually hit 0. The DM said something along the lines of "you wouldn't be complaining if your stats were increasing, so you shouldn't be complaining when your stats are decreasing either." I didn't stay much longer in that game.
If you leave a targets line of sight, it procs opportunity attack. So if you try to skirt around an opponent to try to get flanking with an ally, you might proc opportunity attack even if you stay in melee
Not sure I understand what you mean here. The vanilla normal rule is: MOVING provokes AoO, and that occurs when your as you are "barely" LEAVING a square, not reaching into a new square. If the enemy can see you "as you are leaving as square", it provokes AoO. The fact that the new targeted movement square is behind some obstacle blocking line of sight from the enemy to you, does NOT prevent the AoO from occurring. "You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach. To make the opportunity attack, you use your reaction to make one melee attack against the provoking creature. The attack occurs right before the creature leaves your reach." Also, there is no "facing" in 5e. Your character is not looking "forward" in any specific direction. Line of sight is 360 degrees. You might disagree, but those are the official rules. So when a DM makes a House Rule you should just ask to write that rule down CLEARLY so that there is no confusion possible.
@@patrickrannou1278 whats aoo?? I know how regular opportunity attack works, DM had it if you moved from one square within melee of an opponent to another they arent facing but still within melee, somehow they would get an opportunity attack. We spent hours debating wtf he meant by facing and what a character sees and they decided that if youre facing north for instance, you see the top 3 squares in front, the 1 on each side, but you dont see the 3 behind. so if I went from his side to behind him, hed get an opportunity attack against me
@@Tototoron what you've described was partially the case in 3.x; if you left a threatened square as part of normal movement, rather than using the Withdraw action, or a '5-foot step', you'd trigger an Attack of Opportunity even if you went from one threatened square to another. I think something similar to the second part existed as an optional rule.
@10:43 - The chances of rolling a 1 on either die (or both) is not 10.7% when making two attacks, it is 9.75%. It's always less than +5% when adding in additional dice. With 2d20, there are 39 possibilities out of 400 to get a 1. Worst house rule ever: In the desert after each day of travel, everyone rolls a d6. Lowest gets dehydration. We had a decanter of endless water.
It you are going to do that sort of thing in your games, you could probably just creatively make use of pre-existiting skills instead of just adding a new one.
There are times that makes sense, such as when reinforcements are arriving 'x' rounds after combat or the alarm is triggered. Definately not a 100% of the time thing though.
The worst Home Brew Rule I ever suffered under was Your Character can't receive XP unless they are in a safe environment where they can fully relax and contemplate their achievements/experiences, such places being a Town or City etc., NOT a tent camping in the wilderness or a clearing on the side of a road... The biggest problem I had with it is our Group was in some Extra-Dimensional Corridor traveling I forget where now and had been for more than 6 Real World Months of weekly Game Sessions with no end in sight...we were 3rd Level when we entered the Corridor and when we finally reached a "Safe Place" (assuming we ever did) where we could conduct that introspection/contemplation and FINALLY receive all the accumulated XP, we'd jump from 3rd. level to at LEAST 15th level overnight... The Group finally got so sick and tired of the same-old, same-old with no end in sight we all collectively told the DM to stuff himself up his Waste Disposal Orifice (we were not NEARLY that polite when we told him, I'm cleaning up the Language so my Comment doesn't shock younger readers, or teach them new words/phrases they haven't already learned at school/online 😄😁😆😅😂🤣) and that was that for that Campaign and the Group moved on to a different Campaign under a new DM...
I actually really like the idea of leveling up in a safe place, when you have time to reflect. It offers some interesting roleplay opportunities around what would otherwise be a purely mechanical effect of leveling up. But man do you really need to consider what your game is going to look like if you want to use that rule. I can't possibly imagine this working for anything but a city campgain where you know you're going to be returning home for downtime a lot!
@@torifort717 It wasn't the concept on not Leveling Up until in a Safe Place, it was the DM's belief that the ONLY area that is 'Safe' is a Town or City...he absolutely REFUSED to give us our Earned XP even if we could use a spell such as Leomund's Tiny Hut to create an extra-dimensional place that ONLY WE COULD ENTER to rest, relax and 'Contemplate Our Achievements/Experiences' and thus earn the XP we had waiting for us... THAT is what so MASSIVELY pissed off the group...we had no problem with the idea as a whole, just how the DM applied it...he absolutely REFUSED to allow us to create a Safe Place out in the wilderness despite there being multiple ways to actually do so and he refused to let us reach the end of that Never-to-be-Sufficiently-Damned Transit Corridor so we could actually get to a bloody Town/City and receive the XP we damn well earned! As I mentioned in my original comment, by our Math, if/when we did finally get to a freaking Town, we'd instantly jump from Level 3 to level 15 MINIMUM...and that's insane, no game should ever have a situation where Characters have that much unapplied XP...
3:45 reminded me of a VERY crazy and nasty game called "Fatal". if i remember correctly, it has a rule that EVERY time ANY spell is cast, there's a small change that THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE WILL COLLAPSE! also, character creation is TOTALLY random! random CLASS, random SKILLS, random SEX, random personality, it's TOTALLY nuts!
From what I know about this game, these are the least bad thing about it. It's unplayable in multiple ways at the same time and was created to make a point (with point being "I'm an incel and I have way too much free time")
@02:30 Uhhh, thats actually pretty reasonable, from what I understood of the ruling. The Acrobatics check was not to clear the jump, but to do those tumbles you see parkour people do after a insane jump. Though admittedly, i wouldn't make that same call, unless the landing was below the jump off point. Even then i wouldn't make it at disadvantage.
I had a DM that rolled a D12 to determine what encounters we'd get. Sounds fine, but there was a 11 in 12 chance that the encounter was a powerful beast that gave status affects just by being near it. THEN, if you avoided to face the thing, just got out of there without ever engaging the creature, just making a strategic "Yeah screw that noise" the DM made us roll a wisdom save, if we failed we'd be permanently afraid and at disadvantage against that specific creature type. Having to go across the world to one specific town to get it removed. "It'S nOt A cUrSe! It'S fEaR mEcHaNiCs!". Yeah, I left.
I did a temporary ruling during a massive battle that they didnt have to roll to hit, just do dmg and thsts how many you hit (they were being swarmed by enemies). That wasnt the problem. What was though, was me allowing Ranger Horde Breaker to doubke your roll. In 5 turns, one player got over 60 kills
one i heard about but didn't actually see: making everyone re-roll initiative at the beginning of EVERY combat round! edit: oops, someone mentioned it at 11:03!
@@leonelegender No, in D&D you roll initiative once at the beginning of combat, and it remains in that order for every round thereafter until combat ends. Having to reroll initiative every round for the entire combat isn't just painfully slow (repeating the step slows down the actual process of combat by quite a lot), it's also adds a lot of uncertainty to players trying to plan their next turn, which slows things down even more. However charming the idea may look on paper, in actual practice it's best to avoid this houserule. The game runs smoother and feels better without it.
1:15 one of my DM's had that for Only Barbs, fighters and munks. It worked out well since our munk died early and was replaced by a paladin, there was just me the fighter and our barb to take advantage of the rule
My brother has been our forever DM for quite some time, and is an excellent at it, but the one thing he does that absolutely drives me bat-crap crazy is that he uses performance checks for way more than it is supposed to be. If it comes to whittling, or trying to do some sort of Hands-On something or else he calls for a performance check rather than using it for things that are actually performing
I feel like the wisdom/intelligence save against persuasion checks can be a interesting and good thing so long as said check just prevents them from falling for something blatantly stupid
i think what's worse is i had a dm say "i don't allow persuasion checks. You have to role play it, using your own words to convince me , in character " and then they would just stonewall me, no matter what i said. doesn't help that i'm on the spectrum and bad at improv, which completely invalidated the 18 cha i put on my character. If i'm expected to have 18 cha IRL, i wouldn't be playing dnd, i'd be out there convincing real people to do my bidding. . .
@@Femaiden "If i'm expected to have 18 cha IRL, i wouldn't be playing dnd, i'd be out there convincing real people to do my bidding." That's a pretty good argument to demonstrate how stupid that ruling is. Too bad you probably didn't think of it at the time.
I had a DM that if a single attack hit you and caused half or more of your current HP to be lost then you would fall unconscious and need to make death saves. Absolutely sucks the fun out of fighting when you can get one tapped by a good hit.
For that “roll for severity” I think that could be fun if it were still tiny changes. A 1/1 is you just fail completely, a 1/4 you take a few hp of damage caused by you smacked against the ground as you tripped. A 20/1 is a critical hit, a 20/4 the enemy gets crit damage and falls prone or something. Little things.
I've had to deal with a Xenomorph-esque homebrew in a game I was in once (as a player). That thing was so utterly busted it wasn't even funny: 400+ HP, +13 to attack, 6-8 attacks per turn depending on whether it was raged or not (barbarian class fyi) each dealing around 50-70 damage on average, and somewhere like, 25+ AC. *All of this at around LEVEL 10!* Also it tamed a freaking T-Rex. Seriously it nearly SOLO'D the *Ancient Blue Dragon BBEG* back when the party was at level 7, and would've outright KILLED said BBEG then and there if it weren't for the DM having to aggressively employ a tactic called "lying about the boss's health". We now cite that Character as the definition of an Overpowered Homebrew Character, and an example of what NOT to allow in a game.
reminds me of the most overpowered D&D character ever, "pun-pun". that build uses a specific module, and involves a Kobold Druid with a very specific creature for a Familiar. the combo enables them to both give each other infinitely stacking permanent buffs, as in all attributes in the HUNDREDS, and able to use EVERY "spell-like ability' in the ENTIRE monster manual!
my old DM decided that every attacker after the 1st got a +10 to hit. the logic being your attention is divided. this is when flanking rules already gave a +2. and we would ALWAYS be outnumbered because the campaign was balanced on us fighting hordes. 4 people, fighting goblin camps.
I did my own version of critical fumble. Firstly it’s OPT-IN per roll. Secondly the negative effects lessen as you gain higher levels, indicating your greater skill. Lastly as the negative effects lessen they are replaced by trade-off effects, something bad happens but something beneficial also happens making it actually worthwhile to use the table.
I mean arcance components are literally written in the book as a requirement for the spells. How the bloody hell is that homebrew? Whats next? They complain that silence doesnt allow them to use spells with a verbal component? Also, the wusses could have switched to divine magic users.
@@ashtongiertz8728 Typically they just get handwaved away by saying that any components that cost less than 1 GP are just kept in a component pouch. Having to keep track of that sort of thing is kind of silly.
We have a bunch of homebrew rules, but I have a definitive #1 homebrew rule I love the most. It's called familiarity. The more you use anything the better you get at it. The better you get at it the harder it gets to get even better with it. So, as something to make anything and everything unique to your character we do what we call familiarity bonus. As an example, you cast detect magic 10 times. Now you have 10/10 familiarity with it. That means you get 1 familiarity bonus with it. What you can do with that is really up to what you and the DM decide is fair for it. For my Half-Orc Wizard, Grok Hexcor, he lowered the amount of rounds he has to concentrate on detect magic to get the full benefit from it, we play PF1e with 3.5 sprinkled in. The next familiarity, 20/20 more times using it, he lowered it again. That means instead of taking 3 rounds to utilize the full effect of Detect magic it takes 1 round. The third bonus, 30/30 more times casting Detect Magic, he lowered the casting time by 1 stage. So, now Detect Magic can be cast as a move action instead of a standard action. That allows him to cast Identify and in the same round cast detect magic, while getting the full effect of Detect magic. Another example is with our Paladin, Rideyr Eleor, he uses a long sword and shield. Every time he swings his long sword he gets a familiarity point (FP). At 10/10 FP he uses his first familiarity Bonus to give him +1 attack bonus to hit with that weapon. The representation of this is he's been using that sword so much he knows that sword better than anyone else would. For example, he may know that the sword has a certain weight distribution and has learned how to swing it in a more effective way to be able to increase his chance to hit his target. Last example, and this is when you can really make things unique, as my Wizard (Grok) I have spells that's I've altered in a way with FB that my cantrip "Ray of Frost" is a swift action and does 1d12 points of damage as a range touch attack. Did I mention that's a cantrip? AND a swift action? EVERY round I get a free Ray of Frost for up to 24 points of damage, if I crit with it. We allow FP/FB to be added to anything that aren't "Skill Checks". We even have one person who has familiarity in dying and being resurrected. He's died like 7 or 8 times now, very low intelligence character so he typically does a lot of dumb stuff in game. We're currently in an almost 3 year long campaign we play every Friday night at 1930 est and I stream it on my Twitch channel. twitch. tv /Sinful_Solution
Crit fumbles are funny if they don't actually affect anything. Like I got a 1 on an attack to throw a coin at a kua-toa and we described it flying out the window of the ship, landing on the water tails-up, and sinking.
In a previous dnd session I've had, our party went to 2 shops, in the second shop, 2 members of the party did most of the talking and interacting, which left me and the other member there not being able to talk to the shop owner much, i only got to ask if he knows anything about my axe and the other person healed the owner and got something after the party left So at the end of the session, which was shortly after shopping, i suggested that we roll for initiative for stuff like shops, so everyone gets some time to ask questions and buy something, which the party agreed to, we haven't gone shopping since then, but i try to remember it for if we go shopping again
Joined a running rapan athuk campaign, and first or second game the guy ruled ballista couldn’t be stopped with a shield. Thought whatever, and to be fair it never came up again. Unfortunately when he let people make characters from Spheres of power I noticed he tended to “play things by ear”. As in adding crazy spheres based bosses or similar crazy crap, made worse by some of his sudden rulings. In a already hard campaign. 1. Heavy nerfs to Alchemists and crafting so we couldn’t get much money or potions, made worse by 1-3 week long wait for the ferry to comeback with orders. 2. For a Spheres ability that let people move away from someone engaging them he ruled that only the beginner level was allowed…… in the middle of a boss fight. After we’d had it for several games. And the boss still had it, which made it so its targets couldn’t try to get away. 3. A character I made was like a living weapon and he made a npc for me (was planning on using possess enemies or fly around). Thing is the class and host get a turn, which wouldn’t be a problem if I was possessing a enemy (it’s risky and can fail), or working with another player. Upon realizing his mistake, rather than remove the npc (which I didn’t want when making the character) he just removed the turn. For anybody I work with. Meaning if I was working with a player only one of us go. So if the Npc he gave me died I planned on just leaving the fight. 4. Player made a Spheres healer and Dm nerfed him so bad and was constantly asking Player to make his character weaker resulting in Player leaving. This is before the Super Boss in 5 and a mass battle with multiple cultists using channel negative energy, with spheres based boss support, just to show how unfair this was. 5 is the worst one though. He decided that a rapan Boss could get sphere abilities and he even gave it a ability that let it attack after a player misses, which he used till I found that it was only once per turn. It hit hard btw. Then after the party destroyed it (me mentioning destroying his body) he decided it could comeback to life despite not being a lich….. and hunt the party Paladin for Exp. While also tailoring it’s attacks to fight Paladin and the party. Honestly while the guy was ok and the campaign had cool moments, like the Npc becoming my Pc after he got brought back to life as a dragon (kinda), and us killing a mummy only to almost all die to its trapped treasure, I just wish his Dm style wasn’t taking away stuff from the players and make stuff harder. Sure, Rapan Athuk campaign, but it made us never want to go to the actual dungeon cause we wouldn’t be able to run away from whatever he made up. It’s why everyone wanted to leave the game, cause despite the Spheres being added, everything was getting stronger too fast, in a campaign where everything is already stronger. TLDR; Dm severely nerfed abilities in actual combat while letting the enemies keep them. Nerfed crafting and two “problem” classes to near uselessness. Made a Op Boss we didn’t know how to kill permanently then allowed it to level off the party and Paladin player, making it a random encounter.
counter spell on counter spell = roll on the wild magic table. I heard of it and am encouraging it in our game, which occasionally happens. Always fun.
My time has come. I had this one DM who decided to entirely revamp the AC system because he didn't agree with the use of Dex for AC or how armor wroked in general. It ended up being such a convoluted mess that the first fight after the shift took 6 hours of real time, so a full session. To give you a reference frame of just how scuffed it was: The average AC was floating around the mid 20-s, while attack rolls remained unchanged. If you miss with an attack, you still deal damage depending on if you hit 0.5*AC or 0.75*AC. Even if you're a Dex-based character, you absolutely need to rush Con, because now it impacts both AC and HP. Our Rogue wasn't pleased. Granted, we were all displeased and immediately told the DM exactly that, but he was stubborn and that rule persisted for 3 more sessions before he relented. The game fell apart shortly after.
@@AlbinoTiefling I really can't understand people completely rewriting core game mechanics in general. I mean, I'm not in the business of "just play X", but if you want to play an entirely different game, there's at least 90% chance this game already exists and was playtested or at least edited
Every game I've played where the DM implimented a weather table, we always rolled the worst weather back-to-back right at the start. One game, which is still on-going, the DM rolled so many extreme rainy weather scenarios he's forcing himself to change around a bunch of his prep for the starting islands our pirate crew were visiting because some of these villages would be wiped off the map while others would be under extreme duress AT BEST due to their resources being used up+washed away+drowned. 😅 The party was supposed to speed through a mountain area between villages, but because of the storm we had no choice but to clear out part of an encounter that was initially intended to just be foreshadowed in order to kill time. Then we were stuck waiting another few days even after the storm was over, just for things to dry up enough to travel. We finally do so and the creeks/craters/etc. that were just minor obstacles before with a few mean monsters in them we could just rush through are now twice their original size or larger from all the excess water. It's been almost 10 sessions now and we still haven't made it to the 2nd village that we were expected to make it to in session 3-4 all because of this weather table stealing the show... 😅
dm said "if you roll two 20s while attacking with advantage you kill your enemy". I explicitly ask them if I would be able to kill an Adult Red Dragon while being a lvl 1 Monk, he said yes
The contested rolling for attacking and damage does sound kind of intriguing if I’m being honest, but not for a system like 5e. I’d kind of like to see that implememted in a different kind of ttrpg
But it doesn't. It should be easier to convince a beger on the street to give you info for some coin then convince a noble to give you the dead to his house even if they have the same save bonus.
Allowing Persuasion checks against PCs takes away player agency. Even with a save, imagine a Rogue with Charisma 20 and Expertise in Persuasion bossing around the rest of the party.
5:40 I had one 3.0 character that wouldn't much have cared about the Weather or Accommodation Rolls... He was (at this point) a Wizard 5/Air Elemental Savant 10 with an Item that gave him Resist Elements Fire and Resist Elements Cold permanently...so he was completely Immune to Electricity (so a Lightning Strike would at most Flash/Bang him with no other damage) and since his natural Movement Type is Fly 100 ft. perfect maneuverability, the room pests wouldn't bother him since he's usually floating in mid air instead of nestled in the uncomfortable sheets (the Resist Elements item gives him 5 Points of Immunity to Fire and Cold each Round so even a Blizzard wouldn't do much to him other than blow him around and blind him, the cold wouldn't affect him)... He liked it when Rogues tried to Sneak Attack him...when they tried, they revealed their presence behind him and he Ground-Zeroed a Lightning Ball (Fireball affected by the Elemental Substitution: Electricity Feat) on himself and fried them while doing nada to himself since he's Immune...Shocked the HELL out of them (Pun absolutely intended 😄😁😆😅😂🤣), then he turned, 5-foot floated away (so no Attack of Opportunity against me) and cast Disintegrate, Cloudkill or something equally nasty that doesn't have a REF Save (so no Uncanny Dodge) at the poor Rogue...
Silver... I had a DM who only rewarded us silver coins but charged everything in gold. Magic items did not exist in dungeons and had to be purchased from a specific thief, FOR GOLD!
A buddy of mine wanted to make it so that if you were being attacked by a Swarm that was in your space, then if allies rolled low they would hit you. I said that was a stupid ruling and punishes front liners for being front liners. He said that that was how other DM’s always ruled it when he played. I said if that’s the only reason he wants to do it, then it’s not a good rule. He actually listened.
11:00 I have a solution for this person because old school D&D did exactly what they’re looking for Group initiative systems. You roll once for the whole group. All actions happen simultaneously. You ask them what they’re doing, they do necessary rolls, then you narrate what happens And yes, back then, you rolled a new initiative every turn for all groups involved. Though back then initiative was a d6 roll. Then in 2e it switched to a d10. It wasn’t until WotC that was saw the standardization of everything as d20
Not the worst Ive seen but one of the best, our DM has us roll initiative for the next encounter at the end of combat so its narratively a smooth transition into combat . That way we don't have to go through the math and role call part of battle every time.
Not sure if this counts, but one of my DMs call for some of the weirdest skill checks for somethings. Like cooking he asked for performance, which I guess might make sense if we were trying to make it look fancy, but for regular cooking it doesn't sound right to have Charisma be the base stat for determining how edible your meal turns out to be. Even more baffling instance of this is when he asked us to roll performance for handling the ropes on a ship... I feel like he just hears word "performance" and stops there and doesn't think about it any further mechanically.
Oooh the wild magic surge one. I also had players wanting to see it proc more. We were also running out of the abyss. So I redesigned some of the adventure and had points where the planes borderlines between the abyss and underdark were weak. This created weird shenanigans in those areas. When the rogue player scored a crit with her magical bow, I said give me a d100. Took a few seconds for the group to work out what was going on then ":O :O :O : O" reactions.
6:20 I actually like this I’m currently running classic Traveller and that game has something similar. It doesn’t have HP, your stats actually go down when you take damage, and that’s what wounds are. If 1 stat goes to 0, you’re unconscious and lightly wounded; if 2 stats go to 0, you’re unconscious for longer badly wounded; if 3 stats go to 0, you’re dead. Lightly wounded just needs first aid. Someone with medical-1 skill and a basic med kit can patch you up quick, you’ll wake up after 10 minutes: Heavily wounded you’re out for 3 hours and need medical attention at a hospital from a medical expert, ie someone with Medical-3 skill. Without such medical treatment, that stat is stuck halfway between the wounded level and full. Traveller combat is fast and brutal though. It’s not a combat centric game, it wants you to avoid combat if at all possible. As you should, people have guns in this game and guns kill people.
Lots of folks seem to hate on Crit Fumble tables. This, in my opinion, comes from two issues. The first is GMs only using them for the PCs, and not the villains. The players have less of an issue if the big bad rolls a nat one and suddenly his sword is 15 feet in front of him. The second comes from the mindset that players are supposed to succeed no matter what, and crit fumble makes them seem less powerful somehow. I use Crit fumbles in my game, and crit success. I make the fumbles pretty balanced, in my opinion. And heck, if you roll a natural 1, you manage to fumble so badly, you actually somehow hit your opponent. That actually makes my players excited, Will they drop their weapon, get stunned for a round, or will they actually turn an automatic miss into a hit anyway.
I use crit fumbles for nonproficient skill check, and thats it. The wprst rule i tried was that necrotic damage drained a d4 of your max hp until you had restoration cast on you.
5:13 Maybe the effects were a bit too damaging, but I don't think this is a bad system. Instead of having to pre-plan unique events each time you camp out or stay at an inn, you let a player roll for the outcome based on a table and what resources they invest. If they're a new party, and skimp out on how much to pay at the inn, they risk a worse penalty, albeit minor. Spend a bit more money, and they wake up better rested, and well-fed. They get a slight morale boost.
I had a DM with two house rules, one not so bad and one that was just plain dumb: - seeing us overthinking every action we took to the point a single encounters could take us an entire session, he gave us 5 seconds to make a decision after announcing our turn in combat. It sped things up significantly and since we were all experienced players at this point, the time pressure wasn't too bad to handle. - He introduced psionic classes in a campaign, and treated psionic abilities as something completely separate from magic (so anti-magic and spell resistance would have no effect on them, for example), which led to ridiculous exploits and interactions, and psions becoming the most busted things in general since countermeasures against psionic abilities were close to nonexistent. If you have a problem with a psion casually spamming teleports inside a dungeon protected by a dimensional lock and an antimagic field because "well it's not technically magic", you're not alone.
had a whopping 5 in one session that weren't explained in session zero because "a DM doesn't have to tell you anything". yeah, except THE RULES. 1: a nat 20 against your character would result in the DM comparing the difference between your AC and the total. if the difference was more than 5, you have a limb crippled decided on a d4 roll. if it was 10 or more, you automatically lose that limb. what happens if you lose both arms? well, the rest of the party is now on an escort mission because unless you can fight with your feet, you can't do anything. Oh, and the enemies will target you first because you're an easy target. 2: targeting beast races for no reason other than unexplained racism. 3: player agency didn't matter. did you roll a nat 20 on persuasion to get information from a bartender? too bad, they can just decide to not tell you anyway because fuck you! 4: being forced to roll for mundane actions. opening a door? better hope you roll higher than a 10 or else you sprain your wrist. 5: ROLLING. FOR. UNCANNY. DODGE. do i even NEED to explain why this is stupid!?
@@vrfujundying a rogue ability that halves damage on a reaction. you don't roll for it, but this DM thought it was unfair that players could just get out of half of a 12d10 roll. the stringer the attack, the higher the "dc" you had to make in order to take half damage. nat 1? oops, looks like the enemy gets to treat it as if they rolled a nat 20.
yeah, ditching ac for a contest system is really bad. another bad house rule in our campaign was, you roll your stat with a d20 but the catch is, you have to decide class and race before rolling and each roll would go down the list i.e. you roll the str first then dex, then con, etc., etc. my first character ended up with a 4 in dex and 6 in int
nothing in the spell description of healing word says they have to hear you. "A creature of your choice that you can see within range regains hit points equal to 1d4 + your spellcasting ability modifier" you just have to be able to see them, and speak. it is the act of invoking the word that heals them, not their perception of it.
One DM I had removed the innate Monster Levels. Everyone started off in a level 1-3 campaign setting with 4+ Monster levels and a single class level. Being entirely over-levelef and overpowered for the setting. Not to mention the variance in strengths across the Monster Races themselves. He did not last very long as a DM for 3/3.5. That is pretty much the only bad "homebrew" rules I've encountered. But then again, I've only had 2 inexperienced or incompetent DMs.....
I was given a homebrew magic item as a lvl 5 arcane trickster rogue (Technically my character was lvl 9, as I had 4 lvls of arcane archer fighter... I know now that I should've picked champion, but oh well... anyway back to the story) So, after our party pulled off a heist, a bodyguard of the man we robbed tracked us down and surprised us at our camp, attacking the monk out of nowhere. The Druid managed to cast hold person, and we all got in position and just jumped this humanoid shark man... Once he was dead, I looted his corpse, like you do, and managed to get a pretty sick magical dagger... Sharkfang (needs attunement) It's a jagged dagger with what looks to be a large fish hook coming out of the pommel... "Okay, but what does it do?" I hear you ask. It's a +1 dagger, with a special ability... Upon a successful hit when making a melee sneak attack coming out of stealth, the target must make a Con Save against the Sneak Attack damage. On a success, the target's throat is slit, and they are unable to talk or make verbal components for spells until they receive 1hp of healing. On a fail, they just... die. Now, for those of you who don't get why this is busted... let me remind you I was a lvl 5 rogue, meaning my sneak attack (base) was 3d6, that's anywhere from 3-18... but the problem comes in with "sneak attack coming out of stealth", that means, I'm rolling with advantage... meaning I have a higher chance to crit (the odd are 9% to crit when rolling with advantage)... and critting doubles all dice... including sneak attack, which meant if I crit on a hit with this dagger, my sneak attack damage would be 6d6 instead of 3d6. After I got this dagger, the 2 humans in our party got kidnapped by a cult and I snuck in ahead of the druid and monk to go find them. Long story short, I was hiding in the shadows between the cult leader and the monk who was pretending to be drunk... and he walked to her... meaning he passed into and out of range, meaning I got an attack of opportunity while I was stealthed. Nat 20, crit. 6d6 sneak attack: 25 Cult Leader rolled a nat 20 to save... and then I used my reaction to cast silvery barbs... He rerolled the save... 8. I killed the Cult Leader (who had about 120 hp and some powerful spells at his disposal) before combat could even begin. It felt awesome to do, but it was VERY broken.
The RaW interpretation of the @02:30 story (Dashing and then leaping) would just be that you can't. Your movement (incl. the dash) is *all* of your movement. If you can leap 15 feet, then that has to be included in the 60ft of movement you have available. The DM's ruling is still kinda bad, and I'd probably allow this for coolness reasons, but it isn't actually how the rules work.
Not sure how bad this is, but I ruled that attacks of opportunity against enemies that are flanked prior to the movement lose that flanked advantage because you have to move away from the person on the other side in order to leave the zone of control, and by the time they’re out of that zone, the other person is no longer in direct flanking position. My partner gave me a sour look but rolled with it anyway.
It's objectively mechanically weaker though. Some bonus to attack roll could compensate it, but I'm not sure how exactly it should work. Or you may not care about it being objectively mechanically worse, but it's a group decision, and the player has a right to not like it
I had one dm back in the day whose homebrew rule gave all sacantily clad female characters fullarmor protection. Bur any unarmored male would take double damge to those areas that werent armor protectedl What a scum bagimo.
funny rule we use for non serious campaigns: after a nat 20 or 1 roll 2 more dice if all are 20/1 then super crit/fail and someone dies if its a 1 its you if its a 20 its whoever u want this includes saving rolls so you dodge so hard some dude just dies or your mental fortitude is so immense that trying to prob your mind killed them. we agreed enemies have this roll as well so they can insta kill us which considering the odds im fine with and everyone else agrees because "its silly"
No more copper, no more silver, no more platinum, everything is just "Gold" now. He wasn't going to be changing the price of anything, either. Five coppers? No, five gold.
Any homebrew rule that is kept secret until triggered.
DMs, be honest with yourself, if you actually thought your homebrew rules where good, you would not feel the need to trick your players into engaging with them.
In my experience, it's either "I don't like how rules work in this case so I won't use them", without ever thinking it through beforehand, or the GM giving negative amount of f-s about the game in general (never announcing rules - not even house rules, it was his own system and we didn't know how it worked - was the least of problems)
Everyone I know in the RPG Community absolutely refuses to play in any game where ALL the Rules aren't put on the Table before Character Generation begins so everyone know what to expect...any D/GM that springs a "Surprise" Home-Rule on the Group mid-Campaign, tends to get VERY rudely told off and the Campaign ends right then and there...
Exceptions are made ONLY when the D/GM talks to the entire group explaining what new Rule they want to implement and why, usually to deal with a problem that happened in-game, if the entire Group hashes out and accepts the new Rule, then it's accepted as if it existed from Day 1...and sometimes it's a Player, not the D/GM that asks for a new Rule and explains why they believe it's needed, again, if everyone agrees, it's in...
I feel this with a passion, so I'm trying to avoid it myself. However, I'm planning on going for a more buckwild game, with fewer restrictions than standard dnd. Listing them all out as individual rules seems like a bad way to convey it though. I'm thinking of just listing examples instead so that people have an idea of where the line is. Like
-if you want to give up a weapon to "wield" two shields? I'll help you with that and do tweaks to the loot so you regularly get some cool "shields" where I just swapped out the weapon or armor stats for shield ones.
-if you want to change your spell/weapon's damage type before the game starts or even on a long rest we can work with that. Scribe wizards still have their niche of switching damage types during combat.
-If a 2014 version of a spell like true strike is useless RAW or RAI we can go with the 2024 version or tweak it ourselves to make it work.
-You want to do something in-flavor like backflipping off a platform or sliding down the rail when you've got plenty of movement to take the stairs? I won't make you roll for that. Have fun.
-You've got an idea for a monk uses X weapon but monk rules say you can't use it? I'm fine with okaying the weapon.
As long as people don't go full coffeelock levels of disruption to the narrative and the table's collective fun I'm fine with dropping small restrictions here and there. But listing every single example would take ages and no one wants to read all of that. If you've got some alternative ideas I'd love to hear them.
@@TheMightyBattleSquid The most recent example I had was warlock spells and invocations that don't fit the theme of the patron are banned, but the only way to find out which are banned, you have to experiment. you can't pick spells after level 1 anyway, you have to earn them in game. Other classes got some abilities extra instead.
I was about to play an artificer with guns and then my dm told me that in her homebrew before every attack with a firearm you should throw a d20 without modifiers and if you get something below 10 your gun explodes in your hands, dealing damage to you...
Guns aren’t for every D&D game so fair if a DM doesn’t want them but there might be a better way to communicate that 😂
Also does this apply to NPC’s and enemies as well? 🧐
@@Lucas.Blevinsprobably not, seems like a way to scare the player into playing something else
@@Lucas.Blevins: If you don't want guns, just say "no". Last I checked(which admittedly is a long time ago), you can play Artificer without guns.
every time i see someone bring an artificer to the table, i inwardly groan, because i know they're gonna do some crazy broken thing bringing real world knowledge and engineering or physics into the game. . .
@@Femaiden I’ve never played one but if I did I would have the companion subclass so I can have a big red panda robot. For some reason everyone overlooks it and the iron man suit and just want guns.
Critical Fumbles unnecessarily penalise martials who use more attack rolls, and make zero sense since as you get more skilled as an adventurer you become MORE likely to make a critical fumble.
Seriously I had a warlock in a campaign with fumbles and it was the worst
My recommendation is, if you like critical fumbles, use a chart where the chance of bad outcomes is reduced at higher levels so as to reflect the growing skill of the player characters. That way you at least dodge the stupid "high level characters somehow fumble more" nonsense.
@@ghostwolf6765 Same, I ended up killing myself with an eldritch blast and quit
@@TheSealMayor it’s just pain when you’re already a squishy class and have the ability to possibly damage yourself
Just make it so a critical fail is worse than a normal fail, but only on a characters first attack each turn.
My homebrew rule that my players adore is, if you two or more pc are next to each other in initiative, I'll let them take actions together, meaning, oh fighter has to fly to pursue the bbeg but he has no fly spell??, well, the wizard has the "same" initiative, he can cast the stupid spell before he jumps even if it isn't his turn just yet.
Hey! That's pretty dope. I'll consider using that myself. Thanks!
It’s like that in Baldurs gate three and I use it all the time, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be in dnd
Great rule
That's just a less complicated way to parce held actions
Interesting, I usually just have whoever has the highest modifiers go first and if that's a tie too, then I just let the players pick. But then again, I have very flexible rules about reserved actions. I let people reserve some or all of their actions, so they can already combine turns basically. My only condition is that they have to state aloud very specific triggers for said actions (which I typically write down) and if their next turn comes around without the triggers occurring they lose the held actions.
Technically in 5e, all actions happen at the same time in the same 6 seconds. It's just hard to contextualize it.
The worst homebrew rule I've ever seen is a GM who in 5th edition HATED bonus actions or reactions, so he just didn't allow them.
I left after the first combat session.
Holy shit that sounds miserable.
I can see being against that theoretically, but then don't play 5e. The action economy is set up the way it is. Imagine how utterly lopsided class and monster encounter balance goes if you remove half of players' abilities. Absurd.
The worse I have seen is:
"If your character dies you can make a new one at level one (regardless of average party level)".
That one can at least be justified (some players, when they get "bored" of a character or don't like how something went, will just off their character in that moment regardless of the consequences it'd have for the story or party, and then pull out a new character with a customized list of abilities suited for the new situation).
Not something to worry about with most parties, but if you have a player or players that (outside of that) haven't given you reason to kick them out, it keeps them from trying to treat their characters like disposable pokemon that lack investment in the story & party.
@DBArtsCreators
What you're describing sounds frustrating but if a player has to start at level one they may as well leave the campaign. Even if the rest of the party is only level three you're operating at like half the health and with no class features, if the party is past level five you're completely useless.
@@joep2999
It can depend. Specification is on "death" after all; assuming the DM isn't an ass, then working with the DM to organically walk-out your character would mean you get to start with a character that would be at the party level (alternatively, work with the DM to have a pre-made backup character that is an NPC / DMPC until you need it).
Or, other alternative: you start at the party level, but all your levels are in essentially side-kick levels or NPCs levels (just extra HD / proficiency bonus / skills). As the party gets long rests, the new character gets to exchange NPC levels for class levels.
@@MS-jp3opeh, it depends.
I've had a new player join a campaign as an underleveled character, but nobody even noticed an imbalance because they were a wizard in a party of non-optimized martials, they were arguably more powerful even at lower level.
Another player I had wasn't underleveled, but it wouldn't even matter if they were, since they solved their first couple encounters by using batman prep, equipment and environment.
In the next campaign I'm planning to start one player at a higher level than the rest of the party, since he doesn't enjoy low levels and struggles to build for them, while other players would be overwhelmed if I tasked them with making a higher level characters. I'm fairly confident I can give everyone an appropriate challenge for their power.
It does help that I have underleveled party members level up significantly faster until equalized.
So yeah, it works, but I would never go as far as starting at lv1, that power difference is too significant.
OK, and if everyone else is Level 16+, how exactly does your new Level 1 Character survive the first round of Combat when the Enemy Arrows/Spells start flying?
I can see your new Character being up to 5 Levels lower than the rest of the Party (your Level should catch up fairly quickly due to your Bonus XP from being under-leveled for the Encounter), that's survivable if you play smart, but possibly 12+ Levels under the Party Average, not survivable at all unless the DM is fudging the Enemy Attack Rolls against you (their Base Attack alone would be high enough that they should miss ONLY on a Nat. 1 or 2, everything else would result in a To Hit Roll more than high enough to beat your AC since you'd only have basic 1st Level gear/Armour...ye GOD'S that was an Insane Rule...I'd have Noped the HELL out of that Game and refused to ever accept that Person as D/GM ever again when I heard that one...
[Shudder]...
Lunacy doesn't BEGIN to describe it...
😄😁😆😅😂🤣
I had a GM who had just finished playing Secret of Evermore on the SNES.
You know what he loved most about that game, apparently? Having to pay for spell components in order to use magic.
He revealed this only AFTER I had rolled up a wizard.
Suddenly the text of "Spell Component Pouch", where it automatically provides any component without a listed cost, didn't exist. I was expected to buy every single component and keep track of the contents of my pouch on a separate sheet. Every adder's stomach and pinch of colored sand. Anytime he, personally, didn't like a spell, suddenly its components were no longer available.
I took the Eschew Materials feat with my very next level. It didn't matter. He assigned costs to every component that didn't have one, nullifying the feat.
And that's when I would have found an arcane focus
@@jdizzy192 This was 3.0, mate. They didn't exist.
And he would have ignored that too, because they do the exact same thing as a spell component pouch.
After they got bored the feat I would have left the game. That's a DM imposing their "fun" by taking yours away.
Then it was past time to swap the Eschew Materials Feat with the Eschew DM Feat and find a new game...😄😁😆😅😂🤣
I've done that a couple of times and bluntly (but Politely) told the DM EXACTLY why People don't want to play in their Games...so far only one actually listened to what I was saying and didn't take it as a Personal Attack/Insult...they got better as a DM and now have a stable Group that enjoys the game...the others either stopped DMing and are strictly Players now, gave up RPGing entirely or left the City and I don't know if they're still trying to DM or not...
At the moment, there are 2 People I will NEVER accept as D/GM and one of them I simply will NEVER Game with (they are a horrible "Do it MY way EXACTLY or I kill your Character!" GM and FAR Worse, a Power Gamer/Min-Maxer/Rules Lawyer as a Player)...to Paraphrase Rob from Karma Comment Chameleon, "Screw You Kat!"
The first one is just a bad GM that doesn't know how to put together or properly run a Campaign, their fine as a Player...
There was a 3rd person on my Not as a GM but OK as a Player List but unfortunately, he Passed Away not that long ago so now my List has 2 names on it...
That's lame. He should have just banned the spells outright and tried to manage your expectations before character creation.
The absolute worst rule was a character creation one. You use a d20 to roll for stats, no re-rolls, and it was straight down the stats. Additionally you had to have a minimum 13 in a stat order to take classes, basically the rules for multi-classing ie you have to have a 13 in Dex to be a Rogue. The issue was if you didn't roll higher than a 11 then you don't have a class. The highest I rolled was a 10. I would have to wait until level 4 in order to get a class if I got the ASI but would actually have to wait another level because I would be 'multi-classing'. This was my first DnD game, I am veteran TTRPG player. I noped out of that game because it was going to be a miserable experience.
how tf do you even gain an asi without a class?
@@arcturuslight_ They probably invented a "peasant" class, akin to Onion Knight in Final Fantasy 3 or the Freelancer in Final Fantasy Tactics. If I had to work with a system like that, I would've borrowed the concept of "Level 0" characters (I think Greyhawk invented it) as people who could learn multiple class features before dedicating themselves to a full class. So, you could have a fighter that knew mage and cleric cantrips as well as some light rogue skills.
I'd also personally rule that anyone who had _no_ stats over 13 could raise at least one to 17 automatically.
There are some hardcore RPGs like that out there. IIRC, the Judge Dredd game has rules like that, but there's the possibility of death in character creation too, so I probably would've "killed" that character and re-rolled until I got something semi-decent. After six or seventeen characters run screaming at the monsters equipped with nothing but a dagger and insatiably bloodlust, leaving the rest of their generated fortune to my next character each time, I think the DM would've reversed the whole "stick with what you roll" rule before I got rich enough to buy a mercenary army large enough to take out the entire campaign.
@@arcturuslight_ It sounds like everyone without at least one 13+ Stat was automatically a Commoner...
@@HappilyHomicidalHooligan yeah but they mentioned that you can somehow get an ASI to then be able to take a level in a class, but ASI is a class feature, so it looks like they invented some classless class
9:25 A featherless biped? That's definitely a human
Ok, so you know one of the big features of the fey Wanderer ranger is that you can ADD your wisdom to charisma skills (mainly persuasion and deception)?
Well my DM thought THAT was too OP and demanded I choose either wisdom or charisma as the stat for those rolls instead.
Yeah, he thought the main feature of the subclass was too powerful.
Also he banned rogue/bard builds and hated moon druids.
Sounds like maybe they would rather run a different game.
The Moon Druid thing is understandable. But Fey Wanderer Rangers? Why?
@@tehrulefoo In theory, I can kind of understand his logic that being able to add *two* stat modifiers to a skill roll would be OP, but at the same time, between your main attacking stat, CON to not die, and WIS for your spellcasting, you're MAD enough that there should be no way you'll have a high charisma on top of all that.
TBH: The problem with 5e isn't that healing word brings up a party member (it's part of it, but not the whole thing) it's the fact that a 5th level cure spell at level 9 is *just* as good at letting the target take exactly one more hit as healing word at 1st is. The way 5e is designed most things are set up to deal lots of damage, but the damage outpaces the healing so there's no real point in doing anything but wait until down to heal.
Yes. This also leads many GMs to impose penalties such as exhaustion or lingering injuries when PCs are downed , which has two problems: Firstly, you're punishing players for doing what the rules incentivise and also, you're using an 'All Stick and No Carrot' situation. You're not giving any benefits for people doing it differently so they're either punished for doing what the game rules expect, or forced to play spending all their spells on an uphill struggle to stop PCs falling over when the mechanics work against that.
The system of pf2e to combat this is pretty nice imho.
It needs to be put into the context, that in pf2e, armour is there to prevent crits from happening, as a +2 weapon doesn't do +2dmg, but +2 DICE. So, basically you'll almost never out heal crits.
Most RPGs are like that, I think. In combat heals are usually poor uses of an action that could be used on CC or deleting an enemy.
@@amorencinteroph3428 You're not wrong, but the problem is exasperated by the fact that you don't heal nearly as much damage as being dished out, combined with not going to negative hit poins....
my current dm doubled the dice on cure wounds and healing word and it's been surprisingly balanced.
During a modern campaign, I homebrewed that firearms would inflict a small radius of thunder damage whenever they were fired in confined spaces. It was annoying to implement, so I dropped it before the end of its introductory session.
Honestly, the only place where I'd implement damage from being next to the gun would be standing next to firing artillery (because those are big guns) or if someone shoots in melee range (because even if blank, it's still a stream of hot gasses at high pressures)
To be honest, I haven't shoot in real life (maybe airgun at some point, but it doesn't count), but... Do modern firearms straight up hurt you when you shoot? I know they could affect your hearing (perhaps con save against deafness if you don't wear ear protection), but I wouldn't interpret anything less than risk of breaking your wrist as thunder damage.
Early firearms on the other hand...
@@nabra97 if by hurt you mean things like garand thumb - yes, but only if you're not paying attention or you put your hands in stupid places. If not, then anything handheld is not strong enough to do such things.
Weather and bugs is okay if survival aspect was talked about in session 0.
I like survival aspects but can admit most players would zone the eff out
Before I reply to everyone at once, I'm going to clarify a bit of my thought process.
5e did a terrible job naming the damage type as "thunder" damage. A lot of spells and effects that inflict thunder damage are doing so with vibrations, which is the primary component of sound. I find it weird that they called it thunder damage, instead of carrying the name from 3e D&D that Pathfinder also uses: sonic damage.
With that out of the way...
@Jfk2Mr It was a 5ft area, and 1 singular point of damage. I only activated it when the hallways (or cave branches) were roughly 5 feet wide, and made of materials that are known to resist certain forces. I dropped the rule when my players came upon a slanted hallway and I was thinking about how the soundwaves might bounce to affect enemies around a corner. I knew then that I was focusing on emphasizing the wrong aspects of the game.
@nabra97 Even with suppressors, firearms are very loud. In an open area, or in an area that is made of materials that can absorb the energy from a shockwave, it's not so bad. The wave either has a place to go, or it will lose enough energy. In a place like a rock wall or concrete bunker, though, those waves are going to be bouncing around until they find an unprotected eardrum. And at 600 mph, they WILL find some eardrums.
@brandonturner4113 Forget players tuning out; **I** was tuning out. That's when I knew I had a bad rule: it wasn't fun for anyone, even me.
Final words: Prioritize fun over immersion or realism, even if you or your players demand more of the latter. It was a lesson I learned the hard way, but that's okay. Failure is the best teacher, whether that be mine or any of the people reading this. You'll know what to not do going forward. Sometimes that can be just as important as knowing exactly what to do.
5:42 saw the Editor's Note. Made me laugh and almost drop my late lunch of ramen!😂😂
I had a DM rule that any critical hits against us would result in our armour breaking, while critical misses we made would result in weapons breaking. This might not have been so bad, except we were constantly starved for gold. He also deliberately broke the barbarian's shield because, and I quote, "Barbarians with shields are just too OP". The rule was especially daft when he gave the ranger a suit of adamantine chainmail, the special effect of which is to prevent critical hits. When this was pointed out, he grudgingly said it would take three crits to destroy the armour instead of the usual one.
i had a DM impose the "on nat 1, your weapon breaks" on us. . .dropping the bomb suddenly , mid combat, 4 sessions in, right after same DM had just given my character a custom tailored homebrew magical weapon , made for my character. . and of course, i rolled a 1 and my weapon broke. ..
the most annoying part of it was the DM not telling us beforehand or laying it out in session zero, but rather dropping it on us mid session, but
in all fairness, the DM was new and i don't think they did it out of malice, just inexperience and they wanted to try something new. The had literally just thought of it during that session.
also, when i asked the DM if my item was fixable, they said yeah, but i have to go on a quest for it, so i agreed to it thinking that could be a clever way to do a side quest story. because otherwise it made no sense that the DM went out of their way to homebrew a special magic item themed around my character, only to have it break the very first time i used it. The DM realized this and was going to set up a special quest for me
but then everyone just stopped showing up to sessions for whatever other real life reasons and the dampaign dissolved, so i never got to see how it played out
last group definitely has never heard of alarm clocks
Yup. Unconscious does not equal dead.
You can exchange your movement to take another action. (A rule I actually used for a while before realizing how dumb it is)
Sneak Attack was its own move, not bonus damage on an attack.
Everything besides attacking provokes attacks of opportunity from nearby enemies.
Any rule that's made specifically to make your thing not work.
I've actually wanted to have there be something one could use excess movement for in combat; it sucks to have a resource just sit there unused. Something like "you can spend 5 points of movement to boost your attack rolls, damage rolls, saves or AC by +1 until the start of your next turn" or something like that.
Only issue I have with implementing such is that it's more for players to juggle and remember, resulting in more of the game just being bogged down every turn.
@@DBArtsCreators Why not use flanking rules? it at least encourages players to "fix" their positions. It's true that most of the time you just stand in front of the enemy and hit, but that's a 5e thing that requires way more effort to fix
@@DBArtsCreatorsI think that’d be a cool thing to add to a martial class, especially monk since movement is their whole thing. That’d be op though
For the movement, I feel like that's only something that can work if its baked fully into the system. Pathfinder does this pretty well as it does away with movement and bonus actions. Instead, you have 3 actions, but its balanced because things like casting spells costs 2 actions.
Though i do understand that changing systems over just this is a big ask.
@@Lilith_Harbinger
Regular flanking is too strong (free Advantage); the common homebrew swapping it to a flat bonus is better.
Neither solves the mobility issue though, since positions don't need to change once characters are in position (and it's usually an excessive advantage regardless, not worth the effort).
Roll a 1 and your attack strikes a nearby ally.
There are also variations that a natural 1 immediately ends the turn.
Oh, I have a worse one. Nat1 and your melee attack hits you, and your ranged attack hits a random ally within range NO MATTER THEIR POSITION. Meaning, you can hit *SOMEONE BEHIND YOU* or even *SOMEONE WHOS BEHIND A FULL COVER*.
THERE IS NO SAVE AGAINST IT.
Honestly this one's kinda good, had four of roll 1s like 3 times in a row, honestly the grimaced luck we've ever had
Depends on the circumstance in my opinion for hitting an ally.
If it could feasibly be done.
Like a ranged attack as the barbarian is running towarzs the target.
Or you back swung to hard and smacked your buddy in the face behind you.
@@Meme-Weeb-Dweeb The problem is it is punishing martial classes, and the stronger they get, the worse they become at fighting.
"Noodlefist is one of the greatest martial arts masters in the world. He can move faster than the naked eye can see, pluck arrows out of the air and stopped visibly aging. He also hits an ally twice per minute. Nobody believes him he is doing it by accident."
for me its pretty much any of the contradictory retcons that Jeremy Crawford makes which he then contradicts 3 statements later
Mine are any changes/nerfs to sneak attack because they almost always result from the same thing, "The Rogue got a crit and one shot my bbeg. Theyre too strong"
This can be mitigated by giving bosses more hp.
Can mitigate this by using something I made called shielded HP. The boss has a number of charges that have an HP amount tied to them, if the party does enough damage in a round a charge is removed and only one charge can be lost per round.
This rule makes bosses tanker, means you have to remember a much smaller number, and prevents aforementioned one shots on said bosses while still letting the rogues attack give the party an advantage.
the weather and accommodation. 100% good things. like. this should be a check.
I watch the unexpectables and they use this system
Sounds to me like here it was a problem not with the concept, but with the implementation: too high of a chance for too negative of results. 1-3 on a d20 being a storm that could get you struck by lightning (I imagine doing significant damage) seems like a bit much.
Done wrong, these things could *very* easily end up feeling like "time to roll your daily random debuff tables!"
my example "when the dm allows a guy to roll for SA"
One of my worst mistakes as a GM was to sum up the experience from a combat encounter and apply it to every party member, without dividing it. This made them incredibly powerful per encounter completed and made every other source of exp trivial in comparison. This campaign also happened to involve the Four Horsemen, which is why they grew so powerful so quickly.
One DM I played with ruled that we couldn't just move where we wanted to in Darkness effects because we couldn't see where we were going. So he rolled a d6 to see if we veered left or right in the darkness for every square we moved. It took a while to roll and seldom made that much of a difference. It was just annoying. And this was a Drow-Themed game, so this terrible homebrew came up fairly often.
"No, in my campaign there's no such thing as proficiency in Charisma checks: if you want to convince the guard, you'll have to do it by talking to me"
"Also, we won't use Xanathar."
I had a dm who tweaked Divine Smite and was adamant it was a buff. Divine Smite no longer used spell slots, instead you could use it up to your proficiency bonus per long rest. it's damage scaled with your spell level (except they forgot level 5 so it was dealing a whole d8 less by level 17) and it didn't deal extra damage to undead and fiends. the reason the dm was adamant it was a buff was because *drumroll*..... you could choose to deal necrotic or psychic damage instead of just radiant
It’s not bad, just needs tweaking, just fix the d8 loss and the extra damage to undead and fiends and it is still good while also having its own unique limitations.
@@ERBanmech Something like that still needs to be opt-in, not imposed on the player by the GM
The worst rule I played with (for like a session cause the campaign stopped after that), was when my dm said that during combat, if you wanted to talk, you could only have 6 seconds to do so, cause that’s how long it took for a turn
Early on I had a DM who decided that projectile weapons shouldn't have an upper limit to their range. I have NO clue why he thought this was a good idea; it was just my second campaign, and even I knew this could only end disastrously. So I set out to make sure it did, just to prove my point.
I rolled up a ranger with a bow and arrow, and the first chance I got I set about rounding up and drilling archers from the military of a nation we were allied with. The plan was simple: fire volleys of arrows over the horizon in the direction of the enemy country until we wiped out their population, knowing that we had no range limit and that the law of averages would give us at least one kill for every twenty arrows shot.
There were THOUSANDS of archers, each with an extra quiver to double their 30 arrow ammo capacity. Guess how long the campaign lasted.
about fifteen minutes
I hate to say it… but it sounds like you were the problem 😂
@@thewovenmantis6813that was a very stupid rule tho
@@thewovenmantis6813 That's why rules exist, and also why bad rules are "bad rules."
@@minaashido518I'm pretty sure what it actually meant was "the range of any ranged weapon is the whole battle scene, because nobody wants to measure it". If OP didn't like it, they could try to find middle ground or just leave (I have a grudge against interpreting sphere as a cube, so I can understand that), and if they wanted it to be specifically clarified, they could just ask. Using arrows as ballistic missiles to prove a point isn't a good solution in any of these cases
8:08 MrRipper didn't realize that Tubthumping is a song and Chumbawamba is a band🤣
I played a ranger with firearms once on a oneshot, and everything was fine, then when I decided to play this character again in a campaign the DM, very same who I played forementioned oneshot with, decided that reloading this gun is gonna cost me an ACTION, after EVERY attack, and my ability to ignore loading property with a feat (which I already had on the oneshot and used without any issues) doesn't work. I tried to argue that this is a bad rule, in a discussion that lasted multiple hours of online discussion over an entire week, and in the end DM stood by his original ruling because "it's more realistic, these are times of flintlock not modern weapons so what else are you expecting? Just use a different weapon if you don't like it".
I ended up never participating in that campaign. That gun dealt only 1d10 damage btw, and was an important backstory item for my character.
Folks get weird about guns in DND. Seems out of place, maybe, but early firearms and plate armor are contemporaries.
@@kontrarien5721 "No guns! But magical robots and machines? A-Ok!"
Some genius out there came up with an idea about just spending a few feet of movement to reload the gun depending on the time it would logically take to reload, which I think makes a lot more sense. So like you could spend 5ft of movement if you reloaded a colt pistol or a hunting rifle, either spent reloading it behind the cover before or while you moved around the battlemap. Made things much more fun.
@@DavidJoshua-zc8df That'd also open up the possibility of being able to get an ability that lets your character reload on the move, to either minimize or negate the movement cost of reloading.
People get weird about a lot of random stuff. The fact that crossbows, longbows, and eldritch blast exist in this universe probably wouldn't dissuade the guy. If your gun is literally just a loud crossbow when examined mechanically, and he's still giving you a bad time about it, then he's just unfit to make such decisions. If he's imposing illogical rules he pulled from his rear like that, that would indicate he's not qualified to GM. In the past when I've had GMs who played targeted homebrew games like that, the campaign was unpleasant in a LOT of other ways. You were right to bail. (I've been banned from playing a fighter because the GM believed that fighters are OP & lame and I should play a wizard instead; ended up as one of the worst D&D games I've ever played)
first table i ever played dnd at, the DM used critical fumbles on a nat 1. it wasn't that bad, just "you dropped you weapon and now have to waste a turn picking it back up", but the thing was that for the entirety of playing 2e, i didn't realize it was a homebrew rule and thought it was a real rule, so i imposed it on my players when i DM'ed. .
The dm decided that if a race has a dedicated god, then all clerics of that race has to be a cleric to that god and be a cleric of their domain (ie Gruumush is the god of orcs and has the domains of war and tempest, so all orc clerics have to be war/tempest clerics of Gruumush)
He didn’t tell me that until after he kicked me out for making a dragonborn death cleric, and his only argument is that “Tiamat isn’t a death god you should know this”
Uhhhh. Isn't she? I thought she had a massive hatred for all mortal life because she saw it as an affront to divnity. How isn't she a death goddess?
@@tehrulefoo her official domain in 5e is trickery
@@zachm5485 Her domain is fucking what now? We still talking about the 5 headed dragon right?
@@lvlHive I just double check, she is marked as a trickster god
@@zachm5485 That is crazy, i need to recheck her lore because never in a million years would i have expected that.
I had a game where we used "realistic" injuries and stuff. The problem I had with it was my character got a major wound, and was laid up for weeks in game (and technically out of game) so the DM literally just had me make a new character because mine needed to stay behind and recover. And then my first character got kidnapped.
I use something akin to Rogue Trader, where if you ever fall unconscious, you'll get a trauma. That trauma will give you a debuff until you either get some form of healing magic (a lesser restoration removes 1, a greater removes 3), or until you have a long rest. Sure a long rest shouldn't fix everything but it's a game, and I need to keep things moving.
I just want to say that I love your all’s outtros. They always make me feel so warm and happy inside.
Only homebrew thing we had was adding the Alchemist class from pathfinder.
One time, my DM said that we had advantage on ranged attacks because the enemy was prone; the players handbook says the exact opposite!
To be fair, that rule is stupid. I don't blame your DM.
Edit: I'm dumb. This is wrong
@@TheRoseWolf I do, if you were prone you were a smaller target myself would give a penalty to range attack.
@@TheRoseWolfLike what Nettle said, the entire idea of "going prone" is to make yourself a smaller target against ranged weaponry. Militaries across the globe do it.
Tell me, which one is easier to snipe: a tall, 6 ft target with arms and legs, or a really thin line less than a foot tall?
For melee, it's obvious that you'd get advantage since your target is in, well, a disadvantageous position for melee combat.
@@dextertek9536 Okay my bad, I misunderstood. Yeah, that's a legit thing that people will do while fighting. Y'all make valid points
@@TheRoseWolf It's alright. Just keep learning and become the best you that you can be 👍🏼👍🏼
I think the worst one I've not only had happen to me, but also read multiple horror stories about WHY it's so awful, is any time a DM rules that if a PC is attempting to persuade another PC, then they just have to roll a persuasion check. *Especially* when the PC they're attempting to persuade doesn't get an opposed check to resist.
The worst rule I've seen is applying the automatic fail of the Nat 1 attack and the automatic success of the Nat 20 attack to skill checks. It's not a deal breaker mind you, but it tends to be frustrating for both DM's and PC's. It means no matter how trained you are in a certain skill, you can always fumble it like a commoner, on the other hand things that are supposed to be really difficult can be resolved simply because a character got lucky and rolled a Nat 20. Unless the D.M. and the group are prepared for the utter chaos that a 5% chance of stats not meaning anything for every role made, it will be frustrating. Even when you are prepared for it, you are knowingly giving murphy's law free reign over the campaign. Which means that it's never a matter of if, but when your rolls hit those numbers that the story can shift dramatically.
11:00 i like initiative every round its an interesting idea but dnd is not designed for changing initiative. even hold turn which was common in older stuff cant exist in 5e because of it. spells ending on your next turn or opponents turns or whatever mean shifting initiatives can massively break the game. iv tried to come up with solutions to this for various reasons over the years but it always comes down to the moment initiative changes for any reason spellcasters and effects become wonky fask
I had a DM who decided he wanted to take inspiration from dark souls and make a boss fight where the boss had insane movement, was practically invulnerable on half of all turns, and hit like a truck. His thought process was that we would have to strategically target it on the "vulnerable" turns, which were in fact just normal health mechanics, and somehow try to defend or avoid it otherwise.
I'd just rolled a new character after an honestly fun and interesting death that I hadn't minded. I got one-shot by a damage over time effect - from full health to negative half my hit points in one turn, with more coming on the next turn. DM ruled I survived nonetheless because he didn't want my new character gone literally the scene it was introduced.
Only reason we won the fight was because a friend who wasn't in the campaign joined for the one session. Friend was a huge power gamer so was dealing damage on a hit or a miss and was very hard to hurt, especially since he was given all the gear he needed because he was a one off character anyway.
Still friends with the DM, he's a fantastic guy, but everyone left that session frustrated and I think he was a little hurt by our reactions.
Back in the day of 3.5 DND, I was with a friend who was taking part of my evil drow campaign at a local shop to get another players handbook, because honestly having only one was not the best for a table of six players. When we overhear a conversation of another player saying that their DM lets them spend skill points to buy feats, at a rate of three points per feat. Now, my friend here is very new to the game, but out of his mouth comes a "Isn't that incredibly overpowered?" and I could not stop a mighty, villainous guffaw! With me saying "Out of the mouth of a newb no less!"
I can guess where this came from; "there is a feat that gets you +3 on a skill, so why not the other way around?" Except that's not how min-maxing works. That feat is only worth it when that skill is really important for your build.
1:02 My overleveled monk character would love this rule.(He is one level higher than the rest of the party)
Ok, before i continue watching (im on the image of knight with the video title) i made a rule that i actually thought was litterally real because that's how games like fire emblem worked: you kill the enemy, you get the exp it alots. You could see where this went. One PC overpowering the others because they were able to get the last swing on an enemy, and inevitably overshoot a PC in 1 or 2 levels after a few sessions. I only did this rule because I didn't know the experience gain rules, who reads the DMG?
I used to have a DM who ran a session where all the players in the group were split up in different places in the world, usually in pairs, but never more than that. There were seven of us, the DM not included, and I was a Chronomancy Wizard, travelling with another Wizard (I forget their specific subclass). We didn't last very long, since I was the only one who brought a healing spell between the two of us, and it was False Life.
A different DM had an arguably *worse* rule, which was that if I get 3 successful rolls for a stat in a row, I get to increase that stat by +1. If I get 3 unsuccessful rolls for that stat in a row, it decreases by -1. If that wasn't bad enough, all the stats started at around 8 or 9, so I wound up getting more failures than I did successes, tanking my stats. I brought this up to the DM, asking if it would be possible to maybe get a bit of leeway in terms of rebuilding the stats that I've lost, since otherwise I'd eventually hit 0. The DM said something along the lines of "you wouldn't be complaining if your stats were increasing, so you shouldn't be complaining when your stats are decreasing either." I didn't stay much longer in that game.
If you leave a targets line of sight, it procs opportunity attack. So if you try to skirt around an opponent to try to get flanking with an ally, you might proc opportunity attack even if you stay in melee
Not sure I understand what you mean here.
The vanilla normal rule is:
MOVING provokes AoO, and that occurs when your as you are "barely" LEAVING a square, not reaching into a new square.
If the enemy can see you "as you are leaving as square", it provokes AoO. The fact that the new targeted movement square is behind some obstacle blocking line of sight from the enemy to you, does NOT prevent the AoO from occurring.
"You can make an opportunity attack when a hostile creature that you can see moves out of your reach. To make the opportunity attack, you use your reaction to make one melee attack against the provoking creature. The attack occurs right before the creature leaves your reach."
Also, there is no "facing" in 5e. Your character is not looking "forward" in any specific direction. Line of sight is 360 degrees.
You might disagree, but those are the official rules.
So when a DM makes a House Rule you should just ask to write that rule down CLEARLY so that there is no confusion possible.
@@patrickrannou1278 whats aoo?? I know how regular opportunity attack works, DM had it if you moved from one square within melee of an opponent to another they arent facing but still within melee, somehow they would get an opportunity attack. We spent hours debating wtf he meant by facing and what a character sees and they decided that if youre facing north for instance, you see the top 3 squares in front, the 1 on each side, but you dont see the 3 behind. so if I went from his side to behind him, hed get an opportunity attack against me
@@Tototoron what you've described was partially the case in 3.x; if you left a threatened square as part of normal movement, rather than using the Withdraw action, or a '5-foot step', you'd trigger an Attack of Opportunity even if you went from one threatened square to another. I think something similar to the second part existed as an optional rule.
8:18 I’m beginning to understand why old-school RPG nerds got bullied in school
@10:43 - The chances of rolling a 1 on either die (or both) is not 10.7% when making two attacks, it is 9.75%. It's always less than +5% when adding in additional dice. With 2d20, there are 39 possibilities out of 400 to get a 1.
Worst house rule ever: In the desert after each day of travel, everyone rolls a d6. Lowest gets dehydration. We had a decanter of endless water.
7:23 that actually gives me an idea, how about parry is added and it has that effect, but it's checks are higher than dodging or blocking
Parry already exists in game, but it's a monster ability
The worst I had was a seperate stat everyone had to add for their skill at… sex….
thats quite silly
It you are going to do that sort of thing in your games, you could probably just creatively make use of pre-existiting skills instead of just adding a new one.
@@tehrulefoo ig it could be performance
@@tehrulefoo regardless it was… pretty gross, he would force sexual encounters in wherever possible. And that was my first experience with dnd.
I think you got the wrong kind of Dungeon Master
My DM made us roll for initiative outside of combat…
There are times that makes sense, such as when reinforcements are arriving 'x' rounds after combat or the alarm is triggered. Definately not a 100% of the time thing though.
@@andylaugel4241 Oh it was 100% of the time.
The worst Home Brew Rule I ever suffered under was Your Character can't receive XP unless they are in a safe environment where they can fully relax and contemplate their achievements/experiences, such places being a Town or City etc., NOT a tent camping in the wilderness or a clearing on the side of a road...
The biggest problem I had with it is our Group was in some Extra-Dimensional Corridor traveling I forget where now and had been for more than 6 Real World Months of weekly Game Sessions with no end in sight...we were 3rd Level when we entered the Corridor and when we finally reached a "Safe Place" (assuming we ever did) where we could conduct that introspection/contemplation and FINALLY receive all the accumulated XP, we'd jump from 3rd. level to at LEAST 15th level overnight...
The Group finally got so sick and tired of the same-old, same-old with no end in sight we all collectively told the DM to stuff himself up his Waste Disposal Orifice (we were not NEARLY that polite when we told him, I'm cleaning up the Language so my Comment doesn't shock younger readers, or teach them new words/phrases they haven't already learned at school/online 😄😁😆😅😂🤣) and that was that for that Campaign and the Group moved on to a different Campaign under a new DM...
I actually really like the idea of leveling up in a safe place, when you have time to reflect. It offers some interesting roleplay opportunities around what would otherwise be a purely mechanical effect of leveling up.
But man do you really need to consider what your game is going to look like if you want to use that rule. I can't possibly imagine this working for anything but a city campgain where you know you're going to be returning home for downtime a lot!
@@torifort717 It wasn't the concept on not Leveling Up until in a Safe Place, it was the DM's belief that the ONLY area that is 'Safe' is a Town or City...he absolutely REFUSED to give us our Earned XP even if we could use a spell such as Leomund's Tiny Hut to create an extra-dimensional place that ONLY WE COULD ENTER to rest, relax and 'Contemplate Our Achievements/Experiences' and thus earn the XP we had waiting for us...
THAT is what so MASSIVELY pissed off the group...we had no problem with the idea as a whole, just how the DM applied it...he absolutely REFUSED to allow us to create a Safe Place out in the wilderness despite there being multiple ways to actually do so and he refused to let us reach the end of that Never-to-be-Sufficiently-Damned Transit Corridor so we could actually get to a bloody Town/City and receive the XP we damn well earned! As I mentioned in my original comment, by our Math, if/when we did finally get to a freaking Town, we'd instantly jump from Level 3 to level 15 MINIMUM...and that's insane, no game should ever have a situation where Characters have that much unapplied XP...
3:45 reminded me of a VERY crazy and nasty game called "Fatal".
if i remember correctly, it has a rule that EVERY time ANY spell is cast, there's a small change that THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE WILL COLLAPSE!
also, character creation is TOTALLY random!
random CLASS, random SKILLS, random SEX, random personality, it's TOTALLY nuts!
From what I know about this game, these are the least bad thing about it. It's unplayable in multiple ways at the same time and was created to make a point (with point being "I'm an incel and I have way too much free time")
@02:30 Uhhh, thats actually pretty reasonable, from what I understood of the ruling. The Acrobatics check was not to clear the jump, but to do those tumbles you see parkour people do after a insane jump. Though admittedly, i wouldn't make that same call, unless the landing was below the jump off point. Even then i wouldn't make it at disadvantage.
I had a DM that rolled a D12 to determine what encounters we'd get. Sounds fine, but there was a 11 in 12 chance that the encounter was a powerful beast that gave status affects just by being near it. THEN, if you avoided to face the thing, just got out of there without ever engaging the creature, just making a strategic "Yeah screw that noise" the DM made us roll a wisdom save, if we failed we'd be permanently afraid and at disadvantage against that specific creature type. Having to go across the world to one specific town to get it removed. "It'S nOt A cUrSe! It'S fEaR mEcHaNiCs!". Yeah, I left.
I did a temporary ruling during a massive battle that they didnt have to roll to hit, just do dmg and thsts how many you hit (they were being swarmed by enemies). That wasnt the problem. What was though, was me allowing Ranger Horde Breaker to doubke your roll. In 5 turns, one player got over 60 kills
one i heard about but didn't actually see:
making everyone re-roll initiative at the beginning of EVERY combat round!
edit: oops, someone mentioned it at 11:03!
Isn't that how it's done?
@@leonelegender No, in D&D you roll initiative once at the beginning of combat, and it remains in that order for every round thereafter until combat ends.
Having to reroll initiative every round for the entire combat isn't just painfully slow (repeating the step slows down the actual process of combat by quite a lot), it's also adds a lot of uncertainty to players trying to plan their next turn, which slows things down even more. However charming the idea may look on paper, in actual practice it's best to avoid this houserule. The game runs smoother and feels better without it.
1:15 one of my DM's had that for Only Barbs, fighters and munks. It worked out well since our munk died early and was replaced by a paladin, there was just me the fighter and our barb to take advantage of the rule
My brother has been our forever DM for quite some time, and is an excellent at it, but the one thing he does that absolutely drives me bat-crap crazy is that he uses performance checks for way more than it is supposed to be.
If it comes to whittling, or trying to do some sort of Hands-On something or else he calls for a performance check rather than using it for things that are actually performing
I feel like the wisdom/intelligence save against persuasion checks can be a interesting and good thing so long as said check just prevents them from falling for something blatantly stupid
i think what's worse is i had a dm say "i don't allow persuasion checks. You have to role play it, using your own words to convince me , in character " and then they would just stonewall me, no matter what i said. doesn't help that i'm on the spectrum and bad at improv, which completely invalidated the 18 cha i put on my character. If i'm expected to have 18 cha IRL, i wouldn't be playing dnd, i'd be out there convincing real people to do my bidding. . .
@@Femaiden "If i'm expected to have 18 cha IRL, i wouldn't be playing dnd, i'd be out there convincing real people to do my bidding." That's a pretty good argument to demonstrate how stupid that ruling is. Too bad you probably didn't think of it at the time.
I had a DM that if a single attack hit you and caused half or more of your current HP to be lost then you would fall unconscious and need to make death saves. Absolutely sucks the fun out of fighting when you can get one tapped by a good hit.
For that “roll for severity” I think that could be fun if it were still tiny changes. A 1/1 is you just fail completely, a 1/4 you take a few hp of damage caused by you smacked against the ground as you tripped. A 20/1 is a critical hit, a 20/4 the enemy gets crit damage and falls prone or something. Little things.
I've had to deal with a Xenomorph-esque homebrew in a game I was in once (as a player).
That thing was so utterly busted it wasn't even funny: 400+ HP, +13 to attack, 6-8 attacks per turn depending on whether it was raged or not (barbarian class fyi) each dealing around 50-70 damage on average, and somewhere like, 25+ AC. *All of this at around LEVEL 10!*
Also it tamed a freaking T-Rex.
Seriously it nearly SOLO'D the *Ancient Blue Dragon BBEG* back when the party was at level 7, and would've outright KILLED said BBEG then and there if it weren't for the DM having to aggressively employ a tactic called "lying about the boss's health".
We now cite that Character as the definition of an Overpowered Homebrew Character, and an example of what NOT to allow in a game.
reminds me of the most overpowered D&D character ever, "pun-pun".
that build uses a specific module, and involves a Kobold Druid with a very specific creature for a Familiar.
the combo enables them to both give each other infinitely stacking permanent buffs, as in all attributes in the HUNDREDS, and able to use EVERY "spell-like ability' in the ENTIRE monster manual!
@@ericb3157
i dont know if this is real but i heard there is a way in 3.5 dnd for a kobold player to remove the sun.
my old DM decided that every attacker after the 1st got a +10 to hit. the logic being your attention is divided.
this is when flanking rules already gave a +2. and we would ALWAYS be outnumbered because the campaign was balanced on us fighting hordes. 4 people, fighting goblin camps.
I did my own version of critical fumble.
Firstly it’s OPT-IN per roll.
Secondly the negative effects lessen as you gain higher levels, indicating your greater skill.
Lastly as the negative effects lessen they are replaced by trade-off effects, something bad happens but something beneficial also happens making it actually worthwhile to use the table.
I mean arcance components are literally written in the book as a requirement for the spells. How the bloody hell is that homebrew? Whats next? They complain that silence doesnt allow them to use spells with a verbal component?
Also, the wusses could have switched to divine magic users.
Because the rulebooks don't provide any guidance on how you aquire and keep track of your material components.
@@ashtongiertz8728 Typically they just get handwaved away by saying that any components that cost less than 1 GP are just kept in a component pouch. Having to keep track of that sort of thing is kind of silly.
We have a bunch of homebrew rules, but I have a definitive #1 homebrew rule I love the most. It's called familiarity. The more you use anything the better you get at it. The better you get at it the harder it gets to get even better with it. So, as something to make anything and everything unique to your character we do what we call familiarity bonus.
As an example, you cast detect magic 10 times. Now you have 10/10 familiarity with it. That means you get 1 familiarity bonus with it. What you can do with that is really up to what you and the DM decide is fair for it. For my Half-Orc Wizard, Grok Hexcor, he lowered the amount of rounds he has to concentrate on detect magic to get the full benefit from it, we play PF1e with 3.5 sprinkled in. The next familiarity, 20/20 more times using it, he lowered it again. That means instead of taking 3 rounds to utilize the full effect of Detect magic it takes 1 round. The third bonus, 30/30 more times casting Detect Magic, he lowered the casting time by 1 stage. So, now Detect Magic can be cast as a move action instead of a standard action. That allows him to cast Identify and in the same round cast detect magic, while getting the full effect of Detect magic.
Another example is with our Paladin, Rideyr Eleor, he uses a long sword and shield. Every time he swings his long sword he gets a familiarity point (FP). At 10/10 FP he uses his first familiarity Bonus to give him +1 attack bonus to hit with that weapon. The representation of this is he's been using that sword so much he knows that sword better than anyone else would. For example, he may know that the sword has a certain weight distribution and has learned how to swing it in a more effective way to be able to increase his chance to hit his target.
Last example, and this is when you can really make things unique, as my Wizard (Grok) I have spells that's I've altered in a way with FB that my cantrip "Ray of Frost" is a swift action and does 1d12 points of damage as a range touch attack. Did I mention that's a cantrip? AND a swift action? EVERY round I get a free Ray of Frost for up to 24 points of damage, if I crit with it.
We allow FP/FB to be added to anything that aren't "Skill Checks". We even have one person who has familiarity in dying and being resurrected. He's died like 7 or 8 times now, very low intelligence character so he typically does a lot of dumb stuff in game.
We're currently in an almost 3 year long campaign we play every Friday night at 1930 est and I stream it on my Twitch channel. twitch. tv /Sinful_Solution
Crit fumbles are funny if they don't actually affect anything. Like I got a 1 on an attack to throw a coin at a kua-toa and we described it flying out the window of the ship, landing on the water tails-up, and sinking.
In a previous dnd session I've had, our party went to 2 shops, in the second shop, 2 members of the party did most of the talking and interacting, which left me and the other member there not being able to talk to the shop owner much, i only got to ask if he knows anything about my axe and the other person healed the owner and got something after the party left
So at the end of the session, which was shortly after shopping, i suggested that we roll for initiative for stuff like shops, so everyone gets some time to ask questions and buy something, which the party agreed to, we haven't gone shopping since then, but i try to remember it for if we go shopping again
Joined a running rapan athuk campaign, and first or second game the guy ruled ballista couldn’t be stopped with a shield. Thought whatever, and to be fair it never came up again.
Unfortunately when he let people make characters from Spheres of power I noticed he tended to “play things by ear”. As in adding crazy spheres based bosses or similar crazy crap, made worse by some of his sudden rulings.
In a already hard campaign.
1. Heavy nerfs to Alchemists and crafting so we couldn’t get much money or potions, made worse by 1-3 week long wait for the ferry to comeback with orders.
2. For a Spheres ability that let people move away from someone engaging them he ruled that only the beginner level was allowed…… in the middle of a boss fight. After we’d had it for several games. And the boss still had it, which made it so its targets couldn’t try to get away.
3. A character I made was like a living weapon and he made a npc for me (was planning on using possess enemies or fly around). Thing is the class and host get a turn, which wouldn’t be a problem if I was possessing a enemy (it’s risky and can fail), or working with another player.
Upon realizing his mistake, rather than remove the npc (which I didn’t want when making the character) he just removed the turn. For anybody I work with. Meaning if I was working with a player only one of us go. So if the Npc he gave me died I planned on just leaving the fight.
4. Player made a Spheres healer and Dm nerfed him so bad and was constantly asking Player to make his character weaker resulting in Player leaving.
This is before the Super Boss in 5 and a mass battle with multiple cultists using channel negative energy, with spheres based boss support, just to show how unfair this was.
5 is the worst one though. He decided that a rapan Boss could get sphere abilities and he even gave it a ability that let it attack after a player misses, which he used till I found that it was only once per turn. It hit hard btw.
Then after the party destroyed it (me mentioning destroying his body) he decided it could comeback to life despite not being a lich….. and hunt the party Paladin for Exp. While also tailoring it’s attacks to fight Paladin and the party.
Honestly while the guy was ok and the campaign had cool moments, like the Npc becoming my Pc after he got brought back to life as a dragon (kinda), and us killing a mummy only to almost all die to its trapped treasure, I just wish his Dm style wasn’t taking away stuff from the players and make stuff harder.
Sure, Rapan Athuk campaign, but it made us never want to go to the actual dungeon cause we wouldn’t be able to run away from whatever he made up.
It’s why everyone wanted to leave the game, cause despite the Spheres being added, everything was getting stronger too fast, in a campaign where everything is already stronger.
TLDR;
Dm severely nerfed abilities in actual combat while letting the enemies keep them.
Nerfed crafting and two “problem” classes to near uselessness.
Made a Op Boss we didn’t know how to kill permanently then allowed it to level off the party and Paladin player, making it a random encounter.
counter spell on counter spell = roll on the wild magic table. I heard of it and am encouraging it in our game, which occasionally happens. Always fun.
My time has come. I had this one DM who decided to entirely revamp the AC system because he didn't agree with the use of Dex for AC or how armor wroked in general. It ended up being such a convoluted mess that the first fight after the shift took 6 hours of real time, so a full session.
To give you a reference frame of just how scuffed it was: The average AC was floating around the mid 20-s, while attack rolls remained unchanged. If you miss with an attack, you still deal damage depending on if you hit 0.5*AC or 0.75*AC. Even if you're a Dex-based character, you absolutely need to rush Con, because now it impacts both AC and HP.
Our Rogue wasn't pleased. Granted, we were all displeased and immediately told the DM exactly that, but he was stubborn and that rule persisted for 3 more sessions before he relented. The game fell apart shortly after.
@@AlbinoTiefling I really can't understand people completely rewriting core game mechanics in general. I mean, I'm not in the business of "just play X", but if you want to play an entirely different game, there's at least 90% chance this game already exists and was playtested or at least edited
Every game I've played where the DM implimented a weather table, we always rolled the worst weather back-to-back right at the start. One game, which is still on-going, the DM rolled so many extreme rainy weather scenarios he's forcing himself to change around a bunch of his prep for the starting islands our pirate crew were visiting because some of these villages would be wiped off the map while others would be under extreme duress AT BEST due to their resources being used up+washed away+drowned. 😅
The party was supposed to speed through a mountain area between villages, but because of the storm we had no choice but to clear out part of an encounter that was initially intended to just be foreshadowed in order to kill time. Then we were stuck waiting another few days even after the storm was over, just for things to dry up enough to travel. We finally do so and the creeks/craters/etc. that were just minor obstacles before with a few mean monsters in them we could just rush through are now twice their original size or larger from all the excess water. It's been almost 10 sessions now and we still haven't made it to the 2nd village that we were expected to make it to in session 3-4 all because of this weather table stealing the show... 😅
dm said "if you roll two 20s while attacking with advantage you kill your enemy". I explicitly ask them if I would be able to kill an Adult Red Dragon while being a lvl 1 Monk, he said yes
The contested rolling for attacking and damage does sound kind of intriguing if I’m being honest, but not for a system like 5e. I’d kind of like to see that implememted in a different kind of ttrpg
BESM uses the opposed roll system for attacks and defences but it works because the rest of the mechanics support it.
@@BlueTressym I’ve heard some good things about BESM, I’ll try it out!
I think that offering wisdom or intelligence for persuasion saves actually kinda makes sense
But it doesn't. It should be easier to convince a beger on the street to give you info for some coin then convince a noble to give you the dead to his house even if they have the same save bonus.
@@an8strengthkobold360that really has nothing to do with my point
Allowing Persuasion checks against PCs takes away player agency. Even with a save, imagine a Rogue with Charisma 20 and Expertise in Persuasion bossing around the rest of the party.
@@andylaugel4241 That doesnt have anything to do with my point
5:40 I had one 3.0 character that wouldn't much have cared about the Weather or Accommodation Rolls...
He was (at this point) a Wizard 5/Air Elemental Savant 10 with an Item that gave him Resist Elements Fire and Resist Elements Cold permanently...so he was completely Immune to Electricity (so a Lightning Strike would at most Flash/Bang him with no other damage) and since his natural Movement Type is Fly 100 ft. perfect maneuverability, the room pests wouldn't bother him since he's usually floating in mid air instead of nestled in the uncomfortable sheets (the Resist Elements item gives him 5 Points of Immunity to Fire and Cold each Round so even a Blizzard wouldn't do much to him other than blow him around and blind him, the cold wouldn't affect him)...
He liked it when Rogues tried to Sneak Attack him...when they tried, they revealed their presence behind him and he Ground-Zeroed a Lightning Ball (Fireball affected by the Elemental Substitution: Electricity Feat) on himself and fried them while doing nada to himself since he's Immune...Shocked the HELL out of them (Pun absolutely intended 😄😁😆😅😂🤣), then he turned, 5-foot floated away (so no Attack of Opportunity against me) and cast Disintegrate, Cloudkill or something equally nasty that doesn't have a REF Save (so no Uncanny Dodge) at the poor Rogue...
Some of these homebrew rules are triggering me and I don't even play DnD. Such bullsh*t!!
Silver... I had a DM who only rewarded us silver coins but charged everything in gold. Magic items did not exist in dungeons and had to be purchased from a specific thief, FOR GOLD!
Sounds like a good dm
A buddy of mine wanted to make it so that if you were being attacked by a Swarm that was in your space, then if allies rolled low they would hit you.
I said that was a stupid ruling and punishes front liners for being front liners. He said that that was how other DM’s always ruled it when he played. I said if that’s the only reason he wants to do it, then it’s not a good rule. He actually listened.
11:00 I have a solution for this person because old school D&D did exactly what they’re looking for
Group initiative systems. You roll once for the whole group. All actions happen simultaneously. You ask them what they’re doing, they do necessary rolls, then you narrate what happens
And yes, back then, you rolled a new initiative every turn for all groups involved. Though back then initiative was a d6 roll. Then in 2e it switched to a d10. It wasn’t until WotC that was saw the standardization of everything as d20
Not the worst Ive seen but one of the best, our DM has us roll initiative for the next encounter at the end of combat so its narratively a smooth transition into combat . That way we don't have to go through the math and role call part of battle every time.
Not sure if this counts, but one of my DMs call for some of the weirdest skill checks for somethings. Like cooking he asked for performance, which I guess might make sense if we were trying to make it look fancy, but for regular cooking it doesn't sound right to have Charisma be the base stat for determining how edible your meal turns out to be.
Even more baffling instance of this is when he asked us to roll performance for handling the ropes on a ship... I feel like he just hears word "performance" and stops there and doesn't think about it any further mechanically.
Oooh the wild magic surge one. I also had players wanting to see it proc more. We were also running out of the abyss.
So I redesigned some of the adventure and had points where the planes borderlines between the abyss and underdark were weak. This created weird shenanigans in those areas.
When the rogue player scored a crit with her magical bow, I said give me a d100. Took a few seconds for the group to work out what was going on then ":O :O :O : O" reactions.
Healing Word not working on a downed person is the stupidest fucking rule I've heard.
6:20 I actually like this
I’m currently running classic Traveller and that game has something similar. It doesn’t have HP, your stats actually go down when you take damage, and that’s what wounds are. If 1 stat goes to 0, you’re unconscious and lightly wounded; if 2 stats go to 0, you’re unconscious for longer badly wounded; if 3 stats go to 0, you’re dead.
Lightly wounded just needs first aid. Someone with medical-1 skill and a basic med kit can patch you up quick, you’ll wake up after 10 minutes:
Heavily wounded you’re out for 3 hours and need medical attention at a hospital from a medical expert, ie someone with Medical-3 skill.
Without such medical treatment, that stat is stuck halfway between the wounded level and full.
Traveller combat is fast and brutal though. It’s not a combat centric game, it wants you to avoid combat if at all possible. As you should, people have guns in this game and guns kill people.
Lots of folks seem to hate on Crit Fumble tables. This, in my opinion, comes from two issues. The first is GMs only using them for the PCs, and not the villains. The players have less of an issue if the big bad rolls a nat one and suddenly his sword is 15 feet in front of him. The second comes from the mindset that players are supposed to succeed no matter what, and crit fumble makes them seem less powerful somehow. I use Crit fumbles in my game, and crit success. I make the fumbles pretty balanced, in my opinion. And heck, if you roll a natural 1, you manage to fumble so badly, you actually somehow hit your opponent. That actually makes my players excited, Will they drop their weapon, get stunned for a round, or will they actually turn an automatic miss into a hit anyway.
Players are such spoiled babies ffs
I use crit fumbles for nonproficient skill check, and thats it.
The wprst rule i tried was that necrotic damage drained a d4 of your max hp until you had restoration cast on you.
5:13 Maybe the effects were a bit too damaging, but I don't think this is a bad system. Instead of having to pre-plan unique events each time you camp out or stay at an inn, you let a player roll for the outcome based on a table and what resources they invest. If they're a new party, and skimp out on how much to pay at the inn, they risk a worse penalty, albeit minor. Spend a bit more money, and they wake up better rested, and well-fed. They get a slight morale boost.
I had a DM with two house rules, one not so bad and one that was just plain dumb:
- seeing us overthinking every action we took to the point a single encounters could take us an entire session, he gave us 5 seconds to make a decision after announcing our turn in combat. It sped things up significantly and since we were all experienced players at this point, the time pressure wasn't too bad to handle.
- He introduced psionic classes in a campaign, and treated psionic abilities as something completely separate from magic (so anti-magic and spell resistance would have no effect on them, for example), which led to ridiculous exploits and interactions, and psions becoming the most busted things in general since countermeasures against psionic abilities were close to nonexistent. If you have a problem with a psion casually spamming teleports inside a dungeon protected by a dimensional lock and an antimagic field because "well it's not technically magic", you're not alone.
had a whopping 5 in one session that weren't explained in session zero because "a DM doesn't have to tell you anything". yeah, except THE RULES.
1: a nat 20 against your character would result in the DM comparing the difference between your AC and the total. if the difference was more than 5, you have a limb crippled decided on a d4 roll. if it was 10 or more, you automatically lose that limb. what happens if you lose both arms? well, the rest of the party is now on an escort mission because unless you can fight with your feet, you can't do anything. Oh, and the enemies will target you first because you're an easy target.
2: targeting beast races for no reason other than unexplained racism.
3: player agency didn't matter. did you roll a nat 20 on persuasion to get information from a bartender? too bad, they can just decide to not tell you anyway because fuck you!
4: being forced to roll for mundane actions. opening a door? better hope you roll higher than a 10 or else you sprain your wrist.
5: ROLLING. FOR. UNCANNY. DODGE. do i even NEED to explain why this is stupid!?
whats uncanny dodge?
@@vrfujundying a rogue ability that halves damage on a reaction. you don't roll for it, but this DM thought it was unfair that players could just get out of half of a 12d10 roll. the stringer the attack, the higher the "dc" you had to make in order to take half damage. nat 1? oops, looks like the enemy gets to treat it as if they rolled a nat 20.
@@penguinmaster7 damn... this truly might bee one of the worst ones omg
yeah, ditching ac for a contest system is really bad. another bad house rule in our campaign was, you roll your stat with a d20 but the catch is, you have to decide class and race before rolling and each roll would go down the list i.e. you roll the str first then dex, then con, etc., etc. my first character ended up with a 4 in dex and 6 in int
nothing in the spell description of healing word says they have to hear you.
"A creature of your choice that you can see within range regains hit points equal to 1d4 + your spellcasting ability modifier"
you just have to be able to see them, and speak.
it is the act of invoking the word that heals them, not their perception of it.
One DM I had removed the innate Monster Levels.
Everyone started off in a level 1-3 campaign setting with 4+ Monster levels and a single class level. Being entirely over-levelef and overpowered for the setting. Not to mention the variance in strengths across the Monster Races themselves.
He did not last very long as a DM for 3/3.5.
That is pretty much the only bad "homebrew" rules I've encountered. But then again, I've only had 2 inexperienced or incompetent DMs.....
Rogue having at 7th level to use their dexterity score for AC instead of the modifier.
Monk attacking a number of times equal to their level.
I was given a homebrew magic item as a lvl 5 arcane trickster rogue (Technically my character was lvl 9, as I had 4 lvls of arcane archer fighter... I know now that I should've picked champion, but oh well... anyway back to the story)
So, after our party pulled off a heist, a bodyguard of the man we robbed tracked us down and surprised us at our camp, attacking the monk out of nowhere. The Druid managed to cast hold person, and we all got in position and just jumped this humanoid shark man...
Once he was dead, I looted his corpse, like you do, and managed to get a pretty sick magical dagger...
Sharkfang (needs attunement)
It's a jagged dagger with what looks to be a large fish hook coming out of the pommel...
"Okay, but what does it do?" I hear you ask.
It's a +1 dagger, with a special ability... Upon a successful hit when making a melee sneak attack coming out of stealth, the target must make a Con Save against the Sneak Attack damage.
On a success, the target's throat is slit, and they are unable to talk or make verbal components for spells until they receive 1hp of healing.
On a fail, they just... die.
Now, for those of you who don't get why this is busted... let me remind you I was a lvl 5 rogue, meaning my sneak attack (base) was 3d6, that's anywhere from 3-18... but the problem comes in with "sneak attack coming out of stealth", that means, I'm rolling with advantage... meaning I have a higher chance to crit (the odd are 9% to crit when rolling with advantage)... and critting doubles all dice... including sneak attack, which meant if I crit on a hit with this dagger, my sneak attack damage would be 6d6 instead of 3d6.
After I got this dagger, the 2 humans in our party got kidnapped by a cult and I snuck in ahead of the druid and monk to go find them. Long story short, I was hiding in the shadows between the cult leader and the monk who was pretending to be drunk... and he walked to her... meaning he passed into and out of range, meaning I got an attack of opportunity while I was stealthed.
Nat 20, crit.
6d6 sneak attack: 25
Cult Leader rolled a nat 20 to save... and then I used my reaction to cast silvery barbs...
He rerolled the save... 8.
I killed the Cult Leader (who had about 120 hp and some powerful spells at his disposal) before combat could even begin.
It felt awesome to do, but it was VERY broken.
The RaW interpretation of the @02:30 story (Dashing and then leaping) would just be that you can't. Your movement (incl. the dash) is *all* of your movement. If you can leap 15 feet, then that has to be included in the 60ft of movement you have available. The DM's ruling is still kinda bad, and I'd probably allow this for coolness reasons, but it isn't actually how the rules work.
Not sure how bad this is, but I ruled that attacks of opportunity against enemies that are flanked prior to the movement lose that flanked advantage because you have to move away from the person on the other side in order to leave the zone of control, and by the time they’re out of that zone, the other person is no longer in direct flanking position. My partner gave me a sour look but rolled with it anyway.
No multiattack seems fine when you want to speed up combat
It's objectively mechanically weaker though. Some bonus to attack roll could compensate it, but I'm not sure how exactly it should work. Or you may not care about it being objectively mechanically worse, but it's a group decision, and the player has a right to not like it
I had one dm back in the day whose homebrew rule gave all sacantily clad female characters fullarmor protection. Bur any unarmored male would take double damge to those areas that werent armor protectedl What a scum bagimo.
If it applied to both sides that’d be cool. Making it body shame dudes isn’t cool. I may prefer my fellow ladies but that’s hella sexist
What tabletop RPG system uses armor regions?
funny rule we use for non serious campaigns: after a nat 20 or 1 roll 2 more dice if all are 20/1 then super crit/fail and someone dies if its a 1 its you if its a 20 its whoever u want this includes saving rolls so you dodge so hard some dude just dies or your mental fortitude is so immense that trying to prob your mind killed them. we agreed enemies have this roll as well so they can insta kill us which considering the odds im fine with and everyone else agrees because "its silly"
it has happened once as of this
No more copper, no more silver, no more platinum, everything is just "Gold" now. He wasn't going to be changing the price of anything, either. Five coppers? No, five gold.