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@@DM-Timothy your opinion please, would increasing the Eldritch Knight cantrips to 3 with an added Cantrip at 10 level for 4 overpower the game ? As it is in 14 and in 24 now cantrip is the go to damage spell for the EK as it's slot spells are buffs, it's not designed to hurl spells but to fight melee with enhancement. Least at 7th he can attack with a 2d10 chill touch now along with sword now.
@@Mark-ki7ic Happy to offer it. I do not think it would be overpowered at all. Cantrips are great, and knowing more is obviously better than less, but having options in the spell department, while it increase versatility, adds very little actual power increase to any class.
You don’t need a narrative reason for the background feat / bonus . It’s like working on a farm as a kid and becoming really good at pig calling. Then you go to college and become an engineer, you don’t need to be able to pig call but you’re still good at it.
I mean, it was a catchy title for a video about Houserules you might consider for things you may or may not dig about the new rules… Whether or not these fix it for you specifically is your own call. I’ll be considering using some of them.
@@monkeyman3194 well 1. The implication is weird, do you know if a bullet to the leg would hurt you or you need to be shot to be sure? 2. Untrue, some people are already playing it. But even if I am not, I playtested it and played 2014, some of the problems come from back there and haven't been addressed 3. Have you seen the 2d8 upcasting of CME? If I wait until a player creates a build for it, wait until it reaches the problematic levels, confirm that it is indeed a problem, and THEN change it, it'll be a WAY BIGGER problem
I don't think you can make an opportunity attack against an ally. The intro section says you can make an opportunity attack against foes and then gives you the rule for taking an opportunity attack. I can see why people might have an alternate reading, but i think it is an exploit that i would not allow at my table.
If creating characters is something you pour a lot of creativity into and really enjoy, I can see why using AI might feel off. But our generator isn’t meant to replace that creativity. You still come up with the core ideas; the AI just helps with the more routine parts, like filling out the sheet, and can suggest additional ideas to enhance your creation process. We’re also planning to improve it further, allowing users to upload longer descriptions or files with character backstories and world context, so AI can help manage that info without taking over the creative process. Our plans for Kickstarter include features like a smart editor that can analyze your character sheet, offer balancing suggestions, or give relevant tips based on the specific rule set you’re using. Do you think any of these features would be helpful for you to create your characters? If not, is there any other part of campaign prep that feels more tedious where AI might be useful?
I wouldn't want to generate a character that way, but as Dreamer is pointing out in the comments, I WOULD be happy to have it take the character I have in mind and hurry through some of the paperwork so I can get to work on customizing it the way I want it. But really, their other plans are what makes them kind of wildly awesome.
@@DungeonDreamermaybe. I also (as a DM) have had players at the table who didn't understand their characters from a mechanical perspective (class features, spell effects, etc). Is part of the analysis also intended to explain those parts to new players? That would save me time as a DM. Also troublesome about that is the old adage, "Players will optimize the fun out of a game," I think that your product might be less off-putting if it helped empower player choices and decision making rather than a straight up "Take this build because it's optimal" which is already an existing problem in game spaces when players just follow a guide for optimum performance.
Until couple of weeks ago I wouldn've thought the same, but I learned that experiences vary. In my latest campaign, every single one of the players grabbed a pre-built character from roll20 instead of making their own, and then they just come up with bits of lore about their character as the game goes on. Apparently they like playing the game, but not building characters.
Can I suggest one house rule that has fixed 90% of the balance issues in my game. No multiclassing. It has made my prep work much easier and doubled my enjoyment as a DM and so far doesn’t seem to be having any impact on the fun of the game for my players.
Definitely a solid option. There’s a lot of players out there who really balk at the idea of it. I suspect more of them would enjoy it than THINK they will enjoy it. Glad your table is a good example of that!
@@DM-Timothy it was not popular when I first announced it but my players do not approach the game with an optimisers mentality. Having now played for 2 years without multiclassing I think (hope) they have come to realise the restriction has had little to no impact on their enjoyment of the game.
Sounds extremely boring from a narrative perspective. Though I guess it makes sense if your table has a lot of powergamers and such. Mine rarely multiclass because the few times they did they noticed a drop/delay in power more than anything. But it did make for unique stories when they decided to learn different skillsets.
@@goji253 I have yet to encounter a player who multiclassed for narrative reasons. It always seems to be for the abilities and the power combos certain mixes offer. 2 levels of fighter for action surge, a dip into warlock to use charisma to attack with that kind of thing. If there was a genuine in game reason for a player to multiclass I’d be okay with that. I think it helps that each player is running 3 characters in the campaign and so gets to experience different characters classes from session to session depending on which of their characters is involved in the action for an encounter. Less chance to get bored playing just a fighter or being the party healer.
So far: 1) I feel like a risky strike could be adjusted and could *feel* more like D&D5E, such as by saying "Once on your turn as a mastery property you may take disadvantage to an attack. If you hit, add double your proficiency bonus to damage" Also down with shield removal, but I also feel like it could've been more compelling if it was instead something like "until the start of your Turn, you are considered in Half-Cover, or three-quarter covered if already half-covered". Keep the game terms present, but force some interaction. 2) No reactions until your Turn starts while surprised feels fine for me. Yeah that's fine. As long as it's not the gross old version. 4) Yeah that works. My anti-whack-a-mole is costing a hit die *or* exhaustion to get back up (plus another per failed death save) for tables with fewer encounters. 5) Yup, DCs should absolutely be nerfed from exhaustion. Exhaustion absolutely hurts martials more. 6) Yup, and would not surprise me if in DMG or next tasha's-like book they add custom backgrounds 8ish) I just like giving everyone automatic ASI at 3rd and every 4th after, so you raise stats on every odd numbered level that doesn't boost proficiency bonus. If a feat gives ASI, take a save proficiency instead. We don't play to final tier so might as well let people get the toys and stats they want for endgame. I can see this working out, though maybe some exceptions. Like Lucky feels too nutty with a stat boost 9) Yup.
5) Spell DC is already reduced my exhaustion. If DC of all your abilities is reduced by it, it will primarily apply to martials, so i am thoroughly confused by the intention both in the video and this comment.
@@arcturuslight_ Your confusion might be because as writ Exhaustion only affects your D20 tests (attack rolls, saving throws, and abilty checks) not your static numbers (Spell save dcs, Armor Class). This houserule is proposing changing that, so that a wizard can't cast a fireball with no modifier for being exhausted, just as they can't cast a scorching ray without penalty under the rules as written. Hope that helps! :)
@@DM-Timothy It appears that I was convinced that they kept spell DC reduction from the playtest. I am surprised that they removed it, but even more surprised that youtubers reviewing the handbook and making "all the rule changes in 2024" videos haven't pointed out that change from the playtest, especially when it comes to everyone's favourite power divide.
The Treeantmonk's Armor/Spell Casting Rule easily solved by simply not allowing multiclassing. Does a Sorcerer want to use two ASIs to get light/shield and then medium armor proficiency? Alright. Does an Eldritch Knight with the Defense fighting feat want to cast Shield while on the front line? Well, that was never a problem.
Truthfully I've always hated this rule. I only played with it once but I hated every second of it. It feels like it only exists to punish multiclassing. Even if you aren't trying to play something broken and have a narrative reason for it. Just getting arbitrarily locked out of half your kit is just asinine. Barbarian Rage is the exception, but you know that's coming
I think that the yo-yoing for health came about because healing doesn't always keep up with incoming damage, so why heal this turn if the damage is still going to down your ally and you will have to cast another spell next turn anyway. They might still go down and you will waste 2 spell slots instead of 1. (Yes, the new healing in the 24 ruling will help offset this a little) Pack Tactics did a video on this called "Exhaustion by Unconscious doesn't fix Yoyo Healing".
Totally agree that the yo-yo healing is a logical reaction to a problem. It will be interesting to see how the boost to healing affects behavior WITHOUT an exhaustion rule, but would also be interesting to see how having both would impact behavior. Time will tell :)
@@DM-TimothyIn my experience, yo-yo healing isn't even a logical conclusion. It's just not a choice the players can make. It's just how healing works in this game, and adding exhaustion will just unnecessary make the character worse at skills for the rest of the day.
@@arcturuslight_ I have seen occasions where yo-yo healing is unavoidable, and times when it's because people don't heal because it's less efficient. The latter is what this houserule would be designed to prevent, your table style will largely determine if this is necessary :)
For D&D 5e 2014, I house-ruled Shield to add Proficiency Bonus to Armor Class but only for the turn it was triggered in, unless the caster Concentrates on the Shield spell. Then it lasts until the beginning of the caster's next turn. I think I am keeping it this way for my next 5e 2024 campaign.
Our house rules for Shield is +PB to AC Eldritch Knight bonded wpn can be used as his spell focus Custom background we're using is the Battle Medic based on Soldier. Minor Elemental upcast is 1d8 instead of 2d8
I agree with most of these rules. When you started talking about power attack, I thought you were keeping it around and I was going to be sad. I'm glad you didn't. Two things I would add: The light property should require the additional attack be performed with your other hand. No "two weapon fighting" with one hand while the other holds a shield. Somatic components require a free hand (this might be an oversight? But right now it doesn't say you can't have something in your hand, it just says it takes a hand).
I consider a houserule that you can’t make a meele attack with two different weapons using the same hand during the same turn - to prevent some crazy weapon juggling you potentially can do with the new rules.
That would break fighters trying to use multiple different masteries, without trying to cheese the game, and doing that is intended and why they relaxed weapon equipping rules in the first place. I think what you want is to disallow the extra light/nick/dualwield attacks from being done with swapped weapons, these are the only issue. Or you can just return the old wording from 2014 that they removed for no reason, that says that you need to hold light weapons in both hands at the same time to get these benefits.
@@arcturuslight_ How do you define cheese? I think it very cheesy to swap weapons multiple times every single round to get the benefit of different masteries. It will punish players that just want to use the same weapon. It will also drag out combat.
@@sortehuse Other than weirdness with nick, using many masteries per turn is a balanced and intended use of them. You can listen to designers talking about it in their sneak peek videos. You can totally use the same weapon all the time and be fine, like pushing enemies with every attack. The masteries don't really synergize with each other that well, so you are not incentivised too much to use different ones on the same turn, but it is an option for those who want to. Even if it wasn't the case, it's kinda weird to say someone is "punished" by choosing not to use some of their abilities.
The set of house-rules I use for addressing wack-a-mole healing are as follows: 1) Characters gain one level of exhaustion when they go to 0 hp and then are healed, unless they are stabilized via a medicine check, healer's kit, or spare the dying BEFORE they are healed using magic 2) I have changed exhaustion to be -1 per level of exhaustion (like the playtest). Death still occurs at 6 levels of the condition. 3) Healing Word requires the target to be conscious and able to perceive (hear or see) the caster 4)Targets that are unconscious AND prone grant ADVANTAGE to ranged attacks that are within normal range and to all melee attacks that are in range (reach weapons can attack the downed target with advantage). Those attacks score critical hits if the hit. Ranged attacks against the downed target that are at long range are made with a straight roll unless another factor gives disadvantage. These long range ranged attacks DO NOT auto-crit if the hit. 5) Failed Death Saves remain on a character after they stabilize or are brought back to consciousness. They remove 1 failed Death Save after a long rest. Levels of Exhaustion must all be recovered from before the character can begin recovering from Death Saves. Greater Restoration can be used to heal 1 failed Death Save per casting. These house rules imperil unconcious characters in a way that discourages party members from letting their allies fall before trying to heal them.
There are 2 HR that i would enforce ASAP on top on the conjure elementals issue: 1) Divine intervention is not a magic action, but has time EQUAL to the casting time of the duplicated spell, this would allow reaction spells, but no more casting hallow in 1 action 2) Spirt guardians and all simialr spells can do a maximum of 1 instance of damage on tbe casters turn + 1 instance of damage during the round. Beeing able to do instances of damage for each turn with the Rugby/pinpall effect best described by Chris breaks any math of the game, especially with hiw now grapple works and how many subclasses have teleportation abilities there needs to be a cap to the number of times a single spell can apply damage in asingle round.
The house rule I would rather use to avoid the whack a mole situation is keep track of how much the character goes to negatives, and need them to be healed for more than that before they get back up. So like if you get hit to -15, you would need to be healed for at least 16 total (not necessarily at one go) before you get back up.
Hey i just found your channel thanks to the algorithm I had a question when it comes to multiclassing, i was looking at spell casting classes and i saw this rule (in this case for sorcerer: Whenever you gain a Sorcerer level, you can replace one spell on your list with another Sorcerer spell for which you have spell slots.) - if i (hypothetically) went 6 levels of bard first, and then two levels into sorcerer, when swapping our first level spells at level two, according to this wording i can grab 2nd, 3rd and 4th level spells when replacing them. I haven't actually got a copy of my players handbook yet so i'm relying on online snippets, but am i correct, or is there clarification in the multiclassing rules section that actively prevents this?
Welcome to the channel! Great question, one I had myself. The Multiclass rules do indeed clarify on this: You determine what spells you can prepare for each class individually, as if you were a single-classed member of that class. If you are a level 4 Ranger / level 3 Sorcerer, for example, you can prepare five level 1 Ranger spells, and you can prepare six Sorcerer spells of level 1 or 2 (as well as four Sorcerer cantrips). They go on to specifically mention that you cannot prepare a spell for a high level slot for which you would not have access as a single-classed character of that type.
My biggest house rule is, just use Alternate classes by Laserllama as well whatever homebrew classes I allow along with Flee Mortals and 3rd party monsters. So far, it's been super amazing!
Regarding Power Attack, how about this: you can tack on a Bonus Action to go along with an Attack or Magic action, and you can take a penalty matching up to your proficiency bonus (so -2 by default), and you get a +2 damage per -1 to hit you took. If you have more than one attack (from Extra Attacks or the spell) you can have the penalty vary, if it is used at all to that particular d20 roll.
Ok let's talk about Armor Class with the new rules. A Sorcerer or Wizard can cast Mage Armor for a 13 AC. Let's say they have a 14 Dexterity giving them an additional +2. Then with the new Blade Ward Cantrip rules, you can concentrate to have an opponent subtract 1d4 to their to hit roll. Also you can cast Shield as a reaction. So a wizard like this would have an effective AC of 21-24. With an 18 Dexterity it would be 23-27. A 3rd Level Abjurer with an 18 Int would also have an Arcane Ward of 10 Hit points., especially after casting Shield.
If I was going to modify it, I'd probably style it off other similar free casts that have been added into subclasses and let the ranger either cast it without a spell slot as normal, or without concentration, but at a 1 minute duration, possibly without letting them change targets. This would let them use their cool ability for hours at a time, OR, if they want to concentrate, pop it on a single foe for 1 minute while they break out their bigger spell. (The real danger comes in multiclassing and dipping ranger for concentrationless hunter's mark + other options)
🥳🫂👍🏿 Thank you so much for making a house rule video and shouting out Josh - you’ve been very generous with your time, energy and willingness to take my requests ❤
My pleasure entirely. I really appreciated what you did for me and I’m happy to pay it back and forward this way! There’s some good new Houserules in the comment sections too, did you see the grapplers occupy the same space one?! I’ve never heard that before and it’s kinda brilliant.
@@DM-Timothy 🙏🏿 I mentioned something like that rule to Ryan once when I learned about emanations - I took screen shots of some of the comments for later review, but I’ll go look at them directly now - many thanks
@@DM-Timothy read thru them - lots of cool ideas - especially the counter to dragging - dragging is such a frustration to me - people say they’re just being “creative” or using “ingenuity”, but I don’t now how creative it is to google “most broken damage build” - the emanations/grapple rule I mentioned was a counter to spells like spirit guardians, so it’s cool to see it created by someone else for a totally different reason - many thanks 🙏🏿
My only house rules so far is being able to equip/unequip weapons for free, without needing to track the amount of these interactions you get. Except that you can't equip any weapons right before making the extra attack given by light, nick or dual wielder. That both makes sense narratively, and shuts down cheezy interaction of getting these attacks by swapping weapons in one hand.
I was disappointed they dropped the 10-step Exhaustion that appeared in the playtest. I use a version of it, and the X on 0 rules to prevent Tubthumping. I apply the penalty to Save DCs, but not ACs or death saves.
I suspect it is at least partially to do with backwards compatibility. If something from an old adventure gave you x levels of exhaustion, they probably want the max number of levels to be the same so it puts you just as close to death as before. As someone playing in an Icewind Dale campaign right now, I’m glad that exhaustion has been simplified and is now much easier to remember.
The new Backgrounds system is a huge Blunder IMO. They should have separated Stat modifiers from the equation entirely. Just have the +2 +1 or +1, +1, +1 options available at the ability modifier section of the character creation processes.
Fair stance. Lots of people feel strongly one way or the other on this. I liked having it tied to Species, personally, but hey, I work with what I've got! :D
Exhaustion is pretty extreme in 2024- giving you 2x reduction in d20 roll per level of exhaustion. (3 lvls of exhaustion is a -6 to d20) I’d house rule this to -1 per level and add “gain exhaustion level at 0HP”
Definitely not in favor of exhaustion at 0 hp. That would have likely tpked my entire party last game session. One player dropped to 0 hp 3 times and couldn't be healed for a round. Another player also suffered the same fate and went to 0 hp twice. I believe the cleric exhausted all their spells. And the party was probably only saved by the rogue getting several Crits. Exhaustion would have just been too much for the two party members that ended up in melee while the other two went ranged. Two of the monsters did 3 attacks and 1 did 2 attacks. And there was no chance the cleric could ever heal enough to keep one up especially when she couldn't heal them anytime they got hit.
@@bradleyhurley6755 I’ve had a few pcs get to level 2 or 3 exhaustion without much penalty. We’re only talking about a 10-15% increased chance to fail on a d20 roll than they would without exhaustion. I even won’t allow a long rest to remove a level of exhaustion unless it’s in a “comfy bed”. Adventuring and sleeping in the wilderness is exhausting So far none of my eight players in two campaigns have died-died
@@DM-Timothy I even won’t allow a long rest to remove a level of exhaustion unless it’s in a “comfy bed”. Adventuring and sleeping in the wilderness is exhausting
Rather than adding "hostile" to opportunity attack, I would make taking an opportunity attack optional. Reworded like, "If creature A leaves a space next to creature B during combat, creature B _can_ make an opportunity attack." Something like that.
Interesting! I'm not sure if that would solve the problem. The wording already begins with "can". The reason for adding hostile is not to prevent people stabbing their allies, it's to prevent the Warcaster loophole of being able to cast spells as an OA and choosing to cast benevolent spells on allies as a reaction.
For the wack-a-mole I love Grim Hollows Grievous Wounds system, that means players really want to avoid getting dropped to zero (and my life cleric healed someone for 31hp with a second level cure wounds yesterday which was clutch)
I'm not sure what gives you that impression. I'm just offering suggestions in response to a request :) I'm actually running my 2024 games with 0 Houserules currently, because that's what my tables agreed on in Session 0, at my suggestion.
Adding the +1 onto origin Feats does sound good... Was rebuilding a character recently, and was pondering putting Magic Initiate on, but "couldn't" because it didn't have the +1 🤔 (also, I'm keeping Power Attack)
@@DM-Timothy Mostly it's my game-design philosophy. I like to give my players lots of tools/abilities, so I can put them up against enhanced/more dangerous encounters. We've been sprinkling in 5.24 rules since the UA as well, so while no one has done a full-rework yet, we have some experience with it. I think it also helps with the Martial/Caster divide. Sure, the Wizard and Druid have all these spells, but the Ranger is doing 1d10+15 with their pistol +Vex 3 times a round (old rules using "Crossbow" Expert, new rules Dual Wielding). We also use the Spell Point Variant rule from the DMG, so casters have even More flexibility than normal. I think the two house rules mirror the divide nicely.
Ello! Thank-you for the video! It was fun to watch and listen and judge what I agree with or disagree with. I think I ended up not liking most of these homebrew rules so I won't be using most of them. My personal critiques were that they seemed to punish player ingenuity and cleverness. Some were good and well thought out. Have a great day!
Thanks so much for the kind comment! Picking and choosing the ones that work for you is definitely the intent. I’m curious about the feeling of punishing clever players, I didn’t expect that comment and wouldn’t want to ever DO such a thing. I like to create a more level playing field between optimizing and non-optimizing players, but I’m all in for shenanigans at the table. Lol
@@DM-Timothy I never thought about Warcaster on allies as a cleric. I'm a forever dm running a few long term games, if one of my players came up with that idea I would be like: "THAT'S COOL! GO FOR IT!" Makes me think of like the shape a battlefield medic would take in a magical world?
I'm surprised they didn't keep the Custom Background option from the UA. Maybe it'll be in the DMG. Seems like they wanted to keep some restrictions in.
I believe the restriction was intentional. That said, the rules for converting old backgrounds are basically rules for custom backgrounds, so while it has been said custom background rules will be in the DMG, I don’t suspect they will be terribly ground breaking. (Though they MIGHT have some kind of useful guidance in there)
Opinions on the houserules. 1. GWM & SS are changed and as such -5 +10 can go. 2. The reason shield was banned at table was not because it was strong. It was banned because it was objectively the strongest option for it's role. That is no longer clear and as such no need to overcomplicate the rules. 3. I could see this still being a useful houserule however I would air on the side of caution with overhouseruling. 4. I don't see the need for this houserule. Surprise is being moved from "You have six seconds of uninterrupted beatdown" into "You get the jump on them and they can only respond on instinct". You are surprised not in stasis. 5. You seem like a game design oriented person so let me present you with a thought experiment. Suppose you are running a combat with three creatures, a cleric, a fighter and an ogre. The fighter being the tank goes infront and attacks the ogre. On the ogre's turn the ogre gets a crit and downs the fighter. On the cleric's turn they cast healing word and sacred flame, giving the fighter one level of exhaustion and not doing much damage. On the fighter's turn they see how little damage the cleric is doing and decides to attack. Ogre downs fighter, cleric casts healing word and sacred flame. This repeats until the ogre is dead and the fighter is on exhaustion level 5. Looking at this combat, which player was making the tactical error and who was punished for the tactical error? 6. Totally agree, I was shocked that they went through all that effort in Tasha's and Multiverse only to backtrack on all of it without warning. 7. I didn't notice that and now that you have brought up those synergies I am absolutely not houseruling that away. 8. Fuck that spell. Good video overall. Best of luck to you, your group and your channel.
Fun question, thanks for that. Tactically, perhaps the fighter for not going defensive to buy some misses, but it could go either way there and narratively I wouldn’t honestly say anyone was making the wrong decision. But that scenario doesn’t serve as analogous to the other situations where injuries go untended because it is inefficient to heal the wounded when you can let them go unconscious purposefully. It’s that sort of play wherein I’d consider an exhaustion house rule. Keeping in mind of course that I’m not going to use all these Houserules, I was simply asked what Houserules I would consider. :)
My Homebrew changes are as follows: Custom backgrounds : Ability Scores - +2 to one ability, and a +1 to another; Or +3 to three different ability scores. Feat - 1 Origin Feat of your choice. Skill Proficiencies - 2 Skill Proficiencies of your choice. Tool Proficiencies - 1 Tool Proficiency of your choice. Equipment - 50 GP Hunter's Mark no longer requires a Bonus action to move, and only moves when the creature reaches 0 hp. Relentless hunter lets you modify the spell to not require concentration, limiting the spell to 1 min duration. The ranger capstone feat also increases the damage to 2d6 instead of 1d10. Divine Smite is no longer a spell. I have changed that back to a class feature, that is "once per turn when you hit a creature with a weapon attack" All other smite spells with the new bonus action casting time have had their casting time's changed to a Reaction, when you hit a creature with an attack instead of a bonus action. Some various spell buffs and nerfs - Like Conjure minor elementals, Giant insect, Armor of Agathys. These spells are a bit overtuned. Rouges have also at my tables seen sneak attack modified to counter the new cunning strike costs; Sneak attack deals 1d4 bonus damage, and scales 1d4 per level. At 10th level normal sneak attack is 17.5 average damage; My version is 25 average damage. The cunning strike costs remain, but are d4 instead of d6; Allowing you to not sacrifice a ton of damage and buffs the rogue up a bit more since they are currently under tuned.
@@NateFinch You must have misread the post because the suggestion was to go from a d6 every other level (current rules) to a d4 every level, which effectively doubles the number of dice just stepped down one in size. Works out to about a +42% increase in sneak attack damage at every even level, and with the odd levels being the only time where the old rules try to climb back but never coming even with the d4 per level beyond first. Further, as the op said, this makes sacrificing dice for the bonus effects way less costly as you are only sacking 2.5 avg damage per die instead of 3.5. Honestly, a very reasonable approach to rebalancing in my opinion. For those interested in the raw numbers: Level 1: 1d6 (3.5) vs 1d4 (2.5) -28% **Only level where this is less Level 2: 1d6 (3.5) vs 2d4 (5) +42% Level 3: 2d6 (7) vs 3d4 (7.5) +7% Level 4: 2d6 (7) vs 4d4 (10) +42% Level 5: 3d6 (10.5) vs 5d4 (12.5) +19% Level 6: 3d6 (10.5) vs 6d4 (15) +42% Level 7: 4d6 (14) vs 7d4 (17.5) +25% Level 8: 4d6 (14) vs 8d4 (20) +42% Level 9: 5d6 (17.5) vs 9d4 (22.5) +28% Level 10: 5d6 (17.5) vs 10d4 (25) +42% Level 11: 6d6 (21) vs 11d4 (27.5) +30% Level 12: 6d6 (21) vs 12d4 (30) +42% Level 13: 7d6 (24.5) vs 13d4 (32.5) +32% Level 14: 7d6 (24.5) vs 14d4 (35) +42% Level 15: 8d6 (28) vs 15d4 (37.5) +33% Level 16: 8d6 (28) vs 16d4 (40) +42% Level 17: 9d6 (31.5) vs 17d4 (42.5) +34% Level 18: 9d6 (31.5) vs 18d4 (45) +42% Level 19: 10d6 (35) vs 19d4 (47.5) +35% Level 20: 10d6 (35) vs 20d4 (50) +42%
@@balanceseeker....not gonna lie, i misread your sneak attack houserule as well (and forgot that sneak attack increases every other level). But after seeing your breakdown of its efficacy, dope ass houserule! My only concern is how low it takes to count that many d4 later and having enough d4s 😅
With regards to the idea of armor proficiencies and level dips; I haven't looked at the new capstone abilities, but I would not change this unless many of the capstones were rebalanced. Some (like for Barbarians) are great while others (in 2014) are meh. If all of the capstones were good, then the price paid for the level dip would balance out things like spell-casters wearing better armor, etc.
I don't think that Elven Accuracy is an actual problem. It's boost if you do the math is not that big. Especially if the feats that allow a -5 to attack are gone.
Its largest impact at one of my tables is in optimized crit-fishing paladin builds. Its impact there won’t be as bad as it used to be, but won’t be unfelt if allowed. Some of my tables will probably keep old feats, so we will see. :)
I don't plan on nerfing Shield but I am carrying over a house rule from 2014 5E that Shield bonuses do not stack. I fixed the Light Weapon property to say weapon in your other hand so TWF + Shield doesn't work. I am carrying over a rule that when you grapple someone, you share the same square. That way, the drag through spiked growth cheese hits the dragger as well as the dragged. I've always had an issue with multiclassing. It only makes sense with certain combinations. I'm a fighter that just finished a dungeon and now I'm a wizard too! How!?! When did you spend 2-4 years studying Wizardry??? (1) I increase the minimum ability score requirement to 15 for multiclassing, (2) require the player take downtime to learn the new class and find a teacher (nearly all will require months or even years of in-game downtime to learn the proficiencies, skills, fighting styles, spellcasting, etc, possibly meaning they're out of the campaign), and (3) they must construct a narrative about how/why.
Yo-Yo effect removal: Stable is removed from the game. 0 hp = dying; 1 or more hp = alive. I use the Unconscious condition instead of stable. Exhaustion occurs not when when people are knocked to 0 but when they are magically healed from 0 to 1 or higher (except Spare the Dying which now brings you to 1 hp but you're still unconscious). 3 successful death saves doesn't incur exhaustion nor does a Medicine check or Spare the dying. This way, the Medicine skill and Spare the Dying are important to the game. Unconscious condition can be removed with a Medicine check or by being healed to any amount higher than 1 hp. So a Cleric is really good for this game. Spare the dying as an action, then healing word as a bonus action can bring a player up without consequence but you've just used the entirety of the cleric's turn. The Medicine skill can also remove the Unconcious condition by spending an action to apply smelling salts. This is a separate action from the Medicine check that applies first aid bring a player from 0 to 1 hp. And any healing will remove the unconscious condition if its a result of going to 0 hp. Also, I use a pc's Bloodied condition (half hp) to give monsters special attacks, attack bonuses, or damage bonuses. This encourages healing while the players are still up and active. Tangentially, this closes the martial-caster divide a bit by requiring clerics, bards, and druids to use spell preps and casts for healing spells trying to keep as many above half hp as possible to avoid the bloodied condition.
Two more things: (1) in character creation, Background provides +1 to one of the listed stats, your class provides +1 to the main or secondary ability score, and species provides +1 to any ability score of your choice. (2) Healer's kit is now a tool that requires proficiency and requires a Medicine check to work.
One House Rule that I suggest, is to allow certain DCs for skill checks, such picking locks... rather than be set at a maximum of 15 forever, have DCs be adjustable by the DM again. Otherwise, DC of 15 will start to be pointless after level5 or so.
Definitely. I'm not SURE that this is a house rule, but then again, I'm not sure it's not! It never occurred to me to leave all locks as being pickable with the same DC regardless of the quality of the lock. But I can see how it'd look like that's the only option from the PHB. We'll see more of the intent as DMG comes out, I suspect.
I really don't agree with the custom backgrounds, because what that would lead to would just be everyone having their optimal stat modifiers AND best background feat always, which essentially removes the whole point of backgrounds in the first place of being a narrative choice, it's much nicer if they have to choose whether they want the optimal stats OR the optimal feat.
I would counter that by saying it can also limit creativity. Take the noble background, it's good for paladins (which doesn't make sense in the first place) but there are plenty of "falls from grace" or has a "scrooge" kind of moment that could lead to any class. They decide to devote themselves to nature, or a god, but the stats don't really line up, and it's not power gaming for your character to be good at what they are supposed to be good at.
@@Nemnar7 Most characters have been more than one thing before they started adventuring, so you can have a character who is a noble in their backstory but has some different background because they also did something else that defined their abilities more. Like for example, I made an elements monk who is a a princess living in exile after there was a coup in her home country. She had received the most of her training in a monastery that was basically like a private school to upper class kids, and her main interests include calligraphy and painting, so I gave her the Scribe background instead of Noble. Similarly if you have say a character who grew up on the streets they could have the Wayfarer background, but they could also have background of whatever they did after growing up, like criminal, charlatan, entertainer, etc.
I've seen people theorise that it is intentional, but not to permit all these tactics, but because "hostile" there leads to all sorts of narrative weirdness. Firstly, it makes it so by being friendly to you, a creature blocks you from performing physical actions with it, which doesn't sound very friendly. Like, for example, enemy creatures usually block your movement, but allies permit you to move through their space, but here it's like the opposite. It also lead to some of the more cheesy players to have their characters momentarily just decide that they are hostile, to circumvent the wording. It's one of those places where its even difficult to use "DM can say no", as "no" has its limits where it makes zero narrative sense to disallow it. If you want to balance it though, you can easily say that opportunity attacks are limited to dealing damage, or to using offensive spells in the case of war caster, because it makes total sense that characters are trained to use opportunity attacks specifically for that, especially from the description of war caster.
Personally, I'm fine with you being able to opportunity attack your allies. Someone runs past you and you shove them to give them to give them a little bit of extra movement seems cool.
taking hostile away from opportunity dose promote teamwork and that is a good thing. i like the penalty for hitting 0 hp, so now your mage will just want to leave after being ko's for the first time. mage ac is already super low. for the last house rule just tweak the wording so it's one attack you make.
I think its a problem if rogues run past a cleric and he heals him as a reaction. Or if combat starts and the wizard can cast haste on you as a reaction. It sounds really broken.
FFS SHELD is NOt br0ken, Multiclassing is BROKEN!! i wera Plate, wield a shield and have the shield spell?? yea THATs broken. all class design is front loaded IE all multi classsing is BROKEN.
I don't find a reason why im taking a background. I just take it and pretend it doesnt exist. Its that thing i did for a summer one year wheb i was 16 or whatever.
Might not be a bad compromise, it was largely a balancing agent rather than a focus on the fiction, medium+shield is just so drastically improved over light or mage armor.
No house rule is needed to prevent Opportunity Attacks being used to benefit allies. It's already in the RAW: it's an Opportunity *Attack*. By no definition of the word 'attack' in the English language does it mean behaviour that is benevolent. If I'm mistaken, please let me know which recognised dictionary, e.g. Oxford, Collins, defines it that way. And in case there were any doubt, the 2024 PHB says in its opening paragraph on Opportunity Attacks that they are taken against careless 'enemies' and 'foes'. It says nothing about using them on friendlies.
Naturally, you wouldn't want to attack them. But that they provoke one by the description of Opportunity Attack (two paragraphs below the narrative description) is clear enough. I'm not saying it is sensible, lol, just that the language left a loophole when combined with Warcaster. I'd put hostile back into the language if needed to help folk realize the intent of the rules. Unless I liked the idea of allowing shoves and warcaster spells. YMMV of course.
But that's the fun part! Why let a computer do my character-crafting for me? I will admit, it's cool and all, but I am more of a DIY when it comes to making characters. That's why I have so many of them.
You can then think of it like a quick template - just a starting point that you can customize to your liking, so you don't have to begin from scratch every time. But if you enjoy building characters from the ground up, then yeah, this might not be your thing. Are there any other parts of campaign prep that you find less enjoyable and might want to automate instead?
Totally fair. But golly they’ve got some amazing things on their game plan for the Kickstarter that will be a huge help for folk, and there’s almost certainly something there you could get excited about. :)
i was surprised too, but players in my latest group don't enjoy character building at all, they just want to play the game. They took prebuilt characters and are coming up with lore for them on the fly and its working really well for them
The new feat backgrounds are a little restrictive. We should be able to do Custom ones and eventually I see WOTC greenlighting that change. I would just say so far, having converted my Shadow Sorc/Rogue/Warlock to the new system has been a breeze and the balancing is better. No more Hexblade 1 dip for meduim armor +shield + Char martial, you have to go all the way to 3rd for those subclass goodies and I only plan a 1 dip for Eldrtich Blast Quicken combo. So in the conversion I lost 3 AC points but picked up Warlocks advatage on concentration checks (poor mans Warcaster feat) for free. I also got 2 weapon masteries from the rogue dip. Humans get two background feats so I found it pretty easy to customize my own character using these official backgrounds and the human free feat. None of the feats are make or break. I picked Magic Initiate Druid for Guidance + Spare the dying + Absorb Elements. And then just picked Charlatan for the Skilled feat and a bunch of social skills on a chr based character. I also have Expertise in Perception and Stealth. So with all the new stuff, my character has all three social skills mastered and a bunch of others making her a mini skill monkey. Besides not having custom background, it still worked out great for humans at least. Having two origin feat combos allows for more versatility in skills/tools.
Humans have definitely got it made in the shade. For others, so far the backgrounds have been the sticking point for many players, but I think the restrictions are important... I'm riding the line with my different groups to see what balancing act works best. :)
@@DM-Timothythe restrictions are probably going to be moot after the next 2-3 player option books. As for fear choices there are only like 4 that you would ever want to take and once someone has musician no one else needs it unless you have a very large party
@@bradleyhurley6755 I would concur with you on Musician and the new books making many choices potentially moot. Though my suspicion is that we will actually see a lot of new material come out with a background that has a specific feat from that book as an origin option (ala Bigby's, Dragonlance, and Strixhaven books) WotC has been testing the waters for a while, I reckon we'll see them do that over making new backgrounds that link to current origin feats.
thank you! i have somthing to think about for the Exhaustion rules you suggested. but nothing beats AID 5E below 0 hit points rules, for i hate yo yo healing so so much. :D
One alternate to the background is to still have a limit to which ability you can increase but have +1 come from species, +1 come from class, and +1 come from background. This would allow you to still increase a main stat for your class and have some versatility for species and background.
They basically got rid of surprise, and I don't like it. Going last isn't a big deal. Having your opponent go twice before you was significant (if they beat your initiative). I may house rule that one back to the old style. I'll house rule that drinking potions requires an action. I don't like video game style healing.
Too tired to pump as much magic into the spell would be my argument. :) But frankly, just a balancing thing to try and make the penalty apply across the board instead of hitting martials harder than casters.
Banning the Shield spell is something I never agreed with. How can you ban a spell that is so popular and so deeply noted in DnD lore? How could you ban, fireball and is that really DnD anymore....a world without fireballs? Which means I couldn't play my Mystical Monk character at your table like I was able to play it at two different tables with no problem. The Mystical Monk is a 8th level Monk with 8th level Clockwork Sorcerer + 4 levels of Bladesinger at level 20. Max AC without magical items was 31 - Monk 20 AC + 2 Agile Parry Kensei Monk + 2 Haste + 2 Bladesong (or 4 with a Headband of Intellect) + 5 Shield spell. It's a character totally dedicated to casting Haste on itself and going to battle on the front lines. Mixing Quicken Booming/Greenflame Blade attacks with Unarmed Strikes, multi attack and Haste actions meant I did decent damage, had descent all around saves along with of course great AC. Is that OP? You might think so. But if you compared that character to a straight classed Bladesinger or any full Sorcerer or wizard, she wasn't so powerful. A full caster will beat any gish any day of the week if they know what they are doing. Being really good at melee doesn't mean you are immune to magic users, or having your reaction split/forced. You only get one reaction, is that to Absorb elements on a fireball or cast Shield to block the White Dragons claws from rending your flesh? That same character went down a few times because my DM knew the weaknesses - like Dispel Magic. If I cast shield that round, I can't cast Subtle Counterspell on the mage who cast Dispel on me and now I'm stuck for a whole round while monsters get to wail on me. This game has gives and takes. If a character dipped to grab a level of fighter for armor/Shield prof, they are also delayed a whole level in spellcasting and do not get their capstone feat. You keep adding classing and your subclass capstone goes away. Any more than 3 levels of dipping and now you're missing 9th level spells. Is being really good at martial tactics really more powerful than 9th level spells? My point is, it's rare to run into a build that completely breaks the game. Everyone has weaknesses. I would be very hard pressed to ever ban any spell or feat or class that is officially in the rules book. You/Treantmonk ban it, but like 90% of the other tables had Shield spells. Which is akward, IMO. Awkward lore wise and awkward because that is a very very niche ruling. Never seen another DM or another RUclips DM that bans the Shield spell. 😅
Totally fair stance, and removing the shield spell is definitely not for every table. For me at least, it was more about bringing the highs closer to the lows so that optimizers and less optimizing players can both feel closer to one another in power. I don’t mind OP characters, but I do mind players feeling left out or weak. Incidentally, the DMs at my tables who have played with shield adjusted have all been skeptical, but all adopted it for their own tables. That is very anecdotal of course! I appreciate you offering a dissenting opinion. I’m not on the net to tell folk my way is the right or only way :) Thanks for being here and for always keeping it civil and interesting. :)
@DM-Timothy I of course don't mean to be super critical of course, like I get what you and Treantmonk are trying to do and it not insane. But after playing one of the most "unbreakable characters", my Mystical Monk, I know she had limits. AC doesn't care about crits or grapples. If you make enough attacks, those 20s become inevitable. The Mystical Monk was challenging red dragons to solo combat at level 12 in Rise of Tiamat. So she was very very good at what she did, but she also didn't have an unlimited resource pool. Quicken Booming Blades cost 2 sorc points. If I'm casting Shield too much, now I'm draining slots I could use for even more Quicken Greenflame strikes. As the day/battles wear on, now I'm burning 5th level slots to feed all these abilities all the while managing my KI pool. Having played this character really opened me to understanding the limits of any character build.
@@007ohboy It sounds like a fun character and like a lot of fun was had. Every character has limits, for sure, and it is somewhat the DMs job to figure those out where necessary. :)
@@DM-Timothy She's both my "weakest character" (not a full caster) and the most fun due to how many options she had each round even for melee. But yeah, good chat. Have a great day and let's enjoy this new edition! Whoop whoop!
I was like, "Hey wait! That's my name!" 🫨👉 I think you're right. When a player takes an origin feat at level 4+ the stat boost should be thematically appropriate. Like raising the mental stat you want as your spellcasting ability for Magic Initiate. 🧐💯
Totally fair! Take what works for you and skip the rest. I hunted for rules I thought would be interesting for people, but by no means am I using all of these myself even.
Personally, I would hold off on the custom backgrounds for the next year. This is why: stats were tied to races in 2014, and if you wanted a certain stat array, you needed to choose the corresponding race that got it. On the other hand, backgrounds were just a couple of proficiencies and a niche feature that rarely came up in play. We didn't get the ability to adjust our stat bonuses until Tasha's in 2020. That's 6 years we had to live within these rules. A "custom lineage" was also introduced in Tasha's. That also changed everything. 6 years without. And we still had fun. We are spoiled in 2024. We allow almost everything and it makes the game unbalanced, for lack of a better word. So my game is going to play it straight until everyone agrees it's too restrictive.
I love that. I’m inclined to agree, though I know some of my tables will be less on board with it than others. Restrictions breed creativity, imo, but it’s a fine line for some. :)
Personally, I think alot of classes and features are improved significantly. Now I only have to homebrew ~12 rules and one class instead of 4 classes and way more rules.
Definitely an option for those who don’t want to see much of a change. It was how I approached the 3.0 to 3.5 transition, and eventually we finished the switch as our group was more comfortable with the new stuff.
LOL. The "New" players handbook is so poorly written that it needs fixing... Maybe Hasbro WOTC should spend as much time, money and effort on putting out a good product as they do trying to make sure there is enough diversity, equity, inclusion and safe spaces into the game. #HasbroWOTCDnDisdead
Actually, I don’t necessarily think you need any of these houserules. I am really enjoying the new rules as written so far. I am offering up options, not declarations. :)
WOW!!! So much abusiveness, this is advice for bad DMing. PLEASE STOP BEING KILL THE PLAYER DMS!!! DO NOT DO MOST OF THESE, EVER!!! 1a) Power Attack for All? Great idea, keep it, every Martial can take -5 to attack to add +10 to both Ranged and Melee attacks, plus double the 10 on a crit... This is a Good rule, this is good advice. Removing it, bad advice... was 8/10 Stars, now is 0/10 Stars... granting it was great, taking away something that isn't there is just a nothing. 1b) Removal of Shield? WTF? STOP TRYING TO KILL PLAYERS. Keep Shield as is, Shield is fine... Shield is meant to exist. It costs two resources, Reaction and Spell Slot, it is perfectly fine for a one round boost, and if someone boosts themself by multiclassing, they are still using their Reaction and Still using one of their precious spell slots. If Shield were a reaction Cantrip, I could see an issue, but it isn't. Terrible -5/10 Stars, but very common among KILL THE PLAYER DMs, its commonality makes it not as impactfully bad, despite being bad 1c) Again, this is Kill the Player thinking. Stop trying to hurt the players, the dice will do it fine, there is an existing mechanic, No Proficiency at all, Armor stops spellcasting, the dip to get the Armor Proficiency is the Penalty, it is one caster level less, causing more xp needed to get spell levels and spell slots, as well as to get to features. The balance was always there, you don't need to add extra penalties. It works both ways, the Paladin can dip Warlock for Spell Slots that come back on a Short Rest for more Smites, WHICH they nerfed anyway by making Divine Smite a Bonus Action... HORRIBLE RULE -50 out of 10 Stars. 2) No Reactions when Surprised? This is fair, it works both ways, it makes Surprise have a genuine benefit still for Players to be stealthy, not just a pathetic advantage on Initiative, which is actually valueless if you roll low anyway. Oh, look, they had disadvantage and rolled a 19 and a 20, oh, and with advantage you rolled a 4 and a 5... yes, Surprised... so surprised... We can keep this, as it at least sounds good, even if it is nearly useless due to the idiocy of 2024 Surprise Mechanics. A real house rule would be "Anyone who is surprised doesn't get a turn on round one, has disadvantage on initiative, and no one get reactions until the beginning of the turn they get to go" This means, surprised people are genuinely surprised, they are caught off-guard and can't act in response at all, then initiative may or may not be on their side to go earlier or later in the second round, it still wouldn't make the NEW Alert feat genuinely valuable, as it would still would only cancel out the disadvantage where the 2014 version would have meant you got to go on the Surprise 1st round and it protected you from hidden/invisible foes surprising you in the middle of combat (Side Note: a GOOD House Rule would be to make the Alert Feat do both of those, still grant advantage on Initiative, and allow the Initiative Swap, as the Alert Character could have their first turn, get their reaction, and allow a surprised ally to go earlier in the 2nd round). 4/10 Stars, it isn't really that impactful, but it isn't bad advice, just meh. 3) What Books you allow? This isn't a House Rule, this is standard rules... You always chose which books you allowed and disallowed. We can keep this, but it isn't a House Rule anyway. Obviously there were even books that stated things like "This Feat is meant only for this Setting", meaning the intent was unless you were in that setting or allowing something from that setting in your custom setting, that book or part of that book was innately off-limits without talking with the DM. This didn't even need to be stated. 1/10 Stars, technically, as of 2024, it is a sort of House Rule, but this is such a nothing, that it barely warrants above an actual nothing. 4) Exhaustion on 0 HP? WTF? STOP TRYING TO KILL PLAYERS. There are literally mechanics to drop a PC to 0 HP instantly (See Sea Hags). This punishes Tanks, this punishes squishy casters, this punishes getting low rolls, this punishes players for roleplaying. This rules says "You actually want to just go and hide, because mobs gang up, so you will have four to eight levels of exhaustion, since you aggro everything... oops, make a new character cause you didn't ho and hide." The idiocy that MASH Units are stitching up Soldiers in the middle of a fight is dumb. Especially in conjunction with the later idea to nerf an intentionally added feature to reaction spellcasting, this House Rule is a horrible intent to kill parties quicker. -100/10 Stars this isn't just crippling, this is why have a game level game ending mechanics 5) Oh, look, more punishing players to make sure you kill them. Tell me, does your grenade get less effective when it blows up because you drank less coffee? Then why would a fireball be easier to dodge because the Wizard is a little tired? This is just more KILL THE PLAYERS mentality. Ever heard of the adage that a cornered creature is MORE dangerous? Being Exhausted and tired and agitated and afraid for their life, if it were mechanically going to do anything, would be to UP DCs, cause more attacks, make the Squishy Spellcaster MORE Dangerous, not less (No, I'm not suggesting making boosts for fear, exhaustion, low hp, and other negative conditions... but the point was, those are way more realistic if you are talking making things REALISTIC in a Fantasy game). Penalties to melee attacks, because your arms are tired; penalties to con saves to make concentration checks because your mentally exhausted, those make sense, but the magical energies you tap into aren't losing their potency, so Spell Save DCs shouldn't be dropping; and your armor suddenly doesn't get weaker because you are fatigued, so AC shouldn't be going down either (yes, I get that the idea is you're less agile, but lower AC affects the non-agility characters... in addition, it is more KILL THE PLAYERS mentality, as NPCs rarely suffer from Exhaustion, there are few ways to give foes levels, so it doesn't help make the Dragon squishier, it only affects PCs, and it makes them much easier to kill... this is poor GMing at its worst... might as well just say "I decided you have brain eating parasites that do 1d8 Intelligence Damage every round at the start of your turn, you can't remove them, you can make a Int Save to reduce the damage by half at the end of your turn", because this is just you trying to make your PCs dead to make them dead, there is no balance at all). Absolutely, positively, never ever ever do this, this is some of the worst advice ever, and this is in a video that is already filled with horrible, Kill the Players ASAP advice. -200/10 Stars, the above kills players, this kills players faster, Game ends before it starts.
6) Custom Backgrounds... oh, wow, brilliant... except, as you pointed out... a) Tasha's already discussed this, and b) the bringing 2014-2023 Background in line with 2024 rules in the PHB basically already made this Rules as Intended if not Rules as Written. This is less a House Rule and more a rules Errata. But, fine, this is generally good advice. And, I will grant you the subset, adding a Half ASI to Origin Feats taken after Level 1, is decent Good DM House Rule Advice. I might even say, make them all Half ASI... always, this makes the Human look even better, as that makes their extra feat at level 1 give another +1 to an ability score that the DM feels is appropriate for the Feat. OR, how about also making ALL Non-Epic Boon Feats available as options for Custom Backgrounds? Why wouldn't Gladiator have the Grappler Feat at Level 1? Why wouldn't the Sorcerer who was a Town Guardsman have Lightly Armored? Why wouldn't the Pagan Revival Preacher have Inspiring Leader? Why wouldn't the Mine Cook have Chef? Why wouldn't the Traveling Thespian have Actor? See, that is an even Better House Rule, but sure, granting an half-asi to origin feats taken after level 1 is fair, decent, and good advice to DMs as a possible houserule... 6/10 Stars, it isn't great, but at least it is good. 7) First, it isn't an exploit, it was a feature... the whole point of the new wording was so Warcasters, Paladins, and Mercy Monks could render aid or buffs to allies, remember resources... this is why having your reaction is important, this is why it still costs a Spell Slot, or Lay on Hands Die, or Focus Point, because it encourages teamwork, encourages using your resources to benefit others, and provides ways for players to do more than just attack. I will agree with this rule, as long as any DM that institutes accepts they count as a Hostile creature, and so anytime they move away from a player the player gets to hit them in with anything they want, anywhere they want. A DM that puts this in place deserves to get Opportunity Attacked by the entire party and other DMs, and anyone that see them, this is a Hostile DM. -20/10 Stars, Hostile behavior from a Hostile creature who deserves Hostility toward them. 8) Okay, I understand why idiots, novices, fools, haters, and bad readers think Conjure Minor Elementals is broken, but they are missing many key issues: A) The spell only affects a 15 foot emanation, that is a radius of 15 feet around the caster, meaning it is useless on any target further away and easily avoidable by ranged combat... You shoot, move back 20+ feet, even if they dash, they have used their action to get you in range without getting the damage benefit. B) the difficult terrain means anything in it or at its edge (because no PC race has under 30 feet of movement) can get base to base with the caster if they start their turn in or just at the edge of the emanation, so normal movement to base AND Melee Attack the Caster while they still haven't benefitted from the spell. C) It is a Concentration Spell, so hitting them potentially ends the spell, hitting them multiple times, increases the chances, having the Mage Slayer Feat means they make the save with disadvantage. D) It takes an action to cast, so even if they cast it with a foe inside the Emanation, they either have to use another resource (like sorcery point or maybe a single use per long rest ability) to cast a damaging spell immediately or wait an entire round to benefit from the potential damage, so odds are low this will get more than one nuke before every caster, ranged martial, and nearby melee martial piles on the damage to break that concentration. E) It still took a spell slot, and in fact, to get that so called 'broken' benefit, required the use of on of their higher, if no their highest spell slot. So F) They are as this letter implies, F'd, the moment they cast it, as it puts a massive target on them, cost them their most important resources. There is no reason, whatsoever, to change, ban, nerf, modify, or touch this spell in anyway, it is perfectly fine and balance, but people see that potential, and forget that this is mainly for the benefit of the players, this is their spell to take down a big threat or maybe two if they're really lucky, because a smart party of players takes down the NPC Spellcaster using it (see A-F above for how and why) and logical DM will have the NPC minions and mobs either do the same or flee for 10 minutes then restart the fight (maybe rinse and repeat), pack tactics (Shout out to Gator and Kobold, you guys love one of the best ways to crush this spell for NPCs) will make this spell a joke. Any House Rule that penalizes, punishes, or cripples players is not good. No one said, "Look at all that innovation and creativity that came from that Totalitarian Dictatorship", more restrictions does not foster creativity, it stifles it... Roleplaying is an improv session with structure, rules that support, not barriers that constrain, "Yes, AND" should be usually the mindset, not "No, NOR".
If a system does 50 things right and 9 wrong is it really that necessary to find another system? Just change what you dislike. I play another system only when I want something completely out of the scope of the system that I normally play.
@Kennedy00Louis as a past 5e dm and current pf2e gm, 5e had 1 massive flaw that slowly ruined it for me. the monster CR system has no balance and makes creating challenging yet fair encounters a nightmare. pf2e has simple balancing math that just works, has been amazing. so for me, it only took d&d doing one thing very badly for me to switch
@@DM-Timothy yeah for sure. I was more talking to the audience of the video! If DND is suiting your needs That’s awesome. My comment would be only for people who actually want to hack DnD but still having a bad time lol.
Yeah, no offense to Chris, but his armor rule is pretty wack. The only reason to multiclass out of wizard or delay your spell progression is to get those armor proficiencies that the spellcasters lack. It defeats the whole purpose of multiclassing with a martial class. I'd rather work around an optimized character if it gets crazy with AC. Like saving throws. Athletics (grapple) checks. Heat Metal. An armored wizard is not invincible. Very useful and powerful, but you're still rocking those d6s for hit dice.
Fair stance for sure. For me, Chris’ rules are about bringing the optimized characters and the standard characters to a more level playing field, and the armor rule does that pretty well in my experience. But everyone’s table is different!
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@@DM-Timothy your opinion please, would increasing the Eldritch Knight cantrips to 3 with an added Cantrip at 10 level for 4 overpower the game ?
As it is in 14 and in 24 now cantrip is the go to damage spell for the EK as it's slot spells are buffs, it's not designed to hurl spells but to fight melee with enhancement. Least at 7th he can attack with a 2d10 chill touch now along with sword now.
@@Mark-ki7ic Happy to offer it. I do not think it would be overpowered at all. Cantrips are great, and knowing more is obviously better than less, but having options in the spell department, while it increase versatility, adds very little actual power increase to any class.
You don’t need a narrative reason for the background feat / bonus . It’s like working on a farm as a kid and becoming really good at pig calling. Then you go to college and become an engineer, you don’t need to be able to pig call but you’re still good at it.
@@monkeyman3194 unless you're going to the University of Arkansas, then calling the HAWGS is a must have skill
@@Mark-ki7ic yeeeeehawww
Wait a minute... We are already "fixing" D&D 5.24???
They barely changed D&D 2014 LOL. Surprised?
I mean, it was a catchy title for a video about Houserules you might consider for things you may or may not dig about the new rules… Whether or not these fix it for you specifically is your own call. I’ll be considering using some of them.
Let's see, it is kinda broken, we're implementing house rules so it's not broken anymore... Yeah, we're pretty much fixing it indeed
How is the game no one’s played yet broken
@@monkeyman3194 well
1. The implication is weird, do you know if a bullet to the leg would hurt you or you need to be shot to be sure?
2. Untrue, some people are already playing it. But even if I am not, I playtested it and played 2014, some of the problems come from back there and haven't been addressed
3. Have you seen the 2d8 upcasting of CME? If I wait until a player creates a build for it, wait until it reaches the problematic levels, confirm that it is indeed a problem, and THEN change it, it'll be a WAY BIGGER problem
You can also make an unarmed strike on an ally as an opportunity attack, and choose push. This could make for some interesting movement shenanigans.
I don't think you can make an opportunity attack against an ally. The intro section says you can make an opportunity attack against foes and then gives you the rule for taking an opportunity attack. I can see why people might have an alternate reading, but i think it is an exploit that i would not allow at my table.
Minor elementals become pretty balanced if you add "once per turn"
RE: your sponsor
Using artificial intelligence to generate a character just sounds depressing.
If creating characters is something you pour a lot of creativity into and really enjoy, I can see why using AI might feel off. But our generator isn’t meant to replace that creativity. You still come up with the core ideas; the AI just helps with the more routine parts, like filling out the sheet, and can suggest additional ideas to enhance your creation process. We’re also planning to improve it further, allowing users to upload longer descriptions or files with character backstories and world context, so AI can help manage that info without taking over the creative process. Our plans for Kickstarter include features like a smart editor that can analyze your character sheet, offer balancing suggestions, or give relevant tips based on the specific rule set you’re using.
Do you think any of these features would be helpful for you to create your characters? If not, is there any other part of campaign prep that feels more tedious where AI might be useful?
I wouldn't want to generate a character that way, but as Dreamer is pointing out in the comments, I WOULD be happy to have it take the character I have in mind and hurry through some of the paperwork so I can get to work on customizing it the way I want it. But really, their other plans are what makes them kind of wildly awesome.
@@DungeonDreamermaybe. I also (as a DM) have had players at the table who didn't understand their characters from a mechanical perspective (class features, spell effects, etc).
Is part of the analysis also intended to explain those parts to new players? That would save me time as a DM.
Also troublesome about that is the old adage, "Players will optimize the fun out of a game," I think that your product might be less off-putting if it helped empower player choices and decision making rather than a straight up "Take this build because it's optimal" which is already an existing problem in game spaces when players just follow a guide for optimum performance.
Until couple of weeks ago I wouldn've thought the same, but I learned that experiences vary.
In my latest campaign, every single one of the players grabbed a pre-built character from roll20 instead of making their own, and then they just come up with bits of lore about their character as the game goes on. Apparently they like playing the game, but not building characters.
If you've ever rolled on a random table to decide something, you've used the equivalent of AI. It's not some evil boogieman; it's a tool.
Can I suggest one house rule that has fixed 90% of the balance issues in my game. No multiclassing. It has made my prep work much easier and doubled my enjoyment as a DM and so far doesn’t seem to be having any impact on the fun of the game for my players.
Definitely a solid option. There’s a lot of players out there who really balk at the idea of it. I suspect more of them would enjoy it than THINK they will enjoy it. Glad your table is a good example of that!
@@DM-Timothy it was not popular when I first announced it but my players do not approach the game with an optimisers mentality. Having now played for 2 years without multiclassing I think (hope) they have come to realise the restriction has had little to no impact on their enjoyment of the game.
Sounds extremely boring from a narrative perspective.
Though I guess it makes sense if your table has a lot of powergamers and such.
Mine rarely multiclass because the few times they did they noticed a drop/delay in power more than anything. But it did make for unique stories when they decided to learn different skillsets.
@@goji253 I have yet to encounter a player who multiclassed for narrative reasons. It always seems to be for the abilities and the power combos certain mixes offer. 2 levels of fighter for action surge, a dip into warlock to use charisma to attack with that kind of thing. If there was a genuine in game reason for a player to multiclass I’d be okay with that.
I think it helps that each player is running 3 characters in the campaign and so gets to experience different characters classes from session to session depending on which of their characters is involved in the action for an encounter. Less chance to get bored playing just a fighter or being the party healer.
@@garethhamilton1252I don't allow multi classing unless something in the campaign creates a reason for it
So far:
1) I feel like a risky strike could be adjusted and could *feel* more like D&D5E, such as by saying "Once on your turn as a mastery property you may take disadvantage to an attack. If you hit, add double your proficiency bonus to damage"
Also down with shield removal, but I also feel like it could've been more compelling if it was instead something like "until the start of your Turn, you are considered in Half-Cover, or three-quarter covered if already half-covered". Keep the game terms present, but force some interaction.
2) No reactions until your Turn starts while surprised feels fine for me. Yeah that's fine. As long as it's not the gross old version.
4) Yeah that works. My anti-whack-a-mole is costing a hit die *or* exhaustion to get back up (plus another per failed death save) for tables with fewer encounters.
5) Yup, DCs should absolutely be nerfed from exhaustion. Exhaustion absolutely hurts martials more.
6) Yup, and would not surprise me if in DMG or next tasha's-like book they add custom backgrounds
8ish) I just like giving everyone automatic ASI at 3rd and every 4th after, so you raise stats on every odd numbered level that doesn't boost proficiency bonus. If a feat gives ASI, take a save proficiency instead. We don't play to final tier so might as well let people get the toys and stats they want for endgame. I can see this working out, though maybe some exceptions. Like Lucky feels too nutty with a stat boost
9) Yup.
I like the HD cost for recovering from dying, I haven’t seen that suggestion before. Thank you!
5) Spell DC is already reduced my exhaustion. If DC of all your abilities is reduced by it, it will primarily apply to martials, so i am thoroughly confused by the intention both in the video and this comment.
@@arcturuslight_ Your confusion might be because as writ Exhaustion only affects your D20 tests (attack rolls, saving throws, and abilty checks) not your static numbers (Spell save dcs, Armor Class). This houserule is proposing changing that, so that a wizard can't cast a fireball with no modifier for being exhausted, just as they can't cast a scorching ray without penalty under the rules as written. Hope that helps! :)
@@DM-Timothy It appears that I was convinced that they kept spell DC reduction from the playtest. I am surprised that they removed it, but even more surprised that youtubers reviewing the handbook and making "all the rule changes in 2024" videos haven't pointed out that change from the playtest, especially when it comes to everyone's favourite power divide.
@@arcturuslight_ It's a lot to review, in their defense. Goodness knows I'm missing and mistaking all sorts of stuff too.
The Treeantmonk's Armor/Spell Casting Rule easily solved by simply not allowing multiclassing.
Does a Sorcerer want to use two ASIs to get light/shield and then medium armor proficiency? Alright.
Does an Eldritch Knight with the Defense fighting feat want to cast Shield while on the front line? Well, that was never a problem.
Definitely agree that if you don’t allow multiclassing, you don’t need the Treantmonk rules.
Truthfully I've always hated this rule. I only played with it once but I hated every second of it. It feels like it only exists to punish multiclassing. Even if you aren't trying to play something broken and have a narrative reason for it. Just getting arbitrarily locked out of half your kit is just asinine. Barbarian Rage is the exception, but you know that's coming
I think that the yo-yoing for health came about because healing doesn't always keep up with incoming damage, so why heal this turn if the damage is still going to down your ally and you will have to cast another spell next turn anyway. They might still go down and you will waste 2 spell slots instead of 1. (Yes, the new healing in the 24 ruling will help offset this a little)
Pack Tactics did a video on this called "Exhaustion by Unconscious doesn't fix Yoyo Healing".
They did buff healing, though.
Totally agree that the yo-yo healing is a logical reaction to a problem. It will be interesting to see how the boost to healing affects behavior WITHOUT an exhaustion rule, but would also be interesting to see how having both would impact behavior. Time will tell :)
@@DM-TimothyIn my experience, yo-yo healing isn't even a logical conclusion. It's just not a choice the players can make. It's just how healing works in this game, and adding exhaustion will just unnecessary make the character worse at skills for the rest of the day.
@@arcturuslight_ I have seen occasions where yo-yo healing is unavoidable, and times when it's because people don't heal because it's less efficient. The latter is what this houserule would be designed to prevent, your table style will largely determine if this is necessary :)
For D&D 5e 2014, I house-ruled Shield to add Proficiency Bonus to Armor Class but only for the turn it was triggered in, unless the caster Concentrates on the Shield spell. Then it lasts until the beginning of the caster's next turn.
I think I am keeping it this way for my next 5e 2024 campaign.
Our house rules for Shield is +PB to AC
Eldritch Knight bonded wpn can be used as his spell focus
Custom background we're using is the Battle Medic based on Soldier.
Minor Elemental upcast is 1d8 instead of 2d8
I agree with most of these rules. When you started talking about power attack, I thought you were keeping it around and I was going to be sad. I'm glad you didn't.
Two things I would add:
The light property should require the additional attack be performed with your other hand. No "two weapon fighting" with one hand while the other holds a shield.
Somatic components require a free hand (this might be an oversight? But right now it doesn't say you can't have something in your hand, it just says it takes a hand).
Solid adjustments. Minor details can be important! The idea of drawing and dropping weapons to two-weapon fight is vaguely offensive. Lol
why doesnt shield scale with profiency?
It's a straight +5 right now, but that's a good point. It'd be a LOT more in line with other options if it did.
I thought of using the spell casting modifier but that would be bad for half casters. Your solution is genius and I think I will use it
I consider a houserule that you can’t make a meele attack with two different weapons using the same hand during the same turn - to prevent some crazy weapon juggling you potentially can do with the new rules.
Yeah, juggling is the new silliness. Lol
That would break fighters trying to use multiple different masteries, without trying to cheese the game, and doing that is intended and why they relaxed weapon equipping rules in the first place.
I think what you want is to disallow the extra light/nick/dualwield attacks from being done with swapped weapons, these are the only issue.
Or you can just return the old wording from 2014 that they removed for no reason, that says that you need to hold light weapons in both hands at the same time to get these benefits.
@@arcturuslight_ How do you define cheese? I think it very cheesy to swap weapons multiple times every single round to get the benefit of different masteries. It will punish players that just want to use the same weapon. It will also drag out combat.
@@sortehuse Other than weirdness with nick, using many masteries per turn is a balanced and intended use of them. You can listen to designers talking about it in their sneak peek videos.
You can totally use the same weapon all the time and be fine, like pushing enemies with every attack. The masteries don't really synergize with each other that well, so you are not incentivised too much to use different ones on the same turn, but it is an option for those who want to.
Even if it wasn't the case, it's kinda weird to say someone is "punished" by choosing not to use some of their abilities.
@@arcturuslight_ I think it becomes very technical almost like a computer game. I don't mind that you like this new rule, but I hate it.
Reaction spellcasting using warcaster looks soo cool! Love it, seems like it will encourage teamwork
how do you have two familiars, that's illegal. Amazing video as always, and also as usual, I love the sponsor, thank you.
Thank YOU! :) My familiars are my pride and joy... Don't tell my grandkids.
The set of house-rules I use for addressing wack-a-mole healing are as follows:
1) Characters gain one level of exhaustion when they go to 0 hp and then are healed, unless they are stabilized via a medicine check, healer's kit, or spare the dying BEFORE they are healed using magic
2) I have changed exhaustion to be -1 per level of exhaustion (like the playtest). Death still occurs at 6 levels of the condition.
3) Healing Word requires the target to be conscious and able to perceive (hear or see) the caster
4)Targets that are unconscious AND prone grant ADVANTAGE to ranged attacks that are within normal range and to all melee attacks that are in range (reach weapons can attack the downed target with advantage). Those attacks score critical hits if the hit. Ranged attacks against the downed target that are at long range are made with a straight roll unless another factor gives disadvantage. These long range ranged attacks DO NOT auto-crit if the hit.
5) Failed Death Saves remain on a character after they stabilize or are brought back to consciousness. They remove 1 failed Death Save after a long rest. Levels of Exhaustion must all be recovered from before the character can begin recovering from Death Saves. Greater Restoration can be used to heal 1 failed Death Save per casting.
These house rules imperil unconcious characters in a way that discourages party members from letting their allies fall before trying to heal them.
That’s a lot! I would indeed be terrified to be down at your table. Thanks for sharing your Houserules! Healing Word was an interesting one!
There are 2 HR that i would enforce ASAP on top on the conjure elementals issue:
1) Divine intervention is not a magic action, but has time EQUAL to the casting time of the duplicated spell, this would allow reaction spells, but no more casting hallow in 1 action
2) Spirt guardians and all simialr spells can do a maximum of 1 instance of damage on tbe casters turn + 1 instance of damage during the round. Beeing able to do instances of damage for each turn with the Rugby/pinpall effect best described by Chris breaks any math of the game, especially with hiw now grapple works and how many subclasses have teleportation abilities there needs to be a cap to the number of times a single spell can apply damage in asingle round.
Both very understandable houserules for sure. Thanks for adding them to the conversation!
The house rule I would rather use to avoid the whack a mole situation is keep track of how much the character goes to negatives, and need them to be healed for more than that before they get back up. So like if you get hit to -15, you would need to be healed for at least 16 total (not necessarily at one go) before you get back up.
Definitely a plausible option. I've not tried it like that since third edition.
Hey i just found your channel thanks to the algorithm
I had a question when it comes to multiclassing, i was looking at spell casting classes and i saw this rule (in this case for sorcerer: Whenever you gain a Sorcerer level, you can replace one spell on your list with another Sorcerer spell for which you have spell slots.) - if i (hypothetically) went 6 levels of bard first, and then two levels into sorcerer, when swapping our first level spells at level two, according to this wording i can grab 2nd, 3rd and 4th level spells when replacing them.
I haven't actually got a copy of my players handbook yet so i'm relying on online snippets, but am i correct, or is there clarification in the multiclassing rules section that actively prevents this?
Welcome to the channel! Great question, one I had myself. The Multiclass rules do indeed clarify on this:
You determine what spells you can prepare for each class individually, as if you were a single-classed member of that class. If you are a level 4 Ranger / level 3 Sorcerer, for example, you can prepare five level 1 Ranger spells, and you can prepare six Sorcerer spells of level 1 or 2 (as well as four Sorcerer cantrips).
They go on to specifically mention that you cannot prepare a spell for a high level slot for which you would not have access as a single-classed character of that type.
My biggest house rule is, just use Alternate classes by Laserllama as well whatever homebrew classes I allow along with Flee Mortals and 3rd party monsters.
So far, it's been super amazing!
Regarding Power Attack, how about this: you can tack on a Bonus Action to go along with an Attack or Magic action, and you can take a penalty matching up to your proficiency bonus (so -2 by default), and you get a +2 damage per -1 to hit you took. If you have more than one attack (from Extra Attacks or the spell) you can have the penalty vary, if it is used at all to that particular d20 roll.
Adding a bonus action cost could be an interesting fix.
Ok let's talk about Armor Class with the new rules. A Sorcerer or Wizard can cast Mage Armor for a 13 AC. Let's say they have a 14 Dexterity giving them an additional +2. Then with the new Blade Ward Cantrip rules, you can concentrate to have an opponent subtract 1d4 to their to hit roll. Also you can cast Shield as a reaction. So a wizard like this would have an effective AC of 21-24. With an 18 Dexterity it would be 23-27. A 3rd Level Abjurer with an 18 Int would also have an Arcane Ward of 10 Hit points., especially after casting Shield.
Do you have any idea for rangers hunters mark? Would you rule it differently or leave it as it is?
If I was going to modify it, I'd probably style it off other similar free casts that have been added into subclasses and let the ranger either cast it without a spell slot as normal, or without concentration, but at a 1 minute duration, possibly without letting them change targets. This would let them use their cool ability for hours at a time, OR, if they want to concentrate, pop it on a single foe for 1 minute while they break out their bigger spell. (The real danger comes in multiclassing and dipping ranger for concentrationless hunter's mark + other options)
🥳🫂👍🏿
Thank you so much for making a house rule video and shouting out Josh - you’ve been very generous with your time, energy and willingness to take my requests ❤
My pleasure entirely. I really appreciated what you did for me and I’m happy to pay it back and forward this way! There’s some good new Houserules in the comment sections too, did you see the grapplers occupy the same space one?! I’ve never heard that before and it’s kinda brilliant.
@@DM-Timothy 🙏🏿 I mentioned something like that rule to Ryan once when I learned about emanations - I took screen shots of some of the comments for later review, but I’ll go look at them directly now - many thanks
@@DM-Timothy read thru them - lots of cool ideas - especially the counter to dragging - dragging is such a frustration to me - people say they’re just being “creative” or using “ingenuity”, but I don’t now how creative it is to google “most broken damage build” - the emanations/grapple rule I mentioned was a counter to spells like spirit guardians, so it’s cool to see it created by someone else for a totally different reason - many thanks 🙏🏿
@@TwinSteel Yeah, in the world of internet-saturated D&D, creativity is usually less optimal :D
The only restrictions I would make for custom backgrounds is that the 2 skill proficiencies you gain must be from different stats.
That's a nice point and spot there. Thanks for adding it.
My only house rules so far is being able to equip/unequip weapons for free, without needing to track the amount of these interactions you get. Except that you can't equip any weapons right before making the extra attack given by light, nick or dual wielder. That both makes sense narratively, and shuts down cheezy interaction of getting these attacks by swapping weapons in one hand.
Keeping the juggling down will be the source of many a houserule for now I suspect, lol.
I was disappointed they dropped the 10-step Exhaustion that appeared in the playtest. I use a version of it, and the X on 0 rules to prevent Tubthumping. I apply the penalty to Save DCs, but not ACs or death saves.
I suspect it is at least partially to do with backwards compatibility. If something from an old adventure gave you x levels of exhaustion, they probably want the max number of levels to be the same so it puts you just as close to death as before. As someone playing in an Icewind Dale campaign right now, I’m glad that exhaustion has been simplified and is now much easier to remember.
The new Backgrounds system is a huge Blunder IMO. They should have separated Stat modifiers from the equation entirely. Just have the +2 +1 or +1, +1, +1 options available at the ability modifier section of the character creation processes.
Fair stance. Lots of people feel strongly one way or the other on this. I liked having it tied to Species, personally, but hey, I work with what I've got! :D
Exhaustion is pretty extreme in 2024- giving you 2x reduction in d20 roll per level of exhaustion. (3 lvls of exhaustion is a -6 to d20)
I’d house rule this to -1 per level and add “gain exhaustion level at 0HP”
I could see that, for sure. Thanks for your comment!
Exhaustion has always been extreme. It works for the first two levels and then becomes basically game ending.
Definitely not in favor of exhaustion at 0 hp. That would have likely tpked my entire party last game session. One player dropped to 0 hp 3 times and couldn't be healed for a round. Another player also suffered the same fate and went to 0 hp twice. I believe the cleric exhausted all their spells. And the party was probably only saved by the rogue getting several Crits. Exhaustion would have just been too much for the two party members that ended up in melee while the other two went ranged.
Two of the monsters did 3 attacks and 1 did 2 attacks. And there was no chance the cleric could ever heal enough to keep one up especially when she couldn't heal them anytime they got hit.
@@bradleyhurley6755 I’ve had a few pcs get to level 2 or 3 exhaustion without much penalty. We’re only talking about a 10-15% increased chance to fail on a d20 roll than they would without exhaustion.
I even won’t allow a long rest to remove a level of exhaustion unless it’s in a “comfy bed”. Adventuring and sleeping in the wilderness is exhausting
So far none of my eight players in two campaigns have died-died
@@DM-Timothy I even won’t allow a long rest to remove a level of exhaustion unless it’s in a “comfy bed”.
Adventuring and sleeping in the wilderness is exhausting
Rather than adding "hostile" to opportunity attack, I would make taking an opportunity attack optional. Reworded like, "If creature A leaves a space next to creature B during combat, creature B _can_ make an opportunity attack." Something like that.
Interesting! I'm not sure if that would solve the problem. The wording already begins with "can". The reason for adding hostile is not to prevent people stabbing their allies, it's to prevent the Warcaster loophole of being able to cast spells as an OA and choosing to cast benevolent spells on allies as a reaction.
@@DM-Timothy Ah. You're right. I forgot about that once I reached the end of the video. 🤦♂
@@TheVTTDM No worries :) It happens. :)
For the wack-a-mole I love Grim Hollows Grievous Wounds system, that means players really want to avoid getting dropped to zero (and my life cleric healed someone for 31hp with a second level cure wounds yesterday which was clutch)
I haven't checked that one out! How bad does it punish folk for being downed?
You talk like it is your game and we are just playing it. It is a new world. The word is collaboration.
I'm not sure what gives you that impression. I'm just offering suggestions in response to a request :) I'm actually running my 2024 games with 0 Houserules currently, because that's what my tables agreed on in Session 0, at my suggestion.
Adding the +1 onto origin Feats does sound good... Was rebuilding a character recently, and was pondering putting Magic Initiate on, but "couldn't" because it didn't have the +1 🤔
(also, I'm keeping Power Attack)
I’d be excited to hear how Power Attack goes in the new rules. What made you decide to keep it?
@@DM-Timothy Mostly it's my game-design philosophy. I like to give my players lots of tools/abilities, so I can put them up against enhanced/more dangerous encounters.
We've been sprinkling in 5.24 rules since the UA as well, so while no one has done a full-rework yet, we have some experience with it. I think it also helps with the Martial/Caster divide. Sure, the Wizard and Druid have all these spells, but the Ranger is doing 1d10+15 with their pistol +Vex 3 times a round (old rules using "Crossbow" Expert, new rules Dual Wielding).
We also use the Spell Point Variant rule from the DMG, so casters have even More flexibility than normal. I think the two house rules mirror the divide nicely.
@@guamae Nice. Thanks for sharing your experience on that front! :)
Make valor bard only be able to change their attacks for BARD cantrips. (Some people use eldritch blast twice)
Ello! Thank-you for the video! It was fun to watch and listen and judge what I agree with or disagree with. I think I ended up not liking most of these homebrew rules so I won't be using most of them. My personal critiques were that they seemed to punish player ingenuity and cleverness. Some were good and well thought out. Have a great day!
Thanks so much for the kind comment! Picking and choosing the ones that work for you is definitely the intent. I’m curious about the feeling of punishing clever players, I didn’t expect that comment and wouldn’t want to ever DO such a thing. I like to create a more level playing field between optimizing and non-optimizing players, but I’m all in for shenanigans at the table. Lol
@@DM-Timothy I never thought about Warcaster on allies as a cleric. I'm a forever dm running a few long term games, if one of my players came up with that idea I would be like: "THAT'S COOL! GO FOR IT!"
Makes me think of like the shape a battlefield medic would take in a magical world?
I'm surprised they didn't keep the Custom Background option from the UA. Maybe it'll be in the DMG. Seems like they wanted to keep some restrictions in.
I believe the restriction was intentional. That said, the rules for converting old backgrounds are basically rules for custom backgrounds, so while it has been said custom background rules will be in the DMG, I don’t suspect they will be terribly ground breaking. (Though they MIGHT have some kind of useful guidance in there)
Opinions on the houserules.
1. GWM & SS are changed and as such -5 +10 can go.
2. The reason shield was banned at table was not because it was strong. It was banned because it was objectively the strongest option for it's role. That is no longer clear and as such no need to overcomplicate the rules.
3. I could see this still being a useful houserule however I would air on the side of caution with overhouseruling.
4. I don't see the need for this houserule. Surprise is being moved from "You have six seconds of uninterrupted beatdown" into "You get the jump on them and they can only respond on instinct". You are surprised not in stasis.
5. You seem like a game design oriented person so let me present you with a thought experiment.
Suppose you are running a combat with three creatures, a cleric, a fighter and an ogre. The fighter being the tank goes infront and attacks the ogre. On the ogre's turn the ogre gets a crit and downs the fighter. On the cleric's turn they cast healing word and sacred flame, giving the fighter one level of exhaustion and not doing much damage. On the fighter's turn they see how little damage the cleric is doing and decides to attack. Ogre downs fighter, cleric casts healing word and sacred flame. This repeats until the ogre is dead and the fighter is on exhaustion level 5.
Looking at this combat, which player was making the tactical error and who was punished for the tactical error?
6. Totally agree, I was shocked that they went through all that effort in Tasha's and Multiverse only to backtrack on all of it without warning.
7. I didn't notice that and now that you have brought up those synergies I am absolutely not houseruling that away.
8. Fuck that spell.
Good video overall. Best of luck to you, your group and your channel.
Fun question, thanks for that. Tactically, perhaps the fighter for not going defensive to buy some misses, but it could go either way there and narratively I wouldn’t honestly say anyone was making the wrong decision. But that scenario doesn’t serve as analogous to the other situations where injuries go untended because it is inefficient to heal the wounded when you can let them go unconscious purposefully. It’s that sort of play wherein I’d consider an exhaustion house rule. Keeping in mind of course that I’m not going to use all these Houserules, I was simply asked what Houserules I would consider. :)
My Homebrew changes are as follows:
Custom backgrounds :
Ability Scores - +2 to one ability, and a +1 to another; Or +3 to three different ability scores.
Feat - 1 Origin Feat of your choice.
Skill Proficiencies - 2 Skill Proficiencies of your choice.
Tool Proficiencies - 1 Tool Proficiency of your choice.
Equipment - 50 GP
Hunter's Mark no longer requires a Bonus action to move, and only moves when the creature reaches 0 hp.
Relentless hunter lets you modify the spell to not require concentration, limiting the spell to 1 min duration.
The ranger capstone feat also increases the damage to 2d6 instead of 1d10.
Divine Smite is no longer a spell. I have changed that back to a class feature, that is "once per turn when you hit a creature with a weapon attack"
All other smite spells with the new bonus action casting time have had their casting time's changed to a Reaction, when you hit a creature with an attack instead of a bonus action.
Some various spell buffs and nerfs - Like Conjure minor elementals, Giant insect, Armor of Agathys. These spells are a bit overtuned.
Rouges have also at my tables seen sneak attack modified to counter the new cunning strike costs; Sneak attack deals 1d4 bonus damage, and scales 1d4 per level. At 10th level normal sneak attack is 17.5 average damage; My version is 25 average damage. The cunning strike costs remain, but are d4 instead of d6; Allowing you to not sacrifice a ton of damage and buffs the rogue up a bit more since they are currently under tuned.
Omg why would you nerf arguably the weakest class (rogue) in the game??? Good lord.
Interesting changes! I like a few of those.
@@NateFinch You must have misread the post because the suggestion was to go from a d6 every other level (current rules) to a d4 every level, which effectively doubles the number of dice just stepped down one in size. Works out to about a +42% increase in sneak attack damage at every even level, and with the odd levels being the only time where the old rules try to climb back but never coming even with the d4 per level beyond first. Further, as the op said, this makes sacrificing dice for the bonus effects way less costly as you are only sacking 2.5 avg damage per die instead of 3.5. Honestly, a very reasonable approach to rebalancing in my opinion. For those interested in the raw numbers:
Level 1: 1d6 (3.5) vs 1d4 (2.5) -28% **Only level where this is less
Level 2: 1d6 (3.5) vs 2d4 (5) +42%
Level 3: 2d6 (7) vs 3d4 (7.5) +7%
Level 4: 2d6 (7) vs 4d4 (10) +42%
Level 5: 3d6 (10.5) vs 5d4 (12.5) +19%
Level 6: 3d6 (10.5) vs 6d4 (15) +42%
Level 7: 4d6 (14) vs 7d4 (17.5) +25%
Level 8: 4d6 (14) vs 8d4 (20) +42%
Level 9: 5d6 (17.5) vs 9d4 (22.5) +28%
Level 10: 5d6 (17.5) vs 10d4 (25) +42%
Level 11: 6d6 (21) vs 11d4 (27.5) +30%
Level 12: 6d6 (21) vs 12d4 (30) +42%
Level 13: 7d6 (24.5) vs 13d4 (32.5) +32%
Level 14: 7d6 (24.5) vs 14d4 (35) +42%
Level 15: 8d6 (28) vs 15d4 (37.5) +33%
Level 16: 8d6 (28) vs 16d4 (40) +42%
Level 17: 9d6 (31.5) vs 17d4 (42.5) +34%
Level 18: 9d6 (31.5) vs 18d4 (45) +42%
Level 19: 10d6 (35) vs 19d4 (47.5) +35%
Level 20: 10d6 (35) vs 20d4 (50) +42%
@@balanceseeker....not gonna lie, i misread your sneak attack houserule as well (and forgot that sneak attack increases every other level).
But after seeing your breakdown of its efficacy, dope ass houserule! My only concern is how low it takes to count that many d4 later and having enough d4s 😅
@@MagiofAsura To be fair, it is not *my* houserule. But yes, I do think the rule is pretty good.
With regards to the idea of armor proficiencies and level dips; I haven't looked at the new capstone abilities, but I would not change this unless many of the capstones were rebalanced. Some (like for Barbarians) are great while others (in 2014) are meh. If all of the capstones were good, then the price paid for the level dip would balance out things like spell-casters wearing better armor, etc.
Capstones still vary, though progress was made.
I don't think that Elven Accuracy is an actual problem.
It's boost if you do the math is not that big.
Especially if the feats that allow a -5 to attack are gone.
Elven Accuracy was never the problem. Elven Accuracy on 1d6+15 was the problem.
Its largest impact at one of my tables is in optimized crit-fishing paladin builds. Its impact there won’t be as bad as it used to be, but won’t be unfelt if allowed. Some of my tables will probably keep old feats, so we will see. :)
I don't plan on nerfing Shield but I am carrying over a house rule from 2014 5E that Shield bonuses do not stack. I fixed the Light Weapon property to say weapon in your other hand so TWF + Shield doesn't work. I am carrying over a rule that when you grapple someone, you share the same square. That way, the drag through spiked growth cheese hits the dragger as well as the dragged.
I've always had an issue with multiclassing. It only makes sense with certain combinations. I'm a fighter that just finished a dungeon and now I'm a wizard too! How!?! When did you spend 2-4 years studying Wizardry??? (1) I increase the minimum ability score requirement to 15 for multiclassing, (2) require the player take downtime to learn the new class and find a teacher (nearly all will require months or even years of in-game downtime to learn the proficiencies, skills, fighting styles, spellcasting, etc, possibly meaning they're out of the campaign), and (3) they must construct a narrative about how/why.
Yo-Yo effect removal: Stable is removed from the game. 0 hp = dying; 1 or more hp = alive. I use the Unconscious condition instead of stable. Exhaustion occurs not when when people are knocked to 0 but when they are magically healed from 0 to 1 or higher (except Spare the Dying which now brings you to 1 hp but you're still unconscious). 3 successful death saves doesn't incur exhaustion nor does a Medicine check or Spare the dying. This way, the Medicine skill and Spare the Dying are important to the game. Unconscious condition can be removed with a Medicine check or by being healed to any amount higher than 1 hp. So a Cleric is really good for this game. Spare the dying as an action, then healing word as a bonus action can bring a player up without consequence but you've just used the entirety of the cleric's turn. The Medicine skill can also remove the Unconcious condition by spending an action to apply smelling salts. This is a separate action from the Medicine check that applies first aid bring a player from 0 to 1 hp. And any healing will remove the unconscious condition if its a result of going to 0 hp. Also, I use a pc's Bloodied condition (half hp) to give monsters special attacks, attack bonuses, or damage bonuses. This encourages healing while the players are still up and active. Tangentially, this closes the martial-caster divide a bit by requiring clerics, bards, and druids to use spell preps and casts for healing spells trying to keep as many above half hp as possible to avoid the bloodied condition.
I love the grappling modification you suggested, and definitely agree on the TWF wording change. Solid stuff, thanks!
Two more things: (1) in character creation, Background provides +1 to one of the listed stats, your class provides +1 to the main or secondary ability score, and species provides +1 to any ability score of your choice. (2) Healer's kit is now a tool that requires proficiency and requires a Medicine check to work.
One House Rule that I suggest, is to allow certain DCs for skill checks, such picking locks... rather than be set at a maximum of 15 forever, have DCs be adjustable by the DM again. Otherwise, DC of 15 will start to be pointless after level5 or so.
Definitely. I'm not SURE that this is a house rule, but then again, I'm not sure it's not! It never occurred to me to leave all locks as being pickable with the same DC regardless of the quality of the lock. But I can see how it'd look like that's the only option from the PHB. We'll see more of the intent as DMG comes out, I suspect.
I really don't agree with the custom backgrounds, because what that would lead to would just be everyone having their optimal stat modifiers AND best background feat always, which essentially removes the whole point of backgrounds in the first place of being a narrative choice, it's much nicer if they have to choose whether they want the optimal stats OR the optimal feat.
I agree. I think a lot of people will want it, and a lot of DMs will allow it, but I don't think it's the best for the game.
I would counter that by saying it can also limit creativity. Take the noble background, it's good for paladins (which doesn't make sense in the first place) but there are plenty of "falls from grace" or has a "scrooge" kind of moment that could lead to any class. They decide to devote themselves to nature, or a god, but the stats don't really line up, and it's not power gaming for your character to be good at what they are supposed to be good at.
@@Nemnar7 Most characters have been more than one thing before they started adventuring, so you can have a character who is a noble in their backstory but has some different background because they also did something else that defined their abilities more. Like for example, I made an elements monk who is a a princess living in exile after there was a coup in her home country. She had received the most of her training in a monastery that was basically like a private school to upper class kids, and her main interests include calligraphy and painting, so I gave her the Scribe background instead of Noble.
Similarly if you have say a character who grew up on the streets they could have the Wayfarer background, but they could also have background of whatever they did after growing up, like criminal, charlatan, entertainer, etc.
15:04 must be an oversight right?! lol
You would think so. lol. I can't be sure...
I've seen people theorise that it is intentional, but not to permit all these tactics, but because "hostile" there leads to all sorts of narrative weirdness. Firstly, it makes it so by being friendly to you, a creature blocks you from performing physical actions with it, which doesn't sound very friendly. Like, for example, enemy creatures usually block your movement, but allies permit you to move through their space, but here it's like the opposite. It also lead to some of the more cheesy players to have their characters momentarily just decide that they are hostile, to circumvent the wording. It's one of those places where its even difficult to use "DM can say no", as "no" has its limits where it makes zero narrative sense to disallow it.
If you want to balance it though, you can easily say that opportunity attacks are limited to dealing damage, or to using offensive spells in the case of war caster, because it makes total sense that characters are trained to use opportunity attacks specifically for that, especially from the description of war caster.
I would never in a million years allow level dipping.
Personally, I'm fine with you being able to opportunity attack your allies. Someone runs past you and you shove them to give them to give them a little bit of extra movement seems cool.
It could be cool. I'm of mixed minds.
taking hostile away from opportunity dose promote teamwork and that is a good thing.
i like the penalty for hitting 0 hp, so now your mage will just want to leave after being ko's for the first time. mage ac is already super low.
for the last house rule just tweak the wording so it's one attack you make.
I think its a problem if rogues run past a cleric and he heals him as a reaction. Or if combat starts and the wizard can cast haste on you as a reaction. It sounds really broken.
@@gorgit dose it not still take a reaction from the cleric the ONE and only reaction he gets that turn?
@@blakenelson4158 it does, but usually a reaction is far worse than an action.
FFS SHELD is NOt br0ken, Multiclassing is BROKEN!! i wera Plate, wield a shield and have the shield spell?? yea THATs broken. all class design is front loaded IE all multi classsing is BROKEN.
You’re definitely right that Shield wouldn’t be an issue if you disallowed multiclassing.
How's that dex save looking, champ? Lmao
I don't find a reason why im taking a background. I just take it and pretend it doesnt exist. Its that thing i did for a summer one year wheb i was 16 or whatever.
lol, that’s a fair approach, too.
I would say only heavy armor should limit spellcasting... And probably just the spells that have somatic components.
Might not be a bad compromise, it was largely a balancing agent rather than a focus on the fiction, medium+shield is just so drastically improved over light or mage armor.
No house rule is needed to prevent Opportunity Attacks being used to benefit allies. It's already in the RAW: it's an Opportunity *Attack*. By no definition of the word 'attack' in the English language does it mean behaviour that is benevolent. If I'm mistaken, please let me know which recognised dictionary, e.g. Oxford, Collins, defines it that way.
And in case there were any doubt, the 2024 PHB says in its opening paragraph on Opportunity Attacks that they are taken against careless 'enemies' and 'foes'. It says nothing about using them on friendlies.
Naturally, you wouldn't want to attack them. But that they provoke one by the description of Opportunity Attack (two paragraphs below the narrative description) is clear enough. I'm not saying it is sensible, lol, just that the language left a loophole when combined with Warcaster. I'd put hostile back into the language if needed to help folk realize the intent of the rules. Unless I liked the idea of allowing shoves and warcaster spells. YMMV of course.
But that's the fun part! Why let a computer do my character-crafting for me? I will admit, it's cool and all, but I am more of a DIY when it comes to making characters. That's why I have so many of them.
You can then think of it like a quick template - just a starting point that you can customize to your liking, so you don't have to begin from scratch every time. But if you enjoy building characters from the ground up, then yeah, this might not be your thing. Are there any other parts of campaign prep that you find less enjoyable and might want to automate instead?
Totally fair. But golly they’ve got some amazing things on their game plan for the Kickstarter that will be a huge help for folk, and there’s almost certainly something there you could get excited about. :)
i was surprised too, but players in my latest group don't enjoy character building at all, they just want to play the game. They took prebuilt characters and are coming up with lore for them on the fly and its working really well for them
My houserule is no 2024 at my table.
Totally fair stance if that’s your preference! :)
The new feat backgrounds are a little restrictive. We should be able to do Custom ones and eventually I see WOTC greenlighting that change.
I would just say so far, having converted my Shadow Sorc/Rogue/Warlock to the new system has been a breeze and the balancing is better. No more Hexblade 1 dip for meduim armor +shield + Char martial, you have to go all the way to 3rd for those subclass goodies and I only plan a 1 dip for Eldrtich Blast Quicken combo.
So in the conversion I lost 3 AC points but picked up Warlocks advatage on concentration checks (poor mans Warcaster feat) for free. I also got 2 weapon masteries from the rogue dip.
Humans get two background feats so I found it pretty easy to customize my own character using these official backgrounds and the human free feat.
None of the feats are make or break. I picked Magic Initiate Druid for Guidance + Spare the dying + Absorb Elements. And then just picked Charlatan for the Skilled feat and a bunch of social skills on a chr based character. I also have Expertise in Perception and Stealth. So with all the new stuff, my character has all three social skills mastered and a bunch of others making her a mini skill monkey.
Besides not having custom background, it still worked out great for humans at least. Having two origin feat combos allows for more versatility in skills/tools.
Humans have definitely got it made in the shade. For others, so far the backgrounds have been the sticking point for many players, but I think the restrictions are important... I'm riding the line with my different groups to see what balancing act works best. :)
@@DM-Timothythe restrictions are probably going to be moot after the next 2-3 player option books. As for fear choices there are only like 4 that you would ever want to take and once someone has musician no one else needs it unless you have a very large party
@@bradleyhurley6755 I would concur with you on Musician and the new books making many choices potentially moot. Though my suspicion is that we will actually see a lot of new material come out with a background that has a specific feat from that book as an origin option (ala Bigby's, Dragonlance, and Strixhaven books) WotC has been testing the waters for a while, I reckon we'll see them do that over making new backgrounds that link to current origin feats.
Custom backgrounds are supposedly coming in the DMG.
thank you! i have somthing to think about for the Exhaustion rules you suggested. but nothing beats AID 5E below 0 hit points rules, for i hate yo yo healing so so much. :D
One alternate to the background is to still have a limit to which ability you can increase but have +1 come from species, +1 come from class, and +1 come from background. This would allow you to still increase a main stat for your class and have some versatility for species and background.
That actually sounds like a neat idea.
I am going to homebrew that wizards can teleport in my games, that way they can keep up with the barbarians.
hehe. I was pretty horrified at the teleporting barbarians, too. Thank goodness it doesn't come up till level 14.
Great video@@DM-Timothy
Defensive Duelist works just for 1 attack tho...
It used to. Now it lasts until the start of your next turn.
My house rule to fix DND 2024: Don't use the 2024 PHB
hehe, fair enough, if it isn't for you, it isn't for you. :)
They basically got rid of surprise, and I don't like it. Going last isn't a big deal. Having your opponent go twice before you was significant (if they beat your initiative). I may house rule that one back to the old style.
I'll house rule that drinking potions requires an action. I don't like video game style healing.
Surprise is definitely less impactful, though it might also feel better in play. Fair points both. Thanks for your comment! :)
Saving Through DC's decrease via exhaustion? 😂
Too tired to pump as much magic into the spell would be my argument. :) But frankly, just a balancing thing to try and make the penalty apply across the board instead of hitting martials harder than casters.
Banning the Shield spell is something I never agreed with. How can you ban a spell that is so popular and so deeply noted in DnD lore? How could you ban, fireball and is that really DnD anymore....a world without fireballs?
Which means I couldn't play my Mystical Monk character at your table like I was able to play it at two different tables with no problem.
The Mystical Monk is a 8th level Monk with 8th level Clockwork Sorcerer + 4 levels of Bladesinger at level 20.
Max AC without magical items was 31 - Monk 20 AC + 2 Agile Parry Kensei Monk + 2 Haste + 2 Bladesong (or 4 with a Headband of Intellect) + 5 Shield spell.
It's a character totally dedicated to casting Haste on itself and going to battle on the front lines. Mixing Quicken Booming/Greenflame Blade attacks with Unarmed Strikes, multi attack and Haste actions meant I did decent damage, had descent all around saves along with of course great AC.
Is that OP? You might think so. But if you compared that character to a straight classed Bladesinger or any full Sorcerer or wizard, she wasn't so powerful. A full caster will beat any gish any day of the week if they know what they are doing.
Being really good at melee doesn't mean you are immune to magic users, or having your reaction split/forced. You only get one reaction, is that to Absorb elements on a fireball or cast Shield to block the White Dragons claws from rending your flesh?
That same character went down a few times because my DM knew the weaknesses - like Dispel Magic. If I cast shield that round, I can't cast Subtle Counterspell on the mage who cast Dispel on me and now I'm stuck for a whole round while monsters get to wail on me.
This game has gives and takes. If a character dipped to grab a level of fighter for armor/Shield prof, they are also delayed a whole level in spellcasting and do not get their capstone feat. You keep adding classing and your subclass capstone goes away. Any more than 3 levels of dipping and now you're missing 9th level spells.
Is being really good at martial tactics really more powerful than 9th level spells? My point is, it's rare to run into a build that completely breaks the game. Everyone has weaknesses. I would be very hard pressed to ever ban any spell or feat or class that is officially in the rules book.
You/Treantmonk ban it, but like 90% of the other tables had Shield spells. Which is akward, IMO. Awkward lore wise and awkward because that is a very very niche ruling. Never seen another DM or another RUclips DM that bans the Shield spell. 😅
We have disagreements, but your content is good. Keep it up.
Totally fair stance, and removing the shield spell is definitely not for every table. For me at least, it was more about bringing the highs closer to the lows so that optimizers and less optimizing players can both feel closer to one another in power. I don’t mind OP characters, but I do mind players feeling left out or weak. Incidentally, the DMs at my tables who have played with shield adjusted have all been skeptical, but all adopted it for their own tables. That is very anecdotal of course! I appreciate you offering a dissenting opinion. I’m not on the net to tell folk my way is the right or only way :) Thanks for being here and for always keeping it civil and interesting. :)
@DM-Timothy I of course don't mean to be super critical of course, like I get what you and Treantmonk are trying to do and it not insane.
But after playing one of the most "unbreakable characters", my Mystical Monk, I know she had limits. AC doesn't care about crits or grapples. If you make enough attacks, those 20s become inevitable.
The Mystical Monk was challenging red dragons to solo combat at level 12 in Rise of Tiamat. So she was very very good at what she did, but she also didn't have an unlimited resource pool. Quicken Booming Blades cost 2 sorc points. If I'm casting Shield too much, now I'm draining slots I could use for even more Quicken Greenflame strikes. As the day/battles wear on, now I'm burning 5th level slots to feed all these abilities all the while managing my KI pool.
Having played this character really opened me to understanding the limits of any character build.
@@007ohboy It sounds like a fun character and like a lot of fun was had. Every character has limits, for sure, and it is somewhat the DMs job to figure those out where necessary. :)
@@DM-Timothy She's both my "weakest character" (not a full caster) and the most fun due to how many options she had each round even for melee. But yeah, good chat. Have a great day and let's enjoy this new edition! Whoop whoop!
I was like, "Hey wait! That's my name!" 🫨👉
I think you're right. When a player takes an origin feat at level 4+ the stat boost should be thematically appropriate. Like raising the mental stat you want as your spellcasting ability for Magic Initiate. 🧐💯
I appreciate you making the suggestion to add to the pool! :D
A couple of those are interesting, but most are not remotely interesting to me for my games.
Totally fair! Take what works for you and skip the rest. I hunted for rules I thought would be interesting for people, but by no means am I using all of these myself even.
Personally, I would hold off on the custom backgrounds for the next year. This is why: stats were tied to races in 2014, and if you wanted a certain stat array, you needed to choose the corresponding race that got it. On the other hand, backgrounds were just a couple of proficiencies and a niche feature that rarely came up in play. We didn't get the ability to adjust our stat bonuses until Tasha's in 2020. That's 6 years we had to live within these rules. A "custom lineage" was also introduced in Tasha's. That also changed everything. 6 years without. And we still had fun. We are spoiled in 2024. We allow almost everything and it makes the game unbalanced, for lack of a better word. So my game is going to play it straight until everyone agrees it's too restrictive.
I love that. I’m inclined to agree, though I know some of my tables will be less on board with it than others. Restrictions breed creativity, imo, but it’s a fine line for some. :)
Step 1: Play the 2014 PHB instead.
Totally fair option. Me personally, I’m rather pleased with the update.
Personally, I think alot of classes and features are improved significantly. Now I only have to homebrew ~12 rules and one class instead of 4 classes and way more rules.
@@gorgit I think they did a good job overall, too.
Use 2014 books as a base and la carte things from the 2024 books.
Lol no way. Why would you do that? 2024 improved SO many things.
Definitely an option for those who don’t want to see much of a change. It was how I approached the 3.0 to 3.5 transition, and eventually we finished the switch as our group was more comfortable with the new stuff.
LOL. The "New" players handbook is so poorly written that it needs fixing... Maybe Hasbro WOTC should spend as much time, money and effort on putting out a good product as they do trying to make sure there is enough diversity, equity, inclusion and safe spaces into the game. #HasbroWOTCDnDisdead
Actually, I don’t necessarily think you need any of these houserules. I am really enjoying the new rules as written so far. I am offering up options, not declarations. :)
WOW!!! So much abusiveness, this is advice for bad DMing. PLEASE STOP BEING KILL THE PLAYER DMS!!! DO NOT DO MOST OF THESE, EVER!!!
1a) Power Attack for All? Great idea, keep it, every Martial can take -5 to attack to add +10 to both Ranged and Melee attacks, plus double the 10 on a crit... This is a Good rule, this is good advice. Removing it, bad advice... was 8/10 Stars, now is 0/10 Stars... granting it was great, taking away something that isn't there is just a nothing.
1b) Removal of Shield? WTF? STOP TRYING TO KILL PLAYERS. Keep Shield as is, Shield is fine... Shield is meant to exist. It costs two resources, Reaction and Spell Slot, it is perfectly fine for a one round boost, and if someone boosts themself by multiclassing, they are still using their Reaction and Still using one of their precious spell slots. If Shield were a reaction Cantrip, I could see an issue, but it isn't. Terrible -5/10 Stars, but very common among KILL THE PLAYER DMs, its commonality makes it not as impactfully bad, despite being bad
1c) Again, this is Kill the Player thinking. Stop trying to hurt the players, the dice will do it fine, there is an existing mechanic, No Proficiency at all, Armor stops spellcasting, the dip to get the Armor Proficiency is the Penalty, it is one caster level less, causing more xp needed to get spell levels and spell slots, as well as to get to features. The balance was always there, you don't need to add extra penalties. It works both ways, the Paladin can dip Warlock for Spell Slots that come back on a Short Rest for more Smites, WHICH they nerfed anyway by making Divine Smite a Bonus Action... HORRIBLE RULE -50 out of 10 Stars.
2) No Reactions when Surprised? This is fair, it works both ways, it makes Surprise have a genuine benefit still for Players to be stealthy, not just a pathetic advantage on Initiative, which is actually valueless if you roll low anyway. Oh, look, they had disadvantage and rolled a 19 and a 20, oh, and with advantage you rolled a 4 and a 5... yes, Surprised... so surprised... We can keep this, as it at least sounds good, even if it is nearly useless due to the idiocy of 2024 Surprise Mechanics. A real house rule would be "Anyone who is surprised doesn't get a turn on round one, has disadvantage on initiative, and no one get reactions until the beginning of the turn they get to go" This means, surprised people are genuinely surprised, they are caught off-guard and can't act in response at all, then initiative may or may not be on their side to go earlier or later in the second round, it still wouldn't make the NEW Alert feat genuinely valuable, as it would still would only cancel out the disadvantage where the 2014 version would have meant you got to go on the Surprise 1st round and it protected you from hidden/invisible foes surprising you in the middle of combat (Side Note: a GOOD House Rule would be to make the Alert Feat do both of those, still grant advantage on Initiative, and allow the Initiative Swap, as the Alert Character could have their first turn, get their reaction, and allow a surprised ally to go earlier in the 2nd round). 4/10 Stars, it isn't really that impactful, but it isn't bad advice, just meh.
3) What Books you allow? This isn't a House Rule, this is standard rules... You always chose which books you allowed and disallowed. We can keep this, but it isn't a House Rule anyway. Obviously there were even books that stated things like "This Feat is meant only for this Setting", meaning the intent was unless you were in that setting or allowing something from that setting in your custom setting, that book or part of that book was innately off-limits without talking with the DM. This didn't even need to be stated. 1/10 Stars, technically, as of 2024, it is a sort of House Rule, but this is such a nothing, that it barely warrants above an actual nothing.
4) Exhaustion on 0 HP? WTF? STOP TRYING TO KILL PLAYERS. There are literally mechanics to drop a PC to 0 HP instantly (See Sea Hags). This punishes Tanks, this punishes squishy casters, this punishes getting low rolls, this punishes players for roleplaying. This rules says "You actually want to just go and hide, because mobs gang up, so you will have four to eight levels of exhaustion, since you aggro everything... oops, make a new character cause you didn't ho and hide." The idiocy that MASH Units are stitching up Soldiers in the middle of a fight is dumb. Especially in conjunction with the later idea to nerf an intentionally added feature to reaction spellcasting, this House Rule is a horrible intent to kill parties quicker. -100/10 Stars this isn't just crippling, this is why have a game level game ending mechanics
5) Oh, look, more punishing players to make sure you kill them. Tell me, does your grenade get less effective when it blows up because you drank less coffee? Then why would a fireball be easier to dodge because the Wizard is a little tired? This is just more KILL THE PLAYERS mentality. Ever heard of the adage that a cornered creature is MORE dangerous? Being Exhausted and tired and agitated and afraid for their life, if it were mechanically going to do anything, would be to UP DCs, cause more attacks, make the Squishy Spellcaster MORE Dangerous, not less (No, I'm not suggesting making boosts for fear, exhaustion, low hp, and other negative conditions... but the point was, those are way more realistic if you are talking making things REALISTIC in a Fantasy game). Penalties to melee attacks, because your arms are tired; penalties to con saves to make concentration checks because your mentally exhausted, those make sense, but the magical energies you tap into aren't losing their potency, so Spell Save DCs shouldn't be dropping; and your armor suddenly doesn't get weaker because you are fatigued, so AC shouldn't be going down either (yes, I get that the idea is you're less agile, but lower AC affects the non-agility characters... in addition, it is more KILL THE PLAYERS mentality, as NPCs rarely suffer from Exhaustion, there are few ways to give foes levels, so it doesn't help make the Dragon squishier, it only affects PCs, and it makes them much easier to kill... this is poor GMing at its worst... might as well just say "I decided you have brain eating parasites that do 1d8 Intelligence Damage every round at the start of your turn, you can't remove them, you can make a Int Save to reduce the damage by half at the end of your turn", because this is just you trying to make your PCs dead to make them dead, there is no balance at all). Absolutely, positively, never ever ever do this, this is some of the worst advice ever, and this is in a video that is already filled with horrible, Kill the Players ASAP advice. -200/10 Stars, the above kills players, this kills players faster, Game ends before it starts.
6) Custom Backgrounds... oh, wow, brilliant... except, as you pointed out... a) Tasha's already discussed this, and b) the bringing 2014-2023 Background in line with 2024 rules in the PHB basically already made this Rules as Intended if not Rules as Written. This is less a House Rule and more a rules Errata. But, fine, this is generally good advice. And, I will grant you the subset, adding a Half ASI to Origin Feats taken after Level 1, is decent Good DM House Rule Advice. I might even say, make them all Half ASI... always, this makes the Human look even better, as that makes their extra feat at level 1 give another +1 to an ability score that the DM feels is appropriate for the Feat. OR, how about also making ALL Non-Epic Boon Feats available as options for Custom Backgrounds? Why wouldn't Gladiator have the Grappler Feat at Level 1? Why wouldn't the Sorcerer who was a Town Guardsman have Lightly Armored? Why wouldn't the Pagan Revival Preacher have Inspiring Leader? Why wouldn't the Mine Cook have Chef? Why wouldn't the Traveling Thespian have Actor? See, that is an even Better House Rule, but sure, granting an half-asi to origin feats taken after level 1 is fair, decent, and good advice to DMs as a possible houserule... 6/10 Stars, it isn't great, but at least it is good.
7) First, it isn't an exploit, it was a feature... the whole point of the new wording was so Warcasters, Paladins, and Mercy Monks could render aid or buffs to allies, remember resources... this is why having your reaction is important, this is why it still costs a Spell Slot, or Lay on Hands Die, or Focus Point, because it encourages teamwork, encourages using your resources to benefit others, and provides ways for players to do more than just attack. I will agree with this rule, as long as any DM that institutes accepts they count as a Hostile creature, and so anytime they move away from a player the player gets to hit them in with anything they want, anywhere they want. A DM that puts this in place deserves to get Opportunity Attacked by the entire party and other DMs, and anyone that see them, this is a Hostile DM. -20/10 Stars, Hostile behavior from a Hostile creature who deserves Hostility toward them.
8) Okay, I understand why idiots, novices, fools, haters, and bad readers think Conjure Minor Elementals is broken, but they are missing many key issues: A) The spell only affects a 15 foot emanation, that is a radius of 15 feet around the caster, meaning it is useless on any target further away and easily avoidable by ranged combat... You shoot, move back 20+ feet, even if they dash, they have used their action to get you in range without getting the damage benefit. B) the difficult terrain means anything in it or at its edge (because no PC race has under 30 feet of movement) can get base to base with the caster if they start their turn in or just at the edge of the emanation, so normal movement to base AND Melee Attack the Caster while they still haven't benefitted from the spell. C) It is a Concentration Spell, so hitting them potentially ends the spell, hitting them multiple times, increases the chances, having the Mage Slayer Feat means they make the save with disadvantage. D) It takes an action to cast, so even if they cast it with a foe inside the Emanation, they either have to use another resource (like sorcery point or maybe a single use per long rest ability) to cast a damaging spell immediately or wait an entire round to benefit from the potential damage, so odds are low this will get more than one nuke before every caster, ranged martial, and nearby melee martial piles on the damage to break that concentration. E) It still took a spell slot, and in fact, to get that so called 'broken' benefit, required the use of on of their higher, if no their highest spell slot. So F) They are as this letter implies, F'd, the moment they cast it, as it puts a massive target on them, cost them their most important resources. There is no reason, whatsoever, to change, ban, nerf, modify, or touch this spell in anyway, it is perfectly fine and balance, but people see that potential, and forget that this is mainly for the benefit of the players, this is their spell to take down a big threat or maybe two if they're really lucky, because a smart party of players takes down the NPC Spellcaster using it (see A-F above for how and why) and logical DM will have the NPC minions and mobs either do the same or flee for 10 minutes then restart the fight (maybe rinse and repeat), pack tactics (Shout out to Gator and Kobold, you guys love one of the best ways to crush this spell for NPCs) will make this spell a joke.
Any House Rule that penalizes, punishes, or cripples players is not good. No one said, "Look at all that innovation and creativity that came from that Totalitarian Dictatorship", more restrictions does not foster creativity, it stifles it... Roleplaying is an improv session with structure, rules that support, not barriers that constrain, "Yes, AND" should be usually the mindset, not "No, NOR".
Thanks for your comment! I'm never out to kill my players, and none of these are intended to do so. Have a great day! :)
Step 1: play a different game that suits your needs better
If a system does 50 things right and 9 wrong is it really that necessary to find another system? Just change what you dislike.
I play another system only when I want something completely out of the scope of the system that I normally play.
@Kennedy00Louis as a past 5e dm and current pf2e gm, 5e had 1 massive flaw that slowly ruined it for me. the monster CR system has no balance and makes creating challenging yet fair encounters a nightmare. pf2e has simple balancing math that just works, has been amazing. so for me, it only took d&d doing one thing very badly for me to switch
Thanks for the suggestion, D&D suits my needs perfectly, however. :)
just remove multiclassing
@@DM-Timothy yeah for sure. I was more talking to the audience of the video! If DND is suiting your needs That’s awesome. My comment would be only for people who actually want to hack DnD but still having a bad time lol.
Yeah, no offense to Chris, but his armor rule is pretty wack. The only reason to multiclass out of wizard or delay your spell progression is to get those armor proficiencies that the spellcasters lack. It defeats the whole purpose of multiclassing with a martial class. I'd rather work around an optimized character if it gets crazy with AC. Like saving throws. Athletics (grapple) checks. Heat Metal. An armored wizard is not invincible. Very useful and powerful, but you're still rocking those d6s for hit dice.
Fair stance for sure. For me, Chris’ rules are about bringing the optimized characters and the standard characters to a more level playing field, and the armor rule does that pretty well in my experience. But everyone’s table is different!
I have one house rule to fix DND: playing a better RPG
Hehe, what’s your game of choice?
@@DM-Timothy Forbidden Lands
@@jfm.d5180 Interesting, i've never heard of that one before.