Things that could safely be adjusted in houserules

[MrStabby]

So in a month or so I will be DMing 5th for the first time and have very little experience of the edition (nor do the other players though).

Reading a lot of posts here it seems that there is a kind of almost consensus view that some things could safely be buffed as classes/abilities. Not quite a consensus but close. Certainly there is a bit of concern in the party about balance and there are a number of people ruling out classes.

Martial classes need diversity of action at higher level and a bit more power at level 14+.

Ranger class needs a further minor buff.

Two weapon fighting style needs a bit of a buff.

Strength is weak relative to dex for combat characters


I was considering houseruling that fighters get a second reaction each turn at lvl13 and a second bonus action each turn at lvl 17.

Ranger and paladin get a second reaction at lvl 17

Ranger gets +1 to hit favoured enemy

Two weapon fighting style lets you make an additional weapon attack whenever you make a weapon attack. These extra attacks count as having disadvantage.

Also, if you have str 17+ whenever you reduce an enemy to 0 hitpoints with a melee weapon attack you may use your reaction to make an attack against an adjacent creature.

Where Eldritch knights and arcane tricksters are restricted to certain schools for their spells, they can pick which two schools they are restricted to.

I haven't played enough games but do people think that these could work as adjustments?



At the other end of the scale I was wanting to slightly lower the options for casters - maybe give each class only access to spells of a certain school or two schools for spell level 6 and higher? This would be more likely to a) differentiate casters and b) make it more likely that other classes can do things that casters can't. I worry that this might be a bit much though. I would prefer to make smaller adjustments than this.

The plan is to begin at lvl 4 and probably end somewhere around 16/17.

[Solusek]

So in a month or so I will be DMing 5th for the first time and have very little experience of the edition (nor do the other players though).

Reading a lot of posts here it seems that there is a kind of almost consensus view that some things could safely be buffed as classes/abilities. Not quite a consensus but close. Certainly there is a bit of concern in the party about balance and there are a number of people ruling out classes.

Martial classes need diversity of action at higher level and a bit more power at level 14+.

Ranger class needs a further minor buff.

Two weapon fighting style needs a bit of a buff.

Strength is weak relative to dex for combat characters



I was considering houseruling that fighters get a second reaction each turn at lvl13 and a second bonus action each turn at lvl 17.

I like the second reaction idea so long as you can still only use 1 reaction per triggering event, so it's kind of acting like a "combat reflexes" type thing from editions past.

I'm not too sure what the point of the extra bonus action is since Fighters don't get very many things to do with bonus actions (especially if you are changing the dual wielding rules). I suppose Eldritch Knights might be able to do some additional bonus action spells with it or something.


Ranger and paladin get a second reaction at lvl 17
Sure


Ranger gets +1 to hit favoured enemy
Harkens back to 3.0 where rangers had a combat bonus against their favored enemy. Seems fine, I don't think I would do this for my game though.


Two weapon fighting style lets you make an additional weapon attack whenever you make a weapon attack. These extra attacks count as having disadvantage.
Do you mean for things like attacks of opportunity only? Or is this doubling the amount of attacks a dual wielding character gets compared to what a single weapon character would get but those extra attacks are all at disadvantage?

Not sure what I think about this either way. If it is doubling the amount attacks then it seems like a pretty substantial change to how dual wielding works. It's probably a decent buff to fighters (who have lots of attacks) but a pretty big nerf to rogues (who have only one).


Also, if you have str 17+ whenever you reduce an enemy to 0 hitpoints with a melee weapon attack you may use your reaction to make an attack against an adjacent creature.
Cleave is a fun mechanic but I don't like the arbitrary strength score break point for this.


Where Eldritch knights and arcane tricksters are restricted to certain schools for their spells, they can pick which two schools they are restricted to.
Seems like a fun idea, no complaints.



At the other end of the scale I was wanting to slightly lower the options for casters - maybe give each class only access to spells of a certain school or two schools for spell level 6 and higher? This would be more likely to a) differentiate casters and b) make it more likely that other classes can do things that casters can't. I worry that this might be a bit much though. I would prefer to make smaller adjustments than this.

Ew, I don't like this. Casters really aren't so much more powerful than martials in combat. They don't need further restrictions like this.

[Strill]

Strength is weak relative to dex for combat charactersI don't agree. Strength lets you use heavy armor, 2-handed weapons, grapples, shoves, and most importantly, allows you to use the Great Weapon Master and Polearm Master feats.


Two weapon fighting style lets you make an additional weapon attack whenever you make a weapon attack. These extra attacks count as having disadvantage.A good try, but extremely overpowered. Multiclass Barbarian or Rogue for easy sources of Advantage to negate the disadvantage, and you've basically doubled your damage.


Where Eldritch knights and arcane tricksters are restricted to certain schools for their spells, they can pick which two schools they are restricted to. I kind of think Eldritch Knights need a straight buff - although not that much. Compare them to Paladins, for example. Paladins get way more spells available, way more spells prepared, tons of exclusive spells, way more spell slots, incredibly powerful abilities like Aura of Protection, Aura of Courage, and Aura of Warding. Paladins also do the same at-will damage as Fighters, which I don't think they should.


At the other end of the scale I was wanting to slightly lower the options for casters - maybe give each class only access to spells of a certain school or two schools for spell level 6 and higher? This would be more likely to a) differentiate casters and b) make it more likely that other classes can do things that casters can't. I worry that this might be a bit much though. I would prefer to make smaller adjustments than this.There are way too few spells at level 6+ for you to restrict them. You'd end up with casters who have nothing to cast.

[Chronos]

The biggest change I'd like to see to casters would be to remove the scaling from damage cantrips. Yes, I know that this makes them suck at high levels. This is fine. You shouldn't be falling back on your cantrips unless you've either already expended all of your slots, or you're conserving resources against an easy opponent so you won't run out of slots when you need them. Casters get the benefit of being better than mundanes when they're at full resources, and that should be balanced by them being worse than mundanes when they're run dry.

Yes, this would hit the warlock especially hard, but I think I'd like to see a complete re-design of the warlock. In 3rd edition, their schtick was that their spells weren't as powerful as a standard caster's, but they never ran out of them. What we have now, aside from their cantrips (which everyone has), their spells run out even quicker than a standard caster's, but all of the spells they have are high-powered. It's just the opposite of what they used to be. The one nod to "warlocks never run out of power" is that they have one single cantrip that's better than the cantrips that other casters get.

[MrStabby]

Ok, so changing two weapon fighting went a bit overboard. I think I would still like to improve it a little as it does seem pretty weak and more importantly a bit boring. I tend to think of bonus actions as being where your characters choices lie and something that occupies that slot as a "default" kind of action seems like it is an incentive to reduce choice and not take other uses of your bonus action.

How about if you hit with a melee weapon with your action you can make two attacks with your bonus action? This then scales decently with fighters who get more attacks (and so more likely to hit but even best case cant get more than 2 extra attacks) but also scales well with other melee classes due to things like hunters mark or elemental weapon. It also means that you may want a backup use for your bonus action in case you miss - generating more diverse and interesting rounds of combat? I think this is a pretty big buff but I think using two weapons needed one. I was a bit worried that it would be overpowered at low levels but it will make your armour class pretty sucky and at time where hitpoints are few..

I also agree with the coments about nerfing the casters. I wasn't comfortable with this and you have certainly persuaded me to make smaller changes.

Points also taken about dex vs str. I still think dex is more important, but maybe not by as much as I did. Initiative, saves, skills all have dex as more important as well as it being able to add to hitting, damage and your own armour class. This disparity was the thought behind the strength cap for the cleave rule (this and it helping martials a bit more at higher levels). Agreed the strength cap does seem arbitrary in isolation. I think instead I will change it to happening if you added your strength bonus to damage.

Also agree on Eldritch knight vs Paladin. I liked paladin much more but i thought that was just my style. I think the gap maybe closes slightly with the fighter buffs I proposed but the spellcasting seems almost Irrelevant. Maybe give them more resistance? From lvl 6 they are automatically proficient in saves against spells from their two chosen spell schools? Eldritch Knight only begins to have any advantage vs Paladin at 11 when 3rd attack comes in to play (ok, and I suppose lvl 1 when they get a fighting style).

Possibly Eldritch Knight and Arcane Tricksters could get some kind of spell recovery when they kill things mechanic to help make up for their abysmal spell progression. Not that many of their spells will be worth casting at higher levels.

[Gritmonger]

If you haven't run it yet - isn't it a bit early to start tweaking? Until you sit down and play, and decide whether the way it runs right now is fun or not, worrying that much about relative damage levels and crucial advancement options seems premature.

For instance, hold off on nerfing casters until you see how concentration affects play.

[MrStabby]

If you haven't run it yet - isn't it a bit early to start tweaking? Until you sit down and play, and decide whether the way it runs right now is fun or not, worrying that much about relative damage levels and crucial advancement options seems premature.

For instance, hold off on nerfing casters until you see how concentration affects play.

I would tend to agree with your sentiment; the best way to know what to adjust is to test. The problem essentially comes down to the fact that it takes many months to run a campaign. Given this investment of time if a class looks bad or dull on paper no one will be keen to play it so actual evidence is a bit more difficult to come by. In this situation I am happy to trust the opinions of the people who have played these classes, especially when their opinions match what appears to be the case on paper.

That said, I have suspended my plans to nerf casters given the feedback of the people who play them.

For a bit of context I will be running a "hard" campaign. Given that each encounter will carry a genuine risk of death to the party, given alarms will bring more enemies and given that enemies will try and use all of their abilities intelligently there will be a strong incentive to use a lot of non-combat abilities to avoid fights where possible and to ensure every time they risk their necks it is because there isnt another solution and that the reward (plotwise) is worthwhile.

[Gritmonger]

I would tend to agree with your sentiment; the best way to know what to adjust is to test. The problem essentially comes down to the fact that it takes many months to run a campaign. Given this investment of time if a class looks bad or dull on paper no one will be keen to play it so actual evidence is a bit more difficult to come by. In this situation I am happy to trust the opinions of the people who have played these classes, especially when their opinions match what appears to be the case on paper.

That said, I have suspended my plans to nerf casters given the feedback of the people who play them.

For a bit of context I will be running a "hard" campaign. Given that each encounter will carry a genuine risk of death to the party, given alarms will bring more enemies and given that enemies will try and use all of their abilities intelligently there will be a strong incentive to use a lot of non-combat abilities to avoid fights where possible and to ensure every time they risk their necks it is because there isnt another solution and that the reward (plotwise) is worthwhile.

Okay - If you want to run "hard", you could try to run the slow recovery option - a "short" rest is 8 hours, a "long" rest is one week - that will significantly put a tax on abilities that refresh, and allow the fighter types to shine much more in repeated encounters, as well as make people consider taking damage in the first place, if they can only recover hit dice over a long rest. It's not as much a nerf as a playstyle, and does tend to make combat a last resort rather than the first resort of short-rest-is-five-minutes, long-rest-is-one-hour.

Add to this the optional lingering injury rule whenever anybody takes a hard enough hit (any time an enemy rolls a critical, any time a player drops to 0) and you'd have something of a hard campaign. Magical healing is only available on a limited basis depending on how you run the availability of potions, and the rest schema reduces the availability of even clerical healing depending on how many encounters occur consecutively. To plan for a really bad encounter will take a week in a shelter where there won't be any combat, instead of just camping overnight.

Just trying those two tweaks, without a lot of other ones just yet, and I think you might have some of the flavor and new pressure on casters that you might be lacking in the base system.

Best part is, those are stock DMG options, so you escape any culpability for home-brew...

[Strill]

The biggest change I'd like to see to casters would be to remove the scaling from damage cantrips. Yes, I know that this makes them suck at high levels. This is fine. You shouldn't be falling back on your cantrips unless you've either already expended all of your slots, or you're conserving resources against an easy opponent so you won't run out of slots when you need them. Casters get the benefit of being better than mundanes when they're at full resources, and that should be balanced by them being worse than mundanes when they're run dry.They are worse. Quite a bit worse. Cantrips do half the damage of a martial class at absolute best, and an eighth of their damage at worst. - Warlocks excepted. Eldritch Blast does the same damage as martial classes.

[FightStyles]

For a bit of context I will be running a "hard" campaign. Given that each encounter will carry a genuine risk of death to the party, given alarms will bring more enemies and given that enemies will try and use all of their abilities intelligently there will be a strong incentive to use a lot of non-combat abilities to avoid fights where possible and to ensure every time they risk their necks it is because there isnt another solution and that the reward (plotwise) is worthwhile.

So you want to play a regular game of D&D as the DM? haha

But seriously, most of my encounters I run I like to keep in the "hard" area of encounter building. However, I have thrown a couple "mediums" and a "deadly" here and there to mix things up. With that being said, the party tends to have one or two PCs go unconcious each session (however only one death so far).

[Person_Man]

I would strongly suggest playing the RAW rules for a full campaign before you start adding homebrew. Adding homebrew is the gods given right of every DM. But a lot of the "weak" or counter-intuitive rules actually play really well in real games and are surprisingly balanced.

[MrStabby]

I would strongly suggest playing the RAW rules for a full campaign before you start adding homebrew. Adding homebrew is the gods given right of every DM. But a lot of the "weak" or counter-intuitive rules actually play really well in real games and are surprisingly balanced.

Could be reasonable. I was just picking the things I thought people were complaining about the most as being underpowered. Certainly there was no desire by people to play many of the classes - everyone ruled them out pretty early on. I wasn't trying to go by my judgement of what was good but by what more experienced people said (although it did help if I agreed with It).

[rpavlicek]

I'd probably boost damage when using strength as a compensation for dexterity being so effective.

Maybe 1.5x STR mod with one-handed and 2x mod with two-handed?

[EvanescentHero]

I'd probably boost damage when using strength as a compensation for dexterity being so effective.

Maybe 1.5x STR mod with one-handed and 2x mod with two-handed?

All that's going to do is make the damage gap already inherent between dex-allowed weapons (finesse) and strength-required ones (everything else, but especially two-handed and heavy ones) even larger.

The highest base damage of a finesse weapon is a d8, compared to the d12 or 2d6 that strength builds will be dealing anyway.

[MrStabby]

I'd probably boost damage when using strength as a compensation for dexterity being so effective.

Maybe 1.5x STR mod with one-handed and 2x mod with two-handed?

I added the cleave rules to try and slightly rebalance in favour of strength. I think upping the strength bonus this much might have a bit of a bigger effect than I was hoping for. My thinking was that cleave using your turn's reaction would somewhat rebalance from polearms to other two handed weapons.

[rpavlicek]

All that's going to do is make the damage gap already inherent between dex-allowed weapons (finesse) and strength-required ones (everything else, but especially two-handed and heavy ones) even larger.

The highest base damage of a finesse weapon is a d8, compared to the d12 or 2d6 that strength builds will be dealing anyway.

Exactly. Also its not like characters have 30 STR like in 3.x

DEX has quite a few things going for it on top of damage:

DEX saves (far more common)
AC
Initiative
3 skills (compared to one)

[EvanescentHero]

Exactly. Also its not like characters have 30 STR like in 3.x

DEX has quite a few things going for it on top of damage:

DEX saves (far more common)
AC
Initiative
3 skills (compared to one)

Giving such a boost to damage on top of the fact that you need high strength to properly take advantage of Polearm Master and Great Weapon Fighting, which already have the highest martial damage output, seems completely unnecessary and ridiculous to me.

[rpavlicek]

Giving such a boost to damage on top of the fact that you need high strength to properly take advantage of Polearm Master and Great Weapon Fighting, which already have the highest martial damage output, seems completely unnecessary and ridiculous to me.

I don't think its ridiculous at all...although it could use tuning. DEX is far and away the preferred stat.

GWF is nice but doesn't substantially increase damage. Polearm Master is very nice, assuming feats are allowed. Perhaps there should be different balance for feats/no feats. If STR needs a feat to be on par with DEX, maybe something else is wrong...

[MrStabby]

My perception is that Dex is better than Str but really depending on class.

Dex obviously helps classes that have a lot of skills that use dex or have abilities like the Rogues sneak attack that favour dex weapons (possibly including things like the archery fighting style.

Dex also is big for casters that want to drop buffs or area of effect spells before other people mingle in combat.

Certainly when I look at builds that people are playing there seems to be more dex fighters in close combat as plate mail clad strength fighters, more dex paladins than strength paladins and more dex focussed clerics than str focussed clerics. Justified or not it does seem like peoples perceptions are that you can fill a similar role better using dex than strength.



In addition once common complaint I have seen is that the power if hitting things with pointy metal things drops off relative to other classes at higher levels. Maybe you could balance this simply by raising the Str cap to 22? This would mean more diversity in races (fewer variant humans to get that polearm mastery early) as well as meaning that late game a Str based character can gain just that little bit more of an edge. Late fighter levels do seem to come in for some special criticism so providing an extra benefit to their ASIs might help balance that?

[EvanescentHero]

In addition once common complaint I have seen is that the power if hitting things with pointy metal things drops off relative to other classes at higher levels. Maybe you could balance this simply by raising the Str cap to 22? This would mean more diversity in races (fewer variant humans to get that polearm mastery early) as well as meaning that late game a Str based character can gain just that little bit more of an edge. Late fighter levels do seem to come in for some special criticism so providing an extra benefit to their ASIs might help balance that?

So do you increase the cap to 26 for barbarians so the fighter doesn't step on their toes by getting one of their most distinctive features?

[MrStabby]

So do you increase the cap to 26 for barbarians so the fighter doesn't step on their toes by getting one of their most distinctive features?

Yup. 26 for Barbarians. Although I would be very surprised if we got that far.