D&D 5e House Rules, need constructive criticism

[Spaceweasels]

I'm running a game, and I've been adding a lot of house rules to give the campaign some added flavor. I'm looking for some impartial, constructive critiques to these rules.

I'll start with my critical failures table. I wasn't going to include this in the campaign initially, but I had most of the players asking for it.

Critical Failures
Upon rolling a natural 1 on an attack roll, roll a D20 on this table to see what happens:

1. Bonked your head. Make a save with your best saving throw stat DC8, or be rendered unconscious
2. Stunned yourself. Wis save DC8 or be stunned until your next turn.
3. Dirt in your eye. Dex save DC8 or be blinded until your next turn.
4. Pushed yourself too hard. Con save DC8, or gain two exhaust level
5. Confused. Int save DC8 or cannot cast spells and all skill checks are at a disadvantage for the next round.
6. Overstep. Str save DC8 or you move out of the melee, causing an attack of opportunity against you.
7. Exposed yourself. Cha save DC8 or enemies get advantage to hit you.
8. Off your center. Disadvantage to saving throws until your next turn.
9. Out of breath. Gain one exhaust level.
10. You miss, and you look bad doing it, too
11. Slip. Dex save8 or fall prone.
12. Big mistake. Int save DC8 or nearest enemy gets free action on you.
13. You accidentally blurt out an embarrassing moment from your past. Everybody hears.
14. Strained your groin. Str save DC8 or lose 10 feet of movement for the rest of combat.
15. Lost your voice. Cha save DC8 or you lose your voice and cannot talk, scream or cast spells with vocal requirements.
16. Inhaled some phlegm. Con save DC8 or you have disadvantage on your next attack.
17. Distracted. Wis save DC8 or your next opponent has advantage on you.
18. Drop your weapon. Dex save DC8 or use your movement phase or attack phase to pickup your weapon.
19. Dropped defenses. You cannot use your shield or off-hand weapon to defend yourself.
20. Accidental tackle. You slip and tackle a foe within 5 feet to the ground. You and your target are grappled.

I kept the DC low, so the players can avoid most of the unwanted effects. I tried to diversify the checks with all ability scores.

[Spaceweasels]

Exhaustion house rules
I'm putting in a few other circumstances that can cause a character to gain a level of exhaustion. Currently the 5e rules says you gain a level of exhaustion when:


A barbarian ends their Frenzy ability
Exposure to extreme heat or extreme cold environments
Being immersed in frigid water
Starvation and dehydration
Prolonged time of physical exertion (climbing, swimming, pushing or pulling a massive weight)
Marching for more than 8 hours in a day
Dashing more than your limit (3 + constitution modifier), during a chase.
Being in a hostile or incompatible plane of existence (Psychic Dissonance)
Detrimental effect of diseases (such as Crackle Fever or Sewer Plague)
Side effect of using certain magical items (such as a ring of X-Ray vision)




Added to that, I will be adding these circumstances that add to an exhaustion level:


Possible outcome to a critical failure roll
Every time a person falls unconscious (or drops to 0 hit points) and is reawakened before a long rest. The only exemption to this, is if a character rolls a natural 20 on a death saving throw.
Character is not able to get at least a short rest in a 24 hours period
Detrimental effect of certain poisons, if the saving throw failed
An additional effect of certain powerful magical items, such as a Sword of Life Stealing or a Staff of Withering
An undead's Life Drain ability (such as a wight, a wraith, a lich or a vampire), if saving throw failed
An effect of the special abilities of certain creatures (a Beholder's enervate eye, the wail of a Banshee, after being possessed by a ghost)
An effect of the lost necromantic spells: Life Drain, Energy Drain or Ghoul Touch
After having been affected by a Haste spell
Side effect of using of magical items, such as: Boots of Speed.




For those who aren't sure what the levels of exhaustion do, here's the list:


Disadvantage on ability checks
Movement speed is halved
Disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws
Hit point maximum halved
Speed reduced to 0
Death*



* One slight change I will do to that list is when you reach exhaustion level 6. Instead of instant death, I will have the characters roll death saving throws, as if they were at zero hit points. If they make 3 successful saving throws versus death, or roll a natural 20 on a death saving throw, they essentially go back to exhaustion level 5.

Your characters can recover a level of exhaustion after a long rest (with food and water). Additionally, the lesser restoration spell can remove one level of exhaustion, greater restoration will remove all exhaustion levels, and a potion of vitality can also remove all levels of exhaustion.

[Spaceweasels]

Magical Item Attunement House Rule

Many magical items need to be attuned to a specific user to unlock some or all of its abilities. In the vanilla rules, characters can only be attuned to three items. In our campaign I will change this slightly, as characters can become attuned to more items as they go up in level.

Level..Attunements..Maximum
1.....one item......Common
3.....two items.....Uncommon
5.....three items.....Rare
8.....four items.....Very Rare
12....five items.....Legendary
17....five items.....Artifacts

A low level character cannot wield a power magical item as well as a high level character. The maximum column shows the safe level where a character can use specific types of magical items without risks. If you are lower level than them item you are trying to use, you must a check. The DC is the level requirement minus your character's level. Thus, a 3rd level character trying to activate a legendary item (12) must make a DC 9 check.

A failed check might mean:


Nothing happpens
a charge is used but nothing happens
that the item has become unattuned to its user
a surge of magical energy occurs.

[Fishyninja]

I'm running a game, and I've been adding a lot of house rules to give the campaign some added flavor. I'm looking for some impartial, constructive critiques to these rules.

I'll start with my critical failures table. I wasn't going to include this in the campaign initially, but I had most of the players asking for it.

Critical Failures
Upon rolling a natural 1 on an attack roll, roll a D20 on this table to see what happens:

1. Bonked your head. Make a save with your best saving throw stat DC8, or be rendered unconscious
2. Stunned yourself. Wis save DC8 or be stunned until your next turn.
3. Dirt in your eye. Dex save DC8 or be blinded until your next turn.
4. Pushed yourself too hard. Con save DC8, or gain two exhaust level
5. Confused. Int save DC8 or cannot cast spells and all skill checks are at a disadvantage for the next round.
6. Overstep. Str save DC8 or you move out of the melee, causing an attack of opportunity against you.
7. Exposed yourself. Cha save DC8 or enemies get advantage to hit you.
8. Off your center. Disadvantage to saving throws until your next turn.
9. Out of breath. Gain one exhaust level.
10. You miss, and you look bad doing it, too
11. Slip. Dex save8 or fall prone.
12. Big mistake. Int save DC8 or nearest enemy gets free action on you.
13. You accidentally blurt out an embarrassing moment from your past. Everybody hears.
14. Strained your groin. Str save DC8 or lose 10 feet of movement for the rest of combat.
15. Lost your voice. Cha save DC8 or you lose your voice and cannot talk, scream or cast spells with vocal requirements.
16. Inhaled some phlegm. Con save DC8 or you have disadvantage on your next attack.
17. Distracted. Wis save DC8 or your next opponent has advantage on you.
18. Drop your weapon. Dex save DC8 or use your movement phase or attack phase to pickup your weapon.
19. Dropped defenses. You cannot use your shield or off-hand weapon to defend yourself.
20. Accidental tackle. You slip and tackle a foe within 5 feet to the ground. You and your target are grappled.

I kept the DC low, so the players can avoid most of the unwanted effects. I tried to diversify the checks with all ability scores.

I especially like 13 and 20.
I think 19 needs re-working slightly. I mean the concept of not being able to defend yourself is good but you'll need to give a good explanation as to why the character suddenly loses their ability to use their other arm.

These are all good I feel you should prepare some good explanations to the characters, 1) because it's always good to get a description. For example "You bring your Greatsword down in an overhead swing but the orc blocks it with his shield, he when pushes back with all his might casuing you to fall off blanace and strike yourself between the eyes with you pommel, you fall unconcious! 2) I feel if a character rolls a 1 and falls unconcious, someone will question it.

[Fishyninja]

Magical Item Attunement House Rule

Many magical items need to be attuned to a specific user to unlock some or all of its abilities. In the vanilla rules, characters can only be attuned to three items. In our campaign I will change this slightly, as characters can become attuned to more items as they go up in level.

Level..Attunements..Maximum
1.....one item......Common
3.....two items.....Uncommon
5.....three items.....Rare
8.....four items.....Very Rare
12....five items.....Legendary
17....five items.....Artifacts

A low level character cannot wield a power magical item as well as a high level character. The maximum column shows the safe level where a character can use specific types of magical items without risks. If you are lower level than them item you are trying to use, you must a check. The DC is the level requirement minus your character's level. Thus, a 3rd level character trying to activate a legendary item (12) must make a DC 9 check.

A failed check might mean:


Nothing happpens
a charge is used but nothing happens
that the item has become unattuned to its user
a surge of magical energy occurs.


This works well, I especially like the idea of low level characters but being able to fully control extremely powerful artifacts.

One thing you could do is if a character attunes to an item, have hidden properties that appear as the character level and add the fluff of "due to prolonged use and training you discover the following properties".

[Professor Beard]

I'm running a game, and I've been adding a lot of house rules to give the campaign some added flavor.

My biggest advice with house rules like this us nearly always the same: Make sure your players are on board with all the rules and that they know the rules before they make their characters and start the game. Personally, I hate critical failure rules, I find that they decrease the fun of the game. Failing forward is way more fun. So, as a player, if these rules were sprung on me after I built my character I would be livid. Also, if the group decided to go forward with the rules I might still play, but I would certainly build my character differetly to avoid needing to deal with the possibility of interaction with those rules.

Essentially, make sure that the PLAYERS want to use the rules you are creating -- after all, it is their game too.

[The Cats]

I find critical failure tables frustrating.

As characters grow in level they will end up making a lot more attack rolls. Each roll has the same 5% chance of getting a 1, regardless of the character's level. This means the more powerful the character gets, the more likely they are to be hit by some punishing effect. This doesn't make any sense. They get punished more often due to their ineptitude as they grow in skill? Low DC or not, the whole concept is nonsensical.

Extra attack is an incredibly cool feature. Much less cool when it doubles your chances of knocking yourself out like a doofus.

[Spaceweasels]

Thank you all for the comments so far.


Make sure your players are on board with all the rules and that they know the rules before they make their characters and start the game

I absolutely agree with this. When I introduce a new house rule, I make sure that all the players can read it over before the game day. On game day, before the game actually starts, I let everyone weigh in on the house rules. Players tend to like rules that give them advantage, while disliking rules that may seem to take away an advantage. As thus, players aren't entirely impartial when it comes to rules that affect them.


Personally, I hate critical failure rules, I find that they decrease the fun of the game.


I find critical failure tables frustrating.

I agree with both of you. Initially, I had a 1 set as an absolute miss. No matter how easy a target it might have been, you miss. However my players wanted a more descriptive critical failure, with random outcomes. The worst outcome is knocking yourself out, which you almost need to roll three 1s in a row.

[JNAProductions]

I'm gonna second no critical fumbles. If you HAVE to include them, though, you seem to have done a good job of it.

[xyianth]

This is not a criticism, just a heads-up so that you are fully aware of what is about to happen with those rules added. Your players are going to die. The exhaustion levels being far more common without any new ways of dealing with them mean your players won't last long. You can carefully build your campaign to prevent this of course, but it will be much harder than normal. If you intend the campaign to include a lot of deaths, well, good job I guess. :smallwink:

I like the attunement rules, and the ciritical failure table sounds like it is what your players want. (Personally, I hate critical failures on principle and would build a character that never makes an attack roll if these rules were in place, but if your players want it then so be it.) I especially like the added DC 8 save even on a critical failure, it makes fatal accidents much less likely.

Edit: And no, the worst outcome is gaining an exhaustion level. Getting knocked out is bad, but without a listed duration I assume it is fairly easy for an ally to wake you back up.

[Professor Beard]

I find critical failure tables frustrating.

As characters grow in level they will end up making a lot more attack rolls. Each roll has the same 5% chance of getting a 1, regardless of the character's level. This means the more powerful the character gets, the more likely they are to be hit by some punishing effect. This doesn't make any sense. They get punished more often due to their ineptitude as they grow in skill? Low DC or not, the whole concept is nonsensical.

Extra attack is an incredibly cool feature. Much less cool when it doubles your chances of knocking yourself out like a doofus.

To put this in perspective:
a 20th lvl sword-and-board fighter will make 4 per round. A round is 6 seconds. This means that, in 1 minute, a fighter will make 40 attacks.

This means that a max-level fighter will, on average, roll 2 ones per minute. A god-tier fighter, able to compete with an Ancient Red Dragon or raid the tomb of a demi-lich or lay low a balor or pit-fiend has a chance to knock himself unconscious or stun himself twice a minute. This seems -- inaccurate.

[Spaceweasels]

I think 19 needs re-working slightly. I mean the concept of not being able to defend yourself is good but you'll need to give a good explanation as to why the character suddenly loses their ability to use their other arm.


Yeah, I think you're right about 19. It punishes mostly melee characters, and not spellcasters or ranged attackers.

I always add a bit more description as to how the critical failure happens in the combat, depending on the environment and the encounter itself.

[Spaceweasels]

The exhaustion levels being far more common without any new ways of dealing with them mean your players won't last long.

I agree with you that exhaustion can be a real killer. In the house rules, I made it so lesser restoration can restore one level of exhaustion, and greater restoration removes all levels of exhaustion. In the 5e rules, lesser restoration does nothing for exhaustion, and greater restoration recovers one level of exhaustion.

I also added the spell Endure Elements, which protects characters for 24 from extreme environments that add levels of exhaustion.

[Arial Black]

A 20th level fighter (the BEST fighter in the world!) practices against a wooden dummy for 10 minutes.

That god-level fighter will, on average, suffer every single one of those crit fumbles!

Meanwhile, your basic moron with an improvised weapon will last four times as long against the dummy.

With those rules, the optimum strategy is for the PCs to send a load of wooden dummies against the enemy and come back 40 minutes later.

Meanwhile, those mortals who are messing with forces Man Was Not Meant To Know (i.e. casters) can play with the very forces of the cosmos and NOTHING bad will happen if they steer clear of spells with attack rolls.

What about Wild Sorcerers? Darwinian forces wiped them out years ago.

[Fishyninja]

Yeah, I think you're right about 19. It punishes mostly melee characters, and not spellcasters or ranged attackers.

I always add a bit more description as to how the critical failure happens in the combat, depending on the environment and the encounter itself.

I mean just changing the flavour text to something similar to 'In the heat of battle and you were caught of guard, the next attack will guarantee to hit hit you'

[Bugado25]

I also don't like critical miss tables, but if you're going to add one I suggest making it much more uncommon than a 5% chance.

Something like:
Everytime you roll a 1, also roll a d6. If the number rolled is equal or lower than your proficiency bonus, nothing happens.
For example:

A 1st level character rolled an 1.
Now he rolls a d6, if he rolls an 1 or 2 (his profiency bonus), you have the normal effects of an 1 (auto-miss). If he rolls 3 or more, he rolls at the table.

That makes higher level characters less likely to roll at the table, and 17+ leveled characters immune to it (characters that high level would not make stupid mistakes during battle)

If you add the d6 roll, i would make the DCs a little highter (10 or 12)

And, if you add a critical miss table, also add a critical hit one, because, for most classes, critical hits are very uninpressive.

About your exaustion rules, I like some of them and dislike some.

Haste is not that good of a spell to need this huge nerf. If you wanted to exclude the spell you will probably be successful because only one target, concentration, and the lost round when it ends already makes it an average spell, adding exaustion makes it a bad spell.

Depending on the magical item that change would also make them much less powerful.

[JAL_1138]

Before implementing crit fumble rules, even if the players (think they) want them, you could try being extra-descriptive about how they miss, without actually imposing a mechanical penalty. "You lunge at your enemy with your rapier, but your footing is a bit off. Your left foot slips a bit on the floor tiles and feel a sharp twinge of pain in your right knee as it takes your weight. You manage to catch your balance, but instead of finding a gap in your foe's armor, the point of your sword glances off one of the plates."

If that doesn't cut it and they still (think they) want crit fail tables, maybe limit the number of times you can suffer a penalty for a crit fail to once per round, so at least they won't stack up on a particularly bad round.

EDIT: Or only let them happen on the first attack roll per round. So if they crit fail on attack #1, they might face a penalty, but if it's on attack #3 (after successful attacks or normal misses on attacks #1 and 2), it's just a miss.

[Mith]

I also don't like critical miss tables, but if you're going to add one I suggest making it much more uncommon than a 5% chance.

Something like:
Everytime you roll a 1, also roll a d6. If the number rolled is equal or lower than your proficiency bonus, nothing happens.
For example:

A 1st level character rolled an 1.
Now he rolls a d6, if he rolls an 1 or 2 (his profiency bonus), you have the normal effects of an 1 (auto-miss). If he rolls 3 or more, he rolls at the table.

That makes higher level characters less likely to roll at the table, and 17+ leveled characters immune to it (characters that high level would not make stupid mistakes during battle)

I really like this idea.

[PotatoGolem]

Alternative balancing suggestion, to make the critical fumbles less of a tax on martials: have it also apply when the target of a single target spell you cast gets a 20 on their saving throw (or when all targets roll 20- going to be the same thing most of the time, but may be relevant once in a blue moon). Say that you goofed up the casting somehow and there's backlash. That way you can keep the same zany, slapstick vibe you're going for without affecting game balance as much.

[Arial Black]

Conceptually, Messing with Forces Man Was Not Meant To Know was always more inherently hazardous to the Messer (by losing control of reality altering magic) than hitting someone with a stick.

The trouble is, DMs get excited when a player rolls a nat 1 on a d20, and want to have their 'fun'. Fighters roll lots of d20s (attack rolls) but casters never need to because, with spells, the caster doesn't roll to affect the target, the target rolls a save.

This leads to absurdity. Trying to harness reality-controlling magic is perfectly safe, but hitting someone with a stick leads to the universe acting like it's seen too many Road Runner cartoons. It also leads to more skillful fighters being more likely to hurt themselves/lose control than relatively unskilled fighters.

As well as being absurd, it exacerbates the martial/caster divide even further.

So, in order to restore sanity to the fumble system (if you absolutely must have one), here is my 'correction':-

* whenever a natural 1 occurs on any attack roll, the next spell cast by anyone within 60 feet is altered such that, instead of having its usual effect, the spell conjures an Eldritch Horror which then proceeds to suck the caster's brains out through his nose

The caster's nose, obviously.

Not the Eldritch Horror's nose.

That would be silly.