Favourite Houserules?

[Powerdork]

Without quoting other posters or otherwise replying to anyone, what are some houserules that have greatly enhanced your game?

[Zhorn]

Drinking a potion is a bonus action. Administering a potion to someone else is still an action.

[Man_Over_Game]

Without quoting other posters or otherwise replying to anyone, what are some houserules that have greatly enhanced your game?

Short Rests in the middle of boss fights in exchange for Exhaustion. Let's me balance two encounters instead of one, change the boss around a bit, and fixes many balance issues with having few fights per day.

Long Rests only heal by pulling from your Hit Die. That is, you spend your HD to heal, regain 50% of your max HD, and keep spending HD until you're at max HP. Gives off the idea of lasting wounds and energy reserves without being oppressive. It also adds value to Song of Rest, healing magic, Medicine, and just overall resource management.

I do a whole suite of attribute changes allowances (like Dexterity Barbarian) that require you to follow strict rules on how you can level. For example, a Dex Barbarian has to be a Berserker, and at least half of your levels have to be in Barbarian. More on the signature link, under Prestige Options.

Polearm Master replaces the Bonus Action attack with increasing your reach by 5 feet until your next attack or the start of your next turn.

GWM replaces the -5/+10 with allowing you to take a penalty equal to your proficiency to gain that much damage, but only applicable to your Attack action attacks.

Sharpshooter gets the same treatment, but no more ignoring cover, and you must spend all of your movement for the increased range. However, you don't make ranged attacks with Disadvantage while prone anymore.

Champion no longer gets an increased crit chance. Instead, they get a bonus to their Strength attack rolls equal to half of their Dexterity bonus (minimum of +1), and vice-versa. This bonus is no longer halved when they would get the second crit bonus (minimum of +2).

Fighters can opt out of Action Surge to instead get the Martial Adept feat. Doing so means they get an additional Superiority Die when they'd get the Extra Attack feats. There's more than that, but that's the gist.

Redundant Extra Attack features (like getting 5 levels into both Fighter and Ranger) instead lets you gain a feat/ASI.

This one isn't a houserule, as it's suggested by a combo of rules suggested in Xanathar's and in the PHB, but:
Only specify the relevant attribute for a player's check, when they then mention what proficiencies they want to make that attempt with. If they state more than one applicable proficiency, they make that check with Advantage.

Group Checks are done with the lowest bonus character making the check with Advantage (as they are being Helped) and the highest bonus character making the check with Disadvantage (as they are focused on Helping) and using the lower of the two to determine the success of the party.

Flanking works by adding a bonus to hit equal to the number of your target's enemies adjacent to him when you attack, minus 1. Welding a shield decreases the flanking bonus against you by 2, or wielding two weapons reduces it by 1.

Pact of the Blade gets Hexblade's proficiencies and Hexwarrior (now every Patron is a melee Patron). Hexblade changed to be focused around vengeance and curses (think ghosts or someone who encourages your revenge), being a damage/concentration focused Patron.

[Dienekes]

When multiclassing martial classes, you may choose to gain extra attack after 5 levels in any class that grants extra attack. If you do so, the usual benefits of the class are delayed by 1 level (except spell casting for rangers and paladins).

I have maneuver variants for the fighter, rogue, ranger, and barbarian.

Drinking potions as a swift action

You can draw 2 weapons or a weapon and a shield when you can normally only draw 1.

At level 1, Ranger gets 1 a day use of Hunter’s Mark, Monk gets 1 ki point and Flurry. As I find these classes uniquely bad at first level.

Rangers can apply an off-hand attack as part of the bonus action used to cast Hunter’s Mark. Or they can direct their animal companion to attack the target of their Hunter’s Mark. The Animal Companion will continue to attack the target of your Hunter’s Mark until given an order to stop, attack someone else, or Hunter’s Mark is applied to a new target.

Sorcerers subclasses grant increased spells known to get them about even with everyone else.

All martial classes that don’t have spells are given a list of out of combat ribbon abilities to choose from as they level up.

Berserker Barbarians can regain a level of Exhaustion from a short rest twice per day

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Look at my signature, still a work in progress but things have been working out rather well.

[Azuresun]

Short rests take 5-10 minutes, but characters can only benefit from two of them between each long rest. It's worked out well so far, and fixes the problem where if you're able to rest for one hour, you're probably also able to rest for eight.

[TigerT20]

Reaching 0 hit points causes a level of exhastion. I haven't actually tested this one out yet, but in theory it seems pretty sound, and a deterrent to 'well if I go down, Druid/Cleric has Healing Word so...'

[stoutstien]

Momentum (inspiration replacement) - anytime someone misses an attack, fails an ablity check, or fails a saving throw the party gains momentum. Once the party earns a number equal to 3 + the number of people in the party they gain one d10. The max pool size is equal to the number of players.
A die can be rolled and added to any d20 roll.

The pool resets at the end of a long rest.