House Rules

This page contains a list of adjustments and clarifications to the standard rules of a 5e game. New house rules will likely be added over time.

General Gameplay

• Variant travel rules.
  • A long rest is a night's sleep in a safe place such as an inn.
  • A night's rest elsewhere qualifies as a short rest, but staves off exhaustion like a long rest would.
  • An hour of inactivity still counts for a short rest.
  • Magic items that recharge daily (dawn, midnight, etc.) instead recover on a long rest.
• Group stealth checks. If more than two PCs stealth together, only one failure is tolerated, otherwise the group is discovered. With one or two characters, they must all succeed. This rule applies to PCs, not NPCs.
• Legendary actions. PCs cannot use legendary actions even when transformed into a creature that has them.
• Mount carrying capacity. Mounts can carry characters or equipment, not both at the same time.
• Mounted combat. When using a mounted creature as a mount, the rider may spend an action to have their mount perform any action, such as an attack or breath weapon. Normally mounts can only dash or disengage with their action. This lets special mounts use their unique abilities, but not for free.
• Multiple movements. Moving counts down from the movement type used; a character's highest movement speed determines their maximum speed for a turn.
• Grappling. A character that is grappling a target may spend two feet of their movement to move the target one foot without moving themselves. This is equivalent to the base rule of dragging a target, except you don't have to move your own character.
• Blind targeting. A creature can always target itself as if it can see itself, even if blinded.

Character attributes

• Races
  • Walk speed. All races have a base of movement speed of 30 feet, if it would be lower (e.g. halflings, dwarves).
  • Ability scores. New characters may change the ability scores granted by their race. These scores cannot be combined or split. See "Ability Scores" in Character Creation & Options for more info.
  • Trance. Long rests and night rests still require 8 hours, even for characters with Trance such as elves and eladrin.
• Skills
  • Religion. Religion (WIS) checks can be used in place of Religion (INT) checks for the exact same purpose. Religion (WIS) checks are used to interact with spirits.
  • Nature. Nature (WIS) checks can be used in place of Nature (INT) checks for the exact same purpose. Druids shouldn't be worse at nature than artificers.
• Backgrounds
  • Customize proficiencies. Players may choose any two skill proficiencies and any two tools/languages, regardless of their background's listed proficiencies/languages.
  • Customize starting equipment. PCs may replace either their starting gold or their starting items with a tool kit that they are proficient with, or replace both with two tool kits they are proficient with.

Classes

• All Classes
  • When creating a character, players may choose ANY skill proficiencies instead of the ones listed for their class. E.g. rogues begin with four skill proficiencies from a specific rogue skill list; instead, they may choose any four skills. This only applies to skills, not other proficiencies such as armor.
  • Once per mission, characters with known spells (bards, sorcerers, rangers, warlocks) may exchange one of their spells for a different one. Normally these classes are unable to change their spells; this provides a little extra freedom.
  • Great Weapon Fighting (fighting style): All dice that are directly part of the attack, including smite and flametongue dice. Would not effect poison that independently requires a con save on hit.
• Druids
  • Owlbears qualify as beasts for Wild Shape, allowing druids to turn into them (CR 3). Owlbears are officially monstrosities, but they're plenty bestial and far from imbalanced as an option.
  • Druids cannot use any of their class features while wearing metal armor or shields.
  • Dropping to 0 hit points in an alternate form (e.g. wild shape, polymorph) doesn't trigger 0 HP effects, such as disintegration from the disintegrate spell.
• Rogues
  • For assassin features, creatures that were surprised are considered surprised for the entire surprise round. RAW a creature is no longer surprised on its initiative, but that makes little sense and is a dubious nerf to assassins, so we're ignoring it.
  • Soulknife rogues may benefit from a bonus to their attack and damage rolls when holding a basic +X dagger. e.g. Holding a +1 dagger grants the +1 on the rogue's psychic blades.
• Sorcerers
  • Twinned spell. The following spells can target multiple creatures, and are not valid for twinning: magic missile, eldritch blast. Chaos bolt can be twinned.
  • Dunamancy. All sorcerers have access to dunamancy spells from EGtW.
• Wizards
  • Dunamancy. All wizards have access to dunamancy spells from EGtW.

Spells

• Ready action with spellcasting. When using the ready action to cast a spell, the spellcaster does not use their concentration for it, and the resource is not spent if the trigger does not occur. This is more intuitive than the restrictive base rules.
• Banned Spells
  • Counterspell. While it can add interesting strategy to a combat, counterspell can lead to several unfun or uninteresting situations, such as a shutdown of a player's cool moment, a boring slap-fest between wizards, or an unfair advantage for arcane spellcasters over other casters.
  • Plane shift. Temporary; will be re-added when level cap is removed.
    • Some NPCs are able to cast this spell.
    • A character with 5th level or higher spell slots may spend 10 DD to create a tuning fork for a plane of existence they could easily spend that time on.
  • Simulacrum. This one can throw off the power balance of the game, and has a degenerate interaction with wish. I'd prefer to remove it than adjust it.
  • Magnificent Mansion. Temporary; will be re-added when level cap is removed. This spell trivializes resources and breaks the intended cycle of travel rules, above.
• Adjusted Spells
  • Conjure woodland beings. Pixies conjured with this spell do not have spells higher than 1st level.
  • Eldritch blast. This spell can target objects.
  • Forcecage. This spell can be dispelled by dispel magic. There's no good reason for this already-strong spell to have even fewer weaknesses.
  • Goodberry. This spell simply invalidates any survival aspect of the game; these limits bring it back in line.
    • Goodberry absolutely requires its material component; a spell focus can't replace it. The berries in the component must be no more than 1 day old. This means that goodberry can feed a party for a day or two after collecting some berries, but no longer than that.
    • Goodberries cannot be fed to unconscious characters.
    • Features that modify healing, such as the life cleric's Disciple of Life, do not affect this spell.
  • Glyph of warding.
    • When activating a spell via glyph, if there are effects or decisions beyond the original cast, the activator is considered the caster (but the spell still uses the DC of the glyph's creator). Example: with misty step, the activator chooses where they teleport.
    • Conditional activation of this spell can't observe information farther than 60 ft away, nor can it interpret complex information beyond the perception of the caster at the time of casting.
  • Guards and wards.
    • To become permanent, guards and wards must be cast in one place for 200 consecutive days intead of 365.
    • When the last effect of guards and wards is dispelled on a permanent instance of the spell, its progress is reduced by 1 day, requiring consecutive daily casts until it reaches 200 days. If all effects are currently deactivated, additional dispels reduce its progress by 1 day.
  • Healing spirit.
    • This spell can heal a number of times equal to 1 + spellcasting modifier (minimum twice). This was officially errata'd in newer versions of Xanathar's Guide.
    • Features that modify healing, such as the life cleric's Disciple of Life, do not affect this spell.
  • Nathair's mischief. Creatures that are immune to the stunned condition are immune to the incapacitation from this spell.
  • Polymorph. Dropping to 0 hit points in an alternate form (e.g. wild shape, polymorph) doesn't trigger 0 HP effects, such as disintegration from the disintegrate spell.
  • Produce flame. This spell's attack can target objects.
  • Raulothim's psychic lance. Creatures that are immune to the stunned condition are immune to the incapacitation from this spell.
  • Silvery barbs. This spell can't target creatures that pass a saving throw. Attacks and checks only.
  • Wall of force. This spell can be dispelled by dispel magic. There's no good reason for this already-strong spell to have even fewer weaknesses.
  • Teleportation circle.
    • To become permanent, teleportation circle must be cast in one place for 200 consecutive days intead of 365.
    • Each time dispel magic is cast on a permanent or in-progress teleportation circle, its progress is reduced by 1 day, requiring consecutive daily casts until it reaches 200 days.
    • When a character learns this spell, they learn the signature of Quasar's teleportation circle in Salmund. This replaces the "two random ones" written in the spell description.
    • A permanent teleportation circle is deactivated if moved more than 10 ft from its created location (relative to the world). It is reactivated if it returns to that location within a day, otherwise it is disabled completely.



Items




Mundane Items

• Ammunition count. Players do not need to track nonmagical weapon ammunition that they have at least 100 of. In other words, a quiver with 100 or more arrows is infinite.
• Poisons. See common Poisons for details on modifications to poisons.



Magic Items

• Custom magic item prices are set by the DM; see Magic Item Values.
• Spellcasting foci. Only one spellcasting focus can apply at a time, preventing stacking spell attack and DC bonuses. For example, a character wielding a rod of the pact keeper, staff of power, and wand of the war mage simultaneously must chooose only one +N bonus each time they cast a spell.
• A character cannot benefit from different copies of the same magic item until the item's recharge window is complete. Sorry, no rotating bloodwell vials for infinite sorcery.
• Spell-like abilities. Some homebrew magic items use the text "cast <spell> as a spell-like ability". This means that the feature uses the effects of the spell, but isn't considered a spell. It can't be affected by metamagic, isn't blocked by antimagic, doesn't inherently deal magical damage, etc.
• Specific items
  • Modified items. Some official magic items have significant modifications to their features, and are listed in the Modified Items folder.
  • Ioun stones. The ioun stones are written with a caveat that they can be grabbed or attacked while active. This weakness is removed for this campaign.
  • Potions. Consuming a potion may be done as a bonus action. Feeding one to someone else always costs an action.
  • Spell scrolls.
    • Any character may attempt to cast a spell scroll, not just characters with the right spell list. If the character has a spellcasting modifier, they apply it to the check.
    • When copying a spell scroll in one's spellbook, there is no need for a roll and no chance of failure.
  • Staff of fire. This item can be attuned to by any spellcaster.
  • Staff of frost. This item can be attuned to by any spellcaster.
  • Staff of power. This item can be attuned to by any spellcaster.
  • Staff of withering. This item can be attuned to by anyone (no class requirement).
  • The following property is removed from all items that have it: "when you spend the last charge, roll 1dN. On a 1, the item is destroyed." Items changed or destroyed by different properties can still be destroyed as normal.



Miscellany

• Exhaustion. This replaces the 5e exhaustion rules: When a character has N levels of exhaustion, they suffer a -N penalty to attacks, checks, and saving throws. If a character's exhaustion level reaches 10, they die. This is the new One D&D exhaustion. Recovery works as usual.