Our D&D house rules

Rules to live by

[7 min read]

Treantmonk is one of my favorite D&D Youtubers, and this video, where he outlines his (only) three house rules, really stuck with me. Paraphrased below, those three rules were:

1. Remove the Shield spell completely
2. Spells gained through a class can only be cast in armour, or with a shield, if the class provides proficiency in that armour or shield
3. The attack action allows the player to declare a -5 to hit and a +10 to damage without any feats (e.g. Great Weapon Master, Sharpshooter)

What I respect about Treantmonk is that his recommendations are based on years of playtesting, which is why he stops short of giving Silvery Barbs the same treatment as the Shield spell - he doesn't feel experienced enough with its use to make a judgement call.

In principal, Treantmonk's rationale makes sense to me, although in practice I haven't been playing long enough for these three house rules to be really necessary. In fact the second, about spellcasting in armour, would stop my Paladin/Sorcerer multiclass, Tomas of Tyr, from realising his sorcerous powers in the full plate that he wears. However, the third, declaring a -5 to hit for a +10 to damage, would greatly benefit Tomas since he wouldn't need to take the Great Weapon Master feat to do more damage in this way.

Regardless of what you think of Treantmonk's specific rules, it likely makes you think on the house rules that you run with at your own table. Below, I submit our own house rules, that we use in our two official campaigns, and give some thought on the rationale behind them and their effectiveness.

Character capabilities

• Higher starting attributes for more heroic stats ~83 to spend on any stat up to a max of 20
• Multiclassing and feats are allowed, as well as optional class rules from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything
• At level up, Hit Point increases are rerolled until higher than 50% of the die (e.g. 5 or more on a 1d8 hit die)
• Variant encumbrance is in play, but ignoring coin weight

Combat

• Flanking (diametrically opposed) is a +2 to attack
• Critical hits - one die at max, roll the others
• Cleave - when you down an enemy, any excess damage can be applied to an enemy within 5 feet
• Bloodied condition when a creature is lower than 50% of their max hit points (no mechanical effect, but used as a way to visually mark progress in a fight)

Let's unpack the rules on character capabilities first. 

Both campaigns start by granting characters a much larger pool of ability points, and full flexibility on where to place them. This means characters are likely starting with one or two primary abilities maxed at 20, greatly increasing their power at level 1. It also means in later character advancement, players are more likely to take feats instead of ability increases and given the high stats, it is easier to meet the requisites to multiclass. Add the fact that low hit point increases are rerolled, and it means the characters are typically well above average in capabilities, damage output and survivability. 

One of our DM's wanted to introduce a little more tactical nuance, so went with the variant encumbrance optional rule. This makes operating at full movement difficult without careful inventory management, and penalises characters with Strength as a dump stat. It did have the effect of having Dexterity build characters opt for Strength scores of 12+ but, as the group added treasure, players started getting encumbered from the coins they found. As a group we discussed this, and not finding it fun, agreed to ignore coin weight in the encumbrance calculation. Since then, variant encumbrance has not factored much in play.

For the second set of house rules, I would say our players enjoy the combat pillar more than average, and our campaigns then naturally have an emphasis on tactics. We rarely use theatre of the mind, being more comfortable employing online virtual tabletops (either Roll 20 or Above VTT) to carry out these tactics with precision. In this environment, the flanking bonus is a sought after (and satisfying) one. Our group fell short of using full advantage for flanking as this felt too powerful. Maybe there was some unconscious metagaming in play since it is more likely the monsters would get flanking on the players than vice versa?

For critical hits, our group wanted to avoid the disappointment of having double damage dice yield poor results, so we use the popular modification where the base damage die is at max and the others rolled. Crits are then at least higher on average than the regular rules, making them meatier and more consequential overall. The optional cleave rule (only used in one of our campaigns), when combined with meatier criticals, helps with mopping up weaker enemies to speed up combat. While the critical rule works against the player characters equally, since they go down rarely, the cleave rule is lop-sided in their favour.

My thoughts on our house rules

Reflecting on our house rules has surfaced some interesting insights into our table's style. The group clearly favours heroic style campaigns where the characters are not only powerful when compared to the general populace, but stronger on average even than other adventurers of equivalent level. And with multiclassing, feats and all the Tasha's optional class rules, the players can optimise what ever build they want with maximum flexibility. This minimises any constraints on realising the power fantasies of the players.

On the flip side, the group has tried to employ some grittier rules for combat to test the character's capabilities. Variant encumbrance, meatier criticals, cleave, and flanking rules do force the players to think more tactically, especially around positioning. We also strictly enforce things like weapon interactions and free hand rules for spellcasting, whereas some other tables are more laissez-faire with these. So, are these to rein back the power of the characters and make combat more difficult? 

Personally, I don't think that was the intention, nor do they serve that purpose, since after the early levels our heroes have rarely fallen in battle and have had zero character deaths.  Balancing encounters for our parties, with their superpowered optimised builds, must be tough, and I don't think using the Challenge Rating system would cut it. We would need to face significantly higher CR rating monsters or go many encounters without long rests to be truly endangered. No, I think these house rules serve to make battles more interesting for a combat-oriented group.

When running my own game

So what does this mean for when I am the DM instead of the player? In my drop-in campaign, I didn't consciously assess the above when I started, and here is where I landed: 

• Standard array or point buy methods of character creation
• Multiclassing and feats are allowed, as well as optional class rules from Tasha's 
• At level up, Hit Point increases are rerolled until higher than 50% of the die
• Flanking (diametrically opposed) is a +2 to attack
• Critical hits - one die at max, roll the others
• Bloodied condition as a visual reference of progress

Keeping the majority of the combat rules reflects that I myself enjoy the tactical nuances and means the overall list is pretty similar, with one major exception - character creation and abilities.

Since Standard array or point buy grant only 72 points worth of ability scores, this is significantly lower than the 83+ from our heroic campaigns. I think I did this subconsciously for simplicity, to try and keep to standard combat encounter balancing using challenge ratings, since I am running with all published adventure material only. But having thought about it more consciously, I think I have a preference for placing the players under more constraints and force harder choices on ability scores and character design.

Extrapolating from that, I think I would like to run a campaign that is a little more 'lethal' than average, where character death is a real and present threat. Here is what I would consider adding: 

• Flanking yields advantage
• Making a death save means adding a level of exhaustion
• The optional massive damage rule from the Dungeon Master's Guide (fall unconscious, be stunned, or lose reactions if you take half your hit points in one blow)
• Rests have a higher chance of random encounters, unless in a designated safe house

And maybe to counterbalance it just a little bit, I would consider granting the player characters one additional feat at level 1 (but remove the variant human and custom lineage race options that already receive a free feat).

I will experiment with some of these in my drop-in campaign and report back...