Homebrew Thread.
What homebrews do you or have you implemented in your D&D campaigns?
Did they brake the game or unbalance it?
How did you balance them?
I like the game design aspect of D&D in that you deal first-hand with the mathematics of the system and can see how it was designed. I like the concept of homebrewing but in my experience it's used too often to just make up some ridiculous shit like a half human/unicorn race or is ridiculously broken.
I've been trying to make custom monsters for the game I'm running. based on things from my nightmares.
I knew arthropods were an a big part of my nightmares, but something that has surprised me is that all the monsters I've come up with so far that weren't just straight up stolen from an existing franchise are partially arthropod based.
First combat encounter with something I created is still going because I've been terribly slow in processing combat.
Dming 5e for a bunch of meta power gamers.
Make Ningulfin but boost its silence field to 150 foot radius and give it magic reflecting skin.
They killed it but they got very whiny and upset about BBEG enlisting an anti-magic monster to fight their mage party.
It only makes sense to attack your players where they're weak. Kinda enforces the idea of party balance
What kind of combat tactics/abilities do you give your arthropods? Personally I'd think it more terrifying if there were hundreds of small ones that do swarming tactics
...
I'm out and about on phone at the moment. Maybe later.
Some are swarms or made of swarms however.
one is a cross between a giant crab on powered roller skates and a Strv 103 (Swedish S-tank)
another is suits full of flesh eating nightmare hornets. (one part mute masked solder, one part work that walks that launches sorties of flesh eating hornets)
>cross between giant crab on roller skates and a tank
That's one hell of an abomination, mate. Also lul
Homebrew is healthy if it is tailored towards improving the experience for your players.
Although if you ever implement some kind of homebrew that ends up ruining the game (Often by being too easy or hard), fall on your sword and discuss it meta, then either implement it with a in-world context and explanation, or just change it and make the charecters pretend it always was that way.
Only bad homebrew I've tried was a DM who had a massive hardon for lifelong debuffs. System was rare to add them, only at Nat 1 rolls, but after a few sessions we had a ranger who
>Had 4 of his fingers missing on one hand and major muscle damage (Left hand can't be used for weapons, which also means no dualwielding. He used a one hand crossbow after this.)
>Blinded on one eye (Roll for disadvantage with ranged weapons, unless an accuracy enhancing spell is used)
>Weak heart (Does not get full health from resting, can only heal up to 50% of max hp by resting)
>Burned face (Roll with disadvantage for charisma)
And me, someone focused around herbal healing, had:
>Chronic nerve damage (Actions requiring fine motor skills are at a disadvantage)
>Crippled left thigh (Heavily limited movement in combat. Basically couldn't do shit)
>Lost almost all teeth (Almost no foods can be eaten, and had to be prepared in a mortar)
>Guilt-induced Traumatic Insomnia (Roll a d20 every time you rest. If the roll is 10 or below, you do not rest the entire night).
This can easily be attributed to sheer bad luck, but after most the games for me and the ranger were just being useless and having no agency, the DM offered the system to be removed and have an in-lore reason during a session about why our debuffs were removed.