Homebrew Thread

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.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=51f_2l8fWhw
docs.google.com/document/d/1mG6AHGLXe0bARFfpzO2YuKtA9q95Day8cIBnjFVOv3Y/edit?usp=sharing
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

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)


s-tank youtube.com/watch?v=51f_2l8fWhw

>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.

I have a race problem.

docs.google.com/document/d/1mG6AHGLXe0bARFfpzO2YuKtA9q95Day8cIBnjFVOv3Y/edit?usp=sharing

Why not make a bestiary instead?

Sounds like a confirmation roll would have really helped reduce the amount debuffs. How magical was the setting?

>Why not make a bestiary instead?
Because I hadn't even thought about that. At this point, I'm nearly done with races because I'm running out of places on the map for them to live.

I like the idea of permanent debuffs (or at least long-term) but they also fight character progression. I assume it'd be nigh impossible for a group of cripples to fight the epic bosses in the higher levels.
Although I think that Guilt-induced Traumatic Insomnia would be a good debuff to give to clerics and paladins if they do something against their god and can have it removed if they do some sort of atonement.

I'm seriously tempted to throw a bagpipe monster at my PCs.

>posts on Veeky Forums
>has a race problem

Oh, there's a shocker.

Okay, that made me chuckle. To be honest though, I give zero shits about skin colour, my favourite coworker is a black muslim.

Ya gotta have a "fuck it, go crazy" session every now n then

Muslim isn't a skin color.

But thanks for sharing I guess.

Why do you think I stated black muslim? Either way, doesn't matter.

A while ago I homebrewed the whole range of Hidden Ones monsters from the original Diablo game, because they scared the shit outta me when I was a kid but also found them cool.
Gonna used them soon in our current campaign. I think they're pretty week, honestly, but let's wait and see.

>What homebrews do you or have you implemented in your D&D campaigns?
The Hidden Ones

>Did they brake the game or unbalance it?
I don't know yet, but I think they're ok. Shown them to a friend of mine who also DMs habitually and he said they would be ok with some adjustment.

>How did you balance them?
Substracted some HD from the tougher types and reducing their damage ranks one step (the CR 1 have 1d4, CR2 1d6, etc.), and gave them combat advantage only on their first attack and only if they're in complete darkness.
I used the Diablo suplement for D&D that came with the special edition of Diablo 2 as reference for CR and such.

Would be good to have it as the pet of some evil bard
>construct that requires great engineering and musical skill to create and control
>can use various air based magic depending on music related skill level
>doubles as an airship
>least stealthy monster possible

I'm not really familiar with early diablo. Are those smaller monsters like kobolds or are they larger like orcs?

Medium monstrous humanoid (outsider subtype). In game they look almost as tall as the warrior character, so my guess is they're some 5 feet tall. Maybe taller, since they walk with a slight crouch.

That seems to be pretty reasonable damage for their size, especially if there'll be a good sized group of them. Of course you could also buff or nerf mid-game if you need to

Strongest variant is the Illusion weaver, which go for 2 claw attacks of 1d6+3. It's really low damage for a CR4, I think, but they get a some bonus for sneak attack and pack some spell-like abitilies (including phantasmal killer 1/day).

I might post them here after the field test, I dunno.

y not before?

woah

I'm trying to figure out how to stat a monster that has active defense turrets mounted on it ans also something with redundant non identical senses.

like since the whole point of the active defence turrets is to shoot down incomming missiles while the monster does it's own thing I'm not sure if they should have their own initiative or not. (it may be better just to wrap them up in a power inherent othe monster and give that power the "removeable" flaw to represent that the turrets can be disabled or destroyed).

mutants and masterminds is a trip.

Because first I want to make sure they don't suck.

I'm not sure how mutants and masterminds work but in 5e d&d I would just increase the armor class and ass the players damage the it it would lose armor class. You could also use infrared (heat) cameras and echo-location for redundant, non-identical senses