Homemade rules thread

If it's a survival focused campaign, where counting that stuff is important, sure (although, cantrips generally tend to be weaker than bows/arrows).

>All those "problems" and their "solutions"

Its more to encourage flexible combat styles

Get the wizard to pick up a sword every now and again, or at least be able to act in both scenarios out of necessity

I don't keep track of ranged-weapon ammo as it is, unless players have ammo that is magical/poisoned/ect. or otherwise out of the ordinary. It's extra book keeping that doesn't add much value to the game.

I have been getting that response a lot but to most of my players they prefer keeping track of ammo and being able to constantly spam firebolt while the archers only got 20 shots in him seems unbalanced

Yes, but that only happens if you do a survival focused campaign where you have like 20 combats without a chance to return to town, otherwise, it's just pointless bookkeeping.

That's ignoring the fact that wizards already only use cantrips when they don't need to cast anything else i. e. combats that are more like speedbumps.

Bean counting is not fun, unless you set your campaign up to make it important.

Valid opinion, thanks.

I suppose its the resource manager in me that likes the idea.

Seems like your players are also on board. DESU, a rule doesn't have to be actually good to be enjoyed; if the wizard/cleric/whatever player is cool with it, just put 20 use on the component pouch or something.

That's very streamlined,

I am happy to hear the differing advice though.

Much appreciated Veeky Forums!

Put up or shut with that meme.

What system are you saying people should use as their to go system? Because saying "D&D is bad" leaves out what it is being compared to.

For those particular problems?

___4e___

OP here, a lot of these rules could be applied to other systems. I personnally don't play D&D at all.

I agree with
On the fact that if your players enjoy it, it's a good rule to use.
Also, when I do spells/cantrip/potion management, I like to make my players look for things to make them, adapt the way they fight and use their powers depending on what they found or where they are.
Of course you can always find basic healing materials in towns but you may run out of fireball material halfway through an icey land and have to rely on freeze rays casted with the help of those lovely frozen flowers you found.

Wew

5e

Successive strikes. They can really change your game. In its simplest form, this means that after you strike at somebody, they get to immediately strike back. Ideally, you do this in two-round clusters, so that you attack / they attack / you attack / they attack. This gives you a real feeling of back-and-forth and can dramatically increase your sense of immersion. It can require a bit of improvisation and judgment on the part of the GM regarding actions that affect people not in this pairing (if you get attacked and want to attack somebody else, or are casting an area affecting spell), but it's not that tricky if you go with the flow. The key is to have a rather fluid sense of time and to be okay with some characters getting one round ahead of others on occasion (characters who are a round behind can make up this deficit the next time they act).

In terms of homebrew stuff, where I've been able to bake successive strikes into the very system, every attack you make gives the enemy a counterattack, but also grants you a followup. In addition, in cases where it makes sense, after this succession has occurred, your enemy may be able to go right after you if he choose to return the favor by attack you. So an exchange can look like this:

Your Turn:
attack
enemy counterattacks
followup attack

Enemy's Turn:
enemy attacks
you counterattack
enemy followsup

This means you each get 3 attacks in and there's a real feeling of back-and-forth rather than just doing one thing and waiting 5 minutes until something else happens.

Seeing ops image of blank dice got me thinking about a mechanic were when players do something cool they get to write a number on One face of a blank d20. This will create a chaotic die that is incredibly overpowered, but that catch os that sometimes monsters can use this die.

Now i just need to iron out this idea.

What about this for a fun idea.

At the start of battle everyone rolls a blank d20 alongside their own. They can choose to use a number on the blank die if it tuns out higher than your normal roll. If you rolled the blank die and a blank face was rolled, but you still succeeded with your own d20. You then write in marker the fwce value of your successful d20. Then the next player makes their move and rolls the same blank die along their roll. Rvrn the enemies use this blank die and populate its blank spaces. Eventually combat will reach a crazy point where the blank d20 is filled with probably high numbers, and every one starts making drastically increased odds of success.

I feel it would be too overpowered after a while but that's worth digging.

I don't know, as someone who always plays buffer mages, merchants or healers, I feel like this would mean
>each fighter's turn lasts so fucking long
>every other fight ends after two fighter's turn without any other PC getting to do anything
>people who don't directly hit the villain (buff people, heal people, cast spells) have shorter turns, less often and don't feel like they're playing any significant part in the fight

I really dislike rule two. Imagine doing that to player damage, each time you repeat an attack, you roll additional d4's against your own damage for every time you use it in battle. That's a nofun kind of rule. Turns where I use a high level slot, roll low numbers, and then roll max four would be the worst (and common knowing my luck). Players hardly give a shit when I heal, having them watch me roll a D4 afterwards as I lower their max hp (something they do tend to care about) would truly suck ass. I wouldn't be playing a Cleric if that were an official rule. If I am continually detrimental with my healing (a power I only get from my holy deity, the only reason I even go Cleric), I am probably taking a caster class that has healing as a back up option instead, like Bard, or Druid.

Perhaps you could've had them (non healers) pick up the Medicine Feat for free. As professional soldiers/explorers, they received first aid training. Maybe let one of them produce their own healing potions, especially if they are sitting on mountains of gold that have seemingly lost meaning, or value. The Cleric is not an "it" job, if you are doing it well, you are little more than background noise to your party members. People are much more excited about unique spells, or felling a monster.

I do agree with rule one though, the constant up and down thing isn't exciting, or good in the sense of story. People take it as a joke when going down is more like a game of whack a mole, than a serious matter.

>overpowered

That is kind of the point it ramps up the likelyhood of hitting spreading up combat and making the last few attacks very climactic.

I am gonna test this shit oit.

As someone who only plays healer/buffers/non-fighters I agree very much

If it rolls off the table it's an auto fail.

Don't look at me, my players actually WANTED harder healing rules and told me magical healing was "too easy", so I gave it a stacking cost that would punish abusing it.

Bargain For Your Life
Whenever your character dies (due to bleeding out, drowning, death magic, whatever) you may chose to instead take a -1 penalty to your Con score and have your character miraculously recover, escape, or otherwise survive. You can do this once per session, up to a maximum of one/level times. Once per character (or per campaign, same diff) you can also chose to take a Flaw, and thus get a bonus feat when your character next rests. Doing this maintains plot and character drama, keeps party balance in line, gives players more control over whether the character they put it much time and creativity into survives and thrives.

I don't feel this one.
That would make characters very weak after a while.

I have implemented a pretty big management system in most of my long campaigns in order to manage estates, commerce, families, employees and such since my players tend to settle down and expand their character's realtionship with the world during campaigns.

It depends on the game but if someone's interested in the system for a particular game I'll post it.
>Legend of the Five Rings
>D&D 3.5 (I DM in my own world with some of the rules so it may not sound familiar to any hardcore D&D players)
>World of Darkness (mostly nWoD but some for oWoD)
>Call of Cthulhu

>At the beginning of the session, I roll a d20 and ask two questions about lore or other in-character information. First person to answer a question correctly gets to add the result of the d20 to a roll of their choice that session.
>If you roll and your die falls off the table in the process, it's a 1. If you do it when a 1 would benefit you, you lose your turn.
>If you start taking too long with your turns in combat, you'll get 20 seconds to decide your actions or lose your turn
And on a less serious note
>all Aarakocra are masters of alchemical silver and automatically succeed on any knowledge based checks regarding it.
That one happened because the first time I let a player be Aarakocra at my table he rolled 4 nat 20s in a row, all regarding checks to learn about alchemical silver. I'm hardly one for "LOL NAT 20!!1!," but when the dice speak like that you listen.

If you roll a nat1 on a range attack shooting into melee, you hit one of the other combatants. I see nothing wrong with this. It's better than the boring old "-4 to hit" which eliminates any possibility of friendly fire. A natural 20 is an automatic hit as it is, no matter how high the target's AC. I hate "nat1 lol u die" or "nat20 lol u win" bullshit to the point that it enrages me, but I make one exception here.

I do that and roll a die to determine which one they hit.

My players are rewarded with EXP even if they do little killing but RP well and advance the story(or stories because I let their actions expand plotlines in other directions). This made DMing way better.

Not him. But GURPS.

I wish I could bring in homemade rules, but pretty much anything that can be changed or "fixed" has been done, and better than anything I could hope to do, both official and by members of the community.

Aside from designing encounter tables and completely new spells, or a grid-based travel system, I don't really need to do anything for GURPS because the system by default is so modular. Even at its basest base it's stable enough that there are very, VERY little problems.

Encounter tables are great I love them do you have some ?

Yeah I was working on some for a Fallout game. Unfortunately they are stuck on roll20, so I can't really share easily. Sorry. I can post screenies, but they don't show the weights I was using.

...

...

In 5e at least, caster's cantrips outstrip ranged martials very quickly, except for fighters.

after hitting "Raiders," "NCR Troops," "Legion Troops," Etc.

Oh yeah I never used that table thing in Roll20

As opposed to dead? The player chooses to do this. They know the risks.

If you're interested (and patient) I can get the weights and write them all out in a post.

That's not really a choice is it ? Either die or make it easier for your character to die anyway. For someone that is building a tank meant to soak up damage that can be really hurtful and for someone building a weak character it's even worse.

If I had to make the players bargain for their life I'd make it a roleplay thing : bargain with Death. You can make it however you want
>bring Death someone that has been escaping him for a long time
>play a game with Death
>accept to become an agent of Death

Anything can work and it may even add nice elements to your campaigns, but just weakening characters until they're unplayable is not the way to go.

HP tanks are shit anyway, only thing this really hurts is barbarians.

I was considering doing the following as a method of speeding up combat, because I saw something similar to it in another game:
>>Escalating the Violence:
>Once per turn, when a character deals damage, they can choose to Escalate the Violence by adding a d4 to play, called an Escalation Die. They roll this die and then add it to the damage dealt. Other players can use the Escalation Die as well to deal additional damage. However, when an enemy is able to act, they can choose to increase the size of the Escalation Die (or add an additional d4 if the smallest Escalation Die has been changed to a d12) before they roll it. This goes back and forth until the combat ends.
Used to represent people getting more desperate and lethal in their attempts to end fights.

>In 5e at least, caster's cantrips outstrip ranged martials very quickly, except for fighters.

Only Eldritch Blast, and only if you don't use feats and magic weapons.

Not bad, the name (and vaguely the mechanics) reminds me of the Escalation die of 13th Age.

I thought about doing something similar, but with initiative. Just dump initiative as a roll and order from the game, and choose the first action by what makes sense.

Let the side choose the order to act, and keep performing actions until they fail - such as enemy succeeds a saving throw or an attack misses or whatever. If every individual acts successfully, then the other side can go. If they fail, then the other side immediately goes starting with one of the opponents that turned the tide. Reactions allow for the same, a successful attack of opportunity means the sides change again with the one making the reaction acting first.

It's messy but it would mean the highest level side would have an advantage, though for 5e it would mean that something like Legendary action turns solo encounters into something bonkers.