Top 10 Worst Common House Rules
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- čas přidán 23. 07. 2024
- House Rules are unofficial rules that players and dungeon masters incorporate into their home games. Most of the time these rules are there to enrich the game experience in some way, but sometimes house rules can do just the opposite. Today we'll be going over 10 of the worst house rules that are fairly common in 5th edition.
Video edited by BV
Written by: Two Tone Shoes
Managed by: Stimpack
├ The List
Intro: (0:00)
10: Natural 20s always succeed: (0:15)
9: Spell casters must use materials: (2:45)
8: Forced party composition: (4:40)
7: Banning multiclassing: (6:35)
6: Hyper realistic combat: (8:16)
5: Allowing all 3rd party content: (9:48)
4: Starting over at level 1 after death: (11:10)
3: Custom experience progression: (12:41)
2: Permanent injuries: (14:18)
1: Critical fumbles: (15:58)
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My favorite bad rule - “The player that deals the killing blow gets all (or more) XP”
It is related to bad leveling but worst. DMs doing this tend to think it will all work out since everyone will kill some one but it never does. It breaks down party cohesion and punishes the non- damage dealers.
Clerics won't deal the killing blow that often since they are busy healing, while a fighter, Rouge or Ranger has a better chance of landing the killing blow.
Imagine setting the battlefield as a caster (web, bless, hypnotic pattern, etc.) and then not getting any exp.
@@EnraiChannel I would be so mad. I'm so thankful my DM did experience equally as long as you did something you got experience
Ouch. In addition to being really unfair for healers, battlefield controllers and skill monkeys, this just makes no sense flavor-wise either, unless you assume "experience" to be some kind of mystical essence that flows out of the slain creature into its killer. If a party beats a dragon, then some random shmuck waltzes in while it has 1 HP and deals the finishing blow, should he be entitled to all the XP despite having done next to nothing? Logically everyone who contributed to the fight should get XP from it. Even fucking Pokémon understands this, how the fuck do some DMs completely fail to?!
@@astuteanansi4935 Exactly, and even the Digimon games understand how experience works, in both Cyber Sleuth and Dawn/Dusk every Digimon that participates in battle gets a full share of exp. regardless of which deals the finishing blow.
In my games, nat 20s always succeed, and I simply don't let my players make rolls for impossible things, if the heavy armor fighter with 8 dex and no stealth tries to sneak past Tiamat, they won't roll, I will just describe them failing
The reason I truely hate forced party comps and remind my players when I'm DM to play whatever class/role they personally want is I spent most of a session 0 helping a new player build their first character, going over the different races, classes, stats, basic rules, and by the time we where done everyone else had finished so when I finally got to start rolling I was told no more front liners so I couldn't play the spear fighter I prepared. That new player was a monk.
I've seen some people suggest critical fumbles be ruled like a failing upwards kinda of situation where they succeed but in a silly or unlucky way, like opening a locked door but it made a REALLY loud noise or something
I like it
7th Sea is a somewhat Pirates of the Caribean rpg based on the setting and the kind of shenanigans that may ensue. The manual explains at one point that if your players fail a roll it shouldn't stop the action but turn the situation into something more dramatic and interesting while furthering the action, and I've been trying to think like that ever since.
I don't like it. Rolling the lowest possible result shouldn't be a good thing.
Or applying Cleaving rules to missed attacks, allowing the attack to hit a _different_ enemy within range.
I had a DM who did something kind of similar. I'm 5th edition. They just made it so that if you crit failed you would have disadvantage on the related roll. So if you fumbled during an attack, your next attack will be made with a disadvantage. If you fumbled with social encounter, your next interaction with that NPC was at disadvantage. Within the same scene/ encounter that is.
I don’t design my world around my players, I design my world so it has everything my players might need, so when 90% of the party is fighters? They can always hire an NPC wizard. Hiring NPCs is one option, or naturally becoming friends by doing quests until they begin doing small tasks with that NPC and then the NPC is adopted into their group and next second you realize the party has like 60+ members, 5 of which are players members, 10 or so being pets, and the rest being other adventures who forgot what party they were in when they worked for the party so long they just became a part of it.
Moral of story is; I like using my parties weakness’s to make them spend ingame money, it’s kinda smart.
An oft overlooked component of these discussions is how much more heavily martials (doubly so melee) rely on their health as a resource. If you punish dropping to zero, multiattack, or getting hit; then you are actively punishing front line martials.
Also with dropping to zero fixes please don't invalidate grave cleric.
Critical fumbles also hurt martials far more than casters. A fighter has a MUCH higher chance of rolling a 1 when they're attacking 4 times a turn compared to a wizard whose every spell imposes a save rather than making a spell attack. Missing is already bad enough. Failing a check is already bad enough. When a demigod-level fighter has a 12% chance to slice off their hand or break their weapon in a 3 turn encounter, you have a stupid rule.
This!
I despise crit fumble, my first ever dm, amazing dm, sadly imposed the rule, we were in some ethereal realm, i rolled a nat 1 after nat 20, my weapon disintegrated as it returned to the dust of the realm, since it was like?? Shaped by someone, idk its been years
Not every spell is against DC, but I agree with the point. Few DMs I played with did crit fumbles only for enemies. I didn't mind that, but sometimes they could get a bit too silly.
@@EnraiChannel I mean, you can easily make a competent spell list where everything is a DC rather than an attack roll.
@Futureal2112 no one is designing their spell list to avoid fumbles.
It's not for everyone but there are a lot of games that use it.
Natural 20s should always succeed, because the DM shouldn't let you roll for something that you have no chance of succeeding on regardless of your roll. If a natural 20 doesn't succeed, you shouldn't have rolled. Same with natural 1s and failures.
That being said, natural a 20 shouldn't automatically give a "critical success" on a skill check, just the best reasonably profitable outcome. For example, if you're trying to persuade a king to give you a better reward for a quest, a natural 20 means that you get the most gold the king could possibly be willing to give you. But he's not going to suddenly decide to hand over his kingdom and let you marry his daughter.
I have to disagree, you should always let the players try to succeed on something.
It's stupid to just say to a player "No, you just can't convince the king" and let it at that, it feels awful from a player perspective to not even have the chance to do something.
Same goes for other example, like he said with the rogue. If an enemy rogue rolls a 25 you as the half blind fighter might try to find him but that doesn't mean you can. Players can still have the hope of succeeding, hell maybe he find a clue of the direction in which he hides.
Well you can do that, but it's weird meta level gaming then. Sometimes failing even on 20 can show you how much better someone is. You may have a silver tongue, but the merchant has 40 years of experience in his trade.
@@EnraiChannel i like this example, because you might have a rogue that has expertise in a stealth, and it's possible with a 19 for them, but a paladin in plate, even if they roll both 20s, probably isnt sneaking past the gaurds
Naaaah there are DCs beyond 20
I remember hearing a story where the group had a fumble table, but it was much less sever and the 1% worst outcome was your drop your weapon. That sounded like a rare fun fumble chart.
The assumption with the component pouch is that it contains the non-costly components. It is a book keeping work saver.
Focuses, holy symbols and component pouches would be as liable to seizure as weapons. A neat side adventure would involve a wizard having to rebuild his component pouch. And, a competent wizard will be seeking to refresh his component pouch. So, lots of room to drop adventure hooks. So, don't use mats to punish but don't ignore them either.
I think depending on the style of game components can't be interesting flavor. If you are on a like bare knuckles life and death in the foreground game components add to the latent anxiety and appeal. But if you are on a like sprawling globe troting adventure, it can just take away from the exploration feel.
Same. I learned a while ago that there's no such thing as imprisoning a spellcaster if you don't pay too much attention to focuses and components. On the other hand, micromanaging my players to use components really turned them off and slowed the game to a halt. The only additional tweek is that focuses show up with detect magic and are considered weapons to be confiscated or to be kept hands off in neutral areas like any other weapon. (That and the controversial yet effective rule that druids can't wild shape without their focus or a 10 hour ritual)
It would make a neat part of a story where your group gets captured and everyone loses all of their equipment for a while, but they could scavenge for materials to cast spells. Requires some extra work from the DM though. Because they would have to make loot tables for the casting components based on what the caster(s) can cast. Doing that for a bard or for a sorcerer would be somewhat easy, but for a wizard you should probably let the wizard to prep different spells depending on what they find.
Not true at all, because you can only use your component pouch to replace material components that DON'T get consumed. So you don't need to "refresh" it.
@@ACP13. I played around with house rule that a component pouch has 6 uses without a spell-casting focus (not including spells with a cost of course). Whether it's materials that get consumed or magic can no longer be channeled out of certain components, it needs to be refilled once exhausted and its not cheap. Figured it was a good way to encourage my spellcasters to appreciate their focuses more while still giving a decent amount of casting utility from a single pouch.
Another thing not mentioned in either the Permanent Injuries and (more importantly) the Critical Fumbles entries is that both also disproportionately effect some classes more than others, most commonly, martial characters. Martials are already considered behind compared to spell casters, but with these house rules, they are further punished (and far worse) than the spell casters.
For Permanent Injuries, martials are disproportionately punished as they tend to be the ones in direct combat and often take the role of "tank". They're hit more frequently (often by design) and are therefore more likely to have injury after injury stacked upon them.
For Critical Fumbles, this gets even more prominent as martials use attack rolls more frequently than casters. A spell caster will normally cast one spell per turn that will commonly be an attack roll or force people to make saving throws. Depending on how they are built, they can completely avoid doing attack rolls and will almost never have a critical fumble. A martial character can do from one to four attack rolls per turn depending on class and level. This means they are already four times likely per turn to critically fumble. They are far more likely to have something bad happen to them.
Solve the multi-classing issue with this one simple trick:
"You need to be able to explain it in lore."
The funniest experience i had with a natural 20 is when i rolled a natural 1 on an attack roll. My DM said to roll a dex save or I'd drop my weapon, and well i rolled a nat 20 on the save. So my character basically yeeted his sword out of pure incompetence and then performed absolutely crazy acrobatics to catch it again.
I dislike banning multi-classing on a fundamental level. I enjoy the Jack of all trades archetype and hybrid builds. There is something that speaks to me about a middling skill but multifaceted character in DnD.
Multiclassing also let’s you make some very niche builds. Sometimes powerful yes but also more so thematic. Example- you want to make a Angel PC. Aasimar Sword Bard 7 and Hexblade 3 or Paladin 6 Divine soul 4. Yeah going to have power but they are not as powerful because you could optimize if that was the idea very easily.
I feel like multiclassing warlock or cleric should be ilegal, you gain waay too many things
Multiclasses in practice are far from middling. They're mostly done for some exploit or powerful build. Regardless of if it fits the character or not
I think the criticism about metagaming is fine. But it's really easy to tell when someone is doing that.
But I think people should be allowed to make like a final fantasy style red mage or a like mount rider that tries to terrify enemies through magic and skills. That stuff is very flavorful. Plus it allows for fun antimagic builds that really aren't possible outside of multiclassing.
Plus, multiclassed characters aren't THAT powerful compared to straight builds. Unless they are using some weird exploit, which EVEN THEN simply turns a character into a one trick pony. What's that super damage build gonna do when it comes time for a simple investigation check? When it comes time for a puzzle or they're no better off.
The reason I generally don't like using multiclassing is because it was an optional rule. The way the class abilities are laid out clearly shows to me that multiclassing was more of an afterthought. I just also don't like how it's the only thing in 5e that opens up trap choices. If you multiclass wrong it can ruin your character forever, and I think that sucks. I'd want the multiclass system just completely reworked, but I'll still allow it on a case by case basis
To be fair most people multiclassing are going to know enough to not permanently doom a character as it is rare for a small dip to be actually bad, so although you can mess up it is unlikely and even moreso if you look at the intended audience of the more experienced players who already understand all the base classes. But I am also a min-maxer who will read the books for fun so I may just be missing something and with newer players your ideas are more likely to work out.
Definitely agree that two players can play the same class and both still be extremely useful. We started playing Keys to the Golden Vault and nobody happened to pick Rogue, and we agreed that it probably would’ve been easier if all 5 of us were Rogues.
In one of my siblings first game of DnD, the DM had the most absurd house rule. In order for a Bard to use magic, the player has to sing. Ignoring the fact that there was no other limitations on other classes, bards arent all inherently musical, they can be anything really. It took a lot of convincing that that wasnt a rule and it turned them off of DnD for a while l.
I played two sessions with a DM who ruled that all female characters should have a -2 penalty to strength. He said it with a completely straight face. That we lasted two sessions with him is an unholy miracle.
Also, a friend of mine experienced this rule: on character death, your next one is one level lower.
Doesn't sound too bad at first, but that DM had it out for him, and it became unavoidably apparent when he asked the DM how to make a level 0 character, since he'd been killed so much he'd levelled down that far.
Game crashed on that session as well, funnily enough.
Seriously? -2 to strength just because the character was female? The Players guide literally says there's no difference stat wise. That doesn't make sense.
@Wonderdavy he justified by saying "it's fair because they can have babies". Again with the straight face.
This was... 2005 maybe?
Yes, he was a twunt.
@@SymbioteMullet yeah I bet. Why didn't he give a bonus to Dexterity or Intelligence to even it out, just that kind of DM I guess
@@davyt0247 oh yeah, he was _that_ kind of DM
Makes me so happy to see others pointing out the basis of wanting a multiclass to be relative to the story and not just a Power/ability grab. I've used that exact example with paladin/warlock before.
When it comes to multiclassing, I allow for power grabs at character creation (I start players at level 4 because no one feels heroic dying at level 1 to a critical hit from a goblin), but any multiclassing beyond that needs to be relevant to the story going forward or directly related to a choice or event that occurred. I might even advance a player characters level or force multiclassing on them if they made a deal with an entity to further the story. Eg. Boblin the Goblin Fighter makes a deal with a Greater Demon/Devil to save their friends/family from certain doom, they gain a Fiend Warlock level even if they don’t meet the prerequisite.
I don't think either of these house rules are bad per se, but they were pretty weird ones that my Dm implemented when we were first learning DND, and I decided keeping around for attachment reasons.
1. Advantage and Disadvantage don't cancel each other out if they are multiple instances versus one. Instead, if you have 2 instances of advantage, and one disadvantage, you'll just have one advantage, rather than having neither. Our group just decided that having it cancel is dumb.
2. Death saving throws worked a bit differently at our table. When making death saves, rolling a failure twice and then rolling a success, instantly disregards the previous failures. Same with rolling a success and then rolling a nat 1 leaves you with two failures. I think we made it to give medicine more of a use I guess? That and it made it feel like you were fighting for your life by slipping in and out of near consciousness, since it was so swingy, made it feel more exciting.
2.5. Speaking of death saving throws, a 20 doesn't restore you to 1 hp, just counts as 2 success's and magical healing does not bring someone back into the fight, just stabilises them. I think we mades this compromise on the condition that unless the enemies were intelligent Bosses or the like, they wouldn't outright kill you, they'd take some of your stuff or something. Oh, and for whatever reason, we thought that waking back up from unconsciousness took 1d4+1 hours rather than just... 1d4. Don't know where we got that one tbh.
3. Finally, rolling a nat 1 on a perception check causes a giant golden bunny, to appear out of nowhere for 1d4 rounds, before disappearing, and entirely captivating the person who made the check. It was a bit of an in joke when we were running TOA, and one us decided to eat some mysterious looking mushrooms. You can probably guess the rest.
The idea that you can't play till the end of the fight (and probably sometimes a portion of the session more) if your PC fell unconscious, with no possible way to solve it, kinda doesn't sound fun. But if it worked well for you, nothing wrong with it.
@@nabra97 It's why we placed so much importance on making sure we didn't drop to 0hp, mostly by using out of combat healing (prayer of healing being pretty good at that) and by taking short rests. It's a balancing act I guess, though I can see why most people would probably say it would be unfun. It's just... Kinda what we stuck with, we were 13 at the time, we barely knew the rules so we made due with what we thought was cool *shrug* .
Multiclassing is a pretty amazing mechanic for character progression from a roleplay point of view, but because of that I feel like it should be justified by what happens within a campaign. It doesn't make much sense for a warrior to suddenly pick up classes from another class out of nowhere, but maybe within the story he had a humbling experience against a representative of that class and became interested in learning, so he finds a way to train for that so he can dabble in it or even go into a new direction.
You can make entire character arcs around a character changing their class or even just dabble in another, the potential is amazing.
I never multiclass before talking to my DM, and I explain/justify it to her, and I let her "write it in" for me. She actually doesn't care, but I personally wouldn't feel right suddenly learning certain class features.
My current character is a level 7 Divination Wizard and has just taken 1 level in knowledge cleric, but I've told my DM I'm basically not touching any of the features until I awaken to them narratively and I don't mind eating the "negetive" of essentially wasting a level until I reach that point.
To be fair most abilities in dungeons and dragons don't make sense. Why when I kill the last goblin I suddenly learn multiple spells at the same time and get new powers.
@@LizzyThatB That entirely depends on how you run your game. You can introduce narrative reasons for why your character leveled up, even mid-combat.
Or you do away with that and run a campaign where the player characters are aware of the rules of their universe, which can be really fun too.
My players like the critical hit tables, but I do tend to water it down a bit. If someone gets a broken bone or severed limb, instead of it being game ending for that character, they might just have to take a detour to go get it magically fixed. Enough to feel punishing, but not enough to make someone want to stop playing.
If you want a realistic combat with broken limbs - maybe try a system that supports it, like The Riddle of Steel or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay?
The worst house rule my DM uses is that illusion spells require you to make a deception check or the person you are using it on immediately sees through, before the person/creature can then try to see though it with a perception check..
This screwed my shadow monk and our arcane trickster rogue out of using minor illusion and a number of other spells as we both dumped charisma.
This video shows the difference between modern gamers and osr gamers lol permanent injury, ridiculous fumble events, the constant threat of death, is the stuff that makes us older gamers have fun.
If your wizard gets a broken jaw well figure something out! I'd allow people to cast with a small disadvantage for gurgling or mumbling to much. I would laugh if I had to figure out a way to cast my spells with a broken jaw or find work arounds because that's half the fun to many of us, challenging the player to be creative and ask questions like "can I try to cast while gritting my teeth from my broken jaw?" Instead of only challenging the character
I also really enjoy making quests for an angel feather or some other high level spell components but these are all reasons why we all play different ttrpgs
I'm guessing that's because you are playing ttrpgs that are balanced around critical fumbles and the like, instead of people putting unbalanced homebrew crit failure tables into dnd 5e (which has already been pointed out to effect martials way more than casters).
I also play GURPS, which does have critical failures, but they are balanced between martials and casters since casting is also a skill check that can be failed unlike in dnd, and with martials being the primary DPS type also unlike in dnd. And in having actual balanced rules for long term injuries, or injuries to specific body parts.
@@mtswerensnope, I play Mork Borg, Forbidden Lands, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, OSE, and other OSR games where balance is thrown out the window, spells requires caster checks that mean if you fail you could just explode or maybe you rip a void in the air and a demon comes out and kills the whole party
You can always say that enemies can't roll nat 20 for anything other than attacks. I really like critical fumbles when it is done right which usually takes a good GM. Had this one game where the first perception check was a fumble and the person fell through the floor starting the encounter early. It was a situation that felt appropriate because it wasn't that bad of a fumble, this system we were playing you could open-end rolls up or down and the player didn't roll that badly. The next perception check the same player fumbled again but open-ended the fumble twice for something like a -267 which compared to the -40 on the first was much worse. The GM had basically had the play accidentally release an elder god that effected the course of 3 different campaigns. The difference is how it is done. When done creatively it can be great, when done poorly its just salt in a wound.
The biggest problem with fumbles is that they happen too often. 5% for a fighter who rolls 4 attacks every 6-second round is far too much. Master of the sword isn't supposed to hit himself every 30 seconds of combat.
And keep in mind that critical fumbles only affect martials (since casters can just avoid spells that require an attack roll) while martials are already underpowered compared to spellcasters.
@@SebThorson If you roll a 1 you were more than likely going to miss anyways. Having something happen rather than nothing can make for more varied experiences. The crit fumble is better on ability checks so you can just home brew it for only them. That's the best thing about home brew: you can make adjustments however you want.
Also a crit fumble isn't just a 'you stab yourself', 'you attack an ally', or 'you throw your weapon 30 ft away'. A crit attack fumble could be 'you make a solid blow. make an insight or perception check with maybe disadvantage, maybe even change things up a bit and use the same stat that you used to attack instead of Wis. On failure: you think that monster is immune to your weapon or just impossibly strong. On success: you know that was just a bad attack placement'. If you include crit fumbles then the enemies can crit fumble as well. As I said it does need a good GM it find that balance of failure/something interesting happening. A bad GM will always punish failure.
@@jettblade Or you can just play a divination wizard (which is already OP) and avoid the whole crit fumble BS altogether by solving everything with spells.
@@SebThorson Well then at that point you might as not play at all. If you eliminate risk you miss out on player experiences and potential character growth. If you just want to win, you can do that. It will be fun for a while and then just becomes stale.
@@jettblade Choosing to play the class and spec that DM is obviously pushiong you toward by making other choices comparably bad isn't some munchkin move to "eliminate risk", it's common sense.
Nat 20s/1s always succeeding/failing just goes to make the game more ridiculous. A DM I had used it for a Mad Mage game, and so many monsters ended up surviving spells that otherwise should have killed/seriously incapacitated them just because they rolled a Nat 20 against a party member's Fireball. At the same time, my Warlock literally got Feebleminded by a homebrew Elder Brain, and then Nat 20'd her way through two consecutive INT/CHA saves at -5 vs DC 18 (read: impossible) to end up killing the boss in a feral rage, but also rolled a Nat 1 for 10 total on Performance and had the city guard called for disturbing the peace. It's absolutely something that should be played up when it happens and is appropriate, but if the DC is 21 and your modifier is -1, it's because the monster is that strong and targeting you instead of the Cleric with a +11 WIS or the Rogue with Evasion.
The only time you should really worry about material components is when there's a cost to them. The sidequest for diamonds or hunting down a musical craftsman for Plane Shift-tier tuning forks is a neat way to build up the world and its connections.
Forced composition is something that I'm only on the fence on because mages aren't actually squishy, and a party having three Counterspell-capable mages all but invalidates ever having a spellcasting enemy ever again, let alone having a single monster that will get hit with a Flaming Sphere + Wall of Force and just watch them boil. If Shield only gave a +2 AC to one attack instead of until your next turn, it'd be much more fair compared to a Fighter that actively sacrifices Reach/damage output to hold a physical shield.
Multiclassing is fine when there's a good character reason for it, and/or there's clearly no synergy that is any more than a gimmick. I've only multiclassed once, and that was to go PHB TWF Hunter Ranger to Wizard because the guy had to compete with damage vs GWM Fighter, stealth vs Thief Rogue, and support/spellcasting vs Lore Bard. The only synergy I've found was using multiclassing spell slots with the newfangled Xanathar's Guide to Everything spell Shadow Blade with Whirlwind Attack in order to get up to eight 5d8+MOD psychic damage attacks as a single action, or more depending on outside size-boosting effects. I never even got to do that before the DM called off the campaign due to high-level parties with high-level NPC allies willing to help being really unbalanced, which was kind of a grave he dug for himself because he likes it when the party is helped by the people they help.
I really enjoyed this video, it's exactly like you touched on briefly too, sometimes it's fun to play a brutal, unfair death trap simulator (Dark Heresy is my person favourite), but play games designed around that don't import it into 5e.
Back in my AD&D days, we tried bookkeeping with spell components a few times. It was more trouble than it was worth and did not add enough to the game. I am glad they changed it in later editions.
eh, always succeding on a 20 is easily controlled by just saying no, if your player wants to do something imposible just say no you cannot do that or make them roll with disadvantage, in most situations a nat 20 will give you the results that you want either way
the problem is asking players to roll in situations where success is imposible
It impossible you say but you're giving me a roll with disadvantage...ok ...I roll a 14 and a 20 but I have to choose the 14, But Wait I have luck points now I can roll one more die, aw I got a 1... but wait I can choose any of the three dice rolls so I choose the nat 20.🤣
@@frankprendergast8020 by rules you get to pick either the new rol or the old, disadvantage rol, the higher rol is out of the question
Such situations are solved very easily by putting your foot down as a DM, "no i'm not going to allow you to pick the 20, you have disadvantage you only get to reroll the disadvantage dice and pick either of the two"
a roll could be impossible for something like a barbarian, with a minus 1 for intellegence and wisdom, who is trying to read an arcane circle, but possible for the rogue with expertise in arcana. but if it's impossible for a rogue with expertise in that skill to pass it, you definately shouldnt have them roll for it.
@@carso1500 Nope. The lucky feat allows you to roll a third die and choose between the three.
So are you going to "put your foot down" and take away one of your players feats??
@@backcountry164 he can already roll there dice but one of them, the highest is out of the question, but he still got to roll three times and have somewhat advantage even with disadvantage
Otherwise he could put himself in disadvantage on purpose and then use the lucky roll to have súper advantage
roll three times grab the highest yeah no
Some of my best D&D experiences where from sessions where I housed ruled GP granting experience. Suddenly, everyone became a slightly psychotic money grubber which is very fun for a short college campaign
In our game, the DM created a few homebrew items that “leveled up” when we reached important character milestones. Instead of leveling characters, we had awakened and exalted versions of items that did extra stuff but wasn’t game breaking. It was super cool RP-wise to find the triggers. For my paladin, one trigger was to die and be resurrected for the exalted version.
“Houserules” don’t include any rule you don’t like and therefore ignore.
“Banned” Multiclassing is not a houserule in 5e. The multiclassing rules are an optional variant. Multiclassing is not allowed by default. PHB p. 136
“Custom experience progression” Asymmetric XP/leveling is the default in 5e. “Typically, adventurers earn experience only for encounters they participate in. […]” Missing a session or splitting the party can cause some characters to gain more XP than others in a party, or certain magic items can change a character’s XP directly. Giving absent characters the same XP as character who earn it is an alternative rule. DMG p. 260
Also, awarding XP for noncombat challenges, and milestones is at the DM’s discretion, and also the default rule. DMG p. 261
“Permanent” (Lingering) Injuries is not a houserule. Lingering injuries are an optional rule that DMs can use to represent damage that isn’t adequately covered by lost hp, like losing a limb to a sword of sharpness. DMG p. 272
“Starting over at level 1” seems to be implying that there’s a default rule for creating a new character at the same level of the rest of the party. (And incidentally that the party is all the same level by default.) There’s no rule for creating a new character after one dies. The closest thing you get is the rule for a new *player* joining a campaign midway through. Though admittedly, the default is to create a character at the same level as the lowest leveled party member, and starting at level 1 is a variant suggested for players who are “completely unfamiliar with the D&D game.” DMG p. 236
Overall there’s some decent advice in here, but it’s way to heavy-handed and peppered with bad advice or just overly broad, *X* is always bad generalizations. It’s one of those DM advice videos that’s not good for new DMs, and any DM who knows how to filter out the bad advice probably doesn’t need the decent advice.
Not sure if this is something other tables do but my players and I run a small variation on AC and attack rolls that we call "glancing blows" ie if an attack roll matches your AC exactly, you only take half damage.
I only allow multiclassing when it makes sense to the fiction of the both the campaign and the character's story.
I love critical fumbles but I would never make them detrimental to the character. I make them take a small bit of damage or maybe temporary injury that causes them to have disadvantage on an ability check or save of a given type until they receive healing or something else small like that.
Yeah, lots of games use critical fumbles. I rarely hear players complain about it.
@@backcountry164 Cause they're newbie players who don't know better.
That's already very detrimental when you consider you could be a caster instead and not have to deal with crit. fumbles at all, while also being much more useful in and out of combat.
problem is - casters roll much less than a martials. So every "small damage or temporary injury" is taken ONLY by party's fighter. And more levels of fighter - more "small damage or temporary injury" he takes.
My first group had an interesting house rule for a nat 1. We'd roll again to see how bad of a failure it was. It usually didn't end with anything too bad, a common result was dropping a weapon (the weapon did not break), though there was one time where on the second roll I got a second nat 1 and fell of a balcony and almost fell through the floor below into the boss chamber.
I had wonderful, off the cuff, moment with a player of mine relating to team composition. I've dm'd for a while, but he's always been the dm for his playgroup. I offered to run a summer campaign.
Session 0 rolls around and we've got 2 warlocks, 2 wizards, and 2 rouges. He's like "I'll just change my class," and I informed him that wouldnt be neccesary. He asked whether or not i was worried I'd run into balancing issues with such a weird team comp, and I told him it was my job as a DM to balance encounters around the players, not to balance the players around my encounters.
Had never thought of it that way until he raised his concern. =) And our game is going great.
We do critical fails until level 5. Kind of gives us the feeling of gaining combat experience either as an individual or just the characters learning how to meld as a team.
9. Using materials instead of a spell component pouch is just a weird way of doing the same thing. Yes, your component pouch is assumed to contain what you need, but you should still be mentioning restocking it, and even with an arcane focus you still have to provide any material component with an associated cost. (Though I bet some people houserule that even those costly materials are handwaved.)
A lot of these errors in making house rules starts with not understanding basic math. A great IRL example of this comes from World War II. Bomber squadrons had a 5% attrition rate. Your tour was considered complete after 20 missions flown. That's not good. This is obviously similar to rolling a "1" on a d20. It's going to happen 5% of the time which is not rare. If you are going to have extra consequences for rolling a "1", perhaps add an additional roll on a table with another d20 roll to spruce things up a bit. The reason for house rules is usually to add flavor to things. A good DM can come up with things on a whim to make things more fun. A funny fail can be better than a punishing fail. As far as house rules I do like, is ditching multiclassing. It is optional after all. I just dislike it when people take 2 levels of fighter just to get action surge for the millionth time. Instead of multiclassing, I tend to create magic items with limited uses that the players can use in a pinch that replicates these abilities. This also prevents abuse.
Apparently #10 is becoming RAW in the next edition of D&D. Urggghhhhh...
I played a short westmarches campaign (goal was to clear out an old, demon/orc/undead infested dwarven stronghold, so pretty simple) with Permanent Injuries, and considering the tone and... simplicity? of it, I was pretty OK with it.
It was all up-front, and it wasn't *every* crit that took a limb, but it was an option. Also the crit table (which affected both PC's and monsters) allowed us PC's some absolutely monstrous turns. I was a lvl 11 paladin who dealt 400 damage in a single turn, because the crit table let me attack one extra time, and I got quadruple the damage on my crit(s. Had 2 crits of 4 attacks).
It had risks balanced out by absolutely mental amounts of damage potential for us. But the game was SUPPOSED to be deadly, and living to the end wasn't something you should expect. It was very niche, but I think in a situation such as that one, Permanent Injuries is an acceptable house rule. I'd never accept it in a regular "Narrative" campaign, though.
My take on numbers 10 & 1: natural 20's succeed more often for the party (e.g. if they beat an opponent's opposed skill by 20, no number of natural 20's from the opponent can negate the party's roll) and fail forward mechanics OR natural 1's fail the opponents more often (Someone failing a check may allow them to still continue forward but not without consequence. While natural 1's _doesn't_ have to have a critical failure table, i.e. _an_ excuse for pricks to peck over martials, an opponent rolling a natural 1 on an opposed check will invariably allow the party to succeed... except maybe both fumbles result in rerolls to see who fumbles into a win somehow).
My DM does critical success on initiative so regardless of how much higher you have an enemy could easily go first just from pure luck, which really screws with anyone that builds around high init.
Hi. Regarding bad rule 8: I just encountered this on a new game I joined. I wanted to be a bladesinger but he “strongly encouraged” that I pick a non-wizard, preferably a martial because of the existing party comp. luckily, there are tons of character concepts I want to try so I went along with it but in really wanted to play that bladesinger.
He said his reasoning for no wizards was not wanting the extra load of making scrolls available or materials for wizard spell copying and material components
I just have every character level at the end of every session.
How long are your sessions? How do they go? How far do they get? How often do you play? LOL so many questions...
@@AllenLinnenJr 4 hours weekly
@@BoToChris Wow! So, like half a year to level 20. That's cool. Do you do 'end game content' for adventures at level 20? I don't see a lot of it and I think that lvl 20 adventures would be cool.
In the first campaign I played it was an established rule player death was forbidden. On more than occasion we were threatened we would revived if we died. So narrative death based on rp was out the window.
First thing that comes to mind when hearing multiclassing in 5e is coffee-lock.^^
I had comedies in my game through not ones occasionally catastrophic for the enemy's mostly but I usually just make it a narrative moment some of your most horrific failures are hilarious to watch
I made a chart of lingering injuries that'll suck to have, but can be cured with the right spell/potion (and if it's really bad, a saving throw)
Sounds like pointless admin if it doesn't actually serve a purpose. Like what was the point if I could just get it undone? Might as well just make it a timed debuff.
@@Hinaguy749 it may indeed be pointless to you, yes.
At our gaming table we have a rulel with crits and crit fails . If you role a Nat -1 your next atk/skill roll is a -1 but if you roll a Nat-20 you get a +1 on your next roll . It's not much but they like it .
For the rule about making players pick different classes/roles, if someone wants to play a class I already have in my games, I'll let them know, but I'll also say I can make it work if they want to play that class. I just want them to know it isn't off the table, just that this class is played by someone else. Most classes can be played as multiple roles anyways, so I haven't had a problem on the couple occasions that the player had their hearts set on that class.
I agree that almost all of these are terrible, but personally I'm conflicted on Nat 1/20 = Auto Fail/Success. You made some great points about players/NPCs always having a 5% chance of success even when it should be impossible and I HATE critical fumbles... but part of me loves the excitement over a Nat 20 or the humour of a Nat 1, so I'm very torn.
I've watched some D&D shows where a Nat 1 on something like Perception or Insight reveals something ridiculous, or the opposite of the truth and that can be very entertaining, but there's always the potential for metagaming making that obsolete, not to mention that it can sometimes feel like punishing a player who has already failed (this is why I don't do this in the game I DM). As for Nat 20s being an auto success, I guess if a Nat 20 isn't high enough to succeed, then maybe they shouldn't be rolling the dice for that check? The friends I play with are reasonable people, so they don't tend to roll checks before being asked or try to murderhobo/seduce every NPC. If they ask to do something that's legit impossible, I would probably just tell them that, rather than letting them roll and get their hopes up
counter point to nat 20 not succeeding could be that it is a high roll that you'd be expected to have either proficiency or expertise in in order to succeed
For 3rd party content I don't allow them to just look up any homebrew online. It has to be from one of my books. Many are official and just as much are 3rd party. That also means no silvery barbs because I don't have that book.
I'm also not a fan of multiclassing since it can come across as pretty power gamey and if a player wants to do it, they need a good lore reason.
My group does the first one, success at a rare event is just what we do (just we don't do any over the top shenanigans with it.) We also have a special multi classing rule. 2 classes only both can go up to 20th level.
Also critical fumbling is fun! As both the players and enemy something bad or really good happen to them. Depending on whats the situation and it it's a Crit fail or success.
I had an idea what if when you have a reoccurring character villain maybe cause permanent damage to it to make it feel possible or maybe learning weaknesses like if you have a super boss like nemesis style that won't leave you alone maybe each time you're able to temporary defeat the character you're able to learn and maybe even weaken it over time or even cast a seal that takes time to work I think would work best with a mid-range boss before the final boss who like dark souls style and gained a lot of power from it.
Ideas to fix these rules:
10. Keep Natural 20 successes to Players Only, and don't let players roll excessively or on things they can't succeed. Natural 20 ability checks aren't to everyone's liking, but I think Natural 20 saving throws always succeeding for players is great if a barbarian with 8 int is stuck making an int save against things like Maze from a high level spellcaster. It would suck to have no hope of escape from debilitating spells.
9. You got it right. Use it in a very survival-focused campaign, but not in every campaign. Not for everyone's taste, and I wouldn''t want to be a spellcaster in it.
8. Forcing party composition is a bad rule, but i do have one exception. I personally like keeping two people from playing the exact same class, as it makes for more interesting parties. Feel free to disagree, however, as I think that is a somewhat unpopular opinion.
7. Like you said, not technically a house rule. I agree fully omitting multiclassing makes the game worse, but you already fixed it, so... moving on.
6. Only for the right table. Keep it simple and don't make it too punishing.
5. Be careful. With the right table, allowing tons of homebrew can make things insanely fun. However, blanket allows is a huge problem, especially with horribly downvoted Dndbeyond content. That being said, banning all of it feels like a disservice to the community.
4. No, just no.
3. Don't cause the players' levels to drift apart or split them up.
2. Definitely not for me. Feels really really bad. Grittier tables, however, may enjoy it as long as it isn't too crippling.
1. Again, nope.
I am doing DnD with fairly new players and I banned Multi-classing just so they get a feeling for the classes first before going crazy.
Was that a mistake?
Nope. Multiclassing is an optional rule. Not using optional rules isn't a "house rule," it's very literally using Rules As Written.
The very fact that optional rules are called "optional" makes them... well... optional.
Yes and no. That better choice would be to not ban it, but rather let players focus on their class. But if one player wanted something special from another class, or saw something fun online and wanted to multiclass. They could talk to you about it because the player could be invested in the game. And on occasions some dms allow never players to back pedal some character choices. (Including previous level ups)
Some players don't want to think to hard so they solo class. But there's a small number that gets invested in the game aspect.
@@dee7571 My goal was to not overwhelm them. I curated a list of races, classes and subclasses I allowed and I figured the rules to multiclassing are very complicated and open up a lot of options and also make character creation harder (with min stats to allow certain multiclassing and so on) i figured it would be unfair to some of them to then allow it because not every character was built with multiclassing in mind
@@xXFoiXx this is for a table of new players, and you did it without melishious intent. I don't know what you have planned for your table. Length of campain or future goals. I hope your players will have fun.
I'm the dm and I'm the youngest of the group, and am a numbers guy. I mentioned multiclassing and their possibilities without diving into it. One player was interested but she also said it was a little complicated and would prefer not to multi. I'm just listing how I covored Multiclassing at my table of new players to possibly help
When my group played DnD for first time our DM did ban multiclass as we all afraid of it going to be too complicated. But later on the Fighter ask the DM that she wanted to multiclass into a Rogue out of curiosity, and since the DM also curious on how it works too he allowed it. And thus my group learnt about how multiclass works during our first campaign. Based on that, I think multiclass wont hurt *if* you and your group really wanted to try it. Tho to be note that my group's first campaign (LMoP) was pretty much just us testing how the game works.
Multiclassing is Optional, therefore not using it is not "House Rules" by the very reason that is an optional rule.
You are right, but not allowing multiclassing kind of sucks
@BigChiba
As long as WOTC allows for OP exploits within multiclassing I'm fine with DM's banning it in full or partially. It's already hard enough to balance the game as it is.
@@yunusahmed2940
It ain't that serious 🤣
@BigChiba
For a lot of us DMs it is. That's fine if you don't care that much, but I deal with powergamers.
@@yunusahmed2940
Same here, our table allows ALL published material. We take turns DMing and love dealing with whatever insane challenges we throw at each other.
Nat20s on saving throws are an automatic pass in my games. If you would have also passed on a 19, a Nat20 save also negates any ill-effects, such as half damage on a passed save.
As it comes to D20 rolls, I also use the Pathfinder rule that any successes 10 or more over the DC are considered critical successes, which are functionally equivalent to rolling a Nat20.
Nat20s on skill checks that have an impossibly high DC simply negate any downsides of a failure for that roll. This one's a bit trickier for DMs to interpret, but I'm sure they'll manage.
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"Permanent" injuries are another house rule in my games for recovery from death as well as the mentioned narrative injuries from choices the players make their characters do.
Why I put the "permanent" in quotes is that the penalty lasts until healed with a regeneration spell, which typically requires going to a Cathedral or doing a guild sidequest to recover.
Typically, only one or two party members will ever have these types of injuries at a time; resulting in the party needing a bit of downtime, as I offer them an easy worldbuilding quest.
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In my games, critical fumbles exist, and when they happen, either the player rolling them or an ally adjacent to the roll's target is slid one square as a result of a critical fumble.
Brings me to a big one you missed: push/pull/slide mechanics provoking opportunity attacks with advantage. I use this one a LOT in my games. Normally, only willing movement provokes.
I want my players to pull off some nice combos and help to facilitate such with this house rule. However, I also use this in conjunction with critical fumbles. Lots of fun from this.
I was largely with you until the Disallowing Multiclassing one. At least as far as a Top 10 Worst Homebrew Rules is concerned, and that's even before the fact that the DMG specifically mentions that Multiclassing is an optional rule.
There are plenty of lore related reasons why someone shouldn't be able to multiclass. Being an actual Fighter or an actual Bard is already supposed to be amazing enough. It really beggars belief that a constraint like 'Stay with the One who Brought you' isn't going to allow a player to be creative in those bounds.
I usually implement house rules only to eliminate tried and true fiascos that the community has identified as stupidly broken, such as the Woodland Beings' spell Pixie's polymorph ability. DnD 5E has enough rules already, I don't need to implement more. My goal was, is and will always be, ensuring my Players are having FUN. They get enough crap rules thrown at them at their job, school, LIFE, whatever. They came to this game to have fun, not to see if their PC can overcome the kind of crap they already deal with on a day-to-day basis. Any DM that still thinks the game is "DM vs the PCs" or "PCs vs the Rule Set, is a bad DM. Reading some of the bad "House Rules" mentioned by commenters here, I'd walk out during session ONE. Life's too short.
My leveling up system is what level you are is how many sessions it takes. so a level 3 party takes 3 sessions to level up. the cap on this is 8 sessions or so. it gets tedious to want to level up when you're level 14 or so
I allow critical success and use fumbles, but I keep fumbles optional and reward xp for them.
I use the nat 20 rule but not to his full extend, and i drasticly reduce the effinency of the outcome by social ekcounters
I plan on dming soon, probably gonna create an LFG, im gonna let multiclassing, multiple same classes, archetypes, whatever.
Even homebrew, only request for homebrew is ask me, if you show me the stardust bard, and i think it sounds fun and flavorful, you can use, but if you show me an isekai protag subclass, no😂
Two Points in this video are less "House Rules" and more - "Optional Rules in the DMG/PHB".
#7 Multiclassing- Multiclassing is optional just like feats are optional in 5e thus your DM and Table have the freedom to say no to this. Its rare but it is technically not a house rule to not allow feats and multiclassing in 5e.
#2 Permanent Injuries. There's rules for Lingering Injuries on page 272 of the DMG, they imo are quite brutal (15% chance of a devastating debuff after suffering a Critical Hit/Dropping to 0 Hit Points/Failing a Death Save by 5 or more) but like feats and multiclassing its all optional stuff.
Personally, I think rule 4 is the worst house rule on this list, Critical Fumbles are terrible but at least you can still play the game after something bad happens to your PC (or make a new one). Rule 4, Reset back to level 1 after death, is unplayable. You will have PCs die and unless your DM has revival options like Raise Dead and Resurrection just casually available to the party throughout the game this rule might as well say "You die, you leave the game" cause no level 5 or 8 or 12 group will take a level 1 person into the crazy difficult stuff they're dealing with and its not fun for the player to be that weak. It also causes problems for when multiple people die, the campaign is basically over just because two of the four PCs die, its a compounding problem.
new video LESGOOOOO
When it comes to party composition, there are certain thing players should try to divvy up simply to avoid designing characters that are constantly competing for the same opportunities to shine.
For number 8: forced party composition. my home rule is people can't be the same class and role. so two fighters is fine as long as their playstyle is different. (like one knight character and one archer character) or if there are two healer characters and one's primarily a healing cleric then the other player would have to be a healing druid or bard etc. I want each player to feel special and no one stepping on each other's toes
Some of these I agree with some, obviously not. I do add some spice on Natural 1s. They apply to both sides, PC/NPCs but never really anything that outright kills or breaks a character. Normally on a 1, you hit an ally...or lose a weapon...or make an ass of yourself. Beyond that, nothing too bad. I also think that the aversion to 3rd party is way way overstated. I think that there are some things that are OP, I dont have any issue with powerful feats, races, classes, etc. I think in most cases, people can sit down and hammer the details if they really wanted.
im not a fan o Critical Fumble Tables cause i once almost killed the party Sorcerer cause of two 1s i rolled in combat with my Ranger, and twice i rolled to hit an ally, and twice the ally was the Sorcerer (over 30 damage to a level 6 Sorcerer)
Multiclassing is an Optional rule, so choosing not to use it isn't a house rule, it's just running the game
I can understand why some DMs don't use multiclasses, that rule is very confusing, so some DMs just don't bother, especially new DMs, one less thing to worry about.
That’s actually the case for several of these “houserules” if you actually read the relevant rules.
7. Multiclassing is already a variant just like feats. You all just assume they're part of every game.
I use also permanent injuries if a Player get nocked with a nat 20 but I gibt my players the Chance to heal themselves
Ugh, I hate that people think critical fumbles means just catastrophic consequences for all 1’s. It’s super fun when something a little extra bad happens. It’s made every game I’ve ever been apart of (as player or dm) way more fun and memorable
If a natural 20 doesn’t succeed you shouldn’t be rolling.
I’ve always wanted to play, but I don’t have people to play with or teach me 😭
The nat 20 always succeeds is so stupid, my most hated house rule. Spell casters needing the actual components, ugh that would make me want to quit since my favorite class is sorcerer. The no multiclassing rule, another great example of a shit house rule. Nevermind, just got to number 1... crit fumbles is actually my most hated house rule. It is objectively the worst house rule for 5e.
Idk how you can add not allowing an optional rule as a house rule though.
Also nat20 always succeeding as a good house rule IMO, you know what's bad? Asking for a roll that cannot succeed on a nat20, why are you rolling dice then?
So banning multiclassing is a bad house rule, but it's an optional rule so it's not really a ban? His final sentence of the section completely negated the need for the section in the first place.
Guys, repeat after me:
If there's no way a character would sucessed we shouldn't ask for rolls.
Good.
Not allowing Multiclassing isn't a house rule. It is not using an optional rule
meanwhile baldur's gate 3 with nat 20s and nat 1s.
Yeah, but that's a single-player video game. If your BG3 barbarian rolls a 20 on an Arcana check that Gale failed, so what? There's no player behind Gale who feels bad because their character is useless in the thing they built him for while the -1 INT barbarian succeeds.
I strongly disagree with the nat20 rule being placed on this lidt because if there's no way a characterd would succed at something, there shouldn't roll to begin with. Dices are there to simulate randomess, if there's only one outcome a roll becomes pointless.
The way I use Crit Fumbles is that they get knocked prone, because that's still not great but it's not going to mess with a character very much, outside of specific situations.
for the last one: nat 1s
In our group we use nat 1s to discribe failure funny. Its clear for everyone, that the role fails, so offen PCs have funny ideas for what Happens.
We enjoy nat 1s :D
I don't enforce party roles, i make my encounters with zero regard for what they can do. You guys don't have a rogue? Be a shame if there's a locked door.
3rd party content? Everything in my game is 3rd party... made by me because a goal of me running my game was to playtest some changes i made to core classes
It's not even a rule, but I'm annoyed with the "it's unrealistic" argument. I mean, if it's your real argument (not "doesn't feet the setting" but exactly "unrealistic"), it's basically the same as "I'm a DM and I can bun anything from the game because I just don't feel like this". And if it's just for saying something... I will appreciate any reasons you want to ban a certain option (not accounting for the previous case), but please, tell about it. I at least want to understand if it's OK if I try to find another way to do the same, or if it's better to give up on my idea
I mean.
If you dislike Critical Fumbles or Critical Successes, why are you asking for a roll? If there is no chance for failure, or success on a given roll, then it is pointless.
As for your comment about social encounters, I'd point you to the social encounter part of the DMG, where NPCs are either helpful, neutral, or hostile to the players. Their interactions, INCLUDING ROLLS, should influence the NPCs disposition, though almost never more than one shift per encounter.
I use critical fumbles in long-term campaigns, but the rule I've hit on for it makes 2 alterations to the way most people seem to. First off, when you roll a 1 you have to roll again to 'confirm' the fumble. If you roll anything but another 1, it's just a failure, only if you get two 1's back to back do you trigger a fumble effect. Secondly, the effects are always limited to the character that fumbled, and always temporary. No hitting other players, no permanent crippling injuries, no breaking a valuable item. My current campaign has had one fumble so far, where a character was charging into a grapple with an enemy on top of a cliff. Rolled both ones, so the enemy completely sidestepped and they couldn't stop themselves in time, had to roll a dex save to catch themselves as they went over the edge. Had they failed, they would have taken 2d6 falling damage and had to climb back up, but they made the save so just ended up effectively prone for a round while they pulled themselves up from the edge.
I do like the idea of critical fumbles
Most of the others I don’t like
Not using optional rules isn't a "house rule." It's Rules As Written. "Optional" means optional.
Wosrt house rule at my table is repelling blast is outlawed
As a Warlock player with repelling blast, I say Booo! It's FUN! DM even gives me extra damage if I smash enemies into stuff! I disarmed a fire Giant by making a Targeted attack! (it was awesome. I launched the greatsword from its hands and embedded it in the mountain rock 10ft away)
Warlock already underpowered compared to other caster, how did your DM thinks crippling them more is a good idea. (-_-)
@Bendtsen that's exactly how repelling blast should feel.
Came about when we were on a ship, and I repelled a few bad guys off the side, so now there is no repelling blast without some sort of save or size restriction or once per turn.
Well for number 10 im 100% of the opinion that you wouldn't let them roll if they are not able to succede anyway. The only exeption would be a roll from 2 different people were one has a +2 and ther other a +11 and you don't wanna break the moment. And even then you are fucked if the guy with the +2 rolls a nat20
Not using the OPTIONAL rule of multi-class is not a house rule
I have never heard of #2, let alone anyone implementing it, and it sounds HORRIBLE! Isn’t it good enough with the RAW that you at least need components that have a specified gold cost? Many components are just jokes anyway, not part of divine formulae the designers uncovered. Plus, spell foci are iconic to the casters. This is like making a martial character maintain their weapons and armor due to wear and tear or those things need to be a specific shape for them to confer the damage/AC.
why is it wrong for a player to want to take a level in a class that makes them more powerful?
WotC has given up on balance, and I don't know of anyone who thinks Wildemount is balanced. Not aware of any playtesting before that was released.
Anything should be vetted by the DM. 3rd party content isn't special in that regard.
If you get a nat 20 on a skill, to me it means you performed above your means. It gets rewarded and my job as a dm is to figure out what that looks like.
If it's an outlandish request, you have disadvantage and there could be social consequences to your failure.
No a nat 20 isn't above your means but the best you could possibly do. A illiterate barb who has never once seen draconic text is not going to be read the scroll of dragonic magic regardless of whether or not the player rolled 20
@@sam7559 I wouldn't allow a skill check for a language you can't read.
If you were like "I want to rip the wheel off this wagon" and you had a -2 athletics, a nat 20 on that athletics check would do it for me. Even if that would normally be a DC of 20 (hard) or higher. Either I would narrate that you clearly identified a faulty wheel, or that you felt a surge of adrenaline uncharacteristic of you. Telling a player they could never succeed instead of collaborating on a fun success isn't my style. But I imagine we dm differently. Your style probably works for your table and that's all good.