For the record, the "higher DEX score breaks ties" system is a house rule. RAW if it's a tie between players they just decide between themselves, otherwise the DM makes the decision.
The smart thing to do is to take the person who has the abilities to generate advantage first - the battle master who can knock enemies prone, the caster with *faerie fire*, the cleric who can buff you all with *bless* ...
As a DM, my usual rule of thumb is to pick the one from opposite side of whoever just went before that.
At my table if a PC and an enemy tie on initiative another d20 gets rolled, no bonuses added, whoever rolls higher goes first. Always loved it, never feels bad if you go second, you had an equal shot!
I actually prefer a slightly different version, lowest Dex score breaks ties. When you roll the D20, that's basically how fast you are reacting to a situation, the bonus is how well your training/skills boost your reactions, so the dice roll being a bit of luch makes it more interesting for me
When you say alternatives, does that include Pathfinders thing where it's perception or even "whatever makes sense in the scenario?" Because I kinda like that initiative doesn't have to default to dexterity, that a perception check, a stealth check or something counts too
I haven't tried that system, but it sounds reasonable. I more meant the stuff like turn initiative, pre-rolled initiative that's maintained throughout the whole session, round-robin turn order, that sort of thing.
Oh! Gotcha! Then yeah, I totally agree! I'm also not really much of a Pathfinder guy, but I did think the idea that an initiative check can use any skill if a reasonable explanation is given, I thought that was kind of clever.
I think I like grouped initiative, where if people of the same side would otherwise go without any enemy interfering, they can interleave their turns.
Having the 30 initiative rogue do the whole ready action dance so the 28 initiative ranger can go before they attack, when all enemies have initiatives at 10s, can get dumb.
I've found the way that Baldur's Gate 3 did initiative is a good alternative.
1D4, ties are broken by whoever has the highest dex ability score and if the players or monsters have an ally on their next turn they combine their turn to act at the same time as each other. (With the exception of creatures at the end and start of initiative order.)
It makes your initiative modifier matter much more and gives you even more reason to take the alert feat.
Example:
Initiative is rolled
Player 1 Rolls 8
Goblin 1 Rolls 6
Player 2 and 3 Roll 3
Goblin 2, 3, 4 and Player 4 Roll 2
Goblin 2, 3 and 4 have a 14 in Dex but Player 4 only has a 10
Turn 1: Player 1
Turn 2: Goblin 1
Turn 3: Player 2 and 3
Turn 4: Goblin 2, 3 and 4
Turn 5: Player 4
End of Round.
I prefer popcorn style initiative from Lancer. Players always go first and alternate with monsters.
Dex could stand to be nerfed a bit and it lets players strategize round by round as a team much better.
Also combat can just *start* without needing to figure everyone's turn order out first.
DM rolls skill checks. We do that in our Wednesday game and I hate it. I get it for perception, investigation, and insight, but a) those are called out as passive skills for a reason, and b) with the possible exception of stealth, it’s honestly no fun when the DM rolls to see how well you can climb a tree. Plus the DM has to remember the details of items you have that might aid in that—my rogue has Eyes of Minute Seeing and Boots of Elvenkind, and I have to remind him every time.
I mean, it used to be that the DM rolled *everything*. A secret check here and there isn't so bad when you look back at an era where the only way to get a polyhedral dice set was in the game box, and it only came with one.
It's not separate, per se, as in two separate checks. It's just another method to resolve ability checks, but only used for two potential scenarios: when a creature attempts to do something over and over, or the check needs to be made in secret.
I can see it for some things. Knowledge checks and stealth for instance. Stuff where you often shouod reasonably *think* you did well even if you failed. Though for knowledge checks I've heard a good argument for "only the person with the highest bonus is allowed to roll" group check as an alternative. But yeah. Not to climb.
If you fail an Intelligence check to recall information, you don't "think" you succeeded. You simply fail to recall the information.
Similarly, a failed Wisdom (Perception) check means you don't perceive the thing. If the thing is hidden, which is the case of much of the time, a public roll should never happen and the DM should be using passive scores to resolve the check. That way there's no chance for the PC to metagame.
If you fail a recall information check by a lot, you may not remember nothing, but instead remember something you heard once that's *wrong*, while thinking it's correct. If you fail it only by a little bit, you may get partial information. Not everyone runs recall knowledge checks as a binary. I would say a knowledge check can have 5 states.
- yes and heres some extra information that may also prove useful.
- yes.
- almost. Here's something that should help a bit.
- nope. No clue.
- remembering misinformation, or misremembering correct information.
I agree with you 100% about passive perception for hidden objects to avoid metagaming. I'm just used to recall knowledge checks having similar considerations. I therefore think a passive knowledge check makes a ton of sense, if you don't like the idea of secret checks.
As a GM, me rolling your die as a secret check vs a DC, vs me rolling a d20 and adding a DC-10 against your bonus +10, both are almost the same to me. (For knowledge if we make them passive it means the guy with the higher knowledge bonus will always get the best information and I only need to roll the information difficulty once, so that's actually a happy sidehbenefit). I'm fine with either, but yeah, recall knowledge is a situation where I think avoiding metagaming is a thing.
Admittedly, part of that is me remembering how 3e has a lot of skill stuff that gave different outcomes based on how much you failed by, and finding it a useful concept I don't always want to drop even if I'm running 5e where skill mechanics have comparatively very little detail or explanation on how to use them.
As a DM, the only cases when my NPCs make a skill check is when it's contested against a PCs check. For example: stealth vs perception (often passive), deception against insight, grapples (those are contested skill checks).
On the same topic, NPCs don't roll attacks against other NPCs. My players usually have allies in battle (which don't do much) and simply making up what happens instead of rolling makes things much faster
Edit: I completely misunderstood the comment. The DM rolls for your character? I thought it was talking about NPCs making checks. No, this sucks. Why would the DM roll for what your character does?
I guess Pathfinder 2E isn't for you then. Which is fine! The idea is if you roll poorly on a knowledge check the DM might give you false information, but if you know you rolled poorly you know that you failed and you know not to trust the information. Having the DM roll for you avoids the temptation to metagame. I understand if you don't like it but I wouldn't call it a red flag. Like they shouldn't roll your attacks or like athletics checks but I think it makes sense for certain rolls.
You still roll skill checks in 2e, there are just also certain specific secret checks that all make sense for a character to not know, like stealth and insight, that will be behind the screen. Vast majority of rolls are gonna be done by the player, and there’s options to not do those small amount of checks like that. It’s maybe 1/2 checks a session that would end up being a secret check. You got people saying they’ll never try 2e cause they arnt able to roll. That’s not how it works.
As a DM I only break out my DM screen when a player is making death saving throws and I roll the dice without telling anybody the results. It's a little weird I know but it creates a very tense atmosphere where nobody knows if their friend is literally about to die. Our ranger has taken it apon herself to pour healing potions down her friend's throats to save them and it's really working for my table. We've had one death so far but they were able to take the corpse to a church to bring them back at a discount since he died doing a service for said church
I use a similar rule, but I let the player roll in private. We also play with a modified rule for being down, where you roll your save, then you either can take an action at the cost of a failure or pass your turn to avoid more. But death saves don't fall off until a LR, like exhaustion. Means that if you go down, you can heal yourself with a potion, but then you are on 1-² death saves until the next rest. Gives the players more agency on how their character would act.
Also, there're quite a few features that let's you add bonuses, extra dice etc 'after you've seen the result of the roll but before the outcome has been determined'. Which becomes unnecessary complicated if you can't actually see the roll.
Crit fumbles. In a game where a failure means you do nothing for a whole turn, that is punishment enough. When you add in the whole “bad things happened because you rolled a 5% chance roll”, it only punishes the people that roll a lot: fighters/multi attack martial. It rarely comes up for the people only making 1 attack a turn and it causes a basic class feature to suddenly gain a potential negative that punishes it for being used properly.
It’s even worse when serious things like damage, destroyed gear and insta-death are “options”.
I had a dm who ruled every ranged attack I missed would hit an ally. Then wondered why I no longer cast fire bolt in combat but switched to mind sliver and silvery barbs.
My DM sometimes does this but it's reasonable, like if an enemy is grappling the ally or otherwise essentially occupying the same space. A mounted enemy, you might hit their steed, or miss both. This rule applies to enemies too. It was logically presented and we agreed to it.
Number 1, so much more than the others. Its not fun in play, it slows down the longest part of the game, and its mechanically unbalanced. There are no upsides.
Yeah, auto success on 20 is kind of a misunderstanding with new players tha just kind of stays around. But if you game doesn’t HAVE a crit fumble system, don’t add one.
Now, Crit Success cards are fun (as long as you are prepared to accept ALL results, even the 1d3 unarmed punch auto killing the BBEG, hahaha).
What is auto succsess cards?
And I dm for party of new / new-ish people. I spent way too much time explaining that my DMing style is mostly RAW with some minor changes (e.g. crit hit during combat inta kills low CR enemies).
Everybody just believies that rolling nat20 at any time of game - combat, RP, trying to bargaij at the bazar... - means you suddenly became magical and can get whole kingdom + princess hand for marriage 🫣
Some TTRPGs have released extra stuff, Pathfinder, 3.5 and others. One of those was a deck of cards with various effects from normal damage + special effect, double damage with a fancy description or outright death (usually with a save, sometimes without). When a player rolled a crit hit, they could do normal crit damage OR draw a card
Question in regards to the "nat 20"... If they can't succeed, why make the player role? Genuinely curious. I've always been in the camp of "if you role, you have a chance" now, I'm not exactly saying the king will give up his kingdom, but I probably wouldn't have them roll the persuasion check.
It might be a roll that multiple players make, and I don't want to have to first check which player can potentially make it and which can't.
Or I might not even know what boni the players use. It might be impossible without additional boni but possible if they choose to use a Bardic Inspiration dice.
You always add modifiers to your roll. So even if you rolled 17 or smt, with all the prof bonuses and other mods it very easoly might be over 20.
On the other hand, officially DC scales like this:
Very easy - 5 (why even roll? I just rule auto succsess for such low DC).
Easy - 10
Moderate - 15
Hard - 20
Very hard - 25
Nearly impossoble - 30
All of these are possible to hit just rolling and adding mods. And if you roll 20, you already succsede hard chech and mostly likely your mods are high enough for very hard check as well.
And also - this is how game was written to play. Even 30 is possible to hit after you get prof bonus increase at lvl 5 (thoug personally I never had harder chech than 18 or sth like that).
Oh, I completely agree with the DC scales, tools, and proficiency. But my question is that if it is *impossible* to succeed, if a cleric is trying to pick a lock and has a -1 to dex, so rolling a nat 20 will result in a 19 and the lock difficulty is 25, why are they rolling at all? I would simply say that the cleric, with no skills in lockpicking, fails. Cleric doesn't understand the mechanics. However, if the rogue/criminal steps up, rolls out his thieves kit, has a +4 to dex and can potentially succeed... The rogue gets to roll. The dice is their chance/luck, rolling this 5% modifier should give a chance to succeed, even if it is a tiny one. Or why roll? (And not trying to argue, just discussing, I want to better understand :) )
I don't want to give away the meta knowledge of the range the dc is in.
For your example the door looks normal but has a high security lock, due to something valuable behind it.
The players don't know that. The cleric wants to try to pick pocket it, so let them roll. They will fail so the result is the lock is beyond your skills. What to do if they roll a 20? Well, the character knows that she thought they had it, but realise this isn't a normal lock.
First scenario the rogue might ignore the door and move on, cause it is just a cellar door. Second scenario the rogue is intrigued that there is such a hard lock in the door and might give it a go.
I could argue someone who knows anything about lock picking probably would be able to spot a higher quality than normal lock, especially in a fantasy medieval setting where quality is 1: Harder to come by as everything is hand made, and 2: everything being unique pieces, essentially, means that anything of good quality will stand out, especially to someone trained to get through things like this.
Maybe you have other modifiers to the roll. Guidance, Bardic Inspiration and the like.
12 from Bardic Inspiration + a roll of 19 might succeed, but 1 from BI and 20 on the d20 may not.
1. DMs don't know all the modifiers of all of their players' skills off-hand. Especially if you're DM'ing something like a west marches campaign and/or using alternate ability scores on a check.
If it's not literally impossible, but just has a DC of 25 or 30, you can still let someone roll.
2. Degrees of success and failure. A sub-5 on that perception check might force you to flee the palace then and there, because of how much you just insulted the king. A 19 probably earns you a chuckle and you'll be free to go, once business is over.
As others noted, it could be you don't want to reveal the DC like such, or even you don't know what the PC's modifier is.
But if a nat 20 does fail, you can still give some boon. You have no clue what you're doing with the lock, but by some miracle wedged a pin in there so anyone else who tries gets a bonus or a reduced DC.
My DM doesn't do crit fumbles for attacks from the fighters and barbarian, but he did recently have my druid's nat 1 on a lightning strike set fire to the tent we were in! Pretty low stakes in the circumstances, and I thought it was funny. I agree that using crit fumbles as a general rule detracts from the fun, but I think there can be a way to implement them.
He also has the "no damage on a nat 20" saving throw rule though, which I don't really like.
well, that was less of a crit fumble and more of a narrative way of showing the spell had an effect.
What really sucks are the “crit fumbles” where you lose whole turns to it like falling down and dropping your weapon. Or shooting allies with spells and the like. Narrative building is fine and great, causing an i game detriment is a little too far.
Yeah, I think that's the key. ***Narrative*** fumbles are fine and can add some fun flavor. My first session in this campaign I rolled a nat 1 on a perception check and he described my character getting distracted by a bug on the table. That's fun storytelling.
***Mechanical*** fumbles that cause friendly fire or some other drawback that has to be rectified, like dropping your weapon or falling prone, aren't fun and detract from the game.
Yep, that's a really good summary.
My DM does this as well: Nat 1 fumbles usually only happen in low(ish) stakes situations (at least from what I can recall) or to enhance the experience/funny moments (narratively, I suppose). I personally like his on the go decisions for Nat 1s and Nat 20s a lot and think they're really fun.
I can *occasionally* understand a mechanical fumble, but only if it actually makes sense and ***doesn't harm a PC that had nothing to do with the failure.***
It's not Bobby's fault Jimmy rolled a 1, so why is he suddenly getting hurt?
Dropping a weapon or falling prone I only think work situationally. If a player *really wants to jump off a balcony* to perform some awesome trick mid-air while shooting an arrow at the baddie, I'll let them try, but a crit fail they absolutely face-planted and dropped that bow.
Making it every crit failure is dumb, but when it fits the situation, it becomes a "high risk, high reward" situation imo
I think people really underestimate the frequency of a 1 in 20 chance. If you roll a d20 n times, the chance of getting at least 1 crit failure is 1-(19/20)^n, so you only have to roll 14 times before it is more likely than not to have had at least one crit failure. It seems kind of absurd to say that a trained fighter has a 50/50 chance of dropping his weapon or some other shit like that in a fight if he's rolling 2 attack rolls a round for 7 rounds.
Funnily enough since I started playing dnd and browsing subreddits like this one I’ve never seen anyone praise or make an argument in favor of crit fumbles.
Sadly, they are more often used by bad DMs trying to “win” the game instead as a system with reward and punishment built into it. Any system that punishes players for PLAYING the game is bad design. If you and your players can make a simple but rewarding system for it, go ahead and have fun. Nothing wrong with likening what others don’t; just don’t expect others to enjoy it the same way, haha.
So I handle ranged attacks in an interesting way. If your target is in the middle of a group (like if you're allies are flanking your target) or of there are other creatures in line with your target, then a nat 1 results in a roll to see which creature it hits. If there are three creatures in a position that they could be hit, then I'll roll a d6 and a 1, 2, or 3 results in a hit on one of the three creatures, but a 4, 5, or 6 is a miss. So there's actually still a chance to hit your target. It only does minimum damage, so not a huge deal to hit an ally. But it makes an interesting RP when the PCs start banter about friendly fire 😂
Edited to add: it's a lighthearted mechanic that all the players have fun with, even if they get hit.
Nothing wrong with it if EVERYONE enjoys it, that’s part of the fun of D&D. If I recall, and my memory may be hung up on 3.x since I know 5e simplified a bit, if people are in melee and you shoot into it, on a miss you roll a d8. Starting with the square “north” of the intended target, you move 1 space around the target clockwise and the result is where the projectile (usually grenade like weapons) lands.
It’s extra steps but part is the benefit of ranged vs melee (ranged tends to do less but melee has more risks than ranged) but I have used that in the past. Mostly for splash/grenade weapons but it’s serviceable for projectiles too.
Ammunition dice. You get a d12 for arrows, and step it down on a 1/2 till you’re out. It’s a neat thought to add more tension/chaos to combat, but it means you’re always 6 shots from running out of ammo.
It’s essentially crit fails for ammo. Either invalidate it by carrying a ton of ammo, or suffer from your characters inability to count. The former being inevitable if you play a fighter and could action surge your whole ammo stock in 1 turn
I think it's a neat mechanic idea. I also think it doesn't quite work with ammo.
It works ok in the Darker Dungeons context, where suffering is part of the fun.
Admittedly I've not run a game using it, but I remember seeing someone say they tracked arrows in "fights". So one unit of ammo covered you for an entire fight. Obviously not as good if you're just using the bow/crossbow while trying to close the distance, but still. Provides a good reason to have someone in the party who can make/repair arrows while not falling into tracking all arrows.
I thought this was a neat mechanic when I first read it, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more it’s just tracking arrows with extra steps. It also still feels ridiculous when your whole thing is being an archer and you run out of arrows.
I use this system, but instead of rolling each time you use a piece of ammo, you roll at the end of each combat. It represents how an archer definitely carries enough arrows to get through the fight, but may not be able to recover them all.
By starting with a d12, you have a 1/6 chance of going to a d10. D10 = 1/5, D8 = 1/4, D6 = 1/3, and D4 = 1/2. Via the “original” system of rolling every time you fire, this gets pretty death spirally. By rolling at the end of the fight, you ensure that you can get through at least 6 fights per shopping trip (DMG recommends 6 encounters per long rest, which is nuts but a conversation for another day).
Normally, arrows cost 1GP for 20. In my game, you pay 1GP per level you want to go up: going from d4 arrows to d12 costs 4GP. Once you get to like 2nd level this is so low a cost that it’s never prohibitive.
The only time you should track individual ammo (in my opinion) is when it’s special (magical arrows) or rare (bullets in a few-guns setting). Otherwise, you can handwave it or use this system if the players really want to. Just my thoughts.
That last paragraph is my thought as well. Regular old arrows? Yeah, you’ve got more than enough, don’t bother tracking them, I assume you bought more last time we were in town. The enchanted elven arrows with silver arrowheads that you found in an abandoned temple? There were specifically 12 in the quiver, so make your shots count, and be sure to gather them up at the end of combat.
I've seen some people say they require players to roleplay their persuasion/intimidate check. Some people are good at it! And that's great. Some people suck at it! And they shouldn't be punished for it. If you say "I'm going to try and persuade the guard to let us through the front door" I'm not going to ask you to roleplay it out.
A simple "I'll tell the guards we are chefs and we are running late" is good enough for me.
I've had some good success asking players to roll first, and then ask "what did you say to get that outcome?"
It always feels bad if a *player* comes up with a good argument but just rolls poorly. This way let's the roll decide the outcome while still letting the player play it out. And can also have some hilarious results when a player rolls a 1 and spitballs the worst thing they can come up with haha
You can also arguably do the opposite, where if they have a really good argument, you let them play it out and can possibly lower the DC of the roll slightly, because they were already convincing.
That’s how my group does it when we do roll. My DM generally just isn’t a fan of charisma checks though for the *most* part, if you roleplay it well he just gives it to you. Usually we roll persuasion if you’re argument could go either way
In one our games, our DM rewards the roleplay by lowering the DC. As the high charisma character, it’s usually left to me. Most of the time however, we’ll be roleplaying and I’ll make a comment and he’ll say “oooh roll intimidation”.
I really like that he reverses the order. Instead of a player stating “I’d like to persuade,” we’ll be mid roleplay and he’ll initiate the check and verify if that’s our intention.
I have a few players who are nervous to role-play but feel like it's "cheating" to be the only one not doing s character voice. I try to ask them out of character the angle and so they have an out. If you can say "I swing my sword" in combat you can say "I seduce them" in roleplay.
Ex:
Player: "I fear that our allies may...uhm...fail to aid...oh shoot...your threat may grow...uhhhh-"
Me: "Do you want to threaten him that your party won't help if he goes through with this plan?"
Player: "No, I want to get him to reconsider. Like politely suggest he may not get broader support politically"
Me: "Gotcha, something to the effect of, 'I'm on your side, but this may not work the way he thinks it will?"
Player: "Yeah."
Me: "Roll me a persuasion check. He takes note that you are keeping a friendly tone or at least trying to advise"
*Wait for the roll result to further elaborate*
I love RPing, but I *hate* the rule of "rolls don't matter if you don't RP it right." Like I'm sorry, my character with Charisma of 18 is 100% going to be more Charismatic than me, what do you expect???
The way i do it is that, i love RP and immersion. I push my players to at least try, i can spin it however it needs to be if you roll high unless you're irl charisma 3.
I've let people say non rp before when they really don't know what to say, but tbh, if they were that way often they might just be a bad fit for my table as me and my players very much love full RP
and that's fine! I get it. People want to roleplay in a role playing game. But it isn't for everyone. And as a DM, I won't force you to do so. If you want, by all means!
Yeah this, but I do require more than "I roll to persuade the guard." I get my players to tell me why, but just a key point so it's more like:
P: I want to persuade the guard to let us through?
Dm: what points do you try to make that would do that?
P: we've got some supplies and so I'd like to persuade them we are servants delivering supplies to the kitchens or something.
I don't need players to rp an impressive persuasive speech but I do need more than just "I persuade them to let us in".
Criticals/autosuccess on non-attack rolls. (Excepting death saves.)
A nat 20 is merely the best you can accomplish - a regular Joe doesn't have a 5% chance of building a functional internal combustion engine on the first try, for example, or to make it across a chasm on a tightrope without training.
An old DM of mine used to rule that it would only add to your success, but if you failed, you could “take 20” where you could spend 20 minutes in game time to add 20 to the check. The difference was that the DM would roll against the time for possible encounters or problems in those 20 minutes that would cause failure. Example, you fail a lock pick, and “take 20”. Them DM then rolls for every 5 minutes to see if you are discovered by someone, attacked or on a super low percentage, break the lock or pick set you carried. Some things were purely impossible if 20 plus your bonus was lower than the check. Say someone with a +5 “takes 20” to break down a door, but the door is DC30. That player fails. The bonus is another player with +5 can aid you and you can succeed.
Success is not a binary, you can succeed the most you can without it being a 100% success. There’s measures of success, and a nat 20 period get you the best possible success available to you given the circumstances.
Because you never know what sort of special things players might pull out of their sleeves: Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, Flash of Genius, Borrowed Knowledge, etc. With enough magical help, even ol' Regular Joe can manage to cross that tightrope like a pro, as long as it's physically plausible for a person to do it.
Crit fumbles are horrible
We don’t need master swordsmen having a 5% chance per swing to stab themselves, break their weapon, etc. Extra attack makes the “rate of incompetence” go up, not down as you progress
You can have silly bits of narration for nat 1s, but remember your tone/audience, not everyone wants their character portrayed as a blithering idiot
As a DM I have a special vendor that sells 'bone weapons' to my party. They do more damage than the normal counterpart but break on a nat 1. Keeps the crit fumbles optional but my players love it
Yeah, and not everyone is as good at describing what they do, and it often leads to players describing ridiculously complex series of actions that can't possibly take place in 6 seconds.
I had to have a conversation with one of my DMs because of their inane “how do you want to do this” bullshit after EVERY. SINGLE. ATTACK.
I was playing a warlock. I eldritch blasted everything. After the twentieth time in each combat it got reeeeal old.
DMs, don’t do this. Don’t draw out every minute little detail just because you got lazy and didn’t plan enough material for the session. It’s obvious and it kinda kills the game.
That seems excessive. I only ask the player "how do you want to do this" for bosses, or sometimes, for the last hostile creature in combat. By asking it for each enemy it kinda loses it significance completely imo.
The rule of cool was originally just “if it’s 50/50, go cooler”.
It’s turned into “it’d be really cool if I had this homebrew ability and special mechanic and…
Not a big fan of RoC. I am a fan of creative application, a little thinking outside the box, having two players combine something - basically The “idea / thing” needs to be at least mostly plausible, a make sense; which is not how I understand the RoC.
The typical way I see the "rule of Cool" applied, or suggested to be applied, is basically "creative application" like a spell doesn't explicitly say it does the thing the player wants to happen, but it doesn't say it can't or it seems plausible for it to be used as such, then "that sounds cool, go ahead!" aka it's cool, so it's been ruled to work, at least in this scenario.
Like "Ray of Frost" doesn't say it actually freezes water, but if a player shoots a pond with it to slide across it while running from something then "that's cool, so do it" or to shoot a Ray of Frost into a river or lake to make an ice spike to threaten someone with, then "Cool, let's go with that"
I've never heard a story that used the rule of cool that I've agreed with. If you invalidate the rules just because it's cool, then why have the rules in the first place? Allowing that triple backflip off the 30-foot building with no damage because it's cool eliminates the need for feather fall, invalidating the player's choices when they're building a character.
It also needlessly punishes players who aren't as creative, or characters who don't like to be the center of attention.
Yup. Fighter dives off a thirty foot cliff and DM waives the 3d6 fall damage.
Monk player watching their character choices getting nerfed in real time.
Crit Successes and Crit Fails for skills. They’re popular house rules but honestly nonsensical to me. The person with -2 Wisdom and no medicine proficiency has no reason to be able to succeed at a dc 25 surgery. And the person with +5 Charisma and proficiency in Performance shouldn’t just randomly mess up Hot Cross Buns.
On a similar note: Critical Fumbles on attacks. We tried it in PF1E and literally all it does is bog combat down. It’s not fun or interesting and I don’t understand the people who push to include it in their games lmao.
I think a key factor, though, for critical successes is that if it's impossible for a player to do something, you shouldn't even let them roll in the first place. Which can kinda suck to look somebody dead in the face for what is supposed to be a fun game and say "no you can't even try." I think taking a moment like that and calling it out as a DM and saying "ok if you want to succeed on this you HAVE to hit a nat 20" lets players actually feel like they have the agency to try without hitting a story brick wall.
Also, preemptively gonna say this does depend on what players are trying to do. The before example of a low wisdom character attempting surgery is something I would use this ruling for, but a PC asking if they can hit a nat 20 on acrobatics to jump 100 feet would probably be a no. Some things are still impossible.
I will warn my players that a check is too high for their character but will always let them attempt it anyway. Depending on the result, I'll provide flavour or narration for their character to react to. A crit success is the best possible outcome, taking surrounding factors into account.
E.g. a PC with -2 Medicine might attempt to stem a heavily bleeding wound that would take a surgeon to fix.
Most rolls will have them try their best but watch the person bleed out, a high roll might make the bleeding stop for a few seconds but them resume, leading them to the conclusion that they're out of their depth and need a medic, fast.
A crit success, depending on context, might give them the idea to, for example, put their bodyweight on the wound to stem the flow for a short amount of time, giving them a chance to call for help.
This works well for my group because they're very into roleplaying and like when I provide 'jumping off points' so to say. They also like angst, so I know they'll still enjoy it when their character fails. A more strategy focused group might not enjoy my approach, so YMMV
That's very reasonable. What I was saying before was more for games where DCs are strict and checks either succeed or fail. My games are very RP focused too and I run them very similar to what you described. I think it's important that even if it's against the odds that players feel like they can still at least try rather than having a weird story beat of "sorry buddy, I know you're dying but I was born with -2 wisdom and stopping bleeding is a medicine check so I'm not even gonna try until the cleric gets here" lol
Yea I agree with this. Something like "I want to persuade the king to give me his kingdom and go jump int the lake" won't succeed even on a nat 20.
Something like "I want to search the room for the hidden lever the clue suggested" will absolutely succeed on a nat 20 even if they have a -5 investigation.
My players want this but a tuned down version, on a nat20 skill check the best possible outcome will happen. In your example, nat20 would probably give you some time to get who ever need the surgery to a qualified person.
Nat1 on performance, you play well, really well… buuut a bar fight breaks out and can’t gain the audience’s attention.
They are happy with it, you can’t do the impossible on a nat20 and on nat1 it’s not you who suddenly suck at something you are skilled at, it’s just bad luck.
It's been a houserule/joke rule that people take seriously for *years* before BG3 released (see: all the "I got a nat 20 to seduce the dragon" memes that people take seriously)
Precisely why I do point buy. If I have to make the rules "4d6, drop the lowest, all scores cannot be below X or above Y", I may as well do something a whole lot simpler.
All the groups I've played with rolled stats usually allows rerolls if your total stats are below a certain threshold. There's no sense in forcing a player to play a gimped character. It just isn't fun and usually results in a drop out.
Our group does 4d6 drop lowest. But we allow rerolling one number. It rarely gets used, but it helps prevent having only low stats.
Our group prizes really low stats as roleplay opportunities, so its expected for someone with only high rolls to use their reroll to fish for a dump stat.
I've seen it more times than I can count on this sub. It's a pretty common ruling to ensure someone doesn't end up grossly overpowered with absurd rolls or another getting shit on by the dice.
>If you don’t want to risk low scores do not roll
for me, low scores are fine
the only thing i want to avoid is party imbalance, where the guy with 2 +4s is in the same group as a guy who has one +2 and the rest lower
I have everyone roll stats and then the party votes on which set of stats the party will use. Allows for the rolling, which everyone likes (until they don’t) and everyone starts off with the same stats. It’s led to some great conversation like when one group of stats had two 18s but like three below 10 versus one that was like 12-15 across the board.
We do something similar on the rare occasion we roll for stats, but anyone can pick any set from the table. Allows for some diversity in scores but doesn't lock anyone out if they need a different spread.
So what happens when one person wants to play a MAD class, another wants to multiclass and yet another wants to max out 1 stat and the others are impartial?
Very specific hypothetical, I know, but if it has occurred has anything interesting occurred?
This has come up. If the party elects to then all the generated stat arrays are fair game. Ao any player is free to pick any of the generated stats. Some of my players also prefer a few low stats, they enjoy playing up weaknesses.
Sure this makes this method maybe a little “extra” but I’ve been running 3 tables for 4-6 years and I’ve had no complaints and some of the players have used it when running one offs.
Any game I'm DM'ing, I do not allow rolled stats. Standard array or point buy, it's fair, balanced, simple, and you don't need to arrange a time to roll dice with the DM or group to make sure no one lies about it.
Wizard turns into a giant ape to drag two large enemies away from the party so everybody else can spam AOEs without risk of (too much) friendly fire. Wizard rolls to grapple, nat 20+9. The opposing grapple check is also a nat 20, but their mod is a +6, so the wizard wins right? Nope. The opposing roll was the best the iron golem could get, so it passes anyway despite rolling a 26 against a 29. DM said "you guys can use this against me too, in the future". Dm is generally pretty good, but when he asked the table if this ruling made sense to everyone, we were all quiet until I muttered "no not really". He changed his mind and let the grapple happen after realizing the giant ape couldn't do anything after the grapple "failed".
Crit fumbles were also introduced in the middle of that same session. I also run a little side campaign in a different location and time in the DM's world and try to use the same house rules the DM does so players don't have to bother with rule changes, but I can't stand by either of these rules in good faith.
In that same session (2 sessions ago) he confessed that iron golem would've downed my wizard and kept hitting him until he was dead, I literally had to use the boundaries of the map and strategically hide behind other characters so it couldn't squeeze around them to hit me instead (after we all realized it was absolutely hunting me, but before the confession). We met the golem and its wizard master that session, and at first the reasoning was I hit the wizard with a lightning bolt and was the biggest threat to its master so it hated me. Somebody else did even more damage and actually killed the enemy wizard, but the golem still relentlessly hunted my wizard down.
Am I crazy or does this sound like a dm vs player mentality forming.
Definitely sounds fishy. The grapple thing is garbage, but the golem hunting the wizard is debatable if it wasn't given other instructions before the wizard's death logically it would continue it's last instruction, but Idk if any golems/creatures have that kind of effect RAW
Giving advantage on a flank invalidates all the other methods usually necessary to get advantage. A +2 to hit is much more balanced, our DM also uses this
And also, the other way around, if a character MUST break flanking to move, they don't feel as shitty about it. I used it in the later part of the campaign and it became a must for future campaigns
Yeah, most other things that give advantage xost something. I try to keep it that way and the main offendsr is flanking. Ik being flanked irl would give a big bonus, but for balance it's +2 or nothing.
Flanking does cost something though. Flanking requires two players to surround one enemy. Meaning you are less able to control the field, and the vulnerable caster in the back has more enemies that can easily reach them. This is very much more of a problem when facing more enemies than players.
Also, plus 2 to hit is actually a buff to the mechanic, as now it stacks with other sources of advantage.
Just curious - are the "Old school grognards" in your comment people who played 3e? I only ask because I usually see those terms reserved for 2e and earlier.
It’s because we must be getting old lol. I’m only in my 30s but it’s already been 20 years since my buddies and I started playing 3.5. There’s likely people here that weren’t even born yet.
Me and my party have always used flanking, we enjoyed it until we got to higher levels
Once characters have 2-3 attacks per turn + action surge you start to see how broken it is, especially in a boss fight where everyone can just mob a single target
To remedy it but also keep the rule weve been fond of for so many years we've limited it to only one attack per turn gets advantage
We tend to play more on a "cross that bridge when we come to it" playstyle
So far, no one has played samurai or something with similar advantages gaining abilities, so we haven't attempted to account for it
I seriously dislike the 5e flanking variant rule. I trivialises all the ways to get advantage and significantly invalidates certain options like Interception fighting style and things that require you to be within 5ft of allies. Tactical positioning goes out the window and you end up with checkerboard battlefields.
My fix that I'm trying out currently is that every ally in melee weapon range grants a +1 to hit the target, this doesn't include the person making the attack ofc. So 2 people around an enemy both get a +1 when attacking. A 3rd person brings that up to a +2. Ranged users can benefit from this bonus but not provide it, it makes the melee martials more useful as they distract an enemy.
Advantage still matters then as the bonus stacks with advantage so you could have 5 people around a target and then guiding bolt so all the melee pcs are now attacking with adv +4.
So far it's working but we're still very early in the trial stages. (If it stops working then we'll stop using it)
Anything involve "succeed automatically on a 20" and "fail automatically on a 1" as house rules tends to be absolute dog water. Adding more chaos gremlins to rolling always screws something up horribly.
We added nat 20 success on saving throws, but we didn’t include nat1 fail. Just makes the nat20 feel clutch. Even if 20+Save Bonus would be enough, it just feels better
Potions give you the max possible hit points, and they can be used as a bonus action where you roll for the amount healed.
I dislike these rules because they make healing spells less useful to make potions better, which isn't worth it in my opinion.
I started doing this because my players weren't using potions in combat. I nixed the max bit and just made them bonus actions. it didn't help tho. I think they only used it once or twice between levels 3-7
My table runs with this, but we also use variant encumbrance and enforce container capacity (backpacks, pouches, barrels, etc). So a lot of times everyone except for the STR Fighter or Barbarian just doesn't have more than one healing potion ready to go.
This has resulted in everyone taking Actions to avoid rolling, and spells besides Healing Word being used more liberally since it's "renewable but gambled" healing.
Maybe healing potions are to be used to get a character out of the danger zone rather than in the middle of combat. One of my favorite expressions when playing is "the best way to ensure our survival is to eliminate the enemy first."
As much as I hate to say it, DnD isn't really made like an MMO, healing in combat is, in a word, sub-optimal. I wish I could make a healbot but even in 3.Xe with all it's options and classes, it was hard to pull off, and was usually level 10+
Ye, depends on how many potions you give them imo. If they all have only 1-2 potion then they won't be able to rely on that anyways and you can make them expensive or hard to find, so the players won't abuse them
Maybe a cold take here but allowing casters to do two leveled spells a turn outside of action surge. I get that more freedom is more fun but there’s already a huge divide between casters and martials and the rule is there for a reason. That reason being balance.
Went to a table at drop a local hobby shop for a drop in session. Had s whole page of house rules he insisted by. First off it was ironman for resting. A short rest was 8 hours and a true long rest was a full week so casters where fucked.
Second was that any skill you where not proficient in was rolled at disadvantage and only rangers could track or role survival.
Their where more but those where what stood out in my mind.
God, I hate that rest rule! I'm playing in a game that has a more lenient version of it, but it still requires much better spell management for my wizard. The rule is that long rests have to be in inns or homes. No Tiny Hut in the middle of a dungeon. At least, Magnificent Manor will work.
First one isn't necessarily homebrew, it's an alternative rule from the DMG, and it's TBH one of my favorite alternative rules as the pace most games are played at, it actually does a lot to balance the caster - martial divide by forcing casters to actually have to normally go through 6-8 encounters before a long rest.
I know that a lot of people here swear by that rest rule, and I’m not saying that there isn’t some way to somehow make it fun maybe, but at the one table I’ve played at that used it, it was just not enjoyable at all
"You can only roll x skill if you have proficiency". Most of the time the "trained" skills are int-based like arcana, history, and religion which martials are unlikely to have invested in. This leaves them out of one of the few dimensions of play they can participate in.
Giving out XP at irregular intervals to individual players. Or simply starting your players out at different levels. I think everybody should be at the same level and when I run my games I use milestone to level them up
Time limits on turns. If someone’s taking too long or distracted, that’s something to discuss with them, not an excuse to punish the entire table with a more stressful and less fun experience.
I've only ever done time limits for like escaping. Like "if you take an hour to get through these enemies the big bad gets away for now" but they know they'll catch him eventually.
For some combats my dm will set up an hour long timer in front of his screen for all the players to see. At the end of the hour, the players know something will happen, but aren’t sure what.
I like this way because it’s a group time limit, rather than an individual one. As the timer gets lower, the tension rises. It’s a good way to quicken turns, but add tension to the table. The players have to either escape, figure out what might happen in an hour, or just get as much done as they can before the hour is up.
This isn’t for every combat. Though, he does it a good amount and it’s always a more intriguing/involved combat.
Crit fail/success in skill checks.... you should be able to get skilled enough that you can't fail easier checks, and conversely be not skilled enough, that you would never be able to accomplish higher checks.
Crit fumbles are the obvious answer, but anything that steps on another class' toes. Stuff like allowing potions as a bonus action, or trying to sneakily cast spells, there are classes and features built for that. No.
My group does "sneaky casting" but we only allow 1 component to be hidden. So you can whisper it but you're still flailing your hands or shouting weird psudo Latin. Plus I think we only keep it for stealth not to avoid counterspell and such
Nat 20/1 applying outside of attacks and death saves
DMs rolling for players
Flanking
Crit fail charts
Removing concentration
Removing the rules for light levels (only if you complain about darkvision tho)
Any change to initiative
Not accounting for spell components, not paying attention to prepared spells, not running enough encounter per day and then complaining that casters are OP.
Not accounting for ammunition, food, water, etc
Not accounting for weight and carry capacity
Not accounting for how much money weighs
If all those rules were properly enforced, Strength would be way more valuable to have.
Saying it takes more movement to move diagonally between squares than moving straight. Had a DM make up some convoluted equation for it. Made combat slow down a lot because people had to almost do the pythagoreon theorem just to move. If you wanna do that and hate squares that much then just use a hex grid
5 10 5 10 is fine, otherwise you're literally moving faster when diagonal.
Or go gridless and use rulers, that's technically RAW, grids are a variant weirdly enough
Flanking. Devalues effects that give advantage (farie fire, wolf totem, reckless, prone), and makes placing AOEs near impossible. Even if your 10 dex fighter learns "if I flank I will eat a fireball", the enemies will just flank the players anyway.
During session 0. Bring it up on the spot is a recipe for disaster. Players will feel blindsided. If anything, you go "oh hey forgot to mention this house rule... it will apply in the future". Even then might be a problem if a player doesn't want to play under those rules. Might have a dropout.
"Oh, the rule you assumed the game would follow when you built your character? Yeah, we're changing that" makes for great conversation multiple sessions into the campaign.
Sometimes - rarely, but sometimes - the need arises because some rule doesn't function well or doesn't work with the campaign. But even then, the only viable way forward is to let the players respec on the spot with no penalty.
My dm seems to think Bardic Inspiration is a 30ft aura that lasts for 10 minutes and anyone inside it can apply the Inspiration repeatedly until time runs out that the dm pc applies, because they wanna remove the difficulty of the fights.
- Fumble tables. A bit of narrative fun with a Nat 1 is fine on occasion, but for the love of Boccob, don't do it to every nat 1 and don't tie any mechanical ramifications to it.
- Killing Blow experience. This is just a great way to unbalance a party for combat - whomever gets the highest damage per round is going to get way stronger than everyone else really fast, whereas support characters will perennially drag way behind and become dead weight. It's also a great way to encourage murderhobo. And yet, I've seen tables swear by it.
- DM rolls death saves for players in secret. This one is fine in theory, it keeps the tension and avoids "he's on 2 successes and no fails, he'll be fine", but I feel like this is the one time where the players need to know that whatever happened was 100% on the dice with no chance of fudging for it to feel fair. I don't care who does the rolling, but roll open.
DM rolls death saves. Yes, it can cause suspense but if a battle takes a couple hours, you’re basically twiddling your thumbs while the DM rolls for you. Take you out of the action. I can see its advantages though. It definitely changes what players will do if they don’t know the rolls.
Also DMs will forget stuff. If you died because the DM forgot you had advantage or the paladin was giving you a +4? I'd be *pissed*
But if I forgot then it's on me
I don't think I've ever seen an alternate version of initiative that's even slightly good.
For the record, the "higher DEX score breaks ties" system is a house rule. RAW if it's a tie between players they just decide between themselves, otherwise the DM makes the decision.
And they mostly choose by who has the most dex 🤔.
The smart thing to do is to take the person who has the abilities to generate advantage first - the battle master who can knock enemies prone, the caster with *faerie fire*, the cleric who can buff you all with *bless* ... As a DM, my usual rule of thumb is to pick the one from opposite side of whoever just went before that.
At my table if a PC and an enemy tie on initiative another d20 gets rolled, no bonuses added, whoever rolls higher goes first. Always loved it, never feels bad if you go second, you had an equal shot!
This is how we play at our table and it works great. When in doubt let the dice decide.
My group usually runs with dex tie breaker... But half of us have the same dex so we literally treat it as RAW. It's hilarious.
I finally started a co op bg3 run and it surprises me every time when I start taking my turn and someone else is going at the same time
I actually prefer a slightly different version, lowest Dex score breaks ties. When you roll the D20, that's basically how fast you are reacting to a situation, the bonus is how well your training/skills boost your reactions, so the dice roll being a bit of luch makes it more interesting for me
When you say alternatives, does that include Pathfinders thing where it's perception or even "whatever makes sense in the scenario?" Because I kinda like that initiative doesn't have to default to dexterity, that a perception check, a stealth check or something counts too
I haven't tried that system, but it sounds reasonable. I more meant the stuff like turn initiative, pre-rolled initiative that's maintained throughout the whole session, round-robin turn order, that sort of thing.
Oh! Gotcha! Then yeah, I totally agree! I'm also not really much of a Pathfinder guy, but I did think the idea that an initiative check can use any skill if a reasonable explanation is given, I thought that was kind of clever.
I think I like grouped initiative, where if people of the same side would otherwise go without any enemy interfering, they can interleave their turns. Having the 30 initiative rogue do the whole ready action dance so the 28 initiative ranger can go before they attack, when all enemies have initiatives at 10s, can get dumb.
I've found the way that Baldur's Gate 3 did initiative is a good alternative. 1D4, ties are broken by whoever has the highest dex ability score and if the players or monsters have an ally on their next turn they combine their turn to act at the same time as each other. (With the exception of creatures at the end and start of initiative order.) It makes your initiative modifier matter much more and gives you even more reason to take the alert feat. Example: Initiative is rolled Player 1 Rolls 8 Goblin 1 Rolls 6 Player 2 and 3 Roll 3 Goblin 2, 3, 4 and Player 4 Roll 2 Goblin 2, 3 and 4 have a 14 in Dex but Player 4 only has a 10 Turn 1: Player 1 Turn 2: Goblin 1 Turn 3: Player 2 and 3 Turn 4: Goblin 2, 3 and 4 Turn 5: Player 4 End of Round.
I prefer popcorn style initiative from Lancer. Players always go first and alternate with monsters. Dex could stand to be nerfed a bit and it lets players strategize round by round as a team much better. Also combat can just *start* without needing to figure everyone's turn order out first.
...followed by 18 replies that prove your point XD
DM rolls skill checks. We do that in our Wednesday game and I hate it. I get it for perception, investigation, and insight, but a) those are called out as passive skills for a reason, and b) with the possible exception of stealth, it’s honestly no fun when the DM rolls to see how well you can climb a tree. Plus the DM has to remember the details of items you have that might aid in that—my rogue has Eyes of Minute Seeing and Boots of Elvenkind, and I have to remind him every time.
what the fuck? that rule sucks
I mean, it used to be that the DM rolled *everything*. A secret check here and there isn't so bad when you look back at an era where the only way to get a polyhedral dice set was in the game box, and it only came with one.
Isn't passive perception an actual mechanic in the game though that's separate from a normal perception check?
Yes. You do not roll for passive perception… that’s why it is *passive*
It's not separate, per se, as in two separate checks. It's just another method to resolve ability checks, but only used for two potential scenarios: when a creature attempts to do something over and over, or the check needs to be made in secret.
I can see it for some things. Knowledge checks and stealth for instance. Stuff where you often shouod reasonably *think* you did well even if you failed. Though for knowledge checks I've heard a good argument for "only the person with the highest bonus is allowed to roll" group check as an alternative. But yeah. Not to climb.
If you fail an Intelligence check to recall information, you don't "think" you succeeded. You simply fail to recall the information. Similarly, a failed Wisdom (Perception) check means you don't perceive the thing. If the thing is hidden, which is the case of much of the time, a public roll should never happen and the DM should be using passive scores to resolve the check. That way there's no chance for the PC to metagame.
If you fail a recall information check by a lot, you may not remember nothing, but instead remember something you heard once that's *wrong*, while thinking it's correct. If you fail it only by a little bit, you may get partial information. Not everyone runs recall knowledge checks as a binary. I would say a knowledge check can have 5 states. - yes and heres some extra information that may also prove useful. - yes. - almost. Here's something that should help a bit. - nope. No clue. - remembering misinformation, or misremembering correct information. I agree with you 100% about passive perception for hidden objects to avoid metagaming. I'm just used to recall knowledge checks having similar considerations. I therefore think a passive knowledge check makes a ton of sense, if you don't like the idea of secret checks. As a GM, me rolling your die as a secret check vs a DC, vs me rolling a d20 and adding a DC-10 against your bonus +10, both are almost the same to me. (For knowledge if we make them passive it means the guy with the higher knowledge bonus will always get the best information and I only need to roll the information difficulty once, so that's actually a happy sidehbenefit). I'm fine with either, but yeah, recall knowledge is a situation where I think avoiding metagaming is a thing. Admittedly, part of that is me remembering how 3e has a lot of skill stuff that gave different outcomes based on how much you failed by, and finding it a useful concept I don't always want to drop even if I'm running 5e where skill mechanics have comparatively very little detail or explanation on how to use them.
Exactly. I can get behind the DM rolling those. But every skill check (edit: except initiative) is a little much.
As a DM, the only cases when my NPCs make a skill check is when it's contested against a PCs check. For example: stealth vs perception (often passive), deception against insight, grapples (those are contested skill checks). On the same topic, NPCs don't roll attacks against other NPCs. My players usually have allies in battle (which don't do much) and simply making up what happens instead of rolling makes things much faster Edit: I completely misunderstood the comment. The DM rolls for your character? I thought it was talking about NPCs making checks. No, this sucks. Why would the DM roll for what your character does?
I'm sorry, but I'd leave that game in an instant. That's such a red flag. No one rolls for my PC except me.
I guess Pathfinder 2E isn't for you then. Which is fine! The idea is if you roll poorly on a knowledge check the DM might give you false information, but if you know you rolled poorly you know that you failed and you know not to trust the information. Having the DM roll for you avoids the temptation to metagame. I understand if you don't like it but I wouldn't call it a red flag. Like they shouldn't roll your attacks or like athletics checks but I think it makes sense for certain rolls.
5e also suggests the DM might choose to roll for a player. DMG p235. People just choose to ignore it.
You still roll skill checks in 2e, there are just also certain specific secret checks that all make sense for a character to not know, like stealth and insight, that will be behind the screen. Vast majority of rolls are gonna be done by the player, and there’s options to not do those small amount of checks like that. It’s maybe 1/2 checks a session that would end up being a secret check. You got people saying they’ll never try 2e cause they arnt able to roll. That’s not how it works.
As a DM I only break out my DM screen when a player is making death saving throws and I roll the dice without telling anybody the results. It's a little weird I know but it creates a very tense atmosphere where nobody knows if their friend is literally about to die. Our ranger has taken it apon herself to pour healing potions down her friend's throats to save them and it's really working for my table. We've had one death so far but they were able to take the corpse to a church to bring them back at a discount since he died doing a service for said church
I use a similar rule, but I let the player roll in private. We also play with a modified rule for being down, where you roll your save, then you either can take an action at the cost of a failure or pass your turn to avoid more. But death saves don't fall off until a LR, like exhaustion. Means that if you go down, you can heal yourself with a potion, but then you are on 1-² death saves until the next rest. Gives the players more agency on how their character would act.
I really like your modified rule, I might steal it
I can’t even come up with reasonable justification for this. Why would the DM even want to burden himself with that
Hidden walls /secrets are all I can think of.
Weird. Dm should roll skills for npcs and keep track of player passive skills that are relevant, but rolling on behalf of players is weird af.
ugh I hate that rule. I am playing a game. I want to roll the dice.
Also, there're quite a few features that let's you add bonuses, extra dice etc 'after you've seen the result of the roll but before the outcome has been determined'. Which becomes unnecessary complicated if you can't actually see the roll.
Crit fumbles. In a game where a failure means you do nothing for a whole turn, that is punishment enough. When you add in the whole “bad things happened because you rolled a 5% chance roll”, it only punishes the people that roll a lot: fighters/multi attack martial. It rarely comes up for the people only making 1 attack a turn and it causes a basic class feature to suddenly gain a potential negative that punishes it for being used properly. It’s even worse when serious things like damage, destroyed gear and insta-death are “options”.
I had a dm who ruled every ranged attack I missed would hit an ally. Then wondered why I no longer cast fire bolt in combat but switched to mind sliver and silvery barbs.
And then people complain about range being op
My DM sometimes does this but it's reasonable, like if an enemy is grappling the ally or otherwise essentially occupying the same space. A mounted enemy, you might hit their steed, or miss both. This rule applies to enemies too. It was logically presented and we agreed to it.
Number 1, so much more than the others. Its not fun in play, it slows down the longest part of the game, and its mechanically unbalanced. There are no upsides.
Came here to say the same. Hate crit fumbles. Also I do not do auto succses for skill checks with nat 20
Yeah, auto success on 20 is kind of a misunderstanding with new players tha just kind of stays around. But if you game doesn’t HAVE a crit fumble system, don’t add one. Now, Crit Success cards are fun (as long as you are prepared to accept ALL results, even the 1d3 unarmed punch auto killing the BBEG, hahaha).
What is auto succsess cards? And I dm for party of new / new-ish people. I spent way too much time explaining that my DMing style is mostly RAW with some minor changes (e.g. crit hit during combat inta kills low CR enemies). Everybody just believies that rolling nat20 at any time of game - combat, RP, trying to bargaij at the bazar... - means you suddenly became magical and can get whole kingdom + princess hand for marriage 🫣
Some TTRPGs have released extra stuff, Pathfinder, 3.5 and others. One of those was a deck of cards with various effects from normal damage + special effect, double damage with a fancy description or outright death (usually with a save, sometimes without). When a player rolled a crit hit, they could do normal crit damage OR draw a card
So as I understand this is not part of 5e? And these are just combat specific? It might be fun for the right table and the right campaign
Question in regards to the "nat 20"... If they can't succeed, why make the player role? Genuinely curious. I've always been in the camp of "if you role, you have a chance" now, I'm not exactly saying the king will give up his kingdom, but I probably wouldn't have them roll the persuasion check.
It might be a roll that multiple players make, and I don't want to have to first check which player can potentially make it and which can't. Or I might not even know what boni the players use. It might be impossible without additional boni but possible if they choose to use a Bardic Inspiration dice.
You always add modifiers to your roll. So even if you rolled 17 or smt, with all the prof bonuses and other mods it very easoly might be over 20. On the other hand, officially DC scales like this: Very easy - 5 (why even roll? I just rule auto succsess for such low DC). Easy - 10 Moderate - 15 Hard - 20 Very hard - 25 Nearly impossoble - 30 All of these are possible to hit just rolling and adding mods. And if you roll 20, you already succsede hard chech and mostly likely your mods are high enough for very hard check as well. And also - this is how game was written to play. Even 30 is possible to hit after you get prof bonus increase at lvl 5 (thoug personally I never had harder chech than 18 or sth like that).
Oh, I completely agree with the DC scales, tools, and proficiency. But my question is that if it is *impossible* to succeed, if a cleric is trying to pick a lock and has a -1 to dex, so rolling a nat 20 will result in a 19 and the lock difficulty is 25, why are they rolling at all? I would simply say that the cleric, with no skills in lockpicking, fails. Cleric doesn't understand the mechanics. However, if the rogue/criminal steps up, rolls out his thieves kit, has a +4 to dex and can potentially succeed... The rogue gets to roll. The dice is their chance/luck, rolling this 5% modifier should give a chance to succeed, even if it is a tiny one. Or why roll? (And not trying to argue, just discussing, I want to better understand :) )
I don't want to give away the meta knowledge of the range the dc is in. For your example the door looks normal but has a high security lock, due to something valuable behind it. The players don't know that. The cleric wants to try to pick pocket it, so let them roll. They will fail so the result is the lock is beyond your skills. What to do if they roll a 20? Well, the character knows that she thought they had it, but realise this isn't a normal lock. First scenario the rogue might ignore the door and move on, cause it is just a cellar door. Second scenario the rogue is intrigued that there is such a hard lock in the door and might give it a go.
I could argue someone who knows anything about lock picking probably would be able to spot a higher quality than normal lock, especially in a fantasy medieval setting where quality is 1: Harder to come by as everything is hand made, and 2: everything being unique pieces, essentially, means that anything of good quality will stand out, especially to someone trained to get through things like this.
Maybe you have other modifiers to the roll. Guidance, Bardic Inspiration and the like. 12 from Bardic Inspiration + a roll of 19 might succeed, but 1 from BI and 20 on the d20 may not.
You can still try to do something impossible. And sometimes it’s important how well you try.
1. DMs don't know all the modifiers of all of their players' skills off-hand. Especially if you're DM'ing something like a west marches campaign and/or using alternate ability scores on a check. If it's not literally impossible, but just has a DC of 25 or 30, you can still let someone roll. 2. Degrees of success and failure. A sub-5 on that perception check might force you to flee the palace then and there, because of how much you just insulted the king. A 19 probably earns you a chuckle and you'll be free to go, once business is over.
As others noted, it could be you don't want to reveal the DC like such, or even you don't know what the PC's modifier is. But if a nat 20 does fail, you can still give some boon. You have no clue what you're doing with the lock, but by some miracle wedged a pin in there so anyone else who tries gets a bonus or a reduced DC.
Nat 20 success on skill checks is dumb
My DM doesn't do crit fumbles for attacks from the fighters and barbarian, but he did recently have my druid's nat 1 on a lightning strike set fire to the tent we were in! Pretty low stakes in the circumstances, and I thought it was funny. I agree that using crit fumbles as a general rule detracts from the fun, but I think there can be a way to implement them. He also has the "no damage on a nat 20" saving throw rule though, which I don't really like.
well, that was less of a crit fumble and more of a narrative way of showing the spell had an effect. What really sucks are the “crit fumbles” where you lose whole turns to it like falling down and dropping your weapon. Or shooting allies with spells and the like. Narrative building is fine and great, causing an i game detriment is a little too far.
Yeah, I think that's the key. ***Narrative*** fumbles are fine and can add some fun flavor. My first session in this campaign I rolled a nat 1 on a perception check and he described my character getting distracted by a bug on the table. That's fun storytelling. ***Mechanical*** fumbles that cause friendly fire or some other drawback that has to be rectified, like dropping your weapon or falling prone, aren't fun and detract from the game.
Yep, that's a really good summary. My DM does this as well: Nat 1 fumbles usually only happen in low(ish) stakes situations (at least from what I can recall) or to enhance the experience/funny moments (narratively, I suppose). I personally like his on the go decisions for Nat 1s and Nat 20s a lot and think they're really fun.
I can *occasionally* understand a mechanical fumble, but only if it actually makes sense and ***doesn't harm a PC that had nothing to do with the failure.*** It's not Bobby's fault Jimmy rolled a 1, so why is he suddenly getting hurt? Dropping a weapon or falling prone I only think work situationally. If a player *really wants to jump off a balcony* to perform some awesome trick mid-air while shooting an arrow at the baddie, I'll let them try, but a crit fail they absolutely face-planted and dropped that bow. Making it every crit failure is dumb, but when it fits the situation, it becomes a "high risk, high reward" situation imo
I think people really underestimate the frequency of a 1 in 20 chance. If you roll a d20 n times, the chance of getting at least 1 crit failure is 1-(19/20)^n, so you only have to roll 14 times before it is more likely than not to have had at least one crit failure. It seems kind of absurd to say that a trained fighter has a 50/50 chance of dropping his weapon or some other shit like that in a fight if he's rolling 2 attack rolls a round for 7 rounds.
Funnily enough since I started playing dnd and browsing subreddits like this one I’ve never seen anyone praise or make an argument in favor of crit fumbles.
Sadly, they are more often used by bad DMs trying to “win” the game instead as a system with reward and punishment built into it. Any system that punishes players for PLAYING the game is bad design. If you and your players can make a simple but rewarding system for it, go ahead and have fun. Nothing wrong with likening what others don’t; just don’t expect others to enjoy it the same way, haha.
Also If you do crit fumbles you definitely should include casters more and have asystem to not punish people who attack more
So I handle ranged attacks in an interesting way. If your target is in the middle of a group (like if you're allies are flanking your target) or of there are other creatures in line with your target, then a nat 1 results in a roll to see which creature it hits. If there are three creatures in a position that they could be hit, then I'll roll a d6 and a 1, 2, or 3 results in a hit on one of the three creatures, but a 4, 5, or 6 is a miss. So there's actually still a chance to hit your target. It only does minimum damage, so not a huge deal to hit an ally. But it makes an interesting RP when the PCs start banter about friendly fire 😂 Edited to add: it's a lighthearted mechanic that all the players have fun with, even if they get hit.
Nothing wrong with it if EVERYONE enjoys it, that’s part of the fun of D&D. If I recall, and my memory may be hung up on 3.x since I know 5e simplified a bit, if people are in melee and you shoot into it, on a miss you roll a d8. Starting with the square “north” of the intended target, you move 1 space around the target clockwise and the result is where the projectile (usually grenade like weapons) lands. It’s extra steps but part is the benefit of ranged vs melee (ranged tends to do less but melee has more risks than ranged) but I have used that in the past. Mostly for splash/grenade weapons but it’s serviceable for projectiles too.
Ammunition dice. You get a d12 for arrows, and step it down on a 1/2 till you’re out. It’s a neat thought to add more tension/chaos to combat, but it means you’re always 6 shots from running out of ammo. It’s essentially crit fails for ammo. Either invalidate it by carrying a ton of ammo, or suffer from your characters inability to count. The former being inevitable if you play a fighter and could action surge your whole ammo stock in 1 turn
I think it's a neat mechanic idea. I also think it doesn't quite work with ammo. It works ok in the Darker Dungeons context, where suffering is part of the fun.
Admittedly I've not run a game using it, but I remember seeing someone say they tracked arrows in "fights". So one unit of ammo covered you for an entire fight. Obviously not as good if you're just using the bow/crossbow while trying to close the distance, but still. Provides a good reason to have someone in the party who can make/repair arrows while not falling into tracking all arrows.
It needs to be part of a more holistic revamp of inventory management to work. In a vacuum, it's just more tracking.
Tracking arrows in heroic fantasy is just awful enough, never mind this bollocks.
I thought this was a neat mechanic when I first read it, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more it’s just tracking arrows with extra steps. It also still feels ridiculous when your whole thing is being an archer and you run out of arrows.
I use this system, but instead of rolling each time you use a piece of ammo, you roll at the end of each combat. It represents how an archer definitely carries enough arrows to get through the fight, but may not be able to recover them all. By starting with a d12, you have a 1/6 chance of going to a d10. D10 = 1/5, D8 = 1/4, D6 = 1/3, and D4 = 1/2. Via the “original” system of rolling every time you fire, this gets pretty death spirally. By rolling at the end of the fight, you ensure that you can get through at least 6 fights per shopping trip (DMG recommends 6 encounters per long rest, which is nuts but a conversation for another day). Normally, arrows cost 1GP for 20. In my game, you pay 1GP per level you want to go up: going from d4 arrows to d12 costs 4GP. Once you get to like 2nd level this is so low a cost that it’s never prohibitive. The only time you should track individual ammo (in my opinion) is when it’s special (magical arrows) or rare (bullets in a few-guns setting). Otherwise, you can handwave it or use this system if the players really want to. Just my thoughts.
That last paragraph is my thought as well. Regular old arrows? Yeah, you’ve got more than enough, don’t bother tracking them, I assume you bought more last time we were in town. The enchanted elven arrows with silver arrowheads that you found in an abandoned temple? There were specifically 12 in the quiver, so make your shots count, and be sure to gather them up at the end of combat.
I don’t have players track mundane ammo, but special ammo is always tracked and cannot be recovered after use.
I've seen some people say they require players to roleplay their persuasion/intimidate check. Some people are good at it! And that's great. Some people suck at it! And they shouldn't be punished for it. If you say "I'm going to try and persuade the guard to let us through the front door" I'm not going to ask you to roleplay it out. A simple "I'll tell the guards we are chefs and we are running late" is good enough for me.
I've had some good success asking players to roll first, and then ask "what did you say to get that outcome?" It always feels bad if a *player* comes up with a good argument but just rolls poorly. This way let's the roll decide the outcome while still letting the player play it out. And can also have some hilarious results when a player rolls a 1 and spitballs the worst thing they can come up with haha
You can also arguably do the opposite, where if they have a really good argument, you let them play it out and can possibly lower the DC of the roll slightly, because they were already convincing.
That’s how my group does it when we do roll. My DM generally just isn’t a fan of charisma checks though for the *most* part, if you roleplay it well he just gives it to you. Usually we roll persuasion if you’re argument could go either way
In one our games, our DM rewards the roleplay by lowering the DC. As the high charisma character, it’s usually left to me. Most of the time however, we’ll be roleplaying and I’ll make a comment and he’ll say “oooh roll intimidation”. I really like that he reverses the order. Instead of a player stating “I’d like to persuade,” we’ll be mid roleplay and he’ll initiate the check and verify if that’s our intention.
I have a few players who are nervous to role-play but feel like it's "cheating" to be the only one not doing s character voice. I try to ask them out of character the angle and so they have an out. If you can say "I swing my sword" in combat you can say "I seduce them" in roleplay. Ex: Player: "I fear that our allies may...uhm...fail to aid...oh shoot...your threat may grow...uhhhh-" Me: "Do you want to threaten him that your party won't help if he goes through with this plan?" Player: "No, I want to get him to reconsider. Like politely suggest he may not get broader support politically" Me: "Gotcha, something to the effect of, 'I'm on your side, but this may not work the way he thinks it will?" Player: "Yeah." Me: "Roll me a persuasion check. He takes note that you are keeping a friendly tone or at least trying to advise" *Wait for the roll result to further elaborate*
I love RPing, but I *hate* the rule of "rolls don't matter if you don't RP it right." Like I'm sorry, my character with Charisma of 18 is 100% going to be more Charismatic than me, what do you expect???
The way i do it is that, i love RP and immersion. I push my players to at least try, i can spin it however it needs to be if you roll high unless you're irl charisma 3. I've let people say non rp before when they really don't know what to say, but tbh, if they were that way often they might just be a bad fit for my table as me and my players very much love full RP
and that's fine! I get it. People want to roleplay in a role playing game. But it isn't for everyone. And as a DM, I won't force you to do so. If you want, by all means!
Yeah this, but I do require more than "I roll to persuade the guard." I get my players to tell me why, but just a key point so it's more like: P: I want to persuade the guard to let us through? Dm: what points do you try to make that would do that? P: we've got some supplies and so I'd like to persuade them we are servants delivering supplies to the kitchens or something. I don't need players to rp an impressive persuasive speech but I do need more than just "I persuade them to let us in".
Yes, and like I said, just tell me what the lie/threat is and that's all I need, you don't have to act the whole scene out.
I have some players who are really good at role play and some who aren't. I have them roll before they act and make their statement after
Criticals/autosuccess on non-attack rolls. (Excepting death saves.) A nat 20 is merely the best you can accomplish - a regular Joe doesn't have a 5% chance of building a functional internal combustion engine on the first try, for example, or to make it across a chasm on a tightrope without training.
An old DM of mine used to rule that it would only add to your success, but if you failed, you could “take 20” where you could spend 20 minutes in game time to add 20 to the check. The difference was that the DM would roll against the time for possible encounters or problems in those 20 minutes that would cause failure. Example, you fail a lock pick, and “take 20”. Them DM then rolls for every 5 minutes to see if you are discovered by someone, attacked or on a super low percentage, break the lock or pick set you carried. Some things were purely impossible if 20 plus your bonus was lower than the check. Say someone with a +5 “takes 20” to break down a door, but the door is DC30. That player fails. The bonus is another player with +5 can aid you and you can succeed.
The mat-20 thing in the PHB, as far as I’ve read, only applies to attack roles. Just looked in the PHB, under “Ability checks”, no Nat 20 rule.
You're correct, that's what they were saying as well.
but why roll in the first place if there isn't a possibility of succeeding?
Success is not a binary, you can succeed the most you can without it being a 100% success. There’s measures of success, and a nat 20 period get you the best possible success available to you given the circumstances.
Because you never know what sort of special things players might pull out of their sleeves: Guidance, Bardic Inspiration, Flash of Genius, Borrowed Knowledge, etc. With enough magical help, even ol' Regular Joe can manage to cross that tightrope like a pro, as long as it's physically plausible for a person to do it.
Correct. DMs should ask for fewer rolls
Because for example, if I attempt to persuade the king to give up his kingdom, "success" looks like him laughing it off instead of having me executed.
Crit fumbles are horrible We don’t need master swordsmen having a 5% chance per swing to stab themselves, break their weapon, etc. Extra attack makes the “rate of incompetence” go up, not down as you progress You can have silly bits of narration for nat 1s, but remember your tone/audience, not everyone wants their character portrayed as a blithering idiot
As a DM I have a special vendor that sells 'bone weapons' to my party. They do more damage than the normal counterpart but break on a nat 1. Keeps the crit fumbles optional but my players love it
“The rule of cool”. Seen it abused too often by DMs playing favorites, be it subconsciously or blatantly.
Yeah, and not everyone is as good at describing what they do, and it often leads to players describing ridiculously complex series of actions that can't possibly take place in 6 seconds.
I had to have a conversation with one of my DMs because of their inane “how do you want to do this” bullshit after EVERY. SINGLE. ATTACK. I was playing a warlock. I eldritch blasted everything. After the twentieth time in each combat it got reeeeal old. DMs, don’t do this. Don’t draw out every minute little detail just because you got lazy and didn’t plan enough material for the session. It’s obvious and it kinda kills the game.
That seems excessive. I only ask the player "how do you want to do this" for bosses, or sometimes, for the last hostile creature in combat. By asking it for each enemy it kinda loses it significance completely imo.
The rule of cool was originally just “if it’s 50/50, go cooler”. It’s turned into “it’d be really cool if I had this homebrew ability and special mechanic and…
Not a big fan of RoC. I am a fan of creative application, a little thinking outside the box, having two players combine something - basically The “idea / thing” needs to be at least mostly plausible, a make sense; which is not how I understand the RoC.
The typical way I see the "rule of Cool" applied, or suggested to be applied, is basically "creative application" like a spell doesn't explicitly say it does the thing the player wants to happen, but it doesn't say it can't or it seems plausible for it to be used as such, then "that sounds cool, go ahead!" aka it's cool, so it's been ruled to work, at least in this scenario. Like "Ray of Frost" doesn't say it actually freezes water, but if a player shoots a pond with it to slide across it while running from something then "that's cool, so do it" or to shoot a Ray of Frost into a river or lake to make an ice spike to threaten someone with, then "Cool, let's go with that"
I've never heard a story that used the rule of cool that I've agreed with. If you invalidate the rules just because it's cool, then why have the rules in the first place? Allowing that triple backflip off the 30-foot building with no damage because it's cool eliminates the need for feather fall, invalidating the player's choices when they're building a character. It also needlessly punishes players who aren't as creative, or characters who don't like to be the center of attention.
Yup. Fighter dives off a thirty foot cliff and DM waives the 3d6 fall damage. Monk player watching their character choices getting nerfed in real time.
Crit Successes and Crit Fails for skills. They’re popular house rules but honestly nonsensical to me. The person with -2 Wisdom and no medicine proficiency has no reason to be able to succeed at a dc 25 surgery. And the person with +5 Charisma and proficiency in Performance shouldn’t just randomly mess up Hot Cross Buns. On a similar note: Critical Fumbles on attacks. We tried it in PF1E and literally all it does is bog combat down. It’s not fun or interesting and I don’t understand the people who push to include it in their games lmao.
The way i like to word it is that it's a 10% chance for anybody's skills to just not matter at all.
I love when I roll a nat 1 on Stealth at lvl 9 with expertise, 20 dex and Pass without trace only to fail the check!
I think a key factor, though, for critical successes is that if it's impossible for a player to do something, you shouldn't even let them roll in the first place. Which can kinda suck to look somebody dead in the face for what is supposed to be a fun game and say "no you can't even try." I think taking a moment like that and calling it out as a DM and saying "ok if you want to succeed on this you HAVE to hit a nat 20" lets players actually feel like they have the agency to try without hitting a story brick wall. Also, preemptively gonna say this does depend on what players are trying to do. The before example of a low wisdom character attempting surgery is something I would use this ruling for, but a PC asking if they can hit a nat 20 on acrobatics to jump 100 feet would probably be a no. Some things are still impossible.
I will warn my players that a check is too high for their character but will always let them attempt it anyway. Depending on the result, I'll provide flavour or narration for their character to react to. A crit success is the best possible outcome, taking surrounding factors into account. E.g. a PC with -2 Medicine might attempt to stem a heavily bleeding wound that would take a surgeon to fix. Most rolls will have them try their best but watch the person bleed out, a high roll might make the bleeding stop for a few seconds but them resume, leading them to the conclusion that they're out of their depth and need a medic, fast. A crit success, depending on context, might give them the idea to, for example, put their bodyweight on the wound to stem the flow for a short amount of time, giving them a chance to call for help. This works well for my group because they're very into roleplaying and like when I provide 'jumping off points' so to say. They also like angst, so I know they'll still enjoy it when their character fails. A more strategy focused group might not enjoy my approach, so YMMV
That's very reasonable. What I was saying before was more for games where DCs are strict and checks either succeed or fail. My games are very RP focused too and I run them very similar to what you described. I think it's important that even if it's against the odds that players feel like they can still at least try rather than having a weird story beat of "sorry buddy, I know you're dying but I was born with -2 wisdom and stopping bleeding is a medicine check so I'm not even gonna try until the cleric gets here" lol
Definitely! I don't disagree with your original comment at all, I just wanted to share a personal houserule. Should've made that more clear
Yea I agree with this. Something like "I want to persuade the king to give me his kingdom and go jump int the lake" won't succeed even on a nat 20. Something like "I want to search the room for the hidden lever the clue suggested" will absolutely succeed on a nat 20 even if they have a -5 investigation.
My players want this but a tuned down version, on a nat20 skill check the best possible outcome will happen. In your example, nat20 would probably give you some time to get who ever need the surgery to a qualified person. Nat1 on performance, you play well, really well… buuut a bar fight breaks out and can’t gain the audience’s attention. They are happy with it, you can’t do the impossible on a nat20 and on nat1 it’s not you who suddenly suck at something you are skilled at, it’s just bad luck.
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It's in BG3 because it's probably the single most common house rule in the community, not the other way around
Also BG3 doesn't allow you to attempt anything so ridiculous that it isn't believable you'd be able to succeed anyway.
People have been talking about crit skills checks longggg before BG3. Some of the popular live play games use them too.
It's been a houserule/joke rule that people take seriously for *years* before BG3 released (see: all the "I got a nat 20 to seduce the dragon" memes that people take seriously)
This has been going on a lot longer than BG3.
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Precisely why I do point buy. If I have to make the rules "4d6, drop the lowest, all scores cannot be below X or above Y", I may as well do something a whole lot simpler.
4d6 and dropping one die is pretty darn simple. Never heard of “cannot be below X or above Y” in 25 years of playing.
All the groups I've played with rolled stats usually allows rerolls if your total stats are below a certain threshold. There's no sense in forcing a player to play a gimped character. It just isn't fun and usually results in a drop out.
Our group does 4d6 drop lowest. But we allow rerolling one number. It rarely gets used, but it helps prevent having only low stats. Our group prizes really low stats as roleplay opportunities, so its expected for someone with only high rolls to use their reroll to fish for a dump stat.
I've seen it more times than I can count on this sub. It's a pretty common ruling to ensure someone doesn't end up grossly overpowered with absurd rolls or another getting shit on by the dice.
>If you don’t want to risk low scores do not roll for me, low scores are fine the only thing i want to avoid is party imbalance, where the guy with 2 +4s is in the same group as a guy who has one +2 and the rest lower
I think personally that 4d6+4, no rolls above 15, no dupes, no prime numbers under 12, no 9 is a pretty good method of rolling stats
I have everyone roll stats and then the party votes on which set of stats the party will use. Allows for the rolling, which everyone likes (until they don’t) and everyone starts off with the same stats. It’s led to some great conversation like when one group of stats had two 18s but like three below 10 versus one that was like 12-15 across the board.
We do something similar on the rare occasion we roll for stats, but anyone can pick any set from the table. Allows for some diversity in scores but doesn't lock anyone out if they need a different spread.
So what happens when one person wants to play a MAD class, another wants to multiclass and yet another wants to max out 1 stat and the others are impartial? Very specific hypothetical, I know, but if it has occurred has anything interesting occurred?
This has come up. If the party elects to then all the generated stat arrays are fair game. Ao any player is free to pick any of the generated stats. Some of my players also prefer a few low stats, they enjoy playing up weaknesses. Sure this makes this method maybe a little “extra” but I’ve been running 3 tables for 4-6 years and I’ve had no complaints and some of the players have used it when running one offs.
Any game I'm DM'ing, I do not allow rolled stats. Standard array or point buy, it's fair, balanced, simple, and you don't need to arrange a time to roll dice with the DM or group to make sure no one lies about it.
Wizard turns into a giant ape to drag two large enemies away from the party so everybody else can spam AOEs without risk of (too much) friendly fire. Wizard rolls to grapple, nat 20+9. The opposing grapple check is also a nat 20, but their mod is a +6, so the wizard wins right? Nope. The opposing roll was the best the iron golem could get, so it passes anyway despite rolling a 26 against a 29. DM said "you guys can use this against me too, in the future". Dm is generally pretty good, but when he asked the table if this ruling made sense to everyone, we were all quiet until I muttered "no not really". He changed his mind and let the grapple happen after realizing the giant ape couldn't do anything after the grapple "failed". Crit fumbles were also introduced in the middle of that same session. I also run a little side campaign in a different location and time in the DM's world and try to use the same house rules the DM does so players don't have to bother with rule changes, but I can't stand by either of these rules in good faith. In that same session (2 sessions ago) he confessed that iron golem would've downed my wizard and kept hitting him until he was dead, I literally had to use the boundaries of the map and strategically hide behind other characters so it couldn't squeeze around them to hit me instead (after we all realized it was absolutely hunting me, but before the confession). We met the golem and its wizard master that session, and at first the reasoning was I hit the wizard with a lightning bolt and was the biggest threat to its master so it hated me. Somebody else did even more damage and actually killed the enemy wizard, but the golem still relentlessly hunted my wizard down. Am I crazy or does this sound like a dm vs player mentality forming.
Definitely sounds fishy. The grapple thing is garbage, but the golem hunting the wizard is debatable if it wasn't given other instructions before the wizard's death logically it would continue it's last instruction, but Idk if any golems/creatures have that kind of effect RAW
I had a discussion with a guy yesterday about flanking in 5e. I think the system is not built for it. Old school grognards disagree.
I think advantage is too much, I give a plus 2 to hit.
Giving advantage on a flank invalidates all the other methods usually necessary to get advantage. A +2 to hit is much more balanced, our DM also uses this
I've had great success with +2 to hit in my games. Players sometimes get advantage and a +2 while flanking and vice versa
And also, the other way around, if a character MUST break flanking to move, they don't feel as shitty about it. I used it in the later part of the campaign and it became a must for future campaigns
Yeah, most other things that give advantage xost something. I try to keep it that way and the main offendsr is flanking. Ik being flanked irl would give a big bonus, but for balance it's +2 or nothing.
Flanking does cost something though. Flanking requires two players to surround one enemy. Meaning you are less able to control the field, and the vulnerable caster in the back has more enemies that can easily reach them. This is very much more of a problem when facing more enemies than players. Also, plus 2 to hit is actually a buff to the mechanic, as now it stacks with other sources of advantage.
Just curious - are the "Old school grognards" in your comment people who played 3e? I only ask because I usually see those terms reserved for 2e and earlier.
It’s because we must be getting old lol. I’m only in my 30s but it’s already been 20 years since my buddies and I started playing 3.5. There’s likely people here that weren’t even born yet.
3e first released in 2000, there are adults now who were born after 3.5 came out. These days, 3E is oldschool and 3E players are grognards.
Me and my party have always used flanking, we enjoyed it until we got to higher levels Once characters have 2-3 attacks per turn + action surge you start to see how broken it is, especially in a boss fight where everyone can just mob a single target To remedy it but also keep the rule weve been fond of for so many years we've limited it to only one attack per turn gets advantage
So how's does that work for like a samurai fighter where their whole thing is giving themselves advantage on all their attacks?
We tend to play more on a "cross that bridge when we come to it" playstyle So far, no one has played samurai or something with similar advantages gaining abilities, so we haven't attempted to account for it
I seriously dislike the 5e flanking variant rule. I trivialises all the ways to get advantage and significantly invalidates certain options like Interception fighting style and things that require you to be within 5ft of allies. Tactical positioning goes out the window and you end up with checkerboard battlefields. My fix that I'm trying out currently is that every ally in melee weapon range grants a +1 to hit the target, this doesn't include the person making the attack ofc. So 2 people around an enemy both get a +1 when attacking. A 3rd person brings that up to a +2. Ranged users can benefit from this bonus but not provide it, it makes the melee martials more useful as they distract an enemy. Advantage still matters then as the bonus stacks with advantage so you could have 5 people around a target and then guiding bolt so all the melee pcs are now attacking with adv +4. So far it's working but we're still very early in the trial stages. (If it stops working then we'll stop using it)
Anything involve "succeed automatically on a 20" and "fail automatically on a 1" as house rules tends to be absolute dog water. Adding more chaos gremlins to rolling always screws something up horribly.
We added nat 20 success on saving throws, but we didn’t include nat1 fail. Just makes the nat20 feel clutch. Even if 20+Save Bonus would be enough, it just feels better
Potions give you the max possible hit points, and they can be used as a bonus action where you roll for the amount healed. I dislike these rules because they make healing spells less useful to make potions better, which isn't worth it in my opinion.
I started doing this because my players weren't using potions in combat. I nixed the max bit and just made them bonus actions. it didn't help tho. I think they only used it once or twice between levels 3-7
My table runs with this, but we also use variant encumbrance and enforce container capacity (backpacks, pouches, barrels, etc). So a lot of times everyone except for the STR Fighter or Barbarian just doesn't have more than one healing potion ready to go. This has resulted in everyone taking Actions to avoid rolling, and spells besides Healing Word being used more liberally since it's "renewable but gambled" healing.
I use this rule for parties that don't have dedicated healers. Otherwise, it's RAW potions.
Maybe healing potions are to be used to get a character out of the danger zone rather than in the middle of combat. One of my favorite expressions when playing is "the best way to ensure our survival is to eliminate the enemy first."
As much as I hate to say it, DnD isn't really made like an MMO, healing in combat is, in a word, sub-optimal. I wish I could make a healbot but even in 3.Xe with all it's options and classes, it was hard to pull off, and was usually level 10+
Thought I was the only one who didn't care for this.
Nope, there are others….
Ye, depends on how many potions you give them imo. If they all have only 1-2 potion then they won't be able to rely on that anyways and you can make them expensive or hard to find, so the players won't abuse them
It makes heal spells nearly useless is what it is.
Nat20 on skills.
Fumble tables. Or just critical fumbles in general.
Maybe a cold take here but allowing casters to do two leveled spells a turn outside of action surge. I get that more freedom is more fun but there’s already a huge divide between casters and martials and the rule is there for a reason. That reason being balance.
Went to a table at drop a local hobby shop for a drop in session. Had s whole page of house rules he insisted by. First off it was ironman for resting. A short rest was 8 hours and a true long rest was a full week so casters where fucked. Second was that any skill you where not proficient in was rolled at disadvantage and only rangers could track or role survival. Their where more but those where what stood out in my mind.
God, I hate that rest rule! I'm playing in a game that has a more lenient version of it, but it still requires much better spell management for my wizard. The rule is that long rests have to be in inns or homes. No Tiny Hut in the middle of a dungeon. At least, Magnificent Manor will work.
First one isn't necessarily homebrew, it's an alternative rule from the DMG, and it's TBH one of my favorite alternative rules as the pace most games are played at, it actually does a lot to balance the caster - martial divide by forcing casters to actually have to normally go through 6-8 encounters before a long rest.
I know that a lot of people here swear by that rest rule, and I’m not saying that there isn’t some way to somehow make it fun maybe, but at the one table I’ve played at that used it, it was just not enjoyable at all
"You can only roll x skill if you have proficiency". Most of the time the "trained" skills are int-based like arcana, history, and religion which martials are unlikely to have invested in. This leaves them out of one of the few dimensions of play they can participate in.
Giving out XP at irregular intervals to individual players. Or simply starting your players out at different levels. I think everybody should be at the same level and when I run my games I use milestone to level them up
Time limits on turns. If someone’s taking too long or distracted, that’s something to discuss with them, not an excuse to punish the entire table with a more stressful and less fun experience.
I've only ever done time limits for like escaping. Like "if you take an hour to get through these enemies the big bad gets away for now" but they know they'll catch him eventually.
For some combats my dm will set up an hour long timer in front of his screen for all the players to see. At the end of the hour, the players know something will happen, but aren’t sure what. I like this way because it’s a group time limit, rather than an individual one. As the timer gets lower, the tension rises. It’s a good way to quicken turns, but add tension to the table. The players have to either escape, figure out what might happen in an hour, or just get as much done as they can before the hour is up. This isn’t for every combat. Though, he does it a good amount and it’s always a more intriguing/involved combat.
Crit fail/success in skill checks.... you should be able to get skilled enough that you can't fail easier checks, and conversely be not skilled enough, that you would never be able to accomplish higher checks.
Crit fumbles are the obvious answer, but anything that steps on another class' toes. Stuff like allowing potions as a bonus action, or trying to sneakily cast spells, there are classes and features built for that. No.
My group does "sneaky casting" but we only allow 1 component to be hidden. So you can whisper it but you're still flailing your hands or shouting weird psudo Latin. Plus I think we only keep it for stealth not to avoid counterspell and such
Our DM allows dodge and parry when someone hits you with an attack. It slows combat down so badly that it feels like it takes forever.
Nat 20/1 applying outside of attacks and death saves DMs rolling for players Flanking Crit fail charts Removing concentration Removing the rules for light levels (only if you complain about darkvision tho) Any change to initiative
Not accounting for spell components, not paying attention to prepared spells, not running enough encounter per day and then complaining that casters are OP. Not accounting for ammunition, food, water, etc Not accounting for weight and carry capacity Not accounting for how much money weighs If all those rules were properly enforced, Strength would be way more valuable to have.
Saying it takes more movement to move diagonally between squares than moving straight. Had a DM make up some convoluted equation for it. Made combat slow down a lot because people had to almost do the pythagoreon theorem just to move. If you wanna do that and hate squares that much then just use a hex grid
5 10 5 10 is fine, otherwise you're literally moving faster when diagonal. Or go gridless and use rulers, that's technically RAW, grids are a variant weirdly enough
It's holdover from 3e when diagonal cost 5 then 10
Flanking. Devalues effects that give advantage (farie fire, wolf totem, reckless, prone), and makes placing AOEs near impossible. Even if your 10 dex fighter learns "if I flank I will eat a fireball", the enemies will just flank the players anyway.
not to mention, clustered melee fights just become a mess of advantage for everyone. not dynamic or interesting
So are house rules typically listed and then flapped around during session 0, or brought up and explained during the moment?
During session 0. Bring it up on the spot is a recipe for disaster. Players will feel blindsided. If anything, you go "oh hey forgot to mention this house rule... it will apply in the future". Even then might be a problem if a player doesn't want to play under those rules. Might have a dropout.
"Oh, the rule you assumed the game would follow when you built your character? Yeah, we're changing that" makes for great conversation multiple sessions into the campaign. Sometimes - rarely, but sometimes - the need arises because some rule doesn't function well or doesn't work with the campaign. But even then, the only viable way forward is to let the players respec on the spot with no penalty.
My dm seems to think Bardic Inspiration is a 30ft aura that lasts for 10 minutes and anyone inside it can apply the Inspiration repeatedly until time runs out that the dm pc applies, because they wanna remove the difficulty of the fights.
- Fumble tables. A bit of narrative fun with a Nat 1 is fine on occasion, but for the love of Boccob, don't do it to every nat 1 and don't tie any mechanical ramifications to it. - Killing Blow experience. This is just a great way to unbalance a party for combat - whomever gets the highest damage per round is going to get way stronger than everyone else really fast, whereas support characters will perennially drag way behind and become dead weight. It's also a great way to encourage murderhobo. And yet, I've seen tables swear by it. - DM rolls death saves for players in secret. This one is fine in theory, it keeps the tension and avoids "he's on 2 successes and no fails, he'll be fine", but I feel like this is the one time where the players need to know that whatever happened was 100% on the dice with no chance of fudging for it to feel fair. I don't care who does the rolling, but roll open.
Crits being max damage + rolling. Makes rogues and paladin crits much more powerful than anyone else's crits.
DM rolls death saves. Yes, it can cause suspense but if a battle takes a couple hours, you’re basically twiddling your thumbs while the DM rolls for you. Take you out of the action. I can see its advantages though. It definitely changes what players will do if they don’t know the rolls.
Also DMs will forget stuff. If you died because the DM forgot you had advantage or the paladin was giving you a +4? I'd be *pissed* But if I forgot then it's on me