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Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion / House rules for immersive 5e
« on: October 24, 2018, 06:15:03 pm »
So I'm trying out starting up a D&D 5th ed game. I've played and run a few games using only the standard rules, and now I'm thinking of branching out with more house rules.
1) Something close to the DMG option for 8 hour short rest / 7 day long rest.
Ideally, I'd like resting to be more of a smooth transition rather than nothing at 6 days and fully recharged at 7. However, it seems complicated to get this to work under the current rules.
2) A variation of my older "death charm" idea, to address 1 hit point healing from being down.
I don't like the way that regardless of how much damage was done, a person pops back up with 1 point of healing. I understand that there is a game play reason for it, but it was jarring for me in practice. Instead, I replace "Healing Word" with "Wound Charm" - which is cast as a reaction, and instead of healing X points, it means that a single source of damage is ignored but the creature is stunned until its next action. Also, any healing ability can be used to create a "Wound Charm" instead of 3 or more hit points of healing. This will work on whatever the next source of damage is to them. In turn, hit point totals do go negative, and they go more negative the longer someone is down. Characters need more healing if they have taken more damage.
Wound charms should have a similar effect to having characters bounce up from being down, but with a different explanation. i.e. The character didn't really take that damage, rather than taking a bunch of damage and popping back up with 1 point of healing.
3) An option to restrict nova of spellcasters
I picture that a bunch of play in my campaign won't be restricted to having many combat encounters in a day or even in a week. I'd like play to sometimes stretch across months of travel or ordinary life. Going from zero to hero will take years rather than weeks. Given this, some encounters will be rare clashes in relatively safe places, like a fight in town or as part of a months-long voyage. Even with 7 days long rest, there will be times when the PCs aren't worried about being ambushed or attacked upcoming - so it would make sense to use all resources. So I am thinking about a restriction on spell slots in an encounter for clerics and wizards in particular.
In the longer term, I'm thinking about creating a variant of cleric and a variant of wizard that are both a little easier to play, and less long-rest restricted. They would be closer to the warlock class in balance (more abilities that are at-will or at most short rest), but with different flavor.
1) Something close to the DMG option for 8 hour short rest / 7 day long rest.
Ideally, I'd like resting to be more of a smooth transition rather than nothing at 6 days and fully recharged at 7. However, it seems complicated to get this to work under the current rules.
2) A variation of my older "death charm" idea, to address 1 hit point healing from being down.
I don't like the way that regardless of how much damage was done, a person pops back up with 1 point of healing. I understand that there is a game play reason for it, but it was jarring for me in practice. Instead, I replace "Healing Word" with "Wound Charm" - which is cast as a reaction, and instead of healing X points, it means that a single source of damage is ignored but the creature is stunned until its next action. Also, any healing ability can be used to create a "Wound Charm" instead of 3 or more hit points of healing. This will work on whatever the next source of damage is to them. In turn, hit point totals do go negative, and they go more negative the longer someone is down. Characters need more healing if they have taken more damage.
Wound charms should have a similar effect to having characters bounce up from being down, but with a different explanation. i.e. The character didn't really take that damage, rather than taking a bunch of damage and popping back up with 1 point of healing.
3) An option to restrict nova of spellcasters
I picture that a bunch of play in my campaign won't be restricted to having many combat encounters in a day or even in a week. I'd like play to sometimes stretch across months of travel or ordinary life. Going from zero to hero will take years rather than weeks. Given this, some encounters will be rare clashes in relatively safe places, like a fight in town or as part of a months-long voyage. Even with 7 days long rest, there will be times when the PCs aren't worried about being ambushed or attacked upcoming - so it would make sense to use all resources. So I am thinking about a restriction on spell slots in an encounter for clerics and wizards in particular.
In the longer term, I'm thinking about creating a variant of cleric and a variant of wizard that are both a little easier to play, and less long-rest restricted. They would be closer to the warlock class in balance (more abilities that are at-will or at most short rest), but with different flavor.