My favourite "rule" is the one that allows Fireball to be cast. Call me old fashioned, but I just really think it's neat.

Favorite homebrew rule I saw on reddit "If your vicious mockery insult makes me laugh out loud, there is no saving throw"

Let me just say, I feel like a lot of content creators prefer to focus on more negative aspects of the game, and having this be "rules I like", instead of "rules I don't like", is a really nice change of pace from what I see a lot. Much love, appreciate the content!

If I remember correctly, there is a table for mixing potions. Sometimes the effects are permanent, sometimes you just explode. Either way it is always fun.

I used Mercer’s resurrection rules in my Curse of Strahd game after Strahd murdered the party’s paladin. The warlock straight up threatened the paladin’s god. I called for an intimidation check with a DC of 25, he got a 26. And that’s how the Cthulhu worshipping warlock scared a god into compliance.

About role playing monsters, there’s a book called The Monsters Know What They’re Doing and it tells you what each creature would do in combat and their tactics and strategies.

I really love that Tasha's Cauldron has a section where it encourages players to consider re-flavoring their spells and whatnot to better fit their character. The example they give is a farmer wizard shooting magic missiles that look like chickens, or an Artificer's Cure Wounds being a mechanical spider that sutures injuries. I've always loved doing things like that, so it's cool to see them acknowledge it. I have an eldritch knight who is a skeleton, so I utilize that in his spells. I renamed his Fire Bolt to Burning Bone, and it has him throw a flaming femur or launch his fist at enemies like a rocket punch.

A mechanic that I add to “Bringing back the Dead” is called “Never the same”. Basically, when you die and brought back, you can loose entire memories, personally traits and tastes. After a time the character that died starts creating new things that replenish the ones that are lost forever. This can lead to moments like a character that used to hate drows, now is very merciful towards them. And can lead to sad moments like a father completely forgetting about the existence of his daughter or vice-versa.

Rules are the best, especially when I exploit them for my own nefarious means.

I didn't really see myself running any Wildemount games, but you can be sure that I took that Heroic Chronicle and expanded on it because it's such a cool way to flesh out character creation and add some elements of chance where they wouldn't normally be.

One rule that I love is the Tool Proficiency rules in Xanathar's. It's basically a section that tells you what's in each toolkit, different ways you can use your tools to make checks, and examples of things you can use to craft with them. It really takes a part of the game that's often just seen as useless or only for roleplay, and makes it something that can impact a character's decisions.

My favorite Homebrew rule: "While not required, players may gain Inspiration by writing a journal entry before each session of play. Entries can be posted on the Adventure Log (secret entries can be set so only the DM can view). Posting journal entries helps everyone better understand your character and helps the DM better tailor the game to each character. Entries do not need to be in first person, or even in a journal format. For example, you may find it preferable to write about something in your character’s backstory or draw a scene from the previous session etc."

In regards to the lingering injury, my DM allowed me, when my sorcerer character was cornered without their gear, to use Subtle Spell and Catapult one of their teeth as ammo in order to defeat the one who cornered him. He then had a missing tooth since we both ruled the max damage from the spell shattered the tooth so he couldn't retrieve it, and it forever showed to the rest of the party the lengths that he is willing to go to.

One rule I like that's a bit more nitty-gritty mathy is the ruleset for Mob Combat . It basically lets you have mass combat with players that dynamically change to different groups or regular small combats, without spending 30 minutes each round to move NPCs around and roll 60 dice. It takes a bit to learn but when you understand it, it lets you have the players go up against entire platoons without things feeling like they take too long. And if they get one squad down to one or two units, you just immediately shift those few units to normal rules, since they work in conjunction with regular combat rules.

I always loved the idea of the Vestiges of Divergence. A magic item that is not just powerful, but grows with the character and eventually becomes a legendary or artifact-level item. An item that has to be found, discovered, or won, not just bought in a shop. Much cooler than a +1 sword being replaced by a +2 sword.

The monster lore section from Volos is great. It was an awesome resource and just plain fun read when I was running hags as a bbeg. Nerdarchist Dave

100% agree on the blizzard dice. My players and I love it. They encountered a frost giant riding a mammoth in a blizzard, and that was one of the most tense moment of the entire campaign (especially since one of the players put a severe fear of blizzards in their backstory). It's a great idea, executed well. It also mean that having the same encounter twice isn't necessarily a problem, because it might play out very differently in a blizzard.

Hey Jacob! Best of luck on the baby, you seem like you'd make a great dad.

"Have you heard of this book called the Dungeon Master Guide?" OH MY GOD SOMEONE IS TALKING ABOUT THE DMG! Thank you! The amount that people just throw out the DMG without even reading things outside of the magic item section. Chapter 9 is my favorite thing, because it is loaded with everything that i hear people say, "Man I wish 5e had ____."

something small i really appreciate about Van Richten's guide: in the "how to write psychological horror" is they say to steer away from adding mental illness tropes in the game while still giving good examples on how to make a psychological horror game. it's something small but i like it.

The first two minutes of this video aged exceptionally well, now that One D&D is a thing.

Recently a friend of mine told me that she had never experienced D&D 5e just as written without a mass of homebrew, so sometimes it's good to look at the core chassis of the game and try to appreciate what's there.

I just want to say that I'm super happy that you're actively being positive about 5e. It seems to be a large part of the community to say "argh 5e bad, WotC not do anything how I like it," when there's really so much great stuff out there. I too recently found that the DMG was way better than people give it credit for, and a lot of the complaints about what 5e doesn't have tends to actually be in there. There's definitely stuff to dislike about it and be disappointed in, but it's just refreshing to see that there are people that still find the good in the game regardless.

On the subject of Volo's, I love how Fizban's Treasury gave dragons so many tables and alternative rules! It truly fleshed them out to be epic entities!

Dude, I was actually so hoping that you would bring up downtime activities in XGtE. My party just got done doing downtime for the 3rd time. Its so fun and so different every time we run it, and it adds such a fun and simple flavor to the game.

Wow you really called One d&d 5 months in advance, jacob is a time traveller

"Go to bed on time tonight." That caught me offguard so much, might just follow your advice. :D Thanks for your insight and the positive content. Rambling and ranting may seem easier and more fun, but this was really nice, informative and made me check out things like the heroic chronicle or the downtime mechanic.

Can I just celebrate out loud how this channel is always just genuinely a DND person sharing useful and funny stuff with other DND persons.

I can't help but imagine a party rolling to help their friend return from the dead, and every heartfelt plea fails, only to have one party member be like, "I'm so sorry I ate your last donut." and the corpse suddenly jumps to its feet, fully revived, and says, "You did what?!?" or something like that. XD It just seems way too fitting for some reason.

A tip on managing weather since you mentioned you have trouble with it; completely ignore any rules or mechanics about it. Weather is a tone-setting tool and when played into gives players extra immersion and often changes how they play. It just happens to sometimes have mechanical consequences but that's what Advantage/Disadvantage is here for.

A thing my party did in like 2019 was that there was a spell of mind dullness being casted on a town and the party stumbled on it and they made a fighting pit and the druid was a lobster and they put up a sign and it said "magic lobster" and the towns folk had to pay 1 gp for entry and they put animals in the ring and the druid just beat them up and for downtime they just ran the ring and made like 112 gp per night.They eventually stopped it but ye

Jacob predicted One Dnd

Personally my favorite expanded rules are the resurrection rules from Tal’Dorei Reborn. I’ve been using a version of them for years in my games, and it always creates really dramatic scenarios whenever player death occurs. I actually made a video on it myself a few weeks ago!

You got it right!!!! One D&D is just a revisit of the rules not, a new addition, you were spot on.

The reason people are talking about "5.5e" and "6e" is because WotC has pulled this trick before. 3.5 was, effectively, a new edition -- sure it had *some* backwards-compatibility with 3e, but there was enough that was different that it was effectively a different beast. Also, as late as a couple weeks before the announcement of 4e, they said there were no plans in the works for 4e, despite the products coming out really feeling like test beds for new mechanics. So excuse me if I take any of WotC's assurances that this new set isn't a new edition with a wheelbarrow of salt. WotC's earned my skepticism.

One of my favourite rules/sections in a dnd book is the Draconomicon section of Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons. It’s that section in Volo’s you talked about but for each of the True Dragons (chromatic, metallic, gem) as well as some other dragons like Fairie Dragons, Shadow Dragons, Dracoliches, Dragon Turtles, Moonstone Dragons, and Deep Dragons. It goes over (with tables) each stage of life if that specific dragon in what they want, what they’re doing, what their hoard is compiled of, different creatures that they would have as minions/helpers/worshipers, and most of them also have a stock lair map that gives you an idea of what their lair would look like to expand on them. Speaking of lairs it also adds some lair actions and regional effects aside from what was already included with the creature stat sheet. It’s really really really cool and pairs well with my other favourite section in that same book which is the Dragons in Play chapter which is all about creating and developing dragons as unique creatures with everything ranging from quirks, personality traits, additional features, spells, fun stuff called Hidecarved Runes, and different factions that dragon may be apart of and/or lead. All in all Fizban’s is a pretty cool book and if you’re gonna do anything with a dragon I recommend it

Great vid Jacob but I was truly hoping you would have mentioned Keth Ammann's book; "The Monsters Know What They Are Doing". Though not a 'rule-book', it is an incredible resource for DMs on how to effectively run their "Bad Guys" in confrontations. He adheres directly to the "Monster Manual" for stats, acknowledging you can easily punch up or punch down your beasties abilities dependent on party size and XP/Level. This Gentleman and/or his Editor also did an amazing job collating enemies by Type (i.e. one chapter is dedicated just to Undead, another to Aberrations, one for Devils, etc). Cannot recommend it highly enough.

I love Stibble's Codex. My heart melts when I see that your companion can get you food. I just imagen this adorable little animal setting down a bushel of berries at your feet and looking up at you with big eyes that plead, "I did good, wight?" And I just double over clutching my chest in pain at how fucking adorable that is. Especially when you consider the plant based animals like the Vine Snake that grows fruit themselves. A Vine Snake companion could see that you're hungry and pull off one of their grapes and hand it too you and I just "Heeerk" at how cute it is.

In combination with the expanded lingering injury table, I also like to use the Massive Damage rule listed at DMG 273. It adds an additional Con save if you take >50% damage in one hit with a variety of short term consequences for failing.

1:00 watching after one dnd is released makes this hit different. damn this man is a prophet.

I’m super grateful for Star Wars 5e including the Xanathar’s downtime activities. I started a campaign last night for a few friends and they spent a lot of time carousing and gambling (they started in the casino/resort district on Nar Shadaa) and it led to some really amazing role play moments. Good way to get the players to work together and bond as a party outside of questing.

A rule that I use is the brutal critical rule. How it works is fairly simple. When you get a Nat 20 you do the roll with max damage instead of double dice. So let's say your weapon does 1d12 damage, it'd do 1d12+12 damage instead of 2d12

On the 6th edition point If they're going to do an update-style development cycle for 5e, they really need to release a 5.5 player's handbook. I'm happy to play 5e, but with all the optional class rules and balance changes in Tasha's it'd be nice to have them in a central book with all the base game options, especially if we can expect more of that sort of thing.

This is hands-down the best advertisement for theses books. Especially for DMs on a budget, there’s the question of whether a book is really worth it. I’ve never seen a video that’s had me add to my wishlist like this. Nice work!!!

Oh, i use some interesting rule for resurection. Players also participate in it, but, they asked questions about the dead one. I give them a little table with 4 variants of personality traits of a character, but only one of them is really true, when others are false traits. And the if wrong traits been chosen resurected character gets a full length insanity including new, extended personality trait, based on what has been chosen

I absolutely love the Aquisitions Incorporated book and the introduction to Business roles and special magical items to make an office based comedy in a fantasy realm

The great thing about showing rules you like is that it’s a great resource for home brewing rules. You can take these existing ideas and create new inspired ideas and rules that can add more flavor to the table top rpg experience. I’m gonna look more into these to home brew some other systems I’ve been wanting to make. Thanks for this video!

Thaaank you for giving random tables the credit they deserve! Especially the dmg dungeon and city generators. They are SO good for sparking inspiration or lending a strong foundation for inspiration you might already have.

Homebrew rule: as a free action, 3 or more characters with shields can “wall up,” increasing their cover by a quarter and granting all members reaction against foes who strike their wall-buddies. This halves their movement speed and it only works from one side, but makes it much easier to hold down hallways or face large groups.

The Renown and Piety systems from Ravnica and Theros respectively. Giving us solid progression lines with features that tie into these two scores that were only vaguely explained in the DMG is really amazing, especially with how there's 10 Guild and 15 Gods to give you not only jumping off points for making your own factions and God Boons, but for use as is in and out of the setting.

4:48 Never have I seen someone put a book away more awkwardly. And I'm SO here for it.

i personally love the character secrets mechanic from icewind dale, it adds so much to character story arcs. but i'm a bit biased on the encounter tables because we kept running into the white dragon at low levels

DOWNTIME! I finally convinced my players to try playing with downtime and man is it fun. It encourages a lot of character development for the players forcing them to think about what exactly their characters like to do when they're not adventuring. Super glad that somebody else thinks the same.

Definitely going to keep a lot of these in mind for my upcoming campaign. When I started my last campaign, Volo's was the most recent sourcebook - but with it coming to an end, I definitely want to check out some of these options. I'm definitely stealing the Heroic Chronicle for character creation, and the Icewind Dale travel tables will be super useful to nick, considering that I'm running my next campaign in an arid environment. Swap out the monsters with desert stuff and the snowstorm with sandstorm and I'm there!

I LOVE the variant rules in books. Like so many people say that 5e is too simple but then there are literally mechanics they can experiment with that makes it much more difficult. Like some people ban flanking or feats, but what they don't know is that when you add more variant rules into the game, they easily balance themselves out. I really wanted to try my hand at them but my only table is a beer and pretzels table that I have to drag by the ear to even RP let alone learn more rules. Variant rules sound so fun and I see how they work.

I’m not sure how common it is, but on Dimension 20’s Unsleeping City campaign there was a home brew rule about wild magic sorcerers. Every time you don’t roll a 1 on the surge, it raises (eg. 1 or 2 to surge; 1, 2, or 3 to surge; etc.)

I created a mechanic called “Patron’s Gift” basically when you do something for your patron(Kill a certain guy, help a ritual, destroy a place that opposes your patron, etc) your Patron grants you special gift. They can be: Expanding your spell casting abilities, more invocations and passives for your features. Patrons from a specific monster type can also grant unique powers. A Great Old One will allow to search from a person deep memories and thoughts once per day; A ArchFey will allow you to form the Feywild’s Contract on creatures; A Undead may grant you the Vampire’s Regeneration feature; HexBlade will grant you features such as Action Surge, Favorite Enemy(Or Foe) and Smite.

I believe Reaction Rolls and Morale Checks are very important. Reaction Rolls are used to determine the starting disposition of any NPC, particularly the wandering / random monsters in the wilderness or dungeon. Not all monsters want to fight to the death, and that's where morale checks come in.

This is the greatest advertisement for all of those books. I really want them now.

This is by far my favorite video from you! Thank you so much. I’ve been a little tired of being a forever DM but your recommendations have given me a little spark to keep playing so again THANKS

Damn this intro aged really well. Great prediction

1:08 my mans knew already

Jacob: "Go to bed on time tonight" Me: *Looks at the computer screen and the tiny symbols that tell me it's 3 in the morning and I have work tomorrow*

This is awesome! Thank you for making this and featuring all the cool stuff and the pages in the book you can find it! This will be super useful and inspiring!

A real good reminder to look back in previous books a cherry pick some of the great resources we forgot about! (But of course not to read forever and go to bed on time)

for a bit horror or just a change of gameplay the Grim Hollow books are good. they got really good Transformation rules that are much better rules for when the player becomes a Lycan, Vampire or other things (atm got a Seraphin and Specter in the game i run) they also give good rules for making Curses more interesting and harder to cure. and also good rules for blackpowder weapons like pistols.

“As my group’s forever DM” Man, trust me. I feel you on that. I’ve been a DM for 4 years now. I haven’t played this game myself since I started.

One old homebrew rule I have that also uses the lingering injuries table is that it only applies when anyone dies and faild dc 10 con save (that increased by 2 every time you die again before a long rest). Very similar to yours, but instead of being "too much damage" it was just made because of "roly-poly" experience in a fight in the old bonegrinder - whole team positioning to keep the hags in other floors and fighting only one at a time and quickly healing however gets knocked out back up the same turn like 17 times in a single fight that they weren't suppose to even fight made me do it.

Congrats on the baby!!! ❤️✨

I kinda feel like this is the rulebook review that we all needed. Theres so much that people dismiss to the point that I havent heard of a lot of these parts in the books. Cheers Jacob P.S. tables are the best. Its like someone giving you 10-50 suggestions at once

Idk why, but I love the standard rules for water combat, specifically drowning. The fact that losing your breath is just immediate deaths saves which you can never succeed is the perfect level of terrifying for me

"Go to bed on time tonight." It's 4 : 58 am. I am sorry I am disappointing you. I love how enthusiastic you are about tables. I feel the same way about tables in general. I don't own many D&D books because I'm still new to the hobby, but tables are great all the time!

I highly recommend the book "The Game masters book on non-player characters" by Ashworth, got it at Target for $17. It's dam good

I've got a good feeling the new dnd books are basically dnd 5.5 (like 3.5) and it makes me excited to see what we're gonna get for books! 6e might not ever come, but if it does I'd be happy to welcome it

You don't know how much I needed this. Long time DM and a long time fan of you. I usually send your videos to new players, but this video was great since it helped me think differently about all these books.

It has been two tears since I watched ten beginning of CR C2, but when you said “regular gnolls,” I immediately thought “regular gnoll, regular gnoll”

I must say I totally understand what you mean when you say you love tables, out of fun I made an ancient dragon horde with the help of fizabn's and the DMG and it was so much fun, I made 2 more and decided my campagins next chapter will be focused more on dragons :D Aside from the Stuff from Fizban's (I really like that book) I love the system of Ancestral Weapons from the DM's Guild which lets players make their own magic weapons with personalities and really cool effects on them with a point system, though I don't let my players make their own Magic Weapons but instead use that system to make their weapons and over time upgrade them as they grow closer to their weapon and maybe do as it wishes (as it has it's own personality) , as I found that players are pretty good at optimizing the fun out of their characters and they would often rather take that +2 bonus for their sword and crit with a 19 rather than having it be +1 and able to be thrown like a boomerang, store a spell and have it give you a new proficiency like History

I come here from the future ,Jacob predicted One DND

This is absolutely now my most favourite video of yours. Wholesome and unbelievably useful as a DM. And really well thought out. More like this for us dms please!! Keep up the great work!

Im prepping to relaunch a favorite homebrew setting of mine and am looking to flesh more of it out so im thrilled each time a rule vid like this comes out where I can see things id love to add or change about the way my DnD plays!

For the Stibbles companions, I really wish that they pets scaled a bit better. I know they are not supposed to be lower power than an actual party member, but they don't seem to scale to high level very well. For lower levels it's perfectly fine, but if you wanna bring your pets to high or even epic levels... there might be some issues. I have actually run it yet though, so if they do scale at high levels well, someone please correct me. I mainly want this because I think it would be awesome for the party to get a pet at the beginning of the game and have that pet stick with them all the way until the end.

This man called "one dnd"

Ok I enjoyed how you pulled the books close to you ready to do story time, I want to play dnd properly and watching your channel as well as many others have helped me.

Van Richten’s guide page 198. Haunted Traps are wonderful. I used Morbid Memory specifically to tell the story in Death House during Curse of Strahd campaign. Revealed the turmoil in the family, key events from the past, laid the lore out in a way that made my playgroup eager to keep the exploring the house to find out what happened to the family next. It was really great.

When their right about future of DnD 5 months before the announcement.

I LOVE YOUR CONTENT KEEP IT UP

Getting tips from experienced DMs is literally the best. Great video. Gonna check out that city building tip you just dropped, cuz I haven't opened my DMG in a year or two

D&D adjacent: Campfire scenes. Once per session over a long rest, one PC can tell a story, have a flashback, or share a scene with another member of the party meant to reveal more about their character or their relationship with the party. Target time of five minutes. When the scene or story is over, the other players ask the one who set the scene or shared the story one question apiece. The player that told the story answers those questions and then picks the one that they think revealed the most about their backstory or relationships. Both the PC who told the story and the PC who asked the best question get Inspiration. I think Steven Lumpkin of Roll Play created this, but maybe he got it from elsewhere?

First time watching this literally Two days after seeing the One DnD drop ......are.........are you a prophet??

1:09-1:50 Yeah, that aged well

I really liked this video. I became a fan of yours during this video because I can feel your passion for the game and it inspired me. Thank you.

I've been watching your videos for a few years now. I've just put together some friends to start a game which I'll be DMing. This video has really helped. Thanks Jackob :)

Shit dude you called it! I mean One D&D or whatever

He called it. One dnd😂

I just bought the lingering injuries rules from the dm lair and I love it. They have a different table for each damage type with different levels of injuries within those tables, so at the beginning you might have small injuries but if you keep getting injuries they add up and can get pretty bad

Your positive outlook catalyzed my decision to subscribe. Keep up the good work friend!

Damn, that intro came through lol

More positivity here on xp to level 3?? :o

Your videos are getting better and better. Nice!

I love Spelljammers. It's got fantasy space travel, it's got multiverse shenanigans, I just adore it.