Jacob has to lie on the floor again because he's a dad now and needs to have his kid in his peripheral vision at all times

The Urchin background actually does list a pet mouse as part of the starting equipment. As far as I know, it's the only background that lets you have a pet at level 1.

RE: Requiring components for revival. Imagine a Pirate campaign with a custom modeled after the pirates having gold piercings to pay for their funerals, but instead they pay to cover the healing/revival cost. So a pirate with 3 diamond studs in his ear would effectively have 3 extra lives as long as their side is victorious.

Using a potion in the middle of combat is a bonus action. However a character can choose to use thier action to carefully drink the entire potion to receive the maximum amount of healing the potion can provide.

Everybody misses the "Other Activity on Your Turn" part of the combat section which lets you get one free object interaction on your turn as part of any of the other actions. It's only beyond that that you need to use an action to interact with objects.

One of my FAVORITE house rules is allowing Intimidation to be rolled with strength instead of charisma. If you’re a big scary barbarian or a scarred war veteran you’re gonna be.. well.. scary. Super fun and I would totally recommend it.

In my games, at level 10 casters can cast non-damaging cantrips as bonus actions. It’s a good way to feel like you are improving your skill with spells that otherwise never change unlike damage dealing cantrips that scale with level.

To add to the video, we play with something we call "stronger crits": whenever you crit you do not double the dice, but roll normal and add the max damage once. So a greatsword crit is not 4d6+mod, but 12+2d6+mod. We had a couple instances that we rolled crits and then did less than half the damage of regular average (e.g. firebolt on avergae doing 5.5 damage, and the doing a crit and roll a 2 just sucks. Now it is minimum an 11 when you crit). Ofc this goes for enemies too so their crits are terrifying at times.

Jacob laying on the floor covered in toys and referencing Bluey is the ultimate form of *DAD* Happy Father's Day, Jacob!

The urchin background has a pet rat and you get a free object interaction on each turn so opening a door or drawing a weapon is free. I do love the idea of the dungeon being littered with shattered doors from all the shoulder checks though.

The only one I hard disagree with is the no concentration one… concentration is one of the main reasons that spellcasters are so dependent on multiple ability scores, they become far too effortlessly powerful (more than they already are) without at least needing to buffer constitution as well to succeed in concentration checks

I like running crunchy crits, where instead of rolling twice the amount of dice, the player deals the max damage they possibly could with their attack, then rolls the damage that their attack normally does. Makes crits feel really satisfying and substantial to hit

Concentration is a huge power check because it requires casters to spend level up resources on ways to protect their concentration. Concentration spells are literally the strongest spells in the game, there's no reason to buff them.

I wrote a one-shot where the players were 10th level mages imprisoned for being too dangerous to be free. No arcane focuses, only components, and they have nothing to start. As they're put to work in the prison they'll have to try scavenging for all those little components to cast even their regular spells and once they've collected what they think is enough, break free with what spells they can cast. We haven't gotten around to playing it so it might suck but I think the idea is cool

I've always been a fan of letting people change the damage types of their spells to better fit their character. I think that damage types, weaknesses, and resistances so rarely ever come up that it's usually fine to just let someone say that guiding bolt does lightning damage instead of radiant.

14:56 Flanking isn’t really about sight. It’s about not being able to defend opposite sides of yourself effectively because you’ve only got so many limbs.

Also, so many house rules that "speed the game up" by removing clerical stuff are also sneaky buffs for casters and even ranged martials. Removing opportunity attacks is the only one I've seen that benefits melee martials.

For the comment about climbing being Acrobatics, the original design around skills (which may still might be technically RAW) was that any skill can use any stat, but the ones listed are the default. Barbarians can use their strength to intimidate or a charismatic character can use their charisma to fit into a crowd and act like they belong. I think being flexible with stats goes a long way to opening the game up.

one of the most commonly changed rules that many people don't realize they're changing is that Zone of Truth doesn't just allow for one save. it allows for one save per round, effectively making it impossible to save against. it effectively works automatically.

By standard rules, everyone gets a single item interaction on their turn, and the rules for that are pretty wild. You can grab something off the floor, pull a level, open an unlocked door, or dig a potion out of your bag as an item interaction!

For potions, health potions in particular, I like to make them a bonus action to drink and then you roll. However, if you spend an entire action to do so you get max healing since you make sure to get every last drop. I probably stole this idea from someone lol.

One of my favorites I came up with is that if an attack roll is made against you and matches your AC, it still hits, but the damage is halved

When rolling ability scores, all players roll Strength at the same time, pool their rolls, and then divy them up as they see fit. Then move on to Dex, then Con, etc. Helps everyone know what the other characters in the party are capable of on a base level and promotes building characters together instead of everyone telling a separate story from one another. DM also rolls and the players discard whichever roll doesn't get used to provide a buffer.

Base rules, you always get one free object interaction on your turn (opening a door, drawing/sheathing a weapon, etc) and any additional interactions take your action. So you can switch weapons without using any actions if you just drop the one you're holding first

I looove changing rules from d&d. Sometimes for balance, mostly out of spite.

16:37 I know there’s a thousand rules across the 5e books, but opening an unlocked door is *specifically* listed as one of the things you can do for free once a turn, next to drawing/stowing a weapon and downing a tankard of ale (edit: I've been informed that dropping object does not take the Interact with Objects action). Using magical items usually takes a full action, but the mundane stuff is free. Actually, this is something my players forget sometimes. They’ll ask if it’ll be an action to grab the Orb and put it in their bag, and I’ll say “you can do that, no action required.” Similar thing for rolling some actions. Sure, you can reasonably reach the top of the 10ft wall, no need to roll.

11:07 That would actually be strategically brilliant! The BBEG taking over mines where you can get diamonds to keep his enemies from being revivified, while enabling him to revivify his minions.

3:40 "A pet mouse" with the word "pet" specifically in it is found in the urchin starting equipment.

Object interaction as a bonus action is actually a nerf. RAW you get one for free each turn (PHB Pg.190 “Other Activity on Your Turn”) I love for players to use their turns to do a variety of things, but a player would never spend a whole action to take the ‘Search’ action. So I let players make one non physical ability check (perception, persuasion, insight, history, etc.) for free on their turn too

A rule that my tables have had for awhile regarding health increases on level up is that you reroll based on your hit die size. If you have a d6 you only reroll on a 1 but d8s reroll on 1-2, d10 rerolls on 1-3, and d12 rerolls from 1-4. This way the Barbarian doesn't feel bad for rolling a 2 on their hit die.

10:35 I never really thought about having to purchase components before, but after hearing your explanation for it and thinking about it myself, I realized that there’s even more potential for this than you mentioned. For example, let’s say your party’s cleric has 700 gold and they want to be able to cast revivify. The cleric purchases 1 Diamond at the cost of 300 gold, but saves the rest in case they need to buy something important (like a magic item or something). Later, the party takes an exceptionally tough fight that results in 2 characters dying. The cleric has now been punished for being greedy, and now has to make the incredibly dramatic decision of which character to keep in the campaign.

Costly/rare spell components are not just flavor/story, they are also part of the balance of the spell. You want to summon a demon, yeah, you actually have to collect a recently killed person’s blood.

The urchin background gets a pet mouse and the guild merchant gets a mule and cart, so there is some semblance of a rule that allows pets at character creation. Also, creating your own backgrounds/choosing your own equipment may allow you to invest in an animal

My rule for healing potions is that it is a Bonus Action to drink and you roll for healing. But, if you use an Action to drink it, you automatically get max healing from the potion.

I really like a change one of my groups that I'm GMing has made, which is that "movement" based actions, such as opening a door or drinking a potion, reloading a crossbow, etc have a raw movement cost, such as 10 feet to open a door. It allows for more tactical combat, but also has increased players moving and doing more cool stuff during their turn, instead of being like "well, I could do some cool stuff but I need to save my action since I need the entire action for X, so I'm only going to do this one thing for my turn". I dunno. Using movement distance as a resource has been fun and everyone seems to enjoy it since also having enemies use up their movement (so they can't do those actions) also has increased players' investment in the game.

I've been thinking about the fall damage thing recently, and I'd like to try this rule: if its a controlled fall (you jump on purpose and weren't knocked over) the number of safe feet you can drop is your CON mod plus your DEX mod times 5ft. Why Dex+Con? Well Dex is how well you can do like a tumble recovery, and Con is if you're tough enough to just eat it. I feel like fall damage doesn't happen that often anyway so if a player invests in getting 20 in both CON and DEX, what will it REALLY hurt to let them do a super hero landing from 5 stories up? (Yes i know super hero landings would destroy your bones irl, but they still look cool) i feel like you can also flavor in things like sliding down the cliff to control your momentum or landing on outcroppings on the way down or something.

One rule I have for my Strixhaven game is everyone has two backgrounds, and one of them must be a Strixhaven background and the other must not be a Strixhaven background. Basically, the one that's Strixhaven tells what your interested in studying, and the non-Strixhaven background says what your character did before getting to school. It's working really well. I was given quite a bit of inspiration for filling in their backstories a bit, and the Paladin actually has a ranged cantrip she can do (She choose firebolt), and I got to imply that her mother went there (Urchin background).

I am IN LOVE with the fact that jacob left his kids toys in shot, and not hiding the realities of being a parent.

The main homebrew rule we have implemented that changes stuff is wild magic getting 1d20 per spell level, it increases the likelihood of it happening and also plays into the idea that wild magic sorcerers don’t have full control over their magic

3:32 I remember reading one background and being shocked that you got a pet rat

My main takeaway from this informal survey is that it seems like almost EVERYONE forgets that in default RAW 5e, you can take the Interact With Object action for free ONCE on your turn as long as you have an action or movement you can take. The book assumes you interact as part of another action or movement (like taking the gold idol while attacking something or running past the pedestal).

16:31 This is a fun take but I think a lot of players miss the fact that everyone has a free use an object action. Meaning you can just open doors, sift through packages, draw weapons, etc. for free once a turn, afterwards you can do it again as an action. If you are a Thief you can Cunning Action 'Use an Object' as well for a bonus action, meaning in one single turn RAW, a Thief Rogue can, open a door, rush through it, close it behind them, and proceed to lock or bar it as well all in 6 seconds with their deft hands. That's cool af, and why I usually try and avoid changing rules that affect other class features specifically, so as not to take away from them.

Our DM has inspiration going the exact opposite way, where it's super rare, but also really powerful. Using an inspiration can happen before or after a roll, and it doesn't require a reroll, but is just an automatic success(within reason), and attacks that use inspiration are automatically critical hits. It makes them fight changing, and is pretty nice.

Im so on board with the whole components thing. Yeah, its difficult to have what is needed for a spell ahead of time. But I played a dragonblood sorcerer in my sister's campaign and had just gotten the Summon Draconic Spirit spell, but could not find the component for it. It turned into a whole side quest to defeat a dragon to acquire the item, which I was able to use for the first time against the dragon as well! It doesnt always have to be a shopping trip for components, you can pretty easily make an adventure for the rarer ones!

My favorite alternate initiative rule comes from a videogame actually. In the Banner Saga, you pick the order your party acts in. And then combat has a party turn -> opponent turn flow. So the first person in your party queue acts, then the first person in the opponent queue acts, then the second person in the party queue acts, and so on. The queues loop back to start at the end. So effectively the result is that players are _always_ acting. There is never a stretch of time where I as a GM go do several enemy turns at once while players just zone out because its always party-opponent-party-opponent. It makes fights feel a lot more dynamic and fast paced. It has a couple interesting effects too, the group with fewer members will be able to act more. So its a subtle buff to your big bad and their lieutenant, and a subtle nerf to the horde of goblins that outnumber the party. Banner saga also has a "pillage" rule. Where if there is only 1 enemy left, the entire party gets to act in between the enemy's turns. This is a nice way of letting the party clean up a trash mob, although I do away with this rule in boss fights and the party can never be "pillaged". It also helps me shake up boss design, letting me do interesting things since the boss acts after every party member. Fill out their tactics with reactions to some player attacks. When the tank charges in have a special reaction for that. It also allows for interesting timing based attacks. The boss targets a weakened player one turn, and the party has to scramble to save that player if they don't have time to react themselves. Interrupting the boss' attacks. When done well, this is a super satisfying system. It has its flaws, but I've had a lot of fun with this system, and I think choosing your queue order is an interesting tactical decision. A character that goes last can better react to any developments in combat, but the character that goes first can take advantage of terrain or positioning to get ahead of the opponents early.

I really love that critical hit rule with the third hit being a super hit. It feels like a final smash kinda thing.

for the rule at 7:34, even pathfinder has feats that allow you to switch your weapon during your turn for free, if you built it right

Second hot one: Inspiration is so rare at our table, it’s almost exclusively awarded for excellent role play or at table detective work, and as such when you receive a point of inspiration it is a free nat 20 on a role of your choice, and you can hold onto it for as long as you want. My table LOVES this rule, it allows us to plan story beats as players because sometimes we know we can do *one thing* and we just have to get to it to try, and it makes us want to play true to our characters because there’s a chance we’ll nail it so good that we get extremely rewarded for it

A variant of the potions on bonus action rule that we use: drinking a health potion using your BA makes you roll for hit points like usual, but using the potion as an action gives you max HP from it

I always enjoyed running that everyone gets a feat at level 1, helps to make everyone feel unique in their skillsets right from the start, especially since most classes don't give subclasses until level 3.

I like the idea that a healing potion can be either an action or a bonus action, with the difference being that as a bonus action you roll for healing, whereas when you allocate a full action it's automatically maximum. The idea is that when using a bonus action you're effectively just throwing it at your mouth, and maybe some (or most) of it misses, whereas when used as an action you're being careful to consume every bit of it.

An issue you might be having with the action system (though I do agree it’s still not the best) is that you’re not using free object interactions. They are basically that you can interact with 1 object on your turn(such as opening a door or drawing a weapon). I think they are in the “On Your Turn” section of the phb. Fun fact the rule intentionally doesn’t list dropping an item as a free object interaction. My table plays that you can drop a crossbow or something but it might miss fire when you do.

A player of mine decided to (finally) try DMing as she had a ton of great ideas and really wanted to give it a go. She ran a one-shot for her maiden voyage made a rule that gnomes are explosive if you lock eyes with them (without telling anyone else in the group). She almost TPKed the group because a shape-shifting decided to change into a gnome and tried to get an orphan gnome to look at him.

If a table isn't that keen on shopping for material components, they could set aside a set amount of gold for components. And when a spell uses something they can just take it straight out of that pool, pretending they bought it previously. This fund could only be refilled in decently sized towns, and if it runs out, that's it. No more spells for you.

The DM in on of my games gave us a feat at a story appropriate moment, which feels very rewarding after a big quest completion. He allows us to roll for hp on each level up, but if we roll below average, we can choose to take the average. So at worst, you have the average, at best you roll slightly above. In the end it amounts to about 1 more hit point per level so it is not really game breaking. This also prevents players from rolling 1 and 2s at low levels and being super low hp.

In our game, you can only flank if you still have a reaction, so if you still pose a "threat" because you could opportunity attack. If you used your reaction to do something, you can no longer flank for someone until you get it back.

Random idea I came up with for flanking while watching this: a creature being flanked cannot make opportunity attacks (including if one of the flanking creatures moves away) unless they meet the conditions that Jacob mentions like multiple eyes or high passive perception. Makes sense since they're too focussed on multiple opponents to take advantage of the opening you create by moving away. Alternatively, maybe you can't make opportunity attacks if your Dexterity mod is lower than your intended target's. That way it indirectly buffs classes like Rogue and Ranger who generally have higher Dexterities. Could also add a rule where concentration ignores this rule, so if you're concentrating on a spell or a feature creatures can make opportunity attacks against you even if they have a lower Dex mod. Makes the player think more carefully about their positioning.

I had a player who couldn't decide on what class to play. Every few hours they changed their mind. So we made a class, the multiple personality class. Every morning they roll a d8, and the number on the die is the class they are for the day. They have no memory of what did the day before if the class changes, and the personalities are not aware of each other. Once to level three, they get the ability to talk to themselves, where they can call on a random personality to multiclass with. He gets to play a bunch of classes, use the same character and we have some wild RP moments within the party and when dealing with NPCs.

10:45 I just added a square box next the marker for a prepared spell and put a tally in it to mark how many times I could cast it with the amount of materials on hand. Can't prepare the spell without taking note that you can't currently cast it.. (for different spells that share materials I split them but if I've run out of them for one I've got a little * showing that I could take them from another spells) sounds meticulous but really it's just like a spell slot marker. They stand out more than having to check the text box each time. Also infinity symbol means I got the costly ingredient that doesn't get consumed.

A couple of other ideas: You can weapon swap for free before or after attacking. Shields are a bonus action to take on/off. If you have a spell with the ritual tag, you can cast it as a ritual, even if your class doesn't allow it normally. Playtest inspired exhaustion rules: exhaustion is a cumulative -1 to all d20 rolls, up to a limit of 5 levels.

Since you mentioned the opening door (and drawing weapons and such) being an action , I'll point out that while they ARE actions, you get 1 object interaction for free each turn. So you can pull a lever, or open a door, or draw your weapon for free once per turn (For reference it's page 190 "Other activity on your turn" in the PHB). I personally tend to give my players 2 free interactions, mostly for those who want to switch weapons or are dual wielding.

3:52 I know for a fact that if you choose Urchin background your starting equipment gives you "a pet mouse"

House rules are another interesting topic to cover. We have a few house rules I'd like to share: -You have the option to roll 12 sets of 3d6 for stat rolls and take the highest 6 totals -we generally try not to use our phones unless its the DM looking something up. So if you want to reference a spell/race/item etc, you have to have a physical copy of the source material it came from. i.e we couldnt use the Silvery Barbs spell until we bought the Strixhaven book

The one rule that my group does that I really like, is that level one you start with a feat, level four is feat or ability improvement, but then every 2 level after the feat/ability improvement, you can take a feat. It allows for more interesting builds, and makes it easier to decide if you want to forgo that ability score improvement for a feat that works with your build/fits your character. Of course, this can be tuned to however you feel the group works, but the feat level one really makes the character more individual

Fall damage scales with size category (tiny is 1, small is 1d4, medium is 1d6, ect). This is mostly for fall damage transfer (a ancient red dragon falling 200 feet and landing on you should be worse then a raven doing the same) but it's also a little more realistic and gives a slight buff to small charcters.

Definitely some ideas that I stole, possibly even from Jacob, but, Health potions - Bonus action = roll to heal, full action = max heal (ie, 2d4+2 = 10 hp). It just makes a little more sense that if you are going to quaff a potion in the middle of combat, you might spill some, but if you take the time to use it properly, you get the full benefit of the brew. Crits - I hate low damage crits, so I adopted max damage + rolled damage + modifiers. So, if you use a short sword and you crit, you would get 6+1d6+Str. Nothing feels worse than getting super lucky with a crit and rolling 2 1's for your damage. I also tried making a tiered weapon system once, but it got too complicated for some of the new players so I scrapped it. The idea was that you could get better weapons the more your proficiency grew with a certain type of weapon. For example, you might start with a simple short sword, then work up to a long sword, then a great sword. Or maybe a spear, then a halberd, and then a glaive. That way you couldn't just immediately buy the strongest weapon available to you and immediately get all the benefits of it - you could use it, but you wouldn't get proficiency bonus with it.

I do crits in the way that I was taught by my AD&D DM: Regular damage times 2. There's no rolling two dice, there's no "this dice gets the plus this doesn't", it's just straight up you take your regular damage and multiply it by two. If you have say... Savage Attacks from the Half-Orc race, then you add an extra dice *after* the times two.

For the weapon swap thing, I personally count it as your 1 free item interaction per turn. This also takes the slot of opening or closing a door, ya know- something not *as* impactful, but still has a little bit of weight. It enables weapon swapping, but you can’t just Ben-Kei style, Shirou Emiya style grab a weapon, smash, grap a weapon smash. It loses a certain image, but it also prevents having to keep track of what does what on the same turn.

It's another patented "Jacob on the Floor" video! Common Jacob W

15:38 Pathfinder 2e fixes this problem in a really cool way, opportunity are restricted by class and only to certain enemies, which I think is really cool. You can play around it as a player by sending your more mobile characters at spellcasters that don’t have the feat while characters that like to stay up close and personal to bigger threats (like a fighter or barbarian that likes to rank) are given lots of tools to defend against strong melee combatants. Plus there’s so many different reactions that sometimes you’d rather save your reaction for something else then opportunity attacks.

For changing weapons we've always done drawing weapons is a free action but sheathing and drawing is a bonus action. This causes players to sometimes drop what they're holding if they don't have time to fully change weapons

The story after the enlarge reduce rule reminds me of my first ever game. We had a gnome paladin in our group. He was actually about 3 feet tall. But at some point he just became this hat and sword sticking out the grass at all time. No spell was used on him, we just decided he was actually 3 inches tall. The player rolled with it because he convinced our DM to give him advantage on stealth if he took his hat off. It was hilarious.

Finding spell components: Most of the time, it should be as easy as going to the "general store". Sure, it's a lot of fun to go on an adventure to get the diamonds for revivify, but you don't want your players to get annoyed at the wizard because it's the 10th time they need to go on a side quest because of a random spell. After a while the Wizard will just stop using those spells to avoid "wasting" sessions on side quests that only benefit him.

My favorite rule I use is that characters can make any practical skill check during combat using any part of their turn, but using a full action grants you advantage on the check, using up your bonus action or movement is a straight roll, or you can make the check as a free action with disadvantage. Another rule I use is that during character creation you must have some kind of backstory/relationship with at least one other character in the party.

I find it fun that swapping weapons can actually be done in tandem with your movement as a free action anyway. There are a ton of weird free actions that you can do.

I have some of our house rules on these subjects Weapon switching: we changed object interaction to be something separate from the other actions, so you have your action, reaction bonus action and interaction. With an interaction you can do something with both hands, anything more than that and it costs your action. For example: you’re holding a sword and want to grab a bow. Thats one hard for sheathing your sword, and one hand for grabbing the bow. If you want to switch from a bow to sword and shield, you cant do that without using your action or dropping the bow. Opening a door costs one hand interaction, so you can open a door and draw your sword. Concentration: you cant concentrate on more than one spell, but not all damage invokes concentration checks. Only in special cases at the dms choice. We have one other rule, any person with spell slots can support concentration. For example a druid is casting moonbeam, but also wants to conjure animals. The ranger in the party can take the concentration for that spell, as long as he has unlocked spell slots of that level. We are playing a high power game, so this gives the players some more options. Opportunity attacks: simple, as long as you have damaged someone this round, you dont invoke their opportunity attack. This buffs some of the low attack actions in the game, for example a monk. A monk can make unarmed strikes against a group of enemies, which means he can walk away freely.

My table occasionally uses an expansion on Colton's initiative rules. We have had issues in the past about who gets the DM's attention in towns or during rests, so we use initiative ordering to decide who gets to shop in which order, etc. This way the DM gets to directly address each member of the party and check that there isn't any more town-based interaction to be had before progressing the party, and there is never a situation where multiple players hound the DM with questions about different shops or taverns at the same time. We also used to split loot using a pick draft starting at the top of the initiative, but now we have matured enough to be chill with going down the loot list and allocating gear that players want to use and then selling the rest and splitting that gold evenly

I use the falling rule for when someone gets pushed and the movement gets interrupted by terrain or another creature. If the remaining movement is 10ft or more, the receive 1d6 bludgeoning dmg per 10 ft of remaining movement. I think it makes throwing displacement spells and features to play around terrain and enemies becomes more fun, and I think it is always a good idea to encourage using the terrain

My dm recently started implementing alternative attack options and one gives gives you the 5 foot step from 3.5 with certain light weapons. That particularly made me happy.

I actually have a custom rule I came up with for my table which is of very new players and also im a very new DM. The idea was to make it a little harder to fully die and make it a little less punishing to a bad idea. Knockout: When a creature drops below 0 hitpoints they fall unconscious and stable. However, if they were taken to 0 from a crit or an amount greater than double their con score they start rolling death saves as normal. While unconscious if damaged you start rolling death saves. Also while unconscious another player can wake you up with one hitpoint as a help action, no medicine check required. For the most part I use this on monsters which gives players an opportunity to wake them and possibly interrogate or get information.

I like what you said about healing potions as bonus actions, because really how many healing potions does the average party have on them? They're not cheap, and they're not always easy to get, specially if you want a high-strength healing potion. So as a bonus action, they'll probably the mechanic once or twice over the course of a month or two of playing. Even if that, some people just don't have healing potions in their game like that

For flanking, I like to say that it doesn't give advantage, but it lets you use the help action as a bonus action or reaction. It makes positioning more important without trivializing other ways to gain advantage.

Just to add on to the point you make at 10:30 D&D is very much based around resource management. Keeping track of HP, spell slots, how many rages you have, bardic inspiration, etc. Compared to those I don't think that managing your inventory to make sure you have the expensive components to cast a spell is super unreasonable, especially when it can be a lot of fun to track down those things.

In my current campaign we're playing XP leveling, but to give players more options I gave the Adventuring League an Orb at the guild hall that allows players to exchange gold for XP (1:1 ratio). It's worked really well, players get to choose between magic items and XP, and helped a lot with the pacing of the levels.

In a parallel universe, Jacob is actually standing up and the floor is the wall...

"Talk *with* your players" is especially important, an ex dm used to talk *to* us about why he has added homebrew/house rules. He was like "here, we're using these rules, read this" and sent over a 120+ page pdf of variant weapon rules and i'm like yall i'm in college that's so much extra reading, no

IIRC, it takes no action to "drop" a weapon and a free object interaction to draw or stow one weapon, Zee went over this like 2-3 years ago and I'll always remember it.

I love how a decent few of these “common house rules” are just actually the rule

When Jacobs on the floor you know it's gonna be a good vid.

The idea of some monsters/players simply can't be flanked is a great way to encourage critical thinking during combat, as well as +2 for flank and no op attacks

I think i want to add to some of the things in this video... First off, i do have an alternative initiative rule for my games where you can add different attribute scores to your initiative roll depending on the situation... like for example, if you start combat while climbing something, you can add your Strength to the roll instead of Dexterity, or if you start combat after you successfully decieved someone, you get to add your Charisma instead. Only if the party is using their acrobatics or stealth, or if they are suprised, do they use Dexterity. It gives player's a whole new way to get into combat situations, and allows them ways to set up a scenario in which their highest stat is used. Secondly, potions... although i don't use Bonus Actions for people to use Health Potions, whenever they drink a health potion specifically, the healing effects are maxed out, so if you drink a potion of healing which heals 2d4 + 2, you just regain 10 hit points instead of rolling it. I think the main reason people hate using Potions as an Action is because if you drink one and end up only regaining like 3 hit points or something, it will feel like you wasted your action and you wasted the potion, therefore, if a potion always restores the max amount it can restore, people are more willing to use it as an action (In addition to this rule, depending on where a player gets their healing potion from, it can end up restoring more hit points without changing its rarity... like instead of having a potion that restores 10 hit points, you could have one that restores 15 hit points without increasing its price or rarity... it basically just depends on how well the potion was made. In addition to this rule, i do also sometimes use the Bonus Action rule as well, but if you drink a potion as a bonus action you always roll for the amount of hit points restored instead, since you are not drinking it carefully. Even with both these rules in place, my players prefer to use an action to drink a potion because of how much it heals them and how much they can rely on the amount they can regain. Thirdly, material components... for most spells i don't use them, but some spells, especially the ones that consume their components still require the exact component listed. However, there are also "alternative component" rules which allows you to either substitute or add components to spells which then are always consumed... for example, if you use the tentacle of a Displacer Beast to cast a spell like Mirror Image, the tentacle is consumed as a component, but you get a bonus effect on your Mirror Image, where attacks against you also have disadvanateg as long as you have one or more mirror images of yourself. I also often let my player's just harvest the creatures they fight and then give them the oppertunity to make items out of the stuff they harvested (usually, they have to go to a town and present their harvest to someone who can actually make the items, but it is usually always an option). Fourthly, a different rule for critical strikes... when you hit a creature with a critical weapon attack (it has to be a weapon and can not be a spell, cause spell's already use so many more dice for damage), instead of just rolling an extra dice, you get to max out the result of a second die and add the result to the damage... for example... a longsword crit would be 1d8 + 8 + your Strenght modifier instead of 2d8 + your Strength modifier. I mainly added this rule because for martial characters in particular landing a crit and rolling low on the damage always felt really bad. (Flanking also never gives advantage at my tables, but isn't that just an optional rule to begin with ?). Fifthly, certain object interactions are actions, others are bonus actions, and some are free actions. You always get one free object interaction regardless of what the object is, unless i as the GM rule it is too much of an interaction to be done as a free action (which is pretty rare). I also try to give player's optional ways to engage in combat without just whacking stuff, but the rules i introduced for that are not fully refined yet... but i took some inspiration from the Dungeon Coach's "Reckless Action" system, where you can do dangerous and creative stuff but you get a level of exhaustion as a result. Sixthly, i usually use the One D&D Exhaustion System... instead of gaining exhaustion and then having to look at a chart to see what your debuffs are, you just subtract your exhaustion level from your d20 rolls and save DC's. Also exhaustion can reach up to level 10, and your character only dies after they reach an exhaustion level of 11. This actually gives me the ability to use exhaustion way more liberally at my tables as an actual proper debuff that doesnt just make a character useless immediately after just two or three levels. Seventhly, as for spellcaster's and their spells, if a spellcaster is in a relatively safe enviorment, even if they do not have the ability to prepare spells normally, they can exchange their spells on a long rest with enough time. If they are out in the wild and camping then only the prepared casters can do it, but otherwise every spellcaster is able to prepare spells. Also Bards in general are just prepared spellcasters at my table, cause it makes no sense to me why the one spellcaster that casts their spells using performance can't just practice a new song and perform it... In additionm to all these rules, i also have made a bunch of adjustments, changes and buffs to a bunch of classes, subclasses and spells to increase the power level of underpowered stuff, and decrease the power level of some overpowered stuff (Banishment, Conjure Animals, Conjure Woodland Beings, Polymorph and Wall of Force are stupidly powerful spells for what spell level they are... and a big reason why Spellcasters are stronger than Martial characters is because they have access to busted stuff like that... so making it less powerful also lessens the divide between them.)

My Dm both uses google slides for our maps, which is hype as hell because it’s easy to make and he’s super creative with it, and also he has a system called cool points. Essentially, when you do something that is creative or cool or make some sort of gambit that works out you have the chance to earn a cool point, which are given out at the end of each session. You can exchange cool points for 100 xp, but nobody ever does because there’s a traveling cool point wizard who sells really hype items in exchange for cool points. Super good way to help motivate us to not go “I use my axe” every turn the same way. I also noticed that it unintentionally also made us less violent in game, because once you think creatively like that there are often ways to avoid the fights we’re intended to do. Our last section of the campaign we had to navigate a feud between two factions that hate eachother, and our Dm fully expected us to end up picking a side because of the situations he put us in, but we kept finding ways out of the combat and it was a ton of fun, even though we didn’t do any combat for like 6 sessions in a row unintentionally. He’s such a great Dm

Spencer was correct. The street urchin background gives you a pet mouse as part of your equipment..

If more emphasis was placed on the usage of material components then I think you could really enhance exploration and roleplay with them. Say you're in a dungeon and know someone in your party needs a gem for spellcasting, you could try to pry one out of a decorative statue, some wall artwork, or break down jewelry for the gems. Dungeons like ancient temples or haunted mansions would be great places to find stuff like gems, but you can also think of a ton of different spell components and where you could place them for your players to find.

My new favorite rule that I have been using is that I require player characters to use the point buy system but when they reach ASI's they get to both increase their ability scores and get a feat I strongly dislike when my players have drastic differences in stats and some get to take cool unique feats while others need the ASI's just to catch up. I also like the power creep of their stats starting at a max of a +3 modifier and slowly gaining over the course of the campaign as they get more experience adventuring instead of possibly starting with a max stat. And with so many feats to choose from now I love the creativity and uniqueness it gives each character. There is a couple "concerns" that I have thought of (some may not be to you, do what feels best to you) and ill address them now Half feats that include a partial ASI- I like to come up with a small added feature to replace it, for example the shadow touched and fey touched feats get 1 free cantrip that is from the same schools of magic that the feat already requires you to choose from Multiple people in the party choosing the same "strong" feats- if you're not a fan of this because it takes away from the uniqueness or greatly increases the power level of the characters or something, inform them that each feat can only be taken by 1 PC (whether that be permanent or just per ASI level, up to you) Fighters and Rouges getting extra ASI levels- simple, any ASI that isn't from the standard levels (4, 8, 12, 16, 19) the PC chooses 1 or the other as normal

About equipping weapons, with how often I look up combat rules and what you can do during your actions, i figured it was a basic ruling because of this wording i keep seeing whenever i look it up: "You can also interact with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move as you stride toward a foe, or you could draw your weapon as part of the same action you use to attack."

I think the janky part of jump rules in 5e is that a foot of jump takes a jump of movement. Since it’s possible to have a jump distance longer than your movement (for example, the spell Jump), you can get stuck in mid-jump at the end of a turn, and finish the jump next turn. Or you can dash in mid-air to finish your jump. Both of which are weird.

As for the pets, you can technically start with a sidekick so just pick a turtle sidekick, buff the crap out of it with an artificer and name it T.O.D.D. (Turtle of Definite Destruction).

My favorite homebrew rule is: "This is a Game" 1) Every player gets ONE PER CAMPAIGN 2) A Wish may be used to restore this ONE TIME. Additional wishes will be denied per DragonBall rules 3) It is not used to do anything stupidly impossible, uncharacteristic, or out of theme AND cannot be used to indirectly or directly damage a target. Description: The Player is allowed to contrive a single string of plausible events into ac scenario that their character must either do or react to in order to achieve a specific goal, and the DM must contrive a set of ACHIEVABLE roles to accompany the scenario. The scenario the player describes can be convoluted, crazy, and badass as necessary - but cannot be impossible given their level AND cannot do direct or indirect damage to any npc. If the scenario requires objects in the players possession to have been prepared, the player may hand-waive any reasonable preparation. If the player succeeds, the scenario plays out exactly as they describe. If the player fails any check, the scenario is described as such and the player takes whatever damage or penalty appropriate given the point in the roll that they failed. Example: "I want to tie myself to a rope while running, throw it to the barbarian, and dive off the cliff to swing and catch the falling princess." Example Roll: Escape Artist or Appropriate Profession, Reflex Save, Barbarian Strength Check, Acrobatics Check, Player Strength Check. Example Fails: Untied Knot, Trip, Fall to Death, Slam into Cliff, Drop the Princess. What this IS used for: "I throw the halfling rogue across the room with all my might to get them from danger." "My bard puts on a full Illenium-tier concert event as a distraction/bait." What this ISN'T used for: "I'd like to do this combo and instantly kill the enemy." "My barbarian dashes across fired arrows to the other side of a 40 ft cliff gap." Basically, this is a single freebie that the players may use to achieve or overcome a single obstacle AND get that "look at me" Hollywood cinematic moment.

I actually had donning equipment come up in a major way for the first time recently. My party got ambushed by the bagman (they had it coming, they were investigating people who bought bags from the same dude and then disappeared and they BOUGHT ONE OF THE BAGS even knowing it was the bagman), and all had to sprint to one member's room to fight. I told them if they wanted to grab a single piece of equipment on the way it was a bonus action, but to don everything and get to act with all their gear it would take a full action.