5e House Rules

This post is about rules I would use if I were to run D&D 5e. I think D&D 5e is a frustrating game to run or play and most of my experience with it have been mixed. The rules presented here are either optional rules straight out of the 2014 core books or are permitted by the rules therein.

Variant and Optional Rules, Rules Changes

I am going to use variant rules to suit the tone or style of the game.

Slow Natural Healing + Healer's Kit Dependency (DMG pages 266 - 267)

Healer's Kit Dependency applies to short rests only. PCs cannot spend hit dice to recover lost HP during a short rest unless someone expends one use of a healer's kit to treat that character.

Slow Natural Healing applies to long rests only. PCs do not automatically recover lost HP at the end of a long rest. They must spend hit dice to recover HP. Standard rest rules are used (short rest is 1 hour, long rest is 8 hours). RAW, PCs recover half of their hit dice per long rest, and so you need at least two long rests to recover all your hit dice. That means you may need two long rests to be able to recover all your lost HP, then another two long rests to recover all your spent hit dice.

First, this rule encourages down time activities meaning you are encouraged to take an interest in the setting. Rest means light activity is allowed. Go make friends or contacts. Hire allies. Gamble. Research something. Gather information, rumors, news, gossip. Find a teacher and learn something. Try crafting. If you rest in the wilderness or the dungeon, the GM is going to roll wandering encounters and you're going to die. Make the local town your hub.

Second, this rule changes the way you perceive damage within the narrative of the game. Standard rest rules make damage abstract and nonsensical. A stab wound from a spear or a bowshot can be slept off which causes something called narrative dissonance. With this rest variant, damage feels like something to treat seriously. Healing spells and items become more valuable.

Because your class features still recover normally (unlike with gritty realism), it shouldn't slow the game down too much or nerf characters.

Side Initiative (DMG page 270)

The GM rolls one d20 for each NPC group. One player rolls on d20 for the PCs. The rolls are unmodified. Whichever side rolls the highest goes first.

Morale (DMG page 273)

There are conditions that stipulate when to roll to see if the NPCs want to continue to fight or if they try to flee, surrender, or parley. 

Starting Attitude (DMG page 244)

The rules instruct the GM to "Choose the starting attitude of the creature that the adventurers are interacting with..." Either friendly, indifferent, or hostile. For the sake of randomness and emergent gameplay, I may turn this into a Charisma roll on a case-by-case basis, usually for random NPCs. Either the PC who is in the lead or the PC who is nearest to the NPC must roll. The DC for indifferent will depend on the creature or situation. Friendly will be 5 above the DC or a nat 20.

Awarding Inspiration (DMG page 240)

Players can earn inspiration for good roleplaying. To me, good roleplaying is not playing true to your character (even though that is objectively good for roleplaying). People recognize good roleplaying as staying in character as opposed to breaking character and avoiding metagaming.

If you break character to make jokes, to ask for rules clarification, to ask for room or NPC descriptions that have already been provided, to ask the GM how they'll interpret a rule or make a ruling before you commit to your action, use game terminology in your player narration and descriptions, spoil the mood of a scene, have side-conversations or out-of-character conversations, these are examples of breaking character and are bad roleplaying. You don't have to use a voice or accent to stay in character, but that's also good. Staying in character means providing descriptions of what your character does and how they do it using natural but not necessarily flowery language, and saying what your character says how they would say it.

Players who can maintain character for an entire scene / encounter are automatically awarded inspiration at the end of the scene / encounter.  No discussion needed.

Monsters

The sidebar on page 6 of the monster manual says DM's should feel free to tweak monster stat blocks. No restrictions are given. Page 7 states alignment is part of the stat block and says it is subject to change by the GM. Therefore, I will probably never use any vanilla monster stat blocks.

Race, Class, Background, and Magic Restrictions

I don't like all the races, subraces, classes, subclasses, backgrounds, and spells. The passages cited below show that these things are features of the setting and that the GM has purview over the setting, therefore, the GM is free to restrict race and class availability and even combinations. In addition, Chapter 9 has rules for customizing existing classes, races, backgrounds, spells, and even creating your own. Therefore, count on any race, class, or background feature, or spell being subject to change because I don't like broken builds. They make more work for the GM.

-PHB page 6: "Your GM might set the campaign...on one (a world) that he or she created...Ultimately, the DM is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if the setting is a published world."

-PHB page 17: "Not every intelligent race of the multiverse is appropriate for a player-controlled adventurer."

-PHB page 17: "Humans are the most common people in the worlds of D&D..."

-PHB page 45: "Twelve classes...are found in almost every D&D world..."

-PHB page 165: "This chapter defines two optional sets of rules for customizing your character: Multiclassing and Feats...Your DM decides whether these optional rules are available in a campaign."

-DMG page 4: "And as a referee, the DM interprets the rules and decides when to abide by them and when to change them."

-DMG page 4, "Part 1: Master of Worlds": "Even if you're using an established world such as the Forgotten Realms...The world is yours to change as you see fit and yours to modify as you explore the consequences of your players actions."

-DMG page 9, section "It's your World": "The assumptions sketched out above (reference section Core Assumptions) are not carved in stone...You can build an interesting campaign setting by altering one or more of these core assumptions..."

-DMG Page 9: "Your world is the setting for your campaign. Even if you use an existing setting...it becomes yours."

-DMG page 263 GM's Workshop: "As the GM, you aren't limited by the rules in the PHB, the guidelines in this book, or the selection of monsters in the Monster Manual."

-DMG page 287 Restricting Class Access: "Without changing the way a class functions, you can root it more firmly in the world by associating the class with a particular race or culture."

Table Rules

DMG page 235, "There are the rules of the game, and there are table rules for how the game is played. For instance, they need to know...how to treat a cocked die." Topics listed include Table Talk, Dice Rolling, Rules Discussion, Metagame Thinking, etc. Chapter 8 of the DMG touches on unwritten or soft rules of the game. They discuss things tantamount to style, expectations, and the etiquette. The books make suggestions, but these are things the GM takes responsibility for this.

Declaring Actions

Once you've declared your action, you can't change it. No do-overs, no redos, no retracting what you've said. No retcons. If you recognize a mistake two rounds later or after something has been resolved, we're not going back and correcting it unless it's life or death. Otherwise, we can talk about it outside the game and try to do better in the future.

Jokes

No joke characters. Joke characters spoil the tone (mood) of the game. Try not to spoil the tone. 

PvP

No PvP (player vs. player). Adversarial play makes your characters unlikable to me, the GM. If your characters are unlikeable, it makes it harder to care about preparing and running the game.

Evil PCs

No evil PCs. Evil PCs are something I don't like about this hobby. It's not fun for me. If you're going to make a character who's a jerk give them some redeemable quality to make them likeable. If you do something heinous enough, I reserve the right to take your PC and make them mine, and make them an NPC villain in the setting.

PC Names

No joke names, no dumb fantasy names. I am the GM and I portray all NPCs. Your parents are NPCs. Therefore, I have veto powers for all PC names, and it goes like this "my NPC would not have named their kid that. Pick another name or I open the Bible."

Character Builds

Some players have fun by finding exploits with powers and abilities available in the game and mixing and matching them to create overpowered combinations to trivialize challenges. These are called character builds. Sometimes these builds are called broken because they spoil the intended way the game should play or function. This makes more work for me, the DM, and I don't like it. If you bring a build to my game, I reserve the right to hand you a pre-generated character (a pregen) to play instead, I reserve the right to nerf your character without justification, I reserve the right to do something arbitrary and malicious up to and including stating "rocks fall, your character is dead.", and I reserve the right to remove you from my game or group.

Electronics

I prefer pen and paper. If you're relying on D&D Beyond or a similar application to track your character or understand the rules for how your character works, here's a warning: if that app doesn't work or is slow, I'm not waiting on it.

Table Talk

First rule about speaking at the table: Don't be a dick. If you get mad, it's OK to excuse yourself. It's OK to ask for the GM to call for a break. It's OK to leave a session and come back next week. Second, if it's unclear if you're speaking in-character or out-of-character, I am going to treat what you've said as in-character. No jokes or side-conversations. No phones. No building dice towers. No drawing. These things spoil immersion and slow down the game. Pay attention and be ready.

Player Narration

Players narrate their own stuff. You tell us what your actions look like. Tell us what we see, hear, etc. Use natural language rather than game terminology. For example, don't say "I use my bonus action to rage, I use 20 ft of movement to move to the goblin, and I use my action to attack." Instead, you can say "you see Conan go into a rage, run, and swing his sword at the goblin's head." Don't say "I cast fireball." Say "you see Samson conjure a small flame and hurl it into the center of the goblin hoard and it blossoms into a great big hemisphere of flame."

No Rules Discussion During a Game

During the game, there is no asking rules questions for clarity, no reading rules allowed or describing them, no asking the GM for their reasoning for a ruling. The exceptions are if the situation is life or death. Save it for outside the game. Do your best to use the rules correctly and we'll use the honor system. If the rules are unclear or lacking, or if our recollection of the rules is incomplete, I'm going to make a ruling and move on with the game.

No Breaking Character (the Metagaming Rule)

5e DMG page 235 describes Metagame Thinking as "thinking about the game as a game." Essentially treating the game like a game rather than a roleplay exercise. Metagaming is essentially what happens when you break character or roleplay poorly.

For instance, your character doesn't have a concept of a balanced encounter. If you are playing your character cock-sure that the encounters, traps, hazards, etc., will be suited to your character's powers and abilities, you're not playing your character like they care what happens to them. You're playing your character like an idiot, a madman, or like someone with no sense of self-preservation.

Here's another example of metagaming. A combat round represents 6 seconds of real time. It is therefore metagaming to have a discussion about what to do and how to do it mid-encounter if that discussion is out-of-character. If it's in-character, you must wait for your turn to speak, and you can only speak an amount that is reasonable for a 6-second time span.

The best tip to avoid metagaming is to stay in character as much as possible. Every time you break character, you're breaking immersion and you're slowing the game down. I challenge you to try to go without breaking character as much as possible like Liam O'Brien from Critical Role.

No Speech or Insight Checks, Limited to No Ability or Skill Checks

Per the DMG, page 236, under the subheading Ignoring the Dice, the 5e DMG says that it is valid for a Dungeon Master to "...use dice as rarely as possible. Some DM's use them only during combat and determine success or failure as they like in other situations."

I believe that the player should use their own intelligence, wisdom, charisma, and luck. This is called player skill over character skill. Treat the NPCs like real people, not like an opportunity to roll-to-solve (tm) a problem; Try to find a solution in-character by using curiosity and creativity. Try to make the NPCs happy or satisfy their needs to get something in exchange. I see game mechanics for social interaction as unnecessary, and the results of their use often feel contrived and unsatisfying.

Also refer to these passages for social interactions specifically:

-PHB page 186 Results of Roleplaying: "The DM uses your character's action and attitudes to determine how an NPC reacts..." "Pay close attention to the DM's portrayal of the NPC's mood, dialogue, and personality. You might be able to determine an NPC's personality traits, ideals, flaws, and bonds, then play on them to influence the NPC's attitude." "Interactions in D&D are much like interactions in real life..."

-DMG page 244 Social Interaction: "Some DMs prefer to run social interaction as a free-form roleplaying exercise, where dice rarely come into play..."

Interpreting the Dice

5e DMG page 242 has allowances for failing forward or succeeding at a cost if the roll just shy of a difficulty class, for degrees of success or failure where additional effects can occur for when a roll is +/- 5 of a difficulty class, and treating 1s and 20s as special even outside of combat. I will use these situationally and they will be entirely case-by-case. I won't use these as opportunities to be generous or cruel to the players; instead, I'll use them to make the game more interesting or to manage the pacing of the game.

Rules Lite

Conversation is the medium of the game, not the rules or mechanics. I will repeat this for emphasis. Conversation is the medium of the game, not the rules or the mechanics. I as the GM am the referee of the rules, and I will be using them sparingly because I don't like most of them. If something can reasonably succeed, I'll probably just say it works. If something is stupidly impossible, I'll probably just say it fails. Consider the passages below:

-DMG page 4: "And as a referee, the DM interprets the rules and decides when to abide by them and when to change them."

-DMG page 4: "...but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game."

-DMG page 4, How to Use This Book: "The last part helps you to adjudicate the rules of the game and modify them to suit the style of your campaign."

-DMG page 5 subheading Part 3: Master of Rules continued: "As a referee, the DM acts as a mediator between the rules and the players. A player tells the DM what he or she wants to do, and the DM determines whether it is successful or not, in some cases asking the player to make a die roll to determine success..." and "the rules don't account for every possible situation...How you determine the outcome of this action is up to you."

Grounded Fiction

Fiction / fantasy / sci-fi doesn't mean anything goes. The world is based in realism (but is not strictly realistic or simulative). The reason why we make the assumption that the make-believe world resembles our real world is because this is our shared point of reference. We can use our basic understanding of the real world and apply it to the make-believe world to understand how the non-fantastic elements of the make-believe world works. This is how I will make rulings and this is how I expect you to decide what your character can do in a given situation. In other words, don't ask what the rules allow, ask what the world allows.

More to Come

This is a start. I expect to find more problems with the game and to find more solutions to them as I go were I to actually run 5e. I expect that this post could be revisited and expanded upon by a lot.