Had a DM who awarded XP for kills, and kept a tally of "killing blows". I joined mid campaign as a cleric. Prepped a bunch of encounters on a platter, and kept everyone up NP. At the end of my first session with the group, everyone was raving about how smoothly it had gone and how effective my character had been. XP was awarded, and I got 0 points. I'm not shy, politely pointed out getting nothing meant my character would no longer be playing a support role. His response was "That's fine, you made it a pain in the ass to DM this session". Next session I had completely rebuilt my spell list, offered ZERO assistance to the party, and was about to let the main tank die right in front of me in the final fight because "I dont get XP for support and the boss is about to die, so I'm going to attack." House rules were changed on the spot to an even XP split for the party. Everyone lived happily ever after, and that DM actually became a very good friend of mine.
I'll be honest, I was not expecting a good ending to this story lol. But I'm happy it turned into a good thing, and impressed the DM understood where he went wrong!
My bad/good house rule (depending on who you are) is that I stopped tracking treasure and instead tracked Goal Points/wealth. A goal would cost X amount of wealth. Depending on your life style, you would start every fresh adventure with "pocket change" Like the bad thing about it is that my players are terrible with making goals. It requires Too much but in from everyone involved. When I tested it, it was a soft success, the second time I mentioned it to a group, it was received Luke warm at best. (They still don't spend their gold)
@@twistedpinttavern (I forgot to add that as part of the whole thing, player characters are assumed to replenish all of their consumable supplies between adventures...) yeah, I think what I need to do is do a comprehensive list of goals because the players I have listlessly Ragdoll their way true downtime. If it's not adventure they don't exist. Some osr games as well as old games used to just assume that you spend your money between adventures.... Such is why you adventure. So maybe I just sort of say "hey you spent your money, what did you spend it on.... If you didn't spend it on anything particular I guess you spent it on your life style and only have pocket change to show for it" But then again that feels very ham fisted. I just really know that it'll work for my players if they jump on board, but as we both pointed out the reason why it's a poor rule is because it requires too much buy in.
@@broke_af_games9661god, I know that feel. Why is it so hard to find a group that actually wants to play!? Recently went through 4 session 0s with 1 dm because people kept no-showing to sessions. We finally managed to get most of the players in the voice call for session 0 but the 3 new guys weren't talking at all, even to give a quick "yes" in response when the dm asked if something sounded good or made sense. Our 5th player even gave an aggressive "whatever." when we were at the end of the session and the dm asked if anyone was good to end the call or had any questions/concerns before he left. This player was the only one who didn't answer so the dm asked them directly, which is when this asshole snapped. Like no one is forcing you to be here, why did you join the game if you're going to be like this!???
Ok, I can get the logic of "rewarding XP only for what you killed", since that's how a lot of games do things. But it just... doesn't work with D&D mechanics. I do actually like the "one turn warm up" for casters specifically in settings where magic is supposed to be difficult to use (especially if it only applies to leveled spells), but combined with the extremely easy to inflict stun mechanic? That's bullshit, and it honestly sounds like the player with the martial "caster" and the DM came up with this idea together.
Yeah neither of these rules are crazy or unheard of, they just don't work in D&D. Online games or systems built for it, maybe, but definitely not for D&D as it sits
@@twistedpinttavern The charge up rule would work fine for DnD, as in DnD casters are insanely OP. Honestly, such a rule just brings them down to the martial's level.
It was a homebrew system (GM claimed that it was similar to FATE, but it actually had nothing to do with FATE), but I kinda feel like it's a bad idea by default. If somebody had to leave the game earlier and others failed to mantion that they took their characters with them before moving forward, characters are left behind. The main issue was the fact that the GM never brought it up before it became a problem, like a tonne of other stuff, but unlike many other things that could be OK in the right situation and with prior discussion (like, players choosing their turn order is a thing in many systems and it makes perfect sense, it was only a problem because the GM only brought it up after us mantioning being very annoyed by constantly messing up turns and claiming that it isn't system-specific and is a general communication rule; people need to figure out in which order they attack ghosts every day in real life, apparently), I don't think it's ever OK.
If someone's character is at town and can be left without a problem, that could be okay, but just kicking them out mid dungeon doesn't make much sense.
@@twistedpinttavern I agree about the city (in case character can reunite with the group later), but I meant exactly leaving them in the middle of the dungeon.
Most of these would be outright friendship enders. Because they're actively malicious and reveal personality traits that are incompatible with friendship.
Worst houserule I've seen: adventuring in the desert, whoever rolls the lowest suffers dehydration - regardless of how much water you drink. And to top it off, we had a decanter of endless water. 'Insta-death, no save' is ridiculously dumb at any level.
I have a house rule, of passive skill checks. I allow for most skills to be done with a passive skill check. The main key I try to do is you have to be proficient in the skill, outside of say passive perception / investigation checks. I'd still have people roll if they're not proficient, or if they're in a stressful situation. I'd also have them roll if it's at disadvantage. I've not gotten much or any real hate for this rule, so I don't know if it's a good or bad one. Thoughts?
Passive skill checks aren't bad, it's similar to taking 20 but not near as available since it's tied to proficient skills, and still doesn't mean a success every time, it depends on the skill's bonuses. Honestly, I think it could be a decent house rule, and it's something that I could see being an optional rule in a book somewhere since passive perception and insight already exist, and a lot of character sheets online have spots for things like "passive stealth" or "passive deception". I think as long as you still call for rolls where it would make sense, like you said in a stressful scenario or if there's other complications, then it could be fun! A rogue having a passive sleight of hand to quickly jimmy a lock open makes sense, as long as the passive beats the DC.
@@twistedpinttavern that's generally my idea behind it. Many classes get extremely high plusses to their skills. It just seems to make sense to me that a rogue with a +9 to their slight of hand, should be able to jimmy a lock open with ease. Instead of that, situation where even though they roll 4 times they can't even get a 6 on the die for that dc 15 door. I'd still have a roll for someone pickpocketing though, feels like thats got more variables than an inanimate door with no distractions around. It's not fool proof, but it goes back into common sense ruling more than anything.
I played a game where our DM ruled that “negative hit points” were a thing. You have 10, then get hit for 14? Well now you are at -4 and need to be healed for 5 just so you can get up at 1. (Fortunately, nobody made a Half-Orc character, but he claims that their Relentless Endurance trait is basically just one temporary hit point that you start the day with. In his mind, if you are a Half-Orc with 10 hit points and get hit for 12, you are at -1 and bleeding out. Hit for 11, you are stable at 0. Hit for exactly 10 and, congrats, you remain on your feet just this once today.) Thing is, this wouldn’t have been SO bad, if he had bothered to tell us this BEFORE the party Paladin was bleeding out on the floor and a Healing Word was not enough to stabilize them! So they died before anybody could even do anything to really help them. Had we known this was a house rule, we would have taken things like Spare the Dying, Healers Kits, the Healer Feat, etc. or invested more into Medicine to help stabilize each other since that by definition stabilizes someone and ignores his negative hit points.
This actually comes from older editions, in 2e you would fall unconscious at 0, but remain stable (not bleeding out). However, if an attack would bring you below 0hp, you were unconscious and bleeding out. Every round you would lose 1hp, and if you hit -10, you died. This actually was a kind of cool and fun way of doing things, as more serious blows were more life threatening and took more healing to bring you back up. However, it quickly became an issue, as at higher levels monsters could still deal massive amounts of damage, and so if you took 25 damage from something and had 15hp, it would bring you to -10, instantly killing you. If that's a rule that everyone's on board with at the start, then I think it could go okay and would just lean into a more dangerous game. But if it's not cleared with everyone in session 0, it would DEFINITELY cause some issues down the road lol
Warrior in one of my first group insisted on exp per kills going to the one who kills. That changed when my wizard promptly did something with flaming ball that killed over 20 goblins.
Yeah, I'm absolutely not opposed to an instant-death mechanic in any game I play. A warning at the start of the campaign (no, not the start of that particular session, because now you KNOW when it's coming, and that's boring) should be there, but that's all I need.
@@CooperAATEif virtually anything can kill you instantly (lvl 0 DCC or so), or it's something you have reasons to expect in a particular case - I agree. If it's just a random enemies every once in a while, and there is no way to predict or prevent it... I unironically would be glad if you explained what about it appeals to you.
@@twistedpinttavern yeah, my collection is very mixed between what we used to call "AD&D" and "2nd Ed Advanced". D&D used to refer to the small red books in the box set....
4:29 considering how irrelevant martial characters are in 5e, requiring casters to charge up a spell sounds like something that would make them actually useful. It just sucked in that game because of poor team composition.
@@twistedpinttavern Happy to be a member! This channel is one of my faves and I love all the progress you've made. You and your team work your butts off and I'm happy to help you guys however I can :D
I do fully agree that charisma is the basis of your appearance. Charisma is overall your force of personality and how well you come across to people. Your appearance will 100% play a role as to how others perceive you. It's not wholly determinative because it's both your appearance and your verbal skills but still, it is the only stat in which physical attractiveness is represented.
I can understand this perspective, but I also get why some people don't like it. For example, someone who wants to play an old, rugged orc paladin who wants the "fearsome monster" aspect might not want to look attractive, but needs the high charisma for their class. Honestly, I've been considering bringing comeliness into my games specifically for this reason, but I haven't had the need for it. To what you're saying, though, comeliness got a boost depending on your charisma stat, so your personality did also influence your overall attractiveness.
But if it is both your personality and your attractiveness going into charisma, an ugly character can easily still have a high charisma by explaining it away as having a very strong personality. Public speakers don't have to be attractive to be persuasive but it can help. I guess it is misleading to draw a direct link but I still feel like both attractiveness and personality goes into charisma in the same way that both booksmarts and problem solving abilities go into Intelligence.
I guess that's true. It's a balance of the two, so you can still choose the appearance of your character, and the other attribute kind of scales to balance it out
@@JuicyBlueWilldepends on the kind of charisma. Imagine a radiohost voice. The person isn't physically there at all so their appearance is neutral or a non-factor.
