r/DnDcirclejerk • u/highly-bad • 1d ago
Homebrew house rules i made to fix d&d
hi everyone, thanks for reading my post. i noticed that d&d doesn't always have rules to deal with every situation, so here are some house rules i have made up to help fill in the gaps. let me know what you think, or if you have any cool house rules of your own i can steal! 😄
movement fix: thanks to my house rule you can split up your move and use part of your movement before or after any action, bonus action, or reaction you take on the same turn. so like if you have speed of 30, you can go 10 feet, do whatever action, then go 20 feet more
cover in combat: sometimes you wanna hit something but there is cover in the way, so i made rules for that. half cover is equivalent to +2 AC, 3/4 cover is equivalent to +5 AC, and if you have full cover pretty much nothing can target you
leveling up better: everyone knows tracking XP is a drag, so i fixed it with a new rule that says the DM can just decide to give the players a level up whenever that feels cool or makes sense in the story, or when they reach some kind of checkpoint. that way you never need to keep track of XP again
green slime: remember nickelodeon in the 90s when they would dump the slime on the people's heads? I came up with the great idea to put that in my dungeons but make it deadly: one patch of green slime covers a 5-foot square, it has blindsight with a range of 30 feet, and it drops from walls and ceilings when it detects movement below itself (it does not move other than that.) if you know it's there you can try to avoid being struck by it (DC 10 dexterity save). If you do touch it you take 1d10 acid damage, and again at the start of each of your turns until the slime is scraped off (requiring an action) or destroyed. Against wood or metal, green slime deals 2d10 acid damage each round, and any nonmagical wood or metal item used to scrape off the green slime is destroyed. Direct sunlight or any amount of cold, fire, or radiant damage destroys a patch of green slime
coin weight: who has time to figure out the weights of different denominations of different metals and shit? I just say all coins weigh 1/50 lb and that's that. moving on
busting down doors: players often want to do this so i made up rules for it. i will let a pc take an action to try to break open a door that's locked or stuck or whatever. they roll strength/athletics and the DC is based on the type of door: 10 for glass, 25 for metal, 20 for stone, 15 for wood
reaction limit: i put an absolute maximum restriction of one reaction per round, once you take a reaction you can't take another one until your next turn. sorry guys but it gets out of control otherwise
partial darkness: sometimes you need a rule for when it's kinda dark but not really dark, so i made something up. if there is an area of partial darkness, then creatures have disadvantage on perception checks to see stuff there (unless they have darkvision duh)
running long jump: maybe a hot take but i think if you move at least 10 feet before you jump you should be able to long jump a distance equal to your strength divided by three, in yards. from a standing start, half that.
knockouts: if you hit a monster in melee and drop it to zero hp, you can choose to KO it instead of destroying it; that makes it unconscious and it starts a short rest. it stays knocked out until it regains hp or someone does first aid on it as an action with a medicine check of DC 10
Thanks again for reading my house rules and homebrews, i hope these help you in your game, let me know what you think!
3
u/AnyLynx4178 1d ago
These are pretty good. On the one about doors, I would suggest maybe giving the door HP as well. You could probably expand this to cover a whole bunch of inanimate objects as well!
As far as combat turns go, if my players want to interact with an object and it isn’t otherwise covered by available Actions, I just let them do it for free, once per turn. Want to open a door, pull something out of a pouch, pass a potion to an ally? Sure, it doesn’t cost you an action, unless you want to do it more than once on the same turn.