House Rules

https://kanka.io/en-US/campaign/77365/events/62894

What do you do in Ravenspeak?

- Should this be more difficult or penalized in some way?
- Revivify is possible, but after 1 minute, coming back from the dead might be more complicated? (Soul only lingers for 1 minute.)

- What is the expect level range of play? Will we be playing in Tier 3 and 4 for world shaking events?
- No expectation of that level of play? Is there a hard reset?

This is the complete list of House Rules we had for my last campaign. I know we've already talked about some of these. But just a few more off the wall things you may not have considered.

Player Creation

• Create Frodo in Rivendell, not Frodo of the Shire. Be an Adventurer! Be awesome!
• Use the PHB with the option of one of either SCAG, VGM, XGE, or MTF expansion material. No flying races.
• To promote interesting Race/Class combinations, players can take 1 point from any racial ability score and add it to a different score that is not already listed for that race.
• Choose any two Personality Traits, an Ideal, a Bond, and a Flaw. Choose (or roll) a trinket. Finally, you start with one Potion of Healing.
• Use the Standard Array system for Ability Scores.
• You can change your PC however you want during Tier One play.
• Evil alignment is not allowed.
• PCs can not have a base AC over 20.
• If you are planning on multi-classing, the class you take at level 1 must be your primary class. This means you can not have more levels in any other classes combined.
• No familiars, except for role-playing. Conjuring spells or necromancy are allowed (within reason, please).
• Each PC must have a solid connection or bond with at least one but no more than three other PCs. Choose a PC in the party and work together to give that relationship life. These are your friends and allies for glory and hardship, make it count.
• Please write a max. 1/2 page description and biography of your character and find an appropriate portrait for tokens.

 Game Play

• The Identify spell is required to identify magic items.
  
• Material components with an associated gp value must be in your inventory for the spell to work. If it’s not on your sheet, it’s not in your inventory. Consumed items are actually consumed and should be accounted for on your sheet.
• Dragonborn’s breath weapon is a bonus action not an action.
• Earth Genasi: Add Darkvision 60ft, Acid resistance, and Mold Earth cantrip.
• Air Genasi: Add Darkvision 60ft, Thunder resistance, and Gust cantrip.
• Critical hit damage will be calculated with maximum + rolling + modifier.
• Mage Hand cannot be used to pick locks or disable traps except by Rogues.
• DM will sometimes roll Stealth, Perception, Sleight of Hand, Investigation, and Insight checks for you, in secret.
• The group needs to appoint a leader. The role of this PC is to take on the responsibility and decide the course of action for the group. PCs, even if they disagree with the leader, should still follow them. Remember, this is a group game. The PC in this role will change from time to time.
• Levelling will be at the DMs discretion.
• As long as you’re within 60ft and can see the spellcaster cast the spell, you can Counterspell any spell including Innate Spellcasting but excluding spells cast from a magic item.

• Magic items are not rechargeable and start fully charged.
• Vicious Mockery will have a d6 damage dice instead of a d4. Toll the Dead will have a d8 damage dice instead of a d12.
• Healing spells and potions do a minimum of dice average (rounded up) + modifier of healing. For example, a Potion of Healing gives a minimum of (2.5 * 2) + 2 = 7HP.
• Death saves will be performed in private, even from the DM. This is to reduce meta-gaming and ultimately the death of the PC is up to the player.
• Each time a PC is brought back to consciousness, they suffer one level of exhaustion.
• If you have Inspiration, you don’t have to declare that you’re going to use it until after you see the outcome of the d20, but before you know the result. If you know the result, you can not use it.
• Automatic Inspiration is granted for bringing another PC back into the fight, via healing or ending a condition that has removed a PC from play.
• The group needs to appoint a record keeper to keep track of loot and make sure it is distributed. If the party decides on a group fund as well, they need to manage this as well. Individuals are responsible for their own accounting. The party may also want a scribe. I’ll leave that up to you.

Racial Feats

Proposal: At level 1 non-Human characters get a racial feat. Humans get something else to balance (maybe expertise in 2 skills?). Some of the racial feats are very cool thematically, but not very good mechanically. By giving the PCs the chance to take a racial feat at the outset it could make choice of what race you want to play a bit more appealing.
(Humans have one racial feat: Prodigy https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/prodigy that gives one additional skill proficiency, one tool, and expertise, etc. etc.)
(Not all the races have racial feats.)

Dragonborn

Proposal: Breath weapon is a bonus action.

Proposal: Dragonborn gain amphibious trait. They can breathe air and water. Some Dragons have this trait (Black, Green, Bronze, Gold). Maybe only Dragonborn of these colours get this trait?

Proposal: Dragonborn are biologically one gender and reproduce asexually (like the Drac aliens in the movie Enemy Mine). Some have adopted male/female gender identities as they've interacted with other races that have male/female genders.

Magic Items

- i'd like the following items to not be present in the game:  Daern's Instant Fortress, Amulet of the Planes, Cube of Force, Horn of Valhalla, iron flask, Legendary sentient weapons.

- the following items should be easily obtainable (at their uncommon level) by level 5 at latest (i'd prefer 3). By "Easily obtainable", i mean that everyone should have ONE by that point, and if they want another, they should have access to trade another magic item of equal or greater rarity for it.   

• +1 weapon
• +1 shield 
• +1 eldritch claw tattoo (TCE)
• +1 rod of the pact keeper 
• +1 wand of the war mage
• +1 all-purpose tool (TCE)
• +1 amulet of the devout (TCE) 
• +1 arcane grimoire (TCE) 
• +1 bloodwell vial (TCE) 
• +1 moon sickle (TCE) 
• +1 rhythm-maker’s drum (TCE)
• Note: i think one or two of the TCE items need errata to say that they affect only the spells of the class that they are for, i suggest we implement that.

Other item stuff

• Spell components should be easily available except those costing 500g or more.
• For wizards or other casters, it should be possible to obtain spell scrolls - i don't have a good suggestion for how to manage this.
• Basic healing potions should be available in limited quantities and we should be able to make them.

Magic Item Alterations

- If we have druids, it should not be difficult for druids to obtain or alter their magic shield or armor to be non-metal.

- it should be possible and not difficult to alter a magic weapon into another magic weapon (of same general type), or armor into different armor of same weight class. If someone gets a flame tongue greatsword, they should be able to alter it to another flame tongue sword that is more useful to them. (This gives the DM the opportunity to drop an item that is appropriate for the monster to use, without worrying about it being party useful).

Additional Controlled Creatures (personal preference)

- Excluding familiars, a character should not be able to have more than 1 additional controlled creature in combat that has their own turns. I don't want to be taking time from my day to watch you play with your 8 wolves for an hour. 

No exhaustion - exhaustion is a horrible mechanic, suggest we use Stress instead, with the following sub rules:

- lesser restoration removes 1 level stress

- short rest removes 1 level stress, but a max of 1 per day can be removed by short resting.

- long rest removes 3 levels stress, but a maximum of 3 can be removed by resting (so if you had 1 removed by a short, you can only remove 2 more by long)

- greater restoration removes all stress.

- getting knocked out gives 1 level stress

- typical things that give exhaustion give 1-3 level stress instead (DM discretion, but generally, if it's possible to get more than 1 level from same activity, they should be given in increments of 1, while if it's one MAJOR save, it can be higher)

Casting (some of this is actually RAW, but i'd like everyone to be on same page for casting):

- spells cast from items can't be countered

- spells cast with the innate spellcasting trait can't be countered

- spell cast with subtle spell can't be countered

- (my personal house rule) - both sides (players and monsters) know if the spell being cast is a cantrip

- spell identification can be communicated (if player 1 spends reaction to identify a spell, they can shout out "fireball", etc. as part of that reaction, so that player 2 can potentially use the info).

Dragonborn
- bonus action breath weapon

Death Saves
- secret rolls?
- No reset on Death Save failures before short/long rest?

AC:
-(Pending high ACs becoming a problem) Possible soft-cap of AC20 from worn items, allowing for Shield and other temporary costed resources to still exceed 20
- Magic AC bonuses from armor and shield do not stack.

KO
-When brought back from 0 HP, must make a Con ST of take an exhaustion level, what is the DC? Should it be escalating?
(No escalation, since disadvantage to saving throws is an eventual penalty for exhaustion.)

Multiclass
- “Favored” class, no “dipping” (1st class must always have the most levels)
- Re-speccing later on can be permitted as long as there's a cost and a story reason

-Might make potion administration a bonus action to help compensate for the added challenge of the KO Con ST ?

gods are concepts

domains that fit

No "half" races (half-elves, half-orcs).