Houserules/Amending DnD 5e (mostly combat)

[Mgrancey]

So, started running a campaign based on the Embers of the Last War DDAL (mixed thoughts on it) and there are a couple of points that I am checking with the players to see if they are okay house ruling. Most seem open to idea, and I thought I shall see what others think of what I picked, some are inspired by stuff I have seen/read elsewhere or by other systems.

This takes place in Eberron, so I am making use of Hero Points, and generally forget about Inspiration.

Prone
The attacker uses an attack to attempt to trip or overpower and knock down their target. Save is either Dex or Str based vs 8 + Prof. Bonus + Str OR Dex mod.
If tripped or knocked prone by an attacker, the defender will be Disadvantaged if they get up and attack the attacker.

Disarm
The attacker uses an attack to attempt to disarm the defender, Save is either Dex or Str based vs 8 + Prof. Bonus + Str OR Dex mod.
If disarmed, the defender will be disadvantaged if they pick up the weapon and attack the attacker.

Feinting
A bonus action can allow the user to make a Deception check against the Passive Insight of the target, if exceeds they gain advantage on their next attack.

Flanking
IF 2 allies are on opposite (sides or corners) of an enemy they both gain a +1 bonus to attack.

Grappling
The Grappler Feat is defunct currently.
• The grappler has advantage on attacks vs the grappled.
• They may advance the grapple with another contested check and restrain the target. They maintain their advantage on attacks, they are able to drag the target and move around the target.
• All other attackers have Advantage on attacks against them and they are disadvantaged on DEX Saves from anyone besides the grappled.
• A larger size doesn’t automatically end the condition.

TWO Weapon Fighting
Lets face it, 2 weapon fighting is nearly pointless with all your other options, so lets try and make it a bit more relevant.
Rules modification:
• The character gains a +1 AC bonus.
• If they have Extra Attack ability they may make a 2nd attack with their bonus action (if possible thrown may exclude this), normal rules still in effect for size and damage.
Dual Wielder (FEAT amendment)
• The wielder may use their reaction to add their Proficiency bonus to their AC vs the attack.
• They also gain a +1 Crit Range when attacking with both weapons.

Injuries
Largely borrowed from SW, as I like that injuries occur, but DMG has just plain nasty injuries.
On a critical hit, massive damage, a called shot, or on hitting 0 HP, a character needs to make a CON save DC 12 + 1 (per exisiting injury), to avoid taking a temporary wound. If they fail, they roll a d12 to see where that injury is. You can only take 1 injury from a source even if it meets multiple criteria and can only a maximum of 5 wounds will be tracked.
1 Hand wound – unable to use hand for fine manipulation: weapons, spells, potion use, interactions. Shields maintain use.
2-3 Arm wound – Str checks and saves are at a -1, which stack up to a -5 (this includes appropriate attack and damage)
4 Head wound (Knocked senseless) INT checks and saves are at a -1, which stack up to a -5 (this includes appropriate attack and damage)
5-7 Torso Wound – CON checks and saves are at a -1 which stacks to a -5 (MAX HP is unaffected by this)
8 Head wound (Bleeder) WIS checks and saves are at a -1, which stack up to a -5 (this includes attack and damage)
9-10 Leg Wound DEX checks and saves are at a -1, which stack up to a -5 (this includes appriopriate attack and damage)
11 Head wound (Beaten Ugly) CHA checks and saves are at a -1, which stack up to a -5 (this includes appropriate attack and damage)
12 Foot wound – Speed suffers a -5 feet to movement but will not stack to more than -15

Temp Injuries can be recovered from by a CON Save or Medicine Check DC 12 + 1 for each injury with a long rest; a Lesser Restoration to recover 1 injury; a full Restoration to recover from all wounds.

Headquarters (to be expanded as sensible)
This is largely usable as the campaign takes place in 1 area largely, Sharn a metropolis. As such them having their own homes or places that they make comfortable and functional should have some actual benefits. I suppose you could do this with any campaign where they have somewhere they keep returning to or something they keep travelling in over and over again. Cribbing off past editions and other game systems.

Base effect: Recover 1 additional Hit Die during a long rest. Maybe additional effect for better rooms and other such trappings.
Expansions to base include: sercurity, workshops, shop, library, secret exit, training room, stables, and other things that make sense.
• Shop will allow you to run a business without using downtime.
• Training room will decrease downtime needed to gain new physical skill or proficiencies.
• Library can provide a bonus to research or reduce downtime needed to gain new mental skills or proficiencies.
• Security allows the extra safe store valuables and protect against theft and intrustions.
• Stables allow for animal companions (non-class ability based), as well a reduction in downtime for gaining new skills in vehicle and animal training.
• Secret Exit is secret exit.
• Workshops allow for creation of items and possible reduction in time for said creation.

REST –
REMOVED
Short Rest: 30 to 60 minutes. As per normal
Long Rest: As per normal

FEAT
Heroic Efforts
A PC with Hero Points has found several new uses for Action points:
• Their Hero Die increases in potential and becomes a d8.
• They are able to spend 2 Hero points to gain another action, they may do this once until they have a rest.
• They gain 2 additional Hero Points when they gain a new level.


Thoughts? Critiques?

[LordEntrails]

Are Prone, Disarm, Feinting, & Grappling attach actions that anyone can do? I would make them feats, otherwise you are going make combat take much longer than it does now, plus since NPCs usually outnumber PCs, they are going to use them to great advantage (i.e. your players will hate getting disarmed and grappled and knocked prone all the time).

Injuries are going to play against the PCs. Again because the NPCs outnumber them and will statistically get more crits. Plus who cares if a NPC gets an injury. I use a modified version Lingering Wounds myself from the DMG, and it's makes it harder on the PC's, (but they do think it adds interest).

Don't like the changes to rest, resting is already very powerful in 5E, making it more so is just going to give the players more reasons to slow down.

Headquarter's sound a lot like Colville's Strongholds book from his Kickstarter. I haven't bought and read it yet, and it seems a bit simplified to me, but you may want to check into it.

[Zacchaeus]

Yes, I have to agree with LE here, an awful lot if this will slow down combat significantly and be much more of a disadvantage to players than NPCs (of course that might be the idea). The resting is too powerful.

For example there are already rules in the DMG for disarming which use an opposed roll. By changing it to a save you swing the advantage to the NPC. Players will mostly have weapons but many NPCs don’t (they have claws), so they can’t be disarmed. Having said that drawing another weapon is basically a free action so maybe the point is moot.

I too don’t like injury systems. Penalties to saves is a huge deal in 5e due to bounded accuracy, and I could see players wanting to abandon adventures to seek healing to recover. I assume you will have some method allowing them to recover. If not then I would seriously reconsider that. A flat DC 15 con save will seriously hurt low level characters and those that don’t invest in con.

The feinting thing on the other hand is skewed too much in the PCs favour. Most creatures have little intelligence so the PCs will win more often than not and advantage again because of bounded accuracy is a really big deal. Again though since it uses a bonus action and as you point out bonus actions are very valuable for many classes it might not get used much.

As with most houserules that I see only extensive play testing will tell if they are too powerful or unworkable, but if you and your players have fun with it then that’s all good.

[GavinRuneblade]

Some cool ideas, but I'd tweak them a bit as follows:

Prone

Disarm

Feinting

Two things for you: #1 this video from Taking20 goes into detail on these ideas and I think it is what you were trying to reproduce? But by adding the language you have you made the ideas go from being fast and easy to unnecessarily longer and slower.

AngryDM had a great idea for resolution that makes it quicker by removing the competing roll: Simply let the actor roll vs a DC set by the defender's skills/stats. One roll, very fast. Here is the relevant section (because the linked article is very long):
When a character attempts an action that puts it in direct opposition with another character’s skills or proficiencies, the DC for the character’s action is 8 + target’s Ability Modifier + target’s Proficiency Bonus for the relevant skill. If the target has Advantage or Disadvantage on the skill, apply +5 or -5 to the DC. Any bonus that can be granted to the target’s skill roll, such as from Bardic Inspiration or from a Cleric’s bless spell may also be applied to the DC. The notation for this is an Ability (Skill) Check vs. Ability (Skill).

Flanking
I picked +2 to try as it is easy to add in FG.

I recommend +1 as noted from the taking20 above. Several people in many places have done the math on this and because of 5e's bounded accuracy +2 is far too strong.

Grappling
The Grappler Feat is defunct currently.

This is confusing and open to huge amounts of exploitation. Again, I think you were trying to use the ideas from taking20?
Removing grappler is ok, giving advantage versus the grappled target is ok, allowing restrain is great. The way you have it written it appears to be automatic and if that was your intent, then I think it is too strong.
Movement away ends the grapple is in my opinion a horrible idea. the current rules for movement and grappling are excellent, logical, easy to adjudicate, and, I'm sorry, better than this. Right now, RAW, if I grapple you, when I move you come with me or I have the choice of letting go of you an ending the grapple. This is subject to the usual drag/lift weight limits. But it allows a grappler to drag their victim to a pair of steps and toss them down it. Or back out of the room while using the victim as a human shield vs enemies, etc. It opens up tons of great narrative options and dramatic choices for players. I don't think you should take this away from players or your villainous NPCs. Being restrained doesn't need to be prone. Watch some wrestling and you'll see that many combatants can get an enemy into an armlock or chokehold while standing. Knocking an enemy prone before pinning them is one option, but not always what your players will want because ranged attacks are at disadvantage.
If you want to maintain a grab when an enemy grows... then explain how a medium fighter keeps an enemy restrained when it grows from large/horse sized to huge elephant sized. That's not logical. Sure, give the grappler the choice to stay hanging on the target that is 2 sizes bigger than them, but I have to agree with the RAW, two sizes too big = no longer restrained or grabbed.

TWO Weapon Fighting
Lets face it, 2 weapon fighting is nearly pointless

I think this is confusing and maybe not doing what you intend. If I understand where you are going with this you are adding both defense and offense and trying to make two-weapon fighting do two things instead of one thing. My recommendation is to pick one or the other.

In general, the reason that people think two weapon fighting is weak is because archers and great weapon fighters get -5 to hit +10 to damage and two-weapon fighters don't. As a result, they end up weaker than anyone but the sword-and-board defender. What two-weapon fighting has that no one else does is more attack rolls. This is good for crit fishing builds. So what I recommend, is coming up with something that lets two-weapon fighting get bonuses either on a critical hit, or critical more often. Now it is taking advantage of its unique mechanic. Also, do NOT steal the reaction from the fighter, because that's one more chance to get a crit.

Right now the official wording is "When you take the Attack action and attack with a light melee weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light melee weapon that you’re holding in the other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative. If either weapon has the thrown property, you can throw the weapon, instead of making a melee attack with it. ". Instead of +1 AC, add "if at least one attack from your Attack action hits, you have advantage on the bonus attack". Advantage = more crits especially if you have 3 levels of fighter for champion and the crit on a 19 feature. The feat currently allows you to use normal weapons, increasing your die from 1d6 to 1d8.

a two-handed weapon is dealing 2d6+15 = greatsword + 5 STR +10 Feat, with -5 to hit.
with the RAW feat a two-weapon fighter is doing 2d8+10 = two longswords +5 Str twice, no -5 to hit.
that's an average of 22 for greatsword vs 19 for two longswords. Pretty close.

Once extra attack comes into play this goes to hell. Say three attacks and all hit: Greatsword = 6d6+45 average = 66, but really one is likely to miss because of the -5 to hit so 44.
Longswords = 4d8+20 average = 38. Way below the greatsword even if one misses.

So, give the feat +1 crit range (combined with champion = crit on 18 and the bonus has advantage). Now two-weapon fighting is the crit fishing build of choice. It will still end up below two-handed weapons which is where Wizards wants it, but it will be significantly better and it has a unique niche that no other style currently does. Also it will rock with hex or hunter's mark.

If you prefer the defense, then drop the bonus damage fighters give with the fighting style and add +1 AC there instead, and if the bonus action attack with off-hand weapon hits or misses gain +1 AC until start of your next turn. With the feat, do it just like you say, reaction to get proficiency to AC against one attack. This makes it a competitive option vs a shield but not so good that no one wants to take a shield (because 3 or more enemies means 1 reaction isn't enough). VS a boss two-weapon fighting is better than shield. VS tons of enemies surrounding you the shield is better. More options = good.

So again, my advice is pick one idea and go with it but don't try to do both at once.

Injuries
Largely borrowed from SW

My thought is that this will greatly slow down your game. I recommend making it far simpler, make 3 (at most) conditions. One for "action impaired" one for "movement impaired" and one for "stamina impaired". Now you can apply the effect from the combat tracker, it can be automated, and it is fast. I really advice against making anything stack except if the person gets two or all three. Trust me, that will be enough for your players and you can do the rest via narration and roleplay. I would recommend having rules for a medicine check (DC 12+1 for each additional injury) and long rest to remove 1 injury, plus lesser restoration to remove 1. Greater restoration or regeneration = remove all.

Headquarters

Seems do-able and potentially fun. In addition to Matt Coleville's rules, check out the Xanathar's Guide rules for downtime and tool use. I bet if you incorporated a couple extra bonuses from those two chapters you'd have something kickass with this idea of yours that is easy for your players to make unique strongholds or rooms within a shared stronghold.

REST

I agree with the caution that this makes rests too good. Especially If I were in your game, I would convince everyone to multiclass warlock and bard for the infinite spells and infinite bardic inspirations. Totally exploitable.

Instead, what I did is make healing potions consume and give the healing from a hit die. Right now, RAW the humble 50-gp healing potion has infinite use. Instead of buying the 2,000gp stronger version a smart player will buy a keg of 100 regular ones then just chug them after every encounter until they are full hp. I see this as problematic and exploitable. So I added the consumes and heals 1 hd. Now if a wizard drinks a healing potion during battle, instead of 2d4+2 hp (avg 7hp) they get 2d4+1d6+2+CON (probably an average of 12hp assuming +2 con). A barbarian gets 2d4+1d12+2+Con (assuming +4 con that's avg 18hp). Now there is a reason to use the stronger potions instead of tons of the weak ones, it is worth an action in combat instead of a waste of time in combat, and there's less need for a rest and no way to exploit it for infinite healing. Might work for you too.

FEAT
[Heroic Efforts

I like this. I would clarify "until they take a short or long rest" but good limit and great idea. It is very much going to get used, but won't get exploited. It does exactly what hero points are for: encourages your PCs to attempt crazy stuff. I would take this feat on most of my flashy characters.

[Mgrancey]

(from phone)

The goal of knock prone, feint, disarm rules (which maybe not as clarified as I thought) is roughly three fold.
1) Keep streamlined and within current mechanics
2) Make useful and functional,
3) Make available to all characters
I was trying write down and explain what Taking20 had suggested over a couple of different videos. I just find it silly that only 1 type of fighter is able to feint, disarm, knock prone, etc. While at same time I dont want to make doing it this way better or more effective than those fighters.

condensing the rules to be simply one would be a 4th reason as well, as the fighter disarms one way but then doing a contested check for anyother way seems worst.

Injuries
Apologies, the injury is recoverable from after a short or long rest with either a Con or Medicine check. So just a penalty to ability checks and maybe a DC 13 + 1 for each existing injury? I was trying to keep it simple, quick amd logical

will continue later

[GavinRuneblade]

(from phone)

The goal of knock prone, feint, disarm rules (which maybe not as clarified as I thought) is roughly three fold.
1) Keep streamlined and within current mechanics
2) Make useful and functional,
3) Make available to all characters
I was trying write down and explain what Taking20 had suggested over a couple of different videos. I just find it silly that only 1 type of fighter is able to feint, disarm, knock prone, etc. While at same time I dont want to make doing it this way better or more effective than those fighters.

condensing the rules to be simply one would be a 4th reason as well, as the fighter disarms one way but then doing a contested check for anyother way seems worst.

RAW everyone (not just fighters, but literally everyone) can disarm and knock prone. The battle master is the only one who can do it PLUS damage at the same time and sometimes on another player's turn without a readied action.

[Mgrancey]

Apologies, the last couple of days were pretty busy and I was mulling over what I head read, as well as planning next session.

Feint, Disarm, Prone
RAW also does it differently from the Battle Master, which like I said was a 4th reason to try and simplify to doing disarms, trip, feint all with one method in mind.

@Gavin That seems like just flipping who the responsibility to roll lies on from the NPC or Defender to the Attacker, which would probably be easier, but then it would conflict with following the idea of resolving them all using one method. Rather than doing it two different ways, I am also trying to make them all work the same general way.

Two-Weapon Fighting
My biggest complaint with 2-weapon is that there isn't anything that really makes it stand out on its own. 2 Hand fighters go for offense and damage, S+S fighters are defense oriented, 2-Wpns just don't really seem to do anything well even being in-between the two.

I should explain myself a bit better, I think a large part of our differences is in how we view 2-weapon fighting. Some of this is probably influence from previous editions, but 2-Wpn fighters were usually high dex builds and high crit weapon builds; so they ended up as skirmishers and glass cannons. I have generally viewed 2-weapon fighting as a variable or shifting build, able to swap between offense and defense as a situation calls for, but sacrificing being really good at either by being able to swap their focus.

You were talking about Crit fishing and such, but with 5e it seems less beneficial as Crits are all x2 damage dice; on the other side the usual weakness of needing to beat high DR isn't an issue anymore since Resistance is simply 1/2 damage. I originally thought that just adding Prof to AC would be too much or using a bonus action to boost for the whole round as maybe too much cause they could just do it every round and boost their AC up by quite a bit later on, and there wouldn't be a limit like Shield has in having limited spell slots or spells known.

I don't think I want to mess around with the classes right now, so I will probably add that +1 Crit to the feat instead and test if from there.

Flanking
If it makes that big a difference I will drop it to a +1

Injuries
I guess I wasn't clear as I meant to be, total I will only track a maximum of 5 injuries otherwise it could get too much.

If you think DC 12 + 1 would be better I will try that and yeah, Lesser Rest. and Full Rest can heal temp injuries as well as a 1 injury per long rest.

The idea is to try and negate the senselessness of yoyo-ing at 0 HP without any consequence or for such and there being no consequence to hitting 0 HP. I am not absolute on Crits causing injuries or Massive Damage, but Massive Damage and Lingering Injuries as per DMG are both pretty rough and I suppose the way it read you could get 3 injuries in one blow, but that wasn't the intention. You can only gain 1 injury from a source, so if you suffer a crit which also leads to Massive Damage and puts the PC at 0 HP, it would still only be 1 injury. Maybe 5 is too much and I should limit it to 3, I will keep that in mind.


Grappling

It would be another contested check to take from grappled to restrained as per the feat. My issue is that if you look at the feat, doing so leaves both the grappled AND grappler as being restrained. That seems rather counter productive, why would you ever grapple if you ended up that way in the middle of combat. It also kinda negates itself as you have advantage from feat but then disadvantage from being mutually restrained.

What I was trying to express is that the grappler can move around the grappled and move the grappled target with him, but has limited themselves so that aren't as able to avoid attacks and spells. They may sacrifice their control of the grappled to avoid attacks as per normal. I suppose being able to use the grappled target as a shield to take damage would be a good addition to the feat and make grappling a bit more useful.

Will edit initial post to show changes and clarifications