- 5e

How Combat Math Runs Their Games (Our House Rules)

We try to incorporate as many of the rules and source books Dungeons and Dragons offer.

Character Sheet Rules

Certain Backgrounds are Soft-Banned.

We typically soft-ban backgrounds that give away free feats:

We're also exploring One D&D's background choices with a small modification since the current rules still work fine (this only impacts the Background section, the ability scores from your Race still apply):

Replacing ASI with 2 Half-Feats

When a character gains a new feat, if they have taken an ASI increase previously they may replace the ASI with a feat that grants a +1 bonus to an ability score the ASI granted if the combination of the two new feats have the same ASI as the replaced ASI.

Basically, this allows players to max their primary ability score early then get the added benefits of the half feats later. An example of this, a Rogue took +2 DEX at level 4... at level 8, they chose Skill Expert (+1 DEX) and replaced the +2 DEX ASI with Piercer (+1 DEX).

Game Play Rules

We try to follow the adventuring day mechanics layed out in the DMG as best we can. 1-2 short rests, at least 6-8 encounters per day.

We haven't had a need to ban flying races or anything like that yet, most of the players are pretty good at policing themselves if their character breaks the game but we'll adjust encounters on the fly (ha) when necessary.

Healing Potions heal for maximum value.

I'd rather free up my players' learned spells and spell slots for more interesting things than healing. I don't want to force the Knowledge Domain Cleric to take Cure Wounds because "it's a cleric and clerics are healers." If a cleric wants to heal, then it's appropriate to take the Life Domain.

Healing Potions are expensive, they take up an action, and people generally don't want to play a healer. We think it's best to remove variance from these items and have them heal for maximum value -- Potion of Healing always heals for 10, Potion of Greater Healing always heals for 20, and so on.

Regardless, this rule doesn't penalize a player for playing a healer as Cure Wounds will typically outperform Healing Potions anyways:

Cure Wounds
1d8+3 (8, Max: 11)
1d8+5 (10, Max: 13)

Potion of Healing
2d4+2 (7, Max 10)

Also Considering: Everyone gets the Healer feat for free.

This is mainly due to the idea that 5th edition dropped the ball on skill checks compared to games like Pathfinder 2nd Edition. Healing through a skill check is buried behind a feat tax in 5e when it's an action available to anyone with a Healer's Kit (that doesn't expend uses) in Pathfinder:

Treat Wounds. You spend 10 minutes treating one injured living creature (targeting yourself, if you so choose). The target is then temporarily immune to Treat Wounds actions for 1 hour, but this interval overlaps with the time you spent treating (so a patient can be treated once per hour, not once per 70 minutes).

The Medicine check DC is usually 15, though the GM might adjust it based on the circumstances, such as treating a patient outside in a storm, or treating magically cursed wounds. If you’re an expert in Medicine, you can instead attempt a DC 20 check to increase the Hit Points regained by 10; if you’re a master of Medicine, you can instead attempt a DC 30 check to increase the Hit Points regained by 30; and if you’re legendary, you can instead attempt a DC 40 check to increase the Hit Points regained by 50. The damage dealt on a critical failure remains the same.

If you succeed at your check, you can continue treating the target to grant additional healing. If you treat them for a total of 1 hour, double the Hit Points they regain from Treat Wounds.

Normal Monsters do not Critical Hit -- but we introduced a Champion creature subtype.

We typically design encounters to be on the tougher side of the spectrum (and run longer adventuring days) so we don't want too much variance from enemies. We've seen too many back-to-back critical hits from an enemy result in a player death that we want to mitigate this risk; when enemies have grouped up initiatives, this is a big enough problem.

The Champion creature subtype allows creatures to crit on various levels of rolls, a 20 result is always a crit but they'll sometimes crit on 19 or 18 as well. This subtype can apply to any creature, whether it's a common or legendary enemy.

One Minute Duration Spells Generally Last The Entire Encounter.

This isn't as much a house rule as it is an ease-of-play effect. Any spell or effect that occurs in combat with a one-minute duration lasts for the entire duration of the combat. I use this rule to avoid having to track 10 rounds of combat (gross) and that should be completely unnecessary as combat should only last 2-5 rounds anyways. If a situation (or strategy, like the Cook & Book strategy) comes up, I'll temporarily suspend this rule to avoid the abuse case.

Some spells, like Haste, have an effect that occurs when the spell ends and in this particular case I might have a second wave of enemies show up immediately after the encounter ends and the players affected by haste would not participate in the first round of combat.

Haste
When the spell ends, the target can’t move or take actions until after its next turn, as a wave of lethargy sweeps over it.

No flanking.

Flanking makes combat messy and leads to arguments on if something is flanking or not. It also unfairly punishes characters that engage in melee combat (typically funnelling all damage into those characters instead of ranged characters) and offers unintended buffs and nerfs to certain classes and subclasses (things that can't normally generate advantage have a free source of advantage and things that can generate advantage at a cost, like Barbarians and Rogues, effectively lose class features).

Why doesn't a ranged character get advantage if a creature's back is turned to it? There is no such thing as "behind" in 5e, characters are constantly turning/looking during the round. Since there is no concept of facing, we can safely assume that if one creature makes an attack it takes time to make another attack, so it's safe to turn away from that creature. If the facing rule is used, then sure, ranged characters should have advantage on that attack.