House Rules
Let me start off by saying I love 5th edition DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. It's elegant, it's simple, it's fluid and it's responsible for bringing the game to the mainstream in a way no earlier edition even came close to.
That said, in its almost compulsive desire for simplicity, illogical outputs have crept in and much nuance has been sacrificed on this altar of assuming even basic arithmetic is beyond most. I set about rectifying what I consider to be the most egregious examples of this dumbing down, presenting the rationale for change, along with my suggestions for improvement.
Below are alternative rules for:
- Critical hits
- Potions of healing
- Flanking
- The bloodied status
- Resting
- Death saves and dying
Critical Hits
The Official Rule
When you score a critical hit, you get to roll extra dice for the attack’s damage against the target. Roll all of the attack’s damage dice twice and add them together. Then add any relevant modifiers as normal.
The Problem
Critical hits are great when you land one. Rolling a natural 20 is one of life's little pleasures. When you do this when making an attack roll, the idea is that you've scored a powerful hit, possibly striking your enemy in the head, or some other vulnerable area. Therefore, it makes sense that such a blow deals more damage.
The trouble is, what happens when --- in the heat of a climactic battle --- you roll a 20, score a critical hit... and roll two 1s? Aside from being underwhelming for the player, it also doesn't gel with what a critical hit is meant to represent.
The Fix: The Improved Crit
- When rolling a natural 20 on an attack roll, roll double the dice for damage, as usual
- You can re-roll up to half the dice once, but must use the new roll
- Any modifiers are then applied to the sum of the above.
This helps prevent unsatisfying crits.
Potions of Healing (Use an Object)
The Official Rule
When an object requires your action for its use, you take the Use an Object action.
The Problem
Potions of healing are by the most commonly-used potions in battle, for obvious reasons. They can make the difference between life and death.
The trouble is, what happens when --- because of the muted healing options in 5th edition --- potions of healing are typically lacklustre in the healing they provide and let's be honest: in combat, who wants to spend their whole action drinking a potion? The battle is likely to be fraught, otherwise you'd not even be thinking about drinking a potion. In such a combat scenario, all drinking a potion of healing often achieves is keeping you going one round longer --- meaning a wasted action (since you can't do much else) and a wasted potion.
The Fix: The Tactical Potion of Healing
- Consuming healing potions as an action restores a maximised number of hit points
- Consuming healing potions as a bonus action restores a number of hit points equal to the sum of rolled dice, plus any due modifier
This helps improve the usefulness of healing potions; increases their versatility and brings an element of strategic play.
Flanking
The Official (Optional) Rule
When making a melee attack, you get advantage if your opponent is threatened by a character or creature friendly to you on the opponent’s opposite border or opposite corner.
The Problem
Flanking can introduce an element of tactical play and encourages mobility on the battlefield --- something 5th edition struggles with.
The trouble is --- as great as the advantage mechanic is --- it is prone to be handed out like flyers through your letterbox. Dozens and dozens of things award advantage in the game and there is such thing as overkill. Furthermore, getting advantage for flanking seems a bit too good.
In addition, half and three-quarters cover doesn't grant you disadvantage, meaning ranged attackers are at, pardon the pun, a disadvantage.
The Fix: Smarter Flanking
- Two creatures attacking a creature they are both flanking gain a +2 bonus on attack rolls
- Three or more creatures attacking a creature they are all flanking gain a +5 bonus on attack rolls.
This may speed up combat; even the deal with ranged creatures; make surrounding single creatures more favourable; make being surrounded by mobs more dangerous.
The Bloodied Status
The Official (Optional) Rule
When you drop below half your hit point maximum, you show signs of wear, such as cuts and bruises... (You can describe) a monster taken to half its hit points as bloodied, giving the players a sense of progress in a fight against a tough opponent, and helping them judge when to use their most powerful spells and abilities.
The Problem
Given limited resources, it's important thay players have some idea as to how the battle is going. Given the great addition of Legendary Resistance, this is arguably more important than ever. What's more, if the characters are there, in combat, right next to the monster, they'd be able to see some sort of phsyical attrition after a certain amount of punishment.
The trouble is --- this descriptive clue is optional --- and not all DMs are equal.
The Fix: The Bloodied Status
- This simple mechanic provides players with some indicator as to the opposition’s current health, which players find useful in combat
- A creature is bloodied when its hit points drop to or below half its maximum.
In exchange for this indicator, I have taken this opportunity to tune-up certain monsters, making them more dangerous. Where a creature that has an ability that recharges (usually on a 5-6 roll of a d6) becomes bloodied, its recharge timer expands by 1.
For example, the fearsome red dragon's fire breath weapon recharges following use on a 5-6. When the red dragon is bloodied, its breath weapon recharges on a 4-6.
This reflects the increased adrenaline and survival insincts a creature feels when backed into a proverbial corner.
Resting
The Official Rule
A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar adventuring activity, the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.
At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost Hit Points. The character also regains spent Hit Dice, up to a number of dice equal to half of the character’s total number of them (minimum of one die).
The Problem
Long rests are essential for characters to recharge, heal and regain expended resources.
The trouble is --- again in part due to the altered role magical healing plays in 5th edition --- the way long rests heal characters is insane, bordering on magical rejuvenation. You might have been at death's door --- possibly more than once --- earlier that day, coming so close to departing this mortal coil. Luckily, after a decent night's kip, you're back as good as new the very next day. Come again?
Furthermore, thanks to certain spells (Leomund's Tiny Hut to name but one), resting anyhere is almost always a doddle, unless the DM is quite heavy-handed.
The Fix: The Improved Long Rest
- When you complete a long rest outside of sanctuary, you regain half your maximum hit points. Upon completing a long rest, add these onto what your current hit points were at the time of beginning the long rest. You also regain half your maximum HD. Abilities and spells etc. refresh as usual.
- When you complete a long rest inside sanctuary, you regain all hit points as usual, along with half your HD and your abilities and spells refresh as usual.
- Sanctuary extends to established settlements, such as cities, towns, villages, castles, etc.
- If you attempt a long rest in a nightmarish place, at the end of the long rest, you must make a DC 20 Wisdom saving throw. On success, you complete your long rest. On a fail, you gain only the benefits of a short rest --- and one level of exhaustion. This exhaustion disappears upon the completion of a successful long rest.
- Nightmarish places are few and far between, and always at the DM's discretion. Typically, these would extend to places such as undead-infested dark crypts, one of the planes of Hell, and other such hostile and ceaselessly demoralising environments.
This adds an element of realism and helps differentiate taking a long rest in a luxurious suite, located in a bastion of strength and civilization, and camping outside in the wild, or an otherwise potentially dangerous locale. Psychology comes into play as much as physicality.
Death Saves and Dying
The Official Rule
Whenever you start your turn with 0 hit points, you must make a special saving throw, called a death saving throw, to determine whether you creep closer to death or hang onto life. Roll a d20. If the roll is 10 or higher, you succeed. Otherwise, you fail. A success or failure has no effect by itself. On your third success, you become stable. On your third failure, you die. The successes and failures don’t need to be consecutive; keep track of both until you collect three of a kind. The number of both is reset to zero when you regain any hit points or become stable.
The First Problem
The death save mechanic is a fun way to handle the struggle between clinging on and dying. It can allow for some tension at the time and unlike in older editions, means character death is not that common.
The trouble is --- and this is links to both the muted role of healing, and the way long rests have miraculous powers of rejuvenation --- failed death saves have little consequence, unless the character actually dies.
Given the way healing spells and potions of healing function in 5th edition, and the absence of 'negative hit points', it's actually far more efficient to administer healing to a character when they are on 0 hit points and at risk of dying. But given the low number of hit points either restores, this can lead to the yo-yoing of characters, whereby they drop; are healed; drop again; are healed again; etc.
It's comical at first; less fun thereafter. I simply don't buy that someone so close to death's door can suddenly act as though they've just tumbled off a bicycle, when they may have accumulated one or more failed saves before being yanked back from the brink.
The Fix: The Sticking Failed Death Saves
- Failed death saves stick until completing a long rest.
- For example, if you drop to 0 hit points and fail a death save before regaining 1 or more hit points, you carry over the 1 failed death save.
This helps prevent the yo-yo effect and resotres some credibility to the risk of dying. Going into another battle --- even at full hit points --- on the same day that you've accumulated one or more failed death saves can have a profound influence on how you behave and what you do next.
In conjunction with our Improved Long Rest rule, actually completing a successful long rest is all the more beneficial, since it 'wipes' any failed death saves accumulated from that day.
The Next Problem
Imagine, if you will:
You're on 0 hit points and bleeding out. An angry giant batters you with its club. One death save fail. Tiamat roasts you with her dragon fire. One death save fail. The evil deity causes one of the moons to crash-land on your body. One death save fail.
The hedgehog trundling past your body accidentally nicks you with one of its spines. One death save fail.
The Official Rule
If you take any damage while you have 0 hit points, you suffer a death saving throw failure. If the damage is from a critical hit, you suffer two failures instead.
If you're making death saves, you're clearly in a delicate situation and things could go either way. Makes for a tense moment in the game, yes? Well, actually, not so much.
The trouble is --- thanks in part to 5th edition's overzealous simplicity drive --- the collapsing moon and the humble hedgehog's accidental spine are in equal parts dangerous. I'm not buying that. For the sake of a modest reduction in simplicity, we gain some realism.
The Fix: Realistic Consequence of Damage
When making death saves and you take damage, the amount of damage proportionate to your hit point maximum you take determines the number of failed death saves that imposes.
- If you take damage equal to less than 1⁄4 of your maximum hit points in one hit, you fail 1 death save
- If you take damage equal to or more than 1⁄4 but less than 1⁄2 of your maximum hit points in one hit you fail 2 death saves
- If you take damage equal to or more than 1⁄2 of your maximum hit points in one hit, you fail 3 death saves
- For any fraction of a hit point, this always rules in the player’s favour.
Tougher? Yes. More complex? Barely. More realistic? Much. To help players out with this change (especially in light of The Sticking Failed Death Saves rule), we can go further:
- A natural 20 on a death save brings the character back up on 1 hit point – and as a bonus action, provided the character has hit die remaining, the character can spend 1 hit die to recover hit points, which includes any Constitution modifier.
- If a dying character succeeds on 3 death saving throws and has 0 fails at the time, the character returns on 1 hit point and can take its turn.
And since we're on the subject, let's also bake in:
- When a character is brought up from 0 hit points by any means other than a natural 20 on a death save, it gains one level of exhaustion. If this would result in the character’s death, the character instead remains unconscious until it has completed a long rest.
- Whilst you are dying (or unconscious), your Dexterity modifier does not influence your AC, and you cannot benefit from the evasion feature (if you have it).
And one last change to support these changes: let's talk the irritating Get Out of Jail Free card that is the revivify spell. We don't go to all this trouble to increase drama, tension and excitement during life and death moments, to have it all --- dying included --- reduced to a mere inconvenience by a lowly 3rd-level spell that becomes available around about the
same time a fighter learns how to swing a sword twice on its turn.
All of these changes add an element of realism and common sense as a remedy to where the official rules’ preference of simplicity overrides logic and gameplay immersion.
Revivify
3rd-level necromancy
- Casting Time: 1 action
- Range: Touch
- Components: V, S, M (diamonds worth 300 gp.p., which the spell consumes)
- Duration: Instantaneous
You touch a creature that has died within the last minute as a result of failing three death saving throws. You compel the creature’s departing soul to return to its dead body, before the soul has left whatever plane of existence it is on. The creature returns to life by a thread and has its third death save fail undone.
This spell can’t restore any missing body parts and has no effect on a living creature.
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As you can see, this change to the spell makes it less powerful. It effectively undoes the final failed death save that led to the death --- and that's it.
It doesn't work on creatures currently within the death save cycle, and neither does it bring back creatures who died by any other means than failing three death saves. I still believe giving this sort of power to 5th-level charactters is stretching boundaries, but at least in this form, the effort might still be for nothing and in retaining the diamonds as a material component, should help limit its appeal.
This change --- and indeed the other changes in relation to death saves and dying --- segue nicely into my broader homebrew methods for handling death in my campaigns, as well as a revision of the other spells that bring back the dead. This deals with questions such as:
- Where does a creature 'go' when it dies?
- What happens then? What experiences does it have?
- How can it be brought back? And will it definitely want to be?
The answers to these questions are all addressed in my refined approach to (character) death, and revolve closely around Ed Greenwood's FORGOTTEN REALMS setting and in particular, the City of Judgment on the Fugue Plane.
At some point in the future, I'll publish those, too.
And there you have it
Hopefully you find these suggestions for alternative rules fun, interesting and things you'll consider incorprotaing into your game.
I'd welcome your thoguhts, feedback and counter-suggestions. Please feel free to reach out to me over on Reddit at u/Olster20
Variant Rules
For Running
Your Game
Don't believe resting in a lovely castle or luxurious tavern should function exactly the same as sleeping in the Cradle of the Death God? A bit miffed by how life-and-death moments are handled, and underwhelmed by the reduction of character death to a mere inconvenience? Tired of unsatisfying crits?
These alternative rules are simple, logical and help create - rather than destroy - tension at such pivotal moments. I've been running these in both campaigns I run for some time now and both output and player enjoyment have increased. There's no reason yours won't, too.
Cover Art: RamonSalinasArt
More Credits
Art Credits
All the glorious art in this document is courtesy of the hugely talented RamonSalinasArt