D&D Homebrew – Five House Rules

Every table has their own take on the rules. Early editions of D&D encouraged making these things up, later editions took more a hardline attitude towards homebrew as not playing the game as intended, and the current 5E has swung back to house rules as dials for customizing the feel of your game. Here are five that have been options in 5E games I’ve been running.

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Bloodied

When a creature has been reduced to half their starting hit points, they are identified as bloodied.

4E had some interesting concepts, including this condition. It provides a descriptive indicator of the progress and how close a creature or player character is to defeat without talking specific metagame numbers. Knowing that it’s half dead after two hits gets a far different player reaction than a creature not being bloodied after 50+ points of damage from a spell.

I also use bloodied as a trigger for special abilities, a trick right out of 4E like a dragon at half hit points recharges their breath weapon. Reducing a creature might trigger a reckless attack feature, allowing them to use the Berserker class ability. I’m a fan of certain elemental creatures having an area effect as either a free action or reaction when they hit half hit points. An extra +2d6 damage to an attack when an ogre has been bloodied makes it that much memorable.

A side note – it’s become a bit of a minigame with players to create creature appropriate descriptors like ‘winded’ for an air elemental, ‘unstitched’ for a flesh golem, ‘pruned’ for a plant, and so forth.

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Prone = Off Balance

Calling a flying or swimming creature prone seems weird, so just call it off balance for those cases.

Any table with a monk at their table will most likely at some point encounter a flying creature being ‘thrown prone’. The house rule we’ve used is that if a flying creature is made prone as an effect, treat it as ‘off balance’ and apply advantage to attacks made against it and disadvantage with attacks made by it until it uses half its movement to ‘re-balance’. Additionally, we ignore applying disadvantage to ranged attacks against flying / swimming creatures as that penalty seems more appropriate when a creature being prone reduces it’s visible profile to be targeted.

We originally brought this rule modification in a super hero game where flying characters and martial arts maneuvers were common enough that this came up frequently enough.

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Chug-a-Lug

As a bonus action, a creature may consume a potion or equivalent item.

I’ve seen this house rule being mentioned by many a gamer influencer and I hear it’s even in Baldur’s Gate 3. I also use a number of alternate forms for healing potions like gnomish blue cheese (1d4+2), druidic mud packs (1d6), and the holiday themed marshmallow eggs (2d3 temporary hit points of sugar rush) so I had to keep this open ended but block items with consumable charges like a wand. However applying a potion or equivalent to another creature is still an action.

I choose to use this at my table because I was watching players choosing every other action than drinking a potion, healing or otherwise. Drinking a potion appears to be a wasted action in the limited action economy of 5E. Odds are good that in most encounters an enemy attack will be dealing more damage than a common healing potion will heal. I wanted to encourage the drinking of potions (not just healing) and keep the action moving. So far I have not had complaint from players for using this house rule, even when allowing enemies to do it as well.

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Heroic Recovery

As an action, a player character may spend up to half their hit dice (round up) to recover the hit points rolled plus constitution bonus (minimum result of 1 hit point per die). The player must decide how many hit dice they are rolling for this action before seeing the result of the dice. This action may not be taken again until after a short or long rest.

This was another of those high fantasy pulp heroes house rules to keep the action going. It’s the classic trope of the action hero just taking a few moments to catch their breath or being back in fighting form after being reduced to a bleeding heap moments before. There’s much bigger reward for spending an entire action (assuming higher level and more hit dice) and even outside of combat it usually has the desired effect of fewer short rests taken.

A version of this appears in the DMG (pg. 266-7) under Healing Surges (a term carried over from 4E where there was a hole mechanic of how many healing surges a class had) but the DMG version also states that a character would recover full hit dice with a long rest and that was just turning the dial a little too much for my preferences. By keeping it at still recovering only half their hit dice (round up) with a long rest, players have actually paid some attention to how many hit dice they spend during a day of encounters.

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Inspiration overcoming Conditions

A player may spend an Inspiration to ignore the effects of one condition for their character until the end of their turn. If used to ignore being unconscious due to being at 0 hit points, the player character would make a death save at the end of their turn as per normal.

This is another example of a house rule to create a more heroic fantasy feel through mechanics. It’s the hero summoning up that last ounce of strength to attack the villain once more before falling or steeling their mind while charmed. It’s the blinded warrior side stepping attacks from foes or ignoring the disadvantage to shoot an arrow. Most conditions impose a disadvantage so it isn’t too unbalancing, but it does mean inspirations aren’t spent as often (the particular table I use this one at uses up to three inspiration can be saved at a time so it’s less of a problem).