Here are some homebrew rules that I like to use in my D&D sessions. If you book a session with me, we can discuss whether or not we use these rules. While it may not seem like it, ALL of these rules are intended to enhance player fun, so I will include an explanation of the rule itself, and also my reason for including it.

The Perkins Critical

The rule

When a player, NPC or monster scores a critical hit, instead of rolling twice the number of damage dice, you automatically get the highest number on the second dice. So, you roll once, add your modifiers and then add the maximum value from all damage dice. For example, if you score a critical hit with a longsword and your usual damage is 1d8+3, your critical hit damage will be 1d8+3+8. If you are a rogue using a sneak attack using a short sword, whose damage is usually (say) 1d6(weapon)+3(modifier)+3d6(sneak attack), your critical hit damage will be 1d6+3+6(sword)+18(sneak attack).

Why?

We all love that epic moment in a game when you roll a natural 20 for your attack roll at a critical moment... you eagerly pick up double your usual dice and roll them, only to find you roll a 1 and a 2 and inflict damage that is less than or comparable to the damage you typically deal on a normal hit. The Perkins Critical ensures your critical hits hit harder and feel like they're making a real impact. Just remember, while the players may love the opportunity to deal out massive damage, it also means they're in for some pain when an enemy crits them back.

Blind Death Saves

The rule

Only the DM sees the result of the player's death save rolls (either by making the roll themselves, or by having the player roll in a way that only the DM can see the die.

Why?

In a combat situation, if you've just seen your ally go down, you can't tell at a glance if they're dying or stabilizing. If you knew that they were safe and stabilizing, you might choose to act differently. If you don't know whether your companion is safe or on death's door, it adds an element of risk to your decision making, increasing the tension and intensity of the game (do you land the killing blow to an enemy who may be dangerous if they are allowed to take another turn, or do you help your friend and potentially save their life?).

Recovering From Exhaustion

The rule

If players are experiencing any levels of exhaustion, then they can not regain any hit points during a short or long rest. Instead, a long rest reduces their exhaustion level by 1. Characters only recover hit points during short or long rests, if they start the rest with 0 levels of exhaustion. All other benefits of a long rest remain the same, however (i.e. spell slot recovery, rages, ki points etc).

Why?

As per the resting in danger rule, this encourages the characters to be careful with their resource management. Knowing characters can just long rest and start the next day fresh may cause them to be reckless with their resource usage... but knowing that their resources don't come back so easily will force characters to make value judgements about whether it's best to use that feature / spell etc, or save it.

Almost Dying is Exhausting

The rule

Being killed, or almost killed, takes its toll on a character. A player who recovers from being downed (i.e. making death saving throws) adds a level of exhaustion whenever they recover, regardless of the method (i.e. by healing, by an ally making a medicine check). Furthermore, coming back from the dead is also exhausting, as follows:

• Raise Dead (level 5 spell): The character is resurrected with 5 levels of exhaustion (this is instead of the -4 penalty to D20 tests described in the spell description)
• Resurrection (level 7 spell): The character is resurrected with 3 levels of exhaustion (this is instead of the -4 penalty to D20 tests described in the spell description)
• True Resurrection (level 9 spell): The character is resurrected with no levels of exhaustion

Why?

In addition to adding a level of realism by ensuring players who are nearly killed aren't just one good night's sleep away from being back to 100%, it also adds a level of resource management and value judgment to the game.

The Lying Game

The rule

Generally, I won't have players roll deception, persuasion or insight checks against each other, as roleplaying is typically the way this is done. Sometimes we need it, however; perhaps the player knows the other player is lying, but their character doesn't... or maybe they're just suspicious. If one player (the "player") asks to make an insight check to determine if another player (the "target") is lying, it will be handled as follows:

• The player makes an in insight check and tells the DM (only) the result.
• The target decides (without telling the other players) whether they are lying or telling the truth, and rolls either or deception or persuasion check respectively. The results of this roll is told to the DM only, and not revealed to any other player.

The outcome of this opposed roll is as follows:

• If the target is telling the truth (they rolled persuasion):
• If the insight check is greater than the persuasion check: If the player has no initial biases (DM's judgment), they think the target is telling the truth, but if they suspected the target of lying then they think the target is lying.
• If the insight check is lower than the persuasion check: The player believes the target is telling the truth.
• If the insight check is equal to the persuasion check: the player can't determine if the target is being truthful.
• If the target is lying (they rolled deception):
• If the insight check is greater than the deception check: The player can sense that the target is being dishonest in some way.
• If the insight check is lower than the deception check: The player believes the target is telling the truth.
• If the insight check is equal to the deception check: The player can't determine if the target is being truthful.

Why?

I've found this to be a fun little mechanic. Having open rolls for such things creates a difficult dynamic where the player may know that they lost the opposed check, so while the target was successfully deceptive, the player is still suspicious, causing a disconnect between what the player knows and what their character knows. By keeping both the roll used by the target, and the results of the rolls secret, and only revealing what the player senses with their insight, it is more likely that player and character knowledge will be aligned, making it easier for players to respond in a consistent way for their character.

Subtle skill checks

The rule

Sometimes, seeing the result of a roll can hurt the game, because a player who rolls a "3" on their insight roll and is told "they seem truthful to you", now doubts whether the target of their roll is REALLY truthful, or whether it was a result of the roll, and they may act in a way that incorporates player knowledge. Any rolls in which knowing the result of the roll can influence what the PLAYER knows, are rolled in secret by the DM (while still sticking to the general principle that we want players to roll for themselves as much as possible). Rolls for which the true outcome is immediately known are still made by the player.

Examples of rolls still made by the player may include:

• acrobatics
• athletics
• stealth
• sleight of hand
• medicine (if it's a check to actually perform medicine on an injured or sick subject)

Examples of rolls made by the PC may include (though this will be situational):

• insight
• deception
• persuasion
• medicine (if it's a check to see if the player knows something about an injury or ailment)
• religion
• history
• performance

Why?

Aligning player and character knowledge is a great way to make the game more immersive. If a player knows that they rolled high, they will immediately know that what the DM says is the objective truth, if they know they roll low, they may be more dubious. Keeping the results of the roll away from the character entirely will cause them to get their heads out of the dice, and focus instead on the story.

Creative Advantage

The rule

I will sometimes grant advantage on an attack roll or skill check as a reward for players being imaginative in the actions they take or the descriptions of their actions. This could be because you've described actions which would genuinely be advantageous to your situation, or it could just be because you've described an action in an interesting or cinematic way. As players get better at this, the bar for gaining creative advantage will be raised, however.

Why?

I want to reward flavorful roleplaying and combat.

No Coffeelock

The rule

Multi-class sorcerers can only convert Sorcerer spell slots into sorcery points, and vice versa.

Why?

There's an exploit where a multi-class Sorcerer/Warlock can take a short rest (regaining all their warlock spell slots), convert those warlock spell slots into sorcery points, and then convert the sorcery points back into sorcerer spell slots, then short rest again. In this way, so long as they don't take a long rest and are able to take as many short rests as they like, the character can gain essentially never-ending spell slots. While this may be a fun little exploit of a game mechanic, it doesn't make any sense and is a bit broken, so to fix it we are making it such that only sorcerer spell slots can be converted into sorcery points, essentially removing this exploit.

Secret Spells

When a creature a player can see or hear begins casting a spell with verbal, somatic or material components, the DM will not automatically announce to the players what spell is being cast.

Players may identify the spell being cast by succeeding an arcana check with a DC equal to 8 + the caster's proficiency bonus + the spell's level (ignoring any upcast, i.e. if a 3rd level spell were being upcast to 5th level, the arcana check treats the spell as level 3). Players who can make a reaction in response to spellcasting (i.e. characters who can use 'Counterspell') can complete this check before they decide to take their action or not.

Mechanically, given only players who can make a reaction in response to spellcasting will benefit from knowing the spell, they should be the only ones allowed to make the arcana check. Other characters may succeed in identifying the spell, but being unable to do anything to stop it means it will make no practical difference whether they learn of the spell before, or after it is cast.

If the spell has verbal components then the player must be able to hear them to make the check. If the spell has somatic and/or material components, then the player must be able to see them to make the check. If the spell has verbal and somatic, or verbal and material (or all three) components and the player can only hear OR see the caster (not both), then they can make the arcana check with disadvantage.

The arcana check is made with advantage (or cancelled disadvantage) if:

• The spell is on the player's class spell list AND the player can cast spells of level of the spell being cast (again, ignoring any upcast) - whether or not is is known or prepared, OR
• The player has seen this same enemy cast the same spell before.

On a successful arcana check, the player learns the spell being cast, and the level at which the spell is being cast. On a failure, they learn nothing.

The player can still choose to take their reaction (i.e. Counterspell) even if they fail to identify the spell being cast, they just won't know the spell they are countering (or otherwise reacting to)

Bonus actions as actions

The rule

Bonus actions can be performed using actions (but actions can not be performed using bonus actions).

Why

This gives players more options for actions they can take on their turns. Furthermore, it makes sense that bonus actions (which are meant to be small actions that don't take up much time) can be carried out using the player's action (which is the more substantial thing they can do on their turn).

Take 10, take 20

The rule

Skill checks where there is no real consequence for failure, and the check can simply be repeated time and time again, can be done as follows:

• Take 10: Instead of rolling a dice, the player can just take a 10 for their roll (then add any modifiers) on their first attempt.
• Take 20: Instead of rolling a dice, the player can take 10 times the amount of time it would take to complete the action, and take 20 for their roll (then add any modifiers).

Why

This prevents slowing down the game with inconsequential dice rolling.

Speed is an advantage

The rule

If you roll a natural 20 for initiative, then you get advantage on a D20 test in your first turn of that combat.

Why

Natural 20s feel great in D&D, but they are almost anti-climactic in initiative rolls, because apart from going early they don't really grant any additional benefit. This gives the players something rewarding for rolling high on their initiative rolls.

I know a guy

The rule

A predetermined number of times in every campaign, the players can proclaim "I know a guy", where they declare that they know an NPC who can help them in a given situation. The DM does have the right to veto this call (if it is used to bypass an important story beat, for example) but will try their best not to wherever possible. When it is not vetoed, the player will describe the NPC that they know who can help them, and the DM will incorporate this NPC into the game.

Why

This helps players to feel connected to the world, and makes it beneficial for players to think about their character's backstory and connections.

Hit points on level-up

The rule

Each time a character levels up, the player can choose which of the following methods are used to calculate their new hit points - their selection must be made before any dice rolls, and in both cases this is assuming that any additional modifiers (i.e. constitution modifiers, or the Tough feat) are added after the method is used:

• Roll their hit dice (re-rolling any 1s), or
• Automatically take the average dice roll result (rounded up) - e.g. the average roll for a D8 is 4.5, therefore the player can just take 5 for their hit points when levelling up (note, this is the 'average' result when rolling a die and re-rolling 1s... i.e. the average result of a D8 if 1s can be re-rolled, would be 5).

Why

Rolling hit points can feel anti-climactic if you roll a 1, but beyond that, I like the players to feel as though they get to choose whether to risk rolling the dice and getting a lower result (for the chance of getting a higher result) or whether they want to take a safe average.

Evading AoE

The rule

If a player needs to make a Dexterity saving throw to avoid an a spell or effect (i.e. a fireball or lightning bolt), then they must also move to an unoccupied and available space which is outside of the area of effect for the spell (or effect). This movement doesn't provoke opportunity attacks. The one exception is if the players can find a way to shield themselves from the effect within the area, for example, the players may be fighting in knee-high water and manage to avoid the effects of a fireball spell by dropping from their feet and submersing themselves and in this case, they are not required to move). If there are no safe spaces available to the character (i.e. a fireball is cast in a room that is smaller than the fireball's area of effect), then the saving thrown is automatically failed.

Why

It just makes sense, right? If a dragon's breath is headed your way, and you pass your dexterity saving throw to avoid it, but then you're just standing exactly where you were, then exactly how did you evade all that damage? Furthermore, it adds movement and dynamicism to a fight, and also introduces opportunities to use AoE effects in creative ways (using the terrain to your benefit).

Potions

The rule

Drinking a healing potion as a bonus action works as normal, however you can also take an action to drink the potion in which case you regain the maximum possible hit points from the potion.

Why

If you really need healing, it may be a good way to sacrifice some of your action economy to get more hit points back. Plus, it makes sense that the more carefully you drink your potion, the better it is likely to work.