House Rules -- Some Minor Tweaks and Things

In speaking with my group last night, we identified several more things that we have found unclear or that can stand to be better documented for our use.  I'll  role them into my house rules document, for now, I am putting the items and some dicussion into this article.  The topics include:

• Feat: Shield Master 
• Feat: Great Weapon Master
• Feat: Sharpshooter
• Feat: Tough and Durable
• Class: Druid Shape Change Healing
• Rules: Knot Tying
• Rules: Resting in Armor
• Rules: Cost of Creating Scrolls

 

Shield Master

The shield master feat per RAW is a bit underwhelming.  Specifically, it is a tough feat for the character who takes it to benefit from.  It requires the Attack action to have been taken before it allows the bonus action to shove (often knock down) an opponent.  The knock down drains half of the opponent's move and grants advantage to melee attackers. Changing this to allow the Bonus Action shove to occur before the Attack action cleans this up. Add the following:

Shove may occur before or after Attack action.

 

Great Weapon Master

The Great Weapon Master (RAW) doesn't scale.  It reduces the attack roll by five and adds ten to damage at all levels.  This makes it much more impactful at lower levels.  Changing it so it scales can be done simply by replacing the -5 to hit with the character's proficiency modifier and the +10 to damage with two times the proficiency mod. 

Replace -5 penalty with proficiency, +10 with 2 times proficiency.

As a reminder, proficiency bonus is:

• +2 for level 1-4, 
• +3 for 5-8, 
• +4 for 9-12, 
• +5 for 13-16, 
• +6 for 17-20. 

This makes this a non-change for levels 13 to 16.  Weakens the ability from 1 to 12 and strengthens it 17 to 20. 

 

Sharpshooter

This is exactly like Great Weapon Master.

Replace -5 penalty with proficiency, +10 with 2 times proficiency

 

Tough and Durable

These are two underwhelming feats that if lumped together are still not awesome.

Durable adds +1 to CON score, that's clearly a good thing.  It then puts a floor (2 or CON bonus) under hit points gained when hit dice are rolled. The second feature makes short rests more lucrative for healing, but it actually does remarkably little.  

Let's look at the effect on a d6 and a d12 character who is rolling two hit dice at a rest.

The benefit to a small hit die character with a max CON bonus is very significant; though how many mages have 20 Constitution stats?  I'd expect a d6 character to have no more than a 16 which gets them a (noticable?) 8% buff on rests, but more likely a 3% benefit -- snooze fest.

The benefit to a d12 class is smaller, though, odds are they have a higher CON.  They may be looking at a 5% or 7% benefit.  Again, it is something, but not game changing in anyway. 

Tough is much simpler to to look at. It adds a flat 2 hit points per level.  This is similar to a +2 to constitution score with out helping out saves.  A character pretty much has to have a 20 Con score before these feat makes any sense as taking an Ability Score Improvement (ASI) is almost always strictly better. It might be a good choice for a character who is already at 20 constitution.

Combining them makes for a more interesting feat and still leaves room for preferring the ASI to CON, so I think I'm good with:

Effects combined as a single feat.

 

Druid Shape Change Healing

Circle of the Moon Druids in Wild Shape can burn spell slots to heal their wild form.  RAW allows for 1d8 per spell level spent.  That seems a bit stingy, especially when the dreaded snake eyes appear.  I'll be allowing WIS modifier to be added to the result.

Wild Shape Healing spells add WIS modifier to healing.

 

Knot Tying

Xanthar's Guide to Everything (XGE) includes a section on Tying Knots that addresses the frequent prisoner attempts to escape situations. The rule as written works for the escape scenario.  In a nut shell, it says:

Knot DC set with Int(Sleight of Hand). Escape with Int(Sleight of Hand) or Dex(Acrobatics)

Resting in Armor

XGE also delves into the effects of Sleeping in Armor.  The rule presented are obscure enough that my group was unaware of it.

I would phrase the rule as:

Long Rest while wearing heavy or medium armor only recovers 1/4 of spent Hit Dice, minimum one die (normally recover 1/2 of spent Hit Dice) and no levels of exhaustion recovered.

Notice the word spent in the above.  It is in both the base and XGE resting rules.  A character that has 8 hit dice and has spent 5 of them will recover 2 at a long rest unless they are wearing medium/heavy armor in that case they recover just 1.  He/she will need more long rests to refill their pool. 

This seems unnecessarily complex. I'd rather just recover 1/2 or 1/4 of hit dice.  Making the number of rests much more fixed, rather than diddling with fractions.  

This is in fact how DnDBeyond handles hit dice and I think it's fine.  So, my rule:

Long Rest while wearing heavy or medium armor only recovers 1/4 of  Hit Dice, minimum one die (normally recover 1/2 of Hit Dice) and no levels of exhaustion recovered.

Cost of Creating Scrolls

XGE includes a section on creating scrolls.  Low level scrolls are a bargain, high level are prohibitively expensive.  I'll repeat their cost table and add the numbers I have been using in my sane magic items listing for comparison.

Before comparing the costs, a word on time.  The Sane price list doesn't have anything on how long an item takes to make.  I decided when baking the above spreadsheet that I would hold the time of a 1st level scroll constant at one work day.  I then assumed that the time to create more complex scrolls increased at the same rate as cost.

Now, XGE has a very affordable level 1 scroll at 25gp, a lot lower than the 60gp I have fiddled with. The costs for XGE increase swiftly and erratically as the levels increase.  While the sane prices area  lot smoother (60-100% per level).  The result is XGE high level scrolls are incredibly valuable.  I just don't see how that makes economic sense.  They would simply not exist at those costs, perhaps that was the intent.

The amount of time for XGE also jump quickly, though with little apparent connection to the cost.  A single scroll that takes months to make is just not going to get used.  It just doesn't make sense to me.

I do like high level scrolls taking a long time to make.  About half a year at 9th level makes that a serious barrier without needing to coat a quarter million gold.

I also like the complications section and think that should be used.

That gets me to the rule I intend to use if anyone wants to scribe scrolls.

Scribing Scrolls - Per XGE with possible complications.  Cost per Sane Magic pricing.  See BLOG.

That all seems like quite enough.