Five Simple House Rules — Dungeon Dudes

I just watched a video recommended to me (thanks Jon) titled Five Simple House Rules for Better Combat in Dungeons and Dragons 5e by the Dungeon Dudes.  In it they lay out five house rules that they like to use and I wanted to crystalize my thought on them.  So, here we go.

First, the house rules in summary:

1. Critical Hits: Maximize First Set of Die Results
2. Healing Potions: Maximize Healing Potions
3. Flanking:  Provides +2 to hit not advantage
4. Bloodied: Use Bloodied condition defined in D&D 4E
5. Minions: Use 1HP minions essentially from D&D 4E

I’ll discuss each a bit in the following sections.

Critical Hits

I’ve posted previously on critical hit house rules.  The Dungeon Dudes focused on the same issue that bothered me, underwhelming criticals….snake eyes on a critical are just silly.  The rule they proposed is very similar to what I have been using:

When you score a critical hit, roll for damage normally.  Then determine the maximum damage you can roll with your attack before applying modifiers.  Combine the maximum result with your rolled damage, and then add any modifier.  This is your critical hit damage.

They pointed out a possibly abusive issue with attacks that have large numbers of dice, e.g. Paladin Smite, but shrugged off the issue.  I think that corner case is nicely clipped by making the die maximization apply to only the base attack dice.  That guarantees critical are significant without making them one shots on big mobs.

Healing Potions

They think healing potions are underwhelming and proposed the following rule:

When you would normally roll one or more dice to restore hit points with a potion, you instead use the highest number possible for each die.  For example,. instead of regaining 2d3+2 hit points when you consume a potion of healing, you regain 10.

I agree that spending an action to drink a potion and regaining 4hp or something similarly trivial from a potion is just a waste.  Maximizing potion healing helps to make them a viable tactical choice. 

They do mention part of the rule I have been using, drinking a potion as a bonus action as an alternative.  Either method makes healing potions more interesting.  I like what we have been doing especially as it allows the extension of an action to feed a potion to a helpless person as a more “expensive” use of the potion. 

They do address the issue of stockpiling potions which could become a thing with them being more valuable.  That is curtailed by limiting supply or duration (as discussed in an earlier post on Herbalism).

Flanking

Now this is an interesting thought.  First, they want to allow the optional flanking rules, something I support. They then suggest having flanking provide a +2 bonus to hit instead of advantage (which is roughly equivalent to a +5).  This makes flanking less impactful while still interesting and also lets it stack with other sources of advantage.

The main argument against that seems to be that a +2 mod is too complicated for 5E;  everything should just be advantage/disadvantage.  That seems like a terrible argument based on the existence of a +2/+5 advantage for cover and the generally math friendly mind set of most gamers. 

They go on to consider allowing a +5 bonus for multiple flankers which completes a symmetry of flanking being the anti-cover rule. 

I like the +2 for flanking.  It is pretty easy and gives creatures that have other ways to gain advantage (looking at you pack tactics) a reason to also flank which appeals to me.

Bloodied

They suggest using the Bloodied condition as a way to telegraph wound levels.  Creatures that are at half or less hit points are considered bloodied which is shared with players.  There used to be a series of other effects, mostly on special abilities that gave the condition a clear game impact. 

I’m not interested in making a bunch of changes to have the condition provide a mechanical game impact and I already share general health status as I can in combats, so I am not interested in this rule.

Minions

Creatures that have 1HP make tracking hit points trivial.  Minions get to ignore hits when save  and would otherwise take half damage so they don’t instantly evaporate to any AOE spell. 

They do funny things to the action economy.  A swarm of minions that win initiative can devastate at least one player character.  A swarm of minions that loses initiative can vanish under a hail of blows or other multi target attacks( e.g. magic missile).  

They can be mod’ed to absorb two hits, making them slightly less fragile.  Then a bunch of other things can be done.  It seems to me that this just becomes a rabbit hole.

Being able to have a swarm of critters easily handled in a battle is appealing, but this seems like a can of worms.  I’m not a fan of this rule, thinking that I can get largely the same effect with just low HP critters handled normally.