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

Travel Times for Cities in Faerun (North)

I was just needing distance between some cities in Faerun for planning travel and ran across a useful post on Reddit.  The thread included a table giving distances in miles.  I'll include it below so it is easy to find.

Making Tools Useful - Herbalism Kit

One of my players recently pointed me at a series of posts on Dump Stat Adventures that focuses on fleshing out what some of the various tools do in D&D 5E.

The post of immediate interest defines the Herbalism Kit and some associated recipes.

Impact of Critical Hits

A little while back, in response to a critical hit rolling snake eyes, my group adopted a house rule as follows:

Instead of rolling dice for damage twice, roll them only once and add the maximum result possible from those dice, example on a critical hit: a d8+2 attack, does 8 + 2 + the result of rolling one eight sided die. This assures that critical hits are impactful, always resulting in more damage than is typically possible. Note: As per RAW, spells that roll a d20 to hit, can critically hit. (Added 11/6/19)

Some things about that rule change are in my mind excellent.  It eliminates the snake eye critical, or more generally all critically that hit for less than a good normal hit.  It also speeds things up by eliminating the need to make extra rolls or borrow dice (though that can be fun too).