10 SIMPLE HOUSE RULES for Better Combat | Dungeons and Dragons 5e

That advantage rule is dumb and here's why: past +5, why not just say they succeed? What's the point of counting all the apples 😂

How about the help action gives adv. And if they hit its a crit.

Multiple advantages give diminishing returns. My group strait up allows stacking advantage, because we did the math and realized its not a great strategy. Also current advantage system is "simplified" but we can subtract advantages and disadvantages from each other instead of just cancel all out. So now the poisoned rogue can sneak attack with a helping hand.

hello for skeletons a good choice is:
Cracked, Crumbling, Smashed

I feel nerfing the paladin Smite for the critical is not fair, since the rogue on dualwieding can also choose which attack is his sneak, if he hit the 1st and is not critical, he says nothing, he didnt declare it beforehand and is not mandatory, and if the 2nd hit is a critical he just says "i would use my sneak attack now", since is activated after you hiied, just like the paladin's smite, so if paladin get nerfed, rogue get nerfed too, or just allow paladins to powerfulcrit as normal on that one, also, smite is like: you hit the enemy, i will also channel my power to my weapon and create a burst of energy that deal more damage, so, if a critical is like hitting on a weak spot, critical smite makes total sense

I didn't even know about the movement rule. . .must've skipped over it lol. . .we've just always played it as all movement is 5 ft.

Edit: I love the crit rule, I might use it as a perk only though.

For the health rule, we use tiring at 50%, hurt at 25%, very hurt at 10%, and at higher levels, wrecked if their HP is 10 or lower. I also add, if they're wrecked, their movement is halved.

I have 1 simple rule for making combat better.... Just play Pathfinder 2e ;)

For critical hits, I doubled damage dice and then doubled their damage modifier. So if you have a +3 Str, it would be a +6 to damage instead of the usual. I have found this works as well, but perhaps isn't as damaging as the damage dice rule you showed in the video.

For the flanking rule, I always treated an enemy who had their back to a player as blinded to that player, or invisible. Basically, if they can't see them they are invisible. This also allows rogues to benefit from hiding depending on the monsters field of view. Some monsters I add extra stats to for this reason. A monster with multiple eyes, for example, would only be flank-able if you were underneath them. So trying to hide would be far more difficult without a smoke screen.

I also think surprise is an underutilized mechanic and I treat it like an action surge if you can pull it off. Some people think that this could be broken, but most classes have a hard time getting surprise as it is, and stealth or ingenuity is required. Rogues and monks benefit from this adaptation the most, even though they cannot get two sneak attacks on their turn. I think if they can blind someone with smoke bomb and do something clever that deserves to be rewarded. If they want to surprise someone they usually have to roll for it and it can cost an action. If their roll doesn't win, they waste their action. Usually it is some sort of deception based roll, (str, int, dex, cha) matched by the enemy's insight roll (wisdom for int and charisma, str or dex for the others). The str/dex reflects techniques that can be deceptive like faints or dirty tricks. This may grant some extra benefit instead of surprise as well, like blindness for one turn using dirt in the enemy's eyes. For a rogue, being able to sneak attack after throwing dirt or wasting their action if the enemy saw it coming, makes sense. I'm still fleshing this rule out, but I thought it was a good idea.

these are great! my only issue is that I have hard enough time running combat in general! let alone trying to memorize a lot of Homebrew rules. although I suppose I'd get used to them eventually.

for critical hits I still like doing Max damage. it's easy and always feels powerful!

I know it's been over a year, but I ended up here from another one of your videos...
Stacking Advantage: We decided - after many heated "discussions", mostly involving "we don't want monsters doing this to us" - to use scaling advantage, but much less scaling than yours by adding one extra step. We ended up at "Advantage x2" = "your damage dice have advantage". Then "Advantage x3" = "+2 bonus", and so on. This only applies in combat, both to attack rolls and saves, and generally only with Flanking. In a recent fight, the half-orc barbarian was flanking with the Fighter, and used Reckless Attack; his "Advantage x2" allowed him to reroll the d12 greataxe attack, improving the 3 he rolled to an 11!

And it applies in reverse, with Disadvantage. In a recent fight with a Displacer Beast, the Beast had been temporarily blinded by the rogue, and was trying to tentacle-slap the dodging warlock, while the adjacent fighter used his Fighting Style to impose Disadvantage on the attack. The Beast had "Disadvantage x3" on his attack! He attacked with Disadvantage, with an extra -2 to hit, and - when he hit anyway because I rolled a pair of 19s - he rerolled his 3d6 damage and took the lower result!

The PLAYERS are terrified of any "combat coolness" in my games, because they fully expect to be on the receiving end of it more than they successfully use it themselves. Wolves, for example, can trigger these rules very easily, with Pack Tactics and knock prone. (Note that Pack Tactics was clearly not meant to be used with the OPTIONAL RULE of Flanking...).

I don't think the players have ever worked up "Advantage x3" yet, for that +2 bonus to hit, although it can very easily happen when the Battlemaster uses Trip, or the cleric (as you said in your video) uses Guiding Bolt. Might see it more often now, though, as someone has multiclassed into Circle of Stars Druid (which grants 3 Guiding Bolts per day!).

At our table we use red and green poker chips in stacks of 10 to indicate our HP status so anyone that is healing can tell be glancing about where everyone stands. Each chip represents 10% of your HP. I make mine a mixed stack so it resembles a life bar in a video game. Green is good HP, red is missing HP. so if my stack is 2 greens and 8 reds i am missing 80% of my HP.

These are great changes. Some of your suggested bonuses are too generous, but some really good ideas.

However, targeted attack kind of steps on marksmanship feat, and I don’t see why characters wouldn’t use it for every attack. Disadvantage isn’t that big of a disadvantage, if a successful attack means blinding the enemy or keeping it from running or flying away. And complicating it with special hit points or armor class for that location doesn’t make this a simple rule at all. It means most of your combat is going to be taken up with discussing the best location to aim for & how hard it is to effect it there.

Edit: oops I realise I'm super late to this video!

For Called Shots, (I really like this idea) do you allocate a HP amount to a part of the body (such as the manticore tail) that needs to be reached before the player cuts off the tail? Or if it hits at disadvantage it just hits full stop?

Wait, that’s what the movement rules are as written???

What if the help action allowed the creature your helping to make use of their reaction in some way. This way the help action becomes about predicting gaps in the reaction economy and deciding if an ally's reaction is more valuable than your action.

I feel like the help action could benefit from your free form rule for Targeted attacks. The help action gives the next attack a bonus effect, but it also grants advantage. This makes it an actual strategy, instead of your friend giving you help with one attack.

First video I watch, I subscribed.

I watched a lot of D&D 5e. Or rather, a lot of TTRPGs videos. This video is one of the absolute best of them all. I'll be using and tweaking almost all of those rules. In fact, I was already technically using the "inter-action" rule on my Savage Worlds table, but you managed to conceptualize it very well, even putting a very fitting name to it!

Instantly subscribed!

The opportunity attacks for standing up from prone was actually a thing in 3.5

Him: Stacking Advantage.
Me: WRITE THAT DOWN, WRITE THAT DOWN!!!!!

In allowing a player a free roll to topple a table and pin an enemy, do grapplers also get a free roll and get to do something else with their action if they fail?

i want to play a farmer for years any tips to find a likeminded dm

Best house rules video I’ve seen! Will immediately implement at least 2 probably 3 of these.

Have you updated this video ? Just want to make sure. LOL. Great stuff.

Look at how far you've come!

We always have used that movement rule. I hate the idea of extra math during combat lol

Hi. Grognard here. Sounds like you just want to play Pathfinder, TBH. I have liked some of your other suggested homebrews, BTW. .... but not these. My premise begins with a dubious proposition: that the central core RAW of 5e is pretty well balanced. No, please don't mention underwater or aerial rules! My other premise is that any 'good' homebrew rule will be an homage to either Conan/Howard or LOTR/Tolkien, reflecting the tension between Gygax and other designers. My objection to your homebrew is that it skews- badly distorts- some key element of play, either combat or class. And not in a good way, either. Flanking- in the Bad Old Days, 4 Medium foes could all engage a Medium PC. In 5e, it's 8. This was a KISS way to express flanking. Flanking on top, in any fashion, is overkill. See Conan test above- he falls before the mob of mooks. So bad rule. PCs like this cuz a party tends to mob the big bad. But that blade cuts both sides. PCs can be mobbed. And Big Bads have henchmen. You always have to ask if the PCs would be as thrilled when that homebrew is used against them. Injuries- there is already a DMG optional rule for that, with optional times to invoke them. Presumably all attacks are an attempt at some sort of effective called shot. Your X damage suggestions ignores the monster HPs. I.e. a dragonwing is tougher than a harpy wing. Also, pain in arse for DM subcategories of HPs. At 1/2 (temporary) total HP, maybe, in one hit, ask them to pick something on the chart. Something like that. After the fact. Called shots are inimical to D&D. Goblins: we keep calling shots on Conan's eyes. A0O: prone is already effective. I don't recall LOTR or Conan vibe in knock 'em prone, then attack. So it fails my test. B/w the 8 on 1 in 5e, your flanking suggestion, and AoO homebrew, Conan is doomed. Mobility feat is available to limit the move penalty of prone. 5e was an effort to reduce all those 3e AoOs and largely succeeded. If you want flanking teams to be helpful, isn't that a good way to deny AoO for move without Disengage? Your suggestion on 'martial classes' distorts class balance, so fails my rule of thumb test of what 'good homebrew' would be. Your big and slow monster = no AoO on withdraw ignores PC builds with heavy armour but DEX8, which would also suffer. (Yeah I hate that build too.) Inter-action: there has always been the problem with needing to say 'I spend an Action to Investigate' to detect an Illusion. Who says that? Aid another while I have never witnessed it, there are plenty of times when PCs ought to. Help barbie's maul bludgeon that Skeleton. Aid only silver weapon vs lycanthrope. Etc. Your rules with a damage buff to boot ignores that it makes 2 foes, with 1 Help and 1 Attack, more effective than 2 Attacks. Again, Goblins will compound vs Conan. So fails the test. Re: runaway Advantage- ... OK, maybe. But only on a Crit. I.e. 2x, just helpfl. 3x Adv, does MAX + 1dice set. 4x, 2x MAX et al. So there is reason to help that one attack that works (maul vs skeleton giant, silver vs lyc) and tension for the big hit. Again, will PCs be so thrilled when Dire Wolves easily compound Advantage with prone and pack tactics? And I've built a nutso smitomatic Pallie based on crits/champioin/Adv- but it can be shut down with a plain Uncommon adamantine breastplate. In short, your suggestions display a merely superficial understanding of rule mechanics. You are like a food prep, good for chopping vegies, sneaking an extra spice into the chef's dish. Please stop. Thank you.

i thought a attack of oppotunity used your reaction of whcih you only get 1 per round

Adding facing with the flanking would be really hard to keep track of unless you were using an actual grid with miniatures. I think the +2/+5/+10 stacking rule is fine on its own because since every attack is supposed to be essentially simultaneous, having to try and dodge 3 attacks at once should still be harder even if one of the attacks is technically coming from the front. Especially if you're just using theater of the mind rather than miniatures.

As for the massive crits, I also double the flat damage. So great weapon master, Str/Dex etc all doubles as well. Crits in 5e are rarer than in previous editions and I really like amping up their significance.

@thedungeoncoach did you ever make that pathfinder conversion video?

I’m definitely using a few of these. Great video!!!✌️

Hey I'm really thinking about a stress system for horrer/ cosmic horror campaigns, and my inspiration was darkest dungeon video game. And I also found an already designed system with this concept on net. But none is pleasing to me. Can you make a video about it and at least make some discussion about it?

About 8 minutes in I am thinking, all your homebrew ideas are Pathinfinder relevant, and that is right when you say, you would like to introduce Pathfinder rules to your D&D5e table. :D

The diagonal movement of 5 - 10 - 5 - 10 is 3.5 - why do you bring it in here?

Mathematically, the bonus of double advantage (3d20 take highest) compared to regular advantage is about +3. So it's actually not that much more powerful than giving a flat +2.

For context, the best case bonus from regular advantage compared to flat roll is +5. In the worst case, both advantage and double advantage grant approximately a +1 bonus. The effective bonus of advantage or double advantage depends on the difficulty of the roll.

I’m confused, aren’t a lot of these covered as optional rules in the DMG for 5E? At first I thought ok maybe the video was released before the book, but the DMG was released in 2014. Why talk about these as if they’re brand new homebrews?

Note: The reason it takes half your movement to stand up is because it takes 3/6 seconds to do so

Funny thing, your idea of stacking advantage and that advantage being either an extra roll or a +2, that's exactly how a mecha RPG called Battle Century G does it.

The best way I've heard "Standing from prone takes half your movement" explained is really it just takes 3 seconds to stand up, so you've only got half a round left to move regardless of how fast you are. If a player wants to do a kip-up I'd allow an athletics/acrobatic check to reduce the penalty, with a large fail reducing their speed to zero for the round (but they can still stand up).

Cantankerous Curmudgeon says...
I hate Advantage/Disadvantage! Multiple rolls for one action, F right off!
Bonus's and Penalties are the Players appeal and the CM's fiat.
A bandit attacks you from the bank of a river you're standing in. He's on higher firm ground you're on a rocky slippery bed of an ice cold mountain stream. You're at -1 to hit, he's at +1. Every round thereafter you lose movement because your feet are going numb.

Cantankerous Curmudgeon says...
Every rule you add to combat slows combat down. Fttrpgs should not be hyper-granular simulations of Historical European Martial Arts. You wanna do HEMA? That's great! Go to a HEMA gym. Get a good workout.
Combat requires rules for structure and order. Ask your Players what they're trying to do, give them penalties and bonuses as appropriate, and at the end of the round narrate what happened.
Reactions? That's called round 2!

easy, dont play D&D they hate you anyway white boy. Hasbro should have stuck to making toys.

Great video man, love your passion. You earned a sub.

Crazy that I already use a lot of these just off my dome.

I enjoy looking back on Coach's older content. Seeing spoilers for what will become DC20 is really cool.

The adv/dis rule is meant to sweep away the slowness of number crunching. The +2/+5 thing seems like it is heading in the slowing direction.

I wonder if you just allow multiple dice advantages but only after the baddie is bloodied or when the baddies minions have been defeated.

I think the help action bonus should be equal to the weapon die value. If it's 2d6, the bonus would be 1d6. If the weapon is versatile, use the higher die value.