Know Your Options 2: More 5E Variant Rules

Author: Icebrick1

As the Dungeon Master, you are the ultimate arbiter of the rules, and it’s up to you to decide how to run your game. This article does a deep dive into a number of official variant and optional rules available and provides analysis and guidance to help you decide if they might be a good fit for your game. This is the second part of our Variant Rules Guide, covering optional rules we didn’t get to in part 1, as well as some common house rules.

Action Options

The Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) has a series of optional actions to use, as listed on pages 271-272. Ideally, these would add some more variety to combat. However, many of these options are either too powerful or provide only a small difference in combat. We review all of them individually below.

Climb Onto a Bigger Creature

This is an interesting alternative to grappling. Unlike grappling, which requires the attacker to use Strength (Athletics) while the target can choose between Dexterity (Acrobatics) and Strength (Athletics), the creature attempting to climb chooses between Strength (Athletics) and Dexterity (Acrobatics) while the creature being climbed on has to use Dexterity (Acrobatics). This makes climbing onto a creature generally easier than grappling, especially as many large creatures have poor Dexterity and there is only one Huge or larger creature in the game with proficiency in Acrobatics. The benefit provided is also significant, providing the climbing creature advantage on attack rolls against their target.

In play, this option generally isn’t problematic, just a buff to melee weapon users, allowing them to remain close to large, mobile enemies and by giving them advantage. Where it can become a problem is if it is easy to climb onto a location on the creature where the creature can’t attack the climber. Even if the creature being climbed on successfully throws off the climber, it takes the creature’s action and the climber might just get back on before there is time to respond, causing a feedback loop. To prevent this, you can simply make it usually impossible to get somewhere the larger creature can’t fight back.

Disarm

This allows a creature to knock a held item out of an enemy’s hand by making an attack roll against their Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics). If creatures regularly bring backup weapons of equal quality to their normal ones, then this option does very little in most cases as they can simply draw another. If the target does not, then this option is extremely powerful since most creatures that use weapons are completely dependent on them, requiring them to resort to pathetic Unarmed Strikes if they are disarmed. Since attack bonuses are often higher than a creature’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) bonus, this option is also quite reliable as many monsters lack proficiency in either skill.

While this option is situational, since many creatures like dragons have nothing to disarm, it’s too powerful and easy to use when it is relevant, trivializing enemies when it is applicable. If used against the players, this punishes martials the most as they are more often in reach of the enemies to have their equipment stolen and more often have more valuable magic weapons while casters can generally get by fine with a backup spellcasting focus. In general, we do not recommend using this variant rule, as it opens up a can of worms that can lead to unfun and degenerate gameplay, and can exacerbate existing class disparities.

Mark

Perhaps inspired by the ability many 4E characters had, this ability gives characters the power to mark creatures they attack, allowing them to make opportunity attacks with advantage and without using their reaction against that creature. This is supposed to make melee characters better at controlling the battlefield, which would be a welcome addition. Sadly, while it does help, it’s quite minor in most encounters. It won’t enable many more opportunity attacks, and a singular opportunity attack—even with advantage—is still a weak form of “control.” If Mark is an option for monsters as well, then this option also punishes melee player characters and encourages them to have a more static playstyle where they don’t move on their turn (harkening back to an older edition of D&D). That being said, as an option for players, this does help melee characters, just in a very mild way.

Overrun and Tumble

Both these options allow a creature to move through a hostile creature’s space by using a bonus action and winning a contest. For players, this is a fine option with no particular problems. If used by non-player monsters, this reduces what little “tanking” is possible in 5E by reducing the effectiveness of blocking hallways and doorways.

Shove Aside

This allows characters to shove in directions aside from directly away at the cost of having disadvantage on the ability check. This slightly increases the very limited battlefield control options creatures without magic have and is a fine rule to use. In fact, the disadvantage is unnecessary as moving a creature a single square at the cost of an attack is fair enough without the additional downside. Probably not worthwhile as is, but if you allow characters to make the ability check with a straight roll, it may add some tactical options for martial characters.

Cleaving Through Creatures

Found on page 272 of the DMG, this is another mild buff to melee characters, letting a character kill multiple creatures in a single blow if they can kill them in a single hit. This is a nice minor bonus to melee martials and helps them deal with crowds of enemies which they are typically very weak against. However, since it requires the target to be reduced from full hit points to 0, it’s unlikely to come up often. Modifying this rule to allow overkill damage to splash onto creatures adjacent from the one killed could be a reasonable alternative and would not be game-breaking or unbalanced in any way. It also doesn’t change the reality that a crowd of weak enemies is still best dealt with via a spellcaster lobbing an area-of-effect damage spell, which will likely do half damage even on a save and likely wouldn’t put the caster at risk of taking numerous melee attacks.

Gritty Realism

This rule is advertised as being good for greater “realism” but really what it does is change the narrative pacing of the game. Instead of a short rest taking 1 hour and a long rest 8 hours, a short rest takes 8 hours and a long rest 7 days. The game is best balanced around having a decent number of encounters in between every long rest. If there’s too few encounters then casters are going to be extremely powerful as they can expend their spell slots without worry while martial characters remain the same. Gritty Realism allows these encounters to be spread over the course of a couple days rather than a few hours, which can be more amenable to games that have less dungeon crawls.

However, there are a few features in the game which are based on days rather than long rests, which makes them much more powerful in games with Gritty Realism. For example, most magic items recharge at dawn, and Wizard’s Arcane Recovery Feature can be used once per day. As written, this makes Wizards even stronger than they already are, and we recommend changing this feature to be based on long rests rather than daily if Gritty Realism is used.

Gritty Realism also affects spells with longer duration such as mage armor and death ward. Rather than affecting an entire adventuring day, they will instead only last a tiny portion of it. This might be mildly undesirable, especially as these spells generally aren’t that strong (though death ward can have great applications such as with our Death Warden build). You could extend the duration of these spells, but ultimately the effect of these spells lasting proportionally less time is small.

There also exists Gritty Realism’s inverse: Epic Heroism. It allows characters to take a short rest in 5 minutes and a long rest in an hour. This speeds up the pace greatly, it will be difficult to stop the players from taking a short rest between every encounter except in very hectic adventures. It’s possible this might be good to use if you’re running a very fast paced game where you want the players to feel like epic superheroes as they defeat an entire army in a mere day, but most DMs struggle with getting enough encounters per long rest, not the opposite.

Madness

Madness is a tool for DMs to use to represent the effects of extreme psychological stress. There isn’t a hard rule for when to use it, simply suggestions on when you might use it, like replacing the insanity effect of symbol or from some extremely disturbing environmental effect. There are varying lengths of time that the madness can last, with the shorter term ones generally being more intense. The short term effects usually have clear mechanical effects, for example, “The character is stunned.” There’s no problem with this, many are rather harsh, but sometimes this can be used for a good purpose.

However, all the indefinite Madness Effects, and a few long-term Madness Effects instead take the form of flaws with no definite rules such as “I keep whatever I find.” The problem is that these flaws either do nothing, or make your character extremely annoying to play with. In the right party and correct situation, party conflict can be enjoyable, but generally it’s not. There’s a reason the “Rogue who steals from the rest of the party” trope is typically hated, and forcing compulsory behaviors onto players can rob them of their agency.

Lingering Injuries

Lingering injuries is ultimately a similar concept to Madness; under certain conditions you are left with a random lasting negative effect. Lingering injuries, like Short-Term Madness Effects, do have clear mechanical effects and don’t make your character annoying, which is good, but they do have the potential to be absolutely crippling in an unfun way. Notably, a lot of characters rely on using both their hands, especially martials, so the “Lose an Arm or a Hand” injury can make a character completely useless. Worse, it requires a high level spell to fix, so oftentimes the adventure will have to completely stop as the players return to town to find a way to cast the spell. This isn’t impossible to use well, but it should only be used in cases where having a character potentially being severely hampered is appropriate, like a character falling over 2,000 feet and barely surviving.

Sidekicks

Sidekicks are an interesting optional tool presented in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything; they are essentially extremely simplified classes to keep weak friendly monsters somewhat useful to the party even as they advance in levels. As an additional companion, these work well enough: the classes are underpowered but will allow the NPC to contribute a little to combat without overshadowing the party (unless the Sidekick is a spellcaster and the party is exceptionally weak).

One suggested way to potentially use Sidekicks to have them be a player’s only character, “ideal for a player who wants a character who’s simpler than a typical player character.” (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, page 142) We would recommend against this in general, as past very low levels, Sidekicks will struggle to keep up with the rest of the party and really aren’t that much simpler to play than a normal class.

A few particular Sidekick options are unusually powerful and can be quite potent at low levels. For example, a Jackelwere has a good number of hit points and immunity to non-magical, unsilvered weapons, which is a majority of attacks at low levels. Pixies have extremely low hit points, but access to a number of powerful spells even at level 1.

Spell Points

Spell Point is a variant system for magic presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Instead of most spellcasters having a number of spell slots at particular levels they can use to cast spells, they instead just have a pool of “spell points” they expend to cast spells. Some people might prefer this to the more rigid pseudo-Vancian spell slot system, but this is a straight buff to casters in a system that really does not need any more buffs to casters.

Using spell points, you can cast exactly the same total number of spells at the same level as with spell slots, but also with the option to possibly cast low level spells more efficiently or higher level spells a few more times. For example, with spell points a 6th level slot can be used to cast shield 4 extra times, with an extra point left over, making higher level casters even harder to kill than normal.

Technically, there is downside at levels 19 and 20: a typical caster would gain an extra 6th and 7th spell slot, but spell points only allow you to cast one 6th and 7th level spell per day. This tiny downside does not really make spell points any worse, especially as most games don’t play at that level. Overall Spell Points might sound like a fun variation on how magic traditionally works in 5th Edition, but ultimately it will further cement caster domination.

House Rules

Overview

You’ll notice we’re using the term “house rule” rather than homebrew. This article will only be covering creating relatively small modifications to the rules of the game, rather than adding new content like races and subclasses or massively altering the game. House rules have the potential to enhance games, but they also have the potential to make games worse. 5th Edition is far from a perfect game, but many things were deliberately designed in a particular way, and altering them can negatively affect the game. Here at Tabletop Builds we focus mainly on analyzing existing content rather than creating our own, but we will offer a few guidelines on using house rules, and discuss some existing popular rules.

First off, make sure you’re experienced with the thing you’re modifying. If you’re playing the game for the first time or just starting out, we recommend playing as close to RAW as you can manage before altering things. If you’re worried about healing word or other healing magic repeatedly awakening unconscious party members for example, you should observe it at least once to confirm that it’s actually a real problem.

Secondly, your rules should be agreed upon by the players. The whole party should be excited to try out a house rule, rather than having it be something they begrudgingly accept because you’re the DM. If you’re recruiting players, you should make it clear before they join what house rules you use, and if you’re thinking about adding new rules to an existing group you should discuss it with them. If you ever change the rules mid-game, you should let the players rework their characters if anything is affected. For example, if you change how a spell works, you should let the player decide to swap out that spell if they no longer want it due to this change.

Finally, the rules should make the game more fun. This might sound obvious, but a surprising number of house rules fail to meet this. Just because something “makes sense” or makes the game “more realistic” doesn’t mean it should be introduced. A lot of the fun elements of the game come from the unrealistic parts. What is fun will depend on the group and the type of game you’re running. For example, you might want to expand 5E’s somewhat underdeveloped survival rules and introduce house rules surrounding navigation, finding food, etc. But you might also find that your group wants to spend less time tracking rations and making Wisdom (Survival) checks and more time fighting monsters or roleplaying with NPCs.

Limiting Spells

While we advocated against nerfs in the introduction, there are some features of the game which can be abused so much they enormously change the game in ways that most players might not enjoy. A notable example is the infamous wish and simulacrum loop. By casting simulacrum on a caster who knows wish, the created simulacrum can then use wish to cast simulacrum on the caster again, creating another simulacrum who can then cast simulacrum via wish and so on… producing a simulacrum every round indefinitely.

There are a number of spells that can be problematic with a bit of downtime as well; planar binding can be used to create an army of planar minions to storm dungeons without necessarily even involving the players.

We reiterate that one should be cautious when nerfing or banning something. Players often enjoy using strong things, and it can be easy to mistake something that’s merely strong for something that’s broken. However, if a spell can be used to remove all risk of failure from the game, it is fair to modify it to maintain some semblance of normal gameplay. For example, you could prevent simulacrums from casting simulacrum, and limit planar binding to only one creature at time.

Critical Fumbles

When a player rolls a natural 1 on an attack roll, something bad happens, like dropping their weapon or attacking an ally. There are many variations on this, like introducing additional tables to be rolled on with a natural 1, or extending it to skill checks and saving throws.

In general critical fumbles suffer from the issue of punishing martial characters, who already tend to be weaker than spellcasters. The more attack rolls a character makes, the more vulnerable they will be to fumbling. This also means that higher level martial characters will be more prone to fumbling than low level characters. For example, the probability of a 20th level fighter who makes 4 attacks a round rolls a natural 1 in a turn is about 18.5%. It also just feels generally bad for a character’s attempt to do something not just fail, but even make their situation worse. This rule can also lead to supposed heroes appearing comically incompetent at times.

Exhaustion from falling unconscious

When your hit points are reduced to 0, you gain a level of exhaustion.

This rule is intended to prevent the healing “yo-yo” where a player with very few hit points can get knocked unconscious, revived with a tiny amount of healing, such as from healing word, then knocked unconscious again, and so on with relatively little repercussion. However, this rule can be overly harsh and nerfs healing spells.

It can create a negative “death spiral” where an encounter that was already difficult because someone fell unconscious is now even harder, and quickly becomes even harder as the effect stacks as more exhaustion is gained.

Healing spells in 5E also tend to be quite weak unless you’re using them to “yo-yo” allies, with some notable exceptions like goodberry. It might be thought that this could incentivize larger healing spells like cure wounds over healing word, but the difference in healing between the two spells is quite small, and it’s still best to use healing to bring up unconscious teammates rather than as a preventative measure.

This also applies to many other variations on this basic idea of punishing players for hitting 0 hit points, like keeping failed death saving throws until they take a long rest or applying a Lingering Injury.

Free Feat at Level 1

Characters receive a feat of their choice at first level. 

Feats are a defining part of a character, yet there are very few opportunities to get them, and only past level 4 unless you play a particular race. Level 1 is very limited and can be boring when your character has so few abilities. This rule also benefits martials over casters, as martials tend to be more dependent on feats than casters. This makes this an overall buff to martials, which is desirable, though it will also naturally increase the power of casters.

It also makes less viable races much more feasible compared to Variant Human and Custom Lineage. Martials are so feat-starved that Variant Human and Custom Lineage are far and away the best race pick for weapon users, but a free feat for all races opens up race selection, and thus player freedom for character building. 

A wrinkle here is what to do with the original starting feat races. You may find that allowing characters to start with two feats increases the power far above the curve and can cause problems. 

A common variant of this house rule is to restrict the choices to prevent “power-gaming” and banning specific feats like Crossbow Expert, Sharpshooter, Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Lucky, etc. While some feats are quite powerful, especially at level 1, doing this removes much of the upsides from this rule, as it is no longer the boon to martials it once was. Instead of allowing martial characters to pick a build defining feat, you are restricting them to a “flavor pick” that won’t materially help their character in combat.

Max Damage Critical Hits

The idea here is simple – when you score a critical hit, rather than just rolling the dice twice, you maximize the result of the first roll, then roll the second one. 

This serves to ensure your critical hits won’t feel as sad when you roll low, and boosts classes that rely on attack rolls more heavily. It’s particularly helpful on Paladins and Rogues, who are able to roll the most dice on a critical hit, and as it just so happens, both classes aren’t exactly the great damage-dealers they could be (though one of those fares significantly better than the other), so it’s a welcome boost.

If applied symmetrically to enemies, however, it can serve to make combat more dangerous, especially at very low levels, where critical hits were already very deadly, and at higher levels where monsters will often have a great number of large damage dice. A CR 13 Nalfeshnee’s Bite will deal an average of 82.5 damage, over 75% of the HP of most 13th level characters.

Applying this rule to player characters mostly increases the power of martials and half casters, which is trending in the right direction. Applying it universally may make your game more high-variance and deadly, so use with caution.