House Rules 1:Tasha's Variant ability array If you’d like your character to follow their own path, you may ignore your Ability Score Increase trait and assign ability score increases tailored to your character. Here’s how to do it: take any ability score increase you gain in your race or subrace and apply it to an ability score of your choice. If you gain more than one increase, you can’t apply those increases to the same ability score, and you can’t increase a score above 20. For example, if the Ability Score Increase trait of your race or subrace increases your Constitution by 2 and your Wisdom by 1, you could instead increase your Intelligence by 2 and your Charisma by 1. 2.Rolling for HP When you roll for HP you may either take the result or your class' average. For example, a fighter rolls a 4 and takes his average instead, which is a 6. 3.Flanking When you are adjacent to an enemy and an ally occupies a square on opposite side, you both gain a +1 attack bonus to melee weapon attacks. 4.Death saving throws When you go unconscious, the DM rolls your death saves in secret. 5.Health potions Drinking a health potion costs 1 bonus action, however administering a health potion to someone else costs 1 action. 6.Grappling & Pinning Everyone has the access to the 2nd part of the grappling feat which reads: You can use your action to try to pin a creature Grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both Restrained until the grapple ends. 7.variant fall damage Falling deals the same damage as always – 1d6 per 10 feet, to a maximum of 20d6. If damage taken from a fall exceeds your Constitution score, you are reduced to 0 hit points, and become unconscious and dying. If damage taken from a fall exceeds twice your Constitution score, you die instantly. 8.helping with stealth A character who has proficiency in the Stealth skill can take disadvantage on the check to grant advantage on another party member's check (essentially compensating for a less stealthy companion). 9.Xanathar's tools p.80+ All rules regarding tools found in Xanathar's Guide to Everything is fair game. 10. Xanathar's downtime activity p.123+ All rules regarding downtime activity found in Xanathar's Guide to Everything is fair game. 11.bloodied condition A creature is bloodied when the creature's HP is equal to or less than one-half the creature's maxium HP. 12.Group Checks p.175 PHB To make a group ability check, everyone in the group makes the ability check. If at least half the group succeeds, the whole group succeeds. Otherwise, the group fails. 13.Drawing and stowing weapons You can draw or stow any number of weapons using the Free Item Interaction. Donning or doffing a shield still costs an action. 14.Attunement Attuning to an item takes 1 action. Unattuning takes 10 minutes. 15.(Experimental) Gritty Realism Long Rests take 7 days. Short Rests take 8 hours, and you must sleep. You may only take one short rest a day. Recuperate takes 10 minutes. Only Hit Dice may be spent. Rally allows you revert to normal resting rules, however has detrimental effects. After a rallied Long Rest, you suffer -1 to all 6 ability scores. Rallying is possible after a Short or Long rest, or during a 7 day long rest as long as 8 hours have passed. 16.Helping outside of Combat If you want to help someone else making a check, you need proficiency in that skill. 17.Stabilizing others outside of combat If you want to stabilize someone outside of combat, you roll for Medicine with a DC of 10 like normal. If you fail, the unconscious PC rolls another death save. This alternates until either stabilized or dead. 18.Source books All published material is allowed. If it's UA or Homebrew, I need to look over it first. General Game Rules I have a general and loose pre-written plot. But I will introduce NPCs who have their own agendas, and they will pursue these agendas. They will react to player's actions, but they will do so based on their own personality (so some plans may proceed even if the party is unaware of it). This means if you go murderhobo, this will have consequences (allies turning against you, the law coming down on you, bounty hunters coming after you, etc.) I have a pre-created world, but if you have some input, I am more than happy to incorporate it. I would like to work with you (the players) to create this world. I am also more than happy to take backstory and use that for world building and possible future arcs. So as much as possible, I will avoid railroading you. Rules I mostly go by RAI (Rules as intended) and RAW (Rules as written) secondhand. If you don’t know what is possible to do, ask! Rule of Cool – that being said, I am open to creative interpretation for certain abilities, if well argued, and within reason. The DM has final say when it comes to rulings – if something comes up mid-session that can't be quickly addressed, I'll make a ruling, and then we can discuss/research the issue after the session. No rape or any excessively dark topics. We may encounter some dark themes in the story, but any player can “fade to black” and we move on to the next scene. I am RPing the monsters to their fullest extent. This means that if a monster has a chance to directly kill you, and it is inclined to do so, it will. Running is always an option. You don’t have to like each other, but you should be able to work together. This means, no trying to kill each other, no stealing from each other, etc. Remember that this a cooperative story-telling game!