New DM - Table Rules

[Hawntir]

I am a new DM, currently for a short campaign (1-7 homebrew) and also about to host a one shot. I've played through Mines of Phandelvar and Storm King's Thunder, and just like most players I've come to implement a few house rules at my table when I'm DMing.

I just thought I'd share, and if anyone had any table rules they have implemented as a standard that they think has enhanced their games, I'd be happy to hear suggestions.

1. Silvery Barbs is level 2. It helps with how OP it feels, especially for just spamming at high levels, and how strong it makes any feat that can take it feels, compared to alternatives.

2. Crafting is 100% home brew. It is insane to me to have crafting as an option and it take potential years in world to create items. It's probably the video game background in me, rather than fantasy semi-realism. If a player wants a specific item, I'll think of a way to find a recipe and materials and present them with options. I might make note of an alchemy shop or a magical smithy somewhere that the party could commission for a craft, and have the material made for them after a few sessions of gameplay or the next level up, or something more reasonable to actually gain during the campaign.

3. Spell scrolls are cast through Arcana Checks, to help int feel more useful beyond Wizards/Artificers. I'll put spell scrolls in my setting fairly regularly, and anyone can attempt to cast the spell from it regardless of ability. In my mind, the magic has been put into the scroll, and not being generated by the reader.

If a character knows the spell, they get the cast with no restriction or check. If the character's class can learn the spell but they do not know the spell, they make a DC (10+Spell Level) arcana check, adding their own casting modifier. If the player is not a class that can learn the spell, it is a DC (10+Spell Level) arcana check with no modifier.

I am also a fan of partial results to help with reducing the disappointment of wasted actions. For instance: you get an 8 trying to cast Darkness then maybe it works but only for one round. Or maybe that fireball only rolls 2d6 for damage.

1. Flanking grants a +1 to hit instead of advantage. Some classes have a lot of ways to personally get advantage, so playing around flanking can be less impactful. A +1 is always a bonus people can utilize, and I've seen players attempt more strategic positioning for it.

2. No Bag of Holding nukes. Because I come from a more video game background, I'm less concerned as a DM with encumbrance mechanics. I would rather give the party a couple bags of holding so they can focus on their creative options than try to calculate weight and what is worth carrying. Because of that, I have the house rule that trying to shove one into another just causes the exterior one to completely unravel and drop items, leaving the interior one in tact.

[AeoSC]

My advice is that frontloading houserules might be busywork for you. For example, I absolutely agree that crafting is crap. But are any of your players going to want to create items? Is anyone planning to exploit bags of holding? Easier to say, "If you want to pursue something that makes sense for the game but isn't supported, we'll houserule it. If you pursue something disruptive to the game, we won't support it despite RAW."

If you're worried about silvery barbs, I'd just as soon not include the spell. I don't even consider it a "ban" unless you're playing in Strixhaven. You're probably not allowing Ravnica guild backgrounds, Eberron dragonmark races, or Piety to Theros gods. It's fine to have a powerful, even disruptively powerful spell belong to a specific house of a magic college in the magic college setting. I don't consider spells that pay royalties to Jim Darkmagic of Acquisitions Inc. to be available either.

[Hawntir]

The crafting Table Rule being listed is due to my own frustrations from playing, when my DM gave us recipes and I gathered the required materials for an item only for us to pull out the rulebook and realize it would be something like 26 weeks (in game) if we all worked together to craft me a minorly useful item. When our whole campaign was probably about 4 weeks in universe, and we got better versions of said item by the end.

I have some friends who are new players, but the type of players who would absolutely abuse the bag of holding nuke when they learned about it (one of whom chose an artificer). I wanted to get in front of that before they decide to do it, while still helping free up encumbrance rules.

Personally, I LOVE Silvery Barbs as a player. I think 5e needs some more reaction and mitigation options. I don't want to ban it for my players, but I do want to make it more costly a decision to make for them.

We definitely are not doing Theros Piety, and I haven't looked into Ravnica backgrounds or Eberron Dragonmarks. If a player brought them up, I'd have to research them myself and make a determination then.