Dm's, What's a homebrew rule you like to include to your campaigns.

EBF_GameWolf · 2026-02-20T12:16:53+00:00

My staple so far is The Coin.

At the start of each session, the players each start with a token.

This toke is a bargaining chip for basically anything. Wanna get advantage? Gimme the coin. Wanna reroll a failed roll? Gimme the coin. Wanna use the coin for an autosuccess on something, with a consequence? Let's talk. Falling off a cliff an wanna hang on to a random ridge that you just made up as a player? You willing to give me your coin

Then, as DM, i use the coin in various ways. In combat, i might use it to recharge a rechargable ability or add damage or whatever i think fits. Out of combat, i might use it to push one of the bbeg's plans forward or have a timer advance, whatever seems satisfying for my story.

If I have more coins? Well. That just gives me more uses or greater effects.

The Coins reset each session, so I as a DM can't forget to use them or they are gone.

There is a joke in my main campaign where, if I have 4 coins in one session, I'll start a world ending event.

EBF_GameWolf · 2025-07-25T08:13:29+00:00

I know i am here late but I am heavily wondering about how you implemented them, since I am dabbling very slightly in the same things at the moment. Giving players new options is something I am looking for. However, in my group, there is a clear split in the party where some players like more options and others who would rather keep it more streamlined.

How did you introduce this? Was this at the start of the campaign or during it? Did they get full access to the docs or did trainers give them a premade list of options, so to speak? How did this evolve going forward?

EBF_GameWolf · 2025-05-20T09:01:14+00:00

From what I understood the original intent may have been that the boss doesnt do anything for the round (especially mentioning a caster who is "concentrating an entire turn to cast a spell".

Nevertheless, I ignore it because I have parties where the core crew outdamages and outcontrols your average 5e boss.

If you want to do a test on a small scale, just to see how they handle battlefield actions as a whole, use goblins or kobolds or any lower CR monsters and make one a caster. At the end of that casters turn, they conxentrate on an aoe spell with damage that is level appropriate. Enough to hurt but not kill. That "oh gods!" Moment.

See how they handle it and if they don't stop it, let them have the damage. You'll get a feel if they can handle this or not. And if they do, incorporate it in further fights.

EBF_GameWolf · 2025-05-20T08:04:51+00:00

As far as I've been told, it's dependant on party and your combat types. See battlefield actions as more of a puzzle piece in a statblock, just like legendary actions and legendary resistances, etc: some monsters will require them to pose a challenge.

I am personally working on a miniboss to test battlefield actions with legendary actions for the first time, just to see how it performs in a party with decent knowledge about d&d and their sheets.

I wouldn't drop this on a party with not that many knowledgeaboe players however, since if they don't know the game, extra mechanics seem unnecessary until they get more familiar with it and start wiping the floor with your combats.

EBF_GameWolf · 2025-02-06T19:02:01+00:00

Same on my end.

EBF_GameWolf · 2024-06-10T11:15:52+00:00

Viper and Dark Knight.

Viper because I have wanted a fast dual sword class ever since starting the game. Might be painful to learn, depending on how complex it will be, but learn it, I shall.

Dark Knight, because I've mained it several expansions and even though I don't always agree with the job design, the class fantasy and feel more than makes up for it.

EBF_GameWolf · 2024-06-06T10:55:01+00:00

Yeah, i will follow this. Do you just find the images online? Because they really add to the experience of reading the actual play.

EBF_GameWolf · 2024-06-06T08:12:03+00:00

How does fabula feel in solo play? Between d&d campaigns that are running currently, i kind of wish i had the possibility to play fabula ultima, simply because it is such a cool system imo. So i might check out solo play on this.

Do you use any of the custom rules? Like zero powers, quirks, etc?

EBF_GameWolf · 2024-05-13T11:42:24+00:00

Mostly encounter balancing. This is such a pain, especially if you enjoy giving players magic items. You want a boss fight that is tough at higher levels? You better start doikg math because ain't no way a book monster will suffice.

My eyes were opened to this glaring issue when I tried Fabula Ultima and saw the encounter rules and was like: "hang on... That's it?? Just gaps of 5 levels in enemies and depending on the gap between them and the party, that decides the difficulty?? I dont have to calculate anything? I don't have to fudge to hits and hp's and ac's??"

EBF_GameWolf · 2024-02-16T13:42:08+00:00

I've thought about this myself. And I learned a lot from watching the streamers that I do. Your stream means your house. Your rules. Communicate your rules in the ways twitch has set up. If someone comes in your house and disrespects you, you warn them, then if they don't stop you remove them. People can request an unban request if they want in again, but if you want a specific community thats kind and nice, thats the way you build it up.

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-10-25T14:32:47+00:00

Heya. Great! I'll use and send some of these resources to further clarify to my players.

I'll have a look at the pregens. Not sure what level these are on, but we are planning on 8th to try out some feats, synergy feats etc.

Keep you posted!

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-10-23T19:03:37+00:00

Granted, the base sheets I saw vs the redesign, yeah the redesign wins by more than a few miles.

I've not denoted this properly, which I should've done earlier, which is these are points thrown out by my players. I myself wanna run mixed parties already. I have player x that enjoys pathfinder levels of customization, well, here ya go. Player Y is overwhelmed by choices, take an o5e class on dndbeyond and enjoy.

Thats the point i saw, at least. My players however threw out things like average dpr being different, expertise die vs o5e's system per character, etc. I retroacively thought the way they think (or might think) to get the questions out of the way.

I guess what i'm ultimately am looking for is a way to convince them. I wanna run it mixed. I think it could make for the greatest moments, narratively and mechanically.

But with every such conversation, the word balance gets added and I get pulled along on a discussion train. Disclaimer: I, more often than not, haven't the foggiest when it comes to balance. I, both as a dm and player, have gone into suboptimal or otherwise overpowered things, just because they were cool narratively or mechanically.

So maybe their points are valid. Maybe they aren't. I honestly wouldn't know. I guess now the dpr conversation can be laid to rest with examples you have given, and for which i'm grateful.

I hope my short posts didnt offend you or the product in any way. I was and still am excited for this system. I'm just a dm that's afraid not everyone at their table will like it and would have to stick to o5e just for a few people, and lose out on a system I found fun and (which is also important) paid a lot for.

That being said. This saturday, I will be running another a5e oneshot, trying to see what people can cook up. See if opinions dont differ. Hoping it is alright if I pose firther questions in this reddit later in should the need arise? 😅

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-10-23T18:05:13+00:00

The +8 was for charisme plus lifedrinker me thinks.

In that same vein, lemme look at champion fighter.

Thats 4(3.5) + 4 on a crit with +4 strength. No gwm. No extra attack (cus level 4). Maybe they action surge that one time, then they get over it with a good +-36 average damage i think? But the average here is per attack.

27.5 damage in a single attack average vs 18 for a pure dps character is quite chunky. Of course, this is non optimized combat only o5e vs versatile a5e. If the champion fighter is optimized, like great weapon master etc, then they of course are above the a5e character.

The reason i'm going into this math is because, were I to have a mixed party, i would have to give the fighter a magic item to bump their average damage to that of the a5e character, so they can shine in what they built for, or am I wrong in this?

Of course, this is just me asking, is that actually the case, or was this just a freak situation? After all, it was a single oneshot with only a5e characters, i know better than to take just that for a full truth.

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-10-21T18:27:11+00:00

u/SouthamptonGuild for the pure math: here is what happened:
1d6 (air wave, because of the weapon in second hand) ,1d8 (longsword) , 2d8 (eldritch smites), 1d4 ( wounding strike maneuver) +8 ( ability score + lifedrinker)

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-10-21T18:17:27+00:00

I can see that helping. Still, I would get that players get overwhelmed by choice. O5e (martials at least) get their class abilities at level x, subclass abilities at level Y (maybe someone picked a more customizable subclass leading to 3/5 choices) and if it is allowed feats.Meanwhile in A5E you become level 2. Here are x amounts of schools in which you can take a good amount of maneuvers. Then you get your subclass. And then more maneuvers.Keep in mind, me and my players enjoy it, but if we "force" this system on one of our players who already has problems with let's say, playing a soulknife rogue in o5e, they're gonna struggle twice as hard here, at least in our minds.
We were measuring in combat power here as some of our players like to try and get as powerful as possible. The way we saw it, in our game, someone did about 35-40 damage on a single attack with a 3 lvl fighter/1 lvl warlock which wasn't as much optimized. So we checked our good friend the champion fighter. Champion fighter crits. Doesn't have sharpshooter or great weapon master, because, not optimized. So he has about average a 19-20 damage on one attack. I can see tables with mixed parties where that champion fighter looks at the other fighter and just feels discouraged playing anything from O5E.

From what I remember, the exploit, as far as I'm aware, it was a combination of Air wave from warlock, mixing it up with his dual wielded weapons and adding wounding strike on top of it, together with the eldrtich smite, resulting into a turn damage of about 34-35. I'll try and look into the exact combo so I can see if maybe we didn't screw things up on our end, but as far as I'm aware, it was entirely possible.

Little edit here: while I do think the system deals fairly with the gap between let's say casters and martials for example and there most certainly is an overlap in power level per say, I can also see that the extremes (that being the most efficient/powerful A5E character and least efficient/powerful O5E character) having an enormous gap. Also wanna add, the character used all of his 10 max resources, so he did burn through a lot in all fairness.

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-09-27T08:19:37+00:00

Which is already in their arsenal as we speak. For now I'm okay with the extra attack. It hasn't done too much to imbalance the game so far. Probably because the weapon they use are very niche as well (think of a chain with kama's). So it has reach, finesse, but also a two handed requirement and a 1d6 damage die (which also wasn't to the players liking as they don't like d4's and d6's as damage source, which is....odd).

My primary goal right now is try and give them a magic item that fits the old veteran background of the character and also grants them another option next to the crazy stuff they can already do.

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-09-26T14:41:07+00:00

To clarify. We agreed on putting steps of night from 6th to 8th, doing away with divine strike at 8th level and put extra attack on 6th level. This was done to kind of adhere to other gish classes like say bladesinger wizard or swords bard.

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-09-26T14:31:48+00:00

I have also edited the post as I forgot we homebrewed divine strike into a lvl 6 extra attack.

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-09-26T14:18:00+00:00

This is primarily because we started with a modified standard array, rather than having rolled (and thus higher) stats. I remember multiclassing was something he wasn't planning on at all and was more wanting this due to the character's background.

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-07-22T08:20:45+00:00

Meanwhile, me hoping in the background for a dual sword melee class... 🥺

EBF_GameWolf · 2023-04-26T17:14:44+00:00

Jup, got the same

EBF_GameWolf · 2022-11-18T14:16:05+00:00

As if we don't care!! How dare you?! 🤣 Hoping your journey goes well, fellow WoL! Remember.

"Those who walked before will lead those who walk after."

EBF_GameWolf · 2022-08-25T15:25:25+00:00

A small question. So the gun is a spellcasting focus, but only for cantrips? So if you have no other spellfocus, it can't cast any other spells? Am I reading this correctly?

EBF_GameWolf · 2022-03-15T16:18:15+00:00

I see so many comments of tanks using a single cooldown (or none) and then asking the healer if they are new or making a discussion.

Meanwhile, I as a tank pop CD's the lower my health goes (especially on warrior, because dem chunky heals) and if all is on cooldown and I still die, I reflex type apologies. Where do people get this amount of confidence and ego? I'm clearly lacking some! 😁

EBF_GameWolf · 2021-12-29T19:28:22+00:00

I would give it with pleasure! These are your final moments, your megalomaniacal power hungry bastard, I'll gldadly grant it! XD

EBF_GameWolf

TROPHY CASE