Hot Take: 5e is too bloated with unnecessary rules and should be simplified
I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
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If you got to look up rules and nobody cares or wants to, skip it. Its my advice. Use rules only if its necessary and soemwhat contributing to a fun experience.
This is universal.
This. Our entire campaign is home-brewed using the 5e ruleset, but the application of those rules is selective when it needs to be.
For the most part, we're following them, but if there's a rule that results in a level of attention to detail that we simply don't care to implement, or would have less fun trying to religiously adhere too, we just scrap it in favour of something a bit more light-touch and call it a house rule.
Rules provide a great framework to base your game on, but the ultimate aim is to create an enjoyable experience and have fun, so bend them and break them when and where you need to for the benefit of all involved.
One risk with this is when you have a new player join your group. They might expect raw and be surprised by a whole kettle of home brew.
I for one would be annoyed if I joined a group and found they were ignoring the rest rules. They may be having fun but I would have made different decisions if I'd known what they were actually playing.
Every change should be treated the same : you tell about them at character creation and you tell them during the game while allowing for their set of rules on the present session if you cannot think of them in advance. Homebrew, legal rules, anything should be the same. It's not during a game that you tell the multiclass druid cleric that the steroid goodberries dont work in your game, as he's trying to heal someone after a fight. This actually happened to me. Don't fucking nerf the core of a character's mechanics midgame.
Don't fucking nerf the core of a character's mechanics midgame
Happened to me once. Built a monk specifically for cool grapple movement interactions because I hate the standard "I attack. You attack me back." attritional gameplay that DnD normally has.
Stunned a guy, used my 2nd attack as a grapple, started running up a wall, which both me and the grappled target will fall off at the end of the turn (but I have slow fall, he doesn't). The GM says:
"You're running up the wall with the guy still grappled?"
"Yes. Perfectly legal according to the rules"
"You're grappling an orc fighter"
"Yes. And?"
"He's pretty heavy... Roll me a strength check"
Cleared it up after the game, but come on man. I explained how my character would work in combat beforehand, don't nerf me midgame.
Lol. "He's pretty heavy". In 5th its size that matters. If its medium its fine. Even if it doesnt make sense, perfect swimming in plate doesn't either, but you dont just say to a player "oh btw in plate you die if you fall into water as you cant swim" while fighting around water for the first time.
Im glad you cleared it up after. In my case, I ended up leaving for other reasons but the nerf sticked. Mind you, if I knew at character creation it would be fine. But I didn't.
This makes sense.
In my imagination there is a large set of players who "homebrew" stuff because they don't know or understand the rules, and a very large subset of those players are also disorganized. A sizable subset also just don't know what the fuck they're doing.
So they'll be like "oh we let the wizard attack and cast a spell on the same turn. Is that not the normal way?"
But for people who homebrew with intention and thought, yeah, what you said.
Yeah that's fair. For the most part we're sticking to 5e, and the consensus is always to check the rules first when we're unsure about something and to try and implement it as intended, so we're not losing any of what I'd consider to be core rules, like the way movement, actions and bonus actions work during combat, or spell slots and class-specific rules etc.
It's more of our approach to more niche elements, such as the food and water needs relevant to each creature's size as specified in the DM's Handbook - no one has the inclination to track our food supply and consumption to the pound per character, so we instead stock up on provisions to last X number of days, and track our usage by the day. It's just a bit quicker and easier to manage that way, and we can still implement the same effects in the event we run out of food.