Homebrew’s greatest pro and con is “I reject your reality and replace it with my own”

Reflavoring is my favorite type of homebrew. The mechanics don't really change, helping keep with the "balance" of 5e. But it absolutely encourages creativity among players and DMs. For a oneshot, I played a peace domain cleric whose "god" is a clear and healthy mind, henceforth my character's job being a therapist for the group. For a campaign I'm running, one of my players wanted to be an ice-type sorceress ala Elsa from Frozen; I suggested to her white draconic sorcerer, but she wanted to go with storm sorcerery, so I tweaked the damage types to cold and adjusted the flavor of the subclass to suit her needs. In the same campaign, I'm gonna have them meet an artificer that works as a chef, but mechanically is an alchemist; instead of experimental elixers, she hands out test treats.

@telriche

3 жыл бұрын

Very nice! Love reflavoring!

@johnstarinieri7360

3 жыл бұрын

I love that chef flavoring. You could even double down with the Chef feat from Tasha’s

@richtigmann1

3 жыл бұрын

Reflavouring is a great way to have customized things without breaking balance

@justinromero8859

3 жыл бұрын

@@johnstarinieri7360 i did ;)

@tomfranck8821

3 жыл бұрын

I like the Idea of a tiefling totem Warrior barbarian who draws upon demonic energy/ magic to create the class abilities myself

You finally became old enough to legaly drink the homebrew and have embraced its sweet flavor. And if the brew is too strong just use it in mixers to lessen it's strength!

It always upset me a little whenever you said you hated homebrew. Glad to see you’ve come around to my favorite aspect of the game.

@averongodoffire8098

2 жыл бұрын

Most “home brew” to me is just spicy DnD it can be good but too much spice and it can overrun the game and ruin the whole thing but otherwise it’s just nice to have and livens things up

@recka5000

2 жыл бұрын

I do a little homebrew in my games in terms of rules to make things smoother but I'm not huge of the bigger ones myself. Mostly that's me being a newer DM but the other side is I don't have a distrust in my player's intents, I have don't trust them to have all the rules or interactions memorised. Because I sure as heck don't! One is obsessed with making True Strike not a bad cantrip and mentioned something about not attacking on the same turn but it giving a crit. Which is already stupidly powerful, but then I just mentioned "have you considered vorpal swords/swords of sharpness?" Even the blatantly OP ones I don't think they're trying to swindle me, it's just a misunderstanding in game rules, and it's why I don't allow big ones like classes/subclasses (for now, definitely not a closed book though)

@Firestorm422

2 жыл бұрын

@@recka5000 In fairness a Vorpal Sword is written to specifically disallow crit fishing shenanigans, it activates only on a 20 not a crit, that homebrew is still op though

@charger1369

2 жыл бұрын

Same, I write a crapton of it in my spare.

“The Vast Glub” *congratulations you just triggered a Vietnam flashback* Or, more accurately, a Homestuck flashback.

Homebrew is best used once you have an idea of balance

@mr.preston1632

3 жыл бұрын

And even then, doesn’t matter that much because D&D isn’t the most balanced game, just compare it to the more recent stuff in D&D which is a little more balanced and you should be fine

@dseray9494

3 жыл бұрын

Hehe Deflect magic go brrrr

@charlieterry8506

3 жыл бұрын

Me who has a known horrendously bad sense of scale and intuition for what is balanced: Welp. Hope my home-brew campaign setting and story goes well 0_0

Also I'll never get over THE VAST GLUB reference. We can never truly escape, can we?

@DavvyChappy

3 жыл бұрын

IT JUST KEEPS HAPPENING

@argisus1279

3 жыл бұрын

@@DavvyChappy not gonna lie I had to do a double take on that lol.

@Dsiwarper

3 жыл бұрын

was about to comment on it. can't fight it

@mechanizedMytha

3 жыл бұрын

god damn it i'm mad i got it

@marmato9332

3 жыл бұрын

@@mechanizedMytha i dont get it

My most common homebrew rule is "player decides *how* they attack" Does your great axe have a backside spike end? Then you can use piercing damage

@ovbrook3057

3 жыл бұрын

This is good. It's always seemed silly to me that a halberd, a weapon made to do multiple damage types, only does one damage type in DND

@troperhghar9898

3 жыл бұрын

@@ovbrook3057 and having a wide variety of weapons including raipers and scimitars myself I know for a fact raipers can slice longswords can bludgen and scimtars can pierce

@connordarvall8482

3 жыл бұрын

@@troperhghar9898 As someone who trains in longsword, I can say that your bludgeon is harder to pull off as you have to lose some range when holding it that way. I'd probably say that longswords get a -1 to hit when performing a bludgeon. Poleaxes on the other hand could potentially do all 3 damage types depending on how the head is designed with no loss to functionality.

I love homebrew, and I like making it to offer to players because I love it when players have options, and I like to mod the system to bring up classes or options that typically struggle with things, or make mechanics that people feel should be a thing actually a thing (that are too frequent to be satisfied with just on-the-fly rulings). From small things to "int can give you some perks like extra languages" and "let's give vanilla sorcerers extra spells like the new subclasses offer" to "hey here's a packet of 20 homebrew races I designed. Wanna play an arachne?" It's also worth noting, if playing a shorter game, when a player brings homebrew to you, you only need to look at the levels where it'll be available, which makes it way easier to balance. E.g. if running CoS, you probably only need to look at the first 2 subclass features offered for martial characters.

One of my players reflavored the eldritch knight so his character, a ancient warforged found by the party in the ruins of a lost city, could use spells like technological gadgets of his body. That was a lot of fun.

I couldn't ever NOT do homebrew because that would mean actually learning the rules of the game and I ain't about to start now.

@FeinryelRavenclaw

3 жыл бұрын

The rules are there as a floor, for other DMs to build over, or fall through.

@niq362

3 жыл бұрын

Same as a dm i can say one of my specialty is homebrew

@D0cSwiss

3 жыл бұрын

I know, right? You couldn't pay me to learn the encumbrance rules.

@FeinryelRavenclaw

3 жыл бұрын

@@D0cSwiss I’d pay you $10 to learn how encumbrance works.

@mr.preston1632

3 жыл бұрын

Read the books, it helps

Me and my group misread the purple baby when we started playing, and now it's a key deity in our homebrew setting

@defensivekobra3873

3 жыл бұрын

How do you mean missread?

My logic with homebrew is this: "If I can write an entire original world, and be totally fine, then why can't I consider a class my player wants to play?"

@monstermoo4191

3 жыл бұрын

This is actually a really good point. It's funny DM's are the opposite of that 😅.

@charger1369

2 жыл бұрын

I'm waiting for the day when my DM let's me play my original Observer Class lol

Some level of homebrew is inevitable. Trying to play D&D of any edition completely RAW is exhausting and painful.

My group's favorite homebrew rule is 1 free feat per character. No variant human just normal human. It adds interesting abilities that help the character feel more like what you want them to be.

character backstory for scrutinization: a short time ago their was a wizard of considerable reknown who was begining to age and begain indulging in ways to pursue immortality. many were hypothitical with the notable exeption of becoming a lich which he decided not to pursue. during this time he learned of a few monster capable of moving the counsciousness of different beings. one that stood out to him was the carrionette. carrionettes are toy monsters brought to life with the wish of a child, apparently more common amongst fey. the notable part arises when they come to crave having their own body. they carry with them a golden needle capable of allowing one to swap their soul with that of a being with a body most often the child that wished it to life. For a time this meant little to our wizard. He carried on his life dreams of immortality beginning to fade as he set up a residence in a small village where he counseled elders on arcane matters. then one day a (insert fey here) was found lost and greatly injured it appeared young and the counsil did not know what to do. after the fey recovered it was descovered that among fey's this one is a child and had lost it's way from home. after discovering that they could not find a way back to the feywild the wizard, whoose judgement was clouded, volonteered to care for the child. soon after, as the attentive sort may guess, the child was given many toy soldiers, crafted by the wizard, throughout her time in his house. the wizard came to truly love the child but still sought one thing more. one day a special toy soilder was gifted to the child this one tougher and bigger, slightly smaller than a dwarf, than all the toys it was also enchanted to be nearly very tough and never tarnish. the plan almost worked. when the figure came to life the child kept it secret from the wizard. after about a week or so of this the wizard let go of his plan thinking his dream of immortality would fade again as it did before. the figure claimed the fey body perfect build-up for the journey onto an adventure. good plot hooks including but not limited to a lead on the location of the body, information about the feys birth family, and magic items to assist in the search. they are looking for a way to recover the fey body. mechanically the wizard is actually an artificer battle smith his adoptive child being the steel defender. personality trait: redemption. i need to fix my wrongs and recover the body ideal: death is ever marching and even at our most content it can't be avoided Bond:i will do anything to protect my adoptive child flaw:i never told the fey the truth about the soldier and my hopes for an immortal form and i fear it may one day be discovered

Homebrew: because yes, I AM a better writer than Wizards of the Coast.

@akkator0063

3 жыл бұрын

Absolute Mood

"more broken than the nuclear family" ... holy shit that hit deep

I’ve always loved using homebrew or reflavoring for classes and abilities, been doing it since I practically started. I do want to say that having the answer of homebrew doesn’t discredit criticism of the system, I know that’s not the point being made here but it feels very common whenever someone brings up an issue they have with a ruling or way something’s worded.

Fifth edition is like an empty house, sure you can live in it, but wouldn’t some new wallpaper, or a sofa, perhaps even a hot tub make it that much better. Thats how I see fifth edition, it’s purposefully made to be bent to the will of the group and setting, not to have things bend around it.

I just found the Dr. Manhattan Steve Jobs joke/meme yesterday, so it being referenced in the video was pretty well timed and made me laugh. And as an avid and unashamed D&D homebrewer I fully support this video.

Homebrew is fun because you never know what to expect. as a DM, I LOVE throwing homebrew monsters at my party, even if it's just an existing statblock with a couple of small changes. The party is gonna go "wait, what?!" when all of a sudden a goblin starts whipping out battle master manuvers. it really helps the players to not metagame, and it keeps them guessing.

@D_Abellus

2 жыл бұрын

I took the statblock of a chimera and threw an amalgamation of wolves, cougars, and people at my party. They have never been so disgusted and hateful of the evil group before seeing the awfulness of the wougars.

I've been saying reflavoring is the best way to home brew. It limits the brokenness of the game while giving players flexibility. Tasha's did this with magic and made it cannon. Full send on flavor edits.

3:52 ***HOMESTUCK DETECTED!!! HOMESTUCK DETECTED!!!***

I will continually use this metaphor, and my usual issue as a DM; Most new ‘brewers' decide they want a red car instead of a blue one... so they leap out of their perfectly good car in order to try and _reinvent the wheel_ by _banging rocks together at the side of the road_ is the way to go. You don’t need a new system. You _want_ a paint job. A TON of the things that I see for homebrew are things that are already in the game. The number of times I see someone bring in a custom Ninja class that can attack more than a fighter with expertise in stealth and can cast spells like a Warlock is just... exhausting. If you want a ninja, play a rogue, or a shadow monk, or any awesome reflavor of things that exists. Now, I homebrew A LOT, but it's almost always smaller things. Literally today, it became an issue that the Cleric spell list had no attack roll cantrips, so I made the _Glare_ cantrip (d6 fire, ignores resistance/downgrades immunity) to fill that out and let the Holy Warrior paladin use his homebrew magic item that needs attack cantrips. But for goodness sake, most homebrew I see is just made with zero understanding of what is already in the game, rules included.

I really like the Lightcaller and Stargazer classes over on r/unearthed arcana

For my warlock, Instead of casting eldritch blast, by pointing at an enemy. I have her Throw a punch and call it eldritch fist. And hellish rebuke I just cast the spell by flipping off whoever was unfortunate to hit her

wait, i thought *The Vast Glub* was supposed to kill things instead of heal.

I've done druid pirate before and yes, it's such a natural re-flavor that I'm surprised we haven't gotten a subclass for druid pirates yet

I think it's really important to have a good understanding of the base mechanics so you can balance things but as long as it's not breaking the game and everyone's happy go wild

Basically everyone uses homebrew for the encumbrance and natural 20 rules

An excellent example of reflavoring: Magical Girls. Warlocks are all presented by the sourcebooks as cruel and brooding scions of darkmasters. But the can just as easily be Sailor Moon. The Transformation Sequence? Armor of Shadows or Armor of Agathys.

I'm currently using a Homebrew class in a game, which is very good at going nova but falls off quickly if there are multiple encounters during a day. For the 1st three bosses the Class seemed incredibly overpowered, so I told my DM the ultimate counter: "Just use 2 Boss Tier monsters in a boss fight, and I'm fucked." Because I had a habit to blow quite literally all of my recourses on that one Nova move, I usually had little to no options if: 1. The enemy survived 2. There was more coming So he started using more non-fodder enemies and from that point onward I had to space myself much more. Ultimately everyone is enjoying the game now, and we did also do some mechanical adjustments to lower the power ceiling a bit but make it a little more sustainable over more than I encounter.

@szylaj

3 жыл бұрын

Megumin?

@Spiritrise00099

3 жыл бұрын

@@szylaj uh.... No.

I completely agree with what you said. Allowing homebrew means that players can be very creative, and you can just nerf it if it gets abused, just like any other mechanic. Reflavouring is also great, because you can customize the game to he the way you want, but without needing to deal with balance issues. Overall great video!

That Nuclear Family joke was pretty damn meta, and I'm here for it!

I've played an entire homebrewed version of DnD where all dice can explode (for those who don't know, if you rolled a 6 on a d6, you get to roll another d6 and add it on top of the total), I wanted it to be whacky, so I even let it apply to rolling for stats and removed the stat cap, was a very fun time, players were very very strong, but when the enemy goblin got a 23 damage on a single shortsword attack, people be like "Oh shit!!!", would recommend.

i didn’t understand why he kept making alcohol jokes until the last one

@Drallicat

3 жыл бұрын

I only just got it lol. Reading your comment forced me to think into it a little more

I personally find myself playing a Swarmkeeper Ranger with a gimmick based around summoning creatures, due to my character having an being based around being able to “perceive forest spirits”. Even the swarm itself has been reflavored to look and work sort of as will o’ the wisp, it has been fun so far!

Our homebrews are kinda wild, but make sense in context. For the 3.5 games I run, I make it so you don't use Strength or Dexterity in casting, and you get the first level of Weapon Finesse at base. You also have the story of the 5e Warlock rather than the 3.5 Warlock. Another thing is Toughness, I have you gain an extra HP every level after 3rd, instead of just 3HP total. For 5e we homebrewed the average stuff, plus made the Oathbreaker Paladin a Bone Knight (Similar to 3.5) so that I could play one for my friend's first attempt at DMing.

I only play custom races in homebrew as I tend to need to playtest them. I've made a homebrew slime race for example and thanks to playtesting, they're extremely balanced compared to PHB races. They have a lot of ribbons because slimes have a lot of ribbons, (lots of small abilities that don't do much) but a 20ft movement speed makes a lot of their in-combat abilities which aren't that strong even weaker because they need you to be in melee range to use and are useless on casters. But balancing a homebrew race isn't super easy and you need to have DMs who will let you playtest them to really tweak that balance so its perfect. A tip to make balance races for homebrew is to look at already made items/mechanics and reflavor them. Thats what I did and it lead to a really balanced slime race.

I'm reminded, now, of a player I DMed for whose character was a cleric of The Holy Reefer. So, all of his healing spells were changed so that they were administered by blowing that dank smoke into the healee's face!

As someone who's played dnd and dm'd a small bit, I've learned that the rules of dnd can be played fast and loose, if you're a player who's having a good time, even if your dm isn't relying on rules or actively learning them (aka more freeform dnd) make sure you affirm that to your DM that you're having a good time. In our sessions there's really no initiative, if you want to attack you have to say you want to attack, obviously this requires a bit of knowledge and trust on the players part to coordinate their attacks (which can be really fun when it aligns) and to not interfere with other players or speak over them. If we have to use initiative for something like a boss fight, we just go clockwise, it's just the easiest. I wish there were more freeform systems that were mainstream, but the only one I know about is dnd unfortunately.

I’m trying to make warforged specific subclasses for each class so everyone can get some super robot love. I’ve only got concepts right now though.

Davvy Chappy redemption arc

I agree with Davy's examples as they are all reasonable touches of homebrew. Where I've seen it go wrong is adding additional macro rules to the game. One such thing was a homebrew diseases system a group I was in insisted on implementing. I argued against because 5e already has diseases and cures, and more complex and crunchy systems exist if we want to try them. I was overruled. The first game I caught a homebrew disease, it was a Con save per hour resulting in points of exhaustion on fails. So I say to the DM, "well, my character heads back to base, the adventure is over for them." ...why? "Well, you've put us in the wilderness with no assured cure for this disease in any know direction. I have a 50% chance of passing the save, EVERY HOUR, so if I risk it and push on, statistics dictate I'll be dead within the day. IE your homebrew is broken". Session sort of sputtered out from there.

glub glub, my dude

Fun tip too: I had a player that wanted to change to a Samurai Fighter in a greek setting I was running. Rather than argue about 'samurai aren't a thing here', I just said "Sure but not in name. Your fighting style is unique to you and you alone because your whole clan was wiped out, so it makes sense" and just ran the mechanics rather than the subclass flavor. If something doesn't fit theme-wise but its not a huge thing that it needs to be flavored that way, you can totally change it. My player was so much happier too. Flavoring things differently is just fun as a player or as a DM, including monsters and items. I very much agree that its the best tool in the toolkit of a player AND a DM

He’s joined the cult. It’s so much fun to use Homebrew classes because it’s so much more versatile and adds in a lot more concepts

Now I normally allow homebrew. I love homebrew it’s fun stuff and I like reading it to see what my players are trying to do. Sometimes though I don’t allow any homebrew in my campaign. Not becuase of malice, but sometimes you get lost in it. So I’ve been doing one campaign with no homebrew, and it’s been a lot of fun because everything is more grounded in a sense. It’s like returning to your hometown to see that nothing has changed.

My favorite homebrew that i never got to use as the game died before session zero was the DM allowed guns but just saying blackpowder weapons were just reskined crossbows. as he saw it as the skill to use a gun or a crossbow is too close for it to even be a difference *aka aim and press a trigger*. he saw the only difference was in the loading. which the difference size of crossbow changed depends on the size anyway. as small crossbows you only needed to pull it back with your hand, with bigger crossbows needing more tools or steps to do the loading. Most Dms refused to have guns in their dnd world but this one saw fit as it allowed me to play something i always wanted to try. a dnd version of a Napoleonic Grenadier. which was basically a ranged fighter that had proficiency in alchemy to make bombs. sad that i never got to play that but i was thankful for that DM's willingness to try.

Being the sensible person you are Davvy, I knew you'd come around eventually

we all love positive character development ❤️

I think reflavoring and home-brewing are very different. If I reflavor my wizard as an artificer, when he casts Lightning Bolt then he pulls out a device to launch said spell. Nothing mechanical changes, only theatre of mind

Finally, my book of homebrew subclasses will be validated If only people would help me TEST IT

I used to be the same way about homebrew, but I've had a few different things open me up to it a lot more. First and foremost, hearing awesome homebrew concepts from podcasts/shows that I've been following made me start thinking of ways to incorporate those into my home games. Second, playing a different tabletop system that doesn't have a lot of official content but has great rules for making whatever you want in the game.

I ADORE YOUR DRUID CHARACTER A LOT AFTER JUST HEARING ABOUT THEM

This homebrew of changing the element of fire spells is pretty useful. I originally ruled that the Metamagic option that allows you to do it don't require any Sorcery point, but i think that's probably way better. XD

Agreed 100% on reflavoring. I wanted to play as a jedi, so my DM allowed my hexblade's focus to be a kyber crystal. I use double bladed scimitar stats and the +1 magical attacks from the pact weapon feature as my double sided lightsaber. I use the mage armor invocation that allows my robes to not be terrible armor. Bam, got exactly what I wanted without breaking anything.

Homebrew was my introduction to D&D. I mean it was a weird baby of 3.5 and 5e (when it JUST came out) in a weird world with weird characters and weird classes. It was glorious. I always liked the freedom that homebrew that provided (yes, along with the bad things too). Don't get me wrong, I get hyped for official stuff all day long! But when i see good homebrew? Oh boy. Homebrew can be broken, yes. But it can be so much fun and add so much to a game

Home brew: Drinking a potion A PC can drink a potion using a Bonus Action To give/pour a potion to another PC costs an Action

@monstermoo4191

3 жыл бұрын

The epic arguements, where people will be comfortable making claims about who you are as a person, your morals, your psychology etc... all to "prove" that this level of homebrew "SoUnDs UnBaLaNcEd" is what keeps me from sharing a lot of my homebrew ideas.

“That they aren’t more broken than the nuclear family” 😂😭🥲 funny but hurts

Hey davvy, I think it would be an entertaining and helpful video where you go over the optional class features and where they may be useful and how situations where the original would be better.

After watching this I now want a beer. A heart felt thank you for giving me a reason to drink that isnt soul crushing saddness

Reflavoring options I want to put out there: 1. Conjurer that casts spells through creatures he summons or the effect of the spell itself is a summoned creature (e.g. a Fireball is a fire elemental or comes out of a familiar) 2. Make any magic effect psionics. Play around with material components and leave verbal and somatic as means of concentrating 3. Call it a warlock or sorcerer but let it be any other class. Tip: Add feats that flavour the magic if the character lacks it 4. Utilize shapeshifting mechanics as something innate for a race (e.g. Wild Shape and [transmutation wizard's] Shapechanger being a racial ability) 5. Give an ability a visual of shapeshifting or any sort of emanating energy without adding any other powers 6. Give improvised weapons stats of actual weapons as appropriate (e.g. umbrella=rapier, guitar=maul, door=shield)

I say "first get used to the base stuff, add and subtract and substitute what you like or don't like, and then get extra stuff in". So I am doing that with some newbies who I prematurely promised to have them play some magic soccer (they are nuts about "the beautiful game" and I have no clue about how it functions in real life)

As a homestuck i love "the vast glub" insertion

Sometimes I just want to create something that doesn’t explicitly exist yet. That’s where homebrew, comes in and I love making new things for players so the game feels truly unique. Like an gunslinging Eldritch Cowboy Warlock for example

@leothelion5035

2 жыл бұрын

Give it look to the last invocation for pact of the blade (the one that lets you use side gun and long guns as your pact weapons) It makes the gun magical :)

Somebody in one of my games wanted to play an earth bender, and reskinned a bunch of damage spells to be hurling various sizes of rocks. Worked Seamlessly, even asked me on a few occasions if there "is even any earth around for me to throw."

I wanted to play a blind character and RAW it would be nearly impossible, so I spoke to my DM and we made it work, now I got an artificer who can determine the quality of a sword by feeling the vibrations after tapping it against one of his tools!

@JTheVisionaryVA

3 жыл бұрын

I’m blind and have had to give so much advice about this. I’m glad that you were able to make it work, but a lot of people don’t understand that blindness is a disability and sucks outside of aesthetic. The best workaround I’ve found is rooting the disability into the character’s stats. My perception bonus is absurd because my ears are doing all of the work! As a countermeasure, they’ll be keen as can be.

@evanjackson5712

3 жыл бұрын

@@JTheVisionaryVA that's how we worked it! If I want to make any ranged attack I have to take a bonus action to use perception to determine their location. Obviously a little superhuman but I'm a 5th level adventurer and most of my spells are aoe anyway

IMHO I totally agree, there are homebrews I'm ok with and some I'm not. BUT, I totally use a bunch of homebrew - I even have a printed bunch of pages of enforced homebrews so my players can read and know before even making a character. Some are simple homebrews, like allowing spell focus to replace the somatic part of a spell EVEN if the spell doesn't have a material focus (it was less important before college of spirits bard, but I'm still checking if it's that bad with this new subclass). But others are really wide whole new systems. The main one being a straight up use of the questionable arcana I've found on the internet for crafting non magical items - it all started with a character that wanted to craft their own plate armor - and boy oh boy that doesn't work in RAW dnd. It takes way too long due to normal crafting rules, to the point that crafting a magical plate armor is much quicker. The dude then came with a character that was a dwarf brewer (aka brewer supplies proficiency) and boy, by RAW you can brew 125 mugs a day. That's because crafting is based on price, and beer is cheap ! This lead me to reworking the whole crafting system to more viable term, so someone can actually craft their own armor in a more manageable timeslot and not brew enough beer to drown a child in one day.

Homebrew is great! So long as you stick to set rules of course. I played a homebrew race a couple years back that was basically a human who popped back up again a couple hours after each death. It was just for a oneshot so it wasn't super busted and we used him as a trap detector and test dummy. I loved that character so much I made him an NPC in my own game.

Now this is a character arc.

Homebrew is great... unless you're a fresh GM. I just started running my first game a little while back - still learning to balance encounters, plothooks, etc - and the added rules of homebrew stuff makes for a lot for me to keep track of. Especially when I get one of my players throwing new homebrew at me constantly asking "Can I use this? How about this?" If I had some more experience, I'd probably be fine with it. But, for now, it's a little much

Thank you for this video its something I've been trying to discuss with a few friends and you put it succinctly

I really want to play a re-flavored swarm keeper ranger that is obssesed with slimes, so their swarm is a slime

@therussbuss5314

3 жыл бұрын

Slime Rancher

4:42 I do something similar, but its a chaos god the party has some association with grabbing players to do silly tasks in his realm.

I'm homebrewing a shark person race inspired by King Shark so that in an upcoming nautical campaign I can play a fathomless warlock who is a giant shark man that swims up to enemy ships and "Free Willy's" himself from one side of the ship to the other. All while dropping tentacles on the deck. The base mechanics I want for the character are either a goliath with the lizardfolk bite attack, or a lizardfolk with powerful build. I'm currently looking at taking the Simic Hybrid, throwing out all the animal augmentations and taking powerful build as their level 1 augment, and a 1d6+str piercing bite attack as their level 5 augment. Both those changes to the simic hybrid are probably mechanically weaker than the base stuff the race gives. They'll allow me to roleplay the character as if he's just a normal human who's big and brawny from a life of working as a dockhand until his patron takes notice and he wakes up one day with a giant shark head where his face used to be. Also they're in no way as broken mechanically as the 3 level dip in swarmkeeper ranger I'll be taking to get expertise in athletics, both jump and longstrider from level 2 onwards, and the ability of my tentacles to yeet enemies 15 feet over the side of their ship and into my waiting jaws.

With how strong some options in the game are, I often find myself giving players who have chosen classes that don't scale as well the option to take some additional features to buff them up a bit, like how EVERY sorcerer subclass I DM for has bonus spells and some bonus when it comes to casting those spells from Sorcery Points

This, I want this. I want to play 1/2 of a ferret piloted by a sentient sock that it in fact rides.

Reflavoring is the essence of character creation

Awesome video as always. Reflavoring is also an excellent tool.

The vast glub you say. HOMESTUCK HOMESTUCK HOMESTUCK

In my group, any player who is not at the session has their character turned to ash and put into a floating urn with their name on it. When they return they raise from the urn like a Phoenix and everyone acts like it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

Reflavouring makes more sense than homebrewing for classes. There are enough subclasses to choose from that if you cannot find something that fits or is similar work with the DM on trying to make it work. Hell 3.5 had SO many base "prestige" classes why pick the normal ones half the time.

It’s also worth noting you can do the same with official classes that were originally UA. If you liked the Lurker Warlock more than the Fathomless for mechanical reasons, go right ahead and stick to UA

That's what I'm talking about! Glad you came around. Even more glad you're speaking out in support of homebrewing!

Welcome to the big boys table Davvy m'boy!

Meanwhile, I'm the DM and I mass produce homebrew like a broken printer 😅

Reflavoring is the nectar of the GM gods, I played Kensei monk Reflavored as a humble gardener, With his weapons re flavoured into gardening tools, Your average longsword was a hedge clipper your throwing darts gardening trowels ect.

Ah yes. I too play DND in an actual tavern untaxed by the king. Good show.

I just watched this for Davvy Chappy character development:)

My approach is this, I as the DM provide homebrew options, not the other way. But this comes from being a DM who loves looking for new options I like more then the stuff in the core.

I've homebrewed my games so hard that I've taken the next logical step. I'm just making my own damn game at this point.

I homebrewed the Frenzy to damage to the Barbarian instead of causing levels of exhaustion thus making the bezerker viable.

0:15, I also changed my mind about homebrew when I came to the same realization. The rules hardly matter and balancing isn't that big a deal actually. I after a lot of doubts I allowed my sorcerer to play a homebrew subclass which I think is more powerful than a normal sorcerer subclasses, but after a year of playing I haven't regretted it once. If my players exploit a rule I will ask them to stop that, independent of whether the rule is homebrew or RAW, and because we all just wanna have fun they often agree.

I love homebrewing out alignment and changing the cultural aspects of d&d, and that naturally creates new mechanics. So there was a homebrew town I made in the Sword Coast North called Warmpine. They were weird because they worshipped Kossuth, a fire god, and he tends to be worshipped in hot climates. Because they are so far North and I didn't want to worry about extreme cold or it getting dark for 16 hours, I created these fire lamps that would shed bright light and warmth. It was an uncommon magic item which was a specific form of major image cast at 6th level (you can make light and heat, but not enough to cause damage). I figured that since it was so specific, and basically a continual flame with warmth, it could be an uncommon magic item. This was a very small background detail, but it went into the idea of this town being a beaken of light in the dark.

Im glad you are seeing the possibilities and fun that can be had when you homebrew

Been wanting to reflavor a bard that casts spells by making origami, rather than music.

Encumberance is a variant rule. Not using it isn't homebrew, it is and always was optional, even if you are entirely dedicated to following the rules.

The best way I’ve homebrewed spells for classes that don’t get to know a lot of spells *cough sorcerer *cough I’ve allowed them to modify existing spells and reskinning them. For a class like sorcerer, you can remove the meta magic penalty to cast an ice ball spell once they’ve cast it a couple times. This does wonders for storm sorcerers. I also told the sorcerer they automatically know the spell and can cast it once per long rest at a spell level without burning a spell slot. It’s basically a boon. I’ve done similar with the bard and wizard in the party.