Vanilla Dungeons & Dragons 5E is a fine game, but depending on the atmosphere you want to set and the possibilities of your setting, there are a lot of alternate rules that can bring your game to the next level. The D&D 5E Dungeon Masters Guide has some great optional rules you can use to bring different genres of games to life by playing up things like honor and horror. Beyond D&D itself, a lot of other games use mechanics that are worth porting in to create certain effects in your campaign world. Your own unique homebrew mechanics can be even more powerful tools for bringing your setting more to life.

In this episode, Thorin, Tony and Dave talk about their favorite optional rules, how to use them and when. They’ll also talk about how they designed alternate combat and wrestling rules, and how the right alternate mechanics make your campaign feel more like the world you’re trying to portray. There’s a difference between making your game more immersive and just making it more complicated, and this episode will help you know when you’re on the right side of that line.

1:00 An aside about U2, changing up musical rules, and the weird stuff you see at business conferences (we’re not sorry)

5:00 Alternate rules and a new question from Jared

8:00 Mechanic 1: Doing more with Skills and Proficiencies — and what exactly can a cleric use on a Rod of Lordly Might?

20:00 From firearms to madness: A few of the alternate rules we already play with

24:00 Mechanic 2: Monsters with character classes and levels like Strahd

26:00 Mechanic 3: Opposed-roll parries and abusing them with 2E Bladesingers

30:00 Mechanic 4: House-ruling treasure to make it less predictable

32:00 Using alternate mechanics to feed the atmosphere of your campaign — like human sacrifice

38:00 Mechanic 5: Slow natural healing and lingering injuries

41:00 Mechanic 6: Taking weapons off simple mode and adding deeper combat mechanics

47:00 Mechanic 7: Damage rules for crits, mass damage, and more

55:00 Mechanic 8: Honor and reputation systems for codifying how PC’s impact the world

63:00 Mechanic 9: Divine intervention and how the Ghatanothoa sentient sacrifice mechanic works

67:00 Final thoughts and more mechanics we’d like to play with