One of the things that’s as constant in the history of Dungeons & Dragons as the official rules are each group’s house rules. In the group I’m in, the Wyrmfang Chronicles, we have a few of our own. Here’s a couple of ours plus a few that I’ve seen elsewhere.

Wyrmfang Chronicles House Rules

The Werebear

I don’t recall the origins of this rule, but we created a rule that applies at character creation. When you create a new character, you roll percentile dice. If the result is an 01, your character is a werebear. It’s happened exactly… never. There was a character in our campaign who was a werebear, but via other means.

On the Pronunciation of Drow

Regardless of official TSR/Wizards canon, the proper pronunciation of drow is like crow, or row, or snow. It does not rhyme with cow or sow or plow.

Spell Components

To alleviate the necessity of minute tracking of spell components, we’ve added a few enhancements. First of all, it is always assumed that you have any spell components of minor value (10-50 GP or less) so long as you have your normal gear. Further, for instances where a specific quantity of a certain gem is required, you may substitute other gems and coins of equal value. For example, Raise Dead requires 5000 GP of diamond dust. We allow you to substitute other gems totaling 5000 GP.

Birthday D30

If a gaming session falls on your exact birthday, you may roll a D30 instead of a D20 once during that evening’s session.

The On-Time Question Rule

A relatively recent addition is that if you show up on time, our DM will allow you to ask one question related to the current campaign. He may not give you an answer, but you get the option to ask.

My Favorite Rules From Others

Recap XP

Players who participate in giving a recap from the last session receive a story bonus XP award.

Re-Roll 1’s for HP

When rolling your hit points for a new level, re-roll if you rolled a 1.

Packing the Horses

One time half of our group spent almost an ENTIRE 3 hour game session figuring out what gear was packed on which horse. Any rule which just assumes everything is distributed across the various animals is fine by me. If you lose an animal without saving it’s packs, you randomly figure out a percentage of stuff that was lost.

CritMax (The Chris Perkins Rule)

On a crit, the original damage dice are automatically maxed.

What are some of your favorite house rules?