Important information for D&D 5e

This article contains the essentials needed to know to participate in games based in Xhoria. It goes over my homebrew houserules, the variant rules presented in the DMG and some interesting tidbits about Xhoria.

Alternative Resurrection Rules
Character death can often prove to become a minor inconvenience in some campaigns once the adventuring party reaches a certain level, with spells being available to return fallen comrades from the afterlife with temporary setbacks, robbing a small element of danger and threat to future conflicts and challenges within the story. If you wish to elevate the gravity of character death, you can introduce this optional rule. If a character is dead, and a resurrection is attempted by a spell or spell effect with longer than a 1 action casting time, a Resurrection Challenge is initiated. Up to 3 members of the adventuring party can offer to contribute to the ritual via a Contribution Skill Check. The DM asks them each to make a skill check based on their form of contribution, with the DC of the check adjusting to how helpful/impactful the DM feels the contribution would be. For example, praying to the deity of the devout, fallen character may require an Intelligence (Religion) check at an easy to medium difficulty, where loudly demanding the soul of the fallen to return from the aether may require a Charisma (Intimidation) check at a very hard or nearly impossible difficulty. Advantage and disadvantage can apply here based on how perfect, or off base, the contribution offered is. After all contributions are completed, the DM then rolls a single, final Resurrection success check with no modifier. The base DC for the final resurrection check is 10, increasing by 1 for each previous successful resurrection the character has undergone (signifying the slow erosion of the soul’s connection to this world). For each successful contribution skill check, this DC is decreased by 3, whereas each failed contribution skill check increases the DC by 1. Upon a successful resurrection check, the player’s soul (should it be willing) will be returned to the body, and the ritual succeeded. On a failed check, the soul does not return and the character is lost. Only the strongest of magical incantations can bypass this resurrection challenge, in the form of the True Resurrection or Wish spells. These spells can also restore a character to life who was lost due to a failed resurrection ritual. If a spell with a casting time of 1 action is used to attempt to restore life (via the Revivify spell or similar effects), no contribution skill checks are allowed. The character casting the spell makes a Rapid Resurrection check, rolling a d20 and adding their spellcasting ability modifier. The DC is 10, increasing by 1 for each previous successful resurrection the character has undergone. On a failure, the character’s soul is not lost, but the resurrection fails and increases any future Resurrection checks’ DC by 1. No further attempts can be made to restore this character to life until a resurrection spell with a casting time higher than 1 action is attempted.

Banned Races
There are a few races that are either overpowered or do not fit within the world of Xhoria. These are as follows.
 * Aarakocra (Flight is overpowered at lvl 1)
 * Simic Hybrid (What even is it?)
 * Vedalken (Overpowered due to adv on saving throws)
 * Yuan-ti Pureblood (Unless you remove Magic Resistance)
 * Loxodon (Specific to ravnica)
 * Variant Human (Given that I'm planning on giving everyone a free feat)

Bloodied Condition
A character is bloodied when the character's hit points are equal to or less then one-half the character's maximum hit points, rounded down. One-half the character's maximum hit points is referred to as the character's bloodied value. For example: a character with 50 maximum hit points has a bloodied value of 25, and is bloodied whenever the character's hit points are equal to or less than 25. Most of the time this will be used to communicate progress into defeating a monster and will have no impact on gameplay. Some monsters or homebrew classes might have features that activate whenever a character has the bloodied condition.

Bonus Action Healing Potions
Using any healing potion on yourself will cost a bonus action instead of an action. Using any healing potion on someone else will still cost an action.

Carrying Capacity
If it makes sense for you to carry a thing, you can carry it. You won't be able to carry whole statues, but I do not mind you having a lot of tiny stuff in your inventory. The exception to this is when it's in huge quantities, think a gigantic hoard of gold, or a pile of swords and armor.

Intelligence Skill Points
To avoid making Intelligence a dump-stat, I'm adding this houserule. Your Intelligence modifier is the amount of Skill Points you have, which can be negative. You can use these skill points buy skill proficiency (which costs 1 point), tool proficiency (1), a language (1), or you can gain double your proficiency bonus in a skill you are already proficient in instead of only once (3). If you have a negative score, you must take away a skill/tool proficiency, a language. Your choice.

Juicy Critical Attacks
In my games critical attacks don't double the dice, but you do this: When you score a critical hit, roll for damage normally. Then determine the maximum damage you can roll with your attack before applying any modifiers. Combine the maximum result with your rolled damage, and then add any modifiers. This is your critical hit damage. An example of this would be a greatsword attack with a strength modifier of 3: You roll 2d6, add 12 (the maximum you can roll with 2d6), and then add the 3 from the strength modifier. Your damage would be 2d6+12+3. Keep in mind: these rules apply to everyone, even enemies.

Secret Death Saves
When a player has 0 hit points they go in a downed state and have to roll death saving throws. When a player rolls well players might think that that player is not needing of any healing. Thats why I houserule that I, as the DM, roll the death saving throws of a player in secret. You just have to believe, the DM, that I will not fudge the rolls. This will definitely increase the tension in combat when a player is downed.

Travel Weariness
During long travels over land, there will be no long rests. This is to enable me as a dm to spread out combat encounters over multiple traveling days, instead of having to put them all on one day.

Feats
I allow feats. I think it adds a lot of customizability to the game and your character. I'm also allowing one single free feat for everyone at level 1.

Flanking
I personally don't like the flanking rules in the DMG, and thus I have made my own changes to the rule. A creature can't flank an enemy that it can't see. A creature also can't flank while it is incapacitated. You can't flank a creature 2 sizes larger than you. When a creature and at least one of its allies are adjacent to an enemy and on opposite sides or corners of the enemy's space, they flank that enemy, and each of them has a +2 on melee attack to hit rolls against that enemy.

Inspiration
I haven't tried using inspiration in a game yet, and probably still wont. If I ever decide to use inspiration I will let you know.

Level Advancement Without XP
I don't like using XP for leveling because it encourages combat over the other pillars of Dungeons & Dragons, exploration and social interaction. I, as the DM, decide when the party levels up. This is decided on the amount of adventures and quests the party has completed and their difficulty. All members of the party are the same level

More difficult Identification
I like magic items to be a bit more special than normal. You can identify a magic item using the Identify spell as usual, but you can only identify a magic item during a short rest if you succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check with a DC determined by the rarity of the magic item.

Multiclassing
I also allow multiclassing, at least if you know what you're doing.