House Rules

**Rule 0: The DM is God**. The game is collaborative by nature, and opinions are welcome, but the DM's say is final, even if the rule books don't agree.

1. **Book approval.** Anything outside of the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual must be approved for use by the DM. Official content is likely to be okayed, including Unearthed Arcana, but homebrew will likely be denied. The Ranger's UA Revised is acceptable.
2. **Alignment.** There are exceptions to every rule. Not every chromatic dragon is evil. Not every elf is chaotic. Not every paladin is lawful good. Alignment restrictions will similarly be looser.
3. **Story wins.** If you can explain why a restriction or rule should or shouldn't apply because of your character's story, talk to me and we'll sort it out. Sometimes rules will be thrown out for pacing, plot, or character reasons. Sometimes I just mess up. You can let me know if you think I've messed up (preferably in private message), but be aware that it might be done for a reason.
4. **Etiquette.** During games, you should be attentive to the game. If you need to take a quick break, just let me know and we'll determine if we need to pause for a group-wide break or just let you tag along in zombie-mode. During combat, you're expected to be ready to act on your turn. I'll call your name twice, and if you appear to be afk, your turn will be skipped. Combat can already be tedious and too focused on individuals as it is. There's no reason to slow the game even further.
5. **Hold for tech!** Sometimes I'll have a lot of typing to do as a reaction or when describing things. If I say 'hold for tech' all in-game conversation should stop until I can finish typing. Feel free to chat OOC while you wait, though.
6. **Formatting.** Because of the way Discord works, we'll be using quotation marks to indicate character speech and plain text for character actions. Anything written in the IC room will indicate what your character says or does, so keep the meta commentary and side jokes in the OOC room, please!
7. Stat array is 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8 in any order you prefer, before racial bonuses.
8. **Criticals.** Per the 5e rules, the only time a natural 20 guarantees success or a natural 1 guarantees failure is on attack rolls. However, sometimes the 1s or 20s or the degree to which you beat or fail a DC will provide the opportunity for fun story-telling, so the DM may choose to use those things at will. You should not assume you succeed just because you rolled a 20.
9. **Critical Role inspired rules.** It is a bonus action to take a potion, an action to feed one to someone else.
10. **Raising the Dead.** We will use the Resurrection Challenge rules from Critical Roll, and depending on circumstances, there may be additional consequences to bringing someone back from the dead. On a spell with a cast time of one action, such as Revivify, the caster will make a single check of d20+spellcasting modifier against the character's Raise DC. On a failure, they will need a full ritual raise and they add one to their character's Raise DC. The Raise DC starts at 10 on character creation, but each time the soul is brought back to life, the DC goes up by 1. The DC does not ever go down. For a ritual casting that takes longer than one action, up to three people can assist in the ceremony which will create temporary positive or negative adjustments to the Raise DC depending on the appropriateness and persuasiveness of the contribution. After the three contributions, the DM will roll a single d20 against the temporary Raise DC determined by the ritual. Should this check fail, the soul is lost. Only a True Resurrection or Wish spell can bypass the Raise DC or return a character to life even after the ritual has failed, but there will be repercussions to such use.
11. **Going without rest.** We're using the rule in XGTE pg 78: Whenever you end a 24 hour period without finishing a long rest, you must succeed a DC 10 CON save or suffer a level of exhaustion. Each day after the first 24 hours increases the DC by 5. It resets to 10 when you finish a long rest.
12. **Insight.** The insight skill can be used with either Wisdom or Charisma to indicate either gut feelings or social intelligence.
13. **Travel rules.**
	1. **Class Options.** Features like Wanderer and Natural Explorer take some of the fun and danger out of travel, so Wanderers (Outlander background) will have advantage on navigation checks and can forage for themselves and two others (or use one of those forage checks for harvesting, to be claimed before the forage rolls). Rangers also have advantage on navigation checks, but can become lost. Rangers still forage for themselves and one other (or themselves and a harvest check).
	2. **Travel Speeds.** You can choose to travel at a fast, normal, or slow speed. Foraging and staying alert always happen unless otherwise noted in speed.

 Slow
 Medium
 Fast

1. 1. **Making Camp.**
		1. **Navigation.** At camp, the DM will make the Navigation check with the navigator's Survival skill, per the speed traveled. This way, the party doesn't know when they're lost until something happens that tells them such. Being lost will add time and potential hazards to travel.
		2. **Foraging.** At camp, each party member will roll a Foraging check with their own Survival skill. Some features allow characters to make up for failures (like Outlander and Natural Explorer) but every failure that is not made up for results in one day's rations being consumed. If *anyone* succeeds in their foraging check, waterskins were refilled for the day. If everyone fails, waterskins are dry. If everyone fails twice, the party is dehydrated.