Let's Chat About House Rules

Every DM or campaign has house rules. As a SoloDM, I have a few as well. These are create when a game mechanic intended for group play just doesn't work for group play.

A lot of these also serve as a checks and balance system for me and to make sure the game doesn't becoming droll by getting everything handed to me.

I intend for this to be a living post, coming back periodically to add new rules as I develop them. I will date all of them and give an example for each. I am also open to feedback, to tweak them and make them as logical and accessible for any who play. Though, I will admit, some of these are modified rules I found on reddit. Again, knowing they are used for group play, I adapted them to my particular flavor of solo play. Once I stumble upon the links I will post them so the proper people can get credit.

And without further or do, here are the rules. Feel free to use them as you see fit.

Downtime Days

Per the Adventurer's League ruleset, 5 days of downtime are awarded for every 2 hours of table play. Since solo is not as consistent, I will say for every 2 days of questing or exploring, 5 downtime days are awarded.

For example: Denckash traveled two days to retrieve a book from a neighboring town to bring to a friend in Lapoach. Altogether he travels four days, this would entitle him to 10 days of downtime.

I intend to use downtime a lot in upcoming campaigns but I don't want to be too overpowered and just do all the things right at once. The only thing I will not expend downtime is to working a job. I feel it is unnecessary to use downtime to work because it is simply to maintain a lifestyle. Not to mention that when you work, you aren't expending funds for lifestyle expenses, and working bankrolls research, crafting, what have you. However, I will cap it at 2 weeks at a time because I would rather not take away from adventuring.

Charisma checks

Whenever I am presented with a charisma check, I like to roll against the opposing party's their wisdom. So, instead of setting a DC, I roll Charisma (i.e persuasion, intimidation, etc) plus modifiers vs the opponents d20+Wis mods. I feel this makes room for more random outcomes and allows me to be more improvised.

For example: Denckash is trying to persuade an innkeeper to give him the Scaly Man Discount. He rolls a d20+0 (Cha Mod), rolling a 14. Then, I roll for the innkeeper who rolls a d20+1 (Wis Mod), rolling a 15. Denckash fails the roll because he rolled lower than the DC the innkeeper rolled.

I know this isn't too far off than the Charisma vs Insight roll, but it is tweaked a little to add to the randomness.

Determining DC

Often times I find myself perplexed on how to set DC for skill checks, so I found a wonderful system in a reddit comment. Essentially, I roll 3d6 for Easy/Medium checks and 4d6 for hard or difficult checks. Whatever the number, that is the DC for the roll.

For Example: Denckash has to walk across a fallen log to cross a stream. I roll a d100 with Mythic to determine if it is a wide tree. I set the likelihood as 50/50 and with a chaos level of 4, that is a 35% chance of a yes. I roll 75, so it is absolutely not a wide tree. With a 75, it is about wide enough to support him if he shuffles sideways. This is going to be a hard athletics check, so I will roll 4d6 and roll a 14, thus the DC is 14.

Denckash then rolls his athletics check (d20+0) and roll a 15. I say with that, he barely makes it over. It is hard because he is wobbly or the tree is bendy, but he makes it over.

Update: 08/13/2023

Skill Checks

When it comes to skill checks, I don't find it realistic to try something once, fail, and never try again. So, usually, I find it reasonable to assume one can try something multiple times. I also wanted it to be balanced, it would be taking advantage of the rules to keep trying until you get a success. I fixed this by implementing a rule that states a player has 3 tries to get succeed. Then, I put "levels of success" into play, the lower the roles, the less chances of succeeding or doing an accurate job.

• 0 Successes: You fail and you have a disadvantage on your next skill check.

• 1 success: You succeeded but did a poor job, you will have to try it again in a few rounds if it is a Constitution, Dexterity, or Strength check. If it is Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma, while you succeeded, you didn't quite get the full extent of the success (ex., a religion check has 1 success, so while your assessment is correct, the claw marks are undead but you can't tell how fresh they are).

• 2 successes: You succeeded and you did an adequate job.

• 3 successes: You succeeded spectacularly with ease. You have advantage on your next skill check

For example, Jaymz is proficient in thieves' tools but is having a bad day. The DC in this scenario is DC15. So, he rolls to pick this lock, we will use our Dex modifier to our d20 rolls (+2). First roll is 7, fail! The lock is not picked. It's okay, we have 2 more rolls. The next roll is 20! Success! Okay, one more roll and it’s an 18! With 2 successes, there is adequate success.

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More will be added as they come! For now, enjoy a shot of the Beast from the East, Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow.