Summary
Dungeons & Dragonsis a game with more rules than most people care to remember. Some of these are technically part of the game but are almost universally ignored, such as encumbrance. Others are optional rules in either the Dungeon Master’s Guide or various splatbooks, allowing DMs to customize their game to their needs.
As a DM, you should always let your players know when you’ve implemented any house rules or optional rule sets that strike your fancy, whether your campaignhasn’t started yetor is currently ongoing. Here are some of the most underutilized rules in D&D that you might want to implement.
10Exhaustion
Player’s Handbook
While OneD&D has significantly altered the rules regarding exhaustion, the traditional Fifth Edition rules are still nothing to sneeze at. There are six levels of exhaustion, which incur penalties ranging from a simple penalty to ability checks to death. Disease, certain magical effects, or simply going without a long rest can all trigger a level of exhaustion.
Every veteran player of D&D has at least heard of exhaustion, but the rule is seldom used and treated as more of a theoretical consequence than a real one. However, it’s usefulfor survival-based campaigns, and it can provide your players with an additional challenge if your PCs are accustomed to fighting everyone at peak performance.
9Mounted Combat
Shooting arrows and swinging swords on horseback just looks cool, even if it’s not the most practical solution for every problem. Still, mounted combat is easy to work into certain campaign types, such as a war campaign or a traditional high fantasy romp. Certain subclasses, such as the Cavalier fighter, are also built around the conceptof mounted combat.
There are rules for mounted combat in the Player’s Handbook, and players are already easily swayed by the offer of cool pets and mounts. If you need to figure out how to make a mount level with their owner, you could also use the sidekick classes, discussed further in this list.
8Lifestyle Expenses
While taverns and inns are ubiquitous in most D&D campaigns, the expenses of staying there are usually either handwaved or cobbled together based on what the DM feels is right. However, the Player’s Handbook provides you with an easy way to track your players' spending during downtime via a simple table.
A “modest” lifestyle will give your players the bare minimum they need to get a solid night’s sleep and maintain their equipment, but there are benefits and drawbacks to every type of lifestyle on the table. It’s also a great way to introduce your players to different NPCs and quests.
7Thieves' Cant And Druidic
Thieves' Cant and Druidic are listed in the Player’s Handbook as languages every rogue or druid knows. However, most tables don’t actually use them, making them absolutely useless when compared to other languages such as Infernal or Elvish. As a result, most druid and rogue players don’t even consider these languages to be a class feature.
While Druidic may take some creativity and effort to make organic to your world, it’s easy enough to imagine Thieves' Cant simply as coded language and slang criminals use among themselves. Doing so will make your world feel more alive, and it will make your druid and rogue players feel like these languages are actually useful.
6Parlaying With Enemies
Tasha’s Cauldron Of Everything
If an enemy knows at least one language, traditional Fifth Edition rules have always allowed players to solve their problems through talking. This is useful for campaigns with lots of social intrigue, but the rules haven’t always made it clear how DMs can measure an attempt’s success, nor does it give guidelines for parlay encounters.
Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything changes that, offering DMs guidelines on what DCs they should offer players to make successful parlays. You can also use the optional information on how to sweeten the deal for various creature types, such as offering your soul to a devil or answering a fey’s riddles three.
5Sidekicks
Plenty of campaigns will see players gather pets, camp followers, and retainers, all of whom are going to need stats. The sidekick rules in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything enable you tocreate NPC alliesthat level with your party without the headache of a full set of class features.
The Warrior and Spellcaster classes are good for extra hired muscle for tasks that are boring but important, such as guard duty. However, the Expert class is the most useful sidekick option by far, enabling you to create a noncombatant character who’s skilled in one or more areas your party could use some help in.
4More Detailed Tool Rolls
Xanathar’s Guide To Everything
Tool rolls don’t get much elaboration in the standard Fifth Edition rules. Most amount to a simple proficiency check, with no direction as to when a DM should ask for such a roll. As a result, most tool sets simply aren’t used, with the exception of thieves' tools for lockpicking.
Enter Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, which has a list of rollable tables for every tool set in the game. Many of these are also vast improvements on the traditional Fifth Edition crafting system, which takes significant amounts of in-game time and gold. Using the Xanathar’s rules, your players will only need to make a tool check and meet a certain DC.
3Cleaving Through Enemies
Dungeon Master’s Guide
Overkill can become a huge problem in D&D when fighting against multiple weaker enemies. If a player rolls for 20 damage against a creature with five hit points, they might feel their efforts have been wasted. Cleaving enemies, however, allows for all that extra damage to be put to use while making your players look cool in the process.
The rules for cleaving are simple: enemies must be within melee range and standing next to each other. Any excess damage from killing one enemy will roll over to the next foe, until there are either no more enemies within reach or no more damage points to spend.
2Marking Enemies
The marking ability in the Dungeon Master’s Guide is easily one of the most underutilized combat abilities in D&D. It’s a shame, as it makes martial classes more formidable and makes the Disengage action more strategically relevant. Marking is a free action available to characters who strike an enemy with a melee attack.
Doing so will enable a character and all their allies to make opportunity attacks whenever the target moves out of range without using up their reaction. Enemies can also mark PCs, which keeps your players on their toes as they try not to provoke opportunity attacks. There’s no hard limit on how many creatures can be marked, but you may be tempted to balance this rule by only allowing one mark at a time.
1Downtime Activity Rolls
Downtime is usually a chance for players to relax along with their characters. However, some tables want more from their downtime experience, using the time away from dungeon crawls to further their own personal quests, stir up trouble, or craft items. If you want to add more depth to downtime, look no further than Xanathar’s Guide to Everything.
The optional rules in Xanathar’s contain a host of different random tables that cover most activities players might want to try, from carousing in taverns to visiting the local temple. These tables are a godsend for any DM who wants to breathe more life into their worlds, and perhaps find an organic way to work in new sidequests while they’re at it.
