Homebrew D&D is unofficial content and should be treated with caution. In-game fiction that changes the official rules is usually a better solution.
The concept of “self-made” in Dungeons and Dragons may be a bit difficult to define, but broadly speaking, it includes any content used for D&D that is not from official first-party books published by Wizards of the Coast. This means that homebrew can contain customized content from a single Dungeon Master for use in their games, or it can contain third-party D&D-compatible released products created under an open game license. Game groups should be cautious and exercise judgment when adding homemade software to the game. Some properly used self-made content can bring unique brilliance to the battle, but too much self-made content can make the game extremely unbalanced, destroy the DM's expected tone of the battle, or completely derail the game.
The content of self-made rules, including new professions, spells, and other mechanisms, are different from self-made campaign settings. The official D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide provides advice and guidance for DMs who wish to create their own world, instead of using official campaign settings like Eberron or Forgotten Realms. This involves DM creating a map of the world of its original D&D campaign to determine the details of cosmology, country, technical level, etc. Custom-designed battle worlds are the main content of many team D&D experiences, but these games only become truly "homemade" when they include content that is not part of the official D&D books.
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Dungeons & Dragons is not intended to be a general-purpose desktop role-playing game that supports any type of game. It is geared towards heroic fantasy adventures, which usually involve land travel and exploration, deep trapped and fortified mazes, and conflicts with monsters in mythology. Most of the published D&D settings, whether official or third-party, are designed around these assumptions and provide player characters with the opportunity to participate in D&D as a hero of the system's advantage. Homebrew D&D settings can include worlds based on video games, fantasy novels, or completely original works from team dungeon masters. Each setting is different, and some may need to restrict D&D content, or add new self-made content to reflect the uniqueness of the setting.
Imposing restrictions on games may not look like homemade software, but it may have gone too far. Certain settings restrict certain races or professions that do not exist in the game world. The background of the dark day is a gloomy D&D world, and the gods have perished, so sacred D&D professions like priests and paladins are not suitable for their battles. Many scenes focus on illustrating the rarity of magic, whether it is commonplace or industrialized, such as in Eberron, or extremely rare. This is good, and still largely meets D&D's guidelines, but the game assumes that magic is real, which is taken into account in most of the game's balance. Running a D&D game in a world with no gods or magic will severely limit the available courses and close most of the game's rules and content, such as "restricting" cross-border entry into homemade games.
A good self-made option adds appropriate content for settings or activities that meet the established balance of D&D's existing rules. DMs should be careful not to assume that the content published by a third party is digitally printed or sold and assume that it is balanced, because most of the content is seriously unbalanced or does not match the official D&D content. The 5e D&D rules prioritize simplicity and ease of use, but balance is also the main consideration for any game. When weighing whether to use third-party content, whether it is a new profession, sub-class, specialty, or spell, DM should compare it with official D&D products. These show the types of capabilities that each level usually provides, and can provide benchmarks on whether third-party classes are suppressed.
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Homemade backgrounds are easier to measure because the rules already allow for background generation, as long as they provide a combination of two well-trained skills, and up to two language or tool proficiency, and some kind of useful non-combat social or exploratory privilege. Weighing the balance of a homemade D&D game is a little more complicated. As long as they follow the guidelines listed in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, either +2 for one attribute, +1 for another attribute, or +3 for three different attributes, the statistical part should be acceptable. However, DMs still need to weigh whether their abilities of other races are comparable to those of the existing formal races.
Judging homemade Feats and Spells involves a similar paradigm that compares them with D&D content published by Wizards of the Coast. The feat of using a specific weapon type to provide additional action attacks may be consistent with the official D&D feats (such as crossbow specialists and polearm masters), but it is inappropriate to add the feat of additional attacks to attack actions because it overlaps with the extra attacks. Features. Understand the types of benefits provided by official competitions, expertise, and professional features, so that DMs can properly evaluate self-produced content. When judging self-made spells, it is easy to find a spell that causes much higher damage than official spells of the same level, but the DM should also pay attention to discovering spells that provide significant non-concentration buffs and compare them with the appropriate level of such spells. The comparison is in the official content.
In addition to judging the balance of self-made content, DM should also ensure that it meets the basic rules of D&D. Although some DMs use optional rules or internal rules to make memorable activities, even these groups should be careful not to modify the core rules of the game too much in their homemade adventures, because they'd better use a different system completely. The restrictive rules in D&D are there for a reason. Things that allow unlimited reactions or cancel the caster's concentration limit seriously disrupt the balance of the game. The self-made content that changes the basic rules of D&D goes beyond self-made content and completely enters the field of different games.
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Some home-made software that changes the mechanism according to the situation may be fine, because many core rules do this. Homebrew has completely changed the basic principles of the game-such as changing the rules, in which all light armors allow a character's AC full dexterity bonus, and all medium armors have an upper limit of +2, or multiplying static modifiers with critical strikes. Not just to roll the dice-it reflects a completely different system from 5e D&D, such as the third-party rule replacing Level Up: Advanced 5E, which is not compatible with D&D rules, only compatible with its adventures. DM can determine whether self-made content provides contextual exceptions, or whether it covers the core mechanisms of D&D. If enough core rules have been changed and the game is no longer similar or functionally similar to the official 5e D&D, then the team may best just look for a different desktop RPG system that is more suitable for its campaign.
Although D&D professions and specialties have their own fictitious descriptions, sometimes called "flavored texts," the team can separate the rules and mechanics of the Dungeons and Dragons content from the descriptions in the game as needed in their battles. Before making a new race or profession, the D&D team should strongly consider "remaking" existing elements. A role concept involving the sixth sense of the mind, such as Spider-Man’s "Spider Sense", does not require new classes or subsystems, because it can be simply mechanically represented as a thief using a cunning action function for Dodge to take regular actions and Take warning expertise to avoid being surprised. Similarly, elven race statistics can be used instead of designing the Helia race for the D&D campaign in the Zelda game world.
The D&D rules are simple and balanced, but the fictional "style" of the class conforms to a specific fantasy style. In most cases, players seeking more unconventional character prototypes should still "remake" existing content rather than self-made content. For example, a D&D player trying to simulate Zangief from a street fighter style martial artist may have difficulty creating a balanced self-made D&D Monk subcategory that interacts with existing Grab rules in this way.
Instead, they can simply play as a warrior of mechanical standards, possess great weapon master expertise, and a subclass of combat masters that enable them to knock down enemies with attacks, describing their sledgehammer attacks in the game as wrestling actions. . Homebrew offers a lot of potential for Dungeons & Dragons games, but if the real intention is to explore new concepts not covered in the core rules, rather than breaking the balance of the game, it is usually better to separate the rules from the "flavor" in the game method.
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Derek Garcia is the game writer for ScreenRant. He lives with his wife, three dogs and an excessive number of video game consoles. When he is not writing, playing video games, watching movies or TV, or reading novels or comic books, he occasionally spends some time sleeping. Derek majored in journalism and worked in a print newspaper before discovering the Internet. He is a fan of science fiction and fantasy, video games and tabletop role-playing games, classic Hong Kong action movies and graphic novels. After immersing himself in the nerd culture for many years, Derek is now happy to write about the media he likes instead of just ranting at his friends.