I am curious what house rules people play with when the game. This is mostly aimed at the 5E crowd but I am still curious what changes people think are so necessary there are House rules added for them.
In 5E we always played with Drinking a Potion was a bonus action if you had it ‘on your belt’. Meaning everyone would have one potion they picked to be in a ‘ready’ state.
In 13th Age we allow a Potion to be drunk as a Quick Action if the player makes an Easy Save, on a fail they have to roll the save again on their next Quick Action.
In 5E we basically ignored Encumbrance and just made a judgement call is something was ‘too much’. (13th Age already does this in the rules)
I don’t tend to use a lot of house rules, and what I do are usually additive then changing some rule. In one of my Traveller games I added a Luck Point system, where if somebody rolled double ones on a skill check they got a Luck Point. Then after another skill check they could spend a point to reroll. You can’t spend more than one point on a roll, but more than one person can spend a point on a single skill check to reroll it again. It’s been great for player engagement, and has lead to some really fun moments as everybody scrambles to check if they have any points to spend on an important roll. Another one I use in my Traveller games is I added an Overwatch action. Inspired by the Xcom games, you can spend your action on your turn to keep your gun trained on a specific area, and if anybody moves through that area you get a free shot.
I also recently started playing Pathfinder 2e, and though in keeping it rules as written, especially as I learn the system, I have made it so that the party can only level up if they’re in Downtime mode, to encourage my players to actually make use of Downtime.