Misc Rules

Rules that don't warrent their own pages.

Handedness
Roughly ten percent of the population are lefthanded.

Characters that are left-handed have no mechanical penalties, but in some societies, lefthanded people are frowned upon, or viewed with suspicion.

Performing complex tasks, such as fighting with a weapon or using tool with the “wrong” hand imposes disadvantage on any check involved. Ambidextrous characters do not suffer penalties for using their “wrong” hand for complex tasks.

Character Wealth At Higher Levels
Should the event arise that a player creates a new character, be it by a character dying or simply replacing it, they have different starting wealth and equipment to fit into them having adventured in their own past.

Variant Skill Advancement
At levels 5, 10, 15 and 20, characters automatically gain proficiency in one additional weapon, tool, language or skill. This gradual increase of skills will make characters slightly more powerful, but it also allows for a better customization and shows character growth.

Automatic Successes
While ‘Taking 10 and 20’ don’t really exist in the core game, 5e still has passive scores for some skills such as Perception and Investigation. It’s not that far of a stretch to create passive scores for all of your skills by simply adding 10 to your total modifiers. If the GM calls for a skill check and the DC is equal to or lower than 10 plus your skill modifier, this can be counted as an automatic success. If there is a significant danger or element of failure, then the GM may require a roll regardless.

For example, a rogue with a Stealth of +7 wants to sneak past some guards. The guards have a passive Perception of 12. The rogue has an automatic Stealth of 17. It’s reasonable to allow the rogue to sneak by without rolling. If he was to attempt to steal a key off one of the guards, then that might not be allowed, since that carries significant risk.

Firing Into Melee
Yes, you can hit your friends and unintended targets.

When firing into melee, cover bonus is added to the normal fumble threat range of 1. If you roll within that range, you reroll against a random target granting cover.

Example: An ally is attacking a goblin and both are engaged in melee. You fire a ranged attack at the goblin. You must add the soft cover bonus of +2 to your normal fumble range of 1. This becomes a fumble chance of 1-3. If you roll a fumble, you would strike your ally instead of the goblin. However, if there were multiple allies or goblins surrounding a target, this could have different results, such as striking a different goblin or ally.

Coup de Grace
As an action, you can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless (incapacitated, paralyzed, restrained, stunned or unconscious) opponent. You can also use a bow or crossbow, provided you are within 30’ of a helpless target.

You automatically hit and score a critical hit. If the defender survives the damage, he must make a Constitution save (DC 10 + damage dealt) or become dying with 0 hit points. A rogue also gets her extra sneak attack damage against a helpless opponent when delivering a coup de grace.

You can’t deliver a coup de grace against a creature that is immune to critical hits.

Better Critical Hits
With this variant, critical hits are more lethal. Instead of simply dealing double the dice of damage, critical hits deal maximum damage plus the attack’s dice of damage. For example, a longsword attack that deals 1d8+5 damage would deal 1d8+13 on a critical hit.

The benefit to this variant is that critical hits become much more effective and faster during gameplay. This is nice because as written there are times when a critical hit could equate to simply one more point of damage, which is neither impressive, fun nor cinematic. This does make combat a little more lethal though and especially at low level. If you want a more gritty or epic game, consider this variant.

Critical Damage to Equipment
PCs may choose to reduce a critical hit to a normal hit, but at the cost of reducing either their armor or shield bonus by 1 point. If a shield loses all of its bonus, it is destroyed. If a suit of armor is reduced to an AC of 10, it is destroyed.

Fumbles
With this variant rule, a character that rolls a natural 1 on an attack roll suffers disadvantage on their next attack roll.