House Rules

House Rules Introduction
While Castle Mac strives to play Dungeons and Dragons by the rules, occasionally decisions have been made to modify the existing ruleset either to simplify play or encourage behaviors. Below is the exhaustive list of these rules.

Animal Companions
Familiars, summoned animals, and other trained animal companions act on their player's character's initiative. As with Mounted Combat, the player must decide whether the animals act before or after the player character when initiative is rolled, and may not change that for the duration of the combat.

Inspiration
Castle Mac has made a number of changes to Inspiration. Namely, inspiration has been improved from the core rulebook to allow for the re-roll of a d20 the player just rolled. Players may still only have one inspiration at a time.

Player Given Inspiration
At the start of each session, Castle Mac players are given a token representing a player-given inspiration (red beads for in person games). This inspiration token can be traded to the DM to give inspiration (blue beads) to another fellow player at some point during the game. This may not occur immediately after a die roll, but may be given for any reason. This practice was to give a mechanical benefit to encouragement and player-driven recognition for good RP, awesome actions, or whatever else.

Divine Inspiration
Castle Mac streamed games allow audience participation in the form of Divine Inspiration. A divine inspiration die is added to a group pool when Twitch audience members subscribe or donate a pre-determined number of bits. These inspiration dice can be used by any player to gain advantage on a die roll (prior to rolling) or give the DM disadvantage on a die roll. Using a divine inspiration precludes the use of spending regular inspiration for a re-roll.

Neither player given nor divine inspiration may influence death saves.

Mounted Combat
Mounted combat is complicated in the rules, and spread across multiple sections. Castle Mac simplifies Mounted combat in the following ways:

Actions & Initiative
A mount uses the initiative of its rider. However, the rider must determine at the point initiative is rolled whether the mount will act BEFORE or AFTER the rider, and cannot change this throughout the course of the combat.

A mount has 3 actions it may take, except where specified below: Dodge, Disengage, Dash.

"Trained" vs "Untrained"
Castle Mac adds a distinction in mounts. "Trained" vs "Untrained" for combat. Trained mounts should include special mounts or otherwise important mount creatures. The only difference is whether or not a mount can take the attack action. Optionally, the DM may require animal handling rolls based on the training of a mount.

Intelligent Mounts
An intelligent mount (like a Dragon) should be treated in exactly the same way if it is under a player's control. However, it may take additional actions it has (such as Multiattack, breath attacks, etc). Again, for ease, this is controlled by the player on their initiative.

Potions
Potions may optionally be imbibed on a bonus action. As a result, Castle Mac narratively limits the number of healing potions a character may possess (usually through shortage of availability). The usual limit is 1-3. However, improved versions of healing potions should be given to players at higher tiers.

Short Rests
Short rests no longer require a full hour, instead only requiring 3-5 minutes. The party is, however, limited to two uses of the short rest mechanics between long rests. Further, any lasting effects that have 1 hour or less remaining at the start of the short rest are ended at the start of the rest.