Yeah, technically the only rule is "do what sounds good." ?
But in the case where there's Overdriven guitars the smallest rules start coming into play.
The main thing you should want in a heavier mix is Isolation.
"get your chocolate out my peanut butter" (eg. getting as much mic bleed out as possible no matter what!)
Regarding the Overheads, I always pan them hard L and R as I don't want to cut the listeners perspective of the drums short. By panning the OH's hard L/R, it creates a bigger sense of space and widens up the panoramic image making it more interesting.
The way I always explain it to myself is that OH mics are like your ears being above the drumset listening to everything as a whole, the left one is your left ear and vice versa. Not panning them out all the way is like having your ears in the incorrect place. Hence the invention of
this mic which is unbelievably realistic as it replicates exactly what a human hears (for obvious design reasons).
For the panning of kicks, snare and toms there kinda is a rule as if you pan your high tom far left but in the overheads it's sorta 56% right it's gonna throw the listener off a little hearing two instances of a tom being hit once. Because when you stand in a room with a drummer you hear the tom coming from one place not two (unless of course there's an echo/flutter which means it's not really a suitable room to record in)
Everything adds to the overall sound of the drums, (OH's, mic bleed etc) so you'd probably want to make it one sound panned in one correct place instead of all over making it messy. (I feel like I'm not really explaining myself well lol)
The best results with OD guitars have been with Guitars panned hard left and hard right, as their high-mid range often conflicts with vocals if panned center and their power often conflicts with snare and kick pushing that back in the mix and making them weaker and sometimes inaudible.
Now because the OH's
and guitars are panned hard L/R the way to solve this problem (if it is one of course) is to getting rid of as much fizz on your guitar amp and a little during mixing as possible as it is that which causes conflicting frequencies with the overheads being predominantly 648Hz - 16kHz (assuming you high-pass them). Always do it before it's been recorded as I always say "it's mixing not fixing" if you find yourself raising dB's hectically there is a problem at the source not the mix.
Hopefully this explains my point better ?
