In the 70s, the rate of "natural" healing was so low (1 hp per 24 hours of uninterrupted rest if you have food and shelter IIRC) that it made sense for loss of HP to indicate actual wounds.
But when you can regain your full HP in one nights sleep, even if camping outdoors, it just doesn't make sense to do that anymore.
But there has never been a good suggestion of what to replace the original way of narrating combat with. So the core design philosophy of 5e comes into play once again: any problem can be solved by making the DM do more work. Everyone just has to make up an answer on their own.
I have a little table for how long it takes for grevious injuries to heal (that is really me just saying it on the spot and typing it in fantasy grounds), most require some kind of magical healing, my players seem to have enjoyed it. Prosthetic limbs that work like the real thing take a high level party like the one im running a workday to whip up, but they have access to an item that gives Regeneration so its not even an issue anymore
But I only do a "Grevious" wound if it's an incredibly substantial amount of hitpoints, like 90% of their total hitpoints in one blow. Otherwise yeah they flat out just heal up over the course of a long rest like a marvel character with healing factor
This wouldn't work for all tables or settings, of course (like curse of strahd), for what level my party is though I want them to feel like just plain vastly superior to regular humans - but at the same time they keep getting pushed onto their back feet by the things they face, showing how absolutely fucked non adventurers are against things like beholders and dragons
I guess we kind of treat each individual time you take damage as a literal wound when it happens, but when we look at combined wounds suffered over time we abstract it a bit
Yeah I describe HP loss as actual hits and wounds, but just sort of ignore that when it comes to healing. Honestly it's never come up other than occasionally joking about it outside of game. I think it's one of those things that everyone seems to intrinsically understand as just part of the game.
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Yea D&Ds reality is built on a house of cards. It's best not to look too closely at any one thing unless you're looking to explore a theme with a custom campaign.
Yeah, I always just consider HP to be 'luck' and once you hit 0 your luck is out. Same for healing, (unless they are picking you up from 0, they are just praying to their god to 'protect' you.)
Yea D&Ds reality is built on a house of cards. It's best not to look too closely at any one thing unless you're looking to explore a theme with a custom campaign.
Also, a big hit doesn't need to mean a sword goes through your spleen or whatever. It can also mean something like a hard hit that you take on your shield or dents your armor, etc. that rattles your noggin and knocks the wind out of you for a moment.
Also, a big hit doesn't need to mean a sword goes through your spleen or whatever. It can also mean something like a hard hit that you take on your shield or dents your armor, etc. that rattles your noggin and knocks the wind out of you for a moment.
yeah this is how DMs handle it in the games I play in, or for spellcasters its hard hits off their mage armor or barely dodged slashes that draw a bit of blood
I used to in the game I'm running, but around the time the party got to 7th level and was getting hit with fireballs, I basically just started treating them like wolverine
also I just ended up having them all get air conditioned clothes of mending because I was tired of dealing with the jungle survival aspects of the module which weren't a serious threat to the players' lives anyway (and everyone didn't really seem to be enjoying)
override367 on
0
Options
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Yea we handwaved a lot of the survival stuff in out of the Abyss as well. Our DM redid the psychological aspects of the campaign to make them more interesting and unique and we focused on that.
I'd much rather worry about the fact that I sold my soul to Baphomet in a moment of weakness after months of crazy visions than worry if I have mushroom to eat.
I go with the armors been hit so hard or so many times that you/they are now exposed kind of deal...where hit points are more to do with the details than the health. Does that make sense?
As a follow up to artifacts I revised mine so the benefits far outweigh the detriments.
Some detriments I outright changed like instead of magical potions becoming non-magical within 10' radius, they had to "feed" the artifact a potion as a way to renew its magic.
Complainers are thrilled.
The Witch they killed had a trove of treasure and we're having a treasure party session to divvy it all up. A no pressure session so we can all just hang out and get to know each other (one of the suggestions I had from the people who wanted to quit) whilst ogling the new shinies.
A couple of us will also be teaching everyone how to read their character sheets since there were some gripes about that as well.
Looking forward to that actually. It's like a party to talk about D&D!
I have always liked an HP/Vitality points dichotomy but haven't found a way to implement it into DnD. Maybe remove "negative HP".
The thing i like most about HP/Vitality is that you can make some types of actions deal HP damage rather than vitality damage and then you don't have a problem with verisimilitude at higher levels when dealing with environmental effects. Falling damage is 1d6 HP/10' and you have HP==Con Score so if you fall 20 feet you could just die.
Edit: One of the things i attempted but wasn't sure that worked was
Exhaustion is expanded to work like HP in a d10 system. There is normal exhaustion and lethal exhaustion and you fill in as sums so that total=normal+lethal. You can cure a normal point of exhaustion by resting for a day but you can only cure a point of lethal exhaustion by resting for a day and receiving magical healing (one point per spell level, max one spell per day, spell slot is unavailable the next day, spell does not regain HP when used in this manner)
HP as normal but when you take damage that would put you at zero HP you take a point of lethal exhaustion, like in a d10 system. And environmental effects generally do instant HP damage.
I basically just lean into the anime aspect of HP. Heroes taking hits that should definitely kill them in a realistic setting, magical healing closing up wounds wolverine style. We're playing out action fantasy here.
Hitting 0 just means you've taken a particularly nasty hit or two that may kill you. Till that monster buries its sword in your lifeless husk to eliminate your death saves your injuries are basically superficial.
I mean look at an action movie,the hero always gets shot a few times, maybe steps on broken glass, they're fine after a short rest
my D&D players can push on to fight the lich with a missing lung and after having fallen into lava, they're just that tough, and some magical healing and they're right as rain
I have selectively applied levels of exhaustion for magically healing grevious wounds but that's rare, in the lava example, someone got submerged in lava, got lay on handsed to full (while in lava!) but the paladin couldnt get them out
they got out the next turn, taking like 170% of their hp in damage, they were a well done steak at that point, got magically healed to full but I gave them an indefinite form of madness until they got a couple nights of long rest, they became afraid of fire and suffered the Frightened condition from having any fire within 60 feet (that was actually the player's idea! I like my players) until getting a Greater Restoration later on
Any kind of magic healing, even just like cantrip level stuff, doesn't seem to me to be any kind of a problem in narrating the effects on the characters. It's magic. It can, by definition, patch up wounds in ways that don't "make sense".
Healing up to full with a few hours fitful rest holed up in a corner of the dungeon with the door spiked shut is less easy....
Any kind of magic healing, even just like cantrip level stuff, doesn't seem to me to be any kind of a problem in narrating the effects on the characters. It's magic. It can, by definition, patch up wounds in ways that don't "make sense".
Healing up to full with a few hours fitful rest holed up in a corner of the dungeon with the door spiked shut is less easy....
I mean, your players are just super tough, they can "Deal with it", at some point they'll get magical healing, maybe they actually really are so cosmically tough that they can function without some of their major organs, they're beyond whatever their race's limits should be
if you're in a low magic campaign you kinda have to do the whole "hitpoints are basically luck points and when you hit zero is when you actually get stabbed or burned" though, other than minor flesh wounds
Any kind of magic healing, even just like cantrip level stuff, doesn't seem to me to be any kind of a problem in narrating the effects on the characters. It's magic. It can, by definition, patch up wounds in ways that don't "make sense".
Healing up to full with a few hours fitful rest holed up in a corner of the dungeon with the door spiked shut is less easy....
If you prefer a narrative that ends up with a 1 HP character limping to that rest holding his intestines in his hand missing an arm, then sure it's tough to reconcile.
If that 1 HP character instead is bruised and battered, Winded and spent, suffering mostly superficial cuts and scrapes, then its much easier for things to "make sense".
My games tend to fall somewhere in between and, frankly, nobody really sweats it all that much.
Magic healing in a "vitality" point system where HP doesn't represent real wounds can be weird. Resting makes a lot of sense under that system but magical healing does not. Since its no longer healing wounds and is instead magical cocaine. The problem is less that the construction of the magic doesn't work but that the understanding of when to use it does. "I figured you were about to get hit so i gave you an infusion of energy" is weird on a lot of levels.
Hmm one of my players isnt happy with ranger, and I dont blame him, but he still likes his character and his beast companion
I have been wanting to homebrew up "revised ranger, but a lot less wordy and better" for a while
There is an attempt at a less crappy ranger on Unearthed Aracana. I don't know how much better it is in practice though.
There are several different ones, I think. One of them is pretty good; I believe it was the one that got printed along with the first draft of the shadow stalker ranger. It also has a version of beast master ranger that is not hot garbage, although it's still broadly not as powerful as other ranger archetypes.
Beast Master in particular is definitely not less wordy than the PHB version, though.
Magic healing in a "vitality" point system where HP doesn't represent real wounds can be weird. Resting makes a lot of sense under that system but magical healing does not. Since its no longer healing wounds and is instead magical cocaine. The problem is less that the construction of the magic doesn't work but that the understanding of when to use it does. "I figured you were about to get hit so i gave you an infusion of energy" is weird on a lot of levels.
How about something more like "I figured we were all in a lot of danger, so I performed the Chant of the Nine Awakened Elders and when my diety saw you were about to get hit, because of its regard for my devotion to its laws and precepts, it gave you an infusion of energy"? Alter seasonings as needed for school of healing magic, propensity for interpretive dance vs. prayer in your healing tradition, etc. etc.
Our semi-historical campaign was not very historical this time, it was a dungeon crawl:
Last time we (paladin, cleric, barbarian and scout (me)) trapped in a corridor of living flesh, an illusion that we were so far unable to dispel.
This time our cleric cast a ritual to create a burst of holy light that erased the illusion and we met up with two noblemen, one of them suffering from serious brain damage. Both had ties to our barbarian (he worked as a bodyguard for them before and was the one to actually injure the younger brother before he fled Byzantium), but luckily did not recognize him. The brothers were on a quest to find a powerful weapon within
We went through a couple of puzzle rooms that had ghosts in them, each of them trapped in a single scene, all with biblical themes (possibly with the seven deadly sins, though we were unable to connect them all). After quickly solving the first two riddles (ghosts grieving in a chapel over a dead baby, solved by sprinkling the baby with holy water, so it was baptized. A couple arguing with each other, solved by giving them coins), our NPCs now believe that my scout is an expert exorcist.
We encountered a tree with apples made of solid gold (so I pocketed a lot of them) and had a weird bench with snakes on it. A bit of experimenting I dripped some blood on the bench and ghosts talked to me. The other party members tried the same and it seemed to be the ghosts of our victims/people we saved (the two characters with background in war had a worse experience than the cleric and my scout. (The cleric actually hasn't killed any human being in our quests so far, only ghosts)). We couldn't figure it out, so we went into the next room: ghosts of hungry children watching a rich man eat. Leading to the following conversation:
Scout: "I try to touch the food"
GM: "You pass through it."
Barbarian: "Can I touch the rich man?"
GM: "Also intangible"
Cleric: "Can I touch the kids?"
Me OOC: "Eh, Mr. Catholic Priest, wanna rephrase that?"
The paladin was smart enough to give one of the golden apples to the kids and that solved that one.
Next few puzzles weren't too difficult either (a mirror that enraptured the barbarian (who is very vain)) and magic candles that caused illusions of beautiful people trying to seduce the person holding the candle.
After solving these quests, we found a basement with pagan symbols and a circle of candles (with one unlit, the last riddle we hadn't found yet probably.) We lit the last candle and summoned a demonic beast. It rolled really, really well on its first attack and dropped our barbarian to about 10hp left with 1 attack, but we did manage to defeat it though one of the NPCs lost an eye during the fight. After the fight we found the magic weapon they were guarding and that's were we ended.
Not a lot of history this time, a bit on St. Peter the Martyr. Our DM told us that she had planned to put this dungeon on the main land after we left Cyprus, but we went a bit wild exploring Cyprus last session.
[/quote]
My guys just arrived at the Wizards of Wine (And the Light Cleric and Wizard both just learned fireball, so pretty much annihilated the forty or so twig blights outside the winery), so they'll have a bit of a donjon crawl tonight. Whether they'll head to Yester Hill afterwards to finish off the druids or not I can't say.
Their reading is pointing them towards Krezk and Argynvostholt, but they've left Ireena Kolyana in the Blue Water Inn for now. She'll likely get kidnapped by Izek Strazni during the latest Festival, whether they return or not.
My guys just arrived at the Wizards of Wine (And the Light Cleric and Wizard both just learned fireball, so pretty much annihilated the forty or so twig blights outside the winery), so they'll have a bit of a donjon crawl tonight. Whether they'll head to Yester Hill afterwards to finish off the druids or not I can't say.
Their reading is pointing them towards Krezk and Argynvostholt, but they've left Ireena Kolyana in the Blue Water Inn for now. She'll likely get kidnapped by Izek Strazni during the latest Festival, whether they return or not.
my group had a really failsome moment there:
I set the whole thing up so that they'd be able to approach the winery just fine but then notice swarms of the little twigs closing in. What followed was a tense mix of closing and locking doors, dealing with the blights in the winery as well as the druids. The druid with the gulthias staff attempted to flee, two of the 5 PCs jumped out of the winery (loading bay area) after her, caught her, dispatched her and took the staff realising it was somehow controlling the twig blights. They immediately turned around and ran for the winery.
The two PCs, a druid bear tank that had taken surprisingly little damage and a rogue that was basically being held together by his armor, were stood on the wagon, below the open doors of the loading bay where their friends were doing their best to cover them/heal them. The rogue threw the gulthias staff to the barbarian up above, telling him to snap it and then took cover in the wagon, counting on the bear to hold them off for a brief few seconds. The bear, to the surprise of everyone, leapt up and clawed his way to safety leaving the rogue, all alone, on the wagon. The barbarian snaps the staff in half, killing all the twigs but alas, too late. The rogue had been stabbed to death.
Gave the druid an inspiration point though, he did write "abject coward" as his flaw :P
tip.. tip.. TALLY.. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
+3
Options
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Fucking hell guys. Why are you still going on about this. At this point who cares. We've already all lost. There are no winners anymore.
I honestly regret posting that homebrew class. I started this and Im genuinely sorry.
Nah man, it's cool, you just ran afoul of a marketing gimmick, it ain't your fault.
Really at this point I'm just picturing a bear totem barbarian battle master fighter build based on reckless attacking as much as possible and using the menacing attack maneuver a bunch, as well as parry, precision attack, riposte, and sweeping attack. Just carrying around a giant fuck off weapon and consistently just eating the disadvantage.
If you pair the Barbarian's reckless attack with the Rogue's cunning action you can straight up negate your own self-imposed disadvantage.
And if you follow that into Drunken Master? Hooboy...
Fucking hell guys. Why are you still going on about this. At this point who cares. We've already all lost. There are no winners anymore.
I honestly regret posting that homebrew class. I started this and Im genuinely sorry.
Nah man, it's cool, you just ran afoul of a marketing gimmick, it ain't your fault.
Really at this point I'm just picturing a bear totem barbarian battle master fighter build based on reckless attacking as much as possible and using the menacing attack maneuver a bunch, as well as parry, precision attack, riposte, and sweeping attack. Just carrying around a giant fuck off weapon and consistently just eating the disadvantage.
If you pair the Barbarian's reckless attack with the Rogue's cunning action you can straight up negate your own self-imposed disadvantage.
And if you follow that into Drunken Master? Hooboy...
Can't dodge with cunning action.
It's why I pair with menacing attack. It gives you a chance to impose disadvantage on your enemy's attacks while also dealing even more damage.
Sleep on
0
Options
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Fucking hell guys. Why are you still going on about this. At this point who cares. We've already all lost. There are no winners anymore.
I honestly regret posting that homebrew class. I started this and Im genuinely sorry.
Nah man, it's cool, you just ran afoul of a marketing gimmick, it ain't your fault.
Really at this point I'm just picturing a bear totem barbarian battle master fighter build based on reckless attacking as much as possible and using the menacing attack maneuver a bunch, as well as parry, precision attack, riposte, and sweeping attack. Just carrying around a giant fuck off weapon and consistently just eating the disadvantage.
If you pair the Barbarian's reckless attack with the Rogue's cunning action you can straight up negate your own self-imposed disadvantage.
And if you follow that into Drunken Master? Hooboy...
Can't dodge with cunning action.
It's why I pair with menacing attack. It gives you a chance to impose disadvantage on your enemy's attacks while also dealing even more damage.
Oh, I was referencing that you can use Cunning Action to flee an enemy after utilizing Reckless Attack.
It doesn't matter if you're foe has advantage against you if they can't reach you.
Fucking hell guys. Why are you still going on about this. At this point who cares. We've already all lost. There are no winners anymore.
I honestly regret posting that homebrew class. I started this and Im genuinely sorry.
Nah man, it's cool, you just ran afoul of a marketing gimmick, it ain't your fault.
Really at this point I'm just picturing a bear totem barbarian battle master fighter build based on reckless attacking as much as possible and using the menacing attack maneuver a bunch, as well as parry, precision attack, riposte, and sweeping attack. Just carrying around a giant fuck off weapon and consistently just eating the disadvantage.
If you pair the Barbarian's reckless attack with the Rogue's cunning action you can straight up negate your own self-imposed disadvantage.
And if you follow that into Drunken Master? Hooboy...
Can't dodge with cunning action.
It's why I pair with menacing attack. It gives you a chance to impose disadvantage on your enemy's attacks while also dealing even more damage.
Oh, I was referencing that you can use Cunning Action to flee an enemy after utilizing Reckless Attack.
It doesn't matter if you're foe has advantage against you if they can't reach you.
Fucking hell guys. Why are you still going on about this. At this point who cares. We've already all lost. There are no winners anymore.
I honestly regret posting that homebrew class. I started this and Im genuinely sorry.
Nah man, it's cool, you just ran afoul of a marketing gimmick, it ain't your fault.
Really at this point I'm just picturing a bear totem barbarian battle master fighter build based on reckless attacking as much as possible and using the menacing attack maneuver a bunch, as well as parry, precision attack, riposte, and sweeping attack. Just carrying around a giant fuck off weapon and consistently just eating the disadvantage.
If you pair the Barbarian's reckless attack with the Rogue's cunning action you can straight up negate your own self-imposed disadvantage.
And if you follow that into Drunken Master? Hooboy...
Can't dodge with cunning action.
It's why I pair with menacing attack. It gives you a chance to impose disadvantage on your enemy's attacks while also dealing even more damage.
Oh, I was referencing that you can use Cunning Action to flee an enemy after utilizing Reckless Attack.
It doesn't matter if you're foe has advantage against you if they can't reach you.
PC: "I'm gonna attack the fuck outta this dude!"
DM: "Okay, then what?"
PC: "...?! I'm gonna run the fuck away!"
Fair point. Mix that with a trip attack and they probably won't be able to close the distance on you in their turn either.
But crossing the line of scrimmage as it were is also a good strategy, go swashbuckler on it to get the immediate no opportunity attacks on you if you attack them.
So we've got 7 barbarian ,4 fighter, 3 rogue, 3 monk? Probably round that to 4 rogue and 4 monk to get the stat boosts and feats sabre with 8 barbarian.
So final build is 8 bear totem barbarian, 4 battle master fighter, 4 swashbuckler rogue, 4 monk.
Actually the straight kensi monk/bear totem barbarian is hella good purely because of the defensive ki usage I always forget exists. As well, in technicality the larger than normal weapon doesn't have any extra keywords the longsword isn't a heavy weapon so all your kensi stuff could be linked to the longsword, but you're using a large longsword.
Shit, I think monk barbarian needs to be my next character.
I had to deal with horrific grevious injuries as when encountering a massive spinning Adamantine fan the party decided they’d all just jump between the blades
They finished level 1 of tomb of the nine gods with 2 people no longer having feet, one missing an arm, and had to use their one shot regeneration on a nat 1, 150% hp damage roll cutting the bard in half. This was done with virtually no consideration or thought
The NPC with the party withdrew her immovable rod, jammed the fan, and casually walked through immediately after they all finished chucking themselves in the food processor without even talking to each other about how to handle this
Thankfully for them, there was only one room left, and I’m splitting the tomb levels up so they got to leave the tomb as a bunch of ER trauma victims and teleport circle’d back to Nyanzaru for much needed temple services
override367 on
+13
Options
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
God, adventurers are so dumb and I love them for it.
Posts
But when you can regain your full HP in one nights sleep, even if camping outdoors, it just doesn't make sense to do that anymore.
But there has never been a good suggestion of what to replace the original way of narrating combat with. So the core design philosophy of 5e comes into play once again: any problem can be solved by making the DM do more work. Everyone just has to make up an answer on their own.
But I only do a "Grevious" wound if it's an incredibly substantial amount of hitpoints, like 90% of their total hitpoints in one blow. Otherwise yeah they flat out just heal up over the course of a long rest like a marvel character with healing factor
This wouldn't work for all tables or settings, of course (like curse of strahd), for what level my party is though I want them to feel like just plain vastly superior to regular humans - but at the same time they keep getting pushed onto their back feet by the things they face, showing how absolutely fucked non adventurers are against things like beholders and dragons
magic healing makes you go full wolverine
easy
if I was playing a super serious or lower magic world I'd probably lift the fall damage cap
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
World building is hard
I think I actually don't narrate combat results nearly enough.
This is usually how I do it.
Also, a big hit doesn't need to mean a sword goes through your spleen or whatever. It can also mean something like a hard hit that you take on your shield or dents your armor, etc. that rattles your noggin and knocks the wind out of you for a moment.
yeah this is how DMs handle it in the games I play in, or for spellcasters its hard hits off their mage armor or barely dodged slashes that draw a bit of blood
I used to in the game I'm running, but around the time the party got to 7th level and was getting hit with fireballs, I basically just started treating them like wolverine
also I just ended up having them all get air conditioned clothes of mending because I was tired of dealing with the jungle survival aspects of the module which weren't a serious threat to the players' lives anyway (and everyone didn't really seem to be enjoying)
I'd much rather worry about the fact that I sold my soul to Baphomet in a moment of weakness after months of crazy visions than worry if I have mushroom to eat.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
As a follow up to artifacts I revised mine so the benefits far outweigh the detriments.
Some detriments I outright changed like instead of magical potions becoming non-magical within 10' radius, they had to "feed" the artifact a potion as a way to renew its magic.
Complainers are thrilled.
The Witch they killed had a trove of treasure and we're having a treasure party session to divvy it all up. A no pressure session so we can all just hang out and get to know each other (one of the suggestions I had from the people who wanted to quit) whilst ogling the new shinies.
A couple of us will also be teaching everyone how to read their character sheets since there were some gripes about that as well.
Looking forward to that actually. It's like a party to talk about D&D!
The thing i like most about HP/Vitality is that you can make some types of actions deal HP damage rather than vitality damage and then you don't have a problem with verisimilitude at higher levels when dealing with environmental effects. Falling damage is 1d6 HP/10' and you have HP==Con Score so if you fall 20 feet you could just die.
Edit: One of the things i attempted but wasn't sure that worked was
Exhaustion is expanded to work like HP in a d10 system. There is normal exhaustion and lethal exhaustion and you fill in as sums so that total=normal+lethal. You can cure a normal point of exhaustion by resting for a day but you can only cure a point of lethal exhaustion by resting for a day and receiving magical healing (one point per spell level, max one spell per day, spell slot is unavailable the next day, spell does not regain HP when used in this manner)
HP as normal but when you take damage that would put you at zero HP you take a point of lethal exhaustion, like in a d10 system. And environmental effects generally do instant HP damage.
Hitting 0 just means you've taken a particularly nasty hit or two that may kill you. Till that monster buries its sword in your lifeless husk to eliminate your death saves your injuries are basically superficial.
my D&D players can push on to fight the lich with a missing lung and after having fallen into lava, they're just that tough, and some magical healing and they're right as rain
I have selectively applied levels of exhaustion for magically healing grevious wounds but that's rare, in the lava example, someone got submerged in lava, got lay on handsed to full (while in lava!) but the paladin couldnt get them out
they got out the next turn, taking like 170% of their hp in damage, they were a well done steak at that point, got magically healed to full but I gave them an indefinite form of madness until they got a couple nights of long rest, they became afraid of fire and suffered the Frightened condition from having any fire within 60 feet (that was actually the player's idea! I like my players) until getting a Greater Restoration later on
Healing up to full with a few hours fitful rest holed up in a corner of the dungeon with the door spiked shut is less easy....
I mean, your players are just super tough, they can "Deal with it", at some point they'll get magical healing, maybe they actually really are so cosmically tough that they can function without some of their major organs, they're beyond whatever their race's limits should be
if you're in a low magic campaign you kinda have to do the whole "hitpoints are basically luck points and when you hit zero is when you actually get stabbed or burned" though, other than minor flesh wounds
If you prefer a narrative that ends up with a 1 HP character limping to that rest holding his intestines in his hand missing an arm, then sure it's tough to reconcile.
If that 1 HP character instead is bruised and battered, Winded and spent, suffering mostly superficial cuts and scrapes, then its much easier for things to "make sense".
My games tend to fall somewhere in between and, frankly, nobody really sweats it all that much.
I have been wanting to homebrew up "revised ranger, but a lot less wordy and better" for a while
There is an attempt at a less crappy ranger on Unearthed Aracana. I don't know how much better it is in practice though.
There are several different ones, I think. One of them is pretty good; I believe it was the one that got printed along with the first draft of the shadow stalker ranger. It also has a version of beast master ranger that is not hot garbage, although it's still broadly not as powerful as other ranger archetypes.
Beast Master in particular is definitely not less wordy than the PHB version, though.
What about ranger isn't working for them?
How about something more like "I figured we were all in a lot of danger, so I performed the Chant of the Nine Awakened Elders and when my diety saw you were about to get hit, because of its regard for my devotion to its laws and precepts, it gave you an infusion of energy"? Alter seasonings as needed for school of healing magic, propensity for interpretive dance vs. prayer in your healing tradition, etc. etc.
Your Ad Here! Reasonable Rates!
Our semi-historical campaign was not very historical this time, it was a dungeon crawl:
This time our cleric cast a ritual to create a burst of holy light that erased the illusion and we met up with two noblemen, one of them suffering from serious brain damage. Both had ties to our barbarian (he worked as a bodyguard for them before and was the one to actually injure the younger brother before he fled Byzantium), but luckily did not recognize him. The brothers were on a quest to find a powerful weapon within
We went through a couple of puzzle rooms that had ghosts in them, each of them trapped in a single scene, all with biblical themes (possibly with the seven deadly sins, though we were unable to connect them all). After quickly solving the first two riddles (ghosts grieving in a chapel over a dead baby, solved by sprinkling the baby with holy water, so it was baptized. A couple arguing with each other, solved by giving them coins), our NPCs now believe that my scout is an expert exorcist.
We encountered a tree with apples made of solid gold (so I pocketed a lot of them) and had a weird bench with snakes on it. A bit of experimenting I dripped some blood on the bench and ghosts talked to me. The other party members tried the same and it seemed to be the ghosts of our victims/people we saved (the two characters with background in war had a worse experience than the cleric and my scout. (The cleric actually hasn't killed any human being in our quests so far, only ghosts)). We couldn't figure it out, so we went into the next room: ghosts of hungry children watching a rich man eat. Leading to the following conversation:
Scout: "I try to touch the food"
GM: "You pass through it."
Barbarian: "Can I touch the rich man?"
GM: "Also intangible"
Cleric: "Can I touch the kids?"
Me OOC: "Eh, Mr. Catholic Priest, wanna rephrase that?"
The paladin was smart enough to give one of the golden apples to the kids and that solved that one.
Next few puzzles weren't too difficult either (a mirror that enraptured the barbarian (who is very vain)) and magic candles that caused illusions of beautiful people trying to seduce the person holding the candle.
After solving these quests, we found a basement with pagan symbols and a circle of candles (with one unlit, the last riddle we hadn't found yet probably.) We lit the last candle and summoned a demonic beast. It rolled really, really well on its first attack and dropped our barbarian to about 10hp left with 1 attack, but we did manage to defeat it though one of the NPCs lost an eye during the fight. After the fight we found the magic weapon they were guarding and that's were we ended.
Not a lot of history this time, a bit on St. Peter the Martyr. Our DM told us that she had planned to put this dungeon on the main land after we left Cyprus, but we went a bit wild exploring Cyprus last session.
[/quote]
Their reading is pointing them towards Krezk and Argynvostholt, but they've left Ireena Kolyana in the Blue Water Inn for now. She'll likely get kidnapped by Izek Strazni during the latest Festival, whether they return or not.
Down with HP
Aspect hits would be fairly hard to port into 5e. And honestly vtge system as is works fine for 5e. Even 1st level characters are pretty baddass.
my group had a really failsome moment there:
The two PCs, a druid bear tank that had taken surprisingly little damage and a rogue that was basically being held together by his armor, were stood on the wagon, below the open doors of the loading bay where their friends were doing their best to cover them/heal them. The rogue threw the gulthias staff to the barbarian up above, telling him to snap it and then took cover in the wagon, counting on the bear to hold them off for a brief few seconds. The bear, to the surprise of everyone, leapt up and clawed his way to safety leaving the rogue, all alone, on the wagon. The barbarian snaps the staff in half, killing all the twigs but alas, too late. The rogue had been stabbed to death.
Gave the druid an inspiration point though, he did write "abject coward" as his flaw :P
If you pair the Barbarian's reckless attack with the Rogue's cunning action you can straight up negate your own self-imposed disadvantage.
And if you follow that into Drunken Master? Hooboy...
Can't dodge with cunning action.
It's why I pair with menacing attack. It gives you a chance to impose disadvantage on your enemy's attacks while also dealing even more damage.
Oh, I was referencing that you can use Cunning Action to flee an enemy after utilizing Reckless Attack.
It doesn't matter if you're foe has advantage against you if they can't reach you.
PC: "I'm gonna attack the fuck outta this dude!"
DM: "Okay, then what?"
PC: "...?! I'm gonna run the fuck away!"
Fair point. Mix that with a trip attack and they probably won't be able to close the distance on you in their turn either.
But crossing the line of scrimmage as it were is also a good strategy, go swashbuckler on it to get the immediate no opportunity attacks on you if you attack them.
So we've got 7 barbarian ,4 fighter, 3 rogue, 3 monk? Probably round that to 4 rogue and 4 monk to get the stat boosts and feats sabre with 8 barbarian.
So final build is 8 bear totem barbarian, 4 battle master fighter, 4 swashbuckler rogue, 4 monk.
Actually the straight kensi monk/bear totem barbarian is hella good purely because of the defensive ki usage I always forget exists. As well, in technicality the larger than normal weapon doesn't have any extra keywords the longsword isn't a heavy weapon so all your kensi stuff could be linked to the longsword, but you're using a large longsword.
Shit, I think monk barbarian needs to be my next character.
They finished level 1 of tomb of the nine gods with 2 people no longer having feet, one missing an arm, and had to use their one shot regeneration on a nat 1, 150% hp damage roll cutting the bard in half. This was done with virtually no consideration or thought
The NPC with the party withdrew her immovable rod, jammed the fan, and casually walked through immediately after they all finished chucking themselves in the food processor without even talking to each other about how to handle this
Thankfully for them, there was only one room left, and I’m splitting the tomb levels up so they got to leave the tomb as a bunch of ER trauma victims and teleport circle’d back to Nyanzaru for much needed temple services