How often do you use the Inspiration rules?

[CubicsRube]

I'm not a terribly huge fan of inspiration myself due to the disconnection between what earns it and the later use.

I do however like the FIBTs and would love them to see more play.

Here is what I'm planning to do when I run my next campaign in 5e: you can use each one of yout FIBTs once per session to gain advantage ona roll that it relates to.

That's up to five advantages per session, and the player tells me when they're claiming it.

Maybe the rogue has a trait "i pride myself on being the sneakiest thief in baldur's gate" and so they can claim advantage when sneaking once per session. A few times of that and everyone will know what that players trait is.

 

[jasper]

Weekly. I keep a foam "I" to pass to the player. If I give out more than 1 a session the second player just writes I on the playmat.

 

[Aaron L]

Short Answer: We allow everyone to nominate anyone else for Inspiration, the DM just has to say Yea or Nay on the spot. Quick and easy. We try to use it as often as possible, but have a hard time getting people to remember it's there.

My little brother has become our new standard DM ("little" as in 4 years younger than me, but now that he's 39 years old he isn't actually very little anymore!) and despite just starting his first actual campaign 2 years ago, after 23 years of playing (aside from a short stint running an Al-Qadim campaign for a few months back when he was 16 that was pretty hairy) he has turned out to be an absolutely spectacular Dungeon Master, and he's now additionally running a second regular game for a different group of friends, with me being the only shared member between the two groups. There have been a few little rough spots, but nothing anywhere near major, and he's left me in utter awe of his raw ability as a DM. He's always been very charismatic, to the point of becoming the leader of most of our D&D parties from almost the first time he played, despite him being 15 playing with a bunch of 20+ year olds. He would always just take the initiative and everyone else would follow just because it felt natural, and it worked out perfectly because he loved playing very charismatic Paladins, and did it wonderfully.

He and I try to remind everyone of Inspiration and encourage them to use it, and have worked out a system where anyone in the group can nominate anyone else for Inspiration, which the DM then has to approve on the spot (which he usually does unless it's for a dumb reason.)

That way we hope to get everyone spending and re-earning Inspiration several times a game, with the comparison I like to use being a line I remember from something about the old DC Heroes game, where you could spend your Hero Points both as "experience" to increase your character's abilities, and to modify rolls and avoid taking damage during the game, and I remember reading something about a good exciting game having Hero Points "flowing like water" because they were being used so frequently.

Anyone in the group can nominate anyone else, mostly for good roleplaying, but also possibly for cool ideas or a good joke. We've even also taken to nominating the DM for "Inspiration" but that doesn't actually have any game effect, it's just a way to let him know he's doing a great job and we're truly enjoying his game.

In this way, we're actually using Inspiration as a continuation of something we'd been doing for years already; "Rock 'N Roll Points!" Any time anyone in the group did something cool, something that made everyone else sit up and say "Whoah!" we'd collectively give them a "Rock 'N Roll Point!" just for fun, not really meant to do anything, and we just all sort of started recording our "Rock 'N Roll Point!" totals, until eventually the DM would occasionally allow us to spend one of them to reroll a really bad die roll in extremely important situations. And when 5th Edition first came out and we all read the PHB, we all looked at each other and said "they made actual rules for Rock 'N Roll Points!" So that was pretty Rock 'N Roll to us.

My brother and I really like the Inspiration mechanic as a mechanical way to encourage good roleplaying (as well as liking the larger Advantage mechanic itself) and do everything we can to encourage everyone to take advantage of its existence, but it's hard to get everyone to remember, but that usually just boils down to me spending my Inspiration as often as I can, and him granting Inspiration to people as often as is warranted, but that frequently doesn't mean anything because they still have Inspiration that they haven't used yet. So it's kind of hard.

 

[Kupursk]

I think I've reached a point where I like Critfails to be possible for enemies, but not PCs.

I use "critical fails" on certain circumstances:

* When a task may have a particularly bad consequence, such as disarming a trap may set it off on a narutal 1.

* In combat I use natural 1s weapon degradation, each being computed until weapons may break or become dull. This adds some interesting level of care for weapons as players will sharpen and repair them from time to time, and brings more value to carrying a good sidearm for emergencies.

* If fighting in particularly bad circumstances a natural 1 may cause some other misfortune, such as fighting on slippery ground may cause you to slip and fall on a natural 1. But only in such cases and they're usually observable beforehand.

Otherwise a natural 1 is just a regular fail, or, in the case of skill checks I tend to consider it even a success if it's enough to beat the DC. Meaning, if a guy can beat that DC with a 1 on the die it's an auto-success. No need to roll, really.

 

[Nailen]

Here's how I use Inspiration in my games: The Case for Inspiration. It easy. It's intuitive. It's low overhead for the DM. It leads to great results.

In my games, players earn Inspiration 20 to 25 times in a given session. Their characters are coming through loud and clear.

I read that post a couple of months ago, and we have tried to implement this idea at our gaming table.
The players are happy with the idea, and I would say its been a relative success.
They aren't going crazy with trying to shoehorn their character traits into every encounter, but they are definitely thinking about what those traits are and trying to role play them.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

As a DM, I'll award inspiration when a character does something particularly cool that advances the story or simply because it created a memorable moment at the table. The latter often involves playing to a flaw. But the main source of inspiration at our table is what we've dubbed the "Players' Choice Inspiration Award". At the end of every session, each player (we usually have between 6 and 8 players) votes for their top two choices for the PC that deserves an inspiration point, along with a quick detail for why they deserve it. It provides another reason for the players to pay attention, entertains me to read the votes a few hours after the session, and provides some fodder for my session recap. Side note: We've house-ruled that you can stack up to 3 inspiration points.

As for crit fails, I used to have a 3d6 table that had increasingly bad things happen based on the probability of the roll. So a 10 or 11 was a comical miss whereas a 3 or 18 could result in a broken weapon. Lately, we've moved passed that and I just let the player determine the scope of the failure. For example, in last night's session, the monk crit-failed on an attack with his short sword while in a battle against tentacles that were wrapped around their small sailing vessel. He said the slime from the battle made the weapon slip from his hand and end up overboard. After the battle, that failure created a fantastic scene where the water genasi sorcerer dove overboard to inspect the bottom of the ship and then proceeded down into the depths of the sea to see if he could find his friend's short sword. It was there he encountered the storm giant (holding the sword) who was the hook for the next session. I had no idea how I was going to have them meet up with the storm giant before the end of the session but was quite pleased with how a crit fail helped to create an organically cool moment.

As long as we are mentioning crit fails, I'll throw this out there for critical hits. Instead of doubling the dice, I allow PCs (and monsters!) to max out the initial dice, then roll again. Nothing worse than following up the excitement of a critical hit with double 1s on the damage dice, IMO. Also, for the rare case of rolling double 20s on an attack - hmm... maybe due to taking advantage with inspiration (that came around nicely) - I'll have them max the initial dice and the crit dice AND roll the initial set again.

 

[iserith]

Nothing worse than following up the excitement of a critical hit with double 1s on the damage dice, IMO.

In our group, we call that "Pulling a [MENTION=6801813]Valmarius[/MENTION]."

 

[5ekyu]

It's not gamist - haven't you, yourself, ever thought back to an incident in the past and used it as motivation to achieve something in the present? It's a perfectly understandable concept and in fact simulates real life!

This assumes some relation between that past event and now. But that is not reflected in inspiration mechanics.

5e one can gain inspiration for telling the truth because "I am honest to a fault" but then spend it later to get advantage for pick locks in a heist.

I am reminded of a virtues system from a couple games, I think Ars Magica was one.

There a personality trait could be defined and given a value. It was part of the mechanics of chargen.

That value would sometimes serve as a bonus, other times as a penalty and other times not at all. It was all determined by the nature of the trait and whether your actions were in tune with or opposite or not involving that trait.

So, for instance, blurting out the truth would be the failing deception with the penalty. (Honest to a fault)

Always ready to fight might give you bonus to initiative but penalty to escape or evade.


Gimmick points rewarded for playing the way the GM favors dont have a simulation leg to stand on. Imo of course.

 

[sim-h]

This assumes some relation between that past event and now.

Not to me it doesn't. If I feel Inspired I can transfer that to anything using a little imagination. In the example you cite, my character thinks "Well, I was really honest that time, so I deserve a shot to pick this lock - although it is hardly an honest pursuit - because of the 'karma credit' I built up by being honest previously!

It works fine if you want it to - it's certainly down to the individual DM like every other rule in the game. The Ars Magica system you mention sounds complex and difficult to track - the antithesis of D&D 5e.

 

[5ekyu]

Not to me it doesn't. If I feel Inspired I can transfer that to anything using a little imagination. In the example you cite, my character thinks "Well, I was really honest that time, so I deserve a shot to pick this lock - although it is hardly an honest pursuit - because of the 'karma credit' I built up by being honest previously!

It works fine if you want it to - it's certainly down to the individual DM like every other rule in the game. The Ars Magica system you mention sounds complex and difficult to track - the antithesis of D&D 5e.

Yeah I can see where a defined value that modifies a certain sub-group of die rolls could be see as difficult and hard to track by 5e players.

Then again, I could see some folks wondering if imagining "I get karmic credit" is enough to gain advantage, why in the world is Help an sction and not just an interaction "Hey bud, I think you are due. "