Ideas for Improving Inspiration

[Rya.Reisender]

I added the following lately: When a player receives inspiration but already has it, he can himself reward inspiration to another PC for good role-playing. Players having to give their inspiration to someone reminds them to use it occassionally.

As for the other issue, I just ask my players to make it clear to me when they put themselves into disadvantage to play out a flaw. But honestly, it happens so rarely that when it does, I might as well just check it myself.

 

[iserith]

I think requiring a player's character to suffer disadvantage to earn Inspiration is a heavy disincentive to trying to earn it. I would not make this a requirement. If it happens to work out that the choice made puts the character at disadvantage, fine. But to require it seems to me discouragement from engaging with this mechanic at all.

 

[cmad1977]

If someone has a theory as to why players in other groups are forgetting about this mechanic, I'd love to hear it.

I think some people make characters and some make builds.

 

[5ekyu]

I think some people make characters and some make builds.

Could be.

Other reasons i have seen include

Group does not like to use meta-pools or gimmick pools and treat failure due to character stats are normal. (My group)

Group tends to stay focused in-character for solutions and does not think about player tokens. (My group)

Group tends to work well and gst advantage often enough and plans to minimize "checks" in critical moments. (Various groups.).

The group accepts and combines both rp heavy and tactically heavy focused players - and so do not add to the play extra rewards to the role-players. (Some groups, mine included.)

I do agree with the poster that suggested if inspiration was tied into class functions it would get more play and remembered more often.

An easy way would be to have each class soecify an "inspired recovery" where spending an inspiration had some defined partial rest type recovery on the fly. - specifics vary by class.

 

[Jester David]

I bought giant 3.5cm d20s that I pass out to mark Inspiration. The physician prop can help, and they can roll that d20 when spending their Inspiration.

For Ravenloft, I also did some homebrew rules that added another aspect to Inspiration.
An early draft is here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?358971-Ravenloft-Dark-Shadows
The final attempt ended up in this DMsGuild product: https://www.dmsguild.com/product/176659/Heroes-of-the-Mists

 

[Viking Bastard]

The tradition of Awesome Points evolved from Action Points over the course of our 4e campaign, which carried over to our 5e game. We don't use inspiration as written. From our House Rule document:


AWESOME POINTS (APs)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gaining APs:

* Each PLAYER (not PC) starts each SESSION with one AP.
* Controlling more than one PC does not grant the player extra APs.
* Each player can only hold one AP at a time.
* To regain their AP, players need to be nominated by another player (not DM) for an action that is, like, totally awesome, whether it be by way of mechanical resolution ("Whoah, awesome roll, man!") or in-game narrative awesomesauce (even if said narrative flourish is mainly provided by the DM).
* The above rule is limited only by that no APs were spent during the resolution of the nominated action.
* Fishing for AP nominations is not forbidden per se, but it's generally super lame. It is more forgivable if it was obviously very awesome, but people are simply too carried away with the game to remember to nominate.
* AP-farming, players strategically nominating each other for unremarkable actions to boost the party's overall output, is likewise not strictly forbidden but is against the spirit of the mechanic and will be openly mocked.

Spending APs:

* Players can spend an AP to gain advantage on any roll to which advantage is theoretically applicable to by the rules, even if said roll already has disadvantage.
* Player can spend an AP to gain an extra action during a round.
* Player can spend an AP to bend the rules of the game to perform, like, totally awesome "stunts" beyond the intended purpose or scope of the relevant mechanics. All such requests need DM-approval and DM-adjudication for mechanical resolution. Each specific "stunt" can only be performed once during the campaign, unless the DM considers that it would be, like, totally cool to do a repeat for some reason (see RULE OF COOL).
* The AP "stunt" mechanic should not be taken as to mean that the DM is above allowing the rules to be stretched to do cool outside of it's usage (see RULE OF COOL).
* Players can spend an AP for a character that they themselves do not control, effectively gifting said AP to another player.
* There is no limit to how many APs can be used for a character in a round or how many can be stacked on a single action. If anything, Awesome Stacking is encouraged.

 

[iserith]

I think some people make characters and some make builds.

One would think the people who make builds would be particularly interested in the mechanic considering its low cost to achieve.

 

[cmad1977]

One would think the people who make builds would be particularly interested in the mechanic considering its low cost to achieve.

Except that it’s a mechanic that isn’t under their control.

 

[CapnZapp]

I’ve adopted a similar approach after reading Angry’s analysis, though my players rarely use Inspiration. When they do they sadly never try to regain inspiration. My players don’t seem too invested in their characters as rounded individuals, they treat them more like pawns moving through the game world, which is fine but it means this mechanic doesn’t appeal as much as it might.

Yes, we dropped Inspiration entirely. My players don't like that there's a shortcut to optimizing - to them it cheapens the accomplishment of setting up Advantage.

Do note that the proposal above works no matter what. It provides a static bonus and extra movement - not advantage, precisely for this reason.

Also, a player might never use the Inspiration he starts each session with, and that's fine. It just sits there, taking up no time, adding no complexity.

But the idea is, of course, that sooner or later it will start to itch to leave a resource untapped, and that player might just start to roleplay a little, just to use up that free Inspiration.

Maybe only once... but if you've done it once, you might do it twice...

Even later he might consider roleplaying just a little bit more, enough to regain and reuse it...

...and then he's trapped, completing his transformation from rollplayer to roleplayer!!

---

More importantly, of course, is how Inspiration is directly connected to and enabled by your character traits, which was Angry's main criticism against the WotC version in the PHB.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I think requiring a player's character to suffer disadvantage to earn Inspiration is a heavy disincentive to trying to earn it. I would not make this a requirement. If it happens to work out that the choice made puts the character at disadvantage, fine. But to require it seems to me discouragement from engaging with this mechanic at all.

For me it's important to make suffering disadvantage (not necessarily in form of a roll, but let's call it... a "suboptimal move") a requirement. You're right that it's a disincentive to trying to earn it - but that's what I want to accomplish in the first place. If all my players are min-maxers that always do optimal decisions, then they just don't earn Inspiration. No losses here.

The gain comes when now a player joins who doesn't care about min-maxing, he has a very specific character in mind that he wants to role-play out to his best abilities. Now he won't be doing optimal decisions but rather think what his character would do and act him accordingly. And sometimes this may put the group (or just him) at a disadvantage. And now I can reward HIM Inspiration, so despite him not min-maxing, he gains something to compensate, so his PC isn't necessarily less effective than the other PCs.

In short, for me, Inspiration shouldn't be something that players want to earn. Instead, it should be something that motivates players to role-play their characters according to their personalities, even if that means doing suboptimal decisions.