D&D 5E Inspiration! How's It Working Out For You?

[CleverNickName]

The Inspiration mechanic in D&D (not to be confused with Bardic Inspiration) is a rule that allows you to reward players for excellent roleplaying, excellent luck or good fortune, or a variety of other reasons. This reward is a bonus die that can be added to certain rolls.

Do you use the Inspiration rules? Have you used them in the past? What did you think?

Choose the answer that best fits, and leave a comment if you have further details to add.

 

[Stormonu]

The RAW rules, I don't like. I use inspiration in my game, but its much more akin to Story Points. Basically, an automatic success or manipulation of events/stories to get an effect you want. Can only have one at a time, and you have to "invoke your flaw" to fail at something noteworthy to get inspired. It was fairly rare for my PCs to have a point of inspiration because of the failure requirement.

 

[Oofta]

I kind of like the concept of inspiration in a way, kind of hate it. I dislike most things that are overtly meta-game rewards or penalties, I want the world to make sense from the perspective of the PCs, even if some things would be wacky to someone used to the real world. Inspiration just puts it too much into the "there's no in world justification" for me.

That, and I never remember to use it. I can't keep track of TIBF for my own PC, much less for the 6 PCs run.

 

[Kilimanjaro]

I like the concept of inspiration, but I always forget to give it out. Too many other things to keep track of.

 

[Nightfly]

As a DM, I award inspiration when a player: (1) role-plays well at the expense of min-maxing or metagaming (2) does something clever that doesn't work ("The trap can't be disabled that way, but what a cool idea! Take inspiration"), or (3) makes me laugh.

So I'm not using it quite as written, but I used the hell of our it. One of the best mechanics in the game.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I used it in the begging, tried modifying it, but everyone still kept forgetting about it... So, I don't bother with it anymore.

 

[Blue]

I'm glad D&D finally has mechanics that support roleplaying. White Wolf had that back in the 90s, and in important ways like in Vampire regaining Willpower. D&D was hopelessly out of date in this regard before finally bringing this to the rules in 5e, even if the 5e implementation is still for something not-so-important and feel bolted on. It needs to do things like recharge features you use or something to get up to speed.

I use them and am happy with them ... but I've house ruled them. I have never "don't care for them" so I can't pick that option.

I changed them from Advantage to a reroll - so that it's not something that you forget about when you have it, but instead something you reach towards when you need it. This made it immensely more useful in the players eyes. And that was the critical change so that players didn't forget about it.

The other part isn't a house rule, just that five aspects per character that are never otherwise referenced directly is ridiculous for the DM to try to track on top of everything else, so other players can nominate a player. This is effectively just giving players social permission to point out times to the DM to award, it's no rule change.

 

[CleverNickName]

I've never used them...I don't really care for stacking bonuses, even if those bonuses are random. When I reward the players for exceptional roleplaying etc., I do it with bonus XP.

 

[Pedantic]

I think it's fine as a meta-currency, but it's way too much work as a reward, and deeply inconsistent. I give my players inspiration at the start of the session and call it good. Letting them mitigate a roll they're concerned about once per session feels good and means I don't have to run a mental beauty contest on their roleplaying.

I'm not consistent enough to incentivize behavior (in no small part because I'm busy running the game) so I don't think it's worth trying. That, and mechanical meta-currency I find drags them out of character.

It feels better to reward a player's interaction with the game world with more of the game world. If they're interested in an NPC and leaning in to an interaction, I'll give them more of that NPC; stopping that interaction to instead give them a meta-mechanical reward changes the interaction for the worse, in my experience.

 

[Ancalagon]

I like the concept of inspiration, but I always forget to give it out. Too many other things to keep track of.

I do sometimes remember, but yeah - too easy to forget by either me or my players :/