D&D 5E Inspiring leader feat questions

[mellored]

In reality, my question is: if the limit on 6 people isn't really a limit, why even have it?

It is really a limit.

The community consensus is that, given time, the character can give temporary hp to any number of allies?

If you spent 24 hours inspiring, give out THP to 864 creatures, or 36 allies in an hour. Time may be cheap, but it's not infinite. THP only last until you take a long rest.

With out it, you could stand on a pedestal in the middle of a city, and use thaumaturgy to give THP to an entire city.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Please. First you change the subject, then you dismiss that changed subject?!

What answer are you looking for? Are you "missing something" with how the feat is written? No. You think the feat is written poorly (which is why you told us how you wish the feat was written instead.) It wasn't written to how you think it should have been in order to be clear. So you aren't "missing" anything.

Is that the answer you wanted?

Or is your real concern about the idea that you think you're the only one who actually cares about how the feat is written? If that's the case, yes, you are "missing" something. You're missing the fact that apparently no one else thinks it's a problem. They all are interpreting the rules of the feat such that *whatever* the end results are... they're fine with playing them that way.

And that's why I said that to me it's a concern looking for a problem. If all of us are fine with the results of *however* we interpret the rule... then there's no need for any of us to bring the rule up on the boards. Which is probably why no one has.

 

[CapnZapp]

Fine. I'll use the feat as if it were written this way instead, then:

INSPIRING LEADER
Prerequisite: Charisma 13 or higher
You can inspire your companions and followers, shoring up their resolve to fight. Each creature so inspired gains temporary hit points equal to your level + your Charisma modifier. You can inspire up to six creatures per ten minutes, yourself included. Each creature must be within 30 feet of you, able to see or hear you, and be able to understand you for the full ten minutes. A creature can't gain temporary hit points from this feat again until it has finished a short or long rest.

Especially the "six creatures per ten minutes" part makes it much more clear you can repeat your performance and that the intent isn't to limit you to six creatures maximum.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Fine. I'll use the feat as if it were written this way instead, then:

INSPIRING LEADER
Prerequisite: Charisma 13 or higher
You can inspire your companions and followers, shoring up their resolve to fight. Each creature so inspired gains temporary hit points equal to your level + your Charisma modifier. You can inspire up to six creatures per ten minutes, yourself included. Each creature must be within 30 feet of you, able to see or hear you, and be able to understand you for the full ten minutes. A creature can't gain temporary hit points from this feat again until it has finished a short or long rest.

Especially the "six creatures per ten minutes" part makes it much more clear you can repeat your performance and that the intent isn't to limit you to six creatures maximum.

You've made it less clear. Now I'm reading it and wondering what happens if I'm talking to 12 people and get interrupted after 15 minutes pass. Did I inspire 6 or zero? The original wording is really clear unless you approach it with the agenda that reusing it is somehow abusive.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Taken at face value, it appears you can shore up six allies per ten minutes of pep-talking. Not six allies fulll stop.

Sure, and...?

Having the pep talk take 20 minutes for 7 allies but only 10 minutes for 6 seems strangley obsessed with the minutae 5th edition wasn't supposed to do?

It wasn't? But, classic D&D feel!

But time is most often very cheap. If you successfully complete a rest, that means you just had one hour free. It is very likely you will have another half hour (for 3x6=18 allies) or two hours which is 120 minutes (for 12x6=72 allies).

Am I missing something?

Time is sometimes very cheap - allies generally aren't.

Obviously, this matters little in the archetypal situation, where you only have 3-5 allies including yourself.

Oh, no, you didn't miss it entirely.

 

[epithet]

I see no reason why you couldn't speak to your cohort while enjoying your short rest. The short rest doesn't require you to sit still and be quiet (it's not a "time out" for being naughty.) I would say that for an hour-long short rest, you could provide the temporary hp to 36 people, no problem.

 

[Unwise]

I rather like the imagery of a leader visiting the different campfires around his army inspiring different groups with his pep talks before moving on to the next.

I also think that having an inspiring leader (so inspiring that they took a feat for it) leading a posse or militia etc should really make a practical difference. It is their time for their feat to shine. It does not come up too often in most campaigns and if you were running a military one, then good on them for staying true to the genre.

That being the case, I think the feat looks good to me as is.

 

[CapnZapp]

My problem is that the feat text does not say you can use it outside the indicated parameters. A DM would be quite understandable if he read the feat to mean you could inspire up to six people and that this takes ten minutes full stop.

(Not that the feat also allows you to inspire twelve people in twenty minutes, eighteen people in thirty, and so on.)

Since this latter interpretation seems to have overall support from the forums, meaning none of you have indicated you run the feat the former way, I have provided my preferred phrasing.

A feat that specifically states "N people per X minutes" makes it much more clear that the numerals mentioned aren't some kind of hard limit. The text then explicitly allows for a continuance beyond X minutes. This I prefer.

Zapp

PS. If the feat was a spell, the original phrasing would have been much more appropriate. Then it would be obvious that each casting of the spell would do what the text says it does.

 

[CapnZapp]

I would say that for an hour-long short rest, you could provide the temporary hp to 36 people, no problem.

I kind of agree to this.

Not because I particularly want to discuss what you can and can't do during a rest, but because I view the cost involved to be so trivial.

Since y'all agree the feat isn't limited to 6 people, the easiest way to run it is simply to say "you can inspire everyone in your camp during a short or long rest" and simply ignore the specified limits on people, range, and time.

Since those limits are so easily overcome in nine cases out of ten, they're not worth keeping around for that rare tenth rest where they might actually matter in the slightest.

I've asked myself "does this change make the feat better?" and come up with the answer "not in any discernible way. In fact it only makes the feat simpler to understand and use", so that's the way I'm gonna roll with it*. Not having to keep track of pointless minutae such as whether a short rest takes 60 or 80 minutes is a huge bonus in my book.

Thank you all for participating. Bye

*) Obviously, keeping the bit about only one helping of temp hp per rest though. The final wording thus becomes:

INSPIRING LEADER
Prerequisite: Charisma 13 or higher
You can take time during a short or long rest to inspire your companions, followers and allies, shoring up their resolve to fight. Each creature gains temporary hit points equal to your level + your Charisma modifier. A creature can't gain temporary hit points from this feat again until it has finished a short or long rest.

 

[ryan92084]

I don't understand the need for a rewrite but whatever floats your boat. I will say that your version could be little weaker for a standard party than RAW if the table has strict rests per day. I doubt it'd matter very often though.