D&D 5E Does your group use inspiration? If not, why not?

[Minigiant]

I do but I'm stingy with it. You have to draw the plot or arc in a different direction based on your personality, flaws, or bonds to get it. A new decision or complication has to be added or removed completely to get inspiration.

We do let you stockpile inspiration though. We got a dude with 3 cursed items and 3 inspiration.

 

[ccs]

Never. I'm not going to reward players for doing what players should be doing anyway.

Pretty much this. Players do things & the story that results is the reward.

Additionally, being a longtime vet player/DM who made it all these years not using this mechanic, I honestly rarely even remember it.
And in the 5 or 6 years I've been running 5e? I've never had a player bring Inspiration up. I suspect that this is because the other veteran/old players in my games are like me. They're long used to simply doing things "in-character". They don't do this expecting a +, or a re-roll, etc. They do it because they know this is what forms the story. Just because that's what their character would do.... And our new/younger players see that this works, that this is how the games played & simply follow suite.

 

[FXR]

I often forgot to give Inspiration to my players, so, at one point, I said "You guys are mature enough to know when your character should get inspiration. So give your character inspiration when you feel it is deserved".

Of course, they too keep forgetting about Inspiration , so their character rarely have it.

I'm toying with the idea of ditching Inspiration and replacing it with actions points or something similar. At least, these would be used.

 

[cmad1977]

Absolutely gets used.

 

[Umbran]

It doesn't get used much in either of the games I'm playing in. In one of them, the GM is pretty liberal with how often he grants advantage on checks, so we don't miss it too much.

There's an unfortunate negative feedback loop with inspiration. You only get one point, so you rarely spend it. So the GM forgets that it is there, and never hands it out, so you never spend it. Everyone just forgets the mechanic's existence.

All in all, I think the idea is fine. It needs a couple uses other than "get advantage", and you need to be able to have more than one point at a time, making it a resource you can think more about managing.

I have often wondered if using Inspiration for... an extra spell slot, an extra action, or a couple of other things, and allowing a player to have, say, 3 points max at a time, might make it more attractive and less forgotten, but not game-breaking.

 

[Zsig]

I try to remember it whenever I can, I even use some coins as tokens for my players to remember to use it...

Even then, we forget about it most of the times.

 

[Aldarc]

Nope. My own experience with it as a Gm and player is much as @Umbran says. IMO, Inspiration sits in an uncanny valley for those who like Fate like meta mechanics and those who hate them.

 

[tommybahama]

And in the 5 or 6 years I've been running 5e? I've never had a player bring Inspiration up. I suspect that this is because the other veteran/old players in my games are like me. They're long used to simply doing things "in-character". They don't do this expecting a +, or a re-roll, etc. They do it because they know this is what forms the story. Just because that's what their character would do..

I've been asked to make skill checks for the dumbest things. Wasting inspiration on it to do the cool thing I want to do keeps me from getting salty. If you don't require dumb skill checks then I'm fine without inspiration. But from home campaigns to Adventurers League, dumb skill checks seem to be a thing with DMs these days. I'm talking about things like requiring the 4th level Battle Master with 18 Strength and proficiency in Athletics to do a skill check in order to jump on a table in combat. Or a 4th level thief with 18 Dex to roll acrobatics to climb some crates as a short cut onto a second story floor.

 

[jgsugden]

For most games, it seems to be an ignored mechanic. Some people love it.

I reward good role playing with immersive additions to the game. The more you invoke your background, flaws, traits, bonds, etc..., the more I build off of them. The more you take interest in an element of the campaign, the more focus it, and your PC, will get.

I hand out inspiration dice rarely, and when I do, it Is often for something that was cool and memorable, whether it was a product of wild luck, a well designed plan, or a great role playing moment. Generally speaking, if I'll remember it clearly 5 years from now, and tell stories about it, you get a die.

 

[ccs]

I've been asked to make skill checks for the dumbest things. Wasting inspiration on it to do the cool thing I want to do keeps me from getting salty. If you don't require dumb skill checks then I'm fine without inspiration. But from home campaigns to Adventurers League, dumb skill checks seem to be a thing with DMs these days. I'm talking about things like requiring the 4th level Battle Master with 18 Strength and proficiency in Athletics to do a skill check in order to jump on a table in combat. Or a 4th level thief with 18 Dex to roll acrobatics to climb some crates as a short cut onto a second story floor.

(shrugs) There's probably some dumb checks in my games.

• I've got one player who likes to roll checks for stuff. So they get to make checks.... (for most of these the DCs "Don't roll a 1, but I don't share the DCs I set). They get to roll, they get to add up their modifiers, they succeed 95% of the time & they're happy. Sometimes a complication happens.
• Sometimes I ask for checks on a whim. As I don't tell you the DC it'd be up to you wether to spend resources to re-roll if you thought your roll/total wasn't high enough.