D&D 5E Island Adventure and Slow Natural Recovery Question

[Chaosmancer]

So, I was reading a thread about pirates, someone mentioned a shipwrecked adventuring party and that sounded like a really good idea for one of my next games.

Session zero, you are shipwrecked on an island, we are paying attention to encumbrance, time, rations, food spoiling, and all that other fun stuff.

It got me thinking about Hp and danger though and I realized that since this will have almost no NPCs throughout the game, no actual civilizations and all that jazz, that in a few levels the players aren't going to be feeling the desperate need to get off the island.

So, I'm planning on using the Slow Natural Healing rule, just to add a bit more wear and tear to the characters. That rule found on pg 267 of the DMG is that instead of recoverying all hp during a long rest, the players have to instead spend HD to recover hp.


So, first question, officially do the HD get spent, and then recovered? Because I know you recover half your HD after a long rest, so if a player spends 2 HD during a long rest, do they get those HD back or do they need to complete another long rest to recover them? I'd like to know how it is supposed to work before I decide which method I might prefer (this will of course all be discussed with the players in a few months, but the Guild doesn't meet over the summer so I must wait and plan for now)


Following that, I figure I want this island to be an old base from some long forgotten civilization. Ancient crumbling ruins and all that. I don't want a native people to this island. I want this to be almost entirely feral, maybe a malignant fey or spirit hanging around somewhere, but no village of primitives who the players can interact with. They are very much alone in terms of civilization and allies. However, there are a few things still standing. Old ruins that make good dungeons obviously, but also a magic gate that they may be able to repair and use at higher level. Also, if they get deep enough inside the island, they may discover that the island was once powered by magic to be able to fly. I can't imagine they'll be able to procur the materials and knowledge needed to repair this thing anytime soon, but if they make it a home base, they can eventually have a flying island with an interplanar gate on it.

So, what kind of things would people recommend for this island. I don't want dinosaurs, but other than that what kinds of beasts and environments sound really cool. Players will be starting at level 3 (because I want sub-classes chosen and identities largely set before game starts)

I definitely am planning a forest that is going to have an owlbear nest or five in it. Owlbears can make for scary, scary monsters at lower levels.

Ruins and dungeons and caves beneath the island are a must.

Mountains or volcanoes, at least one.

I'm debating making this single massive island partially sunk and appear to be a small chain of islands, so that the tides occasionally reveal a land bridge between different parts.

 

[S'mon]

So, I'm planning on using the Slow Natural Healing rule, just to add a bit more wear and tear to the characters. That rule found on pg 267 of the DMG is that instead of recoverying all hp during a long rest, the players have to instead spend HD to recover hp.

I used this, but found that in practice it just means more fiddly book-keeping. Having to roll hd on long rest completion and decide how many to use quickly gets tedious. "You get all hp back" on a long rest in practice is a lot more elegant. Instead I recommend that you reduce the hit dice recovery rate, I've gone to 1/4 (rounded down min 1) for a wilderness rest, which looks like it should work well for you. I particularly like this because it doesn't hurt 1st level PCs but has a significant impact at higher level, they have to hit 8th to recover 2 hd on a long rest.

If you want it really grim & gritty you could also use short rest overnight, long rest 1 week rule. Establishing a safe base where they can hole up for a week may be quite a challenge.

 

[S'mon]

For some cool ideas & TONS of mouldering jungle island ruins, you have got to check out Monkey Isle by JD Neal - http://basicfantasy.org/download.cgi/JN2-Monkey-Isle-r18.pdf

I particularly liked the temple of necrotic oozes.

 

[Ath'kethin]

Depending on what level(s) you want your game to cover, any number of options from Tales from the Yawning Portal could work as the base/ruin. I'd say particularly the "Hidden Shrine of Tamochan".

You could also check out the 5e Barrowmaze conversion found here, if you want basically a whole campaign built around the dungeon, or the upcoming Sunken Temple adventure from Embers Design Studios. It's been released to Kickstarter backers, so it should be available generally soon. The info from the Kickstarter is here.

 

[rgoodbb]

Grungs are a must of course. Many Grungs. (Volo's)

I bet none of your PC's will have put Grung on their list of languages spoken!

 

[Chaosmancer]

I used this, but found that in practice it just means more fiddly book-keeping. Having to roll hd on long rest completion and decide how many to use quickly gets tedious. "You get all hp back" on a long rest in practice is a lot more elegant. Instead I recommend that you reduce the hit dice recovery rate, I've gone to 1/4 (rounded down min 1) for a wilderness rest, which looks like it should work well for you. I particularly like this because it doesn't hurt 1st level PCs but has a significant impact at higher level, they have to hit 8th to recover 2 hd on a long rest.

If you want it really grim & gritty you could also use short rest overnight, long rest 1 week rule. Establishing a safe base where they can hole up for a week may be quite a challenge.

I thought about the short rest overnight variant, but I do want magic to return on a daily basis.

I like the idea of the 1/4 HD recovery, and I might end up using it, but it raises the specter of "Why should we ever take a short rest".

Not as a DM, but as a player, I had to argue with another player to get him to accept us taking a short rest in the enemy stronghold instead of a long one. Twice. With the HD on long rest variant I wonder if that will also make short rests more appealing. You get the same HP recovery, it is just magic that you are regaining.

Making a long rest take a week could get around that, but it is such a far cry from the normal way I run my games I don't think the group would go for it, and it would make travel much much harder if to get somewhere they have to travel and can only replenish "daily" resources with a week of holing up.

IT isn't an easy balance to strike, is it?

For some cool ideas & TONS of mouldering jungle island ruins, you have got to check out Monkey Isle by JD Neal - http://basicfantasy.org/download.cgi/JN2-Monkey-Isle-r18.pdf

I particularly liked the temple of necrotic oozes.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Depending on what level(s) you want your game to cover, any number of options from Tales from the Yawning Portal could work as the base/ruin. I'd say particularly the "Hidden Shrine of Tamochan".

You could also check out the 5e Barrowmaze conversion found here, if you want basically a whole campaign built around the dungeon, or the upcoming Sunken Temple adventure from Embers Design Studios. It's been released to Kickstarter backers, so it should be available generally soon. The info from the Kickstarter is here.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to those books and my ability to buy new material is officially zero.

As for levels, starting at level 3 and with milestone leveling over the course of a school year we tend to get around level 8-11 (big gap I know, but sometimes I end up leveling them faster than I originally planned due to peer pressure and bribes )

Grungs are a must of course. Many Grungs. (Volo's)

I bet none of your PC's will have put Grung on their list of languages spoken!

But Grungs are a primitive Society, and I want to avoid that. I want the vast majority of the threats to be purely monsters and environmental hazards, not a primitive society of (ape people, lizard people, frog people, toad people, fungus people, humans, elves, halflings, ect).

I want them to not have a civilization to fall back on, at least not for a long time.

 

[transtemporal]

...and all that other fun stuff.

Be careful with this. Your players may not find this as fun as you do. Survival in the jungle is a fun novelty but if no one in your party is a "wilderness" type, and the players actually have to describe what they're doing to survive... it can quickly devolve into arguing about real world survival! I would read up on it yourself before doing the session!

 

[Chaosmancer]

Be careful with this. Your players may not find this as fun as you do. Survival in the jungle is a fun novelty but if no one in your party is a "wilderness" type, and the players actually have to describe what they're doing to survive... it can quickly devolve into arguing about real world survival! I would read up on it yourself before doing the session!

I agree that I need to be careful, but this will be the start of a new campaign.

As soon as I tell people I want to do a survival story on a shipwrecked island I'm going to end up with rangers, druids, nature clerics, and more expertise in the survival skill than you've ever seen in a game.

Kind of like telling people you are going to play Curse of Strahd, at least half the party is going to build for undead.

Still, it is the kind of stuff I'm planning on looking into before the game starts. Just so I can give them ideas when they can't figure things out. Like, how long does it take fish to rot if they don't smoke it, and how long does smoking fish make it last.

 

[transtemporal]

Oh ok, so you're telling them in advance, nice. Should be a fun game!

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think splitting "class feature" recovery from "health" recovery in terms of resting is the first and best thing you can do.

Once you stop thinking about finding a single system where a player can recover both at the same time using the same exact style of rest... it opens things up for you tremendously. By splitting them up, it allows you to decide to let spells and other features come back after an 8 hour or overnight sleep (for example), and delay health recovery to longer periods of time if that's what you want. That will allow you to find and use a better pair of systems for both aspects of recovery separately to give you the style you want for the campaign you are playing... rather than trying to find one system that ends up compromising on both.