D&D 5E Little Tweaks that Surprisingly Influence Your Campaigns or Game Sessions

[ExploderWizard]

Hmmm........ careful with this must you be.

Active defenses and large hit point pools are two mechanics trying to do the same job. Once you open up the active defense path, forever will it dominate your game. Why an active defense for shields only?
Why can't I parry or dodge?

Active defenses are great and work wonderfully in systems designed for them. If hits can be negated AND hit points keep piling up over the levels, your combats will last way too long.

 

[Imaculata]

I made one surprisingly effective tweak to my Call of Cthulhu campaign, that had a dramatic effect on the ambiance of the campaign.

After the players had created their characters, I pulled out a stack of ominous black envelopes. I then gave each player one black envelope, and told them that each one contained a little note, with a list of secrets. I asked them to choose one of the secrets by putting a circle around it, and not tell any of their fellow players. This secret would play an important role in the campaign, and if anyone ever found out about it, their sanity* would suffer. I then asked them to put the note back into the envelope, and hand it back to me.

(* In case you've never played it before; in Call of Cthulhu characters can take sanity damage from learning dark knowledge and seeing traumatic things. Everyone eventually goes insane.)

If however they didn't like any of the secrets, they were also free to make up their own, and discuss it with me. All of the secrets were custom written for their character. Not a single one of them had a duplicate secret, and they had to make sure no one found out about it, especially their fellow players.

This lead to an amazing amount of paranoia. Every session there would be a moment where only one player would have a clue what is going on, and he couldn't tell the rest of the party. It was great!

 

[Minigiant]

Since my world uses injury rules, I made it so person can replace injured and lost limbs and organs with magic replacements. I figured the PCs would rarely do it as it altered your stats a lot.

....
....
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The fighter turned myself into a 40k Space Marine.
He has 2 hearts, 3 lungs, 2 livers, a mithral arm, a gold arm, spine implants, height enhancers, and a ruby eye.

 

[Rhenny]

I made one surprisingly effective tweak to my Call of Cthulhu campaign, that had a dramatic effect on the ambiance of the campaign.

After the players had created their characters, I pulled out a stack of ominous black envelopes. I then gave each player one black envelope, and told them that each one contained a little note, with a list of secrets. I asked them to choose one of the secrets by putting a circle around it, and not tell any of their fellow players. This secret would play an important role in the campaign, and if anyone ever found out about it, their sanity* would suffer. I then asked them to put the note back into the envelope, and hand it back to me.

(* In case you've never played it before; in Call of Cthulhu characters can take sanity damage from learning dark knowledge and seeing traumatic things. Everyone eventually goes insane.)

If however they didn't like any of the secrets, they were also free to make up their own, and discuss it with me. All of the secrets were custom written for their character. Not a single one of them had a duplicate secret, and they had to make sure no one found out about it, especially their fellow players.

This lead to an amazing amount of paranoia. Every session there would be a moment where only one player would have a clue what is going on, and he couldn't tell the rest of the party. It was great!

Awesome. I love roleplaying tricks to get players more invested in character. This also reminds me of a trick that the director Bennett Miller did when he was directing Steve Carell in Foxcatcher. He told Steve to write down his darkest secret, then give the paper to him. Then he told Steve that if he could not convey the creepy, deep seated, underlying angst of John DuPont, he'd tell everyone the secret. It helped Steve capture that angst ridden, paranoid feeling.

 

[Sadras]

The fighter turned myself into a 40k Space Marine.
He has 2 hearts, 3 lungs, 2 livers, a mithral arm, a gold arm, spine implants, height enhancers, and a ruby eye.

Franken-Fighter or subclass Frankenstein?

Does weight play a factor? I mean does he have gold & mithral arms, carry extra organs and wears customised full plate?

But in all seriousness does he ever utter the words "Goliath online"

 

[Minigiant]

Franken-Fighter or subclass Frankenstein?

Does weight play a factor? I mean does he have gold & mithral arms, carry extra organs and wears customised full plate?

Well the weight rules are silly in this game so that's not an issue. Also each arm gives +1 Strength -1 Dexterity. Augments and replacements have him at over 7 feet and over 350 lbs.

Anyone with the money can replace a limb or organ in my setting. Mostly rich nobles and knights who were born with issues or wounded in battle.

By the fighter is super unlucky on crits on himself and then just replaced and added organs and steel to his flesh. He spends all his wealth on augments. He even spent gold on stabilizers so he is weilding an ogre's magic longsword now. Basically he is playing a smart small ogre now.

His speed and initiative are both crap though.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Looking at the same maths as above, shields get less effective as your AC rises.
Eg, AC 18 with shield contributing +2: Hit 3/20, or 15%, 15/100 attacks. With the 1-2/d6 rule, AC=16, hit 5/20, 25%, 25/100 attacks: shield blocks 1/3 = reduces to 18/100. Slightly worse off than using normal rules.
Ac20 inc shield, normal rules: hit 1/20, or 5%, 5/100 attacks. Under this rule, AC 18, hit 3/20, 15%, 15/100, shield saves 1/3 = hit 10/100 - twice as bad as under normal rules.

If you use this rule but decide as a player not to employ a shield because of the scaling at higher AC levels, the Ac20 example above would translate to ac18 and go from being hit 10% of the time with a shield to being hit 50% more often (15%) without it, making a shield still absolutely worthwhile - within the paradigm of that rule.

Obviously none of this takes Prof bonus etc into consideration, but you see the scale.

However...

Maybe it's quite realistic. Generally, the higher your AC, the better your armour. The better your armour, the more likely you'll be to stand and take a hit as your confidence in your armour to absorb damage will increase. So you'll relatively passively trust in your armour.

With lighter armour, you'd be more inclined to dodge and fend off with the shield. In other words, actively avoid a blow.

So while the alternate rule rewards those who do away with a shield entirely at higher ac's in comparison to the normal rules, it still adds efficient protection within the rules bring played.

I think the scaling of the bonus to AC proposed based on type of armour goes too far, and may begin a slope of adding pluses which 5e is actively avoiding. However a simple d6 roll fits the simplicity of the Adv/Disadv mechanic in flavour and mental headspace required.

Which may seem odd when talking about a rule that adds a layer of complexity, but you get the point.

Um. Yeah. Long ramble.

 

[hejtmane]

My group ended up in a bar room brawl but one of them decided to do thunder wave knocking around about 100 patrons and damage then it escalated to an all out brawl/riot destroying most the tavern. They where thrown in jail the guards a mixture of wizards/warriors tortured them, taunted them beat them half to death stole all their equipment (including magic items they had some low level ones) then took them out of the prison and put them on the side of the road where goblin raids generally happen; shot them with arrows and left them for dead naked and no weapons.

Yes needless to say their entire goal now is to get high enough level to go back with some mercenaries and torch the entire town to the ground. They are still pissed about how that went down that they took the blame for the fight when they did not start it they just took it to the next level. Yes I am so evil