D&D (2024) New Optional Rules

[DeviousQuail]

I don't know what to call it but I'll go with heightened recovery vs standard recovery. The players and the game world operate under the assumption of standard recovery, which is akin to the slow resting variant rules. Each day acts as a short rest and a week is a long rest. I'm not married to that ratio, just using it as an example.

Players can then choose to use heightened recovery. That lets them recover hit points, spell slots, features, etc using the normal 5e rules. However, when they do this they take on some kind of penalty. Whatever the penalty is, it doesn't go into effect right away. It sits in the background and adds up for every day the players use heightened recovery. Once they stop using heightened recovery the penalties go into effect. At this point they are under those effects until they get enough rest using the standard recovery.

I like this idea as a way to balance normal life with days that are hectic. I also didn't want to immediately penalize players for the choice. Let them feel like heroes for a day or three and then let the weight of their choice hit them when it's over.

 

[SakanaSensei]

Something I'm going to be tinkering with in an upcoming, DnD adjacent game (Stars Without Number) is Death Saves that carry over. So, when a character is down and their turn comes around, they roll a d20 and must get equal to or over a 10, same as always (for 5E anyway). The difference will be that, success or failure, the player regains 1 HP and stabilizes but remains unconscious. Failed saves don't recover until level up.

My table puts a lot of effort into building up characters and tying them to the world in order to have motivations carry them forward, so we don't want characters that get zero plot armor, but on the flipside we don't like the infinitely sturdy 5E standard or the whack-a-mole that comes from resetting saves. We'll have to see how it goes, but I could see this working well in any fantasy-adventure game with a focus on characters.

 

[Lojaan]

I want less spells so something like "if you want only 5 spells per level choose these".

Or treat spells like magic items and brand them as common/uncommon/rare etc... and make it so that prepared casters only get common spells automatically. The rest they have to find/create. This could be fun and I don't want to spend the time to figure it out myself. Because ugh. Almost a third of the PHB is spell descriptions.