D&D 5E Variants I am thinking of trying

[Lanliss]

I want to add a bit more fun to my games, so I am thinking of trying a few Variants from the DMG. Just let me know if you have tried any of them, and how they worked out.

• Lingering Injuries: I want my players to be a bit more invested in the world and their characters, and I feel like this will help with that. A Kobold Assassin with a spike on his tail is one thing, but a Kobold Assassin who lost his tail to acid? Will be running this by my players first of course, but think it will help to add depth to their characters.
• Healing Surge: none of my players went with healing, and it showed in our last game where two of them went down, and almost the third, from a pair of giant lizards. Will give them some healing to use at will, and see if that helps.
• Proficiency Dice: This seems like a much more interesting way to handle proficiency, and gives both more potential for massive failure, and more chances for truly Epic moments. We will see how it plays out.
• Speed Factor Initiative: This should help break the Monotony of combat, and give my players some more tactical power. I also think I will have them declare their actions in the order of their Intelligence, lowest to highest, to give a bonus to the ones who wanted more tactical characters.
• Spell points: To add some flexibility to the Wizard, hopefully freeing him up to work his spells more. I might also allow a variant where he can spend fewer spell points on the spell than is normally required, and get a lesser effect.

Once again, any thoughts or experience would be nice.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Haven't tried any of these in play specifically, but let us know how it goes! Some of these are definitely things I'd like to try out at some point.

 

[pukunui]

The only one of those I've used is the lingering injuries rule. I roll whenever a PC drops to 0 hp. Quite often they just get one of the injuries that goes away with magical healing, but we have had a few eyes get lost and a few nasty scars. And my wife's wizard lost an arm to a giant crocodile.

I also have the option of forgoing extra damage on a crit to impose a lingering injury, but my players never choose to use that option, and I usually forget about it and just deal the extra damage myself.

I also make good use of the madness rules, and sometimes impose it as an injury when it seems more plausible (like when a PC gets taken out by lightning).

Still, my players seem to enjoy it, and I enjoy maiming the PCs more than killing them.

I enjoyed playing with the proficiency dice rule when it was part of the playtest but haven't used it with the final rules.

 

[bedir than]

We tried to use speed factor initiative, but my group didn't enjoy the added math. So, we dropped it.

 

[Duan'duliir]

Proficiency Dice is good fun to play with, and both groups I'm involved in prefer it to the static bonus. Its also a lot easier to remember the die than a static bonus.

 

[DeltaEcho]

Lingering Injuries: idea, once they get to below half hit point, make them make a con saving throw, every time they are hit, if they fail they lose a point off a stat, (let the stats heal slower than hit points)

 

[Azurewraith]

I have used lingering injuries(expanded table) and speed factor initiative. Lingering injuries were great I house ruled when you revived healing you wither fixed an injury or gained HP but not both. It worked well it made my players think about what they were doing after one player lost an eye. I would expand on the table in the phb though or it gets a bit samey.

As for speed factor it add kabuto extra layer to combat and made players plan carefully however it did extended combats a significant amount

 

[Arial Black]

The lingering injuries thing has a subtle but severe downside: my PC is now broken.

The rule is intended to make you care about your PC, but it has the opposite effect. My cool two-weapon fighter or great weapon fighter or sword & board fighter....what do you mean 'you lost an arm'? This doesn't make me think, 'What an interesting development; I wonder how this guy will adapt to this setback?'

It makes me think, 'This PC now doesn't work any more. I'll retire him to The Home For Unwanted Adventurers and roll up a new PC that does work!'

I put a lot of work into my PCs, both fluff and crunch. I hate to see that go to waste on a random roll.

If I want to play a one-armed swordsman, it will be part of my backstory.

 

[DeltaEcho]

The lingering injuries thing has a subtle but severe downside: my PC is now broken.

The rule is intended to make you care about your PC, but it has the opposite effect. My cool two-weapon fighter or great weapon fighter or sword & board fighter....what do you mean 'you lost an arm'? This doesn't make me think, 'What an interesting development; I wonder how this guy will adapt to this setback?'

It makes me think, 'This PC now doesn't work any more. I'll retire him to The Home For Unwanted Adventurers and roll up a new PC that does work!'

I put a lot of work into my PCs, both fluff and crunch. I hate to see that go to waste on a random roll.

If I want to play a one-armed swordsman, it will be part of my backstory.

But don't you risk loosing your character every time you combat?

 

[Shiroiken]

• Lingering Injuries: I want my players to be a bit more invested in the world and their characters, and I feel like this will help with that. A Kobold Assassin with a spike on his tail is one thing, but a Kobold Assassin who lost his tail to acid? Will be running this by my players first of course, but think it will help to add depth to their characters.

This sounds great, but you've got to figure out exactly when to start giving out Lingering Injuries (hitting 0, failed death save, critical hit, etc.). While it sounds great, these can cripple a character... literally. As long as your players are fine with either making new character semi-frequently or playing severely disadvantaged characters, it should be fine. I used it for about 2 sessions, then shut it down (healing the players affected). It became not fun, real fast.

• Healing Surge: none of my players went with healing, and it showed in our last game where two of them went down, and almost the third, from a pair of giant lizards. Will give them some healing to use at will, and see if that helps.

That could help the current situation. Of course, I personally let the players suffer for their choice in character creation, because otherwise you find a group of Strikers (to use the 4E term). Usually what happens is when the first PC dies, they make a healer to keep it from happening again (and again).

• Proficiency Dice: This seems like a much more interesting way to handle proficiency, and gives both more potential for massive failure, and more chances for truly Epic moments. We will see how it plays out.

I wanted to incorporate this, but my players didn't like the RNG. I'm a big fan, but have no actual experience with it.

• Speed Factor Initiative: This should help break the Monotony of combat, and give my players some more tactical power. I also think I will have them declare their actions in the order of their Intelligence, lowest to highest, to give a bonus to the ones who wanted more tactical characters.

This can be a lot of fun, but realize it will almost double the time for combat. While I detest the cycle initiative, I have to admit it's much faster than the old way (AD&D). You and your group need to decide if it's worth it, so I'd suggest using it for a session with the caveat that it might go away.

• Spell points: To add some flexibility to the Wizard, hopefully freeing him up to work his spells more. I might also allow a variant where he can spend fewer spell points on the spell than is normally required, and get a lesser effect.

Spell points always sound good, but IME the game has to be balanced around it. I've not looked at the 5E version, but earlier versions that I've seen would allow a character to cast more higher level spells at the cost of lower level spells. Since higher level spells are usually just better, this is a win for the caster, especially since you can fall back on cantrips after you Nova. My only thought would be to require cantrips to cost some amount of spell points (possibly a fraction of a point, depending on the cost for 1st level spells), to keep that from happening. This might weaken the caster (since they won't have free cantrips like normal casters), but that's the price of flexibility.