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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next [WIP/PEACH] Expanded Inspiration Uses



Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-04, 09:19 PM
Hey guys! I had this idea for expanding on Inspiration, which, in its current state, is sort of dull; it lets you gain advantage some of the time, which isn't particularly interesting on its own, and doesn't let you do a lot of things you couldn't already do. Moreover, if you already have ways of getting advantage on a lot of things, the inspiration is wasted on you. Inspiration tends not to come up at any of my tables, not because it's not useful, but because it's so forgettable that nobody remembers to recommend it, or use it when they have it. So I'd like to change that by creating an Inspiration-based subsystem which, when you do something that merits Inspiration, lets you translate that Inspiration into cooler things!

The idea behind this sub-system is that you gain a number of unique Inspiration uses (below) equal to your proficiency bonus (two at 1st level, plus one every 4 levels thereafter)or equal to your adventuring tier (one each at 1st, 5th, 11th, and 17th level). You can select any from the following list, although I may decide to have certain requirements for some of them if necessary. At any point when you could choose a new option, you lose one of the old options. In addition to the selected options, everyone gets the standard Inspiration use (advantage on a d20 roll), much like how with Pathfinder's Mythic Power, everyone gets the standard option (+1d6/1d8/1d10/1d12 to the roll based on mythic tier) alongside their path abilities.

This is quite unfinished/what I'd like to get out of this thread: This list is not balanced around itself or around Inspiration's traditional uses. Some of these uses are overpowered, and some are underpowered. In fact, I know for a fact that some of them are explicitly more powerful than others (Rapid Strike is less powerful than Rapid-Fire Casting, because cantrip scaling is supposed to match Extra Attack within the scope of an Action). Rather than balancing them all around a specific power point, I'd like to present them as-is, agree upon which power point for additional Inspiration uses is the most ideal, and then balance them around that use. In general, what I'm going for is either "less generally applicable than the standard advantage use, but more useful in specific cases that make it worth picking up" or "useful when the standard Inspiration use is not."

Without further ado, here are the Inspiration options:

Impediment
When an enemy creature within 30 feet of you makes an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you may spend an inspiration point to impose disadvantage on the roll.

Flexible Inspiration
Anytime you would use your inspiration to gain advantage, you may instead spend an inspiration point to add a d6 to the roll if you would not otherwise have advantage. The die becomes a d8 at 5th level, a d10 at 11th level, and a d12 at 17th level.
Special: If you have the Impediment inspiration trick, whenever you would impose disadvantage on the roll, you may instead subtract a die of the appropriate value from the roll.

Rapid Strike
As a bonus action, you may spend an inspiration point to make a weapon attack roll.

Critical Strike
If you roll an attack roll with advantage, you may spend an inspiration point and choose to take the lower roll instead. If that attack roll hits, the attack becomes a critical hit.

Overwhelming Attack
When you hit another creature with a melee weapon attack in which you had advantage, you may spend an inspiration point to make one of the following actions in addition to your attack: Shove, Disarm, Overrun, Shove Aside, or Tumble. If you do so, you use both of your rolled results for the attack: one for the attack roll, and one for the opposed ability check. You choose which dice applies to which.

Improvisation
As an action, you may spend an inspiration point to become proficient in a tool, instrument, or skill that you are not already proficient in. The proficiency bonus lasts until the end of your next check with the skill, or until you complete a short or long rest.

Skilled Flourish
If you roll an ability check with advantage, you may spend an inspiration point and choose to take the lower roll instead. If you do, add your proficiency bonus to the check. If your proficiency bonus already applies to the ability check, double the bonus.

Rush Job
When you would perform an ability check that takes an action to complete, you may spend an inspiration point to perform the check as a bonus action instead. If the check would normally require a bonus action, it can instead be done at no action cost. You have disadvantage on the ability check.

Savior
When you roll a saving throw, as a reaction, you may spend an inspiration point and choose to take disadvantage on the saving throw instead. If you do, all allied creatures who are subject to the same effect may choose to take your higher roll instead of their own saving throw.

Moment of Clarity
When you are subject to an ongoing effect that allows a secondary saving throw to end the effect, you can spend an inspiration point to act as if you succeeded on the saving throw for 1 round. Until the start of your next turn, you may act as though you are not suffering any such ongoing effects. On the start of your next turn, you must continue making saving throws as normal.

Glancing Blow
As a reaction, you may spend an inspiration point to halve the damage you take from a weapon attack. Until the start of your next turn, you gain resistance to the damage type of that weapon attack.

Not My Time Yet
When you are dropped to 0 hit points, you may spend your inspiration to automatically become stabilized.

Last Stand
When you take damage that would reduce you to 0 hit points, you may spend your inspiration to remain at 1 hit point instead. Until the start of your next turn, you gain a bonus to your Armor Class and all saving throws equal to your proficiency modifier. If you are reduced to 0 hit points again before the start of your next turn, you start with one failed death saving throw.

Fancy Footwork
As a bonus action or a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet times your proficiency modifier. This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Quick-Fire Caster
As a bonus action, you may spend an inspiration point to cast a cantrip you know. Normal spellcasting rules apply.

Glimpse of Prescience
As an action, you may spend an inspiration point to gain the benefits of one of the following spells:
1st level: Detect Evil and Good, Detect Magic, Detect Poison and Disease
5th level: Augury, Find Traps, Locate Animals or Plants, Locate Object
11th level: Clairvoyance, Detect Thoughts, See Invisibility
17th level: Divination, Locate Creature
If the spell has a duration, the effects last until the end of your turn.

Gift of speech
As an action, you may spend an inspiration to cast Comprehend Languages. At 11th level, you may spend an inspiration point to cast Tongues, but only on yourself.

Expanded Memory
When you choose spells to prepare, you may spend an inspiration point to prepare a number of additional spells equal to your proficiency modifier from your spells known. The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

Channel Divinity
You may spend an inspiration point to use your Channel Divinity feature instead of expending a Channel Divinity use. You can use your Channel Divinity in this way even if you have expended all your Channel Divinity uses.

Quickened Recovery
As an action, you may spend an inspiration point to regain one of the following, which are not to exceed your normal maximum:
- One use of a racial ability that recovers after a short rest;
- One superiority dice;
- One use of Channel Divinity;
- One use of Wild Shape;
- One daily use of Rage;
- One use of Bardic Inspiration;
- Ki points equal to one-half your proficiency modifier, rounded up;
- Sorcery points equal to one-half your proficiency modifier, rounded up.

Stan
2017-03-05, 09:46 PM
I like the idea of being able to do more. Do I understand correctly that the number of things you can choose from goes up but you still get a max of one?

It's a lot of choices to go through - you might be able to condense it to a short list of general benefits, something like this:


add your proficiency bonus to a roll after you have rolled it but before the results are determined.
get a bonus action to do something that normally takes an action, as long as you follow all other rules.
get one use of something that normally recharges on a short rest.
delay the effect of one failed save or one attack against you until the end of your next turn.
gain the effects of an abjuration or divination spell with a max level equal to half your proficiency bonus.



That covers many of the uses and makes fewer things to balance. Even if something is a bit overpowered, the rarity of inspiration would keep it largely in check.

Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-05, 09:58 PM
I like the idea of being able to do more. Do I understand correctly that the number of things you can choose from goes up but you still get a max of one?

Yes. I wanted it to be sort of like Pathfinder's Mythic Power resource, but Mythic Pathfinder is explicitly a very different game from regular Pathfinder, with balance shifting drastically if non-mythic characters become mythic. My intention for this is that it's something that can be implemented at the average table for free without significantly affecting game balance (provided no one option crowds out all the others by being so OP that you always use it instead of the others), and for that, you can't necessarily have more inspiration, but you can have more options for inspiration.

Maybe it would be a good idea to have a feat which allows you to have a number of inspiration equal to your proficiency modifier, or a fixed number (like having the Lucky feat just increase the number of inspiration you can have by 3, or something like that, or giving you an "Inspiration Pool" you can use), if it becomes too limiting to have all these options and only one inspiration at a time to use it with, but I feel like widening the list of options and increasing the cap on inspiration would be too much for free, you know?


It's a lot of choices to go through - you might be able to condense it to a short list of general benefits, something like this:


add your proficiency bonus to a roll after you have rolled it but before the results are determined.
get a bonus action to do something that normally takes an action, as long as you follow all other rules.
get one use of something that normally recharges on a short rest.
delay the effect of one failed save or one attack against you until the end of your next turn.
gain the effects of an abjuration or divination spell with a max level equal to half your proficiency bonus.



That covers many of the uses and makes fewer things to balance. Even if something is a bit overpowered, the rarity of inspiration would keep it largely in check.

That's true, and I might need to narrow down the list significantly anyway. The reason I wanted to start with a larger list was because the idea I originally based this around was that you had either (proficiency bonus) or (adventuring tier) number of additional options (on top of the default "you gain advantage on a roll" which everyone gets), which means everyone would have either 2-6 or 1-4 extra options, depending on level (3-7 or 2-5 if you count the default option). If there are 5 available options, and they get up to 5 by the game's end, then Randy the Rogue won't feel that different from Sasha the Sorcerer in their special inspiration uses once they've gotten high enough to both have them all.

I'll think about pairing the list down at least a bit, though. Which ones do you think should be the first to go? (Or be combined?)

quinron
2017-03-07, 05:44 AM
I'm on board with Stan - simplifying the list will make things easier. Given the list you have, Quickened Recovery seems like the best baseline to judge other abilities by, but even it has a lot of disparity in what it grants - an extra Rage or Wild Shape is far more valuable than an extra Superiority or Bardic Inspiration die.

I think using Inspiration as the power source for this system may not be the best call. Inspiration is - in my opinion and that of a lot of others, if I'm not crazy - intended to encourage roleplaying by giving a concrete mechanical reward for it. At my table, I stopped using it because I didn't pay attention to it (as you and others have pointed out), and when I did give it out regularly, my players stopped roleplaying their characters as dynamic individuals and intentionally stuck to their already-established personalities in order to get Inspiration. It's a mechanic that inhibits character growth, which doesn't seem suited to the sort of epic fantasy that Mythic Pathfinder shoots for.

Instead, I'd recommend using this system to replace Inspiration. Each character could get a certain number of per-day uses, with a cap they couldn't exceed, but they could still give one of their uses to another character as long as that didn't make them exceed their cap. As long as you keep the uses low and the benefits fairly small (an extra attack here and there, a spell or two regained, an extra Superiority or Bardic Inspiration die), you should be able to avoid changing balance any more than Inspiration would if we could be bothered to use it.

Roderick_BR
2017-03-07, 08:06 AM
My group is flexible with Inspiration. We use it to re-roll a failed roll, or as Stan said, use something that haven't recharged (I saved our tails last session by using it to recharge a spell slot to cover the party's escape from a... problematic encounter).

My additional ideas are:
Additional uses by tier (make it half the proficiency bonus?) so you can stock up to 3.
Re-roll a failed roll (attack/ability/skill/save, like the luck feat)

Lonely Tylenol
2017-03-07, 10:41 AM
I'm on board with Stan - simplifying the list will make things easier. Given the list you have, Quickened Recovery seems like the best baseline to judge other abilities by, but even it has a lot of disparity in what it grants - an extra Rage or Wild Shape is far more valuable than an extra Superiority or Bardic Inspiration die.

I'm not disagreeing with the general principle of the paragraph, but I want to point out that the specific example you gave was a victim of condensing options: I originally had an inspiration use that was expended during a short rest to regain a single use of Rage, or a number of sorcery points or ki points, but tried to merge it into this one so as not to have two recovery uses, and because I couldn't figure out where to put Bardic Inspiration thanks to Font of Inspiration. :smalltongue:

I'll balance around Quickened Recovery as well as condense the list. However, Quickened Recovery is the hardest for me to balance around, since it's the only one that is used for an intangible benefit which is not immediate (rather than having a numbers comparison); which ones, in your assessment, drastically underperform or overperform compared to Quickened Recovery?


I think using Inspiration as the power source for this system may not be the best call. Inspiration is - in my opinion and that of a lot of others, if I'm not crazy - intended to encourage roleplaying by giving a concrete mechanical reward for it. At my table, I stopped using it because I didn't pay attention to it (as you and others have pointed out), and when I did give it out regularly, my players stopped roleplaying their characters as dynamic individuals and intentionally stuck to their already-established personalities in order to get Inspiration. It's a mechanic that inhibits character growth, which doesn't seem suited to the sort of epic fantasy that Mythic Pathfinder shoots for.

Instead, I'd recommend using this system to replace Inspiration. Each character could get a certain number of per-day uses, with a cap they couldn't exceed, but they could still give one of their uses to another character as long as that didn't make them exceed their cap. As long as you keep the uses low and the benefits fairly small (an extra attack here and there, a spell or two regained, an extra Superiority or Bardic Inspiration die), you should be able to avoid changing balance any more than Inspiration would if we could be bothered to use it.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't being selfish with this idea: my main goal is to balance it for use at my own table for an upcoming campaign, where Inspiration itself has a few specific assumptions. For example, I am trying to encourage my players to keep campaign journals, since they tend to act as a means for me to guide the game and better understand player motivations, and my carrot for each entry between sessions is going to be that they start the next session after each entry with Inspiration. "Journal entries" in this case is a flexible definition as well, and includes things like:

- A written recap of the last session ("last time on...")
- A backstory event or exposition ("flashback scene");
- A downtime vignette that describes what the character does during downtime in an interesting way ("filler episode");
- A poem or ballad detailing the party's exploits;
- A bio of an NPC they are in some way bonded to (I help with this one where necessary);
- A song that is thematic and connected to the world in some way ("background score");
- A playlist of existing songs with thematic ties to the character or setting ("theme songs");
- A portrait of the character, or some other visual art piece relating to the character or the campaign;
And so on.

In the past, this type of incentive has encouraged frequent writing and art creation at my tables in previous editions, and has helped me guide my campaign story arcs in a way that was more fulfilling for my players (who got to see the resolution of plot arcs relating to backstory or character motivations that developed over the course of the game). I'm expecting about a 60% return rate on journal entries per session, or a majority of players starting each session with Inspiration, and I'm willing to work with those who struggle to get entries in (like writing help in a Skype convo or something). I'd like to codify this type of incentive for future 5e campaigns, now that I've got another longer one starting up soon, without creating new options which break the game or hedge out others. But, in the tables I've been playing at, Inspiration almost never shows up, because it's so forgettable to the DMs in general: for example, the DM at one of my games decided to reward Inspiration for the first time in 8 months, and I asked why this hasn't come up before, and he straight up said he'd forgotten. So, another aim is to make it less forgettable in general.

In that context, I am okay with tying it to Inspiration for my table, because Inspiration is something I expect to come up frequently enough to the point where it's basically "once per long rest," and maybe a little more common than that.

Outside of that context, where it's necessary to have a specific per-day amount that doesn't require DM mediation, I'd be fine with, say, either creating a new feat which is balanced against Lucky, or provides the options but has Lucky as a prerequisite, or just modifying Lucky to include the option to spend a luck point on these types of options, and creating an optional rule for more epic fantasy games where Lucky is just given to the players. I'll work on rules for each soon.


My group is flexible with Inspiration. We use it to re-roll a failed roll, or as Stan said, use something that haven't recharged (I saved our tails last session by using it to recharge a spell slot to cover the party's escape from a... problematic encounter).

My additional ideas are:
Additional uses by tier (make it half the proficiency bonus?) so you can stock up to 3.
Re-roll a failed roll (attack/ability/skill/save, like the luck feat)

I think both of those options are fine, but don't want to step on Lucky too much, and don't want to devalue the feat. My last paragraph above this quoted portion is a list of possible options that specifically involves the Lucky feat (which is 3/day and incorporates the failed roll idea); of the ideas (similar powered feat but different resource; uses the luck points from Lucky, but is a separate feat which requires Lucky; and is just merged with Lucky outright, providing the normal feat options plus some of the original list), which do you think is most preferable?

Xuldarinar
2017-03-07, 12:50 PM
Though new to the concept of inspiration (I just read it and its mechanics 10 minutes ago), I did promise I'd give my feedback so here it is:

Conceptually, I love the idea. Inspiration, while it can be flavored a number of ways and is potentially very useful in its current state, is a little boring as it stands. This provides additional versatility, though one must come up with things all roughly worth about the same. That being said, it can be difficult to balance fun with mechanics. Too simple and while its easy to balance, it makes an ability dull. Too complex and it gets difficult. Middle road mechanically, you can have a very fun ability but you have more points you need balanced. With that and given my lack of familiarity with inspiration and how well it plays at the table, all I can say ultimately is I think it would require playtesting and perhaps some fine turning to help determine balancing.