Quick Inspiration houserule

[Rusvul]

Hey! I just wrote up a quick and fairly simple Inspiration variant. My intention is to mechanically incentivize roleplaying (especially playing your flaws), and to give PCs a little more control over their fate, all without breaking everything. Wanted a few more pairs of eyes to see if I've made any stupid mistakes. A few notes:
- I'm aware that only allowing Inspiration to give bonuses to attacks helps martials more than it does casters. I was considering something like "Before you force another creature to make a saving throw, you may spend 1 Inspiration to give it disadvantage on that saving throw," but I think casters are strong enough already.
- I'm aware this looks a little bit like giving every player a narratively-influenced version of Lucky. I'm not sure I'd allow a PC to take the Lucky feat in addition to all of this.
- Interludes are lifted lock, stock, and barrel from Savage Worlds. For those not familiar, basically a character tells a story (a tale from their past, a story about something they aspire to, etc) and then they gain Inspiration. Typically, once someone leads an interlude, they can't do so again until every player has also lead an interlude.


Inspiration.

A character can have a number of Inspiration points equal to their proficiency bonus. Inspiration can be used in the following ways:

• Before you make an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, you may use 1 point of inspiration. That roll is made with advantage.
• Before you make an attack roll, you may use 1 point of inspiration. If that attack roll is a hit, it is a critical hit.
• After you make an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, but before the DM explains the result of your roll, you may spend 2 points of inspiration. Reroll the attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, with all the same modifiers (and advantage or disadvantage, if applicable). You must use the second result.

Gaining Inspiration.

A character can gain inspiration in the following ways.

• A character gains 1 Inspiration at the start of each game session.
• Any time a character's flaw makes their life difficult in a significant way, they gain 1 Inspiration.
• A character gains 1 Inspiration by leading an Interlude.

Thanks! :)

[Inscrutable]

This is cool, but it seems the major motives are to give players more power and to incentivize playing up flaws. The first one seems pretty manageable, but the second may cause headaches while playing.

Flaws are bad for a reason, and if players start purposely playing up their bad tendencies to gain immaterial advantages, it might be fun. Or.... It might be a drag on the rest of the players. From my experience, one character's flaws tend to impact the entire party, and not always in a fun way. It is good for spice amd realism, but overdone it can bog down a session.

Just a possibility, though. Depends on how much your players like the new rule.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Yeah, I wouldn’t pair inspiration too closely to flaws, either. Seems like a great way to end up Flanderizing characters for comedy and inspiration, where the quickest and easiest way to get inspiration (outside the free one) is to just be defined by your drawbacks.

If you’re going to incorporate flaws in such a way, I’d tie it equally to your bond, personality trait, ideal, and flaw, such that any of them could, if they have a significant impact on the game, give inspiration. For example, a character’s ideal of charity being borne out when they finally get back to a home cooked meal after a long adventure, find a family huddling out in the streets, and give their meal instead to them, is equally as important, if not more, than roleplaying their fear of spiders when phase spiders attack them. Then, maybe limit the number of inspiration they can gain this way (to maybe one each of the trait/ideal/bond/flaw), and remove the free one.

When I wanted to grant inspiration, I tied it to creation of content—if you wrote a poem, or drew a sketch, or made a journal entry, or some other piece of art, and shared it, you got Inspiration. Enough of that was worth other things, like skill and racial feats.

[MaxWilson]

*snip*

I like your options for spending inspiration. I like that you tie gaining it to flaws. It provides a nice tempo where a PC's positive and negative qualities get equal limelight, both influencing play to similar degrees.

One tweak that I'd suggest, but haven't yet playtested myself, is to invert the economics: instead of gaining inspiration at all, instead of having a positive balance like a piggy bank, you can always opt to spend inspiration to go into karmic *debt* to achieve things that are important to you as a character (bonds/ideals/etc.) but that invites the DM to even the scales later on as follows:

For one point of karma, the DM can introduce a new situation that puts you in a dilemma related to your flaws, a situation that would not otherwise exist. (In less sandboxy games where the DM tailors adventures/exercises lots of DM fiat, there is no "situation that would not otherwise exist" and the DM never pays this cost.)

For one point of karma, when a situation arises which potentially triggers your flaw, the DM can ask you to roll a DC 10 saving throw against the ability score you deem relevant, to avoid giving in to your flaw. If you fail the save, the DM dictates how the PC responds to the situation. E.g. if you're Harry Dresden and your flaw is, "I can't say no to a woman in distress," then when someone tries to hire you to find her missing friend Lily, failing your DC 10 save means you take the case no matter how full your plate already is. (Wisdom would be an appropriate save here but player has the final say.)

For two points of karma it is DC 16. For three points of karma there is no save.

So if you build up four points of karmic debt by leaving heavily on inspiration, you're just asking for the DM to drop a problem in your lap that gets you into exactly the kind of trouble you predicted for yourself at character creation.

Some players may hate losing control over their character's decisions, ever, and they will never spend inspiration. Others love putting up a big cosmic "Kick Me" sign on themselves and will spend it freely.

You might potentially have to limit how deep you can go in debt, e.g. can't use inspiration if you already are at -5 karma. This would prevent characters with uninteresting/inapplicable flaws from accumulating massive karmic debts that the DM can't do anything interesting with.

[ad_hoc]

It makes Inspiration more complicated which, in general, you don't want to do.

It also essentially removes personality traits, ideals, and bonds which are a key part of backgrounds/inspiration.

To simplify Inspiration we just give advantage to any task which involves a character's traits, ideal, bond, or flaw. That eliminates needing to keep track of it and it applies the bonus to the thing rather than something unrelated.