ToA Variant Rules Advice!

[ibrown22]

Hey all! Going full steam on ToA this weekend, and I'll be introducing some variant rules to my now moderately experienced party (new players just hit 6 month mark). I'm hoping to make the jungle seem a tad more fearsome for a 5th level party.

Slow Natural Healing: No HP from long rests, which will mean magic, potions, and hit dice will be the only way to get HP back. Party has a land druid and a paladin, so I don't expect this to be much of a hangup. I'm going to have all HD to replenish on long rests instead of half to offset this.

Healer's Kit Dependancy: Hand in hand with above, I think it makes sense to have to bandage your wounds and not just recover magically if you aren't using magic. 1 use of a healer's kit will be required to utilize HD while resting.

Gritty "Jungle" Realism: The overnight 8 hour rest will only count as a short rest in the jungle. Scary sounds, temperature, storms, danger everywhere, it is just not as easy to rest in the jungle. Long rests will be require 24 hours of resting in the jungle (instead of 7 days from DMG). I am boosting the chance of a random encounter to 75% while posted up resting like this, and if one comes along they will have to spend another day attemping to rest. I'll still give the benefits of a short rest to failed attempts. This is to encourage travel back to the Port or to areas w/ shelter like Kir Sabal.

Loyalty: With all of the necessary guides and NPCs, I figured it is time to bring some hireling rules in. Slightly changed from the DMG w/some details on interwebs, starting Loyalty will = 1/2 CHA of the party member in charge of the henchman. Periodically there will be times where this can increase or decrease. Giving a command to a follower that they don't want to do (run in and distract all the goblins while we escape!) will require a WIS save vs loyalty score, so the more loyal, the higher the save. +1 Loyalty if the hireling gets paid on time/share loot/good RP moments etc. -1 if a Loyalty check fails, 1/2 HP, ignored by party etc. If amazing gifts are given or the party helps the henchman with something (such as Azaka getting her mask from Firefinger) +1d4 Loyalty and the Henchman is "Inspired". This kind of inspiration will allow the player to bypass the Loyalty check descibed above, and goes away once used. If something terrible happens such as henchman is brought to 0hp, is betrayed, stiffed on pay, etc -1d4 Loyalty and Roll d20. If the roll is higher than the current loyalty score, the henchman will disband from party. If current Loyalty is 15 or higher, then they leave on good terms, 5 or below a betrayal is possible.

Hex Crawl Movement: 2 hex per day by land, 4 by water. If the party wants to forage for food, water, herbs etc, this goes to 1 hex by land 2 by water or else -5 to perception. The party can opt for the slower pace without foraging to gain +5 to perception checks. I will probably never make the party get lost if they have a guide.

Any advice from people who have tried variant rules in ToA before? Anything above seems off and will ruin the game? I'd love to hear what you all think! Thanks!

PS: My players are the kind of people who play games on hard, Dark Souls, raids, etc. They have told me the game seems a little too easy when they can just rest and be fine to rinse repeat.

[Zhorn]

I've also been looking at the variant healing rules looking for a way to kick it up a notch from the baseline without going into the Gritty Realism rules from DMG p267, as the 7 day time frame in the book is just way too long, especially in ToA where the clock for the soulmonger is such a big deal.

Rest Times
I would suggest not adjusting the time frames of rests even in the jungle, as the hit die dependency should encourage the players to take resting more seriously on its own. If they are especially low, then it would be up to them to dedicate the extra time into holding up in a defensible location for the extended recovery. Stick with the 1 and 8 hours, everything else should make a noticeable difference in difficulty. And if not, just make sure there's enough encounters per day to drain resources.

Healer Kit Dependency
Makes sense in hazardous environment to require some assistance to effectively heal, but I would suggest extending this to include other avenues beyond strictly healer's kits to trigger the use of hit die

• Expending a use of a healer's kit
• Consuming a share of rations (or an additional share)
• Drinking a potion of healing
• Being subjected to a healing spell, feat, or class ability

Playing a little more loosely with the requirements while still stipulating that expending some form of resources is required to trigger hit die. If a player has a tool proficiency and materials to use, I'd allow those to count too.

• Alchemist Supplies
• Brewer's Supplies
• Cook's Utensils
• Herbalism Kit

Jungles are resource rich, so why not encourage players to take advantage of it, especially if foraging is already part of your intended plan.

Slow Natural Healing
I like the idea of hit die being king when in harsh environments. This is just a personal preference, but I like to imagine a hearty constitution should feel more advantageous still.
Long rest in harsh environments:

• At the end of a long rest, characters regain hit points during a long rest equal to their constitution modifier multiplied by their level (minimum of 1 per level).
• Characters can supplement this healing by spending any number of remaining hit dice.
• Character regain up to half their total hit die (minimum 1) after calculations for recovered hit points are finalized.

doesn't give them a full recovery, but treats those characters with a tankier constitution as more resilient.

[OverLordOcelot]

This won't make the jungle seem a 'tad more fearsome' IMO, it's more likely to make it either really painfully slow or abruptly fatal. "No healing on a long rest" really means "you probably need to take two long rests every time you take one, because the healers will burn all of their healing to get the party back to a functional place". "75% chance of getting attacked wile long resting on a day-long long rest" means "we have to go back to town to have any chance of recovering resources". They're also going to start playing extremely conservatively once they realize this, as they can't recover from any life-threatening fights. The healing kit thing just means they'll buy a bunch of kits and then spend 'accountants and actuary' effort tracking them.

If they like old-style MMO grinds then you're going to replicate the experience, but if they like exciting fights that require clever use of abilities and involve the PCs coming close to dying then this isn't going to give that. I suspect that if they find the game too easy, what they really want is more fights where they end up having to push their abilities to the limit, not a setup where they have to probe a bit, return to safety, so I would the other direction and make encounters more scary.

Also, there is absolutely zero chance of the players breaking the death curse in a reasonable time frame under these rules, because they're going to add weeks of backtracking to the exploration time. If you just want all of the cursed NPCs to end up dead by the time they get to the end then go for it, but if you want the players to have any chance of stopping the clock from ticking down then you can't add weeks to the adventure time, or have to really slow the effects of the curse on people who have been raised.

[Zhorn]

OverLordOcelot does raise an important point regarding ToA. With the module already designed as a meat-grinder, you wouldn't want to over do it with the difficulty adjustments without taking into account the intended design of the module you'll be working with.

If you are just using the module as a setting, but not following the Acererak story about the death curse and the soulmonger, the harsher healing could be a viable work in, but once that clock is ticking down then everyone is off to the races to get to the tomb in time. Even with the regular healing rules, the module assumes the players will lose a few characters along the way, and even a few key npc's may die before the soulmonger is stopped.

If you want to have the slower healing and trips back to town, run the jungle exploration stuff without the Acererak story.
Spend some time hunting Tzindelor (age her up a bit if you want a bigger challenge out of her), or face off against Ras Nsi while he's not wasting away from the death curse, or even throw in a few custom foes into the pre-set areas (I'm setting up a Slaad as a demon king ruling over a grung tribe). Getting the players up a few levels above the intended start of Acererak's quest might allow you to keep the harsher healing and the death curse race, but running the module from the intended start with these rest restrictions would turn it from a meat-grinder into a slurry-maker.

[ibrown22]

Thanks all, I think the extra movement speed might counteract some of the slog but I might get rid of one of these. My players are pretty optomised but maybe i am expecting too much of them. I will can the gritty realism if they aren't in the jungle though, say if they use a Leo's Hut or find some ruins to hide in. I want to run the death curse but will probably slow it down depending on how long they take.

Any experience with Loyalty system?

[Sigreid]

Seems to me that what you don't really take into account is that this is the druid and ranger's turf. Your rules might make sense for city boy characters but deep wilderness with no supports for weeks or months at a time is what the ranger, druid and I suppose barbarian do.