In my current campaign I have a girl who just got into D&D and was struggling with the background part of her character, and eventually she decided to take the lazy route and go with “I’ve got amnesia”. Well, instead of just ignoring her story, I invented an entire quest-line centres around her and her forgotten past, which greatly helped her develop her role-playing abilities because she was always a little shy and couldn’t bring herself to interact with other PCs or NPCs, this pushed her to the forefront and the whole group really enjoyed it. The only drawback is that now I have to come up with 5 other “homecoming” quest-lines for my other players lol. Edit: holy fuck I’m famous
Yeah, I had a similar issue. One of the players couldn't explain why their particular race was in the world and they had virtually zero backstory beyond wanting to play a particular type of character. So I altered the one off module I was using for the first session we were playing where instead of the group escorting the random npc they instead escorted the player to the main city church to investigate who and what this person is since they had an odd magical aura and no memory of who they were when they woke up. As the player started getting a feel for who and what they started getting memory flashbacks. It seemed to go over well with the group.
I actually helped one of my fellow players in our campaign come up with his backstory recently and its pretty similar. Can't remember where I first read about the idea, but its a warlock who sold their memory in exchange for power. All they remember is that they used to be an adventurer (which is good since we started at 5th level and he's joining us at 6th). Did he sell his memory because something horrible happened and he wanted to forget? Or was it so he could experience the thrill of adventuring again? Or perhaps something else?
I personally never cared much for allowing amnesia as a background unless they also work out a real background. I DO allow "generic, generic blah blah I will figure that part out later, generic, generic, more generic" as long as they have a base idea that they can flesh out on the fly, but when they go that route I make them take TONS of notes and let me review between sessions.
They need to add this to the screen somewhere, so that when you skip through the video or return to it try to find something it's not that frustrating eah time.
@@Shaagaah You're welcome! Usually, one of the viewers posts these, sometimes the Dungeon Dudes post the times themselves. It's not that much work and the video is interesting anyways!
Ok. I've been playing DnD for 33 years. Mostly DMing. Let me say this. You guys are amazing. The work you put into these videos is incredible. This one is, as always, really really good. From all the DnD videos out there, your tips, tricks and thoughts are the ones that influenced my DMing the most in recent years. Thanks Dudes.
@@sohinimukherjee2856 I started playing 1st edition when I was 8yrs old. I've played 2nd edition AD&D a lot but then 3.5 was a revolution. We didn't even try 4th edition because 3.5 was so good (and reviews of 4th were not great). Then... 5th edition. I think 5th is hands down the best thing that's happened to D&D ever. What about you?
@@fxlab2540 I find 5e good for one shots or teaching the game, but for any long term game I would never personally run 5e. There is just not enough customization and skill specification to comfortably have a good way to show a Character's growth on a flavor to mechanical level for me, and the more I show 3.5's wide expanses to my new players/friends, the more excited they are getting about trying it out.
I also, as a DM of 20 years of experience and as someone who just started to teach DMing to others, truly think they provide head and shoulders the best advice amongst the well-known channels. The above ties between party members advice is one of my favourites, as well as a good example of going above and beyond to make a campaign incredibly great.
I've used the "I Know A Guy" rule like this: Each player creates 3 contacts/NPCs that their character know and have some sort of background with, outside of any family members. One will be a friend or ally, someone who would obviously do their best to come to the aid of the character, if needed. One will be more neutral towards the character, like perhaps an old colleague or an innkeeper or a street informant, who will possibly help out the character, but will probably expect something in return. And finally an NPC with whom the character has some sort of beef, unfinished business or rivalry, at least the last time the two of them met. So not necessarily an outright enemy, but just someone who will not immediately feel very friendly or helpful towards the character. Think of a Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back. A true friend would have warned Han and Leia that the Imperials had arrived at Cloud City right there on that landing platform. Instead he kind of sells them out to save his own position. Only to much later turn around and become an ally.
I guess I've been doing that indirectly. Every character has a backstory, and generally they have ample hooks to hang NPCs from. Like the first Drakkenheim campaign, I made a point of giving each of the players a chance to have that catch-up session with their past, and they couldn't all come at the same time (although they did overlap somewhat) so it wasn't until 9th level that the wizard actually *met* the sorcerer/attorney father who had abandoned her and then secretly sponsored her. (He had close to a hundred children [although the bulk of them were already adults and not dependent on him], and had to focus his money on the most promising ones, but that meant hiding from all of them.) I think this is also a good way to give the players a sense of shared ownership in the setting, while simultaneously making life easier for the DM. The player should be encouraged to offer up plot hooks, and more of them than the DM can ever hope to pursue. That way they don't know which one will become important later, and allows maneuvering room when NPCs die (as they do). Realistically, I'd say that each character is entitled to one personal arc per campaign, but it may be a recurring one, and most likely will incorporate multiple of the offered plot hooks. And then some of the details will get used for throwaway gags or incidental NPCs like shopkeepers or tavern owners, getting chuckles out of players just when comic relief is required.
Oh, I like that a lot! I love writing character backstories, so I'd have a field day writing out the intricacies of those relationships, and why they're friendly/tit for tat/contentious. So many fun possibilities, like old friend from your bard's troupe/childhood music instructor who's used to taking your money/jilted suitor from your hometown. And really, it's a smart DM who outsources NPC creation to their players.
1:55 "We have a fond, love-hate relationship with rolling for ability scores" Reminded me about the first time I first dungeon mastered, and I watched my players roll for their stats during session 0. I kid you not. I watched my friend roll up a starting character with 18 18 18 14 13 10.
I have a player like that. We always roll stats at my table and for four characters across three campaigns, he has always had multiple ability scores at 20 by level 4 (by rolling 2, 3, or 4 18s) and I'm pretty sure he has never once had a negative modifier. The other four always end up with a fairly ordinary array of stats from rolling. No one in our group really minds because he exclusively plays fairly ordinary, even wangrod-y martial characters. His characters are objectively more powerful, but also less interesting.
@@GoblinUrNuts My table has come to expect it. No one really minds that his average damage is highest because they gravitate toward RP heavy characters. Although it is challenging as a DM to design my encounters knowing that my party's front line fighter's *average* roll is about nat15 or 16.
I'm playing in my first campaign, my stat roll: 16 13 18 14 13 11 ^ Playing as a divine soul half elf sorcerer. So my con & cha are 18. My dex, wis, & int are 14. Str is 11. I think I have the best stats out my team.
Literally just today a friend of mine was rolling stats for a artificer he's going to play in my campaign, and for one of his staff he straight-up rolled 5.two 2's and two 1's (we do 4d6 remove the lowest) and it was one of those, welp moments
My 1st DM has a char creation rule for noobies that I really liked (but haven’t had a chance to use yet). He’d have us create 2 chars, no backstory yet. Then he’d allow us to take 1 stat pt & 1 feat from 1 char to give to the 2nd char. Then he’d help us create a linked backstory between the two chars, usually family or very close friends worked best. And then we’d play the weaker char 1st at Level 1. This allowed us to learn the mechanics of the game & some the RP benefits of a sub-optimal char. And very frequently, these chars died quickly - inexperienced players in a gritty world. If death was too fast, he’d allow a “let’s try that again” moment, or the grisseled old-timer mentor NPC would kinda save their bacon but both hurt real bad. And when all our 1st chars had died, we’d level up the 2nd chars we had to Level 2. He’d tell us that these chars had received word that their prior linked chars had died, he’d pass down 1 interesting piece of equipment, and off we’d go. I loved how this gave us practice, motivation, a little backstory & history in that world, and a tiny benefit carried over from 1 char to another.
Floating ability scores. This is the way. I HATE being stuck to a couple of races for certain character builds. This is why the Half-elf is so popular for Charisma classes.
Def support this, I always play Charisma focused characters (suits my rp style), and I get annoyed being stuck choosing between... half-elf, or perhaps human. Forget Tieflings, they're always social pariahs in every game.
The Lando rule is implemented reasonably well in Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, actually. Each player gets an ally and a rival inside their guild, plus a third person they know from another guild, and the renown system in the same book gives the players additional contacts once their renown with the guilds increases
There's an old web comic called Goblin Hollow/Under the Lemon Tree and in one story arc they ran a D&D session. The DM had what he called a DGR rule. Basically you wouldn't expect someone to take up the life of an adventurer unless he had a Darned Good Reason to think he had a chance of surviving so all of his characters were allowed to pick one reasonably powerful skill or weapon that wouldn't normally be allowed to a level one character.
Whenever I read a gritty fantasy that takes heavy inspiration from DnD mortality, its bogglingly difficult to imagine why some characters would explore dungeons filled with Rock Eaters and Beholders.
In 5e I really like to let my players start at level 3 if they want, as that's when you can choose your class archetype which unlocks tons of flavor, backstory, and roleplay potential. In my mind I imagine whatever the player was doing before level 3 was largely unimportant compared to them now, a Paladin for example can't even pick their oath until level 3, or a cleric's domain, ect. For a lot of players it's also more interesting to skip the first few levels of using the same few abilities over and over on the same few low level monsters
@@TeddyBearAssassin excellent choice! Had a DM who liked to play E8 games, most progression stopped at level 8, and he like to start at lvl 3. 3 is the new 1 he would say.
@@TeddyBearAssassin thats not how subclasses work, yes most classes(fighter, rogue, barb, monk, pali, artificer, ranger and bard) get their subclasses at lv3 but some.get them at lv2 (druid andwizard) and some get theirs at lv1 (warlock, sorc and cleric)
@@zhangbill1194 But level 3 means ALL players get their archetype. Unless you are suggesting having a player who rolls Warlock to start at 1, and a Barbarian to start at 3?
*On being able to move racial bonuses around:* I've been doing a lesser version of this -- if you have a +1 to a body stat like DEX, you can move it to any other body stat, but not a mental one. Conversely, a +1 INT could become a +1 WIS or +1 CHA, but not a +1 DEX, STR, or CON. A +2 can't be moved at all, nor can it be split, because I see it as a defining characteristic of the race. This tends to loosen the cookie cutter a little, but not enough that you can't still make good guesses on which way a character of a given race will lean. A tiefling is going to have a +2 CHA, you can count on it. But many sub-races seem to vacillate between INT and WIS that I decided that a bonus to one could be moved to the other, and eventually to the more general rule above. *On a shared background* Even if the players don't feel like participating, they're going to get railroaded into having a shared experience. Since I also like to start at third level (it used to be 5, but I find it's actually nice to "play your way in" to 5th level, you have a better feel for what the character is about that way -- mind you, I fully understand why you are NOT doing that for Season 2), the shared backstory and their 900 XP may be one and the same thing. "This party is together because you already have adventured together out of necessity, and survived two levels." Then we can sit there and make up an explanation for their first two levels, and that becomes their shared experience. Doing this in advance rather than in session would be better, but not strictly necessary. *Weapon equivalence* I treat weapons that *act* almost the same as if they *were* almost the same. For example, if you have proficiency with rapier, then you have proficiency with all d8 Finesse weapons such as cutlass and khopesh -- the only difference is slashing vs. piercing. If you want to carry a butterfly knife or a switchblade or a stiletto in your boot, they'll all be considered easily concealed daggers, but the penalty will be that they can't be thrown (not balanced for it). This does next to nothing to game mechanics, but allows for a wider variety of weapons to appear in game.
Mal-2 KSC this means you can never have a half orc that’s plays anything other than strength characters still. You think orc tribes don’t have clerics that pray to Grumpsh? The strict racial bonus thing kind of sets an uncomfortable racist real world tone. And since games don’t make it past lvl 10, the smartest half orc will never be as smart as the smartest elf
Ryan Block that’s ridiculous. Just put your high stat in wisdom. But still, you think that clerics don’t need to be strong and tough? Those clerics would see their natural affinity for brute strength as another tool for them to serve their god. “What better way for a half-orc to live,” they’d say. Either way, it’s just a bonus, not a command for you to amplify that stat. If you want a wise half orc, just put your high roll in wisdom, and embrace the strength you are given. Done.
@JonIsPatented I like playing tieflings for INT and WIS spellcasters, but I don't demand the +2 CHA get moved elsewhere. I just don't point-buy any CHA. I had a fun time in a one-shot with a winged tiefling theurgy wizard who spent most of her time dragging other characters out of harm's way just before things went boom.
Ryan Block you do realize that, for about half of Clerics, STR is their main secondary stat, right? +2 STR +1 WIS is the best you could get for a melee Cleric
This video is rock solid for folks looking for the enjoyable cooperative storytelling aspect. The longer a proposed campaign, the worse it is to have bad rolls for creation or leveling hamper one person at the table. That sort of quirkiness is, IMO, better suited to one-shots. You could even have a 'peasant D&D' theme for the one-shot, embracing the bad rolls as ordinary townsfolk attempt to deal with an unusual situation.
I am of the opinion that low roles in stat gen can create great role-play opportunity, however with that being said nothing sucks more than when you can roll for shit and don't have a single stat above a 12. That's why I have a rule that allows players to reroll anything less than a 9 because that way it ensures you aren't stuck with a -3 to start and it increases the likeliness of having decent stats. I've played in games where we're allowed to reroll ones which has lead to some pretty high starting stats. I've also played in a game that allowed us to reroll ones and one two, which made it more likely to have one amazing stat.
God, I'm running a 3 session dungeon crawl as a pause from the main campaign cause the DM has a lot of exams and no time to prepare the game. The cleric... Oh god that cleric... His highest roll was a 13. He had two 8. I think the stats were 13 11 10 10 8 8. Piss poor stats for sure, and that was rerolling 1s. I told him he could roll again, it is after all, just a short dungeon crawl that doesn't matter. He refused. He died last week in the second session. It was funny, cause he chose to play with those god awful rolls, but also tragic, cause he kinda got gangbanged by zombies while the rest of the party tried their hardest to reach him. To make things worse, the zombies succeeded a lot of the saving throws to not die
One of the things that I like about starting with bonds is that it makes a larger variety of alignments possible, with it being much easier for a neutral, chaotic, or evil character to already have some investment. I like playing bastards, and this really helps to keep my bastard from screwing the party over.
I will bring up that changelings can start with a plus 3 to charisma because of their +2 to charisma and additional +1 to any stat of their choice (Jeremy Crawford did say its intended to allow them to add again to charisma) so its possible with that array to have 20 in charisma
Well, they are also the only race who could have an 18 in CHA with the normal standard array. Since you raise the starting power level of every race, the added benefit of playing a changeling who focuses on CHA vs another race remains the same.
John Harrison I treat changeling as a half breed race like half elves and half orcs. It’s a hybrid between a human and a doppelgänger, so their existence regardless of how rare can be justified in any campaign that could justify the existence of doppelgängers.
I left a LOT of races out of my campaign, largely because they hadn't been published yet when we started. Tabaxi was one of them, since we've been at this since prior to XG₂E. But a player wanted a Tabaxi character, and other characters had already been to the Feywild, so I decided that there are plenty of inhabited planets in the Prime Material Plane, most of which we'll never even list, let alone discuss. All of them share a common set of planes, so once you leave the Prime Material Plane, you can re-insert back into the Prime Material Plane in another solar system entirely if you wish. That's how a character from Tabax got to Tera, my setting, via a Feywild pivot. (You can also use teleportation circles on other planets, since it's still the Prime Material Plane, although you may not be greeted warmly -- many worlds are dominated by a single race and they don't really want outsiders to come and stay.) This dodge should work for ANY race, and I didn't have to change the campaign setting to accommodate them. Gods are also planet-specific, although some are followed on multiple planets. This can cause interesting problems for clerics. It is, however, also a lampshade for why there are so many people trying to start new religions all the time. They're not really new, they're just imports. It also explains why the Eberron, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms gods all have followers on Tera. tl;dr: If I have no other explanation from where a character comes from, I'm not saying it's aliens, but...
When in a PC hometown, I always make them roll a D20 with any NPC they interact with that’s not included in their backstory to determine feelings in prior relationships this rule has made a few Random NPC take on a life of there own and became pieces in the story.
Honestly, your set ability scores should be the absolute standard in character creation. It's always great for a character to start off excelling in at least one thing, because it gives the player freedom to take feats and not feel at all trapped to focus on statistically improving their character through score improvements. Nothing makes a DnD game feel less fair than rolling die for a character, and having a complete imbalance in power between the party. Each class has different strengths and weaknesses. Give the agency to the players to decide where their ability scores go. I would say, if you were playing with new players and are introducing them to DnD 5th edition, rolling for ability scores is the worst way you could go about it. Thanks for the awesome house rules, dudes!
I've wanted to play a game with 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17 stats - it means you actually have weaknesses, not just a dump stat, but lets non-standard races start with a good class ability score, and it makes multiclassing a bit harder because your ability scores are more widely varied.
Everyone with a 6, will probably turn to a more comical party...6 is a pretty looowww score for everyone to have(and they wont waste their race bonuses on it). One character will be unable to read, another will have a limp, another may be deformed. It's....more comical, and that can be great or it can be terrible, depending on the setting you want to play.
@@Anegor 6 ain't low. Human average is 10. Look around you at the people you see in life: most of them are carrying around a score of 8, and many of them have a 6 somewhere. Someone with STR 6 in 5e can lift 60 lbs and still move around at 2/3 speed. I've met PLENTY of people who would struggle to lift 60 lbs off the ground much less do that for a whole 8 hour work shift. You don't actually reach the point of disability until 3 or lower, but persons with disability sure do exist. Anyway, a 6 just means you have -2 to do something, or a -10% success chance. Unless you know someone fairly well you might not even spot that kind of weakness. People tend to be pretty good at concealing the things they're terrible at. I think this is really just an obsession with bonuses, and an aversion to penalties so deep-seated as to be a significant hindrance to being a functional player. The correct course of action is to play with penalties until you grow as a person and realize that player skill matters far more than a +1 here or a -2 there. If this is not possible for you, then admit it publicly and everyone in the campaign world will have stats of 12-20, even the wee ickle babies and tiny crows, and the numbers will work out so you never have to be scared by that nasty little minus sign ever again. TL;DR: stop whining and grow a pair.
We use the standard array from the handbook, but then allow a +1, +1, -1 that you can assign as you wish, but have to justify with your background. Makes for just the right bump, and inspires some fun background flavor.
My way of rolling for stats: Roll 4 times (4d6, drop lowest) If none of the scores rolled are 8 or lower, and no scores above 16, assign 8 and 16 as your last two scores. If you have such scores, roll the rest of your stats. If you have the high score, but not the low, roll once. If that roll is 8 or lower, roll again. If not, assign 8. (And vice versa) If a player rolls lower than standard array+2, they are allowed to discard and begin again. Players are allowed to lower their lowest ability score. Solid characters with a weakness are guaranteed, and you still get to do the rolling.
I give all my players expertiese in a skill. I've always felt it "weird" that a bard or rogue is a better athlete than a fighter, or a better arcanist than a wizard. So, all characters have expertiese in one skill, on top of whatever expertiese they may get from classes or feats.
If you ever gain proficiency in something you are already proficient with, it should become Expertise. A goliath should never be excluded from soldier background, they should rather be trained and natural athletes making them great at it!
Alex Jobe well, at least, the “Expertise” ability is for just two classes. You can get doubled proficiency with some other stuff. My point was that backgrounds let you retrain the skills you get from them, if you get the skill another way, which G80 GZT seemed not to know. For detail, read this answer on StackExchange: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/44243/do-proficiencies-with-one-thing-from-multiple-different-sources-stack
• I like letting everyone roll twice, and everyone can select an array anyone else rolled. Everyone using the same array if everyone liked it enough still gives plenty of diversity as they'll probably place them in different places. • All races gain a bonus feat. Variant human doesn't exist. + the ability to move a +1 from the racial bonuses. (Human straight up gets a bonus +1 instead of moving one) • HP = Average HP + 2 + Con. • Always establish "Roots" between the characters. Blood relations, past bonding associations. I like using "Children of Morta" as a fantastic framework for an adventuring party. The adventurers are family and have an established home base. I also like the immortality mechanic, that the adventurers share a link of immortality. Players will be resurrecting most the time anyway. People try to make death more meaningful by nerfing it so it might not work, I prefer making it more meaningful by tying it to this player-shared resource that can be threatened, which also makes players care more about the home base and since every time they die they come back at home base it also anchors them to home as a place they will visit often. Resurrection magic is still important as it can make the player "respawn" at the casting instead of at home. This mechanic doesn't have to just be a home base though, it could be a shared gift of some sort. It's adaptable to almost any desired party set up and theme.
I do think it's easier to put characters in deadly situations more often if death is more like "Banishment on steroids". They still don't want to die because it takes them out of the campaign for a while, but at least it's not the end of the game for that character. At early levels, getting someone brought back can be a quest (or multiple questlets) in and of itself. in a situation like this, you don't have the player roll up another character, you find something productive for them to do (maybe they run an NPC recruited for the quest) for the one or two sessions it takes to get their character back.
@SaviorOfNirn Only if all you care about is your character surviving. If your character instead cares about certain NPCs surviving or about succeeding at their goals, then there's still dramatic tension. Just because you can't die doesn't mean you can't lose. In fact, I'm always looking for ways to make it easier for the characters to lose a battle without it resulting in removing PCs from the game. I like OP's suggestion because you can have situations where the heroes are trying to stop a ritual, are defeated by the cultists and now they have to travel all the way back from their home base. When they return, they can witness the results of their failure The thing you of course have to be cautious about is using it as a death spiral where each time you come back, the enemies get more powerful as a result of your defeat meaning you are more likely to die again the next time you face them. Still, you can impose that risk on certain encounters: If you don't stop the lich now, it's only going to get harder and eventually impossible. You'll be stuck in a loop of infinite death unless the lich is merciful enough to destroy your means of resurrection.
You realize chucking variant human makes human pcs worthless, right? +1 to all asi is always worse than +2 to the asi you need, and on top of that, no other abilities. People overlook that bit of game design way too often. If you bundle together what other races get, it's usually a good deal more powerful than a feat. The difference is that human gives you customization that others don't.
@SaviorOfNirn Only if you're shortsighted and only if you only care about the metagame. There are many many different threats than just death, and now instead of the party being immortal because they can just get resurrected anyway (if not earlygame) or just throwing down a new character sheet (Or worse, quitting the game), you have a tangible link to the game world as a source of the "immortality", immortality becomes a tool you can use as a DM and it becomes more real to the game world. The stakes if that source of immortality is put at risk can be huge, much more impactful than most things you could do as a DM. So long as you don't abuse the tool and threaten it too often. Meanwhile players can still be abducted, subject to curses, and so on. Death can still feel real to the characters themselves. It hurts a lot, it's bad sensation, they might leave their bodies behind and have to see their own corpse- Or have to fight it as the necromancer found uses for it. The source might work in a timeline way, where that timeline of you really truly did die and the rest of the party must contend with the fact that THAT friend is dead and the new person is effectively a different person but familiar, like a twin to their friend with similar life experiences and looks. The new you might even know this fact, and know that they're different, that they're replacing the original. All depends on how you want to run the basic concept of a shared immortality source with how serious or not you want it to be.
I just recently got into DnD (i totally love it and think is incredibly fun) My DM forgot to tell me he had house-ruled that we couldn't use Point-Buy to make our characters so when i made my first character he told me "his abilities are way too perfect, there's no way you rolled this good" and i told him "of course i didn't, i used Point-Buy, you never said we couldn't do that" and then he very politedly said "ok, my bad for not writting that in the common-rules section of the chat, but i need you to roll for his ability score" and so i did (HIS house-rules for rolling for ability scores are actually quite generous, you "Advantage Roll" it, so you make two rolls for ability score, and keep the one you like the most...my character ended up being way more overpowered in the FIRST roll and we just laughed our assess off at it, i actually felt pretty bad about it so i lowered some of it's abilities on purpose to fit better with his backstory XD)
With the NPCs one of my players gave me a massive boon in giving me an old carousing buddy. The look on his face when I introduced the character and the RP that ensued was glorious. One of my favorite moments of the campaign so far.
In our 2nd session of Avernus we had the very clear goal of going to the dungeon to continue the story. Instead we ate breakfast and rped for 3 hours before heading there. RP is so important for me cause its what I enjoy the most in DnD
I'm about to run my second session as a new DM and I've watched nearly all your videos. They've been invaluable in helping me further understand the 5e rules. Thank you so much!
Playing D&D for like 30 years now, I will include the "I know a guy" mechanic (It's not really a rule, is it ?) into my current campaign of mostly newbies. I love the idea of players creating the world with the DM. I already use a 10 candles like approach on passing over narration of certain situations like critical successes and failures. This will so add to my game. Thank you for this simple yet powerful idea.
@@TheDancerMacabre Floating ability scores, probably the biggest thing from Tasha's. Now PCs can add racial ability bonuses to any score, e.g. Mountain Dwarves can get +2 Int and Cha and be awesome Wizards. Party bonds exist as Group Patrons, the idea from Eberron. An organization of some kind gives you a common purpose, mission hooks, and maybe equipment. D&D Beyond defaults to giving you half HD in HP per level, rounded up.
After watching 5 or 6 of your videos I can tell that you guys have a similar playstyle /mindset to my group. I've played all the editions, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness that you obviously put into these vids. These houserules, especially for a smaller group, make so much sense. Well done. Keep 'em coming!
"...having a character that can do everything because they're good in charisma, and intelligence, and in wisdom..." I'm looking at you, Caleb Widogast.
Mind you they rolled their stats (pretty sure) or they had A LOT of points, so he just put his lower scores in Str-Dex-Con. Some of the CR characters have huge Ability totals. Roleplay wise, Caleb should have ordinary Charisma.
Bit late to the party here, but I have a couple house rules that I'd like to throw out. 1. Background determines starting ASIs. Tasha's helps a lot with this, but even now I still like to tie ASIs to a character's background. If someone's background was Sage, for example, they might have Int and/or Wis as their increases. Sailor could reasonably be a lot of different Abilities (even Int, if they were a navigator or something similar). Most of the backgrounds have a lot of flexibility in that way, and I've found that tying ASIs to backgrounds really nails down how exactly your character lived prior to being an adventurer helps with the roleplay and informs their character going forward. 2. Starting Feat: Everyone gets one feat to start (subject to DM's approval; I usually veto stuff like Warcaster and Mobile), but it has to tie into their background or history in some way, or otherwise give some fun flavor. This is a good way to work in some of the less optimal but fun RP feats like Chef. Maybe the Druid travelled with the Wizard for a little while and they taught each other some magic (each player gets Magic Initiate for the other's class). You can do some variation on this as well if it gets a little too min-maxy. For example, if the player wants to take something that boosts an ability score above a certain number (I use 18) then either the DM simply says no or allows the player to raise another ability in lieu of the normal ability, or just say no Half Feats entirely. The most important thing is that it ties into the character's backstory somehow. This really helps make lvl 1 characters a little tougher in different ways and makes the characters more fleshed out. 3. Starting Cantrips: The full casters (Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, Bard, and sometimes Artificer) all have Prestidigitation, Druidcraft, and Thaumaturgy for free as appropriate. For some characters like Eldritch Knight you might also add the relevant cantrip, but I usually don't. You could also allow certain subclasses (Arcana/Nature Cleric, Divine Soul Sorcerer) to get an additional cantrip as well, but again I usually don't. The reasoning is that these cantrips are supposed to be all the minor little tricks of that particular kind of magic; it makes some sense that they'd always have them. 4. Very, very occasionally you can alter what skills you get from certain backgrounds. I once had a PC take the Inheritor background, but we switched out Survival for Animal Handling. The reasoning being that the character spent most of their formative years locked in a wizard's tower with some animal companions.
In the session that I'm a part of every Thursday, there's a running gag that I regularly bring up about an old Dwarf woman (named Rosie) who helped raise my Tiefling. Not only has my DM latched onto this idea, actually adding her into the world, the other players have as well. One of our PC's is a very large "Strongest in the room" kind of guy, and whenever I bring up Rosie, he responds by "I must meet this champion, if her legend is to be believed!" I stand by the "I know a guy" rule, and HIGHLY recommend it.
I am planning on experimenting with a “rolled array + 3”, where at session 0 an array is rolled and applies to the entire party for them to put into whatever stats they want, and 3 points they can add to get a stat up to 17
I like your stat array. Additionally, a DM of mine had a rule for rolling which I found incredibly fair: First you roll one stat array, assigning the scores to whatever ability you want. Keep this array if you feel like it's good enough. If you're like "nah, this is absolute garbage," then you can roll again. You can keep doing this (within reason) until you feel like you've done well enough that you're satisfied. This allows everyone to have roughly the same amount of power, because no one is stuck with a TERRIBLE array of stats for their class. You don't get a fighter with no stat higher than 12, or a bard who's stuck with a single 16 and everything else low. If you roll poorly, you have an out. If you roll decently, you won't want to press your luck.
I like having my players have an existing relationship with another player’s character. When I played an undying warlock, my friend and I agreed to be characters who used to work for another adventure party, but they got killed and my patron discovered us when he investigated a collection of magic items nearby. So we work for him though I’m the one tied to him in order to protect my friend’s character.
The drawback to fixed hp and fixed ability scores is that I’ve noticed a lot of people’s favorite part of character creation is seeing how their die rolls influence the creation of their character. Sometimes you’ll come in not knowing what you want to play and when you’re rolling ability scores and later hp, it helps to mold the characteristics of the PC.
Roll HP every level: Whenever you level up, roll all of your hit dice (with the constitution bonus). If that roll is higher than your current maximum HP, then that is your new maximum HP. Otherwise, your new maximum HP becomes one(+CON) higher than your previous maximum HP. This balances out the variability of hit dice, without removing all randomness from it, and a bad roll doesn't stick around forever. Old school Ability Scores (option): Take a feat at level one. Roll3d6 for all your ability scores, but you may replace the primary ability scores of your class with a 14or13 if you rolled lower. You are guaranteed to be competent in your class, but you probably won't be above average at everything right away. The feat offsets the ~1.5 point lower scores, and lets you get cool stuff earlier.
The former HP roll rule is well-known and you see it used sometimes, but it has a deceptive downside: while it tends to erase early low HP rolls, it also tends to erase early high HP rolls. By the time you hit Level 10 you'll end up with much closer to average HP totals than you would think. So the effect is really only pronounced from level 2-6 or so, and it's only a fairly small benefit.
I love everything you have said in this video. I've always felt the Hit Dice one is near important and having some kind of balance between each players summed stats.
I really like the Standard Array you guys came up with here. Gives everyone the opportunity to be good at what they want their character to be good at without anything being broken.
@@cosmicwonderer6269 they actually went on to do a video on both buffing and debuffing - one benefit of buffing is the avoidance of a saving throw and the number of buffs that affect multiple targets
We generally use the standard array for ability scores, but all characters get 1 free feat at level 1. That free feat could be one that gives a +1 in a stat, so that effectively takes the place of the "floating +1" you described. We already use the "take half HP if you rolled lower" you described, and I like your other ideas too.
So, I came up with two interesting ways to “roll” up a character. For kids: they live in a village of retired adventures, when they come of age they are told they need to apprentice at with six craftsman for six months before they let them go adventuring. The blacksmith each week they roll a d6, at month’s end they have their strength score, and so on. Normally they don’t like that they are unintelligent, but are okay that they just don’t like scribing books. The second is way more fun, they all have 10s in every stat. Or 8 or whatever. Then they wake up after a battle in a museum and the curator tells them they need to use the weapons and equipment on the walls to equip themselves. They select their equipment and each piece gives them a stat increase in one of the six stats based on what they pick, if they pick heavy weapons and holy symbols and the helmet with the wings they get strength, wisdom, and charisma. It is more complicated than that, but in the end they fight off their attackers and return the equipment, but then get to select the class they want to play based on their new stats. Worked well the two times I did it.
An idea I heard about from another source suggested creating a quick story that could be shared during gameplay to *explain* the character’s personality trait, ideal, bond, and flaw. The player therefore would not be tempted to write a three-page fan-fiction account of their character’s past that no one reads or remembers. Instead they would simply tell the quick story during character down-time as the characters are getting to know each other. Brilliant!
I completely agree that for long term characters, point buy or standard array is far better than stat rolling. Taking the average HP roll is already quite generous. I let my players choose: if they roll, they keep the result.
That's what I do. I always took that to be the RAW option; you either roll or take half. For my current rogue that started at level 5, I rolled for level 2 and got a 1, took 5 for level 3, then rolled another 1 for level 4 and took a 5 for level 5. Everyone else in my group was like "why didn't you just take 5 on those rolls" and I answered "this is D&D, you roll your dice and take your chances".
In our current campaign (started last week) We had everyone roll their stats twice. Then each person could pick and choose which of all the rolled stats they wanted. If you picked someone elses stat rolls (The whole table, not just indevidual numbers) the owner of that rolled table would then be able to allow / deny you taking those stats. (Could only deny if they wanted them for themselves) This gave us approximately 8 stat tables to pick from.
Background Rule: I have my players choose two skills (or one skill be two additional languages or tool proficiencies) they want their characters to have already mastered. I then fit the closest background template that closest fits those skills to the character. I also ask my characters for a rival and an ally NPC, kinda similar to your "I know a guy" rule. Rolling, I do rolls, 4d6 drop lowest, but allow the player the option of replacing two rolls with an 8 and 18. (Though I like your No 20s for first lvl characters concept and will probably mod that.)
One of my favorites is everyone gets a feat at 1st level. It really makes the early game funner. Players get more cool stuff and abilities such as Magic Initiate. This lets your character start as a spellblade because Green-Flame Blade and Mage Armor are very useful on 1st-level fighters In the case of the DM it lets me give "story feats" to the players such as Aberrant Dragonmarks or some homebrew feats I use. It also helps to balance weaker classes/races. Dragonborn get bonus AC, casters get certain mandatory feats like War Caster and Ritual Caster and Orcs get to offset their Intelligence penalty if needed. It's a really flexible rule that I wish more DMs used.
I absolutely love the floating ability score bonus. It allows interesting character concepts to not be totally underpowered. I wanted to play a Centaur Wandslinger Artificer (The cowboy who is his own horse) but that incredibly crippled the character since absolutely NONE of the racial traits or abilities helped...
A popular GM when I was playing D&D as a kid had a variant on the HP house rule displayed at 12:0: When you go up a level, you roll your HP and add it to your HP total. Every play session you re-roll your HPs and if you roll higher that is your new total. So going up a level you always improved your HP, but you could still improve your HP further at the start of any play session if you were lucky, and then again if you went up another level.
The randomness of rolling is still really exciting, so I like to have each of my players roll 2 or 3 full arrays. Then they can take 5-10 minutes to choose one that everybody uses. This primes them to work together, and if you have players that are more experienced in playing, gets some knowledge passed down as to why this array is better than that one.
I definitely agree that having a dump stat adds a lot of depth to a character. We played a pocket dimension one-shot while our party's wizard couldn't come to a session and everyone rolled poorly on their checks to know what a pocket dimension was. My 11 int orc fighter rolled a nat 20 and tried to explain "big room...in small space" with a lot of hand movements and visible frustration of struggling with words. I got the point across, though, and it earned me inspiration (which I used to turn a miss on a Displacer Beast into a crit later that session). Flaws are just roleplay seasoning
I dig your standard array I think I'm gonna try it for the next game I DM. I agree with wanting to have the characters have some bond before the adventure begins. Great show as always.
Much better than a backstory bond (which, let's face it, is just words on paper) is something like a common employer. A local noble, a reclusive mage, a crime boss, a consulting detective. Gives the campaign some solid structure until the players find out who the hell their characters actually are.
On the rolling for health thing, i tend to allow this. When rolling for HP, If you roll below your average, take one point below the average. EG d10 Hit die, Gets you 6 if you take average, If you roll a 1, you take 5 instead.
IMO a better houserule for rolling HP is simply "no 1s". If you can just reroll 1s it A: removes the worst possible outcome (which just sucks to get), and B: makes the average roll equal to the suggested average.
@@WannaComment2 I definitely prefer this version rolling 1s sucks and kicking that out is fine but if the MINIMUM is half then you have literally no reason not to roll, half the fun of rolling for anything is that there's always a chance it'll go south, taking that away simply defeats the point of rolling in the first place
I'm currently in a campaign where we rolled for stats and one of the players literally rolled four 1's and just leaned into it, so now we have a warlock with a wisdom of 3. The player literally rolls a d20 periodically just to see if his character notices things: regular things like the weather, when there's a door, and whether or not the rest of us are staying or moving. We've been in combats where we got through two rounds before the warlock realized we were even fighting. Rolling for stats is clearly the superior method for creating flavorful characters.
The most recent method for ability scores my friends used is what I call "Matt's Method" (Matt was the DM at the time) and it goes as follows: 1. Roll for ability scores as usual, 4d6 drop the lowest. However, you roll 7 times instead of six, and can pick whichever roll you don't want. You're greatly encouraged to take a varied array instead of a homogeneous heap of the same number, meaning you'll probably have strengths and weaknesses. 1.5. If you don't like your rolls overall, you're allowed to reroll the entire array of 7 rolls once, but you must keep the new rolls. 2. After placing your scores and applying your racial bonuses, you may take one ability score to reduce by one, and choose two others to increase by one each. 3. This is an optional part, but Matt told us to include flaws that were serious enough to have actual mechanical consiquences. For example, my character was a coward, so if he is getting too close to enemies he's forced to make a wisdom save or be frightened. He also has disadvantage on fear effects other than that innate one.
Those are interesting ideas, but why are you rolling at that point? It's not particularly random after a Bogo, drop the least desirable total, AND drop the least desirable roll each stat. If you are all doing it for fun, that's cool. However, it's not "random" or "organic" anymore. You'd probably be just as happy with a standard array or Point buy. It's your games and danger levels are unique to everyone, but adding a final -1 and +1 to 2 stats even more confirms PB/Standard array just sounds simpler for your group. Most games that allow you to "purchase" a better stat do so at a detriment to 1 or 2 others, not the other way around. Is that your intention?
My take is that if someone wants to spread their buy points around like peanut butter so they have no weaknesses -- let them! They're going to figure out that the character never really shines, and not build like that next time. Letting them get burned is much more effective than trying to warn them off it. I do build certain NPCs this way though, particularly politicians and other non-military leaders where it's more important to always have something to do in the current situation than to have the _best_ method of handling any one thing that may never happen.
I’m not sure how relevant this is to the video, but I’m reminded of a great character interaction story that I’d like to share for the fun of it. My brother played a gnome necromancer who learned necromancy simply because he wanted to resurrect his childhood pet cat. So his character had a camouflaged undead cat that followed him everywhere. I played a tabaxi rogue who didn’t like the strange cat that didn’t act like a cat. And every chance my character had to try something, I had her attempt to steal and bury the cat. She was successful twice. It made for great role playing opportunities between the two characters.
I thought the "i know i guy" was awsome at first, but i found that it undermines the background features. Criminal contact, Shelter of the Faithful, Position of Privilege and Researcher can all be used in the same way as "i know a guy". so i have just expanded on the background features to allow players to use them more.
I agree, I find that as the DM, just by talking alot and asking my players what type of backstory they want, this rule is irrelevant. My players trust me to include very helpful PC's, but also feel heavily involved, and they can make a ton of requests about family member and mentors. The reason I like this more then I know a guy, they always know if they need help, they just have to search, and although it may take effort/time they can find what they need. I would rather encourage more background design then make it an ace up their sleeve, esspecally since alot of campaign settings, characters are "fish out of water" and know no one in their area. More background design, leads to more investment in their character and their goals, and leads to more investment in the world, in my experience,
For the "I know a guy" rule; I would use the character's proficiency bonus for number of uses. That way characters who aren't particularly smart or social get the same opportunities to use it, and it gives the ability a nice hard limit as well as what I think is an appropriate "recharge" rate. So a level 1 to 4 PC could use the ability up to two times, but as soon as they hit level 5 (or any further threshold at which their proficiency bonus increases) they get a new use of "I Know A Guy." Love this mechanic btw!
I use a custom point buy. Instead of 27 points you get 30. You can spend 11 points to make a stat 16. It's kinda works likes Monty's where it allows for "sub-optimal" race/class pics, but it also benefits playing into type. An Elf can still play a strength based class with a 16, but a Half-Orc will have a natural edge that can give them an 18.
This is what I've been thinking of switching to exactly. It solves a lot of annoyances without unbalancing the game in unforeseen ways. What I had been doing up until now is that once characters are important enough in the world to be noticed by someone at the Sorcery College, they are offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rent a Tome or Manual long enough to use it once. The Sorcery College has a trick way of recharging them in two or three years (sending them to a plane where time runs faster) instead of a century so they use them as profit centers. Each character gets one, and I haven't had them ask for the same one before but if they did I''d allow it. It's a Sorcery College, they have duplicates. Anyhow, this came with the side effect that the skill cap rises to 22. I kinda would like to reserve that option for characters that get in _tight_ with the Sorcery College, and avoid power creep even when explaining the origins of the local Big Bad Evil Mother-and-Son Duo.
The key with making point buy systems shine is that you have to make it so that the costs to increase the score by 1 increase the higher the ability score gets. See nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Point_buy for a good example of this for a 3.x system (though I would argue that starting abilities at 7 and having the cost increases land on the even numbers to match with the increased modifier is better design) Set your ability pool to the power level you want for your game and you're good to go (with an interesting tradeoff with how much increasing your primary stat is worth the hit to your other stats, because that increase from 16 to 18 could cost you 6-7 points off of other abilities to get that +1. The question of how much you want to specialize isn't something with a universal and objective answer to it.)
I really like your option for stats. It's just enough to give everyone scores that make thier characters powerful in their chosen class but not over doing it. The way we use to do it 30 years ago was roll 4d6, reroll 1's, keep the best 3, and if you don't get an 18, change your highest roll to 18. It kept everyone happy and people didn't feel the need to cheat or be forced to be an assassion.
I have my own form of standard array that I use, it gives the players a bit of a stronger start with the potential for an 18 in one stat if they play it. Which is a lot like your first one- 16, 15, 14, 13, 10, 8. It’s a bit weaker than yours actually. But it gives you three solid ‘adventurer level stats’ of 15 or higher. I like that standard. An adventurer should be able to start with a minimum of +2 in their focus stats. For HP, I use the roll option but set a minimum, like the corollary to the rule. I’ve also made use of the house rule that offers Feats to players at level 1, which essentially makes variant human useless.
Actually, your system provides one more point to ability score than the Dungeon Dudes system. Your swap out the 11 for a 16 = +5 more points, whereas they swap out the 13 for a 17 = +4. Which is better, IDK.
Arik Wolf Huh, fair point there. Though with my setup they end up with a higher average ability score, their overall highest stat can only be an 18, which does fall below the 19 that the Dungeon Dudes’ Variant has.
Been watching you guys a few weeks but this is the first time I've commented. First, love you. You guys have such a great dynamic and the show is tight. Seems like you're radio/podcast hosts irl. As for character creation, I got turned on to Apocalypse World years ago and swore off DnD. A friend started a campaign and was looking for players so I'm back into 5e and have been watching your show to see what's new. The things you discuss here are basically interpretations of... well... better roleplaying systems.* These are the tenets of the Apocalypse Engine: Players are heroes, so make them heroic (the buffed array); characters have relationships with each other and NPCs of their own creation (bonds, etc.); and something you didn't quite touch on, the players are as responsible for the world as the GM and should be shaping it in session 0. You've no doubt read the Powered by the Apocalypse rulesets and/or discussion of them, but I think you'd do well to encourage your viewers to check them out. *No shade, I simply mean that the DnD ruleset isn't at it's core a roleplaying system, it's a tactical minis system that people use to roleplay with.
I a variation of the point to by system pretty good. I literally set all the point "for sale" instead of giving a base point, and that runs up to around 75 points. This gives you the option to be really good in some stats, but for the cost of some other stats. for example; i created a sorcerer with 18 char and dex, for the cost of strength and con on only 6 and 8. it makes for really good roleplay potential (PS. char only hits 18 because it's a tiefling)
I think one of my favorite ability score generating house rules was point-buy, but you could "sell" one stat down to 6, for an extra two points. That expands on what you say about flaws giving a character depth. Another house rule I love was when the DM gave everyone two extra skills -- "but they have to be useless in terms of game mechanics." Things like "perform: theatrical bartending" or "knowledge: trivial," which exist solely to flesh out your character and their backstory.
For rolling hit points my DM does it like: you roll, dm rolls hidden, and you get the option of "yours, mine, or the average". Adds a little gamble to it, but you almost never get hosed.
As a DM, I'd rather they not roll for HP. It makes it so much easier for me to plan the encounters when the characters are all at the HP level I expect for a given class and level, from my prior experience. It also reduces the need for bookkeeping -- if you're ever subjected to a level drain effect, you're supposed to back out whatever you got in those levels. In practice I think most people would back out the default values and not worry about it too much, but isn't it better if that's actually the correct move? I prefer RAW here: if you want to roll the dice and not take the default, on your own head be it. They didn't want to _force_ everyone to stick to the template, but they made it statistically preferable. I don't want to invert that balance, because it works well for me and generally has no effect on player enjoyment.
@@GoblinUrNuts I think that Remy has the math correct. The average for 1d4+1 is 2.5+1= 3.5 for 1d6 it's 3.5 The average for 1d4+2 is 2.5+2= 4.5 for 1d8 it's 4.5 and so forth
Here's the star rolling method I came up with about 15 years ago. 1. Have two or three players roll using your preferred method. Write those six numbers down and toss them in the middle of the table. 2. Each player choose the set they like and assigns them all as they please. Everyone can choose the same set of they like. This preserves the fun and excitement of rolling with the balance of an array, since everyone can choose the sam
I believe in rolling 4d6 drop lowest assign as desired. I have played other systems. Obviously not all characters will be equal, but who says they have to be, Batman and Superman are on far different power levels but both are in the Justice League, and both have their own roles.
Differing power levels (much like variance in general) is not such a big deal in a large party, but it can be a serious problem when constructing a small party. Fewer players = fewer dice being rolled. Fewer rolls mean much higher chances of extremely good or extremely bad streaks, and the latter can quickly result in a TPK when you only have three in the party to start with. In a small party, you really can't hide a weak brother. Everyone needs to be a virtuoso on their specialty, and have a running side gig too.
Batman also has plot machina. There's few campaigns where those two combined would work. Why would batman do anything when superman could just destroy everything in advance. I get your point though, I think differences in power should be less ability based and more skill based by classes or such.
I unintentionally did that with my DM because I gave a lot of detail about my character's family and friends. Plus I wanted to surprise my friends, so I told my DM about my backup pc and asked could he play my backup as an npc. He agreed, so he will control him, and keep him just vague enough where I'll be able to have freedom to play him how I want should it come time to use him. It'll be fun seeing him appear even if I never need to use him.
You can solve this feeling of 'all characters are the same' that comes from using a using a standard array by offering 2 different arrays. 17, 15, 13, 12, 10, 8 and 16, 16, 13, 12, 10, 8. and the players can choose one. Provides all the stability and balance of a standard array. Still gives the player a choice and creates a better sense of uniqueness
A cool house rule that I've used for rolling stats is that everybody rolls one stat (it depends on your party size, maybe just have the DM roll all of them) and then you give that array of stats to every character. This is a great way to make sure each and every one of the players don't feel above or below the power level of their party members, but it still leaves enough room for customization to make your character unique. Basically it's just the standard array rule in this video but with rolled stats.
Really like these ideas. One of my groups uses a “draft” that allows us to roll abilities but even out the variation among characters. Basically, each player rolls six scores (usually 4d6 drop lowest). We then pool all the scores, and then determine an order among the players. The first player chooses a score from the pool, followed by the next character in the order, etc. This draft is a “snake,” so the order reverses after the last player chooses, so the last player to choose gets to choose twice. One variation on this is to have the DM roll six scores to add to the pool, so the number of scores is greater than what the players need, and players are protected from picking the absolute worst scores.
I gave my players a list of team concepts and they chose what appealed to them. Examples included bandits, pirates, military unit, royal family, prospectors, pilgrims, bounty hunters, etc. The team is financially indebted to some kind of patron. Thus the team must work together and work hard to pay off their debt. In my game, they decided to be a roving company of monster hunters. A financier loaned the company as much money as they wanted to buy equipment, wagons, supplies, office, advertising contracts, stabling, etc. Now their primary task is to get contracts, get paid, and pay off the loan. If they miss payments, the financier will send people to "explain things" to the party. Looking forward to seeing how this all works out!
“Each time you gain a level, you gain 1 additional Hit Die. Roll that Hit Die, add your Constitution modifier to the roll, and add the total (minimum of 1) to your hit point maximum. Alternatively, you can use the fixed value shown in your class entry, which is the average result of the die roll (rounded up).” It’s the next sentence. It’s not a variant or anything... literally another valid choice. It’s also slightly better than rolling since it rounds up.
My house rule for HP is roll your hit die and if it's less than half of max, say 1-3 on a d8, then they get to re-roll it. I also homebrew a lot of monsters and adversaries so it balances it out enough that I don't feel as bad if my creations aren't as balanced.
I think that snuck in because it started as a house rule in prior editions and got adopted into the official sources for 5e. I think it might have been in 4e also, but I don't really care to remember details about 4e anymore. This is one rule I follow as written. The default is statistically slightly better than average, and I see this as a design choice. Rolling for HP is deprecated. You can do it if you like, but it will most likely work to your slight disadvantage if you do.
what would be nice is "you can either take the average rounded up or roll, and if the roll is low, take the average rounded down" That still makes you take a risk for rolling, and wont make people constantly take the average rounded up.
I came up with this based on finding the 5e point buy rather sub par compared to rolling as well as some of the reasons you guys said -Point buy, 31 points 7: -1 8: 0 9: 1 10: 2 11: 3 12: 4 13: 5 14: 7 15: 9 16: 12 Starting Stat array options 15, 15, 14, 12, 10, 8 16, 15, 15, 10, 8, 7 16, 16, 13, 10, 8, 8 16, 15, 14, 10, 9, 8
A reason for why I find a standard array good is that one of my early players always had strangely high scores. Their barbarian for example had a charisma score equal to that of the same campaigns paladin. And this was the norm for all of their characters, so I decided that a standard array would let me mitigate such a trend so that each and every character could feel specialised and not have one which outperforms the rest
You could also immediately solve that mystery by stationing the "lucky" player at the seat directly next to yours and tasking their neighbor on the other side with watching every single die roll. You'd be surprised how the "lucky" player instantly snaps shockingly close to statistical averages over a few sessions.
Things we've been trying on "one shots" 1: Standard Stat Array or Standard Point Buy 2: Free 1st lvl feat. 3: All current Unearthed Arcana is allowed. Something i do is that all stats start with a 6. you roll 3, take highest 2. we plan to make it so your primary 2 stats can start with an 8 or something.
Another option I've used in the past for determining ability scores was to have the entire group roll a shared array. Using this method, each player was able to roll one or two ability scores, then all the players utilized the collaboratively generated set to create their characters. This method allows ability scores to be generated with the classic random roll method, while ensuring that no one player gets better or worse results because they're all utilizing the same set of numbers.
My 2 go tos are: 'Roll 4d6, reroll 1's and drop the lowest'. It does skew stats to the high side, but as a DM I can work with that, and since it has the upwards skew, no one feels useless, though there is likely someone else better. They still get 3d6, just with better odds of getting 12+. 'roll your hit die, take the average if greater then what's rolled' phenomenal rule, helps keep people from being super squish.
Starting with a feat at level 1 seems like an interesting rule to me that could help flesh out a character's own talents outside of race and class, but I could see it happen that a DM could exclude certain feats from this so characters won't get too strong at level 1. Might be even better though, when you can't pick the best feats and only the ones that often aren't seen as worth taking instead of the stats boost, you'll get to give different feats a try that you normally would not pick. Can add a lot of character and might still be situationally usefull.
I've been doing this since 5E first came out. Yes, it lets the characters develop their styles right away. The DM needs to treat the party like they're half a level higher than normal. Other than that, it works great.
I've been having a real quandary with feats. I want to rewrite the mechanic to use some sort of points system, but keep the progression the same. The reason for this is that I would bump the cost of the really prime Feats from two points to three, and bring them back in balance with the rest without nerfing them directly. I came up with an archetype, originally inspired by Veo, of the Master Blaster. Take one Variant Human, make him a ranger with Sharpshooter as his starting Feat. At level 3, go Gloom Stalker and gain Darkvision and the extra first round attack. At level 4, add Crossbow Expert. Put a heavy crossbow in his hands and let the rapier rust. At level 5, you gain Extra Attack. From this point on, the build starts to level out a bit and you may want to cross into Rogue at this point, but it's so far ahead of the pack on damage (especially the first round) that it's hard to overlook if you want to play a character who just wings it in every battle. Even at 9th level (as far as I've leveled this character) he's still ahead of the pack, although the gap is closing, as is to be expected for a rogue dip. It pays off fast but there's a bit of a hangover. Do you want to know how OP Sharpshooter really is? In campaign, we had the party considering whether to hire a ballista crew and catapults to help with a fortress assault, and we realized that some rangers/fighters with Sharpshooter and heavy crossbows did _the same damage per shot_ and with much better accuracy. Add Crossbow Expert and they had increased rate of fire to go with it. The Master Blaster build is literally equivalent to a walking ballista -- except when it's better.
@@mal2ksc Kind of bothers me that some weapons get a feat specific to them and it's really good while some weapons are pretty much useless because there are better alternatives. Crossbow expert probably should be nerfed a bit as a house rule. Pole arm master is good too, but seems easier to work around due to limited range. Shield master seems just right, it gives good advantages and feels really useful but the DM can deal with it well enough.
Our DM allowed a feat at level 1, except Lucky. If you wanted Lucky, you had to roll 1d20. Nat 20, great, you can pick it. Anything else. Nope. You ain't lucky. She also allowed for it if you could write up a convincing backstory showcasing their luck. Like, 1 in a million luck, without being too over the top.
This is my method for keeping the excitement of rolling, but maintaining party ability score balance. We had 3 players in my campaign, so it worked out well. You have to tweak it based on number of players, but the general principals remain the same. 1. Each player rolls 4d6 and drops the lowest 3 times. This gives a pool of 9 ability scores. At this point, all you are looking for is a pool of ability scores over 6. 2. Each player around the table takes turns choosing an ability score that they want to lock in. With 3 players, this is done twice, giving 6 ability scores. 3. Each player now has 6 ability scores to make their character. Everyone has the same scores. I've had some players choose the most optimal, higher scores. I've had others choose low scores for role play. It is some pretty fun drama when you go around the table in order and ask them to lock in a score.
Holy fuck this is literally what happened to a oneshot last wednesday The game description seems very serious and I took it as a serious one shot, it was about cleansing a certain haunted manor I made a variant human paladin of vengeance specializing in bonking people with a greatsword to my surprise, the party consisted of a barbarian aarokocra that is literally just a chicken head that was given a human body (-3 int) an old man gnome divination wizard that never uses his portent rolls a goofy bard that tried to use a greatsword but fails miserably and a somewhat decent cleric of the grave suffice to say it was kind of fun
Bonding is a great way to have some pretext why some of the group member are/stay together. We did this in our current campaign. The warlock and cleric are from the same temple (mystra) and the rogue (mine character) and Bard (my partners character) where traveling in a troup together. Our troup run into trouble and broke up to save each other and our characters stayed together, coming across the quest giver as a "safe" way to get out of the area. The other two where directed by mystra and the same quest was in a vision.
Our DM (who is also brand new to DnD and DMing) came up with what I felt (as a beginner myself) a very fair method for rolling stats that left everyone in our group feeling good about their starting point (this is a 5 person group). Basically we all rolled for our stats and presented our results to our dm who then allowed certain numbers to be rerolled based entirely on his own discretion. This left us all with a good feeling set of numbers where none of us was drastically ahead or behind everyone else
Another fun house rule that I've implemented in some of my home games is that once or twice, or really however many times you want to use it, a campaign you can use knowledge that you as a player know about a certain skill to give yourself advantage on a check. For instance say you're trying to make some kind of poison and you, as a player, know some information about different types of antitoxins. You can essentially give your character that knowledge to gain advantage on that check. I believe it was Ivan Van Norman who I got the idea from but that was while ago so i don't really remember. I like it because it can make characters seem more personal to a player and can really help in a pinch if needed, it also lends well to having those little aha funny I solved it moments in a campaign. It can get pretty overpowered sometimes so that's why I limit it and the players usually save it for big important moments.
Great video - the Lando rule rocks. On HP: My former DM (and by now myself as well) go with rolling up to 3 times on level up. You can take the first roll and thats the end of it or roll again but then you're stuck with the result on the die. This adds a risk/reward component that still usually leaves player characters with above average rolls but also leaves the risk of a poor level up due to outstanding bad luck or greed.
One method of ability score generation I saw on reddit recently that I thought was interesting was 4d6d1, but every player uses the same set of rolls and puts them in their own stats however they choose. Haven't tried it, and I think I prefer point buy, but it's definitely interesting. I think your standard array is interesting, but I think I'd prefer point buy with a free feat at level 1. Accomplishes a lot of the same things, and I think everyone starting with an 18 sounds like a lot for me. You might let this include a dwarf playing a keen mind so they can start with a 16 in intelligence!
Taber McFarlin I did this for a game I play in. There's only three of us so we each rolled a set of numbers and picked the one we like best. As a DM as well, I would prefer my players all used one rolled set, or a point buy to avoid having the one op character.
@@TzarkaanThis sounds like a really great method if you like having randomness of the dice but not the imbalance. If my players want to roll next time I start a campaign I'll definitely recommend this! The thing I like about point buy for making my own characters is I can figure out how to handle odd numbers based on my race lol
My homebrew implementation is when going for HP you roll immediately and if you don’t like it you can either re-roll or take the average that way it puts the responsibility on you if decide to role the second time and get a bad role
In my current campaign I have a girl who just got into D&D and was struggling with the background part of her character, and eventually she decided to take the lazy route and go with “I’ve got amnesia”. Well, instead of just ignoring her story, I invented an entire quest-line centres around her and her forgotten past, which greatly helped her develop her role-playing abilities because she was always a little shy and couldn’t bring herself to interact with other PCs or NPCs, this pushed her to the forefront and the whole group really enjoyed it. The only drawback is that now I have to come up with 5 other “homecoming” quest-lines for my other players lol.
Edit: holy fuck I’m famous
Yeah, I had a similar issue. One of the players couldn't explain why their particular race was in the world and they had virtually zero backstory beyond wanting to play a particular type of character. So I altered the one off module I was using for the first session we were playing where instead of the group escorting the random npc they instead escorted the player to the main city church to investigate who and what this person is since they had an odd magical aura and no memory of who they were when they woke up. As the player started getting a feel for who and what they started getting memory flashbacks. It seemed to go over well with the group.
I actually helped one of my fellow players in our campaign come up with his backstory recently and its pretty similar. Can't remember where I first read about the idea, but its a warlock who sold their memory in exchange for power. All they remember is that they used to be an adventurer (which is good since we started at 5th level and he's joining us at 6th). Did he sell his memory because something horrible happened and he wanted to forget? Or was it so he could experience the thrill of adventuring again? Or perhaps something else?
I personally never cared much for allowing amnesia as a background unless they also work out a real background. I DO allow "generic, generic blah blah I will figure that part out later, generic, generic, more generic" as long as they have a base idea that they can flesh out on the fly, but when they go that route I make them take TONS of notes and let me review between sessions.
@@mattlewandowski73 I would just say "you don't remember? Thats fine. But you have to take whatever bones I throw you and run with it"
Simp.
Timestamps:
1:26 - Generating ability scores
7:53 - Floating ability scores
10:23 - "Take Half" Hit points addition.
12:56 - Bonds between Player Characters
17:21 - the "I know a guy" rule.
a godsent comment!
They need to add this to the screen somewhere, so that when you skip through the video or return to it try to find something it's not that frustrating eah time.
@@Shaagaah You're welcome! Usually, one of the viewers posts these, sometimes the Dungeon Dudes post the times themselves. It's not that much work and the video is interesting anyways!
clutch comment these guys always talk way too long
💖
Ok. I've been playing DnD for 33 years. Mostly DMing. Let me say this. You guys are amazing. The work you put into these videos is incredible. This one is, as always, really really good. From all the DnD videos out there, your tips, tricks and thoughts are the ones that influenced my DMing the most in recent years. Thanks Dudes.
Which version youve been playing from? You gigantic experience amuses me! And i thout with my 11 years i was a veteran!
@@sohinimukherjee2856 I started playing 1st edition when I was 8yrs old. I've played 2nd edition AD&D a lot but then 3.5 was a revolution. We didn't even try 4th edition because 3.5 was so good (and reviews of 4th were not great). Then... 5th edition. I think 5th is hands down the best thing that's happened to D&D ever. What about you?
@@fxlab2540 I find 5e good for one shots or teaching the game, but for any long term game I would never personally run 5e. There is just not enough customization and skill specification to comfortably have a good way to show a Character's growth on a flavor to mechanical level for me, and the more I show 3.5's wide expanses to my new players/friends, the more excited they are getting about trying it out.
I also, as a DM of 20 years of experience and as someone who just started to teach DMing to others, truly think they provide head and shoulders the best advice amongst the well-known channels. The above ties between party members advice is one of my favourites, as well as a good example of going above and beyond to make a campaign incredibly great.
I agree, I'm tired of min/maxers trying to bring in characters with three 18s.
I've used the "I Know A Guy" rule like this:
Each player creates 3 contacts/NPCs that their character know and have some sort of background with, outside of any family members. One will be a friend or ally, someone who would obviously do their best to come to the aid of the character, if needed. One will be more neutral towards the character, like perhaps an old colleague or an innkeeper or a street informant, who will possibly help out the character, but will probably expect something in return. And finally an NPC with whom the character has some sort of beef, unfinished business or rivalry, at least the last time the two of them met. So not necessarily an outright enemy, but just someone who will not immediately feel very friendly or helpful towards the character. Think of a Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back. A true friend would have warned Han and Leia that the Imperials had arrived at Cloud City right there on that landing platform. Instead he kind of sells them out to save his own position. Only to much later turn around and become an ally.
I guess I've been doing that indirectly. Every character has a backstory, and generally they have ample hooks to hang NPCs from. Like the first Drakkenheim campaign, I made a point of giving each of the players a chance to have that catch-up session with their past, and they couldn't all come at the same time (although they did overlap somewhat) so it wasn't until 9th level that the wizard actually *met* the sorcerer/attorney father who had abandoned her and then secretly sponsored her. (He had close to a hundred children [although the bulk of them were already adults and not dependent on him], and had to focus his money on the most promising ones, but that meant hiding from all of them.)
I think this is also a good way to give the players a sense of shared ownership in the setting, while simultaneously making life easier for the DM. The player should be encouraged to offer up plot hooks, and more of them than the DM can ever hope to pursue. That way they don't know which one will become important later, and allows maneuvering room when NPCs die (as they do). Realistically, I'd say that each character is entitled to one personal arc per campaign, but it may be a recurring one, and most likely will incorporate multiple of the offered plot hooks. And then some of the details will get used for throwaway gags or incidental NPCs like shopkeepers or tavern owners, getting chuckles out of players just when comic relief is required.
I have success with just having players roll some social stat then their contact is either hateful or welcoming depending on the roll
Yo that's cool idea!
Oh, I like that a lot! I love writing character backstories, so I'd have a field day writing out the intricacies of those relationships, and why they're friendly/tit for tat/contentious. So many fun possibilities, like old friend from your bard's troupe/childhood music instructor who's used to taking your money/jilted suitor from your hometown.
And really, it's a smart DM who outsources NPC creation to their players.
1:55 "We have a fond, love-hate relationship with rolling for ability scores"
Reminded me about the first time I first dungeon mastered, and I watched my players roll for their stats during session 0.
I kid you not. I watched my friend roll up a starting character with 18 18 18 14 13 10.
I remember hearing a similar story, except the Ranger got a 20 strength to start with, and the Barbarian only had a 13.
I have a player like that. We always roll stats at my table and for four characters across three campaigns, he has always had multiple ability scores at 20 by level 4 (by rolling 2, 3, or 4 18s) and I'm pretty sure he has never once had a negative modifier. The other four always end up with a fairly ordinary array of stats from rolling. No one in our group really minds because he exclusively plays fairly ordinary, even wangrod-y martial characters. His characters are objectively more powerful, but also less interesting.
@@GoblinUrNuts My table has come to expect it. No one really minds that his average damage is highest because they gravitate toward RP heavy characters. Although it is challenging as a DM to design my encounters knowing that my party's front line fighter's *average* roll is about nat15 or 16.
I'm playing in my first campaign, my stat roll:
16 13 18 14 13 11
^
Playing as a divine soul half elf sorcerer.
So my con & cha are 18.
My dex, wis, & int are 14.
Str is 11.
I think I have the best stats out my team.
Literally just today a friend of mine was rolling stats for a artificer he's going to play in my campaign, and for one of his staff he straight-up rolled 5.two 2's and two 1's (we do 4d6 remove the lowest) and it was one of those, welp moments
My 1st DM has a char creation rule for noobies that I really liked (but haven’t had a chance to use yet). He’d have us create 2 chars, no backstory yet. Then he’d allow us to take 1 stat pt & 1 feat from 1 char to give to the 2nd char. Then he’d help us create a linked backstory between the two chars, usually family or very close friends worked best. And then we’d play the weaker char 1st at Level 1.
This allowed us to learn the mechanics of the game & some the RP benefits of a sub-optimal char. And very frequently, these chars died quickly - inexperienced players in a gritty world. If death was too fast, he’d allow a “let’s try that again” moment, or the grisseled old-timer mentor NPC would kinda save their bacon but both hurt real bad.
And when all our 1st chars had died, we’d level up the 2nd chars we had to Level 2. He’d tell us that these chars had received word that their prior linked chars had died, he’d pass down 1 interesting piece of equipment, and off we’d go.
I loved how this gave us practice, motivation, a little backstory & history in that world, and a tiny benefit carried over from 1 char to another.
This is so uniquely cool! I may have to try this out, love the idea of characters pursuing the legacy of their fallen “friends or family”.
You guys should name this, the "XCOM rule".
What happens if the first characters don't die?
@@FlatOnHisFace I think they are “scripted” to die
@@FlatOnHisFace LOL Never happened that I remember. I guess you created one good enough to survive, so play it through.
Floating ability scores. This is the way. I HATE being stuck to a couple of races for certain character builds. This is why the Half-elf is so popular for Charisma classes.
This is the way
Def support this, I always play Charisma focused characters (suits my rp style), and I get annoyed being stuck choosing between... half-elf, or perhaps human. Forget Tieflings, they're always social pariahs in every game.
@@MrKoalaburger "Hi, I'm Jester!"
@@WorgenGrrl thank you for this! i laughed
@@NemoTheWayfarer Yep. Jester broke the sterotype about Tieflings being social outcasts.
The Lando rule is implemented reasonably well in Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, actually. Each player gets an ally and a rival inside their guild, plus a third person they know from another guild, and the renown system in the same book gives the players additional contacts once their renown with the guilds increases
There's an old web comic called Goblin Hollow/Under the Lemon Tree and in one story arc they ran a D&D session. The DM had what he called a DGR rule. Basically you wouldn't expect someone to take up the life of an adventurer unless he had a Darned Good Reason to think he had a chance of surviving so all of his characters were allowed to pick one reasonably powerful skill or weapon that wouldn't normally be allowed to a level one character.
Whenever I read a gritty fantasy that takes heavy inspiration from DnD mortality, its bogglingly difficult to imagine why some characters would explore dungeons filled with Rock Eaters and Beholders.
In 5e I really like to let my players start at level 3 if they want, as that's when you can choose your class archetype which unlocks tons of flavor, backstory, and roleplay potential. In my mind I imagine whatever the player was doing before level 3 was largely unimportant compared to them now, a Paladin for example can't even pick their oath until level 3, or a cleric's domain, ect. For a lot of players it's also more interesting to skip the first few levels of using the same few abilities over and over on the same few low level monsters
@@TeddyBearAssassin excellent choice! Had a DM who liked to play E8 games, most progression stopped at level 8, and he like to start at lvl 3. 3 is the new 1 he would say.
@@TeddyBearAssassin thats not how subclasses work, yes most classes(fighter, rogue, barb, monk, pali, artificer, ranger and bard) get their subclasses at lv3 but some.get them at lv2 (druid andwizard) and some get theirs at lv1 (warlock, sorc and cleric)
@@zhangbill1194 But level 3 means ALL players get their archetype. Unless you are suggesting having a player who rolls Warlock to start at 1, and a Barbarian to start at 3?
*On being able to move racial bonuses around:*
I've been doing a lesser version of this -- if you have a +1 to a body stat like DEX, you can move it to any other body stat, but not a mental one. Conversely, a +1 INT could become a +1 WIS or +1 CHA, but not a +1 DEX, STR, or CON. A +2 can't be moved at all, nor can it be split, because I see it as a defining characteristic of the race.
This tends to loosen the cookie cutter a little, but not enough that you can't still make good guesses on which way a character of a given race will lean. A tiefling is going to have a +2 CHA, you can count on it. But many sub-races seem to vacillate between INT and WIS that I decided that a bonus to one could be moved to the other, and eventually to the more general rule above.
*On a shared background*
Even if the players don't feel like participating, they're going to get railroaded into having a shared experience. Since I also like to start at third level (it used to be 5, but I find it's actually nice to "play your way in" to 5th level, you have a better feel for what the character is about that way -- mind you, I fully understand why you are NOT doing that for Season 2), the shared backstory and their 900 XP may be one and the same thing. "This party is together because you already have adventured together out of necessity, and survived two levels." Then we can sit there and make up an explanation for their first two levels, and that becomes their shared experience. Doing this in advance rather than in session would be better, but not strictly necessary.
*Weapon equivalence*
I treat weapons that *act* almost the same as if they *were* almost the same. For example, if you have proficiency with rapier, then you have proficiency with all d8 Finesse weapons such as cutlass and khopesh -- the only difference is slashing vs. piercing. If you want to carry a butterfly knife or a switchblade or a stiletto in your boot, they'll all be considered easily concealed daggers, but the penalty will be that they can't be thrown (not balanced for it). This does next to nothing to game mechanics, but allows for a wider variety of weapons to appear in game.
Mal-2 KSC this means you can never have a half orc that’s plays anything other than strength characters still. You think orc tribes don’t have clerics that pray to Grumpsh? The strict racial bonus thing kind of sets an uncomfortable racist real world tone. And since games don’t make it past lvl 10, the smartest half orc will never be as smart as the smartest elf
Ryan Block that’s ridiculous. Just put your high stat in wisdom. But still, you think that clerics don’t need to be strong and tough? Those clerics would see their natural affinity for brute strength as another tool for them to serve their god. “What better way for a half-orc to live,” they’d say. Either way, it’s just a bonus, not a command for you to amplify that stat. If you want a wise half orc, just put your high roll in wisdom, and embrace the strength you are given. Done.
@JonIsPatented
I like playing tieflings for INT and WIS spellcasters, but I don't demand the +2 CHA get moved elsewhere. I just don't point-buy any CHA. I had a fun time in a one-shot with a winged tiefling theurgy wizard who spent most of her time dragging other characters out of harm's way just before things went boom.
Mal-2 KSC yes. This. This is the way you should do it. Also, that sounds like a fun character. Enjoy it.
Ryan Block you do realize that, for about half of Clerics, STR is their main secondary stat, right? +2 STR +1 WIS is the best you could get for a melee Cleric
This video is rock solid for folks looking for the enjoyable cooperative storytelling aspect. The longer a proposed campaign, the worse it is to have bad rolls for creation or leveling hamper one person at the table. That sort of quirkiness is, IMO, better suited to one-shots. You could even have a 'peasant D&D' theme for the one-shot, embracing the bad rolls as ordinary townsfolk attempt to deal with an unusual situation.
I am of the opinion that low roles in stat gen can create great role-play opportunity, however with that being said nothing sucks more than when you can roll for shit and don't have a single stat above a 12.
That's why I have a rule that allows players to reroll anything less than a 9 because that way it ensures you aren't stuck with a -3 to start and it increases the likeliness of having decent stats.
I've played in games where we're allowed to reroll ones which has lead to some pretty high starting stats.
I've also played in a game that allowed us to reroll ones and one two, which made it more likely to have one amazing stat.
God, I'm running a 3 session dungeon crawl as a pause from the main campaign cause the DM has a lot of exams and no time to prepare the game. The cleric... Oh god that cleric... His highest roll was a 13. He had two 8. I think the stats were 13 11 10 10 8 8. Piss poor stats for sure, and that was rerolling 1s. I told him he could roll again, it is after all, just a short dungeon crawl that doesn't matter. He refused. He died last week in the second session.
It was funny, cause he chose to play with those god awful rolls, but also tragic, cause he kinda got gangbanged by zombies while the rest of the party tried their hardest to reach him.
To make things worse, the zombies succeeded a lot of the saving throws to not die
That's a nice "I know a guy" rule you got there
Be a shame if someone stole it
Yeah I know a guy who could probably steal it for you
I literally just caught a guy stealing it you should have been more careful with that
Having the first seesion today. You guys's timing is incredible.
May your foes crit fail, and death saves succeed.
More than succeed. May they roll a 20 like Pluto, and pop back up.
No sir, I say your timing is incredible.
One of the things that I like about starting with bonds is that it makes a larger variety of alignments possible, with it being much easier for a neutral, chaotic, or evil character to already have some investment. I like playing bastards, and this really helps to keep my bastard from screwing the party over.
I will bring up that changelings can start with a plus 3 to charisma because of their +2 to charisma and additional +1 to any stat of their choice (Jeremy Crawford did say its intended to allow them to add again to charisma) so its possible with that array to have 20 in charisma
Well, they are also the only race who could have an 18 in CHA with the normal standard array.
Since you raise the starting power level of every race, the added benefit of playing a changeling who focuses on CHA vs another race remains the same.
Only if you're a crappy DM. Let em choose what race they want.
John Harrison I treat changeling as a half breed race like half elves and half orcs. It’s a hybrid between a human and a doppelgänger, so their existence regardless of how rare can be justified in any campaign that could justify the existence of doppelgängers.
I left a LOT of races out of my campaign, largely because they hadn't been published yet when we started. Tabaxi was one of them, since we've been at this since prior to XG₂E. But a player wanted a Tabaxi character, and other characters had already been to the Feywild, so I decided that there are plenty of inhabited planets in the Prime Material Plane, most of which we'll never even list, let alone discuss. All of them share a common set of planes, so once you leave the Prime Material Plane, you can re-insert back into the Prime Material Plane in another solar system entirely if you wish. That's how a character from Tabax got to Tera, my setting, via a Feywild pivot. (You can also use teleportation circles on other planets, since it's still the Prime Material Plane, although you may not be greeted warmly -- many worlds are dominated by a single race and they don't really want outsiders to come and stay.) This dodge should work for ANY race, and I didn't have to change the campaign setting to accommodate them. Gods are also planet-specific, although some are followed on multiple planets. This can cause interesting problems for clerics. It is, however, also a lampshade for why there are so many people trying to start new religions all the time. They're not really new, they're just imports. It also explains why the Eberron, Greyhawk, and Forgotten Realms gods all have followers on Tera.
tl;dr: If I have no other explanation from where a character comes from, I'm not saying it's aliens, but...
Makes extreme amounts of sense on a changeling. Still really funny and slightly OP.
When in a PC hometown, I always make them roll a D20 with any NPC they interact with that’s not included in their backstory to determine feelings in prior relationships this rule has made a few Random NPC take on a life of there own and became pieces in the story.
Ah yes, the venerable "reaction check", like morale rules, were largely eliminated from 3e onward.
Honestly, your set ability scores should be the absolute standard in character creation. It's always great for a character to start off excelling in at least one thing, because it gives the player freedom to take feats and not feel at all trapped to focus on statistically improving their character through score improvements.
Nothing makes a DnD game feel less fair than rolling die for a character, and having a complete imbalance in power between the party. Each class has different strengths and weaknesses. Give the agency to the players to decide where their ability scores go. I would say, if you were playing with new players and are introducing them to DnD 5th edition, rolling for ability scores is the worst way you could go about it.
Thanks for the awesome house rules, dudes!
That bonds rule is so fantastic that I can't believe I've never heard of it before. It's brilliantly simple but makes so much sense.
I've wanted to play a game with 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17 stats - it means you actually have weaknesses, not just a dump stat, but lets non-standard races start with a good class ability score, and it makes multiclassing a bit harder because your ability scores are more widely varied.
Everyone with a 6, will probably turn to a more comical party...6 is a pretty looowww score for everyone to have(and they wont waste their race bonuses on it). One character will be unable to read, another will have a limp, another may be deformed. It's....more comical, and that can be great or it can be terrible, depending on the setting you want to play.
play a kobold and start with a 4 in strength
I think this is my preferred as well, very funny
@@Hazel-xl8in go up against a shadow during of the first session.
@@Anegor 6 ain't low. Human average is 10. Look around you at the people you see in life: most of them are carrying around a score of 8, and many of them have a 6 somewhere. Someone with STR 6 in 5e can lift 60 lbs and still move around at 2/3 speed. I've met PLENTY of people who would struggle to lift 60 lbs off the ground much less do that for a whole 8 hour work shift. You don't actually reach the point of disability until 3 or lower, but persons with disability sure do exist. Anyway, a 6 just means you have -2 to do something, or a -10% success chance. Unless you know someone fairly well you might not even spot that kind of weakness. People tend to be pretty good at concealing the things they're terrible at.
I think this is really just an obsession with bonuses, and an aversion to penalties so deep-seated as to be a significant hindrance to being a functional player. The correct course of action is to play with penalties until you grow as a person and realize that player skill matters far more than a +1 here or a -2 there. If this is not possible for you, then admit it publicly and everyone in the campaign world will have stats of 12-20, even the wee ickle babies and tiny crows, and the numbers will work out so you never have to be scared by that nasty little minus sign ever again.
TL;DR: stop whining and grow a pair.
We use the standard array from the handbook, but then allow a +1, +1, -1 that you can assign as you wish, but have to justify with your background. Makes for just the right bump, and inspires some fun background flavor.
My way of rolling for stats:
Roll 4 times (4d6, drop lowest)
If none of the scores rolled are 8 or lower, and no scores above 16, assign 8 and 16 as your last two scores.
If you have such scores, roll the rest of your stats.
If you have the high score, but not the low, roll once. If that roll is 8 or lower, roll again. If not, assign 8. (And vice versa)
If a player rolls lower than standard array+2, they are allowed to discard and begin again.
Players are allowed to lower their lowest ability score.
Solid characters with a weakness are guaranteed, and you still get to do the rolling.
I give all my players expertiese in a skill. I've always felt it "weird" that a bard or rogue is a better athlete than a fighter, or a better arcanist than a wizard. So, all characters have expertiese in one skill, on top of whatever expertiese they may get from classes or feats.
That’s part of the D&D experience. If something seems BS and doesn’t make sense for then a great DM will change it.
If you ever gain proficiency in something you are already proficient with, it should become Expertise.
A goliath should never be excluded from soldier background, they should rather be trained and natural athletes making them great at it!
G80 GZT you DO know that if your background gives you a proficiency you already have, you can switch it out for ANY OTHER ONE IN THE GAME, right?
@@QuiescentPilot I suppose, but it does feel bad that expertise is locked to just two classes.
Alex Jobe well, at least, the “Expertise” ability is for just two classes. You can get doubled proficiency with some other stuff.
My point was that backgrounds let you retrain the skills you get from them, if you get the skill another way, which G80 GZT seemed not to know.
For detail, read this answer on StackExchange: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/44243/do-proficiencies-with-one-thing-from-multiple-different-sources-stack
• I like letting everyone roll twice, and everyone can select an array anyone else rolled. Everyone using the same array if everyone liked it enough still gives plenty of diversity as they'll probably place them in different places.
• All races gain a bonus feat. Variant human doesn't exist. + the ability to move a +1 from the racial bonuses. (Human straight up gets a bonus +1 instead of moving one)
• HP = Average HP + 2 + Con.
• Always establish "Roots" between the characters. Blood relations, past bonding associations. I like using "Children of Morta" as a fantastic framework for an adventuring party. The adventurers are family and have an established home base. I also like the immortality mechanic, that the adventurers share a link of immortality. Players will be resurrecting most the time anyway. People try to make death more meaningful by nerfing it so it might not work, I prefer making it more meaningful by tying it to this player-shared resource that can be threatened, which also makes players care more about the home base and since every time they die they come back at home base it also anchors them to home as a place they will visit often. Resurrection magic is still important as it can make the player "respawn" at the casting instead of at home. This mechanic doesn't have to just be a home base though, it could be a shared gift of some sort. It's adaptable to almost any desired party set up and theme.
I do think it's easier to put characters in deadly situations more often if death is more like "Banishment on steroids". They still don't want to die because it takes them out of the campaign for a while, but at least it's not the end of the game for that character. At early levels, getting someone brought back can be a quest (or multiple questlets) in and of itself. in a situation like this, you don't have the player roll up another character, you find something productive for them to do (maybe they run an NPC recruited for the quest) for the one or two sessions it takes to get their character back.
@SaviorOfNirn Only if all you care about is your character surviving. If your character instead cares about certain NPCs surviving or about succeeding at their goals, then there's still dramatic tension. Just because you can't die doesn't mean you can't lose. In fact, I'm always looking for ways to make it easier for the characters to lose a battle without it resulting in removing PCs from the game.
I like OP's suggestion because you can have situations where the heroes are trying to stop a ritual, are defeated by the cultists and now they have to travel all the way back from their home base. When they return, they can witness the results of their failure
The thing you of course have to be cautious about is using it as a death spiral where each time you come back, the enemies get more powerful as a result of your defeat meaning you are more likely to die again the next time you face them. Still, you can impose that risk on certain encounters: If you don't stop the lich now, it's only going to get harder and eventually impossible. You'll be stuck in a loop of infinite death unless the lich is merciful enough to destroy your means of resurrection.
It's not that death stops sucking. It's just that "a fate worse than death" actually means something, when death is temporary.
You realize chucking variant human makes human pcs worthless, right? +1 to all asi is always worse than +2 to the asi you need, and on top of that, no other abilities. People overlook that bit of game design way too often. If you bundle together what other races get, it's usually a good deal more powerful than a feat. The difference is that human gives you customization that others don't.
@SaviorOfNirn Only if you're shortsighted and only if you only care about the metagame. There are many many different threats than just death, and now instead of the party being immortal because they can just get resurrected anyway (if not earlygame) or just throwing down a new character sheet (Or worse, quitting the game), you have a tangible link to the game world as a source of the "immortality", immortality becomes a tool you can use as a DM and it becomes more real to the game world. The stakes if that source of immortality is put at risk can be huge, much more impactful than most things you could do as a DM. So long as you don't abuse the tool and threaten it too often.
Meanwhile players can still be abducted, subject to curses, and so on.
Death can still feel real to the characters themselves. It hurts a lot, it's bad sensation, they might leave their bodies behind and have to see their own corpse- Or have to fight it as the necromancer found uses for it. The source might work in a timeline way, where that timeline of you really truly did die and the rest of the party must contend with the fact that THAT friend is dead and the new person is effectively a different person but familiar, like a twin to their friend with similar life experiences and looks. The new you might even know this fact, and know that they're different, that they're replacing the original. All depends on how you want to run the basic concept of a shared immortality source with how serious or not you want it to be.
I just recently got into DnD (i totally love it and think is incredibly fun) My DM forgot to tell me he had house-ruled that we couldn't use Point-Buy to make our characters so when i made my first character he told me "his abilities are way too perfect, there's no way you rolled this good" and i told him "of course i didn't, i used Point-Buy, you never said we couldn't do that" and then he very politedly said "ok, my bad for not writting that in the common-rules section of the chat, but i need you to roll for his ability score" and so i did (HIS house-rules for rolling for ability scores are actually quite generous, you "Advantage Roll" it, so you make two rolls for ability score, and keep the one you like the most...my character ended up being way more overpowered in the FIRST roll and we just laughed our assess off at it, i actually felt pretty bad about it so i lowered some of it's abilities on purpose to fit better with his backstory XD)
"This takes the edge off of the variant human"
Me: *Laughs in Half-Elf*
Nom De Plume V. Human is nothing to the Half-Elf. I just finished writing another comment explaining why.
> implying I don't want two feats
With the NPCs one of my players gave me a massive boon in giving me an old carousing buddy. The look on his face when I introduced the character and the RP that ensued was glorious. One of my favorite moments of the campaign so far.
In our 2nd session of Avernus we had the very clear goal of going to the dungeon to continue the story. Instead we ate breakfast and rped for 3 hours before heading there. RP is so important for me cause its what I enjoy the most in DnD
My group had a session of shadowrun once where three scenes in a row (completely by accident) were three consecutive breakfasts. Best session ever.
I'm about to run my second session as a new DM and I've watched nearly all your videos. They've been invaluable in helping me further understand the 5e rules. Thank you so much!
Playing D&D for like 30 years now, I will include the "I know a guy" mechanic (It's not really a rule, is it ?) into my current campaign of mostly newbies.
I love the idea of players creating the world with the DM. I already use a 10 candles like approach on passing over narration of certain situations like critical successes and failures.
This will so add to my game. Thank you for this simple yet powerful idea.
I'm watching this for the first time and loving that some of these suggestions ended up in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything! You guys are visionaries!
May I ask which ones?
I'm not familiar with TCoE yet.
@@TheDancerMacabre Floating ability scores, probably the biggest thing from Tasha's. Now PCs can add racial ability bonuses to any score, e.g. Mountain Dwarves can get +2 Int and Cha and be awesome Wizards.
Party bonds exist as Group Patrons, the idea from Eberron. An organization of some kind gives you a common purpose, mission hooks, and maybe equipment.
D&D Beyond defaults to giving you half HD in HP per level, rounded up.
After watching 5 or 6 of your videos I can tell that you guys have a similar playstyle /mindset to my group. I've played all the editions, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness that you obviously put into these vids. These houserules, especially for a smaller group, make so much sense. Well done. Keep 'em coming!
"...having a character that can do everything because they're good in charisma, and intelligence, and in wisdom..."
I'm looking at you, Caleb Widogast.
Mind you they rolled their stats (pretty sure) or they had A LOT of points, so he just put his lower scores in Str-Dex-Con. Some of the CR characters have huge Ability totals. Roleplay wise, Caleb should have ordinary Charisma.
@@Baraz_Red I belive when they talked about some ability scores and how they have it the explination was they rolled their stats really well.
@@Mary_Studios Yes, they rolled their stats. That's why Ashley had such atrocious ones at the start of C2
Bit late to the party here, but I have a couple house rules that I'd like to throw out.
1. Background determines starting ASIs. Tasha's helps a lot with this, but even now I still like to tie ASIs to a character's background. If someone's background was Sage, for example, they might have Int and/or Wis as their increases. Sailor could reasonably be a lot of different Abilities (even Int, if they were a navigator or something similar). Most of the backgrounds have a lot of flexibility in that way, and I've found that tying ASIs to backgrounds really nails down how exactly your character lived prior to being an adventurer helps with the roleplay and informs their character going forward.
2. Starting Feat: Everyone gets one feat to start (subject to DM's approval; I usually veto stuff like Warcaster and Mobile), but it has to tie into their background or history in some way, or otherwise give some fun flavor. This is a good way to work in some of the less optimal but fun RP feats like Chef. Maybe the Druid travelled with the Wizard for a little while and they taught each other some magic (each player gets Magic Initiate for the other's class). You can do some variation on this as well if it gets a little too min-maxy. For example, if the player wants to take something that boosts an ability score above a certain number (I use 18) then either the DM simply says no or allows the player to raise another ability in lieu of the normal ability, or just say no Half Feats entirely. The most important thing is that it ties into the character's backstory somehow. This really helps make lvl 1 characters a little tougher in different ways and makes the characters more fleshed out.
3. Starting Cantrips: The full casters (Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric, Druid, Bard, and sometimes Artificer) all have Prestidigitation, Druidcraft, and Thaumaturgy for free as appropriate. For some characters like Eldritch Knight you might also add the relevant cantrip, but I usually don't. You could also allow certain subclasses (Arcana/Nature Cleric, Divine Soul Sorcerer) to get an additional cantrip as well, but again I usually don't. The reasoning is that these cantrips are supposed to be all the minor little tricks of that particular kind of magic; it makes some sense that they'd always have them.
4. Very, very occasionally you can alter what skills you get from certain backgrounds. I once had a PC take the Inheritor background, but we switched out Survival for Animal Handling. The reasoning being that the character spent most of their formative years locked in a wizard's tower with some animal companions.
In the session that I'm a part of every Thursday, there's a running gag that I regularly bring up about an old Dwarf woman (named Rosie) who helped raise my Tiefling. Not only has my DM latched onto this idea, actually adding her into the world, the other players have as well. One of our PC's is a very large "Strongest in the room" kind of guy, and whenever I bring up Rosie, he responds by "I must meet this champion, if her legend is to be believed!"
I stand by the "I know a guy" rule, and HIGHLY recommend it.
I am planning on experimenting with a “rolled array + 3”, where at session 0 an array is rolled and applies to the entire party for them to put into whatever stats they want, and 3 points they can add to get a stat up to 17
I like your stat array. Additionally, a DM of mine had a rule for rolling which I found incredibly fair: First you roll one stat array, assigning the scores to whatever ability you want. Keep this array if you feel like it's good enough. If you're like "nah, this is absolute garbage," then you can roll again. You can keep doing this (within reason) until you feel like you've done well enough that you're satisfied. This allows everyone to have roughly the same amount of power, because no one is stuck with a TERRIBLE array of stats for their class. You don't get a fighter with no stat higher than 12, or a bard who's stuck with a single 16 and everything else low. If you roll poorly, you have an out. If you roll decently, you won't want to press your luck.
I like having my players have an existing relationship with another player’s character. When I played an undying warlock, my friend and I agreed to be characters who used to work for another adventure party, but they got killed and my patron discovered us when he investigated a collection of magic items nearby. So we work for him though I’m the one tied to him in order to protect my friend’s character.
The drawback to fixed hp and fixed ability scores is that I’ve noticed a lot of people’s favorite part of character creation is seeing how their die rolls influence the creation of their character. Sometimes you’ll come in not knowing what you want to play and when you’re rolling ability scores and later hp, it helps to mold the characteristics of the PC.
Roll HP every level: Whenever you level up, roll all of your hit dice (with the constitution bonus). If that roll is higher than your current maximum HP, then that is your new maximum HP. Otherwise, your new maximum HP becomes one(+CON) higher than your previous maximum HP. This balances out the variability of hit dice, without removing all randomness from it, and a bad roll doesn't stick around forever.
Old school Ability Scores (option): Take a feat at level one. Roll3d6 for all your ability scores, but you may replace the primary ability scores of your class with a 14or13 if you rolled lower. You are guaranteed to be competent in your class, but you probably won't be above average at everything right away. The feat offsets the ~1.5 point lower scores, and lets you get cool stuff earlier.
The former HP roll rule is well-known and you see it used sometimes, but it has a deceptive downside: while it tends to erase early low HP rolls, it also tends to erase early high HP rolls. By the time you hit Level 10 you'll end up with much closer to average HP totals than you would think. So the effect is really only pronounced from level 2-6 or so, and it's only a fairly small benefit.
This is definitely one of the best D&D channels. Simple, well produced, and so much information. Keep up the good work Dudes
I love everything you have said in this video. I've always felt the Hit Dice one is near important and having some kind of balance between each players summed stats.
I really like the Standard Array you guys came up with here. Gives everyone the opportunity to be good at what they want their character to be good at without anything being broken.
I would love to see what the Dungeon Dudes think about builds for ally buffing instead of enemy debuffing
I'd say buffing is more fun for the party but debuffing I'd assume is more efficient if your playing the numbrrs
@@cosmicwonderer6269 they actually went on to do a video on both buffing and debuffing - one benefit of buffing is the avoidance of a saving throw and the number of buffs that affect multiple targets
We generally use the standard array for ability scores, but all characters get 1 free feat at level 1. That free feat could be one that gives a +1 in a stat, so that effectively takes the place of the "floating +1" you described. We already use the "take half HP if you rolled lower" you described, and I like your other ideas too.
So, I came up with two interesting ways to “roll” up a character.
For kids: they live in a village of retired adventures, when they come of age they are told they need to apprentice at with six craftsman for six months before they let them go adventuring. The blacksmith each week they roll a d6, at month’s end they have their strength score, and so on. Normally they don’t like that they are unintelligent, but are okay that they just don’t like scribing books.
The second is way more fun, they all have 10s in every stat. Or 8 or whatever. Then they wake up after a battle in a museum and the curator tells them they need to use the weapons and equipment on the walls to equip themselves. They select their equipment and each piece gives them a stat increase in one of the six stats based on what they pick, if they pick heavy weapons and holy symbols and the helmet with the wings they get strength, wisdom, and charisma. It is more complicated than that, but in the end they fight off their attackers and return the equipment, but then get to select the class they want to play based on their new stats. Worked well the two times I did it.
Oh, and incidentally, the reason why the characters know each other are also solved
Unfortunately, I will be stealing this. All of this. You cannot stop it. It will all be stolen and is now mine forever.
An idea I heard about from another source suggested creating a quick story that could be shared during gameplay to *explain* the character’s personality trait, ideal, bond, and flaw. The player therefore would not be tempted to write a three-page fan-fiction account of their character’s past that no one reads or remembers. Instead they would simply tell the quick story during character down-time as the characters are getting to know each other. Brilliant!
I completely agree that for long term characters, point buy or standard array is far better than stat rolling.
Taking the average HP roll is already quite generous. I let my players choose: if they roll, they keep the result.
That's what I do. I always took that to be the RAW option; you either roll or take half. For my current rogue that started at level 5, I rolled for level 2 and got a 1, took 5 for level 3, then rolled another 1 for level 4 and took a 5 for level 5. Everyone else in my group was like "why didn't you just take 5 on those rolls" and I answered "this is D&D, you roll your dice and take your chances".
In our current campaign (started last week) We had everyone roll their stats twice. Then each person could pick and choose which of all the rolled stats they wanted. If you picked someone elses stat rolls (The whole table, not just indevidual numbers) the owner of that rolled table would then be able to allow / deny you taking those stats. (Could only deny if they wanted them for themselves)
This gave us approximately 8 stat tables to pick from.
Background Rule: I have my players choose two skills (or one skill be two additional languages or tool proficiencies) they want their characters to have already mastered. I then fit the closest background template that closest fits those skills to the character.
I also ask my characters for a rival and an ally NPC, kinda similar to your "I know a guy" rule.
Rolling, I do rolls, 4d6 drop lowest, but allow the player the option of replacing two rolls with an 8 and 18. (Though I like your No 20s for first lvl characters concept and will probably mod that.)
Oh, I like that option of replacing two rolls, especially with the added balance of floating ability scores and no 20s for first level.
One of my favorites is everyone gets a feat at 1st level. It really makes the early game funner.
Players get more cool stuff and abilities such as Magic Initiate. This lets your character start as a spellblade because Green-Flame Blade and Mage Armor are very useful on 1st-level fighters
In the case of the DM it lets me give "story feats" to the players such as Aberrant Dragonmarks or some homebrew feats I use.
It also helps to balance weaker classes/races. Dragonborn get bonus AC, casters get certain mandatory feats like War Caster and Ritual Caster and Orcs get to offset their Intelligence penalty if needed.
It's a really flexible rule that I wish more DMs used.
I absolutely love the floating ability score bonus. It allows interesting character concepts to not be totally underpowered. I wanted to play a Centaur Wandslinger Artificer (The cowboy who is his own horse) but that incredibly crippled the character since absolutely NONE of the racial traits or abilities helped...
A popular GM when I was playing D&D as a kid had a variant on the HP house rule displayed at 12:0:
When you go up a level, you roll your HP and add it to your HP total.
Every play session you re-roll your HPs and if you roll higher that is your new total.
So going up a level you always improved your HP, but you could still improve your HP further at the start of any play session if you were lucky, and then again if you went up another level.
The randomness of rolling is still really exciting, so I like to have each of my players roll 2 or 3 full arrays. Then they can take 5-10 minutes to choose one that everybody uses. This primes them to work together, and if you have players that are more experienced in playing, gets some knowledge passed down as to why this array is better than that one.
That sounds like a really nice strategy.
I definitely agree that having a dump stat adds a lot of depth to a character. We played a pocket dimension one-shot while our party's wizard couldn't come to a session and everyone rolled poorly on their checks to know what a pocket dimension was. My 11 int orc fighter rolled a nat 20 and tried to explain "big room...in small space" with a lot of hand movements and visible frustration of struggling with words. I got the point across, though, and it earned me inspiration (which I used to turn a miss on a Displacer Beast into a crit later that session). Flaws are just roleplay seasoning
I dig your standard array I think I'm gonna try it for the next game I DM.
I agree with wanting to have the characters have some bond before the adventure begins.
Great show as always.
Much better than a backstory bond (which, let's face it, is just words on paper) is something like a common employer. A local noble, a reclusive mage, a crime boss, a consulting detective. Gives the campaign some solid structure until the players find out who the hell their characters actually are.
On the rolling for health thing, i tend to allow this. When rolling for HP, If you roll below your average, take one point below the average. EG d10 Hit die, Gets you 6 if you take average, If you roll a 1, you take 5 instead.
"This house rule is so popular that it is on the PHB..."
Is it still a house rule? :|
its a optional rule
Half of the hit die as a *minimum* instead of a fixed amount is the house rule.
IMO a better houserule for rolling HP is simply "no 1s". If you can just reroll 1s it A: removes the worst possible outcome (which just sucks to get), and B: makes the average roll equal to the suggested average.
@@WannaComment2 I definitely prefer this version
rolling 1s sucks and kicking that out is fine
but if the MINIMUM is half
then you have literally no reason not to roll, half the fun of rolling for anything is that there's always a chance it'll go south, taking that away simply defeats the point of rolling in the first place
Matter of opinion
I'm currently in a campaign where we rolled for stats and one of the players literally rolled four 1's and just leaned into it, so now we have a warlock with a wisdom of 3. The player literally rolls a d20 periodically just to see if his character notices things: regular things like the weather, when there's a door, and whether or not the rest of us are staying or moving. We've been in combats where we got through two rounds before the warlock realized we were even fighting. Rolling for stats is clearly the superior method for creating flavorful characters.
The most recent method for ability scores my friends used is what I call "Matt's Method" (Matt was the DM at the time) and it goes as follows:
1. Roll for ability scores as usual, 4d6 drop the lowest. However, you roll 7 times instead of six, and can pick whichever roll you don't want. You're greatly encouraged to take a varied array instead of a homogeneous heap of the same number, meaning you'll probably have strengths and weaknesses.
1.5. If you don't like your rolls overall, you're allowed to reroll the entire array of 7 rolls once, but you must keep the new rolls.
2. After placing your scores and applying your racial bonuses, you may take one ability score to reduce by one, and choose two others to increase by one each.
3. This is an optional part, but Matt told us to include flaws that were serious enough to have actual mechanical consiquences. For example, my character was a coward, so if he is getting too close to enemies he's forced to make a wisdom save or be frightened. He also has disadvantage on fear effects other than that innate one.
Those are interesting ideas, but why are you rolling at that point? It's not particularly random after a Bogo, drop the least desirable total, AND drop the least desirable roll each stat. If you are all doing it for fun, that's cool. However, it's not "random" or "organic" anymore. You'd probably be just as happy with a standard array or Point buy.
It's your games and danger levels are unique to everyone, but adding a final -1 and +1 to 2 stats even more confirms PB/Standard array just sounds simpler for your group. Most games that allow you to "purchase" a better stat do so at a detriment to 1 or 2 others, not the other way around. Is that your intention?
My take is that if someone wants to spread their buy points around like peanut butter so they have no weaknesses -- let them! They're going to figure out that the character never really shines, and not build like that next time. Letting them get burned is much more effective than trying to warn them off it.
I do build certain NPCs this way though, particularly politicians and other non-military leaders where it's more important to always have something to do in the current situation than to have the _best_ method of handling any one thing that may never happen.
I’m not sure how relevant this is to the video, but I’m reminded of a great character interaction story that I’d like to share for the fun of it.
My brother played a gnome necromancer who learned necromancy simply because he wanted to resurrect his childhood pet cat. So his character had a camouflaged undead cat that followed him everywhere. I played a tabaxi rogue who didn’t like the strange cat that didn’t act like a cat. And every chance my character had to try something, I had her attempt to steal and bury the cat. She was successful twice. It made for great role playing opportunities between the two characters.
I thought the "i know i guy" was awsome at first, but i found that it undermines the background features. Criminal contact, Shelter of the Faithful, Position of Privilege and Researcher can all be used in the same way as "i know a guy". so i have just expanded on the background features to allow players to use them more.
I agree, I find that as the DM, just by talking alot and asking my players what type of backstory they want, this rule is irrelevant.
My players trust me to include very helpful PC's, but also feel heavily involved, and they can make a ton of requests about family member and mentors.
The reason I like this more then I know a guy, they always know if they need help, they just have to search, and although it may take effort/time they can find what they need. I would rather encourage more background design then make it an ace up their sleeve, esspecally since alot of campaign settings, characters are "fish out of water" and know no one in their area.
More background design, leads to more investment in their character and their goals, and leads to more investment in the world, in my experience,
Floating ability scores is actually an excellent idea that I'll start implementing! I love seeing nontradition race/class combos
I actually love the idea of the "I know a guy" rule so much. Definitely gonna talk to my DM about it.
For the "I know a guy" rule; I would use the character's proficiency bonus for number of uses. That way characters who aren't particularly smart or social get the same opportunities to use it, and it gives the ability a nice hard limit as well as what I think is an appropriate "recharge" rate. So a level 1 to 4 PC could use the ability up to two times, but as soon as they hit level 5 (or any further threshold at which their proficiency bonus increases) they get a new use of "I Know A Guy." Love this mechanic btw!
I use a custom point buy.
Instead of 27 points you get 30. You can spend 11 points to make a stat 16.
It's kinda works likes Monty's where it allows for "sub-optimal" race/class pics, but it also benefits playing into type. An Elf can still play a strength based class with a 16, but a Half-Orc will have a natural edge that can give them an 18.
This is what I've been thinking of switching to exactly. It solves a lot of annoyances without unbalancing the game in unforeseen ways.
What I had been doing up until now is that once characters are important enough in the world to be noticed by someone at the Sorcery College, they are offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rent a Tome or Manual long enough to use it once. The Sorcery College has a trick way of recharging them in two or three years (sending them to a plane where time runs faster) instead of a century so they use them as profit centers. Each character gets one, and I haven't had them ask for the same one before but if they did I''d allow it. It's a Sorcery College, they have duplicates. Anyhow, this came with the side effect that the skill cap rises to 22. I kinda would like to reserve that option for characters that get in _tight_ with the Sorcery College, and avoid power creep even when explaining the origins of the local Big Bad Evil Mother-and-Son Duo.
The key with making point buy systems shine is that you have to make it so that the costs to increase the score by 1 increase the higher the ability score gets.
See nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Point_buy for a good example of this for a 3.x system (though I would argue that starting abilities at 7 and having the cost increases land on the even numbers to match with the increased modifier is better design)
Set your ability pool to the power level you want for your game and you're good to go (with an interesting tradeoff with how much increasing your primary stat is worth the hit to your other stats, because that increase from 16 to 18 could cost you 6-7 points off of other abilities to get that +1. The question of how much you want to specialize isn't something with a universal and objective answer to it.)
My DM is amazingly nice. He doesn't increase the cost for higher stats (getting up to a 15 only costs 7 points, not 9 or whatever)
@@nemohimself2580 what does that have to do with being nice?
Good game design is about making choices interesting.
I really like your option for stats. It's just enough to give everyone scores that make thier characters powerful in their chosen class but not over doing it. The way we use to do it 30 years ago was roll 4d6, reroll 1's, keep the best 3, and if you don't get an 18, change your highest roll to 18. It kept everyone happy and people didn't feel the need to cheat or be forced to be an assassion.
I have my own form of standard array that I use, it gives the players a bit of a stronger start with the potential for an 18 in one stat if they play it. Which is a lot like your first one- 16, 15, 14, 13, 10, 8. It’s a bit weaker than yours actually. But it gives you three solid ‘adventurer level stats’ of 15 or higher. I like that standard. An adventurer should be able to start with a minimum of +2 in their focus stats.
For HP, I use the roll option but set a minimum, like the corollary to the rule.
I’ve also made use of the house rule that offers Feats to players at level 1, which essentially makes variant human useless.
Double feat level 1 with variant human though
Actually, your system provides one more point to ability score than the Dungeon Dudes system. Your swap out the 11 for a 16 = +5 more points, whereas they swap out the 13 for a 17 = +4. Which is better, IDK.
@@arikwolf3777 Actually, it's the 14 they swap out
Arik Wolf Huh, fair point there. Though with my setup they end up with a higher average ability score, their overall highest stat can only be an 18, which does fall below the 19 that the Dungeon Dudes’ Variant has.
@@MagusAgrippa8 Actually, a Changeling that takes the comedian feat would get 20 Cha
Been watching you guys a few weeks but this is the first time I've commented. First, love you. You guys have such a great dynamic and the show is tight. Seems like you're radio/podcast hosts irl.
As for character creation, I got turned on to Apocalypse World years ago and swore off DnD. A friend started a campaign and was looking for players so I'm back into 5e and have been watching your show to see what's new. The things you discuss here are basically interpretations of... well... better roleplaying systems.* These are the tenets of the Apocalypse Engine: Players are heroes, so make them heroic (the buffed array); characters have relationships with each other and NPCs of their own creation (bonds, etc.); and something you didn't quite touch on, the players are as responsible for the world as the GM and should be shaping it in session 0. You've no doubt read the Powered by the Apocalypse rulesets and/or discussion of them, but I think you'd do well to encourage your viewers to check them out.
*No shade, I simply mean that the DnD ruleset isn't at it's core a roleplaying system, it's a tactical minis system that people use to roleplay with.
I a variation of the point to by system pretty good. I literally set all the point "for sale" instead of giving a base point, and that runs up to around 75 points. This gives you the option to be really good in some stats, but for the cost of some other stats. for example; i created a sorcerer with 18 char and dex, for the cost of strength and con on only 6 and 8. it makes for really good roleplay potential
(PS. char only hits 18 because it's a tiefling)
I think one of my favorite ability score generating house rules was point-buy, but you could "sell" one stat down to 6, for an extra two points. That expands on what you say about flaws giving a character depth.
Another house rule I love was when the DM gave everyone two extra skills -- "but they have to be useless in terms of game mechanics." Things like "perform: theatrical bartending" or "knowledge: trivial," which exist solely to flesh out your character and their backstory.
For rolling hit points my DM does it like: you roll, dm rolls hidden, and you get the option of "yours, mine, or the average". Adds a little gamble to it, but you almost never get hosed.
As a DM, I'd rather they not roll for HP. It makes it so much easier for me to plan the encounters when the characters are all at the HP level I expect for a given class and level, from my prior experience. It also reduces the need for bookkeeping -- if you're ever subjected to a level drain effect, you're supposed to back out whatever you got in those levels. In practice I think most people would back out the default values and not worry about it too much, but isn't it better if that's actually the correct move?
I prefer RAW here: if you want to roll the dice and not take the default, on your own head be it. They didn't want to _force_ everyone to stick to the template, but they made it statistically preferable. I don't want to invert that balance, because it works well for me and generally has no effect on player enjoyment.
@@GoblinUrNuts I think that Remy has the math correct.
The average for 1d4+1 is 2.5+1= 3.5
for 1d6 it's 3.5
The average for 1d4+2 is 2.5+2= 4.5
for 1d8 it's 4.5
and so forth
Here's the star rolling method I came up with about 15 years ago.
1. Have two or three players roll using your preferred method. Write those six numbers down and toss them in the middle of the table.
2. Each player choose the set they like and assigns them all as they please. Everyone can choose the same set of they like.
This preserves the fun and excitement of rolling with the balance of an array, since everyone can choose the sam
I believe in rolling 4d6 drop lowest assign as desired. I have played other systems. Obviously not all characters will be equal, but who says they have to be, Batman and Superman are on far different power levels but both are in the Justice League, and both have their own roles.
Differing power levels (much like variance in general) is not such a big deal in a large party, but it can be a serious problem when constructing a small party. Fewer players = fewer dice being rolled. Fewer rolls mean much higher chances of extremely good or extremely bad streaks, and the latter can quickly result in a TPK when you only have three in the party to start with.
In a small party, you really can't hide a weak brother. Everyone needs to be a virtuoso on their specialty, and have a running side gig too.
Batman also has plot machina.
There's few campaigns where those two combined would work.
Why would batman do anything when superman could just destroy everything in advance.
I get your point though, I think differences in power should be less ability based and more skill based by classes or such.
Because the Justice League has writers where D&D has dice. A writer can hand wave the power imbalance while a player has to live with it.
I love that HP rule, taking the average if your roll is lower than half the possible max. Excellent idea.
“I know a guy!” I love that idea. 👍🏻
I unintentionally did that with my DM because I gave a lot of detail about my character's family and friends. Plus I wanted to surprise my friends, so I told my DM about my backup pc and asked could he play my backup as an npc. He agreed, so he will control him, and keep him just vague enough where I'll be able to have freedom to play him how I want should it come time to use him. It'll be fun seeing him appear even if I never need to use him.
Just forwarded this to my current DM, and I am now STOKED for our next campaign!
You can solve this feeling of 'all characters are the same' that comes from using a using a standard array by offering 2 different arrays. 17, 15, 13, 12, 10, 8 and 16, 16, 13, 12, 10, 8. and the players can choose one. Provides all the stability and balance of a standard array. Still gives the player a choice and creates a better sense of uniqueness
A cool house rule that I've used for rolling stats is that everybody rolls one stat (it depends on your party size, maybe just have the DM roll all of them) and then you give that array of stats to every character. This is a great way to make sure each and every one of the players don't feel above or below the power level of their party members, but it still leaves enough room for customization to make your character unique.
Basically it's just the standard array rule in this video but with rolled stats.
Really like these ideas. One of my groups uses a “draft” that allows us to roll abilities but even out the variation among characters. Basically, each player rolls six scores (usually 4d6 drop lowest). We then pool all the scores, and then determine an order among the players. The first player chooses a score from the pool, followed by the next character in the order, etc. This draft is a “snake,” so the order reverses after the last player chooses, so the last player to choose gets to choose twice. One variation on this is to have the DM roll six scores to add to the pool, so the number of scores is greater than what the players need, and players are protected from picking the absolute worst scores.
I gave my players a list of team concepts and they chose what appealed to them. Examples included bandits, pirates, military unit, royal family, prospectors, pilgrims, bounty hunters, etc. The team is financially indebted to some kind of patron. Thus the team must work together and work hard to pay off their debt.
In my game, they decided to be a roving company of monster hunters. A financier loaned the company as much money as they wanted to buy equipment, wagons, supplies, office, advertising contracts, stabling, etc. Now their primary task is to get contracts, get paid, and pay off the loan. If they miss payments, the financier will send people to "explain things" to the party.
Looking forward to seeing how this all works out!
In regards to the "half HP"
Is it really a house rule if it's in the Core Rulebook?
“Each time you gain a level, you gain 1 additional Hit Die. Roll that Hit Die, add your Constitution modifier to the roll, and add the total (minimum of 1) to your hit point maximum. Alternatively, you can use the fixed value shown in your class entry, which is the average result of the die roll (rounded up).”
It’s the next sentence. It’s not a variant or anything... literally another valid choice. It’s also slightly better than rolling since it rounds up.
My house rule for HP is roll your hit die and if it's less than half of max, say 1-3 on a d8, then they get to re-roll it. I also homebrew a lot of monsters and adversaries so it balances it out enough that I don't feel as bad if my creations aren't as balanced.
I think that snuck in because it started as a house rule in prior editions and got adopted into the official sources for 5e. I think it might have been in 4e also, but I don't really care to remember details about 4e anymore.
This is one rule I follow as written. The default is statistically slightly better than average, and I see this as a design choice. Rolling for HP is deprecated. You can do it if you like, but it will most likely work to your slight disadvantage if you do.
I use “roll up to 3 times, but you can’t go back”
what would be nice is "you can either take the average rounded up or roll, and if the roll is low, take the average rounded down" That still makes you take a risk for rolling, and wont make people constantly take the average rounded up.
I came up with this based on finding the 5e point buy rather sub par compared to rolling as well as some of the reasons you guys said
-Point buy, 31 points
7: -1
8: 0
9: 1
10: 2
11: 3
12: 4
13: 5
14: 7
15: 9
16: 12
Starting Stat array options
15, 15, 14, 12, 10, 8
16, 15, 15, 10, 8, 7
16, 16, 13, 10, 8, 8
16, 15, 14, 10, 9, 8
A reason for why I find a standard array good is that one of my early players always had strangely high scores. Their barbarian for example had a charisma score equal to that of the same campaigns paladin. And this was the norm for all of their characters, so I decided that a standard array would let me mitigate such a trend so that each and every character could feel specialised and not have one which outperforms the rest
You could also immediately solve that mystery by stationing the "lucky" player at the seat directly next to yours and tasking their neighbor on the other side with watching every single die roll. You'd be surprised how the "lucky" player instantly snaps shockingly close to statistical averages over a few sessions.
I very much love that standard array. We also have smaller groups and having that boost is a great help!
-Baron
Things we've been trying on "one shots"
1: Standard Stat Array or Standard Point Buy
2: Free 1st lvl feat.
3: All current Unearthed Arcana is allowed.
Something i do is that all stats start with a 6. you roll 3, take highest 2. we plan to make it so your primary 2 stats can start with an 8 or something.
Try 2d6+6
@@darkmantlestudios thats basically what it is, but rolling 2 1s for 3 stats is still complete shit lol
@@greenhawk3796 it gives you an 8 as a minimum, if you get 3 8s, toss the set bro :p
@@darkmantlestudios its happened before. When we used to roll 4 take the highest 3 i literally rolled 3 1s & a 2.
Another option I've used in the past for determining ability scores was to have the entire group roll a shared array. Using this method, each player was able to roll one or two ability scores, then all the players utilized the collaboratively generated set to create their characters. This method allows ability scores to be generated with the classic random roll method, while ensuring that no one player gets better or worse results because they're all utilizing the same set of numbers.
I’ve also heard of people allowing a -2 score to get a feat. It may have even been you guys.
My 2 go tos are:
'Roll 4d6, reroll 1's and drop the lowest'. It does skew stats to the high side, but as a DM I can work with that, and since it has the upwards skew, no one feels useless, though there is likely someone else better. They still get 3d6, just with better odds of getting 12+.
'roll your hit die, take the average if greater then what's rolled' phenomenal rule, helps keep people from being super squish.
Starting with a feat at level 1 seems like an interesting rule to me that could help flesh out a character's own talents outside of race and class, but I could see it happen that a DM could exclude certain feats from this so characters won't get too strong at level 1.
Might be even better though, when you can't pick the best feats and only the ones that often aren't seen as worth taking instead of the stats boost, you'll get to give different feats a try that you normally would not pick. Can add a lot of character and might still be situationally usefull.
I've been doing this since 5E first came out. Yes, it lets the characters develop their styles right away. The DM needs to treat the party like they're half a level higher than normal. Other than that, it works great.
I've been having a real quandary with feats. I want to rewrite the mechanic to use some sort of points system, but keep the progression the same. The reason for this is that I would bump the cost of the really prime Feats from two points to three, and bring them back in balance with the rest without nerfing them directly.
I came up with an archetype, originally inspired by Veo, of the Master Blaster. Take one Variant Human, make him a ranger with Sharpshooter as his starting Feat. At level 3, go Gloom Stalker and gain Darkvision and the extra first round attack. At level 4, add Crossbow Expert. Put a heavy crossbow in his hands and let the rapier rust. At level 5, you gain Extra Attack. From this point on, the build starts to level out a bit and you may want to cross into Rogue at this point, but it's so far ahead of the pack on damage (especially the first round) that it's hard to overlook if you want to play a character who just wings it in every battle. Even at 9th level (as far as I've leveled this character) he's still ahead of the pack, although the gap is closing, as is to be expected for a rogue dip. It pays off fast but there's a bit of a hangover.
Do you want to know how OP Sharpshooter really is? In campaign, we had the party considering whether to hire a ballista crew and catapults to help with a fortress assault, and we realized that some rangers/fighters with Sharpshooter and heavy crossbows did _the same damage per shot_ and with much better accuracy. Add Crossbow Expert and they had increased rate of fire to go with it. The Master Blaster build is literally equivalent to a walking ballista -- except when it's better.
@@mal2ksc Kind of bothers me that some weapons get a feat specific to them and it's really good while some weapons are pretty much useless because there are better alternatives.
Crossbow expert probably should be nerfed a bit as a house rule. Pole arm master is good too, but seems easier to work around due to limited range.
Shield master seems just right, it gives good advantages and feels really useful but the DM can deal with it well enough.
Our DM allowed a feat at level 1, except Lucky. If you wanted Lucky, you had to roll 1d20. Nat 20, great, you can pick it. Anything else. Nope. You ain't lucky. She also allowed for it if you could write up a convincing backstory showcasing their luck. Like, 1 in a million luck, without being too over the top.
@@Synthatic That's actually a really fun way to go about it that makes sense, sounds like she is an awesome DM.
This is my method for keeping the excitement of rolling, but maintaining party ability score balance. We had 3 players in my campaign, so it worked out well. You have to tweak it based on number of players, but the general principals remain the same.
1. Each player rolls 4d6 and drops the lowest 3 times. This gives a pool of 9 ability scores. At this point, all you are looking for is a pool of ability scores over 6.
2. Each player around the table takes turns choosing an ability score that they want to lock in. With 3 players, this is done twice, giving 6 ability scores.
3. Each player now has 6 ability scores to make their character. Everyone has the same scores. I've had some players choose the most optimal, higher scores. I've had others choose low scores for role play. It is some pretty fun drama when you go around the table in order and ask them to lock in a score.
9:20 or in my case, bringing an optimised character to a joke game, and not having fun because I take things seriously whilst no one else is
Holy fuck this is literally what happened to a oneshot last wednesday
The game description seems very serious and I took it as a serious one shot, it was about cleansing a certain haunted manor
I made a variant human paladin of vengeance specializing in bonking people with a greatsword
to my surprise, the party consisted of a barbarian aarokocra that is literally just a chicken head that was given a human body (-3 int)
an old man gnome divination wizard that never uses his portent rolls
a goofy bard that tried to use a greatsword but fails miserably
and a somewhat decent cleric of the grave
suffice to say it was kind of fun
Bonding is a great way to have some pretext why some of the group member are/stay together. We did this in our current campaign. The warlock and cleric are from the same temple (mystra) and the rogue (mine character) and Bard (my partners character) where traveling in a troup together.
Our troup run into trouble and broke up to save each other and our characters stayed together, coming across the quest giver as a "safe" way to get out of the area. The other two where directed by mystra and the same quest was in a vision.
Best channel for 5e advice
Our DM (who is also brand new to DnD and DMing) came up with what I felt (as a beginner myself) a very fair method for rolling stats that left everyone in our group feeling good about their starting point (this is a 5 person group). Basically we all rolled for our stats and presented our results to our dm who then allowed certain numbers to be rerolled based entirely on his own discretion. This left us all with a good feeling set of numbers where none of us was drastically ahead or behind everyone else
Yes yes yes yes yes. Glad I'm not the only one who dislikes rolling stats for a campaign.
I don't mind it. But on my game my wizard highest roll was a 14 and my friend's ranger got a 12 as the lowest
Another fun house rule that I've implemented in some of my home games is that once or twice, or really however many times you want to use it, a campaign you can use knowledge that you as a player know about a certain skill to give yourself advantage on a check. For instance say you're trying to make some kind of poison and you, as a player, know some information about different types of antitoxins. You can essentially give your character that knowledge to gain advantage on that check. I believe it was Ivan Van Norman who I got the idea from but that was while ago so i don't really remember. I like it because it can make characters seem more personal to a player and can really help in a pinch if needed, it also lends well to having those little aha funny I solved it moments in a campaign. It can get pretty overpowered sometimes so that's why I limit it and the players usually save it for big important moments.
7:23 I though someone else had started talking, lol (video was playing on the background)
Great video - the Lando rule rocks.
On HP: My former DM (and by now myself as well) go with rolling up to 3 times on level up. You can take the first roll and thats the end of it or roll again but then you're stuck with the result on the die. This adds a risk/reward component that still usually leaves player characters with above average rolls but also leaves the risk of a poor level up due to outstanding bad luck or greed.
One method of ability score generation I saw on reddit recently that I thought was interesting was 4d6d1, but every player uses the same set of rolls and puts them in their own stats however they choose. Haven't tried it, and I think I prefer point buy, but it's definitely interesting.
I think your standard array is interesting, but I think I'd prefer point buy with a free feat at level 1. Accomplishes a lot of the same things, and I think everyone starting with an 18 sounds like a lot for me. You might let this include a dwarf playing a keen mind so they can start with a 16 in intelligence!
Taber McFarlin I did this for a game I play in. There's only three of us so we each rolled a set of numbers and picked the one we like best. As a DM as well, I would prefer my players all used one rolled set, or a point buy to avoid having the one op character.
@@TzarkaanThis sounds like a really great method if you like having randomness of the dice but not the imbalance. If my players want to roll next time I start a campaign I'll definitely recommend this!
The thing I like about point buy for making my own characters is I can figure out how to handle odd numbers based on my race lol
Taber McFarlin
In past games, I’ve done something similar where the players could use the spread that someone else rolled if they wanted.
My homebrew implementation is when going for HP you roll immediately and if you don’t like it you can either re-roll or take the average that way it puts the responsibility on you if decide to role the second time and get a bad role