Like many 5e players, I investigated other systems during the drama in January. I have converted my table over to Pathfinder 2e, so that’s what I’ll mostly be running going forward.

However, I’m not one of those people who thinks 2e is better than 5e in all respects, and I’ll probably run 5e again at some point in the future. And when I do, there’s a mechanic from Pathfinder that I will 100% be porting over to 5e: Hero Points.

Below I will provide a version of this mechanic, written in the mechanical language of 5e (to the best of my ability)

Hero Points

(replaces inspiration)

Hero points represent a player character’s unique ability to act heroically against adversity.

At the beginning of each play session, each player loses any hero points they have accumulated, then recieves 1 hero point. Depending on the average duration of your group’s gaming sessions, the DM may increase or decrease the frequency of this by periodically resetting hero points mid-session, or only once every couple sessions. The expectation is that this reset will occur roughly once every 3-5 hours of play.

The DM may award additional hero points for any reason. They are encouraged to give out hero points to reward good roleplaying, good tactics, or any behaviour which improves the play experience for everyone at the table. A DM should award an average of approximately one hero point for every hour of play. You can have multiple hero points, but you can never have more than 3 hero points.

Whenever you roll an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check, you may spend a hero point after seeing the result and after the DM tells you whether or not the roll was a success or failure. If you do, you reroll the check and must use the new result, even if it is worse. This roll is unaffected by whether you have advantage or disadvantage on the check.

Whenever you would fall unconscious due to being reduced to 0 HP, or whenever you would accumulate a death saving throw failure, you may spend all of your hero points in order to remove any death saving throw failures and become stabilized at 0 HP.

The DM may provide other options for how to spend hero points, such as altering the story or introducing new information which benefits the party.

That’s it, that’s the whole mechanic. In general I just think 2e does a much better job of the “inspiration” system than 5e.

In my years as both a player and a DM, I can count on one hand the number of times I ever saw Inspiration being awarded to 5e players. It simply isn’t a good system. The DM fiat needed to receive it makes it unpredictable, and it’s way too hard to get players to actually spend it once they have it.

The Hero Points system is much better because it resets every session, meaning that players will have a predictable way to get hero points, and that they will have a good reason to spend them; even if the DM forgets to award it. And since they will be spending that resource more often, the DM will have more reminders that the mechanic exists.

I encourage DMs out there to experiment with this system in their own games. And let me know how it goes.

  • @tidy_frog
    1•1 year ago

    I’ve been thinking about adapting “Aspects” from FATE to 5e and tying them in with the inspiration system.

    It would work like this: Aspects replace alignment and are used to use and/or generate inspiration.

    An aspect is a short phrase that describes a part of your character’s personality. In FATE you start with something called a “High Concept” that is the core of the entire character. It’s something like, “Drunk Wizard With a Shady Past”, or “High Bishop of the False God Amnothep”. We skip the high concept because that’s already covered in 5e by your class, subclass, and race.

    We also skip your trouble because D&D characters don’t need one. Obviously, the thing that is going to get you killed is enough lust for adventure and treasure to get you to explore places like Undermountain or Ten Towns during an obviously magical blizzard. That’s what D&D is all about.

    So, we just skip to the three supporting aspects. One describes a part of your personality. One describes your most important long-term goal. And the third describes what turned you into an adventurer in the first place.

    So, if I was playing a Centaur Barbarian (who is female just so I can make “horse-girl” jokes) my three aspects might be…

    • Too Curious for Her Own Good
    • To Defend the Herd, You Must Understand Its Enemies
    • A Mighty Need to Prove My Bravery

    The other thing all aspects need is “Invocations” and “Compels”. These are additional short phrases that describe the situations where an aspect might become relevant. Invocations are when a player leverages an aspect for their own advantage, while a compel is when the DM leverages an aspect to get a player to keep things interesting (read: get the player to do something stupid) or for a player who doesn’t have the game’s meta-currency to get it (self-compels are a thing).

    Example:
    Aspect: Too Curious for Her Own Good
    Invoke: To figure something out; To notice something she might otherwise miss; To be brave in the face of the unknown
    Compel: She notices something she doesn’t understand; A mighty need to poke and prod; “I should go investigate that strange noise!”

    In FATE you use invokes and compels to spend and generate “FATE Points”. Because 5e doesn’t have fate points, we use these aspects to, instead, spend and build inspiration!

    Spending and Building Inspiration

    Everyone starts the session without any inspiration. If you want it, you’re going to need to compel one of your aspects, or you get inspiration if the DM compels an aspect for you. Either way, the outcome is the same. When an aspect is compelled to affect your decision-making as a player, you get inspiration for your trouble.

    What if you already have inspiration? Two things can happen if you have inspiration.

    1. The DM can’t compel you on anything tangential to your aspects. For example, if I have inspiration and my centaur comes across something weird, I don’t have to self-compel “Too Curious for Her Own Good” if I want to play it safe and the DM can’t compel me to do it either.
    2. The DM can compel you anyway “only as long as it would be a perfect compel”.

    A perfect compel is when the situation is literally perfect for your aspect. In the case of “Too Curious for Her Own Good” the scenario would have to be along the lines of “you have never seen anything like this before, ever, in your life” for the compel to be valid. Of course, the player and DM can disagree, and in that case a player can refuse the compel.

    If the compel goes through and the character already has inspiration one of three things happen as a result:

    1. The player can give the extra inspiration to another character who does not have inspiration.
    2. If the DM has inspiration, they can forfeit inspiration.
    3. In reaction to the compel, the next roll relevant to the aspect is counted as an automatic natural 20 without the players expending inspiration.

    What if you don’t have inspiration? You get inspiration for the compel.

    What if the compel is valid, but you don’t want to do it? You can refuse the compel.

    Refusing a compel is not free. In order to refuse a compel one of two things must happen:

    1. Someone must give up their inspiration (either you decide not to take the action or someone stops you).
    2. The DM gets inspiration.

    DMs also start the session without any inspiration and cannot compel themselves. They can hold up to one inspiration per player and can use them to do the following:

    • Give an enemy advantage on a roll against the players
    • Deny a player advantage they would otherwise receive
    • Give a player disadvantage on a roll the would otherwise roll straight (even if the straight roll is because they have both advantage and disadvantage)
    • Any DM use of inspiration can be negated by a player if the outcome of the roll would likely result in the death of a character.

    Also, and finally, if the DM uses inspiration to roll against or attack a player character who does not have inspiration, that character immediately gains inspiration.

    So, in short…because there’s a lot going on here and some of it sounds kind of TPK-y…

    • Compels drive narrative action based on character personality rather than optimal play.
    • Compels generate inspiration.
    • Players and DMs can compel aspects.
    • Players have more freedom to compel aspects than the DM by design.
    • DM compels can be refused at cost.
    • Any player can pay that cost.
    • All players must agree to refuse a compel before the DM can get inspiration to use against them.
    • Because players can compel themselves they shouldn’t be running around without inspiration for very long.
    • Just because you’ve accepted a compel doesn’t mean you have to be an idiot. If I accepted an curiosity compel for my centaur barbarian it doesn’t mean I can’t check for traps and then poke the treasure chest with a 10-foot-pole. It just means I have to investigate it because it’s what my character should be doing based on the personality I gave her.
    • If the DM gets inspiration it’s only because the players let them.

    Using Inspiration

    • To use inspiration you must invoke an aspect (it needs to be relevant to your character’s personality)
    • When you spend an inspiration you get to reroll a d20 and choose which value to take.
    • The DM can use inspiration to negate a player’s use of inspiration.

    This isn’t fate, so you can’t use inspiration to add things to a scene or take a flat bonus. You just get a reroll…which is pretty powerful in and of itself.