I last gave one of my players inspiration, for a cool idea he had in combat. He magically trippled his speech-volume and screamed at a bunch of giant bats.
my gm never gives out advantage. I've used subtle spell to squak eldritch blasts at a hag while polymorphed into a chicken knocking them into their own cauldron and gotten nothing for it.
Having Inspiration function like the ‘Lucky’ feat makes it feel impactful. Players end up prioritizing its use for important RP moments more often than combat (unless they’re in dire straits). Being able to reroll a botched attempt feels great for players, and reinforces whatever behavior prompted you to give it out in the first place. I give it out when a player gets real invested in the world or their backstory, or for making me laugh a lot!
At the same time, as someone else mentioned, the help action does require an action. Plus, as someone who enjoys the story of d&d probably more than anything else, I really enjoy being able to help out the bard or someone when they do something really cool, or when they do something really important to the story. A fellow party member is very new to D&D, and a bit shy with role-playing and stuff. it's really fun when they actually do role-play to do something kind of cool and you can be like, "you have a vantage on this".
"Acererak Power Word Kills you." I absolutely lost it. Your sketches keep getting more and more enjoyable, guys! Also, I think I'll start using the Bardic Inspiration table now too, if my players are okay with it. It makes more sense and will keep me from being so stingy with my Inspiration.
What I like to do is at the end of a session, I have the players vote on who gets inspiration for the next game, with the DM breaking any ties. But the one rule is that nobody can vote for themselves.
The only problem is if they metagame and choose to reward the player who has the most use for a roll with advantage, probably for extra burst damage or something. Some of my players are like that...
@@vicca4671 1.) DM can call for a re-vote (simple, but can feel a litle mean) 2.) every other player needs to get inspiration before someone can get it again (kinda hard to keep track of, but is very fair)
In my campaign I let players use their inspiration in 3 ways: 1. Reroll a failed roll 2. Getting advantage (I have a rogue in the party) 3. Nullify a disadvantage (I have a rogue in the party) I was a rules-strict DM until recently and noone tried to get inspiration, when I started using the rule of cool they started trying bolder stuff and I started giving more Inspiration
Instead of inspiration, I usually like to reward my players by lowering success thresholds for their rolls. If they just try to numbers it? Probably gonna need to roll a 17+. But the more they role play their stuff, I’ll drop it to 15, 10, or if I think they did something cool enough I just auto success it
Our DM lets us trade inspiration for a random 'Drama Card' that vary from minor positive effects from getting a spell slot back or no damage from a fall to the legendary 'Awesome Card' which makes anything the player says 'just work because they're awesome!' for the next 30 seconds. It's a pretty rare occurance due to its game breaking potential but makes every inspiration memorable rp vs just giving advantage on a roll :)
Geezer here.... Decades ago we mostly had a lot of house rules that the kids today would call home brew. After all we played Chainmail. Then d&d came out..... Ohhhh a box set, with like magazine sized rule books. The box even gave us room to carry a few sets of dice in and extra notebook papper and pencils. Minds were blown when it went advanced. Anyway, kudos. Inspiration sounds a lot like something we came up with. It really can add a lot. Cannot imagine not having some way of rewarding great players. Whether for role play, tactics or at times astounding blessing of fate. Game on.
So in an official sanctioned stream game for my comic store, the big finale encounter we’ve been building to. I used my inspiration and i fucking kid you not got a 1 and a 1 on both rolls. This was a death save failure of failures.
It's a great reward... sadly I've been forgetful to put it in recently... Players saving it for multiple sessions annoys me though... I was giving it out often enough that you could get 2 or 3 within 1 session if you were putting enough effort into it, not like candy, I'd save it for GOOD rp, entertaining me, etc.
Potential solution is to just be clear you can't horde them and they can only have one inspiration at a time. This is parody with the bardic inspiration as well so players can cry BS
@@MetaMdad I've only let them have 1 inspiration at a time, which is why I was rather upset with this player trying to save it... used to use it as an advantage roll on roll20 so auto crit if your second die was a 20. Imma use this bardic inspiration one now so avoid that
@@elgatochurro just don't let it carry over by default. Use it or lose it. And if there's no combat, you could let them carry it over for the next session then.
@@Fantafaust my games are combat grinds, so mostly combat or something in the way till next combat... Trying to get better but I'm still fairly new, especially with story telling... dnd story telling is... broken... unless i force the PCs to do things, which I dont do
I have a paladin who spent much of our first 3 encounters rolling death saves. Often, my party would make jokes at my need to be carried. There was a moment when an elf ranger was helping me and said “it looks like that was a close call.” To which my paladin responded with a shrug and said “everyday’s a close call” The table erupted in laughter and I was awarded an inspiration point
Im working on my first campaign right now and this gave me some good advice. I want my some of my boss monsters to be pretty darn strong so I think if I give them inspiration a while before the fight and if they don't waste them early then when it comes to the fight it should balance out how strong the monster is. If it doesn't I guess I can lower his hp a bit.
Just a tip: “Usually its fun” should be “It’s usually fun”. When “its” is a contraction, you use the apostrophe. Also the adjective should go after the noun in that situation. Have a good day!
It's not only used for giving yourself advantage on attacks/checks, you can give the dm also disadvantage! Comes in very handy when your character is only at 8 hp and the Hill Giant is about to attack you.. Even better is when you use your inspiration to give disadvantage and one of the rolls was a Nat20 😅
In my opinion, advantage is not as rewarding. As you said, the characters are always getting it. So instead, I made it a really special occasion, I give it to them when they complete a character arc and it gives them an automatic success in a skill check or an automatic critical hit.
I played a paladin in a buddies campaign and I got an inspiration point for praying away an accursed storm. To be fair I rolled a nat 20 for it but it was still dope.
My dm gave me inspiration for killing a cr 13 enemy in a cool way. We’re playing baulders gate and we’re in an environment with lots of spikey trees (which have the souls of the dead impailed on them). We are in the middle of fighting this heavily armored dude on a fire horse, who can teleport for whatever reason, and we’re getting roughed up pretty bad. Then I get a bright idea! I’m playing a currently lv 7 barbarian with 16 str for context. I climb up right next to the spikey trees and prepare a grapple if he teleports next to me. He does, but the dm imposes disadvantage on the grapple because I’m taking him off his horse. 22. “Ok, you have him restrained what do you do?” “I’m going to try to impale him on a tree branch” “ok, take inspiration for that. And if this works, he dies. Roll for strength and I’ll roll for athletics to try to get out.” I get a 16, but after some deliberation use my inspiration to roll at advantage. 23, he rolls a 17. I impale him and we win. TLDR: inspiration is cool if a player does a cool thing.
At my sessions. We start with a question, and if we give a satisfying answer to the bonus question (ie answering as character), we got an inspiration. Later on, the inspiration could only be used on other players. Sometimes we do get normal "use on self" tokens. Edit: One time I was playing a dumb pirate bard named Mr. Shanty (or, MR. SHANTEY), and he is very arrogant in how generous he is. And is a dim bulb. We were trying to help a player's sister escape and Mr. Shanty was playing for the refugees at the camp she was being held (the guards were more happy than the refugees). And while they were doing this heist, Mr. Shanty was not noticing it and honestly thought he was there to make the refugees happy. And I got a roleplaying inspiration.
I talked to my players, and we're going to try this out, adding a dX instead of advantage. We're also going to try out having the players give out inspiration, since I remember to do it about once every ten sessions.
I should probably mention, for a while my DM decided to handle inspiration by handing out pathfinder plot twist cards (with some on-the-fly modifications if needed, seeing as we were playing 5e) at the start of a session, and just handing out more whenever they would normally give inspiration, or when someone rolled a nat 20, or whenever. This made the actual advantage of having inspiration vary every time, and made its use a lot more memorable and common.
In my system I have been using the bardic style inspiration, I like it better. I've also told my players that they're allowed to roll the die and gain that as bonus xp (100 = a level) to potentially gain a level in addition to whatever milestone they're at.
As a DM I like the inspiration rule -- a lot actually. The key is I'm a SOB who doesn't give them away easily at all. in short you have to REALLY earn it -- I feel that way it actually means something, and because its rare to get from me -- I don't really worry about any other concerns with "yeah but...doesn't inspiration water down this or that? doesn't it make my bards sad? doesn't it give too much power to a class that is already hitting just about anything on demand, etc. etc.".....who cares? If you are stingy with giving it out -- it all kind of just works out fine.
With my group we use it to enact rule of cool like doing an extra attack or forcing crit, basically an inspiration allows you to do one anime style thing.
I do remember to give them for great roleplay or innovative ideas. The problem is them always wanting to keep it for later and then going "well I already have inspiration" when I try to give it
Alder Godric we have agreed on DM applying it when the action is about to start. We had our dwarf-warpriest that was ready to sacrifice himself to let party and the rescued quest npcs more chances to leave from the fishmen cavern. Master modified his level by a whopping 5 and rolled his call to god ability - and it worked. He has managed to survive after that thanks to aoe attacks and flat damage reductions that were the boon from his patron god. The player got it even further - spent almost all his loot share for donations to his temple and poor and stayed indoors in there for a month in a frenzied praying. With shit like that you can write books man
I'm giving unlimited amount of insiprations during the sessions (by PHB max is 1), but taking away 1 from each one at the end of the session. It makes it useful and forced them to actually use it and not hoard like we did in the previous session.
As a back-up DM at my local comic store, my personal philosophy is that if I'm busy running the game and one of the players notices a really cool move another player did that I glossed over, they can say "hey I think they deserved inspiration for that" and if I agree, inspiration! ...I'm also infamous for giving out at least one inspiration a night for really good puns. ENTERTAIN ME.
In my campaign players can use inspiration as the book suggests OR use it to change the world in some small way. For example, there is a guard coming your way and you want to remain hidden, use an inspiration to have the guard turn around because he forgot to put on a helmet, or maybe he forgot his keys. One of my players changed the name of an npc because it would be funnier using his inspiration. It's not gamebreaking but a lot of fun.
I usually give inspiration as a bargaining chip for the player to pull things off they usually cant like regaining something they would on a short or long rest in the midst of battle
I use coincidence coins that basically are "thank you for interacting with my world in an awesome way now you can shift something in the world to better interact with you" and that coincidence coins have 3 sizes copper/bronze silver and gold ex. (Finding/creating a beehive that has honey in a tree alond the road) (changing/creating a personality trait for a npc) And i also have 1 inspiration in the middle that they get to award
I allow my players to privately message me with a vote for one player other than themselves between sessions. At the beginning of the session, I tally these votes and award inspiration to the highest scoring player (or 2-3 players, depending on party size) that doesn't already have it, then remove that player's votes and conserve the rest to be added to next week's votes. Basically, players are encouraged to vote for who they believe roleplayed the best, and which character they liked the most in the session. This allows the players to effectively award inspiration to other players with minimal meta-gaming (since inspiration is awarded before the session begins), and also prevents the group's "best roleplayer" from being awarded every distributed inspiration token but his own, while still rewarding players who continue to roleplay well even when their characters already have unspent inspiration. This also promotes friendship between the players, since people will more likely vote for the funny, charismatic guy over the person who consistently interrupts others' character moments to let everyone know what his character thinks about the situation.
Any time a player does something impressive, I give them inspiration. There was one time where I felt one of players outsmarted me (and the dice worked in their favor), where instead of contesting an NPC's attempt to wrestle something away while he stood on unstable ground, he let them have it (and then I rolled a 4 for him to keep his balance. He died.)
I recently came up with an idea that makes inspiration a fully meta system. I liked the general idea of Inspiration as a way to allow people advantage in an extreme situation, but I found the way it's rewarded to be badly designed, either you play in a group that always roleplays so they just have advantage on everything, or you play in a group that isn't super into roleplaying (and that's fine) and so it's rare and super out of sync with the feel of your game, basically turning it into an abusable meta game system. So I thought, hey, DMs have the ability have control over narrative, situation, and the world while players have control over PC's. Yet DMs usually have the opportunity to flex control over the PCs too, while Player's rarely (if ever) have control over any of the DM's stuff, that's not very fair. So I decided that Inspiration would a small system entirely in control of the Players, not their characters, to control the situation just a little bit. Basically, each player gains one use of inspiration every session that can be used whenever. Uses of inspiration do not stack, but a player can allow their inspiration to be used by another, if the receiving player has already used theirs. They can do this entirely in a meta way, i.e. no action is necessary, it does not have to be on their turn or when they have the spotlight, the characters don’t even have to be aware of each other.
I really like the mechanic but I never remember to use it. I have implemeted a method to give inspiration based on the days of the week (in the world we play)... It's less earned, but it still feels special
In my campaing Inpiration works as tokens that you can add to your roll example: I have 5 inpiration points stored, and i have to roll a 16 to succeded but i rolled a 14, in this case I can spend 3 inpiration points to get a 17 and overcome the challenge
The way my party does it is if you fail a roll, you can spend your inspiration to re-roll it, but you have to keep the second roll. I wasted an inspiration a few sessions ago because I had no idea that having Moa in my character was a good thing and still failed the save twice.
My contribution is to use insperation tokens as the currency payed to the D.M. to instigate the RULL OF COOL. Also with percentile dice for sucess these optional rules check and balenc each other.
For fun, I ran the statistics to get see how much advantage 2d20 give you. The average result will be higher by 3.325. However, the chance to have very low values is also reduced a lot, so players just wont fail on a roll with advantage. An additional 1d6 does nearly the same to the average (adding 3.5), but lower results are still more likely. On the other hand, results over 20 are possible. I like the +1d6 rule better and have taken the advantage mechanic to my personal system using +1d6.
We just called them character points and used them for whatever the dm would allow. Autosuccess, meta knowledge, rerolls. Hell, one game I used my cumulative points over 4 sessions to turn my ranger familiar into a werewolf.
I just give them singular pips, consuming a pop will add +1 to any roll (excluding damage) and you can consume as many as you wish. That way, a player has only one way of garunteeing his rolls to succeed, however it's not as powerful or replaceable as advantage. The way I've seen it work out is that they behave better overall, hoping to gain my attention in their actions to be given a unique and irreplaceable commodity, one that garuntees higher rolls. In theory allowing you to reach a 20 whenever you want, if you have the pips to spend. That means that a horrible failure can be turned into a victory, without question... But they'll have to work hard to replace them, and save up if they want them to be useful. A more powerful inspiration, but slowly gained. Each pip counts, but you will never have too many at once given how many times you want to fix a roll. This means that players will have to play the way I want them to, or lose out. It works pretty well in my game this far.
Give inspiration for anything that makes the table excited. Literally anything. Watch and see how many laughs and absurdities you'll get out of your players. Enjoy.
i never read the inspiration page of the book, ive been using it with the bardic inspiration table the whole time. i didnt realise this wasnt the proper way, but i suck at reading so it doesnt surprise me.
I have done the same, except that I did read it, and then forgot what it reads so I went with what I thought it was. I like the bard-inspired inspiration better anyways.
Once a dm gave me inspiration for using wild shape to intimidate a giant poisonous snake. I transformed into another giant poisonous snake, specifically one like a cobra with the flaring neck collar thing, flared the collar. I only rolled a 4 and was preparing for failure, then the other snake rolled a 1, so not only did I scare the damn out of a giant snake, but it was funny apparently
The way our DM uses inspiration is that you're allowed to 're-roll a d20 as long as you declare it before he says the outcome. It's also the only time he lets people interrupt him and yell INSPARRSSHJJON! since he's probably forgotten who has it as well
I should say that my way is not to give them Inspiration often and it's basically like on an anime when the main theme kicks in so they roll 1d6 and add their PB, that amount of rolls with advantage and lasts up to 1 hour after using it. For every "companion"(As someone that the character would actually care) down they get an extra advantageous roll. It represents a character's will to push themselves behind their limits for a short time. I thought of giving them a disadvantage after the "buff"(Since it works more life one than an "ability") ends but idk
PS: My game's are not the classic Hi-Fantasy that base D&D provides, it's a little more difficult to survive in my world so yeah, this is one of the FEW things that really favor a character no matter what (The rest they need to wrap their head around, it's not like they can't do anything)
I work in a crew that basically gives inspiration for doing badass stuff. Once we were facing some undead who were at the bottom of some stairs. We went to push a dresser down at them, but I had the idea to surf down on the bastard.
The groups I play with have a few uses for Inspiration other than just granting Advantage, such as maximizing HP increase on level, maximizing the damage for an attack, and forcing Disadvantage on an enemy. It sounds counter-intuitive, but having a variety of powerful ways to use Inspiration actually makes us think about whether or not we're going to use it (if it was just Advantage, it'd be gone as soon as we saw something we wanted dead, meaning it'd be less impactful), while also encouraging us to play our characters in a way where we're more likely to earn it (e.g., Tabaxi Barbarian ambushes enemies with a plunging attack from a tree, Urchin and Charlatan background characters are constantly working together to hustle NPCs, GOO Warlock refuses to acknowledge the servants of "upstart" gods, etc.) due to the nature of the benefits it can grant.
I gave them an inspiration for doing a non-optimal thing in the name of character-specific roleplay. And by non-optimal, I am thinking "Leeroy Jerkins charges ahead alone without the team" as the degree of non-optimalness required. All my players developed proper roleplaying for gambling all the money they don't own away, charging ork-style once in a while when everyone else had a plan, meeting royalty while too drunk to stand or remember "these are not boobs, these are two beehives on a Dryad", and the secret criteria for how many inspiration they get? THE ADDITION OF ALL PLAYER FUN, MINUS FRUSTRATION. It keep a healthy balance of pranking/self-pranking. I also 5 for hiding a BIG secret 20 games, then revealing.
I'll only award inspiration, if the player does something that blows my mind. Something I never expected and catches me off guard as a DM. Other than that, you don't get things for free (IE: everyone gets it at the start of the game). And sharing is no need because players have a help action.
My DM does a swell job of doling out inspiration. I think I've also managed to have my inspiration revoked after making a pun so clever, the table cringed (It was worth it).
You I've been thinking about this a lot lately, advantage that is not inspiration, and I'm not convinced it doubles the probability of success. I haven't done the regression but doesn't seem that high, in my head. Because rolling a die is supposed to be random that means the probabilities are independent of each other so the probability of getting a success should be squared not doubled. But again I havent' done all the math.
I don't use inspiration in my games (since I play a version of D&D that is massively homebrewed with an entire combat system overhaul), but I just came up with this idea: instead of inspiration giving advantage, when a player already has advantage they can use their inspiration to roll a 3rd dice.
I love Inspiration Points because it provides a little incentive to the role playing aspect of a table top role playing game. However, technically, I believe that players are supposed to have 1 out 1 Inspiration Point that burns at the end of the session, if they don't use it. For my next campaign, they're using Hero Points. 😛
I was planning on making Inspiration a core part of my new campaign, to help introduce a bunch of new people to D&D. Two of them roll Bards. Now Inspiration sure is a part of the game, and I didn't do anything for it...
I like Inspiration. but I have high standards for what I should grant it for. And the one time I tried giving it to a player, I was immediately asked to give something else instead.
Ah yes bad rolls i actually am in a homebrew campaing right now and initially our dm had a rule about injuries you get when you roll a nat 1 and stuff but i always rolled at least a nat 1 once per session means my character was pretty much always running around with some kind of injury well after i had like two broken arms my dm actually removed that rule cause it literally made my character a permanent cripple
I'm running a short campaign that involves a large combat tournament and when a player does cool stuff I use the audience to justify giving Inspiration to members of the party.
"It also makes bards not feel extra useless"
*First off, how dare you*
right!?!? bards are great.
(@ ymmij X & Cheetos)
Yeah! I made a Sword Bard with up to 36 AC!
*Shocked Jaskier Face*
“You-Need a NAP!”
Bards are by far the best class
Jack of all trades, master of most
I last gave one of my players inspiration, for a cool idea he had in combat. He magically trippled his speech-volume and screamed at a bunch of giant bats.
As ya do.
Holy shit that's beautiful
my gm never gives out advantage. I've used subtle spell to squak eldritch blasts at a hag while polymorphed into a chicken knocking them into their own cauldron and gotten nothing for it.
See I have mixed feelings about that: that’s super cool and should definitely be rewarded! But killing/disabling the bars is its own reward!
(@ arrow9245) That’s genius
Having Inspiration function like the ‘Lucky’ feat makes it feel impactful. Players end up prioritizing its use for important RP moments more often than combat (unless they’re in dire straits). Being able to reroll a botched attempt feels great for players, and reinforces whatever behavior prompted you to give it out in the first place.
I give it out when a player gets real invested in the world or their backstory, or for making me laugh a lot!
Wow this video *inspired* me to add this aspect into my campaign
*BADUM *CRASH**
The thing about that idea with "giving other people advantage" is already in the game. It's called the help action.
Masterminds like this comment.
I mean i guess but this doesnt require your action
@@facundoperez2766 True, true.
Yeah, I’ve got it so you can add a D6 or get inspiration. And it stacks with bardic.
At the same time, as someone else mentioned, the help action does require an action. Plus, as someone who enjoys the story of d&d probably more than anything else, I really enjoy being able to help out the bard or someone when they do something really cool, or when they do something really important to the story. A fellow party member is very new to D&D, and a bit shy with role-playing and stuff. it's really fun when they actually do role-play to do something kind of cool and you can be like, "you have a vantage on this".
Logans Idea: “Inspire them to get them to do what you want them to do”
Game Store Version: “inspire people to bring you more snickers.”
"Acererak Power Word Kills you."
I absolutely lost it. Your sketches keep getting more and more enjoyable, guys!
Also, I think I'll start using the Bardic Inspiration table now too, if my players are okay with it. It makes more sense and will keep me from being so stingy with my Inspiration.
What I like to do is at the end of a session, I have the players vote on who gets inspiration for the next game, with the DM breaking any ties. But the one rule is that nobody can vote for themselves.
That sounds like a great idea. Sorta like an MVP for the night for roleplaying.
The only problem is if they metagame and choose to reward the player who has the most use for a roll with advantage, probably for extra burst damage or something.
Some of my players are like that...
@@vicca4671 1.) DM can call for a re-vote (simple, but can feel a litle mean) 2.) every other player needs to get inspiration before someone can get it again (kinda hard to keep track of, but is very fair)
In my campaign I let players use their inspiration in 3 ways:
1. Reroll a failed roll
2. Getting advantage (I have a rogue in the party)
3. Nullify a disadvantage (I have a rogue in the party)
I was a rules-strict DM until recently and noone tried to get inspiration, when I started using the rule of cool they started trying bolder stuff and I started giving more Inspiration
Instead of inspiration, I usually like to reward my players by lowering success thresholds for their rolls. If they just try to numbers it? Probably gonna need to roll a 17+. But the more they role play their stuff, I’ll drop it to 15, 10, or if I think they did something cool enough I just auto success it
Or add advantage to their roll
and if they just try to numbers it add disadvantage
yea but the point of advantage is that it feels good. players would rather you say "add 3 to your roll" than "sure"
Our DM lets us trade inspiration for a random 'Drama Card' that vary from minor positive effects from getting a spell slot back or no damage from a fall to the legendary 'Awesome Card' which makes anything the player says 'just work because they're awesome!' for the next 30 seconds. It's a pretty rare occurance due to its game breaking potential but makes every inspiration memorable rp vs just giving advantage on a roll :)
Geezer here....
Decades ago we mostly had a lot of house rules that the kids today would call home brew. After all we played Chainmail. Then d&d came out..... Ohhhh a box set, with like magazine sized rule books. The box even gave us room to carry a few sets of dice in and extra notebook papper and pencils. Minds were blown when it went advanced.
Anyway, kudos. Inspiration sounds a lot like something we came up with. It really can add a lot. Cannot imagine not having some way of rewarding great players. Whether for role play, tactics or at times astounding blessing of fate.
Game on.
I was so relieved when I realized the red dot on my screen wasn't a dead pixel but something in the video.
Edit: It's at 1:00
@Doobdoob3 almost like the size of a pixel!
So in an official sanctioned stream game for my comic store, the big finale encounter we’ve been building to. I used my inspiration and i fucking kid you not got a 1 and a 1 on both rolls. This was a death save failure of failures.
It's a great reward... sadly I've been forgetful to put it in recently...
Players saving it for multiple sessions annoys me though... I was giving it out often enough that you could get 2 or 3 within 1 session if you were putting enough effort into it, not like candy, I'd save it for GOOD rp, entertaining me, etc.
Potential solution is to just be clear you can't horde them and they can only have one inspiration at a time. This is parody with the bardic inspiration as well so players can cry BS
@@MetaMdad I've only let them have 1 inspiration at a time, which is why I was rather upset with this player trying to save it... used to use it as an advantage roll on roll20 so auto crit if your second die was a 20. Imma use this bardic inspiration one now so avoid that
@@elgatochurro just don't let it carry over by default.
Use it or lose it. And if there's no combat, you could let them carry it over for the next session then.
@@Fantafaust my games are combat grinds, so mostly combat or something in the way till next combat...
Trying to get better but I'm still fairly new, especially with story telling... dnd story telling is... broken... unless i force the PCs to do things, which I dont do
Inspiration isn't just for combats. You can use it in social interactions or ability checks
I have a paladin who spent much of our first 3 encounters rolling death saves. Often, my party would make jokes at my need to be carried. There was a moment when an elf ranger was helping me and said “it looks like that was a close call.”
To which my paladin responded with a shrug and said “everyday’s a close call”
The table erupted in laughter and I was awarded an inspiration point
Idea of inspiration from player to player is so awesome!
Im working on my first campaign right now and this gave me some good advice. I want my some of my boss monsters to be pretty darn strong so I think if I give them inspiration a while before the fight and if they don't waste them early then when it comes to the fight it should balance out how strong the monster is. If it doesn't I guess I can lower his hp a bit.
I love your channel!
In my games the inspiration works as a Reroll for a d20
Usually its fun
Edit: Sorry for my bad english (im brazilian)
André Codo that was actually good English
@@samconsumespie1012 oh, thanks
Hi (sorry for my bad english)
Just a tip: “Usually its fun” should be “It’s usually fun”. When “its” is a contraction, you use the apostrophe. Also the adjective should go after the noun in that situation.
Have a good day!
@@eamartig what about "usually, its fun"? what if he's too lazy to put in the ",".
I once got inspiration for cooking a rabbit with Firebolt. Don't know why I did it. But it helped me.
It's not only used for giving yourself advantage on attacks/checks, you can give the dm also disadvantage! Comes in very handy when your character is only at 8 hp and the Hill Giant is about to attack you.. Even better is when you use your inspiration to give disadvantage and one of the rolls was a Nat20 😅
I love your content so much
In my opinion, advantage is not as rewarding. As you said, the characters are always getting it. So instead, I made it a really special occasion, I give it to them when they complete a character arc and it gives them an automatic success in a skill check or an automatic critical hit.
I played a paladin in a buddies campaign and I got an inspiration point for praying away an accursed storm. To be fair I rolled a nat 20 for it but it was still dope.
My dm gave me inspiration for killing a cr 13 enemy in a cool way. We’re playing baulders gate and we’re in an environment with lots of spikey trees (which have the souls of the dead impailed on them). We are in the middle of fighting this heavily armored dude on a fire horse, who can teleport for whatever reason, and we’re getting roughed up pretty bad. Then I get a bright idea! I’m playing a currently lv 7 barbarian with 16 str for context. I climb up right next to the spikey trees and prepare a grapple if he teleports next to me. He does, but the dm imposes disadvantage on the grapple because I’m taking him off his horse. 22. “Ok, you have him restrained what do you do?” “I’m going to try to impale him on a tree branch” “ok, take inspiration for that. And if this works, he dies. Roll for strength and I’ll roll for athletics to try to get out.” I get a 16, but after some deliberation use my inspiration to roll at advantage. 23, he rolls a 17. I impale him and we win.
TLDR: inspiration is cool if a player does a cool thing.
At my sessions. We start with a question, and if we give a satisfying answer to the bonus question (ie answering as character), we got an inspiration. Later on, the inspiration could only be used on other players. Sometimes we do get normal "use on self"
tokens.
Edit: One time I was playing a dumb pirate bard named Mr. Shanty (or, MR. SHANTEY), and he is very arrogant in how generous he is. And is a dim bulb. We were trying to help a player's sister escape and Mr. Shanty was playing for the refugees at the camp she was being held (the guards were more happy than the refugees). And while they were doing this heist, Mr. Shanty was not noticing it and honestly thought he was there to make the refugees happy. And I got a roleplaying inspiration.
The bardic inspiration type of inspiration is what Matt Merce uses too
I talked to my players, and we're going to try this out, adding a dX instead of advantage. We're also going to try out having the players give out inspiration, since I remember to do it about once every ten sessions.
I always forget to give it out too, and then it feels bad to give it only occasionally
Inspiration: You did a thing I like! Have a cookie!
I should probably mention, for a while my DM decided to handle inspiration by handing out pathfinder plot twist cards (with some on-the-fly modifications if needed, seeing as we were playing 5e) at the start of a session, and just handing out more whenever they would normally give inspiration, or when someone rolled a nat 20, or whenever. This made the actual advantage of having inspiration vary every time, and made its use a lot more memorable and common.
In my system I have been using the bardic style inspiration, I like it better. I've also told my players that they're allowed to roll the die and gain that as bonus xp (100 = a level) to potentially gain a level in addition to whatever milestone they're at.
I didn’t see this in my notifications, saw it when checking your channel though
I like the Save or Dice thing in which the Inspiration is a free reroll instead of just advantage
As a DM I like the inspiration rule -- a lot actually. The key is I'm a SOB who doesn't give them away easily at all. in short you have to REALLY earn it -- I feel that way it actually means something, and because its rare to get from me -- I don't really worry about any other concerns with "yeah but...doesn't inspiration water down this or that? doesn't it make my bards sad? doesn't it give too much power to a class that is already hitting just about anything on demand, etc. etc.".....who cares? If you are stingy with giving it out -- it all kind of just works out fine.
With my group we use it to enact rule of cool like doing an extra attack or forcing crit, basically an inspiration allows you to do one anime style thing.
I am implimenting this idea that players can only give their inspiration....with the caveat that the DM has Veto Powers on the grounds of not-roleplay
Thanks for the vid do more pls.
I do remember to give them for great roleplay or innovative ideas. The problem is them always wanting to keep it for later and then going "well I already have inspiration" when I try to give it
Alder Godric we have agreed on DM applying it when the action is about to start. We had our dwarf-warpriest that was ready to sacrifice himself to let party and the rescued quest npcs more chances to leave from the fishmen cavern. Master modified his level by a whopping 5 and rolled his call to god ability - and it worked. He has managed to survive after that thanks to aoe attacks and flat damage reductions that were the boon from his patron god. The player got it even further - spent almost all his loot share for donations to his temple and poor and stayed indoors in there for a month in a frenzied praying.
With shit like that you can write books man
I'm giving unlimited amount of insiprations during the sessions (by PHB max is 1), but taking away 1 from each one at the end of the session. It makes it useful and forced them to actually use it and not hoard like we did in the previous session.
As a back-up DM at my local comic store, my personal philosophy is that if I'm busy running the game and one of the players notices a really cool move another player did that I glossed over, they can say "hey I think they deserved inspiration for that" and if I agree, inspiration! ...I'm also infamous for giving out at least one inspiration a night for really good puns. ENTERTAIN ME.
In my campaign players can use inspiration as the book suggests OR use it to change the world in some small way. For example, there is a guard coming your way and you want to remain hidden, use an inspiration to have the guard turn around because he forgot to put on a helmet, or maybe he forgot his keys. One of my players changed the name of an npc because it would be funnier using his inspiration. It's not gamebreaking but a lot of fun.
I usually give inspiration as a bargaining chip for the player to pull things off they usually cant like regaining something they would on a short or long rest in the midst of battle
I use coincidence coins that basically are "thank you for interacting with my world in an awesome way now you can shift something in the world to better interact with you" and that coincidence coins have 3 sizes copper/bronze silver and gold ex. (Finding/creating a beehive that has honey in a tree alond the road) (changing/creating a personality trait for a npc)
And i also have 1 inspiration in the middle that they get to award
I allow my players to privately message me with a vote for one player other than themselves between sessions. At the beginning of the session, I tally these votes and award inspiration to the highest scoring player (or 2-3 players, depending on party size) that doesn't already have it, then remove that player's votes and conserve the rest to be added to next week's votes. Basically, players are encouraged to vote for who they believe roleplayed the best, and which character they liked the most in the session.
This allows the players to effectively award inspiration to other players with minimal meta-gaming (since inspiration is awarded before the session begins), and also prevents the group's "best roleplayer" from being awarded every distributed inspiration token but his own, while still rewarding players who continue to roleplay well even when their characters already have unspent inspiration.
This also promotes friendship between the players, since people will more likely vote for the funny, charismatic guy over the person who consistently interrupts others' character moments to let everyone know what his character thinks about the situation.
Any time a player does something impressive, I give them inspiration. There was one time where I felt one of players outsmarted me (and the dice worked in their favor), where instead of contesting an NPC's attempt to wrestle something away while he stood on unstable ground, he let them have it (and then I rolled a 4 for him to keep his balance. He died.)
Runesmith with an OSRS ad.
Definitely not sponsored
I recently came up with an idea that makes inspiration a fully meta system. I liked the general idea of Inspiration as a way to allow people advantage in an extreme situation, but I found the way it's rewarded to be badly designed, either you play in a group that always roleplays so they just have advantage on everything, or you play in a group that isn't super into roleplaying (and that's fine) and so it's rare and super out of sync with the feel of your game, basically turning it into an abusable meta game system. So I thought, hey, DMs have the ability have control over narrative, situation, and the world while players have control over PC's. Yet DMs usually have the opportunity to flex control over the PCs too, while Player's rarely (if ever) have control over any of the DM's stuff, that's not very fair. So I decided that Inspiration would a small system entirely in control of the Players, not their characters, to control the situation just a little bit.
Basically, each player gains one use of inspiration every session that can be used whenever. Uses of inspiration do not stack, but a player can allow their inspiration to be used by another, if the receiving player has already used theirs. They can do this entirely in a meta way, i.e. no action is necessary, it does not have to be on their turn or when they have the spotlight, the characters don’t even have to be aware of each other.
I really like the mechanic but I never remember to use it. I have implemeted a method to give inspiration based on the days of the week (in the world we play)... It's less earned, but it still feels special
In my campaing Inpiration works as tokens that you can add to your roll example: I have 5 inpiration points stored, and i have to roll a 16 to succeded but i rolled a 14, in this case I can spend 3 inpiration points to get a 17 and overcome the challenge
Inspiration - chump change edition
Wowee is that a TF2 crit sound when the first player rolls a 21? Pretty cute
Give them advantage after their favorite npc dies so they get an anime revenge moment
Hero points in Pathfinder, and I keep forgetting about their existence as well.
The way my party does it is if you fail a roll, you can spend your inspiration to re-roll it, but you have to keep the second roll. I wasted an inspiration a few sessions ago because I had no idea that having Moa in my character was a good thing and still failed the save twice.
My contribution is to use insperation tokens as the currency payed to the D.M. to instigate the RULL OF COOL. Also with percentile dice for sucess these optional rules check and balenc each other.
For fun, I ran the statistics to get see how much advantage 2d20 give you.
The average result will be higher by 3.325. However, the chance to have very low values is also reduced a lot, so players just wont fail on a roll with advantage. An additional 1d6 does nearly the same to the average (adding 3.5), but lower results are still more likely.
On the other hand, results over 20 are possible. I like the +1d6 rule better and have taken the advantage mechanic to my personal system using +1d6.
We just called them character points and used them for whatever the dm would allow. Autosuccess, meta knowledge, rerolls. Hell, one game I used my cumulative points over 4 sessions to turn my ranger familiar into a werewolf.
That Mafia add...
I just give them singular pips, consuming a pop will add +1 to any roll (excluding damage) and you can consume as many as you wish.
That way, a player has only one way of garunteeing his rolls to succeed, however it's not as powerful or replaceable as advantage.
The way I've seen it work out is that they behave better overall, hoping to gain my attention in their actions to be given a unique and irreplaceable commodity, one that garuntees higher rolls. In theory allowing you to reach a 20 whenever you want, if you have the pips to spend. That means that a horrible failure can be turned into a victory, without question... But they'll have to work hard to replace them, and save up if they want them to be useful.
A more powerful inspiration, but slowly gained. Each pip counts, but you will never have too many at once given how many times you want to fix a roll.
This means that players will have to play the way I want them to, or lose out.
It works pretty well in my game this far.
Give inspiration for anything that makes the table excited. Literally anything. Watch and see how many laughs and absurdities you'll get out of your players. Enjoy.
i never read the inspiration page of the book, ive been using it with the bardic inspiration table the whole time. i didnt realise this wasnt the proper way, but i suck at reading so it doesnt surprise me.
I have done the same, except that I did read it, and then forgot what it reads so I went with what I thought it was. I like the bard-inspired inspiration better anyways.
can you do a video on how to build encounters for your party?
Once a dm gave me inspiration for using wild shape to intimidate a giant poisonous snake. I transformed into another giant poisonous snake, specifically one like a cobra with the flaring neck collar thing, flared the collar. I only rolled a 4 and was preparing for failure, then the other snake rolled a 1, so not only did I scare the damn out of a giant snake, but it was funny apparently
The way our DM uses inspiration is that you're allowed to 're-roll a d20 as long as you declare it before he says the outcome. It's also the only time he lets people interrupt him and yell INSPARRSSHJJON! since he's probably forgotten who has it as well
I should say that my way is not to give them Inspiration often and it's basically like on an anime when the main theme kicks in so they roll 1d6 and add their PB, that amount of rolls with advantage and lasts up to 1 hour after using it.
For every "companion"(As someone that the character would actually care) down they get an extra advantageous roll.
It represents a character's will to push themselves behind their limits for a short time.
I thought of giving them a disadvantage after the "buff"(Since it works more life one than an "ability") ends but idk
PS: My game's are not the classic Hi-Fantasy that base D&D provides, it's a little more difficult to survive in my world so yeah, this is one of the FEW things that really favor a character no matter what (The rest they need to wrap their head around, it's not like they can't do anything)
I don't use inspiration mostly because I know I would start playing favorites with it.
I work in a crew that basically gives inspiration for doing badass stuff. Once we were facing some undead who were at the bottom of some stairs. We went to push a dresser down at them, but I had the idea to surf down on the bastard.
My DM gave me the lucky feat because I tend to roll shitty too
The groups I play with have a few uses for Inspiration other than just granting Advantage, such as maximizing HP increase on level, maximizing the damage for an attack, and forcing Disadvantage on an enemy.
It sounds counter-intuitive, but having a variety of powerful ways to use Inspiration actually makes us think about whether or not we're going to use it (if it was just Advantage, it'd be gone as soon as we saw something we wanted dead, meaning it'd be less impactful), while also encouraging us to play our characters in a way where we're more likely to earn it (e.g., Tabaxi Barbarian ambushes enemies with a plunging attack from a tree, Urchin and Charlatan background characters are constantly working together to hustle NPCs, GOO Warlock refuses to acknowledge the servants of "upstart" gods, etc.) due to the nature of the benefits it can grant.
Ive been running a campaign for a year, and have only given out one inspiration token, because I keep forgetting.
I gave them an inspiration for doing a non-optimal thing in the name of character-specific roleplay. And by non-optimal, I am thinking "Leeroy Jerkins charges ahead alone without the team" as the degree of non-optimalness required. All my players developed proper roleplaying for gambling all the money they don't own away, charging ork-style once in a while when everyone else had a plan, meeting royalty while too drunk to stand or remember "these are not boobs, these are two beehives on a Dryad", and the secret criteria for how many inspiration they get? THE ADDITION OF ALL PLAYER FUN, MINUS FRUSTRATION. It keep a healthy balance of pranking/self-pranking. I also 5 for hiding a BIG secret 20 games, then revealing.
I am going to borrow that dryad beehive idea.
Imagine they give all their inspiration to the bard for bardic inspiration it's an OP mechanic lol
So Inspiration is like Savage Worlds' Bennies and Deadlands' Fate Chips
I'll only award inspiration, if the player does something that blows my mind. Something I never expected and catches me off guard as a DM.
Other than that, you don't get things for free (IE: everyone gets it at the start of the game). And sharing is no need because players have a help action.
My DM does a swell job of doling out inspiration. I think I've also managed to have my inspiration revoked after making a pun so clever, the table cringed (It was worth it).
What's the pun
@@alucardbunche4197 clearly it wasn't that memorable or I just make so many that I easily forget because I can't remember :(
find it hard to believe this is new of 5th...
I straight up give my players a d20 they can add to any roll. Its very rare that I give it out though.
The inspiration I use is just a extra D6 on your roll.
I got my first inspiration from DM by throwing goblins we just killed as bait food to distract wolfpack.
You I've been thinking about this a lot lately, advantage that is not inspiration, and I'm not convinced it doubles the probability of success. I haven't done the regression but doesn't seem that high, in my head. Because rolling a die is supposed to be random that means the probabilities are independent of each other so the probability of getting a success should be squared not doubled. But again I havent' done all the math.
I don't use inspiration in my games (since I play a version of D&D that is massively homebrewed with an entire combat system overhaul), but I just came up with this idea: instead of inspiration giving advantage, when a player already has advantage they can use their inspiration to roll a 3rd dice.
I don’t do the giving inspiration thing because my players are smartasses and just give their tokens to the person on the right, but thank you!
I love Inspiration Points because it provides a little incentive to the role playing aspect of a table top role playing game. However, technically, I believe that players are supposed to have 1 out 1 Inspiration Point that burns at the end of the session, if they don't use it. For my next campaign, they're using Hero Points. 😛
That is a good rule... Or whatever.
The puzzle pieces dont fit together and it's bothering me now
I was planning on making Inspiration a core part of my new campaign, to help introduce a bunch of new people to D&D.
Two of them roll Bards. Now Inspiration sure is a part of the game, and I didn't do anything for it...
thank
Bards have healing word and fly, and heal, and rope trick, and meteor swarm, and greater invisibility.....
I like Inspiration. but I have high standards for what I should grant it for. And the one time I tried giving it to a player, I was immediately asked to give something else instead.
I always thought this rule was about the dm giving you a d4 for doing funny / cool things, and that the d4 has no time limit l?
I awaed it to characters who play their personality flaw
It’s a worse version of Bennies, but it is a good thing to have.
@davvychappy are you really gonna take this at 3:50?
So it’s like Karma and Legend Points in Earthdawn?
Good thing Logan is so cute
i thought this was how DM inspiration worked already
Ah yes bad rolls i actually am in a homebrew campaing right now and initially our dm had a rule about injuries you get when you roll a nat 1 and stuff but i always rolled at least a nat 1 once per session means my character was pretty much always running around with some kind of injury well after i had like two broken arms my dm actually removed that rule cause it literally made my character a permanent cripple
Inspiration is plot armor lol
I'm running a short campaign that involves a large combat tournament and when a player does cool stuff I use the audience to justify giving Inspiration to members of the party.