Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Fictional Character]

Problem with having an estate/staff is you need the right sort of player/character to entrust with power over NPCs. You have to find people who actually want to play the game and not make the DM's life difficult.

Going back to my endless bitching about what modern books are teaching players, the minute they have power a good majority of players lose their minds and power mad to be "wacky"; they never think about actually being good stewards. And that's because they are raised on a diet of breaking into people's houses and smashing the pottery because they are the hero. They don't want to have to deal with issues on running their estate, the estate is only a resource to be used to break the game economics.

My proudest moment in running an estate was talking the GM into giving me a permanent bonus on Stewardship rolls in Pendragon because when our party went on an adventure with St. Brendan and discovered America, I had my squire bring over potatoes.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Henchmen, hirelings, servants, hell, even slaves, are all a fun thing to include in the campaigns.

And they should have never hand-waved away encumbrance. My group always brings a cart and a couple of mules because you never know what you might find out you need during the adventure going overland.

Food, water, encumbrance, henchmen, hirelings, all that stuff really can make a difference in your game world.

An interesting thing being a GM is to actually do a little bit on the roads that connect different villages if your group hangs out in the same area all the time. Of course, I have a tendency to get a little spergy regarding certain details (city/town/village placement, road route placement, bridges and fording areas, what crops grow where, cattle and sheep ranching, mines, all that good stuff) when building kingdoms and the like.

I also have a tendency to say "OK, the players will be exploring the ruins of Kingdom X, well, let me make a quick map of Kingdom X, then I'll know what ruins go where!"

Which leads to stuff like a city on a hill where the hill is actually the 9 different layers of the city that after the war they covered it with dirt and rubble and built on top of the ruins, giving it a 10 level ruins (bottom is just sewers) where you'll find sewers with sunken streets and the like.

By stripping out details to "streamline" the game, they really are removing things that can make the game more fun.

But these people were raised on video game inventories that didn't pay attention to weight or mass, so they get pissed that they can't jam a ballista in his pocket.

 

[Wormy]

Problem with having an estate/staff is you need the right sort of player/character to entrust with power over NPCs. You have to find people who actually want to play the game and not make the DM's life difficult.

Hence why the DM needs to be able to find and eject them before you grant that power.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Trying to run a game any deeper than "here is cave. Go into cave and kill things. Bring back special thing. Keep any other things you find" without a competent or at the very least engaged party is folly to begin with. The GM and I learned this very early when we started running con and demo games. Even the so-called theater majors who claim to be "all about" character interaction and development get distracted by their phones if they go without rolling dice for two minutes. If you're trying to do it with a Roll20 pick-up group, just forget about it.

 

[The Rockafire Explosion]

Well gents, it happened to me. One of my players was pozzed.

Over the holidays, I was back in the old hometown catching up with one of my old players I've known forever but one that I haven't spent a lot of time with over the past 10 years or so. You know how it is, life, work, family, moving, all of that just makes adult friendships tough to maintain at times. Didn't help that his wife was one of those hardcore Hilldawg types who didn't appreciate me trolling people on social media back in 2016-17 so she blocked me and at some point made him follow suit. Anyway, a few of the old crew decided to catch up when I was in town and we got to bullshitting about the state of the industry these days. I mentioned how the latest errata for 5e was pretty ridiculous, and he agreed, but he said it still hadn't gone far enough. One of the cases he pointed out was that swapping the name of the Madness table for Insanity was just shuffling different ableisms. I didn't want to push the issue too much, because I knew he and his wife had gone down the SJW slide after '17 like so many people (doubly ironic, since I can remember the two of them being very "all lives matter" after Trayvon Martin - white guilt from twitter, not even once!), and I was a guest in his house, but I said I thought that was pretty overblown and if he considered Vistana and orcs racist then he probably wouldn't like my games anymore.

On the bright side, the other players don't really care and are still up to play online more often, and I'm starting up a Ravenloft game with the idea of using Moviebob as a Darklord. I figure he can be an ooze who only exists to consume in the hopes that he'll get enough asspats to escape his prison If that goes well I figure I can slot in DSP as a half-orc monk who's also a wereroach next. It seems that Darklords and lolcows both have the same feature in common, they are their own prison and curse.

 

[Ghostse]

Trying to run a game any deeper than "here is cave. Go into cave and kill things. Bring back special thing. Keep any other things you find" without a competent or at the very least engaged party is folly to begin with. The GM and I learned this very early when we started running con and demo games. Even the so-called theater majors who claim to be "all about" character interaction and development get distracted by their phones if they go without rolling dice for two minutes. If you're trying to do it with a Roll20 pick-up group, just forget about it.

The problem is that they are raised on Videogames, Participation trophies, and constant ass-pats - they are the star of the story at all times. Cutscenes are just there to let you get a snack.
Anytime their character isn't the star they check out, that's boring cutscene time.

If you'll let me yell at the cloud a bit: Most of them are only children, and from post global - lets face it, chinese - economies of scale. There's no need to learn to share because its so cheap to buy another toy. Everyone is told how great they are, they are the star of the story, you and your feelings are the only things that matter. Critical Role, as a currated semi-scripted and stage managed experience, even with 8 players no one is out of the action for very long. We don't teach anyone to listen anymore; they just learn not interrupt or be disruptive when others are talking - look at your phone and play a game while the adults are speaking, honey. I'd rather be interrupted by someone who's actually processing my words than allowed to talk by someone clearly checked all the way out.

Hence why the DM needs to be able to find and eject them before you grant that power.

The problem is you'll have no players left. There's a large majority of the players can be trained to be good players and treat NPCs like people, but no systems and very few modules are teaching them that. Wacky zany "I order him to attack the darkness" abounds because that's all they've learned.

1eBX is a little better about training players, where its usually a few level or two until you can get hirelings, much less until you get your starter order. In my games, Hirelings are sort of low-key slaves (no player has made the connection yet) where there is an upfront "Hire" cost and then a slightly lower "per-day" cost and an (expected) small reduction of loot (I give players (especially rogues) having a chance to keep some high-value items off the books if they want). So if a Hireling bites it, they need to "rebuy" their hireling. This can result in some fun times like the fighter willingly tanking a hit for his lightfinger because he can recover HP but not GP.

Hirelings will leave if mistreated or feel there is too much danger, and will disengage from battle if they don't like the odds.

Flavorwise, the expectation of being a mercenary/hireling is you might never return home. Even if you don't die to some poison trap in a forsaken cursed ruin, you may be stuck on some other plane or the other side of the world with no reasonable way to get back. So that peasant wants an amount of gold that is in the realm of (Lifetime expected earnings - personal expenses) so their family isn't ruined if they never return.

 

[Snekposter]

An interesting thing being a GM is to actually do a little bit on the roads that connect different villages if your group hangs out in the same area all the time. Of course, I have a tendency to get a little spergy regarding certain details (city/town/village placement, road route placement, bridges and fording areas, what crops grow where, cattle and sheep ranching, mines, all that good stuff) when building kingdoms and the like.

That is exactly the sort of hilariously fun thing I got to do with a GM for a homebrew setting of his. We ended up sketching out most of the main realm the game takes place in, a few important cities and details, and most importantly, changing the name of his Magic Pigeon spell to Magic Swallow. And no, it can't carry a coconut. Not even two combined, even if you use a strand of creeper.

And yes, there's a silly place, and no, it isn't a model. Its actually a major agricultural area and RICH AS FUCK off exports, so there's all sorts of lavish parties constantly thrown by the nobles because they're rich and there's no shortage of food to feast on.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

And yes, there's a silly place, and no, it isn't a model. Its actually a major agricultural area and RICH AS FUCK off exports, so there's all sorts of lavish parties constantly thrown by the nobles because they're rich and there's no shortage of food to feast on.

One of the areas in my homebrew is a major agricultural area. It benefits from several major things.

A major highway that goes North-South across that part of the continent that is 150 feet wide and damn near razor straight (based off Roman Legion roads).
Good waterflow in the aquifier as well as good rainfall and excellent weather which makes irrigation easy.
VERY lush ground with a high growth rate.
Long growing season.
Massive "gates" connecting to other cities and city states in the major trading areas.

Then you have their agri-tech:

Crop rotation
Picking out the bigger seeds/seedpods to replant rather than the smaller ones
"Farming" magic, combination of druidac, alchemical, divine, and arcane.
The "Bureau of Land and Crop Management" which is arguably more powerful than the King/Queen which is backed by legions of sages, druids, witches and the like.

Then get into the fact that they can grow 3 crops a year (counting winter crops). They've got a primarily agricultural based pantheon (Their God of War and Battle is their God of Storms and Blood).

The kingdom is RICH AS FUCK and feeds a shitload of people. The nobles are seriously involved because a clan argument between two families can end up in thousands of acres not getting harvested or hundreds of acres of orchards not being picked.

It's always funny with a new player that the inn has bottled beer/whiskey, everyone's well fed, well dressed, everything is all nice and lavish.

One fun thing to do is to sit down and look at the economic, agricultural, industrial, and cultural disruptions magic would have on a setting. The cantrips and first level spells alone can have massive effects. Hell, being able to summon elementals can have a massive effect on things.

Then you look at the various character classes and see how they'll effect the entire world. Decide how the churches actually fit (Too many games seem to nearly ignore the fact that the church has actual divine beings that can manifest an avatar, angel, whatever and aren't just some old guy mumbling from a book) and how the holy warriors fit (Best bet is using martial orders ala Templars or the knights from the Sparhawk series) as well as how much healing magic can impact a world.

If a Cure Light Wounds or even a Cure Moderate Wounds will keep a woman from dying in childbirth, then every midwife would have a cleric with her, or be empowered by the divine, since no God wants to lose worshippers since the main thrust of most of the religions in a D&D type setting is "Be fruitful and multiply" and especially those that depend on worshippers for power. That's just scratching the tip of the iceberg.

For example: With healing magic easily and readily available, how often are plagues a real thing? Why hasn't smallpox and the like been wiped out? What kind of bargains do the gods of disease and corruption make with the other Gods to ensure that they get their once every generation plague sweep through the populace?

It's also not a bad idea to sit down and decide just how rare mages are. I mean, how many mages (with potential to reach level X versus WILL reach level Y) per thousand, ten thousand, what?

That's kind of why a lot of the post 3.5E D&D settings fall apart to me. Apparently there's mages creating magic items everywhere, but where the fuck are they? Why haven't they caused a cultural ripple? Look at the level requirement to create the items, the spell requirement, the monetary cost (and that's WITHOUT the special materials) and you have to ask: "Who's creating all these magic items for the players to fucking buy at the store?" and then you have to ask "Why isn't anyone else buying this stuff?"

I used to have a sheet somewhere where I went full on sperg and decided to run it down on how many per million are mages and the like. It was kind of fun.

Another thing I added was that arcane magic resulted in albinism eventually through use in some kingdoms/phenotypes.

Man, I can go forever about getting spergy with your world. Sure, the players don't see a lot of it, it's all under the hood, but they notice it in other ways.

Eh, way off topic and sperging way too much.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Participation trophies

Participation trophies aren't for the kids. They know they didn't earn them. It's for Karens who don't like it when their special little angel doesn't get top marks in everything.

Anytime their character isn't the star they check out, that's boring cutscene time.

Strongly disagree. It's the result of bad games and "bad" DMs.

One of the reasons I shill Savage Worlds so much is because of how fast it is. When I was in a PathFinder group, here's how the games went.
"I stab the guy." *rolls attack, damage, etc.
Then I wait 40 minutes for my turn to come up again. The battlefield barely changes.
My turn comes up.
"I stab the guy again."
And I rarely have to worry about something interesting happening as most of the combat is chipping down huge health bars.
Add an extra 10 minutes a turn if the indecisive spellcaster is in the party.

5e reduces this problem to about 20-30 minutes, but it's still tedious.


Then there's the story. Sure, when you're doing your thing, or the plot is firing on all cylinders, it's great. But often it's the party edgelord complaining about his dead wife for the 30th time, or it's the DM's overwritten clusterfuck of multiple planes, timelines, and realities where you need a flow chart to keep it all the NPCs straight.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

Maybe once or twice if you've got a smart party. But if they're really smart they'll find a way to cast fireball and keep the village intact. Really, its just one of those spells that's too good to pass up.

In my last session we encountered a bunch of pirates who had raped a bunch of women from the town they had just taken over. They were hiding out in a mansion and we’ll long story short we found out that most of them were gathered in the mess hall and the adjacent music room sooo i arcane locked the doors and opened one up, sent a fireball into the center, closed the door and repeated with the next room. My party members were waiting by the windows to attack them as they scrambled to jump out.

 

[Ghostse]

Participation trophies aren't for the kids. They know they didn't earn them. It's for Karens who don't like it when their special little angel doesn't get top marks in everything.

its so Karen doesn't scream sure, but that is all anyone under 25 knows now.
They know its bullshit, but when they DON'T get one, all they understand is 'I fucked up so bad they didn't give me my participation award'.
They don't understand how to not be fully engaged 100% of the time. No one knows how to be 'bored' anymore, just constant stimuli and instant gratification.

Strongly disagree. It's the result of bad games and "bad" DMs.

Strong disagree back at ya.

I'm not talking about Combat; as long as you are ready when your turn comes up, yeah you don't need to be fully engaged (now if you're checking facebook and getting snacks, then take 30 minutes to consult your spell list when you're on deck... then that's a problem). That's ok in doses, and not what I'm talking about.

(Also, Combat lag can be solved easily with group initiative; players are either coordinating their actions or seeing what the enemy is doing and they'll be responding to shortly)

I'm talking about party decisions and interactions when the party is in town and between dungeons. The shit the Critical Role crowd claim they live for, but can't stand when its someone else's turn to have the spot light.

A bad DM will neglect players who don't need neglecting. Bad players tune out when people are talking to each other instead of taking notes.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

Oh no, I actually understand WHY they removed the hirelings you'd naturally get. In the case of guards and mooks, they'd clutter up the turn order and it relies on the players actually being kind of prompt with their orders.

I know of a dude who took a fucking half hour to try and figure out exactly where to move his shitty skeletons at level 10 or some level like that. They were destroyed instantly since they were shit undead for that level.

This too, since they always forget you're supposed to manage an estate to some degree. They also forget that hirelings or henchmen are only loyal to a point; if they're in arrears or treated like shit, they will leave.

Lol try playing on a Westmarch and running your own smuggling ring in character. The logistics are a fucking nightmare. I have to pay all my henchmen and individually send them off to do jobs which can cost more than their standard pay. Then I have to get the stolen goods appraised then fence them and it starts all over again. It’s worth it though and very fun. My character doesn’t pay taxes on any of it so that’s cool.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

One of the areas in my homebrew is a major agricultural area. It benefits from several major things.

A major highway that goes North-South across that part of the continent that is 150 feet wide and damn near razor straight (based off Roman Legion roads).
Good waterflow in the aquifier as well as good rainfall and excellent weather which makes irrigation easy.
VERY lush ground with a high growth rate.
Long growing season.
Massive "gates" connecting to other cities and city states in the major trading areas.

Then you have their agri-tech:

Crop rotation
Picking out the bigger seeds/seedpods to replant rather than the smaller ones
"Farming" magic, combination of druidac, alchemical, divine, and arcane.
The "Bureau of Land and Crop Management" which is arguably more powerful than the King/Queen which is backed by legions of sages, druids, witches and the like.

Then get into the fact that they can grow 3 crops a year (counting winter crops). They've got a primarily agricultural based pantheon (Their God of War and Battle is their God of Storms and Blood).

The kingdom is RICH AS FUCK and feeds a shitload of people. The nobles are seriously involved because a clan argument between two families can end up in thousands of acres not getting harvested or hundreds of acres of orchards not being picked.

It's always funny with a new player that the inn has bottled beer/whiskey, everyone's well fed, well dressed, everything is all nice and lavish.

One fun thing to do is to sit down and look at the economic, agricultural, industrial, and cultural disruptions magic would have on a setting. The cantrips and first level spells alone can have massive effects. Hell, being able to summon elementals can have a massive effect on things.

Then you look at the various character classes and see how they'll effect the entire world. Decide how the churches actually fit (Too many games seem to nearly ignore the fact that the church has actual divine beings that can manifest an avatar, angel, whatever and aren't just some old guy mumbling from a book) and how the holy warriors fit (Best bet is using martial orders ala Templars or the knights from the Sparhawk series) as well as how much healing magic can impact a world.

If a Cure Light Wounds or even a Cure Moderate Wounds will keep a woman from dying in childbirth, then every midwife would have a cleric with her, or be empowered by the divine, since no God wants to lose worshippers since the main thrust of most of the religions in a D&D type setting is "Be fruitful and multiply" and especially those that depend on worshippers for power. That's just scratching the tip of the iceberg.

For example: With healing magic easily and readily available, how often are plagues a real thing? Why hasn't smallpox and the like been wiped out? What kind of bargains do the gods of disease and corruption make with the other Gods to ensure that they get their once every generation plague sweep through the populace?

It's also not a bad idea to sit down and decide just how rare mages are. I mean, how many mages (with potential to reach level X versus WILL reach level Y) per thousand, ten thousand, what?

That's kind of why a lot of the post 3.5E D&D settings fall apart to me. Apparently there's mages creating magic items everywhere, but where the fuck are they? Why haven't they caused a cultural ripple? Look at the level requirement to create the items, the spell requirement, the monetary cost (and that's WITHOUT the special materials) and you have to ask: "Who's creating all these magic items for the players to fucking buy at the store?" and then you have to ask "Why isn't anyone else buying this stuff?"

I used to have a sheet somewhere where I went full on sperg and decided to run it down on how many per million are mages and the like. It was kind of fun.

Another thing I added was that arcane magic resulted in albinism eventually through use in some kingdoms/phenotypes.

Man, I can go forever about getting spergy with your world. Sure, the players don't see a lot of it, it's all under the hood, but they notice it in other ways.

Eh, way off topic and sperging way too much.

I have to admit, this is intriguing because the usual 'renaissance/medieval' setting seems to be set aside in favor of an almost Victorian-era setup. I am intrigued.

Regarding disease, though: diseases and plagues can be a bear to manage. Standard cure spells won't cut it. Remove disease is a 3rd level cleric spell in 3E/PF, so a bit beyond your standard level 1-2 village adept/cleric.

Which brings me to a new problem: demographics. How many people are magically talented? How many can make the connection they need to access their god's powers? If the answer is 'a lot' then you get into something that resembles the Industrial Revolution or the Information Era in modern times. Not saying it's bad, but the game world will look very different.

A side bar to this is, 'how many people have actual class levels, and how many levels do they have?'. I played in one game where it was made clear in theme that once you got to level 6-7, you were no longer 'an annoying murderhobo' but someone who had to be taken into account. And as you gained in levels, you would draw more attention, because EVERYONE wants to have a friend like that.

So yeah. High level characters (PC or NPC) are movers and shakers, casters or not.

One of the mistakes 3E made (and which has been continued) was to not just codify but simplify creating magical items, especially permanent ones. I generally wouldn't balk at PCs creating expendable items, but permanent items should require a LOT of downtime.

 

[Big Nasty]

You know, one of those annoying fads that I associate with 5ed D&D is the "pet adventures" campaign style, where you play as different dog and cat breeds but with the standard classes.

Where did that exactly come from?

OK, now I've found it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/russrmc/animal-adventures-secrets-of-gullet-cove

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

OK, now I've found it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/russrmc/animal-adventures-secrets-of-gullet-cove

Those are cute, but I wouldn't run a campaign with it. A one shot for laughs, sure.

 

[Snekposter]

One of the areas in my homebrew is a major agricultural area. It benefits from several major things.

A major highway that goes North-South across that part of the continent that is 150 feet wide and damn near razor straight (based off Roman Legion roads).
Good waterflow in the aquifier as well as good rainfall and excellent weather which makes irrigation easy.
VERY lush ground with a high growth rate.
Long growing season.
Massive "gates" connecting to other cities and city states in the major trading areas.

Then you have their agri-tech:

Crop rotation
Picking out the bigger seeds/seedpods to replant rather than the smaller ones
"Farming" magic, combination of druidac, alchemical, divine, and arcane.
The "Bureau of Land and Crop Management" which is arguably more powerful than the King/Queen which is backed by legions of sages, druids, witches and the like.

Then get into the fact that they can grow 3 crops a year (counting winter crops). They've got a primarily agricultural based pantheon (Their God of War and Battle is their God of Storms and Blood).

The kingdom is RICH AS FUCK and feeds a shitload of people. The nobles are seriously involved because a clan argument between two families can end up in thousands of acres not getting harvested or hundreds of acres of orchards not being picked.

It's always funny with a new player that the inn has bottled beer/whiskey, everyone's well fed, well dressed, everything is all nice and lavish.

One fun thing to do is to sit down and look at the economic, agricultural, industrial, and cultural disruptions magic would have on a setting. The cantrips and first level spells alone can have massive effects. Hell, being able to summon elementals can have a massive effect on things.

Then you look at the various character classes and see how they'll effect the entire world. Decide how the churches actually fit (Too many games seem to nearly ignore the fact that the church has actual divine beings that can manifest an avatar, angel, whatever and aren't just some old guy mumbling from a book) and how the holy warriors fit (Best bet is using martial orders ala Templars or the knights from the Sparhawk series) as well as how much healing magic can impact a world.

If a Cure Light Wounds or even a Cure Moderate Wounds will keep a woman from dying in childbirth, then every midwife would have a cleric with her, or be empowered by the divine, since no God wants to lose worshippers since the main thrust of most of the religions in a D&D type setting is "Be fruitful and multiply" and especially those that depend on worshippers for power. That's just scratching the tip of the iceberg.

For example: With healing magic easily and readily available, how often are plagues a real thing? Why hasn't smallpox and the like been wiped out? What kind of bargains do the gods of disease and corruption make with the other Gods to ensure that they get their once every generation plague sweep through the populace?

It's also not a bad idea to sit down and decide just how rare mages are. I mean, how many mages (with potential to reach level X versus WILL reach level Y) per thousand, ten thousand, what?

That's kind of why a lot of the post 3.5E D&D settings fall apart to me. Apparently there's mages creating magic items everywhere, but where the fuck are they? Why haven't they caused a cultural ripple? Look at the level requirement to create the items, the spell requirement, the monetary cost (and that's WITHOUT the special materials) and you have to ask: "Who's creating all these magic items for the players to fucking buy at the store?" and then you have to ask "Why isn't anyone else buying this stuff?"

I used to have a sheet somewhere where I went full on sperg and decided to run it down on how many per million are mages and the like. It was kind of fun.

Another thing I added was that arcane magic resulted in albinism eventually through use in some kingdoms/phenotypes.

Man, I can go forever about getting spergy with your world. Sure, the players don't see a lot of it, it's all under the hood, but they notice it in other ways.

Eh, way off topic and sperging way too much.

I mean, that's pretty much the case with the stuff we worked on, but magic is a lot less powerful than in D&D or your thing. Cantrips can be learned by average Joe after a lot of hard work and reading, but actual proficiency with magic requires one to be from one of several bloodlines, and it doesn't always pop up. The fact the printing press and industrial papermaking aren't things yet means literacy is a specific learned skill, and needless to say most people can't or won't take the time out of their life to learn it. Hell, the NPC mercenary the party travels with for the heavy hitting (since the PC's are a spy, a monk, and a low-level caster that can only cast a single fireball before fainting from the exertion) refuses to take the time to learn how to read since he could spend that time drinking, fighting, womanizing, or all three at once.
@Capsaicin Addict Quote bug on your post.
Pretty much addressed up above, but there's no class levels, only the GM tracking XP gained through skill use Elder Scrolls style. Its also much lower fantasy so no grand heroes, but doesn't change the fact if someone gets a reputation for saving the day they're going to have to deal with the consequences of such. I'm glad the PC's are in what most games would consider NPC roles since that means the big damn hero we travel with gets all the attention, our job making sure his job goes smoothly. Turns out a knight of the realm needs a lot of retainers to make sure his monster hunt goes well (scouts to track the beast, researchers to figure out what the beast is), affairs with the local nobility are properly handled (and any local unseemly elements that might take advantage of his presence dissuaded or utilized to his advantage), and the wounds of all the grateful victims properly treated. That mercenary I mentioned up above is a fellow retainer, and when he isn't kicking ass with the knight as backup he's our bodyguard, loud distraction for skullduggery, and source of headache all in one. Keeping the local priest and constables placated after he's beaten the crap out of several men in a drunken bar fight over who gets to spend a night with a local wench is practically an adventure all in its own at times. Not quite A Night to Remember, but still fun.

 

[Ghostse]

One fun thing to do is to sit down and look at the economic, agricultural, industrial, and cultural disruptions magic would have on a setting. The cantrips and first level spells alone can have massive effects. Hell, being able to summon elementals can have a massive effect on things.

[... ]

If a Cure Light Wounds or even a Cure Moderate Wounds will keep a woman from dying in childbirth, then every midwife would have a cleric with her, or be empowered by the divine, since no God wants to lose worshippers since the main thrust of most of the religions in a D&D type setting is "Be fruitful and multiply" and especially those that depend on worshippers for power. That's just scratching the tip of the iceberg.

For example: With healing magic easily and readily available, how often are plagues a real thing? Why hasn't smallpox and the like been wiped out? What kind of bargains do the gods of disease and corruption make with the other Gods to ensure that they get their once every generation plague sweep through the populace?

For lower-magic 'gritty' campaigns, I usually give healing as temporary "ephemeral" HP, and players still track their "untouched HP value". I'm not a fan of crippling characters, but when settle down to camp, all those healed HP go away as the adrenaline wears off and you're down to whatever you've healed over night; you you can get your cleric to heal you back to full, but the only way to recover is to get enough rest all your wounds heal.
Clerics have to be cautious with their healing, its more of divine medical treatment to stabilize someone.

Spoiler

For clarity because I know it'll come up:
Damage is done goes Temp HP (If those exist in the system) -> Healed HP -> Untouched HP.
If you have 50HP, get hit for 8 damage, healed for 6, and then hit again for 10 and healed for 12 - Your HP is 50 but your True HP is 38.
So when you made camp the night, if you heal 7 HP you start the day with 45 HP. Rest another day (or however long) and you'll be back to 50.
If you get dropped to zero HP (or negative if the system allows) tZero or that negative + whatever you heal is your HP value when you complete a long rest.

The cleric is making you feel better about your injuries enough to fight on vs stitching you up in combat.

I always treat disease as separate from HP. Intervention from a cleric might keep you alive, but eventually something drops to zero if you don't fight it off. If there's a pestilence, it has a level and if you want to cure it, you've got cast on it like you're casting against a spell of that level.

I've sort of wanted to do a thing where weapons/attacks inflict lasting wounds, but as that sort of thing nearly universally is bad for PCs and not of any difference for NPCs, never went anywhere with it.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I always treat disease as separate from HP. Intervention from a cleric might keep you alive, but eventually something drops to zero if you don't fight it off. If there's a pestilence, it has a level and if you want to cure it, you've got cast on it like you're casting against a spell of that level.

Of all the houserules for disease/debilitating curses I saw being used, the one I liked the most was also the simplest: as the disease progresses the character takes X damage (could be fixed, could be a dice roll) that cannot be recovered by normal means. This happens every day and depending on the disease there will be a save against it. Once the character reaches 0HP they're bedridden and they start rolling death saves every day as the disease runs its course. If the character survives it and the disease clears or is healed, they get to regain their lost HP at twice the rate they lost it.

Since HP isn't necessarily health as it is one's stamina and ability to remain standing, this has always worked well for me. Not that it matters much, in most situations disease will be cleared during downtime unless it's something that requires a quest to solve, in which case it can't be so debilitating as to remove the character (and by extension the player) from the game.

I've sort of wanted to do a thing where weapons/attacks inflict lasting wounds, but as that sort of thing nearly universally is bad for PCs and not of any difference for NPCs, never went anywhere with it.

Lasting wounds should by all measures remove someone from adventuring in a game/setting realistic enough to feature them, either through later death or an early retirement. The Skyrim joke about taking an arrow to the knee is a meme but it's got a kernel of truth. Despite what the wheelchair brigade insists, adventuring is a very physically-demanding job. Anything that hobbles you tanks your odds of survival, and that's usually not very fun for players. So any lasting wounds have to be either minor enough not to outright kill them or just cosmetic, which might be fun to play with but boil down to more busywork for little mechanical change.

When my second GM is feeling particularly mean (he likes running grittier campaigns), he gives characters debilitating/permanent injuries when they're taken to 0HP in combat, depending on what took out the character and how much the damage on that final attack exceeded their HP. He does allow most of them to be healed with a powerful enough healing spell, but crucially it can only be done over a long rest and neither the character nor the healer get to benefit from said long rest.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Isn't the bit about taking an arrow to the knee an old Norse euphemism for marriage?

 

[Corn Flakes]

Isn't the bit about taking an arrow to the knee an old Norse euphemism for marriage?

Yes, for the same reason the Spanish use the same term for "wife" as they do for "handcuffs". Both are going to hobble ya. And boy am I glad the wife doesn't read the farms.

The point stands, though. A lasting knee injury will get you thrown out of the adventuring party just as quickly as it would get you thrown out of the football team.