House Rule: Cumulative Death Saving Throws

I’ve been spending some of quarantine finally getting into Critical Role while I search for new material to stream while I’m working from home. I’m still early on in Campaign One, so I don’t know the specifics of this rule or if it’s ever specified, but in a fairly major combat a character goes down and fails two death saving throws before they are brought up with healing magic and Matt says something about keeping those two failed saves and it got me thinking – I kind of like that idea for a grittier, slightly more lethal version of 5th Edition, and I want to spitball an idea I had here for a house rule for death saves.

Now please note that I have not had the chance to playtest this – so please keep that in mind while reading it. That said I present to you:

Cumulative Death Saving Throws

As written, whenever you gain any hit points, the number of death saving throws you have rolled, both successes and failures resets to 0. With this house rule, you keep the failures you accrue until you take a short rest, similar to how Pathfinder 2e has the Dying and Wounded conditions. If you fail one death saving throw and then are brought back to consciousness by the cleric, but go down later in that battle or the next one, you start that clock with one failed save and failing two more will mean that your character dies – it certainly would heighten the tension if the front line fighter with two failed death saves already falls in combat.

Failed death saves are reduced to 0 when you complete a short rest. If you don’t have the time to take a short rest, you can “buy off” failed death saves by taking one level of exhaustion per failed save you have. Exhaustion is a wonderful mechanic that I feel the designers kind of forgot about. There are precious few things that seem to interact with it in the core rules.

So what do you think? Is there something that I missed? Anything you’d change? Let me know!

The Dead Steel Regalia Part Seven – Using the Darn Things

So you’ve got these shiny new weapons that you want to use. But how? Arguably the easiest way to include these five weapons into your game is to use them as macguffins to stop a BBEUG (Big Bad Evil Undead Guy) from taking over the world, culminating in a classic showdown of good versus evil as the heroes bring all of their powers to bear to stop the undead apocalypse from covering the world in the darkness of undeath. But I know you can think of more clever ways to use them than that. But just in case you need a little bit of help, I’ve included three quick campaign seeds using the Dead Steel Weapons as a campaign focus.

Let No Man Put Asunder or Else They Be Put Under

There will always be those that stand against the world of the living – whether it’s the undead themselves or creatures in service (or thrall) to the undead, that dark power is always going to be present. The Dead Steel Weapons are a known quantity within the realm, and have been a vicious thorn in the side of those powers of undeath for a long time. Just as there are those adventurers that seek the weapons to defend the realms of the living, there are those that seek them so they can be destroyed. This campaign seed sees the heroes racing against the forces of darkness to find the Dead Steel Weapons first. If they don’t, they are most likely consigning the weapons to oblivion and robbing the realms of the living of powerful weapons in the future. If only those darned magic items didn’t like to hide in dungeons so much!

Two Minutes to Midnight

What happens when intelligent magical items think they know better than you? The Dead Steel Weapons are a powerful force of good within the realm. Of that, there is no doubt. They have stopped more undead threats and saved the realm more times than have been recorded in the history books. That can’t be a bad thing, can it? Their purpose is to save the realm of the living, after all. But they know that nothing in existence is permanent. The undead can only be held off for so long before even their might fails. They have stopped so many threats since their creation, and it appears that they will face many more before their time is done. And so, over the years they have come to the sad realization that the only way that they win over the forces of the undead is if there are no living for them to threaten. They wish to be taken to the Anvil of Icarros where they tell their wielders, they will be able to uncover the secret of stopping the undead forever. Once there, they join their powers together and begin the process of unmaking the world. Now the heroes are faced with stopping a cataclysm that they helped to unleash, with the Dead Steel Weapons fighting them every step of the way. The artifacts are convinced that this is the only way to prevent another ruler like Kharos from taking over after they are gone and will use all of their powers to fight back against the heroes.

Lord Kharos’s Final Revenge

The Dead Steel Weapons are one of mankind’s best chances of stopping the threat of another creature like Lord Kharos from taking power again. But the fact that these weapons were created from the very thing they seek to stop in the future worried several of the clerics that oversaw their construction. How could something so evil be completely transformed into artifacts of pure good? What if something of the Death Knight survived within the weapons? The truth is far direr than they imagined. Fractions of Kharos’s spirit reside within each of the artifacts, but the magic used to create them keeps them largely inert and powerless. At least individually. Kharos uses the weapons’ natural desire to be gathered together to bring those fractured pieces of his spirit into proximity with each other, where they can join with each other and grow more powerful. From there he subtly attempts to bring the wielders of the Dead Steel Weapons into conflict with the artifacts, hoping to transfer his spirit from the weapon into a living host. From there he can start to corrupt the wielders and set the stage for his eventual return to the world. This plot culminates in the heroes unwittingly taking part in the destruction of the Dead Steel Weapons in the ruins beneath Kharos’s ancient fortress in the former kingdom of Arceel, where they were first brought into this world. The unmaking of these weapons frees the remainder of his power, and from there the corruption of his hosts will be complete, allowing him to be reborn in a new form.

The Dead Steel Regalia Part Six – Corpsebane

The idea for Corpsebane’s unique ability was one of the first ones that came into my mind when I first came up with these weapons. I knew I wanted a weapon that could stop the undead from rising, but I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to accomplish that. This is the solution that I came up, and I think it works pretty well. Corpsebane originally had a couple of other once per day abilities which I decided to drop in exchange for the increased threat range.

So you’ve got these new weapons that you want to include into your campaign. How do you do that? Let’s discuss that tomorrow with some plot hooks that you can utilize and leverage to include the Dead Steel Regalia as a campaign focus.

The Dead Steel Regalia Part Five – Harrower

Harrower was written as a classic love letter to the classic “undead bane” weapon. While effective against everything, it’s especially effective against undead creatures. It’s Harrow ability is especially dangerous and effective against creatures like vampires that have abilities like regeneration halted by radiant damage.

Tomorrow we’ll take a look at the last of the Dead Steel Regalia – Corpsebane.

The Dead Steel Regalia Part Four – Bonecrush

Bonecrush was one of the two items that underwent the biggest changes from when I first wrote them up. Originally this item had charges that let it cast several spells. In the end I decided that it was simpler to just boil it down to a simple thunderous smite effect that you can add to a successful attack a few times per day for easier bookkeeping and use at the table.

Next time we’ll take a look at Harrower, my love letter to an old school bane style weapon.

The Dead Steel Regalia Part Three – Shadow Splitter

Shadow Splitter was a little bit of a challenge to figure out because the incorporeal trait doesn’t exist in 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, but I know that’s where I wanted the focus on this weapon to be. So in the end, I opted for the simplest answer – call out what it’s more effective against, provide some examples from the Monster Manual, and let each table rule it as they see fit. The more that I run and write for this game, the more I see how beautiful and simplistic this design is without limiting freedom of design. You can see this again with its once per day ability – treating it as a spell with a much shorter duration and a unique trapping.

Tomorrow we’ll take a closer look at Bonecrush, a mace of terrifying power.

The Dead Steel Regalia Part Two – Sunspike

Sunspike is a rather straightforward weapon as opposed to some of the other weapons of the Dead Steel Regalia both in terms of ability and personality. But it does what it does very well and very efficiently. The biggest hiccup with this weapon comes in terms of it’s personality – the blade does not wish to be used to kill a living creature and will rebel against it’s wielder if used in such a manner. The blade may also just refuse to stop working if it lapses into too deep of a depression, which could allow for some fun roleplaying opportunities as the wielder attempts to pull Sunspike up by the bootstraps and come to terms with the circumstances of its creation.

Created with GMBinder

Tomorrow we’ll meet the battle axe Shadow Splitter. If you like what you’re reading here, please consider clicking the Kofi button on the side and donating. Each donation lets me devote more time to stuff like this.

The Dead Steel Regalia Part One – The Origin

Halloween is this month. And while I don’t usually do holidays I know a lot of you do. And a lot of you go extra hard on this one. So I wanted to revisit an idea I had a few years back.

Original art by Jeff Simpson.

Centuries ago a powerful death knight Lord Kharos gathered a powerful undead force and invaded the prosperous agrarian kingdom of Arceel. The peaceful kingdom was no match for his might and quickly fell. He slaughtered the inhabitants and raised them as his undead thralls. The formerly prosperous kingdom became a mockery of it’s former life, a kingdom of death where the plentiful farmlands produced nothing. The forces of light eventually gathered a large enough force and mounted a counterattack, lead by the Paladin Sir Arris. After a long and bitter war, Kharos was finally defeated, slain by a small strike force of heroes who entered his chamber and defeated him and his advisors while the death knight’s armies were busy in the field. His armor was then taken and melted down, recast into five weapons. Five warriors of light sacrificed themselves in an attempt to cleanse the corrupted essence of the metal and bind the remains of Kharos’s essence inside of the weapons. Their souls gave life to the dagger Sunspike, the battleaxe Shadow Splitter, the mace Bonecrush, the longsword Harrower, and the greatsword Corpse Bane – the Dead Steel Regalia, weapons that would stand against the power of undeath. You’ll meet each of these weapons individually over the coming days. So make sure you’re following me if you don’t want to miss anything.

#RPGaDAY2020 Day 19 – Tower

One last day of product recommendations for you before we try to get back to game material. If you’re like me, you grew up with older editions of Dungeons and Dragons. One of the big things about those editions of the game was reaching your “name level.” At this point, you were a powerful enough adventurer that you had attracted a small amount of fame and notoriety. This came with a number of benefits, including a stronghold and a number of followers that came to learn from you. This stronghold took different forms based on your class – a keep for martial classes like fighters, or a tower for wizards. But the main idea was that while this was granted by reaching a certain level, it should be something that the character had to work towards. Maybe the fighter’s keep was an old garrison that has been taken over by monsters and needs to be cleared out for example.

Strongholds & Followers by Matt Colville

This idea went away with later editions of the game, but designer Matt Colville has brought us a great product for Dungeons and Dragons 5e with his release of Strongholds and Followers. Successfully Kickstarted a while back, this book contains all the rules you need to introduce establishing one of several types of strongholds in your game as well as all of the NPC followers you will need to keep it functioning. You can build a martial keep to raise armies and hone your fighting skills. Or you can establish a temple to summon beings from beyond to give you succor. If you have an eye towards researching new magic, the tower is up your alley. And then there’s the establishment, which allows for espionage and gold generation. These may take different forms such as a barbarian camp or a druid’s grove and they can improve various class features. The book also introduces a lot of new material including new monsters, several new class options, and some rules for large scale warfare.

If this kind of game play sounds like it would be up your alley, you would do well to check out this release. You can find it on his websitein PDF and a Hardcover and PDF bundle.

And that’s day 19! We’ll see you back here at the top of the next round for day 20! The end is in sight.

#RPGaDAY2020 Day 15 – Frame

Here’s a simple common wondrous item for you today. The idea most likely came from the soundtrack to Jason Robert Brown’s The Bridges of Madison County. In the number “The World Inside a Frame” Robert sings about the art of photography and how it’s about finding the shot and capturing the moment forever in an image. This one is designed as an RP enhancing tool, but I’m sure a clever party can figure out a multitude of uses for it.

Created with GMBinder

And there you have the entry for day 15! There’s still lots to come as you can see below. Feel free to join in the conversation! We’ll see you at the top of next round.