Alternate Uses for Inspiration Points?

[SleepIncarnate]

So, my group tends to meet up on weeknights, meaning our sessions only last 2-4 hours. As such, we rarely make rolls where the use of an inspiration point to alter the roll would come up, especially with both a bard and a cleric in the party. Everyone has an inspiration point on their sheet going unused.

We have a home brew rule where we can cash in an inspiration point, and once the party reaches 5 cashed in, we have a divine inspiration point where we can force a reroll of a DM roll we don't like. Well, we've had that for forever as well, never used. So my DM has asked me to pose the question here, what are some other alternatives for using them that you all can think of?

The one I suggested that he kinda likes is to allow them to be cashed into a pool solely for you as a player, which can eventually be used to buy sub-class abilities from an archetype other than the one you picked for your class. For example, my bard could get the lore bard's Cutting Words ability, but not the abilities of any paladin oath. Maybe at a cost of one point per level of the ability (so cutting words would be 3 points, additional magical secrets would be six, and so on).

What about suggestions you all have for how to make use of these points?

[bid]

Flashback / setup to fix what is missing.
- you bring a package from the innkeeper's brother, he will help you out.
- you had a few manacles in your pack.

[sophontteks]

Most the game is about rolling, are you sure it doesn't come up or is everyone just being too conservative with them? It works on attacks, ability checks, and saving throws. That is pretty much the entire meat of the game.

Your idea will cause big balance problems if you aren't careful, how much that matters depends on your group. It wouldn't fly as an alternate rule for inspiration, but your group can do whatever they like. Inspiration is not supposed to be this major thing. It just lets you make sure a key roll works, which is nice because roleplaying a character often has them doing things that could get them killed if they roll bad in the first place.

[SleepIncarnate]

Most the game is about rolling, are you sure it doesn't come up or is everyone just being too conservative with them? It works on attacks, ability checks, and saving throws. That is pretty much the entire meat of the game.

Eh, we're pretty well optimized for our various roles. Our barbarian is a half-orc with 20 strength, our ranger/rogue is a wood elf with 20 dexterity, our bard/sorcerer is an alu-fiend (home brew race, basically a Dispater tiefling variant) with 20 charisma, etc., so needing to add to our rolls doesn't come up often on any rolls that matter. Add that to the fact that our DM tends to roll very badly in our favor, and it doesn't come up often. We rolled 4d6 for our stats, dropped the lowest roll, and were allowed to reroll a single 1 or 2 on each roll. And then were allowed to shift up to two points. Basically, our DM knew his campaign was built to be tough and gave us a ton of advantages which allowed us all to basically start at or close to 20 in our main ability score.

As an example, while trying to work a diplomatic situation with an orc tribe, the leader of which was rather racist toward half orcs, my bard rolled something like an 18 or 19 on an intimidation check before adding my charisma and jack of all trades boosts, while he rolled something like a 4 to resist it. Was hilarious to see this 7' tall, muscle bound orc warrior cowing in fear from a 4'10" waif of a girl just from a few spoken words. Mind you, I had also cast the Friends cantrip to give me advantage, and casting spells reveals my fiendish heritage, but still...

Point is, that kind of situation is common. Our DM builds monsters that will tear apart someone like the ranger/rogue or the casters in just a round or two, but our bear totem GWM barbarian just shrugs off everything they can dish at him and returns it twice over. Our fodder enemies will kill me in two rounds if given the chance, but the huge bosses just do half damage to the main tank.

Plus, we're more exploration/role play focused, less combat focused, so we don't make a ton of rolls each session. I think the most common roll seen is from our dragonborn rogue making nature rolls to check out every herb he finds to see if he can use it to make poisons.

For reference, our party consists of:
Half-orc bear totem barbarian (7)
Alu-fiend linguist bard (6)/storm sorcerer (1)
Black dragonborn rogue (7, not sure archetype but suspect assassin. He's new to the group)
Wood elf monster slayer ranger (5)/rogue (2, will become arcane trickster at 3)
Warforged forge cleric (7)

The barbarian and bard are the core of the group, present for basically every session, and the others come and go as real life permits.

As for balance issues, this campaign is designed to allow us to go above level 20 (though not in a single class), and allows for us to multiclass into our own class as a different archetype (though the full details on how that's going to work haven't been fully explored yet, for obvious reasons). And we're regularly being told that eventually, having even a 20-25 AC won't mean much. We're already balanced a bit toward the insane.

EDIT: We also sometimes enjoy having failed rolls.

DM: "Everyone give me a perception check."
Barbarian: "I got a 12."
Rogue: "13 here."
Cleric: "9."
Ranger: "Unnatural 20."
Bard: "I don't see jack!"
DM: "Alright, so the cleric is distracted by the clanking of his armor, the barbarian, rogue, and ranger spot a strange light approaching from down the hall, and the bard is apparently checking out the cleric..."

[Innocent_bystan]

Flashback / setup to fix what is missing.
- you bring a package from the innkeeper's brother, he will help you out.
- you had a few manacles in your pack.
This ^

Player: Of course my character thought to bring a <spends inspiration> rubber squeeky toy to distract the dogs. He's a professional, isn't he?

[R.Shackleford]

I once gave the BBEG my inspiration so that he would think I was on his side. The DM was confused and wasn't sure how to spot rule it so he allowed it.

Stabbed him in the back really, really, nicely.

[Frozenstep]

Something I was just thinking about was allowing it to be used to do something that makes sense, but doesn't quite mechanically work, in response to a desperate situation. That's super vague and needs more work on wording, but I'm imagining a mage seeing his friend about to fall off a cliff to his death, not having feather fall, but then using inspiration to cast bigby's hand as a reaction to catch them.

[2097]

Our house rule is that inspiration can be used (and gained!) like Drama Tokens in the game Hillfolk. Give someone one token if you convince someone naturally through normal RP, give them two to convince them mechanically, give them three to counter such a mechanical conviction (leaving them with five; the two they offered and the three they got from you). You can "give them one" even if you're at zero, you just grab one from the bank. Giving two or three otoh requires you having that many tokens.

To impose advantage or disadvantage on any d20 roll (we've expanded it to include things like encounter checks, lingering injury rolls etc) you need to spend all the tokens you have, bringing yourself down to zero. You have to have had at least one obv. (This "spend it all" is to mimic the "you have insp or you don't have insp, it's not a number" nature of the RAW.)

We also have another house rule where you set a wound threshold, a particular HP level (default is at 1 hp but you can set it to any non-negative number at character creation or leveling up).

If you go down to your wound threshold, you get a lingering injury (DMG p 272). If you go down to the wound threshold without also going to zero (which doesn't happen that often if your wound threshold is the default, 1), you immediately get one inspiration. Adrenaline surge. Great for using on the injuries roll, or on an upcoming death save, or for attacking or defending vs your enemy.

We, uh… have a lot of house rules. :smallfrown:

[Enjiel]

Most the game is about rolling, are you sure it doesn't come up or is everyone just being too conservative with them? It works on attacks, ability checks, and saving throws. That is pretty much the entire meat of the game.

I'm their gm. I'm pretty sure they just forget. There were quite a few failed rolls last session. Tbh I forget to remind them.

A few months ago one of them died due to some failed rolls and he held onto that inspiration point as if it would follow him into the afterlife. He was ressurected afterwards. To be fair, it's really hard to die in 5e and even harder to die irreversiblly. I've even gotten complaints about how much damage my NPCs deal. Meh. It's not likely to be the end of the world if the players forget t use their points.

I'm pitching to them the flashback idea, I like that one. Seems more balanced and still very useful imo.

[Cybren]

I once gave the BBEG my inspiration so that he would think I was on his side. The DM was confused and wasn't sure how to spot rule it so he allowed it.

Stabbed him in the back really, really, nicely.

How was the bbeg aware of you, the actor controlling a fictional construct?

[SleepIncarnate]

We, uh… have a lot of house rules. :smallfrown:

So do we. Our campaign world wasn't originally intended for D&D but can be pretty easily modified to fit it. It's why we have so many linguist archetypes: language is a huge part of the world. Most characters don't speak multiple languages. Common is the language of humans and trade, but few NPCs speak anything but their racial tongue.

My bard has the ability to spend an inspiration point to be able to speak, read, write, and understand any language for a number of hours equal to my roll, which is huge in this world. We've a few times now run into a language I can't understand even with that ability, and my bard is constantly looking into getting rubs or copies of the language when she can so she can decipher it.

Personally, I love that aspect of the campaign.

[Wuzza]

Flashback / setup to fix what is missing.
- you bring a package from the innkeeper's brother, he will help you out.
- you had a few manacles in your pack.


This ^

Player: Of course my character thought to bring a <spends inspiration> rubber squeeky toy to distract to dogs. He's a professional, isn't he?

I love this.

Although, the squeaky toy would probably distract my partys' Barb!... :smallbiggrin:

[Bjarkmundur]

I added this to the Background section of character creation


In addition, you gain an Inspiration mechanic tied to your background or character identity. Pick one or two actions that display the essence of your character. This could be a flaw, an ideal, a quirk, or anything else that defines your character. Whenever you play your character according to your essence the DM may give you an Inspiration. The goal of this is mechanic is to enhance the role playing experience by rewarding players for portraying their character well.

And this to the inspiration Rules


You can also use an inspiration die to make up a small fact about the world around you, or generally nudge things to your advantage, such as suggesting a rock is situated in a perfect place to take cover behind or finding a rope on the ground when you could really use one. You can also use it to add facts to the in-game world, such as the mayor's love for homemade pies, a shop's new shipment of the item you desperately need, or a nearby settlement with a goblin problem.

An Inspiration die can also be used to grant your character abilities he would not normally have. For example, a Sorcerer might be in a do-or-die situation, where only Feather Fall would save him. He asks the DM if he can spend a spell slot and an inspiration die, to channel his sorcerous origin and float down to safety. This is a pretty strong ability, so the DM might ask him to roll the d4, and if he rolls high enough, he will succeed. Luckily the sorcerer rolled a 3, and floated down to safety.

Every character gets one or two means of acquiring Inspiration written on his or her character sheet, unique to that character. Some characters even have special means of using them, once acquired


Getting early access to later level class features has come up once or twice, which I find kinda cool, since it adds a step of natural progression to the levelling system. Like a character learning something slowly before mastering it.

Giving each player his special inspiration using ability has been the main thing, since it ties a lot of aspects together. I also like it when it ties into a character's special means of acquiring inspiration. My Barbarian has this.

"You gain inspiration whenever you willingly take fall damage"
And
"You can use your inspiration to reduce falling damage taken"

This makes a sort of vortex of inspiration being gained and spent frequently.