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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next GM Luck: An alternative to GM Inspiration



Chris Hobson
2020-05-25, 01:10 AM
This is a work in progress that I've mostly finished, feel free to offer suggestions on how to improve it if you have any.

As someone who's relatively new to GMing I have found that it can be difficult to correctly reward players for roleplaying, as I don't think that GM inspiration is good. GM inspiration is given to a character when they do something such as good roleplaying or something that makes the game interesting, but you can only have one at a time and it feels like you don't need to do as much roleplaying if you have it. Because I think that this isn't a good reward for roleplaying I have come up with a replacement system called GM luck.

GM luck is a pool of points that players can spend to modify rolls. It takes two points of GM luck to increase or decrease one of your own d20 rolls by 1, three points for an ally, and four points for an enemy. To ensure that this doesn't become too powerful only one player may spend points on a single roll, and players can't trade points. Furthermore, natural 1s are still automatic fails and increasing a roll to 20 doesn't make it a critical.
I'm currently unsure if GM luck should be allowed to work on d100s, but I'll probably end up allowing that with my groups as d100s primarily appear for teleportation accuracy and wild magic surges for players, and they can't modify random encounters with it because that's the GM rolling for encounters rather than an enemy.

The GM luck pool goes up to 20 points, which I feel is thematically appropriate to the system but I'm unsure if it's the correct cap for this pool, so feel free to increase or decrease it or suggest what the maximum should be changed to if you want.
GM luck is rewarded at the end of a session if the GM feels that the players have done some good roleplaying. Typically I reward 1d4 points of GM luck to all my players, rolling once for the group rather than individually, or 1d6 worth if they manage to do something such as completing an arc of a campaign. I have found that this is a good amount of GM luck to reward players with, as it doesn't fill the pool up too quickly, which would make the characters become far stronger due to being able to modify dice too much, but still can impact rolls slightly if the players want it to.
Some sessions I might not reward players GM luck, such as if they've done combat for practically the entire session, as this is primarily a reward for roleplaying and there's less roleplaying in combat.
It's up to you how frequently and how much you reward players with GM luck, the frequency and amount I use is just what I do for my groups and not a rock-solid rule but I have found that it works well as it is.

Because this is a new system I have found that my players are frugal with GM luck, spending it only on dangerous battles, and often minimally on them because they don't know they'll encounter next, and as a result it doesn't take them very long to fill their GM luck pools and keep them high. This may happen for your players depending on how greedy or sparing they are with their own GM luck, but regardless it incentives them to roleplay more and do things that add depth or engagement in the game.

If you have any suggestions on how to modify GM luck to make it better feel free to suggest those changes.
If you use GM luck in your campaigns feel free to change aspects of it to better fit your group, what I have written above is just guidelines from my experiences with this mechanic and isn't definitive.

DracoDei
2020-05-25, 03:06 AM
I wouldn't recommend rolling dice for how much luck they get. Also the rewards seem a bit small... that is a 3 point modification to a single roll MAXIMUM per session, where-as inspiration works out to about a +5 if I remember the statistic that was quoted to me and it was correct. The fact that you can use only as much as you need is nice, but doesn't quite make up for that.

Chris Hobson
2020-05-25, 03:29 AM
I wouldn't recommend rolling dice for how much luck they get. Also the rewards seem a bit small... that is a 3 point modification to a single roll MAXIMUM per session, where-as inspiration works out to about a +5 if I remember the statistic that was quoted to me and it was correct. The fact that you can use only as much as you need is nice, but doesn't quite make up for that.

Good point, that isn't an issue I've come across much. Would you recommend four points every session, with six for completing something like a quest or arc? While it is still less than what inspiration would give on average it can build up quicker for larger bonuses, which I think compensates for having a smaller bonus.

BerzerkerUnit
2020-05-25, 08:38 AM
I use the one described by the DM Lair youtuber. Roll a d6, get that many points. Player can spend points to add to a d20 roll. No limit on banking them or spending them. 1s still always fail, boosting to a 20 doesn't make a crit.

Though I also recently started using a "technical crit" rule where exceeding an enemy AC by 5 deals maximum damage so players have a reason to spend it a few points at a time.

Chris Hobson
2020-05-25, 03:57 PM
I use the one described by the DM Lair youtuber. Roll a d6, get that many points. Player can spend points to add to a d20 roll. No limit on banking them or spending them. 1s still always fail, boosting to a 20 doesn't make a crit.

Though I also recently started using a "technical crit" rule where exceeding an enemy AC by 5 deals maximum damage so players have a reason to spend it a few points at a time.

I have a limit on my version of GM luck because I still want it to be used somewhat frequently and don't want it to get to the point where they have too much points to spend. I do have the rule that natural 1's still fail and increasing to a 20 doesn't make it a critical.
I don't think I'd run the technical crit rule because that could end up being broken with rogues, spells, or critical hits, I picture my luck system in-game as them just being lucky enough to dodge something or succeed at something, so having a technical crit removes that aspect of the flavour.

BerzerkerUnit
2020-05-26, 05:20 PM
My experience with the technical crit rule so far is that it greatly makes up for things like a Rogues and single shot cantrips (which don’t generally get damage boosts of any kind) rolling all 1s and 2s. Since most spells above 2nd level don’t have Attack rolls it doesn’t generally apply to leveled spells, Crown of stars being an awesome exception.

Against high AC targets it may never even come up.

Overall it expedites combats by reducing the number of rolls and calculations. Since I occasionally give creeps higher or lower HP depending on description (a dragon with an Ahab like obsessions might be thin from lack of eating and sleeping) while powerful examples of their type might have near maximum hp and the technical crit helps in those scenarios.