BerzerkerUnit
2022-02-13, 01:00 PM
Aloha friends, I had an idea and here it is.
This is an old idea I had but I've teased it out a bit with some story concept borrowed from Fizban's multiversal dragons now that I think about it. I guess it's more of a house rule/campaign seed. Basically a way to turn ability score bonuses into a resource for resource management, at a price while also making truly ridiculous things possible.
So here's the rule and all the fluff nonsense is below:
Player Characters can reduce their Ability Score Bonus by one to automatically succeed on an attack, check, or save that uses that Ability Score. Spending an Ability Score Bonus point in this way grants the minimum level of success necessary to achieve their goal while appearing as though they are applying a minimum amount of effort. A Cho-Jin can recover one of these Ability Score Increases for each Ability after each Long Rest. Lowering the bonus in this way doesn't lower the Ability Score itself so killing the barbarian with a Shadow is just as hard when they've burned themselves down to Str bonus 0 as it is if they're full. An Ability Score Bonus cannot be reduced below 0 using this option.
In play: It's important to maintain the distinctions between what Can or Can't be done with a check, what is typically done freely but can be increased by degrees with a high check, and what the degree must be to achieve the goal. It really depends on if you want the Cho-Jin to be absurdly superhuman, or if you just want them occasionally capable of extremely unlikely feats.
If you don't play with those distinctions, this works fine as is and they will be superheroes at times, but if you do, you may want to prepare some examples for how you want the sliders to work.
Imagine if in your game, a crit on a named NPC or PC would leave a scar. Does that need to be the case? No, any attack might leave a scar, we use the crit as a benchmark to trigger a narrative reward letting the player describe how they mark their foe. If you want Crit=Scar to be the norm, that's fine, let them crit it's your game. If not, look at the following...
So your level 1 Fighter is confronted in Act 1 by the Big Bad. He wants to scar the big bad's face so he never forgets who's coming for him. He spends a Strength Bonus to automatically hit with his sword and rolls damage normally, but his strength based attacks, saves, and damage will all be one lower until he long rests. He can't declare he wants to crit or kill in a single blow (those are degrees of success on a hit, though I guess he might kill them if the foe is weak enough), he gets the minimum level of success, ie, lands a hit.
The Wizard wants to search the room for his rival's spellbook. Searching a room will take an hour and only find the book on a success. If rolling higher would reduce time and there's a chance he'll be interrupted, spending the Intelligence bonus won't make it take less time or prevent him from being interrupted, he'll just find the book in an hour. The DM might say a stealth check can prevent the interruption, in which case he could spend a Dex bonus as well to insure he finds it and isn't interrupted. BUT, that means he'll have a lower AC and lower bonus to Saves and other dex checks/attacks for the rest of the day. His spell DC and spell attacks would also be reduced, etc.
If a rogue wants to pick a pocket without getting caught, it should be assumed they don't want anyone to see, so success would have to be against the most perceptive person present, aka the highest degree possible. So it's a little fidgety.
Imagine an 12 Str warlock trying to long jump a chasm 20 feet wide. 10 feet of running to the edge and a jump will get them 12 feet without a roll, some DM's run this kind of thing differently, but that's a pretty significant feat, so maybe a DC 20 athletics will do it regardless, maybe the check is Athletics Check result -5 = additional feet jumped, so a DC 15 could do it. In either case, spending the Strength bonus just gets them across the chasm either way. The difference of degree is irrelevant.
Whatever the case, you don't want players typing up legal briefs to make their "I do it" statements with this. It's intent is really, "I don't feel like failing and feel confident enough in the rest of my sheet and party that nerfing my own stat won't get me killed later."
It really shines in opposed checks because having a low strength PC shove an Ogre off their friend, or pull them out of the Purple Worms mouth effortlessly is heroic stuff I like to see and do at the table. Sometimes rolling makes it exciting, and sometimes cursing dice out isn't fun.
Is this strong? Hell yeah, but not without a price and if you run multiple encounters per "day" like I do, it's balanced well enough. It makes reroll features like Indomitable a little stronger too.
Fluff
At the end of the last multiverse, as timeline after timeline collapsed in on themselves, one series of branches had reached so far down a path of harmony it was possible for even the diametrically opposed forces of light and darkness, order and chaos to join hands in an attempt at mutual salvation.
The whole of their mortal followers, who had long since left petty or indiscriminate conflict in the past, were gathered together at a singular point, one colossal world forged from supergiant gas clouds in the heat of white hot stars and hammered into form on the anvils of blackholes before cooling in the vast emptiness of dread void. Here the nigh infinite multitudes held galas, interbred for countless generations, and created wonders that echoed the greatest achievements of all that came before.
In the final moments of these branches, gods and devils, demons and unspeakable horrors, all walked among their followers and children and together they began to see through the fraying barriers of existence into the parallel worlds where countless reflections of themselves looked back and reached through for comfort, unity, and wholeness in the face of this ultimate end. Selves from different iterations of worlds collapsed into selves, richer, denser, more powerful, willful, and hopeful than they had been divided. Before the end finally came the gods and monsters themselves collapsed into there respective peoples as well.
The incomprehensible conglomeration of hope was something no mere multiversal collapse could hope to choke down into nothingness. It transcended time and space and even as the multiverse itself unraveled, new threads and patterns were being woven to give birth to the next. The accumulated power of dreams and hopes held by those advanced souls became some of the threads from which this new skein of fate was being woven. Eventually these fundamental filaments would weave themselves back together into shadows of those beings. Now, they awaken to their new lives and, one hopes, to help lead whatever realm to which they were borne anew into an age of harmony like the one from which they hail.
In these new forms they can summon the vast might of multitudes contained within them but their mortal shells are ill-suited to channeling such power and begin to fray. Until they can recover their resolve and stamina, they find themselves weak with clouded minds, but there's little to no limit to what they can accomplish if they choose to make that sacrifice.
Cho-Jin
Appearance: Cho-Jin can be born to any race though humans seem to be disproportionately represented.
Age/Lifespan: The Cho-Jin are newly manifesting among the mortal races and as such their natural lifespan is difficult to determine.
Alignment: Cho-Jin can be of any alignment though more often have a neutral component. Even those more strongly aligned tend to approach situations with a very broad view, trying to understand the potential necessity for something they may object in grander cosmic consonance.
This is an old idea I had but I've teased it out a bit with some story concept borrowed from Fizban's multiversal dragons now that I think about it. I guess it's more of a house rule/campaign seed. Basically a way to turn ability score bonuses into a resource for resource management, at a price while also making truly ridiculous things possible.
So here's the rule and all the fluff nonsense is below:
Player Characters can reduce their Ability Score Bonus by one to automatically succeed on an attack, check, or save that uses that Ability Score. Spending an Ability Score Bonus point in this way grants the minimum level of success necessary to achieve their goal while appearing as though they are applying a minimum amount of effort. A Cho-Jin can recover one of these Ability Score Increases for each Ability after each Long Rest. Lowering the bonus in this way doesn't lower the Ability Score itself so killing the barbarian with a Shadow is just as hard when they've burned themselves down to Str bonus 0 as it is if they're full. An Ability Score Bonus cannot be reduced below 0 using this option.
In play: It's important to maintain the distinctions between what Can or Can't be done with a check, what is typically done freely but can be increased by degrees with a high check, and what the degree must be to achieve the goal. It really depends on if you want the Cho-Jin to be absurdly superhuman, or if you just want them occasionally capable of extremely unlikely feats.
If you don't play with those distinctions, this works fine as is and they will be superheroes at times, but if you do, you may want to prepare some examples for how you want the sliders to work.
Imagine if in your game, a crit on a named NPC or PC would leave a scar. Does that need to be the case? No, any attack might leave a scar, we use the crit as a benchmark to trigger a narrative reward letting the player describe how they mark their foe. If you want Crit=Scar to be the norm, that's fine, let them crit it's your game. If not, look at the following...
So your level 1 Fighter is confronted in Act 1 by the Big Bad. He wants to scar the big bad's face so he never forgets who's coming for him. He spends a Strength Bonus to automatically hit with his sword and rolls damage normally, but his strength based attacks, saves, and damage will all be one lower until he long rests. He can't declare he wants to crit or kill in a single blow (those are degrees of success on a hit, though I guess he might kill them if the foe is weak enough), he gets the minimum level of success, ie, lands a hit.
The Wizard wants to search the room for his rival's spellbook. Searching a room will take an hour and only find the book on a success. If rolling higher would reduce time and there's a chance he'll be interrupted, spending the Intelligence bonus won't make it take less time or prevent him from being interrupted, he'll just find the book in an hour. The DM might say a stealth check can prevent the interruption, in which case he could spend a Dex bonus as well to insure he finds it and isn't interrupted. BUT, that means he'll have a lower AC and lower bonus to Saves and other dex checks/attacks for the rest of the day. His spell DC and spell attacks would also be reduced, etc.
If a rogue wants to pick a pocket without getting caught, it should be assumed they don't want anyone to see, so success would have to be against the most perceptive person present, aka the highest degree possible. So it's a little fidgety.
Imagine an 12 Str warlock trying to long jump a chasm 20 feet wide. 10 feet of running to the edge and a jump will get them 12 feet without a roll, some DM's run this kind of thing differently, but that's a pretty significant feat, so maybe a DC 20 athletics will do it regardless, maybe the check is Athletics Check result -5 = additional feet jumped, so a DC 15 could do it. In either case, spending the Strength bonus just gets them across the chasm either way. The difference of degree is irrelevant.
Whatever the case, you don't want players typing up legal briefs to make their "I do it" statements with this. It's intent is really, "I don't feel like failing and feel confident enough in the rest of my sheet and party that nerfing my own stat won't get me killed later."
It really shines in opposed checks because having a low strength PC shove an Ogre off their friend, or pull them out of the Purple Worms mouth effortlessly is heroic stuff I like to see and do at the table. Sometimes rolling makes it exciting, and sometimes cursing dice out isn't fun.
Is this strong? Hell yeah, but not without a price and if you run multiple encounters per "day" like I do, it's balanced well enough. It makes reroll features like Indomitable a little stronger too.
Fluff
At the end of the last multiverse, as timeline after timeline collapsed in on themselves, one series of branches had reached so far down a path of harmony it was possible for even the diametrically opposed forces of light and darkness, order and chaos to join hands in an attempt at mutual salvation.
The whole of their mortal followers, who had long since left petty or indiscriminate conflict in the past, were gathered together at a singular point, one colossal world forged from supergiant gas clouds in the heat of white hot stars and hammered into form on the anvils of blackholes before cooling in the vast emptiness of dread void. Here the nigh infinite multitudes held galas, interbred for countless generations, and created wonders that echoed the greatest achievements of all that came before.
In the final moments of these branches, gods and devils, demons and unspeakable horrors, all walked among their followers and children and together they began to see through the fraying barriers of existence into the parallel worlds where countless reflections of themselves looked back and reached through for comfort, unity, and wholeness in the face of this ultimate end. Selves from different iterations of worlds collapsed into selves, richer, denser, more powerful, willful, and hopeful than they had been divided. Before the end finally came the gods and monsters themselves collapsed into there respective peoples as well.
The incomprehensible conglomeration of hope was something no mere multiversal collapse could hope to choke down into nothingness. It transcended time and space and even as the multiverse itself unraveled, new threads and patterns were being woven to give birth to the next. The accumulated power of dreams and hopes held by those advanced souls became some of the threads from which this new skein of fate was being woven. Eventually these fundamental filaments would weave themselves back together into shadows of those beings. Now, they awaken to their new lives and, one hopes, to help lead whatever realm to which they were borne anew into an age of harmony like the one from which they hail.
In these new forms they can summon the vast might of multitudes contained within them but their mortal shells are ill-suited to channeling such power and begin to fray. Until they can recover their resolve and stamina, they find themselves weak with clouded minds, but there's little to no limit to what they can accomplish if they choose to make that sacrifice.
Cho-Jin
Appearance: Cho-Jin can be born to any race though humans seem to be disproportionately represented.
Age/Lifespan: The Cho-Jin are newly manifesting among the mortal races and as such their natural lifespan is difficult to determine.
Alignment: Cho-Jin can be of any alignment though more often have a neutral component. Even those more strongly aligned tend to approach situations with a very broad view, trying to understand the potential necessity for something they may object in grander cosmic consonance.