House Rules

Rest and Healing

1. Slow Natural Healing: Characters don’t regain hit points at the end of a long rest. Instead, a character can spend Hit Dice to heal at the end of a long rest, just as with a short rest.
2. Healer’s Kit Dependency: A character can’t spend any Hit Dice after finishing a rest until someone expends one use of a healer’s kit to bandage and treat the character’s wounds.
3. Resting: A Short Rest requires ¼ day’s rations as well as 10 minutes of undisturbed activity. A long rest requires ½ day’s rations and 8 hours of undisturbed rest.
4. Sleeping in Armor: Sleeping in light armor has no adverse effect on the wearer, but sleeping in medium or heavy armor makes it difficult to recover fully during a long rest. When you finish a long rest during which you slept in medium or heavy armor, you regain only one quarter of your spent Hit Dice (minimum of one die). If you have any levels of exhaustion, the rest doesn’t reduce your exhaustion level.
5. Going without a Long Rest: A long rest is never mandatory, but going without sleep does have its consequences. Whenever you end a 24-hour period without finishing a long rest, you must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or suffer one level of exhaustion. It becomes harder to fight off exhaustion if you stay awake for multiple days. After the first 24 hours, the DC increases by 5 for each consecutive 24-hour period without a long rest. The DC resets to 10 when you finish a long rest.

The Fading Spirit – Alternative Resurrection Rules:

Character death can often prove to become a minor inconvenience in some campaigns once the adventuring party reaches a certain level, with spells being available to return fallen comrades from the afterlife with temporary setbacks, robbing a small element of danger, and threat to future conflicts and challenges within the story. If you wish to elevate the gravity of character death, you can introduce this optional rule.
If a character is dead, and a resurrection is attempted by a spell or spell effect with longer than a 1 action casting time, a Resurrection Challenge is initiated. Up to three members of the adventuring party can offer to contribute to the ritual via a Contribution Skill Check. The DM asks them each to make a skill check based on their form of contribution, with the DC of the check adjusting to how helpful/impactful the DM feels the contribution would be. For example, praying to the god of the devout, fallen character may require an Intelligence (Religion) check at an easy to medium difficulty, where loudly demanding the soul of the fallen to return from the aether may require a Charisma (Intimidation) check at a very hard or nearly impossible difficulty. Advantage and disadvantage can apply here based on how perfect, or off base, the contribution offered is.
After all contributions are completed, the DM then rolls a single, final Resurrection success check with no modifier. The base DC for the final resurrection check is 10, increasing by 1 for each previous successful resurrection the character has undergone (signifying the slow erosion of the soul’s connection to this world). For each successful contribution skill check, this DC is decreased by 3, whereas each failed contribution skill check increases the DC by 1.
Upon a successful resurrection check, the player’s soul (should it be willing) will be returned to the body, and the ritual succeeded. On a failed check, the soul does not return and the character is lost.
Only the strongest of magical incantations can bypass this resurrection challenge, in the form of the True Resurrection or Wish spells. These spells can also restore a character to life who was lost due to a failed resurrection ritual.
If a spell with a casting time of 1 action is used to attempt to restore life (via the Revivify spell or similar effects), no contribution skill checks are allowed. The character casting the spell makes a Rapid Resurrection check, rolling a d20 and adding their spellcasting ability modifier. The DC is 10, increasing by 1 for each previous successful resurrection the character has undergone. On a failure, the character’s soul is not lost, but the resurrection fails and increases any future Resurrection checks’ DC by 1. No further attempts can be made to restore this character to life until a resurrection spell with a casting time higher than 1 action is attempted.

Character Abilities

1. Abilities are created using an alternate point buy system. Ability scores can be lowered to 5 and increased to 16. Calculator

2. Variant Encumbrance: When you use this variant, ignore the Strength column of the Armor table in chapter 5. If you carry weight in excess of 5 times your Strength score, you are encumbered, which means your speed drops by 10 feet. If you carry weight in excess of 10 times your Strength score, up to your maximum carrying capacity, you are instead heavily encumbered, which means your speed drops by 20 feet and you have disadvantage on ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws that use Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.
3. All characters can drink a potion as a bonus action.

Lingering Injuries

If you are reduced to 0 HP, make a constitution saving throw of a DC Equal to half the damage received or 15, whichever is higher. On a failure, roll on the minor lingering injury table.
If you fail the saving throw by 10 or more, roll on the major lingering injury table.

Minor Lingering Injury (2d10)

2: Blinded: Temporarily blinded.
3-4: Broken Hand/Finger. disadvantage with attack rolls and ability checks made with that hand. Can't cast spells with that hand.
5-6: Bruised ribs. Disadvantage on STR and CON checks and saving throws. Unable to take the dash action or lift heavy objects.
7-13: Minor wound. Gain one level of Exhaustion.
14-15: Concussion: Disadvantage on WIS and INT ability checks and saving throws, as well as concentration checks. Can't take reactions. Can only take an action or a bonus action, not both.
16-17: Twisted ankle: Speed reduced by half, disadvantage on DEX saving throws. Fall prone at the end of a dash action.
18-19: Internal bleeding. Disadvantage on all attack rolls and saving throws.
20: Dislocated shoulder: lose access to one arm. no bonus actions.

Curing Minor lingering injuries:

Minor Lingering injuries are cured by the following:
Casting lesser restoration or a similar effect on the creature (removes one minor lingering injury)
Taking two long rests (removes all minor lingering injuries)
Receiving at least 10HP's worth of magical healing (removes one minor lingering injury per 10HP of magical healing)

Major Lingering Injuries (2d10)

2: Lose an eye. You have disadvantage on Wisdom (perception) checks that rely on sight as well as ranged attack rolls.
3: Lose an Arm or a Hand. Lose access to that arm.
4-5: Broken Arm: Lose access to that arm.
6-7: Horrible Scar: You are disfigured to such an extent it is not easily concealed. You have disadvantage on charisma (persuasion) checks and advantage on charisma (intimidation) checks.
8-9: Internal injury: Whenever you attempt an action in combat you must make a DC15 Constitution saving throw or lose your action that turn.
10-13: Major wound: Gain two levels of Exhaustion.
14-16: Festering Wound: Your maximum Hit points are halved.
17-18: Broken Leg: Your speed on foot is halved and you fall prone at the end of a dash action.
19: Major Head injury: Disadvantage on saving throws and ability checks, inability to cast spells, as well as loss of memory and confusion.
20: Lose a foot or Leg. Your speed on foot is halved, and you must use a cane or crutch to move unless you have a peg leg or other prosthesis. You fall prone after using the dash action.

Curing Major lingering injuries:

Several Major Lingering injuries are cured by Months of rest, but not all. All Lingering Injuries are cured by the following:
Healing of 6th level or higher such as 'heal' the 'Regenerate' Spell or a potion of regeneration
Several Months of rest (may only work with certain injuries)

Massive Damage

If a character takes a critical hit or damage equal to more than half their current hit points they must make a constitution saving throw. The DC equals 10 or half the damage you take, whichever number is higher. If you take damage from multiple sources, such as an arrow and a dragon’s breath, you make a separate saving throw for each source of damage. Failure results in a level of exhaustion being gained.