Homebrew Rules

The following is a list of homebrew rules used during the games.

Ability Scores at Character Creation

Roll 4d6, drop the lowest number. Reroll 1s, the idea is that your character is of a heroic nature, and should have stats that reflect this.

Hit Dice at Level Up

When leveling up, if you roll your HP increase, you reroll 1s.

Spell Slot Recovery

When taking a short rest, a mage can recover a spell slot at the rate of one per hour. This counts only towards first level spells.

Resurrection Rules

The campaign uses a modified form of the rules used by Matt Mercer in the Tal'Dorei sourcebook.

Forced Resurrection

One can be brought back from the dead by the sacrifice of a living being of the same race, and of an item that was important to the deceased. The blood of the sacrifice is poured onto the item and both are consumed in the ritual.

Resurrection Ritual

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 3 individuals who knew the deceased 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 which is, again, decided by the DM if it is an NPC. If the ritual is being used to restore a PC, the DM will confer with the player of the dead PC to gauge whether or not the contributions are effective.

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 character’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.

Resurrection System Shock

On the revival of a character, they must roll a system shock check in order to see what effect the resurrection had on their body.

System Shock

On taking massive damage equal to half their HP total, they must make a CON saving throw or suffer from system shock.

Potion Use on Self

It is a bonus action to administer a potion to a yourself.

Racial Ability Scores

The custom ability score placement is ignored in favor of racial ability bonuses.