there better be a fishing minigame in here

This is a small take from video games, but for when I run games with XP, I try to award players it for all sorts of things. Use a stealth skill well? XP! Discover a new place? XP! Have an interesting RP interaction? XP! Finish a lengthy quest? XP! Help a cat? XPPPP!!! I find that letting players associate everything they do with being awarded XP, it incentivizes all sorts of playstyles and approaches instead of just Kill Everything!

The relationship scale bit is funny because the DMG has that but no one remembers to use it

Feel like the Assassin's Creed franchise has stabbed you in the back? Is this ironic? I can't tell.

Enemies telegraphing big attacks! Specifically, enemies using the "ready" action, waiting for the players to do an action like entering melee range or using magic, then they attack Or the enemy can plan to attack a certain area that the players are in and if they don't move they get hit If your players are engaged in the fight and figure out what trigger the enemy is looking for they can avoid some damage

"How many paesant punches can you take?" could be a pitch for a great side quest

On the relationship scale, it could also be fun to have an NPC like you less if you are always just agreeing with them. They really like arguing and if you disagree with them then they go up on the scale.

06:15 "I'm hacking it! It's what I do in my free time. I can't be stopped!" Sombra?

Dael: we should take stuff from video games! everyone: *cheers* D&D 4e: "well, EXCUUUUUSE ME"

Video game music is actually great for D&D. The music is built with the player’s actions being the focus in mind rather than driving a specific scene like in a movie. That means that usually there isn’t some major complicated melody going on, but something that sets a tone instead :)

I steal them from classic Western movies from before 1960, since no-one watches them anymore. And there's a wealth of plots and situations there.

"How am I already sweating?" a question I ask myself every day.

We just started our first DnD campaign! The recruit idea is pretty amazing. We are running a prebuilt campaign, the Lost Mine of Phandelver and, no spoilers, we ended up recruiting a goblin we likely should have just questioned and killed. We bought him armor, some cloths and some musical equipment cause he was staring longingly at a flute. He is now a pseudo party member, the DM is just controlling him as a low level and semieffective bard banging on his wittle goblin drum. But having him be one of our agents out in the world would be super interesting!

2:02 Fast Travel 3:35 Carrying Capacity 6:18 Relationship Scale 8:41 Shields then Health 11:05 Recruit and Influence Missions

I really like the idea of the “shield” (pillars of eternity used “endurance”) being the first line of defense. Maybe some classes could call it luck, others call it will, etc., but maybe that is what can be restored on a short rest or a long rest, whereas the actual health takes longer or more resources to recuperate

Fun thing about the Halo energy shields, I'm pretty sure Combat Evolved was the first video game to implement a recharging 'health bar' in that vein.

Opens with "Hello Humans!". That's rather presumptuous of you xD

Great video Dael! So many of the struggles I've had with different player types and what they each find fun has been solved from stealing ideas or taking lessons from video game development talks/keynotes/postmortems. There is so much to learn from that world of games and vice versa.

I love the relationship scale and actually implemented it in my games a while ago, but I did not use one based off dragon age. I took a cue from Fire Emblem instead. F = enemies D = dislike C = neutral B = friendly A = close S = oh, they banging. And instead of math, which I have neither the attention span nor time for, I just tick it up or down whenever they have a bonding moment or get into a fight.

Getting a bit of Banner Saga vibe from the Armour/HP section, which is always a good thing!

Regarding your “shields and HP” idea, I know that Starfinder has a Stamina, then HP system that works in much the same way you described, with the Stamina being easier and faster to recover and going away before the actual damage to hit points.

Watched this video with my brother who is our current DM, friday afternoon here in Europe, and he enthousiastically began taking notes halfway through for our new sky-pirate campaign. Cool!

Watching this video: Grid inventory! That's on Mausritter. Retainers, that's hirelings from Mausritter. Factions! Of course they're on Mausritter hex maps. HP is hit avoidance and then damage is applied to your stats, that's Mausritter! That little free game is an RPG design masterpiece 🥰

the shields vs. health thing actually *is* something that I'm putting in my own game, funnily enough, though I sort of stole it from a bunch of TTRPGs that already exists. basically once you run out "HP," any further damage is done directly to your ability scores, and directly lowers the probability of success on your rolls. not an original idea, but an effect one to be sure.

The retainer missions thing reminds me of the errands you can send characters on in Final Fantasy Tactics. Definitely a neat suggestion for retainers.

This was actually really cool, I hadn't thought to use any of this. A system that really uses a lot of these concepts (relationship scale, and then the shields (called vitality)). I really liked the AC apprentice thing, as well as the abstract carrying capacity. If I build an RPG I will definitely look back at this

I like the idea that comes waaay back in the original Legend of Zelda. Basically it'd be so neat if every class had a thing they can only do at max HP that scales as they level up. It's really help keep players from only healing when people are at 0.

Veins of the Earth had a grid inventory system that gave you more item slots for positive modifiers in your STR, CON... even INT (smarter so you pack things better)

"I can't be stopped." Nor should you be!

This is why I watch game maker's toolkit despite not owning or playing video games. Watch their video on stealth mechanics! Or on randomness. Both are very applicable for DMs.

Regarding HP, I've actually been exploring a new system that I'll be trying out in my next game to help the feeling of health in combat. Basically, a character's health is just 5 + ConMod; your hit dice are something you spend to reduce incoming damage by dodging/parrying/getting lucky, and only the damage that actually gets through to your health is a true hit. You no longer know your max HP in advance, but it averages out to roughly the same - for example, a Lv. 5 Fighter with +1Con would normally have an average of 37 HP (10+4d10+5). With this system, that fighter would have 6 health and five [1d10+1] rolls (average 32.5) for a total average of 38.5 points of damage they can take. The best benefit of this, though, is that it can give the players the feeling that they're reacting to an attack. Normally, the enemy either hits you or misses you, and there's nothing you can do about it (you can narrate as if you parried or dodged, but it's not the same). With this, the enemy can either totally miss or "potentially hit", and then the player can decide how they're reducing the damage -- maybe they'll parry it all aside, or maybe they'll mostly dodge but let it graze them for 1 point of health. The main balance change will come with healing, and I'll have to play with these to figure them out for sure. Short rests normally regain hit points based on hit dice, so I'm thinking for ease a short rest will simply replenish half your hit dice and no health. Cure Wounds will now replenish one hit die and 1 health per spell level - so it can only HEAL you a little bit, but it does help give you a second wind (it's also now a bit weaker for d6 classes and stronger for d10 classes, which I think is good). I'm thinking a long rest would replenish all hit dice and 1 health - this also can help with the idea that if you're *injured*, a long rest may not fully heal that wound.

I stole so much from the mass effect trilogy for my campaigns. Having a bunch of culture and secret history to pull from is really helpful for building a homebrew world.

Hey Dael, this has probably already been said but your "shields/health" idea was an optional rule in Pathfinder called "Wounds and Vigor" that I was a big fan of. I used it in my dungeon delving/survivalist game (where I also used the Gritty Realism rules and tracked carrying capacity) to great effect.

PF2 kinda has that inventory/backpack system. Not exactly how you described, but your character can carry X much "Bulk" based on their Strength, and items are each a certain amount of Bulk based on how big/heavy they are. Works really well in my experience.

A modern setting 5e adaptation game I run has "armor first, then health" in a way. Contemporary kevlar/ceramic body armor isn't meant to be re-used; when it absorbs a bullet or what-have-you you're meant to have to replace it. In my game, taking significant damage typically represents your body armor absorbing hits, although you might be suffering minor narrative injuries like bruising and fractured ribs underneath it. If you go down, your body armor is rendered damaged and after the scene is over won't provide armor protection anymore until it is replaced. At that point, you are obviously much more likely to be hit and the hits are narrated much more dangerously. We also have major injuries when you go down by more than -10 HP, so being more likely to go down and suffer injuries reinforces the idea that you've "depleted" your armor's protection.

Was great seeing two of my favorite RPG personalities chat on dimension 20. As a DM with a love a literature and mythology, it makes sense that both Brennon and you appeal to me so much. Didn't realize until that interview that you both have such similar backgrounds.

On inventory I like the Pathfinder 2E way of doing it. Items have a Bulk value to represent their weight and size with default carrying capacity being 5 Bulk. So you end up with jump a few bulky items as it's whole numbers only, no fractions or decimals. However lots of smaller things like torches are considered Light and it takes 10 light items to equal 1 bulk. So you don't bother unless you have more than 10/20/etc to add them. Then there are items like chalk which are negligible which means you don't track them at all. It makes things so much easier as you just quickly look at the big ticket items then a quick check of if you got a lot of light items and view your total. None of that spreadsheet math of weights in D&D.

I just realized that Kingsmill and Monarch Factory are different words for the same thing

Your idea for sending out on missions is great. My group had to investigate a village that was sacked by marauding orcs. They sort of took the survivors, all teenagers, under their wing and are slowly rebuilding the village. They plan to retire there when they are too old or tired to adventure any more.

This was cool. I'd just finished writing out my own take on fast travel, and I can see adding the bit about what trouble occurred & how they overcome it.

For the abstract carrying capacity, you could even have rules like 1) if your Strength score is very high or low you lose or get a column of the grid; 2) if you buy a very costly backpack it might expand your grid; 3)you can have smaller grids (even 1 or 2 squares) representing pouches or bags

Love the relationship scale! I remember an incident in Critical Role campaign 1, Vox Machina was talking to someone who, from Matt's description was second or third in rank in the Ashari village and Marisha, in character, dismissed them like a servant in the middle of the conversation. That sort of shit should absolutely have consequences for the players.

Dael! Tell us what you don't like about AC Revelations! I remember not loving Revelations either but it's been a long time. I'm just now returning to the series with Valhalla after taking a break and not playing the last couple of them so it's kinda on my mind right now.

I've tried abstracting carrying capacity for so long, might try using the grid!

Dude, Secret of Evermore, albeit limited, can be a DM's goldmine with references to Greek and Egyptian myth, among other things. I really dig the alchemy system.

One thing that I love to use that I got from Fallout: New Vegas, and adapted from Stars without Numbers, is the factions game and the PCs places in it. Each of the factions in the world has their own agendas and relationships with one another, and take actions each month or so, causing the tide of power and influence to change. It really helped make my world feel more alive and give me easier hooks to dangle for my players. It also had them take some consideration when it came to taking on certain quests that they may curry favor from one faction or another. My favorite moment is when the players went to visit a library far off, but found the city engulfed in civil war and the library destroyed, something that I had alluded to for a little while, but which had completely shocked the players who had taken their sweet time getting there. Time yields to none.

Great video as always. I've been doing the NPC reputation mechanic in my games for a while now. One thing that's really important in the TTRPG setting (vs. the game) is that when you piss off Anders, you get instant feedback that your reputation with Anders has suffered by 5. There's no reason that a player HAS to know that unless the character they're dealing with is the sort of person who will immediately prosecute a grievance. I made a little character tracker handout for people to make them start thinking "this person I met who is a named NPC... what do they think of me? Would they put themselves in harm's way to help me, or would they warn other people away from assisting me? But like so many things -- what the PC thinks they know might not be reality! They might think an NPC is totally on their side when in actuality they are letting that revenge dish get nice and cold before serving it.

SO COOL DAEL. here's an interpretation of "overshield" hp mechanic that could work with d&d as is: level 1 hp is "CORE" hp. on level up, core hp raises by your con mod, the other hp gains (from your class) go into "TEMP/OVERSHIELD/MORALE" hp. so then, "temp hp" (which is not actually temporary) now represents all your combat willpower, your superficial wounds, and your tiring. all "damage" is drained first from your temp hp. it can be replenished by all standard means (magical healing and hit dice now represent bolstering your will, heartening you to continue). any damage beyond temp hp that dips into CORE hp represents actual physical, lasting damage that you have sustained, it can only be healed by a "gritty realism" long rest of 7 days, or by other extreme methods of healing (perhaps involving quests). a reduction to 0 CORE hp could represent a lingering injury based on the damage or attack that brought you there, with in-game consequences. normal healing at 0 CORE hp would restore only 1 CORE and the overflow would be temp. i look at all of this provoking flavorful roleplay, so that a strike that damages CORE hp would be a significant thing and could lend flavor to combat descriptions, as the PCs try to struggle on through their wounds, rather than the "fighting with full power until suddenly unconscious" that the current system implies. THANKS FOR THE INSPIRATION DAEL!!

Audibly cheered when I saw a new vid!!

Another awesome video! I would love to see your Dragon Age hack. My group really struggled with AGE. I love your system ideas. I've had similar thoughts on recruiting and relationship meters.

I like the recruit idea. About to run an evil campaign, and itd be cool to give the players the option to build the cult theyre a part of. Thanks👍

Torchbearer has a cool mechanic for inventory management. The order of items on the sheet is the order they are in your backpack. So it takes longer to grab items at the bottom, and you can get injured and lose items if your bag tears

I like the inventory idea! If I were running it I'd give people a baseline amount of inventory space and reward high STR players (since it's often dumped) by giving them an extra row or column of inventory space for each point over ten. Calling attention to the inventory and engaging with it as a minigame also encourages players to collect and use items. Once you create a barrier to hoarding, players have to be more mindful of what they bring with them. Adds an interesting dimension to gameplay without getting bogged down in numbers.

I'm pretty sure you are my favorite d&d channel

I really like the recruits/squires idea! Not only does this mean that the party can take care of more things because of their influence, but it also allows for far reaching name recognition. "Those guys are the bosses of the team that saved us from the gelatinous cube!" Instant superstar status.

I've been trying to steal boss ideas from World of Warcraft. The fights are designed for a party of players and there's a bunch of boss fight tropes they like to use: The Don't Stand in the Fire boss: The safe places to stand in the arena changes at the start of every turn, forcing players to keep on the move (and risk taking Opportunity Attacks) to avoid taking damage. The Romeo and Juliet boss: Two bosses have to be killed on the same turn, because if one dies before the other, the other one heals them. Make it a Lair Action and maybe have them heal for less each time if the party keeps not managing to kill both of them. The Ornstein and Smough boss: Two bosses fought simultaneously, but when one dies, the other becomes stronger and gets more abilities. The Achilles Heel Armory boss: A boss that can only be damaged significantly by a certain spell/weapon/catapult that also happens to be kept nearby. This lets your players get their hands on super powerful abilities that can only be used for the one fight. The Enrage Timer boss: A boss that gets stronger every turn until it becomes unmanageable, forcing players to burn resources quickly or die. The Kill the Healer boss: The boss has flunkies that heal or otherwise buff the boss' abilities. The party needs to prioritize killing the minions before the boss. The Tank Swap boss: The boss puts a stacking debuff on whatever player they're attacking (maybe -1AC per attack), and after so many stacks, the player needs to fall back and let another player take over. The Hot Potato boss: The fight has some kind of ~Thing~ that needs to be passed from player to player and kept out of the hands of the enemy, but holding onto it for too long has detrimental effects on the player, so one player can't hoard it the whole time. You could really keep this up all day, there's so many good Boss Fight design ideas.

I was just talking to a friend about some homebrew as a first time DM. I have several encounters planned around using the mechanics from WoW dungeons and raids because they were so visually entertaining!

I like the idea of using the "factions" system, in Waterdeep dragon heist I think, to track pious PC's relationship with their deities and their followers. The better you are at holding to their tenants the more likely they are to intercede on your behalf. I think warhammer fantasy also has rules and repercussions guiding these relationships.

An excellent explanation of "health/HP" came from one of the Uncharted devs. Nathan Drake can't take 30-40 bullets. He dies after a couple. The screen going red (health) shows depletion of his "luck". Grazes, near misses, etc... but the last couple of round actually connect and he dies like any other person, or like the enemies he murder-strafes. In the case of the video game, hiding behind the chest high wall let's him take quick looks around, process what's happening and, essentially, replenish his luck/awareness. Always stay for the post credits scenes in Dael videos. Always.

Your idea for NPC relationships is actually how social encounters are supposed to be run. No one uses those rules though.

02:02 Fast Travel 03:36 Abstract Carrying Capacity 06:00 Relationship Scale 08:43 Shields, then Health 11:06 Recruit and Influence Missions

How do you not have _at least_ a quarter million subscribers yet?? Your content is amazing, and one of the few that makes me say "OH SHE POSTED GOTTA WATCH IT NOW" every single time I get a notification

As the game designer who worked on the Assassin's Recruit gameplay (among other things, some less popular :o) It made me really happy that it was something that stands out for you in Assassin's Creed: Revelation. Funnily enough, I am working on some homebrew rules for one of my DnD campaigns where my players, as part of a group of mercenaries, can recruit new members and, eventually, send them on missions to further increase the power and influence of their group. I used some of the rules from Stronghold and Followers as the base, but I am changing and adding a lot of new things. It isn't fully tested yet, but my players are pretty excited to have that little game during their downtime. They also like the opportunities to find and convince people to join their Mercenary group.

I missed this video when it came out, glad I caught it after all. My personal inspirations: Souls games for boss mechanics, often hard to directly transpose to turn based combat but it gives ideas, Resident Evil for puzzles, they are usually simple but very nicely intertwined. And the mother of all: Witcher 3 for side quests, monsters, the oils (that give a nice consumable to reward the PCs with) little non-quest notes on the bulletin boards, priceless. I'm currently playing Horizon: Zero Dawn and am keeping an eye on the quests and mechanics I could shamelessly steal for my game.

As someone who recently had my party battle a monster I completely ripped off from Shadow of the Colossus and who is currently laying out a Zelda style dungeon puzzle (e.g. go to A flip lever so you can go to B to flip lever so that you can cross bridge to C) this was awesome. Might be difficult to enact some of these mid campaign, but I LOVE that inventory system and the recruitment mechanics! Thanks Dael!

For translating the grid system to irl - I imagine pulling out an old set of legos, and using pieces or creations to physically represent your items and stuff them into a bag. This is a more cumbersome option and treads into the realm of LARPing but I think it could be a cool little option. For anyone who loves their models and tokens, they could give beads and tokens to represent currency.

Hacking TTRPGs is my default state when I'm not doing anything else, so this was a very relatable video. Lots of cool ideas, I'll have to rewatch later and take notes!

i have a system where the party can start an adventuring guild and send other adventurers on missions and the party can get items from it as well as gold

The Middle-Earth RPG she mentioned is called "The One Ring"

Thank you for correcting people on HP being hit points rather than health points. Personal pet peeve of mine - losing HP is you being worn down *before* the injury, getting worn to the point you take that *real* damage.

The first edition of star wars d20 had a health/shield paradigm. you had a number of wound points equal to your Constitution and if you lost one wound you were wounded (and you could be knocked out by failling a con save), while vitality points worked like traditional dnd hit points, and were described as your ability to turn hits into glancing hits. Might adopt it for my next dnd campaign.

The abstracting of carrying capacity is a big one I've also been puzzling out. To be fair I haven't had a chance to test it out on my players, but basically my idea of it would be that all their starting equipment and any reasonable adventuring equipment is a freebie, but any special equipment or (more importantly) treasure has a certain size point value associated with it. Sort of like you said, small is 1, medium is 2, large is 3. So a treasure hoard of gold pieces might be a large hoard, but they could split it up and only take a small piece of it. I don't know if I'd use an actual grid, though the tetris aspect of that is appealing. I think the only other thing I'd add to the idea is that I think characters with more strength should still get at least a little more space to carry stuff, since they can lift a lot more. Also, just in general, excellent video! I really liked this one!

I JUST got done with a session long "conversation" with an NPC where they, in kind of the reverse of Dragon Age or Bioware type games, my NPC asked a bunch of questions of the PC's about their God and and the meaning of life (the NPC is the teenage daughter of the town blacksmith), anyway, the answers to the questions helped to guide her one way or another towards a Sidekick class so now they have a little homebrewed paladin sidekick.

Loved the discussion about retainers, passing off gear and sending them off on missions. I play an evil cleric in a Pathfinder game and my character is working on establishing an Assassin's Guild. He just took the Leadership feat and level 1 followers started showing up. His two favorites, a brother and sister (fighter 1 and rogue 1) are both going to become clerics as the gain levels and with be getting most of my characters hand-me-downs. Also, I mentioned to the GM that I would like them to do little missions, like in the ACKS rpg, and he was cool with the concept. In order to help him with ideas, I am going to buy him Waiting for the Raven videogame. It puts you in charge of a cell of a secret society that is infiltrating a city. Might give you some more ideas for those little missions, Dael. Thanks for all of the creative thoughts. Always a pleasure to watch your videos.

Awesome video as always!! Modding TTRPGs to be our person "perfect" experience with our friends and parties is the best example of our the GM/DM can use mechanics as a form of creative expression. It also helps more games be different experiences. I really like Five Torches Deep's Load and Durability system. It abstracts weight based on str score, its are 1-5 Loads, and makes over carrying interesting. Durability is a great way to add to Load. Similar, it has a 1-5 point system, and basically is the health of your armor, shields, and weapons. And if they hit zero, they break, and lose their protection or damage mods, but still are weighing you down. I got super deep into it on our channel -but a major thing about Durability and Shields, is that as a reaction, you can choose to use a shield to block an attack, and you can choose to have it sacrifice 1 Dur, 2 Dur, or break out right. But the only way your weapons and armor lose Durability points if they receive or cause damage from a Critical Success or Failure. "HP = how many peasant punches you can take" best soundbite -Cmike

I like the idea of major towns having teleportation circles. And the way the magic works, you have to have gone to that place to be able to use a circle to get there. So that takes care of the requirement to go there first.

I just noticed that Skulduggery Pleasant book behind you - I loved that series growing up, and I've never encountered anyone else who knew about it!

Awesome video. The relationship/retainer system is something I've been implementing in my Rime of the Frostmaiden game, I love this!

That health system has been "oficially" done before in Starfinder (and as an optional rule in Pathfinder 2E) with the stamina system, and it turns out to be a great way to empower adventuring parties without healers. Those games also use the "bulk" system for carrying capacity, which isn't quite the grid system, but much easier to get a handle on and track for players and DMs.

I've been stealing magic item ideas from video games like crazy lately. There's a whole world of inspiration there if you go looking for it!

The main example I know of the carrying capacity thing is Resident Evil, particularly 7. Those games also make everything a tight fit so you have to think carefully about what you’ll need (RE uses resource management in general as the primary form of tension).

10:00 I like the talk about hit points, and the inspiration from videogames when talking about them. Some TTRPGS like Lancer and an element called "structure" where a player has a number of structure points that is like a number of health bars. So long as a player is within the first health bar their mech's (it's a mech game) ability to function is the same as if it was at full health, but once a mech takes structure damage by depleting the first health bar it goes to another health bar and the mech is in worse shape and cannot function as well. If this were but into DnD terms what you could do is instead of going unconscious when you go below one hit point you roll a saving throw, a success means that the player is at one hit point and functions normally but a failure means that the player goes to full health (minus any extra damage carried over) but loses some functionality until they get healed from their crippling condition. When applying this to players it creates a greater emphasis on strategy other than "make sure the damaging player always has at least one hit point and make sure a designated healer player stays away from danger". When you give your villains structure points it means your villains will be at full strength at the start of a fight so players will want to have something to weaken them before the fight starts, instead of just "how do I make the villain die as quickly as possible?". This is all options to make the game more tactical and get players and DMs to think about more status effect other than just damage but if you prefer to think of hit-points as they are in vanilla dnd that's totally valid too.

I'm gonna use those underling ideas for an evil campaign I'm starting. I need a structured way to use henchmen.

"I'm hacking it. I CAN'T BE STOPPED." Also, the Halo analogy I think could be attained with replenishing temporary hit point to a small degree. I believe some classes get abilities like this, and a Paladin or two just regenerates HP when under half of their max. And the recruit system you love a lot was also done quite well in Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect Andromeda, in differing ways. ME:2 has you recruiting allies old and new, and then later you get to have a loyalty mission where you prove you have their best interests in mind, which gives them extra abilities, and makes them MUCH more likely to survive the final mission. This could be represented by perhaps a new ability like a spell or action surge for your retainer, as well as a choice to reroll or just straight up succeed on a save. ME:A had you command strike teams that would level up after missions to gain new perks like "+5% success rating when the mission is against aliens," and they also would bring in crafting materials and cash. Which could be represented in a Matthew Colville Stronghold setup where your units, are instead more like your fledgling adventurers(or retainers) that work for you, and your cleric team gets a holy weapon so they have +1 on their mission against undead and fiends. I like the concepts and hope to try them on my players at some point.

Dael your recruit idea sounds perfect for the students of my party's monk & the crew of their ship okay thank you

Huh, Revelations was one of my favourites. The recruitment as you mentioned. Constantinople is gorgeous. Old Ezio is great, and I liked seeing old Altair. And back then there was still hope for an interesting present-day plot.

I find that it's usually possible to convey what hit points "actually" are narratively, and I do that in a similar way to how people often use "bloodied". Any damage that someone (NPC or PC) takes up to half of their max hit points are near misses, desperate evasions, or only very incidental damage, e.g. "You swing your broadsword down at the orc and he only barely lunges out of the way, causing you to just barely miss cleaving him in two." An outright miss I will make more explicit: "You take a swing at the orc but misjudge the angle and he deflects the blow with his axe, letting out a rough laugh." Once someone gets under that 1/2 threshold, however, they start taking "Real" damage. Blows start connecting, blood is drawn, and they are visibly beaten down and injured. "The orc tries to parry but you slip under his guard, burying your sword in his hip." This way, you preserve some cinematic tension, filling an encounter with dodges, parries, gaining and losing ground, and finally, a few decisive killing strikes. But again it's more a narrative patch than a mechanical one, and the exact threshold is totally up to you as a DM.

Turns out game designers are good at game design! I absolutely love stealing ideas and systems from video games for my table - interesting random encounters, dungeon elements like traps/puzzles/riddles/mechanics, monsters and powers - so much excellent content.

Always great to see a new Dael video

heck yea!, another Dael video so soon since the last one!

One thing I want to add in a future campaign is an arena similar to the Totomostro from FFXV. Having the players bet and possibly control a set of creatures against other creatures would be a nice change from the life and death stakes normal combat presents usually. Also, by using creatures already battled, the knowledge the players retain from those battles may give them an advantage in which to choose during a matchup.

Always love your content! Thankful for your creativity and encouragement.

I JUST NOTICED YOUR COPY OF SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT!! those books are great!

Was made aware of your channel because of the 'Adventuring Academy' podcast -- been on a binge ever since! Great stuff here!

One of the old D20 versions of Star Wars RPG definitely used that shields/health thing, only I think it was called vigor - which worked like normal HP, and then your health was what really put you in the dead book.

Pathfinder2e has a mechanic similar to shields using stamina. However, what I think makes this more useful than other messages saying similar things is they have guidelines and an entire alternative set of abilities which they set aside to actually suppport this in the system which wasn't built around it, so it's actually very useful for trying to take a system like 5e and make something like shields/stamina work without getting too fiddly. Examples of things I would do based on that: Con mod goes to HP, and hit die goes to stamina (or vice versa) Short rest only restores stamina (Also helps with the perpetually resting party) Temp HP is really just treated like temp stamina. (Avoids some confusion here) Feats like leadership, or adding in some of the feats from PF2e for stamina, like Rally, which is made to restore stamina. These are nice supports you can steal.

I've adopted the shield health idea for the health a set of RPG rules I'm making. The first half of health represents stamina and energy and comes back on a short rest. Instead of taking actual damage you are blocking the attack, but you do so in a way that knocks the wind out of you. The second half of the health is actual body health and it takes either magic or a long time to heal.

I really loved Payday, Left 4 Dead, and Vermintide. They are great examples of a co-op group going around completing objectives, and I learn a lot from the objective examples. If everything was just "these things want to kill you but if you kill them first then they win" it would get dull fast. Have the players carry a large cumbersome object to the altar while skeletons raise around them. Have them break their way through a barrier only to unleash a barrage of enemies onto themselves. Ask them to complete any kind of task under any kind of extra stress can feasibly be a great encounter!

I agree with the "Fast Travel" thing and "Creating Organizations/Recruits" thing. But I personally don't care for the others. I don't care for 'Encumberence/Carry Weight', instead I have the idea of personal "Infinite Pocket Dimensions". There are certain rules and stuff. But basically each player gets one and as such can have infinite items and things.

Great video! I like the idea of letting players fast travel to a location after they have been there before. Also the grid system for inventory, I haven't done much stuff with inventory and that seems like it would be easy to implement. One idea I have taken from videogames is the concept of weapon upgrades. The pc's can pay to increase the damage die of their weapon by 1 increment, like d6 to d8, and it gets progressively more expensive each time. Doing more damage makes the pc's happy, and it gives them something to spend their gold on. I give the monsters hit points that are on the higher side of the stat block average to compensate, so it doesn't really unbalance things.