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"I'm altering the way Restoration magic works, Pray I don't alter it further! " - Jim Davis

With diseases, I think the best way to handle them, without making curative magic toothless, is to exploit the fact that illness rarely hits a person instantly and obviously. If you contract a disease, it usually takes time between infection and the manifestation of symptoms. So the game ought to reflect that. Instead of telling the player, "You wade through the waist high sewer water, you now have Black Fever", just silently make rolls behind the DM screen while the players are wading in through said sewer water. If they contract Black Fever, make a note of it, but don't inform the players. Let them go on with their adventure. Then, slowly, start seeding into descriptions bits and pieces of the PC's deteriorating physical state. They get a coughing fit, or feel some rash developing. They wake up and get told to mark down that they have a point of Exhaustion, and maybe tell the character to reroll Hit Dice when they take rests, and make them take the lower of the two. Have them just experience a fainting spell after a fight...or in the middle of one. Just ramp up to worse and worse symptoms, until it becomes obvious to the characters/players that the PC is actually, legitimately ill. If you've been choosing the times when symptoms manifest, you could potentially trick players into thinking the symptoms are actually something else, like the fainting spell being chalked up to an actual Sleep Spell, by some unknown enemy. Or the result of a curse or poisoning. Or that coughing fit happened in some musty catacombs, so it seems like the character is just suffering from dust inhalation. Make the players as unsure of what's going on as the characters would be in-universe. Moreover, if the game goes on a while before the players catch on, their character might have passed the infection along to others. Other party members, or random NPCs. Many diseases - like Spanish Flu - had a period between infection and when symptoms manifest, where the inflicted person is contagious and passes it along to other people. That disease was so deadly because folks were passing it along before they even knew they were infected. So the PC - the "Patient Zero" - might have been interacting with other PCs or NPCs, silently passing on their ailment. Even if the character gets the party Cleric or Paladin to cure his disease, they may come back to a town they stayed at to find the whole place in the grips of epidemic. Made worse by the fact that the disease might have been contracted from some isolated location that no one has been to in centuries, meaning the populace has no immunity to it.

Ah, lycantropy curse, classic! I was a bit bored during one of my sessions, so when the party completed a dungeon - they got their obvious treasure room. Paladin, of course, instantly went for the chest in the middle of the room. And I asked for a dex roll. Party: - Oh fck, it's trapped! (I don't do a LOT of traps, only if we have a dedicated rogue for that, so he can have his moments of Indiana Jonesing some fucked up shit). Paladin: - *fails the throw* great, how much damage do I get? (party of veteran players, so traps are kinda the damage thing) I didn't really like that I was being called out on "trapping" the loot, so... Me: - You didn't react in time and the chest bit you. The mimic's fangs went deep into your exposed hands and recieved *some damage, nothing too much*. So the party - killed the mimic, and nobody cared for the bite. And what I do in my campaigns - IF players don't cure a condition with normal means during the next 24 hours - IT becomes a curse and can be cured only by doing some sort of side quest (homebrew rule, but sometimes - it's actually fun to see, that cleric goes "OH FCK ME!" after 24 hours and when I say, that some effect became permanent on a party member, because he didn't pay attention). What was the mimic curse? Well, after about 2 weeks - "you see dreams of gold, lots and lots of gold all around you, you can hear the sound of it and the unstoppable will to horde it. You wake up, naked in some village, covered in blood and surrounded by loot. You have a gold coin stuck between your teeth. Basicly, he became a weremimic, and the condition for transformation was - talking an hour or less prior to going to sleep about gold and loot. That was the trigger and they didn't talk about it much until a campfire next to a dungeon they were planning to raid for nearby town. On the awesome side tho, eventually he WAS able to cure the condition, but he was devoted. He was a paladin of Bahamut, I believe, and during their travels - he actually went to a temple to ask for advice from clerics. They provided the chance for "brief talk through high priest" and the Bahamut... well, he found it fair, that paladins greed led him to his current curse. And, for a favor, Bahamut will not remove it, but make it a LOT more bareble to live with. The catch? He stayed a weremimic and he could do a transformation to a furniture he encountered in his travel once per long rest (got a second transformation on level... 12 or something, since it's became kind of a running joke at that point and I really wanted to reward him for finding use for that). And yes, paladin the infiltrator - was one of the best things I've seen in that fun game. Basically, he could be SOLD to any merchant and then run away for instance (that's how they actually managed to infiltrate some corrupt merchant, by selling paladin in form of a table, so that he could know where the storehouse and base of the merchant is; yes, those clever ideas ARE one of the reasons why he got a second transformation) or just hide in shape of a box in plain site with critical success guaranteed on that roll, if enemy has 12 or less INT. Basically, he became a Solid Snake.

The orphaned hero probably has more to do with classic hero tropes as opposed to being D&D connected. Look at superheroes, almost all of the major superheroes lost their parents at a young age. Even mythology and ancient legends often involved the abandoned child, the orphan, the neglected child, or the demi-god whose divine parent was obviously not there to raise them. It just gives greater independence and freedom to the character - that and it's harder to justify why a normal, well adjusted person would be going off gallivanting and fighting dragons as opposed to someone with nothing to go back home to.

Here's an idea for curing lycanthropy: Removing the curse draws out the lycan spirit from the afflicted that you have to destroy before it inhabits another person.

How about that unbeatable curse that lasts at least 18 years called 'an heir'?

LOL the family of Pruitt's on the thumbnail haha.

A dwarf in our group took an axe from a large loot pile that was a tithe to Umberlee. Needless to say he is now cursed and won't go near water.

One of my favorite curses to place on my players was to have them lose memories, but make it so they don't know what they've lost, but they know they've lost it. They took a very extended journey to discover these memories, which tied into another quest or story they had no idea was missing - basically allowing me to poke a quest in out of nowhere.

Jim Davis, I wish my DM was you really bad. Every episode you just bring up this level of detail that I wish my group could reach, not blaming them that’s just how our group is.

15:43 is where they discuss lycantrophy.

That's the most disturbing cover picture to date. Bravo Pruitt. Bravo.

"There is a horrific plague that is ripping through the cities and villages of your world"

I played a wild magic sorcerer that was aged back into 9 year old because of a wild magic surge and she was more effective afterwards.

"that's not what god wanted" is a great way to explain why the medical sciences aren't so developed: Clerics don't want Wizards to study diseases & to heal w/o Devine Magic.

I love lasting consequences in general, but I HATE consequences that are permanent. Especially level loss in older editions... sure, you can earn them back, but by the time you do the rest of the party will be further ahead of you. One bad encounter and you'll be sub-par to the party for the rest of your character's life.

The darkest I’ve ever gone is a I had a psionic try to prove herself to a mind flayer by beating them in a psychic battle. She rolled a natural 1 soI made her a vegetable. Rest of the campaign the party had to travel to the underdark to retrieve the fragments of her mind. After they were all retrieved she had to go through rehab to be able to function again, but nonetheless she was never the same again.

I love sprinkling my curses with some upsides as well. I once had a Wizard become possessed by a demon of secrets. The wizard gained a sizable boost to their intelligence and spellcasting ability, but the demon would be slowly siphoning their vitality and life energy; withering their body and slowly killing them. The wizard was actually quite happy with it in the beginning... although that did not necessarily last :D

You know what would be cool, a monster that sucks the spell slots out of you and empowers his attacks with it.

First of all, you guys are amazing. I have consumed at least a little of probably just about every D&D channel on KZfaq and no one else I have found provides the depth of analysis that I find here other than Matt Colville. Between his channel and yours, I think any aspiring DM can find what they need to run a successful game. You have certainly inspired me, and now I run three games that shamelessly steal ideas from your show. Seriously guys, you are doing God's work with this channel and I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to make it. On the specific topic, I really hate the way restoration magic trivializes some of the tricks in my bag. I know it was an intentional design decision by WotC, but I disagree with it. Instead, I will either have remove curse/disease be a caster check like you suggested in your video, with the DC determined by the spell slot used to cast the curse, or I will just allow the target to make a new saving throw against the curse/disease. I only allow one attempt per curse/disease per day, and I also usually have it so that a curse/disease, once it has taken effect, takes a day to fade after being dispelled. Even just informing my players of that rule has been enough to make them wary and behave more cautiously, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Level drain is the coolest thing ever to DM me, and it's abhorrently overpowered to player me...

My opinion on monsters that reduce some statistic about the players is this: Losing Strength, Intelligence, etc. Feels like damage Losing Levels/XP feels like pointless regression

This is easily the best video thumbnail of your whole channel. That's really saying something, because every thumbnail you make is already solid gold.

One of my favorite characters was from second edition. Dwarven cleric. Ended up retiring him at 17th level. He'd been 14th level twice...and had a wooden leg. Permanent things happen...but you ROLE play them!

I loved his explanation about the mountain sage, brilliant.

I just want to give you some praise, I find your videos very re watchable, it's so easy to have them on again, you and Matt Colville are the only ones I've really found this with even when I enjoy other KZfaqrs.

Thing is, if you've got a cleric in the group then that space in your party is taken by a character whose purpose is to deal with damage, death, disease and curses. If that space was taken by a champion fighter with elven accuracy and GWM then the lasting consequences of battles such as death would be staved off in other ways such as killing the enemy before they can kill the party. So considering the party brings a cleric along and takes that hit on potential overall damage in favour of the utility of a cleric I don't see an issue with allowing the cleric to do cleric things. That said, it behooves the DM to place those kinds of challenges in the parties path, draining their spell slots and the space in the clerics prepared spell list by throwing curses, disease and the like at them and letting the cleric do their thing. Otherwise the cleric is just a worse fighter. And though they might be removed easily, perhaps they can remove the first curse but that uses a spell slot they can no longer use to heal the party, revivify an ally or remove a disease later on.

6:35 My DM did just that with a curse at one point. He made the Remove Curse for that specific curse require a rare flower, found only in the Abyss. (What a flower is doing in the Abyss, I don't know). But it made for a much more interesting adventure to go and get this ingredient instead of just 'boom you're cured'.

I’m running Curse of Strahd now, and I’m all about the party having to make difficult moral decisions. I really like the idea a curse or negative effect that can only be removed by transferring it to someone else. Especially with Lycanthropy and Vampirism.

Pruitt was on point with those puns I love it

Awesome shoutout to Maze of the Blue Medusa! My campaign is just about to go through it and I can't wait!

Hey guys I just wanted to say I absolutely love your channel! Thank you for all the great work you guys are doing and for the awesome videos! Looking forward to many more Wednesdays with WebDM

In 5e I think that players create more negative consequences between themselves than the DM does and that's a good thing. Nasty status ailments is one thing but broken trust between characters or hard lessons learned is another thing altogether. In one game the player was the head of an adventurers guild, a war started and weighing his efficacy as a leader a lot of members up and left out of a sense of national pride as well as better pay. Most of them died though. Another player who had set him up to be a guild leader was railing on him for being inconsiderate and brings up how he wasn't even there to lead his men as guild leader on the battle field. Basically ended the conversation and made a point most people at the table probably never considered themselves.

Ok but now you have me thinking of a town where everyone DOES have a limb missing, and why. maybe a powerful creature that will happily protect the town from invasion, drive off any chimera and such...for a price. it wants a limb from every child born into the villiage. maybe it's a hag who needs them for a ritual, or a necromancer who likes making hand swarms, , or it lost an arm and now demands the same from its wards. nobody knows why, but the creature just wants everyone's non-dominant arm and they're willing to give it to them in return for the protection. that'd make for a fucked up town, especially if a character has an incentive to kill one of those creatures...

Hands down the greatest channel about D&D...hands down! For 100k subs can you guys do a video on how creative control works, who is in charge of the format and final cut, what influence fans now have on the direction you guys go in (if they even have any influence at all), how you guys schedule bringing Jim in now that he lives away, etc, etc. Essentially I’m asking for maybe a mini documentary about “WebBM” and a bit more insight into the people who are “Jim”, “Jon”, and “the Camera crew”. I know you have done a video like this in the past where you talked about the set up of the show and some of what goes into it, some of Jim and Jon’s past works in production / theatre, but perhaps another is in order, based on how far you guys have come. The fans have said it many times before, people toon in just as much for the material as they do for the hosts (some people even more so for the hosts! 😊). Just a thought. Also I really want to know what happens next in Razzel Sinn...🤓

Every party I've played in was a glass cannon party with zero Clerics, and going to a town doesn't. DM "Oh you look for a cleric in in this town? Yea.... Nooo you don't find one; look's like you're stuck without an arm." Inner Me "WHY!!!!!" Outer Me "Alright".

Love your video's, My life cleric recently was turned into an uber werewolf(kept rolling 1's on tests and it was a full moon) My character savagely killed and ate about 14 families and a bunch of passers by. Some powerful casters and everyone that we had met so far tried to cure it to no effect and we read books in game about to no avail. I also nearly TPK'ed the party(I kept rolling 20's to break out of restraints and hit). I had my cleric have a breakdown and decided to take his own life before he could next turn and hurt one innocent life. I didn't want it to seem like a cop out but I think it was how it was received, I had not thought it would but I felt that my character would do. Had it be any other character other than this one I would not have done this but the cleric was absolutely disgusted at the thought of taking a life unless absolutely necessary.

One big proponent for handwashing (and also the first surgeon to perform a C-Section where both the child and mother survived) was actually a transman named Dr. James Barry! Another big figure in the sanitisation movement, Florence Nightingale knew him but they /Hated/ each other because they had such different temperaments. But yeah, those were the big "wash your hands" figures that pushed us towards more sanitary practices #TheMoreYouKnow

Life has enough "teeth" Neither I nor my players need our pastimes to have them too

My favorite character I have ever played lost his right arm from the shoulder down (he was right handed). It is to this day still have greatest top 3 greatest effects on any character I've played.

I've been watching the channel for a while, you guys are the best. I dont play 5th edition but the way you guys talk about dnd really helped my dnd group enriching our experience.

Imagine the curses you could put on people using the “Wish” spell

Disappointed you guys didn't touch on the lingering injuries at all in the DMG or suggestions on what to do with a player who has suffered a dead character that the party is trying to resurrect

At least for me, this is one of the reasons, when I world build, that I assert divine magic definitely comes direct from the gods. It allows me to DM fiat issues in the face of magic when a good narrative requires it. "I cast remove curse." "As you go through the motions, you do not feel the familiar currents of divine presence. Instead, you feel as though the gods require this curse to remain in place for the time being. Perhaps as a test but, for what reason, you cannot say." Etc. Some players might get salty, but folk seem to accept it so long as it is on the table at the very start of a campaign.

Just cursed my players with lycanthropy. So ready to use this

I was running out of the Abyss, there is a point where Zugtomny, the demon queen of fungus can infect PCs with her spores, which are counted as a disease. This is a DEMON LORD. The level 3 paladin goes 'well, I'm immune to disease.' This is a HUGE disconnect between story and mechanics, so I said 'you are immune to common diseases, this is a demon lord, you are not immune.' the PC wasn't happy but he accepted it and we moved on, because it made sense from the story.

Love your videos guys!! I've watched them all and I don't even play D&D though i find it so interesting.

Oof, that part about diseases hits hard in 2021...

So many webdm vids! yeay! Don't stop releasing them!

Awesome video! I'm about to DM a game tomorrow (My first time as DM, actually!) which prominently features an epidemic of a curse similar to werewolf lycanthropy, but I wanted it to be much harder to cure in PCs than *poof* Remove Curse when they hit 5th level and even harder for NPCs so that they feel some repercussions if they leave someone behind (especially someone important) during an attack by these creatures and he/she gets infected, that might come back to bite them! Pun not intended, haha! The last few videos you've done, as well as your lycanthropy video have been really helpful for thinking up some ideas for my own game!

For me, as both a player and a GM, I have always disliked things like level drain. Anything that happens in the game should be a going forward. Losing a level as a temporary effect is dramatic but as a permanent or long term effect it just takes away their character's abilities and powers that they've worked for. I have always enjoyed permanent effects that add to the game though. Losing an eye so they take a penalty on ranged attacks and maybe suffer from headaches or something. Adding a curse and requiring some interesting quest to remove it. Unfortunately I tend to see the opposite when there's a long term effect

Having specialized rituals and materials and places of power and people of knowledge is a fantastic solution for handling magic as a quickfix. The injuries table and madness tables are great resources. You got crit above 1/2 hp or knocked below 1/2 hp, that's a minor superficial injury roll. Crit below 1/2 hp or dropped to 0; lasting minor injury that may alter skill or attack rolls slightly, or roll for long-term madness. Died or crit to 0 hp; marring injury roll and or permanent madness. The most important thing is to encourage and reward players for embracing the difficulties so they feel rewarded for their role-play, instead of punished for trying to play.

Only recently found this channel, and I've been binging tons of videos. As someone who's just started running a 5e campaign (which has...a lot of homebrew) these videos have been a great resource for learning more about how to make a game interesting. This video (and the earlier lycanthropy one) was especially useful...since the entire premise for the campaign I'm running is based on a "werewolf plague" wiping out or converting a considerable swathe of the population, while the party is questing to find a cure. This video really helped me figure out ways to explain why that plague couldn't be just whisked away with a dispel curse and such, which is great. It'd be kinda lame if the central conceit for the campaign was solved quickly with a third-level cleric going around and casting "dispel curse", after all. Keep up the great work guys.

Another video directly correlated to my old school, realistic consequences, 5th ed game. Thanks again for the well discussed underlinings of our beloved game.

I had a DM who had a tinker gnome cleric NPC who used restoration on a rogue who was petrified and chipped his ear off. We asked him to "fix him" so he gave him an ear that would make an alarm sound if he crit failed lol

I think y'all should do a video on transportation. Ask questions like "how big is the world the players are in?" and "what types of transportation are readily available?" You could talk about the exotic modes of transportation and the more common ones, and how they can be used by the dm.

In the game I ran the other night I had the goblin nursery you guys have mentioned a few times to get the players to think. I expected an argument at most and to my delight it actually came to blows within the party. The bard was going to slaughter the goblins and the paladin attacked him to stop him he crits him and dropped the bard in one hit and he had 2 failed death saves before the paladin agreed to loh him. And I laughed and laughed

Ooohh I love that line! “Even Luke lost a hand!”

Really great video! Well done.

Another good effect could be that the restoration/undoing of the consequence happening gradually

my DM was making things easy so we asked him to make it harder and he did now, we're all 20 but he somehow makes quests harder and has buffed up the monster himself (home-brew...kinda but it's really just numbers) and it's awesome

It always makes me happy when you upload a new video ❤️

close that door in the background, it's spooking me

I'm going to be taking over as DM of my group in the near future, and these videos are super helpful, and watchable.

Great video, as always, guys. Seriously though, why would someone thumbs down any of these videos?

One thing I've found helps get players on board with lasting negative effects is to also seed your game with ways to gain lasting positive effects that lie outside of loot and class levels (boons, extra feats, etc). Telling your players "adventuring can change your character for the worse, but it could also change them for the better" is a much easier sell. These lasting positive effects also give your players more goals to shoot for. If they don't want to risk lasting consequences, then they'll decide not to seek out these lasting benefits. It makes the choice theirs and rewards them for accepting putting these lasting consequences in the game.

lose a hand. get a Familiar-like Crawling Claw! an evil mischievous cleptomaniac Crawling Claw who follows you as if you were their hen mom.

I don't know how, but these thumbnails just keep getting better.

I'm about to run the Curse of Strahd campaign. You can bet your d20's that I'll be using some of these ideas for lasting consequences

Another great one guys

now I want to watch the Blue Medusa adventure :/

Jim needs to play the RPG Torchbearer. It's soooo good and it's fun to watch your characters struggle with the conditions they become afflicted with.

I feel like the reason that things like negative levels were unpopular because they lacked a meaningful way to avoid the threat. A player builds a level over many encounters and actions, so having undead that, at times, just kind of become a threat from left field, be able to undo that so easily is, well, kinda bullshit. I think a broader issues is that so many of those negative aspects lacked a concrete way to over come that. A permanent stat debuff is problematic when the rulebook lacks a clear path to reversal. And it doesn't have to be n easy path, but a clear one. Because it's too easy (especially considering the dearth of DMs, and the fact that many people don't live in areas that can support massive game communities) for a DM to permanently cripple a character relative to the events surrounding them without providing a path to remedy. I feel like "Reincarnation" is a good example, where you might end up with a character fundamentally changed, and they're stuck with their old build. A lot of DMs will say "you've made your bed, deal with it." when a character suddenly changes their balance. A fighter that looses their Half-Orc endurance, their +2 to strength, and their +1 con but now has a Tabaxi's +2 dexterity might want to move away from their great weapon style because they've just lost HP, durability, and raw hitting power, and focus on archery or two weapon fighting. But the DMG and PHB provide no recourse to say, rules as written, that serious consideration has to be given to how the players recover or adapt to significant changes or negative effects. (There's also other questions with that spell, such as whether wisdom and intelligence should change, given that the character remembers their life experiences, and wis and int kinda represent learned experience.)

How about, to make remove curse more risky, having a chance that the curse would instead infect the person that tries to remove the curse, like having a low risk of a trade off instead of an outright removal of the curse. Maybe also have it be that if you use a higher level spell slot that the risk is lowered or just vanishes depending on the curses level.

Lots of comments so sorry if this has been said. A good way to use lasting consequences is tie them to a certain location or dungeon. Imagine a dungeon where to unlock doors or solve puzzles you need to interact with a certain kind of crystal to proceed. Interacting with those crystals makes a player take a certain type of curse that lasts as long as the party as in the dungeon. That way the players know they need to deal with these consequences for the duration of the dungeon but arent worried about having that consequence for the whole campaign.

For Lasting Consequences: Revisited, I'd love for you guys to talk about ideas like being banished from countries, creating children you didn't mean to, being saddled with praise or blame you don't deserve, and other effects that are more world-based as opposed to these character-specific problems/effects.

I love watching ur guys videos. I binge watch ur channel whist im painting my 40k minis. Keep it up guys love ur work. Mike from Australia

Totally on point! I'm with you guys all the way here. This is my main gripe with 5th Edition, it is actually difficult to provide any semblance of real danger without tweaking the rules or up scaling your encounter difficulty a great deal, and if you've got more than 4 players you're really working to make it challenging and impacting.

I say you can revive characters but you must do it quickly or else they’ll come back as zombies if you wait too long to do it or their bodies are too badly damaged

I had a Satyr character hit with Grim Revenge (3.5e). He ended up defeating his own hand in combat. He then went on a quest to find tinker gnomes to craft him a hand. It had claws he couldn't use for offhand attacks. Super fun, but would go limp in anti magic fields.

Im in a campaign with a Tortle barbarian named Yog, and he died in our second session. We wanted to keep him, and we decided to have him come back as a ghost. So now when he touches anything he has to make a constitution roll, and if its below an 11, he fases through the object, and has all the weaknesses/resistances of an undead

In NWN, yeah the NWN from BioWare, if you leveled your character up while under the influence of a curse, it became permanent. This wasn't mentioned in the manual, so it was a fairly cool event to experience when it happened to me the first time.

One of the best shows they've done.

There’s the other side of this argument here to consider- what happens when your players are viewed as the only people who CAN cure those diseases and curses? What if the players are dishonoured publically because they want to save their spell slots or go to the next town or progress with the plot to wipe out the source of the disease? Could that end up on them becoming public enemies?

Goosclip guys! This is why I was not upset about losing levels when I got hit by wraiths in 2nd edition, then my team got up to the upper energy plane and their bodies were blowing up because of the energy healing explosion, then I absolutely loved running around in the negative energy plane. I was attached to my character. You lived a longer character life and you did not have to retire your characters as quickly and had more games and stories with your character. Point is I hate telling up new toons. Losing levels has benefits like healing. More adventures with your character

I like to make up a different type of disease or poison that conventional magic doesn't work against. This type of Magical disease makes the party need to seek out an especially powerful magic to combat the magical illness. Maybe it's a great druid or the fey wild or a magical flower that grows in the underdark.

My character lost their arm immediately before they entered the game (as in the party found her bleeding on the ground). There was a healing spring nearby, and I was expecting them to take her there and restore the limb, but instead one took out a potion of limb regrowth and told her to drink it. Turns out the potion secretly duplicated any limbs regrown. Sooo now I'm playing a character with three arms. I love it.

I kind of did that but for a character I'm playing in a supers game but only because there backstory involves time travel and playing out the scenario essentially precluded not messing with that timeline, therefore to keep it from getting to messy I made a nice discreet time loop where the person who gives them access to their technical facilities is actually there future boss they hate before a name change. The Dm can expand this plotline however they want... you know how comics love to mess around with that, however it in no way needs to affect the plot. My Dm's not only a hundred percent on board but actually quite excited!

If you nerf the healing classes, are they going to get something back in return? If not you are going to have the problem of no one wanting to play the gimped healer class. You'll end up playing Inn Stay 5E.

The best way to make the players care about NPCs you threaten is to earlier have those NPCs really help the players, perhaps at considerable personal cost, perhaps turning up at the last minute with the cavalry.

I've only been playing d&d for about a year, hearing these old rules... I don't think I would have enjoyed some of the older versions. Permanent punishments seems a bit harsh, I'd rather just roll a non fucked over character tbh

I'm running my own "razel sinn" campaign, so I deal with a lot of curses and so forth as a DM. And I did it just like you all suggested a level 7 curse needs to be restored by level 7 or higher magic. It's worked so far and the team quested to find a cleric able to restore them, with no questions or complaining about the rules, they just went with it.

Hand withered? You can fix that with a hand of vecna

My favorite was Crit Hit tables that had lasting wounds. I DMed a campaign where a character played a one armed samurai cause of one of these tables and a Nat 20 rolled by me during a climactic boss fight.

my favorite lasting consequence is having a child. if your bard or other pc decides to seduce someone and get a room, have them roll a d20 (rolling against a pretty low number, so it’s uncommon, or whatever you decide) to accidentally get themselves or the other one pregnant. it’s especially fun if you bring it up a bit later (because you never know, right) and they have to provide for the kid

I think revivify doing a d4-1 exhaustion is a fair debuff

I've always loved the idea of double-sided curses, where the curse can have beneficial elements. For example, a curse that gives someone light blindness but they gain darkvision or see in darkness.

Spare the Dying is the bane of my existence lol

Hey guys, really like your videos. I wish you could air some more sessions so we can see your tips and examples in play.