No, I don't think that the advantage is "not enough of a bonus." Quite the opposite. They are hoarding it until they "really need it" -- which suggests to me they don't consider the bonus "not worth the effort of tracking."
It's the same thing with potions by the way. They are probably all clinking with the noise of several flasks clanking against each other because I give potions out fairly freely, figuring they are single-use and so good magic to give out but not unbalance the game. They never use them though... they just keep hoarding them until they "really need them."
I am testing out a variant to the usual Inspiration rules. Basically, each time they get Inspiration, they roll 1d4 and add it to a personal pool of Inspiration. They can then spend as much or as little of it as they want to affect a personal die roll or on the die roll of a party member that they are within 30' of. Of course, it helps having players whom I trust not to cheat, but we'll see how it works.
I thought about letting mine "store it up" but their behavior with the potions makes me think they are just hoarders and we will get to level 20 and some of them will have 378 inspiration left....
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
No, I don't think that the advantage is "not enough of a bonus." Quite the opposite. They are hoarding it until they "really need it" -- which suggests to me they don't consider the bonus "not worth the effort of tracking."
It can oddly be both; given it's a bit hard to get, you're hoarding it for when the expected gain seems worth the trouble to get it, and since it's a lot of trouble to get, most of the time the expected gain isn't high enough.
One lazy option is to just make inspiration expire on completion of a long rest. Adding 'use it or lose it' should get people to use it.
No, I don't think that the advantage is "not enough of a bonus." Quite the opposite. They are hoarding it until they "really need it" -- which suggests to me they don't consider the bonus "not worth the effort of tracking."
It can oddly be both; given it's a bit hard to get, you're hoarding it for when the expected gain seems worth the trouble to get it, and since it's a lot of trouble to get, most of the time the expected gain isn't high enough.
One lazy option is to just make inspiration expire on completion of a long rest. Adding 'use it or lose it' should get people to use it.
Another option would be divide adventures into "Chapters" where completion of any major quest constitutes a Chapter. Give your players until the end of a Chapter to use their inspiration points.
No, I don't think that the advantage is "not enough of a bonus." Quite the opposite. They are hoarding it until they "really need it" -- which suggests to me they don't consider the bonus "not worth the effort of tracking."
It can oddly be both; given it's a bit hard to get, you're hoarding it for when the expected gain seems worth the trouble to get it, and since it's a lot of trouble to get, most of the time the expected gain isn't high enough.
One lazy option is to just make inspiration expire on completion of a long rest. Adding 'use it or lose it' should get people to use it.
I do something similar to this. I only grant inspiration dice for the current session. I typically give inspiration to whichever player does the recap of the last session (which incentivizes them to A. Take turns recapping and B. Remember what the heck they did last session) and whenever a player has a stroke of undeniable RP genius.
Regardless, have the inspiration run out at the end of the session incentives them not to horde it and instead use it more freely. It's been very successful so far.
It seems like this thread has derailed a bit.. but! I think I've solved the 'players not using inspiration' problem for my group without really changing anything at all. All I did was keep note of who had inspiration already, and was very generous with awarding those players with inspiration for reasonable roleplaying and so forth. When they'd tell me 'oh, I have inspiration already', I'd just say something to the effect of 'oh, damn.. what a waste then, huh?'. After a couple weeks of this I noticed them starting to actually use it much more often now, and its continued without me actually awarding it more often than I had before.
You can get at the problem from a different angle with time constraints. For example, if the bomb is going to blow up in 8.5 hours, and they are 25 minutes away from it, now there’s a tactical choice in the long rest, since any delay means failure, so do they risk the rest or go now and make sure they have time to get there. Keep things on a tight schedule and force them to decide if they actually have time to rest or not. Basically turn their time into another resource to manage.
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I am testing out a variant to the usual Inspiration rules. Basically, each time they get Inspiration, they roll 1d4 and add it to a personal pool of Inspiration. They can then spend as much or as little of it as they want to affect a personal die roll or on the die roll of a party member that they are within 30' of. Of course, it helps having players whom I trust not to cheat, but we'll see how it works.
I thought about letting mine "store it up" but their behavior with the potions makes me think they are just hoarders and we will get to level 20 and some of them will have 378 inspiration left....
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
It can oddly be both; given it's a bit hard to get, you're hoarding it for when the expected gain seems worth the trouble to get it, and since it's a lot of trouble to get, most of the time the expected gain isn't high enough.
One lazy option is to just make inspiration expire on completion of a long rest. Adding 'use it or lose it' should get people to use it.
Another option would be divide adventures into "Chapters" where completion of any major quest constitutes a Chapter. Give your players until the end of a Chapter to use their inspiration points.
I do something similar to this. I only grant inspiration dice for the current session. I typically give inspiration to whichever player does the recap of the last session (which incentivizes them to A. Take turns recapping and B. Remember what the heck they did last session) and whenever a player has a stroke of undeniable RP genius.
Regardless, have the inspiration run out at the end of the session incentives them not to horde it and instead use it more freely. It's been very successful so far.
It seems like this thread has derailed a bit.. but! I think I've solved the 'players not using inspiration' problem for my group without really changing anything at all. All I did was keep note of who had inspiration already, and was very generous with awarding those players with inspiration for reasonable roleplaying and so forth. When they'd tell me 'oh, I have inspiration already', I'd just say something to the effect of 'oh, damn.. what a waste then, huh?'. After a couple weeks of this I noticed them starting to actually use it much more often now, and its continued without me actually awarding it more often than I had before.
All good threads do =)
You can get at the problem from a different angle with time constraints. For example, if the bomb is going to blow up in 8.5 hours, and they are 25 minutes away from it, now there’s a tactical choice in the long rest, since any delay means failure, so do they risk the rest or go now and make sure they have time to get there. Keep things on a tight schedule and force them to decide if they actually have time to rest or not. Basically turn their time into another resource to manage.