I'm posting this here for fellow DM's and or players to have a read and tell me what they think. A home brewed fishing mechanic, in general if my players are mid adventure and are in need of fish for some reason generally food. I like many other DMs will rely on a survival check possibly combined with a strength check to land any fish they may catch.
As my players find themselves with some spare time on their hands one thing happening in the city is a fishing contest which they can take part in and so I initially came up with this as a means to running the contest. It does require a little mental arithmetic. It could also however be used during downtime whilst travelling by ship or boat. What I'm looking for here is feedback from other DMs. Have I over complicated things, is there something missed or something you would suggest to improve it. It's a bit of a read but I would be intrested in the opinions of others.
A fifty foot area map focusing on the body of water being fished, this could be smaller depending on the location, divided into a five foot square grid is presented to the players. The DM with his own copy of the map secretly places the locations of fish on the map.
Initially with no knowledge of fishing the player has a 60/40 chance, in favour of the fish, to catch something. Theses odds change depending on where the player choses on the map to cast their line. Should the player chose a location where there is a fish the odds remain the same, for every five foot from a fish location the odds decrease against them by 15.
Example: The player chooses a spot on the map ten foot from the nearest fish location this changes the initial 60/40 chance of a catch to 90/10 in favour of the fish.
These odds can be further altered in two ways, the use of better gear or a greater knowledge of fishing, the more the player fishes the better they understand the skills involved. The better gear and bait that is used can also improve the odds in favour of the player. Use the tables below for skill, gear and bait modifiers.
SKILL LEVEL MODIFIER
Beginner 0
Angler +3
Waterman +6
Fisherman +8
Master Fisherman +10
ROD & TACKLE MODIFIER
Basic Rod & Reel 0
Basic Rod, Reel, Weight & Float +2
Collapsable Rod & Reel +3
Collapsable Rod, Reel, Weight & Float +5
Custom Rod & Reel +8
Custom Rod, Reel, Weight & Float +10
BAIT MODIFIER
Bread And Cheese +2
Fish Or Meat +4
Live Bait +6
Crafted Metal Lure +10
Applying any of the above modifiers combined with the already calculated odds gives the odd to catch before the line s cast.
Example: The players fishing skill is ‘Angler’ and they are using a ‘Collapsable Rod, Reel, Weight & Float with live bait’ this gives a total modifier of +13 This changes the chance to catch from 90/10 to 77/23 in favour of the fish.
The player then casts their lineby making a straight dexterity check and adding the total of their roll and Dexterity modifier to their chance to catch odds.
Example: The player casts their line making a Dexterity check, rolling an 18 and adding their modifier +3, for a total of 21. This is the final modifier that changes the chance to catch from 77/23 to 56/44 in favour of the fish.
This means that to catch a fish the player must roll within their chance to catch on a D100. Using the above example the player rolls a percentile dice along with a D10 combined to give the result aiming to roll between 1-44 upon doing so they catch a fish. On a succesful catch the DM then also rolls a D100 on the table below to determine the size of the catch and the difficulty of the player landing said catch. The table determines only the size and difficulty of landing the fish. The type and species are determined by the DM dependant upon surrounding factors such as location and type of water being fished.
First, I should say, if you like it, great, have fun. For me, that seems like a lot of complexity for something that doesn’t add anything to the story.
I think for a fishing competition in a town this could be a great idea. You've gone into a lot of detail that I think shows you are trying to give your PCs other things to do. A think a lot of them will at least want to try it out. As a player I probably wouldn't want to fish myself, but would be happy to cheer on a fellow party member in the contest.
There are however, people like me who hate fishing mini games. Who wish that every RPG video game didn't feel the need to add one in. I'd still appreciate the work the DM put into this, but I wouldn't be very excited by it.
Which is why I would caution against using this as an out in the wilderness mechanic. The festival is fun and unique, so having a special system for it is fun. But if this is something you start to do frequently, I think it will just become burdensome. You might have one player who enjoys it, but it might start annoying the rest of the party. As a player this would drive me to buy a huge number of rations so that I would run the risk of having to sit around while we figure out the fishing. A lot of things are purposely simplified in 5e to keep the game moving along. If all of your characters are avid fishermen, they may find this fun, but I'd be careful about bogging down travel too much with this sort of thing.
However, downtime may not be a big deal. If all your characters are telling you what they want to do with their week hanging out in town, and one characters wants to do this sort of fishing again, by all means, let them do it. They clearly really enjoyed it, and they should be able to spend their downtime fishing, just like many other players may do things that interest their character but don't interest the whole group.
Definitely not for use in the wilderness, fishing at that point would still be a survival role. Done this solely with a fishing contest in mind. Every chance my players could be like naaa... and walk on by.
I mean, if your table is really invested in telling literal fish stories within a game that is essentially an opportunity to build metaphorical fish stories, I'd say go for it, but to me it strikes me as the sort of crunch that is sort of getting stuck into as opposed to build out from the actual rules system. If you want something more in line with the game rules, yes, there's survival, but you might want to look at adapting the mechanics for "downtime" activity like crime gambling or pitfighitng in Xanthars and the DMG.
Last summer/fall, a lot of events were showcasing a I think Adventurer League's one shot called The Great Knucklehead rally. It was sort of a setting backgrounder for Rime of the Frostmaiden. It's set at a fishing contest (Knucklehead trout bones in Icewind Dale are really the regions only industry that connects with the rest of the continent). I'm not sure if it actually has rules for fishing contests, or the adventure promptly deviated from that event; but if it does have rules for the contest that someone can verify, you might want to check that out.
Great Knucklehead rally product page (DM's Guild). If $9 for a fishing expedition for rules for a fishing expedition is a bit of a steep gamble, the fishing tourney rules are available in the preview. May be a little too fast and loose in comparison to what you've developed. At a quick glance, the rules are a card game derivative of, actually, "Go Fish."
To add this to the wilderness rather than for a specific event, I would look to make:
1: A range of fish. Give them preferred locations, preferred baits and different size ranges. Include some rare ones with magical properties, because why not?
2: A way for the DM to determine what fish are in a given stretch of river or in a lake.
3: A way for the PC to determine what's there as well - probably a nature check. Each fish has a different DC for this, so if they roll a 15 they identify all the fish in there with DC15 or less, but you might say "and there's another fish you don't recognize" if there's one with DC16 or more.
Then when someone says they want to fish in the river, you quickly roll to see what fish are there whilst they roll a nature check to see what they see. You tell them what they see and where, and they decide where they will fish. Then they need to make a roll to determine how effective they are at the whole business, which will be based on the DC of the fish, and the DM can say "you fish for an hour during the long rest, and manage to pull up 2 trout, a small bream and a fish you don't know.". The effects of said unknown fish when cooked or eaten could function similar to a cursed item - "This fish attracts any carnivorous animals to it from 1/2 a mile away whilst it is out of water", "When this fish is eaten, the eater gains an intimate knowledge of what it's like to be a fish" or "This fish is delicious and you find yourself comfortably fed for the next 12 hours". Or "the fish is delicious and you find yourself comfortably fed for the next 7 days, after which you feel a writhing in your stomach and vomit up a stream of tiny fish. You are then extremely hungry."
To make fishing relevant to adventuring it needs to offer some form of adventure - a chance of pulling up a crocodile or being pulled in, or awakening a water spirit or catching cool, magic fish. Otherwise, the only effect it has is "you eat fish this evening", which isn't going to have any later effect on the game!
I would probably modify this to be a bit simpler for use in the wilderness - eg. Strength check, result is how far they cast their line, this then changes the fish they can catch, then Survival to catch and reel in the fish. d100 to see what it is.
First up, as others have said - you do you. If you and your party would enjoy this, then go for it. Fun is always the goal.
Speaking for myself, it seems overly complicated for a downtime mechanic. I'm not particularly experienced, but I'd imagine that after a long campaign potentially full of dice and math intensive combat, the party will want a break from it. I can imagine the players seeing a fishing competition, expecting some light hearted role play with maybe an ability check or two, and then exclaiming "this is just combat with fish!"' I don't think downtime should become just more of the same.
Like it, some choices (where to throw the line), some advantages (skills, lures), some rolls and outcome. If you refine it into a single pdf, possibly with a larger roll table, please follow up. I'll try this with my party.
One thing I'd consider right out of the gate is to turn the player catch roll around. In example, don't require roll of 1-44, make them hit the 56DC (56 or higher)
"This means that to catch a fish the player must roll within their chance to catch on a D100 with 56 DC to catch."
If there is anything dangerous in the water at all, then the villagers are not holding a contest. It only takes 4 one hit point bites to put a Commoner into the land of making death checks. A school of piranha is pretty much lethal. At most a Commoner can have 8 hit points. You have gone to great lengths to make a full and complete guide, and I wish I could think of a way to use it. Where's the fun? What exactly do the players get out of this? A fishing village isn't going to have any treasure worth mentioning to a party of Adventurers above level 1.
I spent many hours in World Of Warcraft fishing. I wanted a special pet. In D&D you can't summon a pet back with a click if it dies. I could also use the fish for Cooking, and that gave me stat buffs. I note that in WoW it took a single click to catch a fish. Finding schools of special fish was trivial, and the most elaborate fishing contest got you no material award. It was an Achievement. You got a title. In D&D, who is going to care? You want a title just take it, either you've already got one from your background, or you can say you did anyway and nobody is likely to try and check.
You said your players were mid-adventure. Are they really so burned out that they want to spend hours doing something that effectively can be done with a Survival skill check? There is no "trivial" Difficulty Class, Easy is DC 5. If they are, I'd really suggest skipping the game session entirely. Whatever it is that's so wrong, they have got to need a break.
Your thoughts are so basic. An anecdotal tale from Warcraft, while bashing someone's ideas in a game about imagination and creativity? You pop off with basic handbook references as if 30+ years of modules and world-building weren't a thing. Please continue to showcase your vast knowledge of only prebuild 5E module books you barely glanced at second-hand from a friend you had DM the three and a half mediocre seasons you played after watching a Matt Mercer video.
This seems much too complex for what it is, all you really need is at most 3 survival checks. I would have it as the first one being a Wisdom (Survival) to see how well the character knows where to fish, has enough patience, and the know-how. Then a Dexterity (Survival) to see how well the character can handle the rod or net that's being used to try and catch the fish. and finally, a Strength (Survival) check to see if they can reel in the fish before it gets away.
To successfully catch enough fish for the party it could be something along the lines of needing 2 successes on the 3 rolls, and if it's 3 successes then you could roll on another table if there is anything else interesting.
You could very easily replace some of the stats with others if the players describe how they go about and catch the fish, for example, I could allow an intelligence check for a character that might know where the water currents are going to see where they might find a bigger concentration of fish.
I'm posting this here for fellow DM's and or players to have a read and tell me what they think. A home brewed fishing mechanic, in general if my players are mid adventure and are in need of fish for some reason generally food. I like many other DMs will rely on a survival check possibly combined with a strength check to land any fish they may catch.
As my players find themselves with some spare time on their hands one thing happening in the city is a fishing contest which they can take part in and so I initially came up with this as a means to running the contest. It does require a little mental arithmetic. It could also however be used during downtime whilst travelling by ship or boat. What I'm looking for here is feedback from other DMs. Have I over complicated things, is there something missed or something you would suggest to improve it. It's a bit of a read but I would be intrested in the opinions of others.
A fifty foot area map focusing on the body of water being fished, this could be smaller depending on the location, divided into a five foot square grid is presented to the players. The DM with his own copy of the map secretly places the locations of fish on the map.
Initially with no knowledge of fishing the player has a 60/40 chance, in favour of the fish, to catch something. Theses odds change depending on where the player choses on the map to cast their line. Should the player chose a location where there is a fish the odds remain the same, for every five foot from a fish location the odds decrease against them by 15.
Example: The player chooses a spot on the map ten foot from the nearest fish location this changes the initial 60/40 chance of a catch to 90/10 in favour of the fish.
These odds can be further altered in two ways, the use of better gear or a greater knowledge of fishing, the more the player fishes the better they understand the skills involved. The better gear and bait that is used can also improve the odds in favour of the player. Use the tables below for skill, gear and bait modifiers.
SKILL LEVEL MODIFIER
Beginner 0
Angler +3
Waterman +6
Fisherman +8
Master Fisherman +10
ROD & TACKLE MODIFIER
Basic Rod & Reel 0
Basic Rod, Reel, Weight & Float +2
Collapsable Rod & Reel +3
Collapsable Rod, Reel, Weight & Float +5
Custom Rod & Reel +8
Custom Rod, Reel, Weight & Float +10
BAIT MODIFIER
Bread And Cheese +2
Fish Or Meat +4
Live Bait +6
Crafted Metal Lure +10
Applying any of the above modifiers combined with the already calculated odds gives the odd to catch before the line s cast.
Example: The players fishing skill is ‘Angler’ and they are using a ‘Collapsable Rod, Reel, Weight & Float with live bait’ this gives a total modifier of +13 This changes the chance to catch from 90/10 to 77/23 in favour of the fish.
The player then casts their lineby making a straight dexterity check and adding the total of their roll and Dexterity modifier to their chance to catch odds.
Example: The player casts their line making a Dexterity check, rolling an 18 and adding their modifier +3, for a total of 21. This is the final modifier that changes the chance to catch from 77/23 to 56/44 in favour of the fish.
This means that to catch a fish the player must roll within their chance to catch on a D100. Using the above example the player rolls a percentile dice along with a D10 combined to give the result aiming to roll between 1-44 upon doing so they catch a fish. On a succesful catch the DM then also rolls a D100 on the table below to determine the size of the catch and the difficulty of the player landing said catch. The table determines only the size and difficulty of landing the fish. The type and species are determined by the DM dependant upon surrounding factors such as location and type of water being fished.
ROLL CATCH
1-10 Small fry, throw it back.
No skill check required to land.
11-20 Small fish, use as bait.
Survival check DC5 to land.
21-35 Medium fish, meal for one.
Survival check DC10 to land.
36-50 Medium fish, meal for two.
Survival check DC12 to land.
51-65 Large fish, meal for four.
Strength check DC10 and Survival
check DC13 to land.
66-80 Large Fish, Meal for six or suitable for
selling.
Strength check DC13 and Survival
check DC15 to land, two chances.
81-95 Huge Fish, meal for ten to fifteen,
suitable for selling or trophy catch.
Strength check DC15 and Survival
check DC16 to land, two chances.
96 Coin purse containing 15 +2D12 GP
97-99 Rare Fish be harvested for meat and
body parts. Can be sold for 150-200 GP
Trophy catch.
Strength check DC18 and Survival
check DC20 to land, two chances.
00 What appears to be a human skull,
contained within it a perfectly spherical
clear gemstone measuring around four
inches in diameter.
My parfy had a fishing downtime and my DM asked for a Wis save. Without waiting for the outcome, I asked, "Is this a boredom check?"
First, I should say, if you like it, great, have fun. For me, that seems like a lot of complexity for something that doesn’t add anything to the story.
I think for a fishing competition in a town this could be a great idea. You've gone into a lot of detail that I think shows you are trying to give your PCs other things to do. A think a lot of them will at least want to try it out. As a player I probably wouldn't want to fish myself, but would be happy to cheer on a fellow party member in the contest.
There are however, people like me who hate fishing mini games. Who wish that every RPG video game didn't feel the need to add one in. I'd still appreciate the work the DM put into this, but I wouldn't be very excited by it.
Which is why I would caution against using this as an out in the wilderness mechanic. The festival is fun and unique, so having a special system for it is fun. But if this is something you start to do frequently, I think it will just become burdensome. You might have one player who enjoys it, but it might start annoying the rest of the party. As a player this would drive me to buy a huge number of rations so that I would run the risk of having to sit around while we figure out the fishing. A lot of things are purposely simplified in 5e to keep the game moving along. If all of your characters are avid fishermen, they may find this fun, but I'd be careful about bogging down travel too much with this sort of thing.
However, downtime may not be a big deal. If all your characters are telling you what they want to do with their week hanging out in town, and one characters wants to do this sort of fishing again, by all means, let them do it. They clearly really enjoyed it, and they should be able to spend their downtime fishing, just like many other players may do things that interest their character but don't interest the whole group.
Definitely not for use in the wilderness, fishing at that point would still be a survival role. Done this solely with a fishing contest in mind. Every chance my players could be like naaa... and walk on by.
I mean, if your table is really invested in telling literal fish stories within a game that is essentially an opportunity to build metaphorical fish stories, I'd say go for it, but to me it strikes me as the sort of crunch that is sort of getting stuck into as opposed to build out from the actual rules system. If you want something more in line with the game rules, yes, there's survival, but you might want to look at adapting the mechanics for "downtime" activity like crime gambling or pitfighitng in Xanthars and the DMG.
Last summer/fall, a lot of events were showcasing a I think Adventurer League's one shot called The Great Knucklehead rally. It was sort of a setting backgrounder for Rime of the Frostmaiden. It's set at a fishing contest (Knucklehead trout bones in Icewind Dale are really the regions only industry that connects with the rest of the continent). I'm not sure if it actually has rules for fishing contests, or the adventure promptly deviated from that event; but if it does have rules for the contest that someone can verify, you might want to check that out.
Great Knucklehead rally product page (DM's Guild). If $9 for a fishing expedition for rules for a fishing expedition is a bit of a steep gamble, the fishing tourney rules are available in the preview. May be a little too fast and loose in comparison to what you've developed. At a quick glance, the rules are a card game derivative of, actually, "Go Fish."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
To add this to the wilderness rather than for a specific event, I would look to make:
1: A range of fish. Give them preferred locations, preferred baits and different size ranges. Include some rare ones with magical properties, because why not?
2: A way for the DM to determine what fish are in a given stretch of river or in a lake.
3: A way for the PC to determine what's there as well - probably a nature check. Each fish has a different DC for this, so if they roll a 15 they identify all the fish in there with DC15 or less, but you might say "and there's another fish you don't recognize" if there's one with DC16 or more.
Then when someone says they want to fish in the river, you quickly roll to see what fish are there whilst they roll a nature check to see what they see. You tell them what they see and where, and they decide where they will fish. Then they need to make a roll to determine how effective they are at the whole business, which will be based on the DC of the fish, and the DM can say "you fish for an hour during the long rest, and manage to pull up 2 trout, a small bream and a fish you don't know.". The effects of said unknown fish when cooked or eaten could function similar to a cursed item - "This fish attracts any carnivorous animals to it from 1/2 a mile away whilst it is out of water", "When this fish is eaten, the eater gains an intimate knowledge of what it's like to be a fish" or "This fish is delicious and you find yourself comfortably fed for the next 12 hours". Or "the fish is delicious and you find yourself comfortably fed for the next 7 days, after which you feel a writhing in your stomach and vomit up a stream of tiny fish. You are then extremely hungry."
To make fishing relevant to adventuring it needs to offer some form of adventure - a chance of pulling up a crocodile or being pulled in, or awakening a water spirit or catching cool, magic fish. Otherwise, the only effect it has is "you eat fish this evening", which isn't going to have any later effect on the game!
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I would probably modify this to be a bit simpler for use in the wilderness - eg. Strength check, result is how far they cast their line, this then changes the fish they can catch, then Survival to catch and reel in the fish. d100 to see what it is.
First up, as others have said - you do you. If you and your party would enjoy this, then go for it. Fun is always the goal.
Speaking for myself, it seems overly complicated for a downtime mechanic. I'm not particularly experienced, but I'd imagine that after a long campaign potentially full of dice and math intensive combat, the party will want a break from it. I can imagine the players seeing a fishing competition, expecting some light hearted role play with maybe an ability check or two, and then exclaiming "this is just combat with fish!"' I don't think downtime should become just more of the same.
Like it, some choices (where to throw the line), some advantages (skills, lures), some rolls and outcome. If you refine it into a single pdf, possibly with a larger roll table, please follow up. I'll try this with my party.
One thing I'd consider right out of the gate is to turn the player catch roll around. In example, don't require roll of 1-44, make them hit the 56DC (56 or higher)
"This means that to catch a fish the player must roll within their chance to catch on a D100 with 56 DC to catch."
If there is anything dangerous in the water at all, then the villagers are not holding a contest. It only takes 4 one hit point bites to put a Commoner into the land of making death checks. A school of piranha is pretty much lethal. At most a Commoner can have 8 hit points. You have gone to great lengths to make a full and complete guide, and I wish I could think of a way to use it. Where's the fun? What exactly do the players get out of this? A fishing village isn't going to have any treasure worth mentioning to a party of Adventurers above level 1.
I spent many hours in World Of Warcraft fishing. I wanted a special pet. In D&D you can't summon a pet back with a click if it dies. I could also use the fish for Cooking, and that gave me stat buffs. I note that in WoW it took a single click to catch a fish. Finding schools of special fish was trivial, and the most elaborate fishing contest got you no material award. It was an Achievement. You got a title. In D&D, who is going to care? You want a title just take it, either you've already got one from your background, or you can say you did anyway and nobody is likely to try and check.
You said your players were mid-adventure. Are they really so burned out that they want to spend hours doing something that effectively can be done with a Survival skill check? There is no "trivial" Difficulty Class, Easy is DC 5. If they are, I'd really suggest skipping the game session entirely. Whatever it is that's so wrong, they have got to need a break.
<Insert clever signature here>
Your thoughts are so basic. An anecdotal tale from Warcraft, while bashing someone's ideas in a game about imagination and creativity? You pop off with basic handbook references as if 30+ years of modules and world-building weren't a thing. Please continue to showcase your vast knowledge of only prebuild 5E module books you barely glanced at second-hand from a friend you had DM the three and a half mediocre seasons you played after watching a Matt Mercer video.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/go-fish-d-d5e-30405653?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copy_to_clipboard&utm_campaign=postshare
With comments like this, no wonder 5E supplements were so slow to come out.
This seems much too complex for what it is, all you really need is at most 3 survival checks. I would have it as the first one being a Wisdom (Survival) to see how well the character knows where to fish, has enough patience, and the know-how. Then a Dexterity (Survival) to see how well the character can handle the rod or net that's being used to try and catch the fish. and finally, a Strength (Survival) check to see if they can reel in the fish before it gets away.
To successfully catch enough fish for the party it could be something along the lines of needing 2 successes on the 3 rolls, and if it's 3 successes then you could roll on another table if there is anything else interesting.
You could very easily replace some of the stats with others if the players describe how they go about and catch the fish, for example, I could allow an intelligence check for a character that might know where the water currents are going to see where they might find a bigger concentration of fish.
get them to catch such a strong fish that it pulls them in.
it will help with immersion.