So we're a couple of sessions into my friends new campaign. He's running his campaign alongside my own, rotating each week which campaign we're playing.
From playing mine alongside he's dabbling with an idea I tend to use where I give my players have one 'ultimate' unique homebrew feature, or adjust a homebrew they come to me with to make it more specific to the campaign/their character. My campaign setting is homebrew anyway so we're not too hung up on whether or not "does this make sense for a paladin?", they're just fun bits of flavour to really make their characters unique.
Examples from my current campaign include:
A Warlock who can temporarily allow his patron to take over his body (I also give him control of his patron in this time) giving him max stats, double health, advantage on every roll, access to all warlock spells and unlimited spell slots. As a trade off it can only be used once every in game month and he permanently loses 1 constitution (which obviously gives its own little list of drawbacks). It's a unique "get out of jail free" card that's also a bit of fun.
A character whos background is that they're interested in researching and writing about dragons. I did a few little solo sessions with them on a mini campaign, gave them a 'unique' dragon hatchling (so not a canonical type of dragon). Over time I'll let it level up, give options on skills or spells it can learn and ultimately let them turn it into what will become a major character in the plot, so its a major plot element (they don't know that) I'm letting the player themselve create over time as well as a unique companion. It'll be difficult to look after as an infant and an inconsistently present ally once I retake control of it later on.
A Chronomancer (homebrew class, obviously) that is also secretly working for one of the antagonists. It was already a homebrew class to begin with, but I had a look at it, took some inspiration from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (he loves that) and decided that if he dies of anything other than natural causes, time reverts back 1 hour and we continue playing the campaign from wherever they would have been 1 hour ago, the only people knowing time has reversed being the players (but they don't know why, unless they work it out or he tells them). This is obviously intended to make him a difficult encounter if/when it comes out he's a villain and the party (presumably) try to get rid of him. He excited for that encounter, so I assume he'll make it happen if they don't.
With the examples in mind for what we're okay with, my character for his campaign is an elderly human artificer who "back in the day" was a heroic well loved adventurer and the prime example of a perfect man. He now suffers from 20 movement speed, has to roll to stay awake after 9pm and has disadvantage to acrobatics and athletics. He's an ageing hero who wants nothing more than to regain the glory from his youth. As a tradeoff he gets advantage when telling people about his glory days when he was better known as 'Ace' Copplesworth.
My idea given the aritificer specialisation in alchemy, I thought maybe he could be on the verge of having a potion that will make him youthful again but he hasn't quite perfected it, so it's only temporary (somewhere between 1-24 hours). Similar effects to what I let the warlock have, max skills, advantage on all rolls, proficiency in everything, he's aesthetically athletic build, handsome and highly charismatic. Every time he does something "cool" everybody (players and NPC's) have to perform a saving throw, on failure they have to exclaim out loud "what a guy!". For any Red Dwarf fans, there's a reason he was known as Ace in his youth.
The DM loved the idea and proposed that I have to roll for it when I transform with a failure resulting in him instead turning into Dwayne Dibbley (yes, Red Dwarf), which I also thought would be great. I proposed basically the opposite effects; all skills are 8(so -1), proficient in nothing, disadvantage on all rolls, aesthetically the classic 'Bad Luck Brian' nerd. He also added given his campaign setting is centred around dragons that I would be able to take this opportunity each time we defeat something related to a dragon...Which sure, that would limit when I can do it, but I also feel that it's a bit useless at that point, we've already done "the thing" I would probably want to use the ability for, there's no opportunity for Ace to shine or Dwayne to screw up...Plus for what may be a rare occurrence, it would suck to mostly get Dwayne Dibbley rather than a more 'regular' and self controlled event where there's more opportunity to see both.
So we're looking for some sort of 'middle ground' for how I could activate this feature and what limitations should be in place to stop me using it constantly and unsparingly. I feel permanent stat reductions like with the Warlock is too much given I could turn into a useless character, having to defeat a something first or do something fantastic takes away the "last resort" nature of the feature as well as the "pzazz" of the idea. The idea of only being able to carry 1 potion at a time sprang to mind, so maybe a limitation on how the potion is created? Another idea is that when I create the potion the DM rolls a d20 and the number it lands on is the saving throw I have to succeed on so I never know the risk?
Shoot some ideas my way.
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A bit lengthy, but here we go.
So we're a couple of sessions into my friends new campaign. He's running his campaign alongside my own, rotating each week which campaign we're playing.
From playing mine alongside he's dabbling with an idea I tend to use where I give my players have one 'ultimate' unique homebrew feature, or adjust a homebrew they come to me with to make it more specific to the campaign/their character. My campaign setting is homebrew anyway so we're not too hung up on whether or not "does this make sense for a paladin?", they're just fun bits of flavour to really make their characters unique.
Examples from my current campaign include:
With the examples in mind for what we're okay with, my character for his campaign is an elderly human artificer who "back in the day" was a heroic well loved adventurer and the prime example of a perfect man. He now suffers from 20 movement speed, has to roll to stay awake after 9pm and has disadvantage to acrobatics and athletics. He's an ageing hero who wants nothing more than to regain the glory from his youth. As a tradeoff he gets advantage when telling people about his glory days when he was better known as 'Ace' Copplesworth.
My idea given the aritificer specialisation in alchemy, I thought maybe he could be on the verge of having a potion that will make him youthful again but he hasn't quite perfected it, so it's only temporary (somewhere between 1-24 hours). Similar effects to what I let the warlock have, max skills, advantage on all rolls, proficiency in everything, he's aesthetically athletic build, handsome and highly charismatic. Every time he does something "cool" everybody (players and NPC's) have to perform a saving throw, on failure they have to exclaim out loud "what a guy!". For any Red Dwarf fans, there's a reason he was known as Ace in his youth.
The DM loved the idea and proposed that I have to roll for it when I transform with a failure resulting in him instead turning into Dwayne Dibbley (yes, Red Dwarf), which I also thought would be great. I proposed basically the opposite effects; all skills are 8(so -1), proficient in nothing, disadvantage on all rolls, aesthetically the classic 'Bad Luck Brian' nerd. He also added given his campaign setting is centred around dragons that I would be able to take this opportunity each time we defeat something related to a dragon...Which sure, that would limit when I can do it, but I also feel that it's a bit useless at that point, we've already done "the thing" I would probably want to use the ability for, there's no opportunity for Ace to shine or Dwayne to screw up...Plus for what may be a rare occurrence, it would suck to mostly get Dwayne Dibbley rather than a more 'regular' and self controlled event where there's more opportunity to see both.
So we're looking for some sort of 'middle ground' for how I could activate this feature and what limitations should be in place to stop me using it constantly and unsparingly. I feel permanent stat reductions like with the Warlock is too much given I could turn into a useless character, having to defeat a something first or do something fantastic takes away the "last resort" nature of the feature as well as the "pzazz" of the idea. The idea of only being able to carry 1 potion at a time sprang to mind, so maybe a limitation on how the potion is created? Another idea is that when I create the potion the DM rolls a d20 and the number it lands on is the saving throw I have to succeed on so I never know the risk?
Shoot some ideas my way.