I am glad that Jacob is using his platform to talk about what he loves. Also those other Jacob clones were rude by casting invisibility on themselves when Jacob was sweeping his camera and saying that he was alone. They are trying to make Jacob look like a crazy person.
@@XPtoLevel3 Hey, Jacob! Love your content, my guy. Wanted to get your take on a trait that I plugged into a Pathfinder campaign that could probably be adapted to 5E: LEGENDARY CELERITY Whether by powers divine, profane, or otherworldly, [INSERT BOSS NAME HERE] draws from their innermost wells of might to move and act at speeds that defy reason. After determining the starting initiative order for this combat encounter, roll an additional initiative check. This character performs their turn on both of these turns in the initiative. This additional turn in initiative cannot be performed before the initiative determined for this character at the start of the combat encounter. At the start of each subsequent round, reroll the additional initiative check to determine the new order of the second turn for that round.
Conspiracy Theorist. It's very clear to me that the DM is trying to confuse us with his magic and make us believe that all these other people are secretly just one man. Preposterous! Perception Roll (Nat 1, -3 from Abilities, -/+1d4 from ADHD Feat)
Next you are gonna tell me that Eddie Murphy played all the members of his family in The Nutty Professor, minus the kid. Well I am not falling for it. ORRR or or Nikko Ortiz plays Army Guy, Navy Guy, Coast Guard Guy, Marines Guy, Air Force Guy, and Space Force Guy....
Don't be fooled! Jacob has perfected the art of flash cloning and memory transfer; the pan was a red herring designed to make you believe there is only one Jacob. Meanwhile, the Council of Jacob pulls society's strings from the shadows, occasionally stepping into the light to right some egregious wrong, before melting back into the inky blackness.
Oh I can't play for the next 10 minutes? Okay, hey where is your bathroom. I just had some Taco Bell before coming over. Chaotic Evil and cackling towards the bathroom.
I love that dying condition rule. It also encourages that dramatic scene of the villain who thought he took care of the hero, only for the hero to be holding their chest, summon their strength, and grab a gun to finish off the villain before collapsing.
And I think that would make more sense when you are healead in battle. I hate when you fall unconscious, is healed and can instantly do whatever you were doing, and have "know" what happened while you were unconscious.
@@LucasStraub Yeeeep. Back from the dead with 1 HP? Great! I will now unload at my full killing potential, same as usual, just with a higher chance of going down again with zero consequences unless I die die.
I’m not a fan it makes any fight past 5th level just a bunch of gods who don’t need to fear death. Imagine a Druid who is level 7 and is currently at 0hp. With the dying condition they can bonus action healing word themselves using a 1st level slot then wild shape into an owl to fly away. That sounds fun in theory but being at 0hp in 5e isn’t even that bad since they can just be healed. If the party was fighting an adult red dragon and this Druid went down from its breath weapon it no longer feels dangerous just more of a mild inconvenience. This rule will make combat’s favor players even more making the game less of a game and more of a spell slot draining simulator. The ideal strategy with it now is going to 0hp then cast healing word and an attack cantrip. Big spells are literally suboptimal to an aggressive degree so much so anyone who understands how valuable of a resource spell slots are now will limit all the actual cool spells they can cast just to avoid true death.
He makes a joke of it near the end, but honestly he does such a good job portraying other characters and personalities that I forget that they're all just him with different camera angles and hair styles
Every version of D and D and a few other similar games either seems to want to ban psionicists and mystics or not ban them but make them poorly designed and imbalanced (I've seen both ways too strong and too weak, usually too strong). ~ Some other guy, not the same Jacob's friend, but someone else.
Jacob seemed a little TOO eager to get charmed and murder his allies. He's definitely the kind of guy to go full nova when he gets mind controlled and try to kill his party as hard as possible.
@@idiotcube The basic "charmed" condition doesn't do that, but the majority of charm effects against players usually have additional modifiers, ie "On a fail, the creature is charmed. While charmed, they are under the control of this creature" or whatever. While its not the charmed condition itself that's doing it, it is true for most context in which player characters are charmed.
Holding back while dominated and told to fight your previous allies is hella metagaming, and it would really sour the mood (at least at my table). If you would go all out and nova the enemy, then while dominated you better go all out and nova your allies just the same, no preferential treatments for anyone just because you have out-of-game knowledge and allegiances.
@@Orillion123456 There would still be, on a more instinctual level, an idea that the people you are fighting are good guys. Kinda like how people are lenient to their friends even when they know that something they did was bad and they should be reprimanded for that. Why, in fantasy, people are so much more reluctant fighting former allies even when they know that their actions are irredeemable.
In Curse of Strahd, our gnome wizard was at 3 exhaustion for about half the campaign. One hag lived from the mill and did their hag things to us every night. Our DM lined up our tokens and rolled to see who was afflicted every night. Out of about 10-15 nights, our poor gnome wizard was rolled about 70% of the time. It was actually pretty hilarious and fun for all of us to plan around and roleplay with so I do like it as an affliction.
Yeah, a wizard can get away with it. It'll be painful to move half and have crappy saves but it's doable. Someone like a melee oriented fighter though, you're fucked.
Jacob: Personally I’m not a big fan of just making up the health Also Jacob: Gigachad DMs wait until someone just does something cool and then pronounce the monster as dead
@@XPtoLevel3 I've been thinking about it... for the... 10 minutes since I heard it in the video... How about waiting until the boss is under a certain HP threshold, and THEN when someone does something really cool, pronounce it as dead? I had a moment where I could have done this in 2 different groups, and I severely regret not doing it like that...
@@XPtoLevel3 What I do is I basically have a range of "this is the actual HP to chew through" and then past that, the coolest blow (or if it would be a narratively satisfying kill for a certain PC) gets the HDYWTDT
@@JJ24x7 In a way: yes this is cool In another way spiritual weapon has now become sort of a meme within our group because I keep killsniping with it most extreme example was when my buddies 12th level paladin just UNLOADS like 150+ damage into the BBEG, and then next turn my clerics spell does nothing, but my floating trident (which I almost forgot) pokes him for 6 damage and he keels over dead its stupid, yes, but its also hilarious. and since our campaign was kind of silly anyway it seemed to strangely fit
Tbh, this is why I love running life clerics and other support. The ability to go "don't worry about going down, I got you homie, now go up there and tear the BBEG a new one" is the coolest feeling especially when the group shows appreciation for you, just as much as they would a tanking paladin or hard hitting barbarian
I also love playing Life Cleric. Best part about that is the panic that sets in when the BBEG Is actually tactical and focuses you down on the second encounter, then watching the sheer panic set in among the other party as they're no longer invincible.
yeah i've found that people that complain endlessly about getting CC'd are ones that NEVER play with a utility player (like a radiant servant of pelor with all util spells). and then you get magic items to make sure that player can't be stunned/etc
@@Gunbudder That's off base from what they were talking about, you're just putting blame on people for making choices which is the entire point of Jacob's video. The other person was just glad as someone who enjoys playing a healer, that they get recognized for what they provide to the group. You're inverting that, and suggesting that people should play certain characters and use certain abilities whether they want to or not. We all complain at times, especially when we're inconvenienced while trying to have fun, I wouldn't hold it against them unless they were really being unreasonably hysterical about it all.
Maybe for the dying mechanic you go for something like Darkest Dungeon's death's door? You get something like -3 on every roll (also, this retroactively affects your initiative roll), and everytime you take damage you have to roll a d6 and die on a 5 or 6. People can still act and heal themselves if possible, but you can also just keep swinging and hope for the best when everyone is close to death.
Pathfinder 2e has a concept of stun with a number. That number reduces your actions per round. You've inspired me to change "Stunned X" To have a max of 2 per round. We get three actions per round. This means stun will last for longer, but they will never have all their actions taken from them. Thanks!
I like the dying condition, usually in a D&D game you can't have that last moments scene where a character is dying and saying their last words or doing their last act since you just get knocked unconscious before you die.
I like zero is dead and that’s it. But I’m more than willing to let the player narrate last words. Players behave so differently when zero means death.
@@Arnsteel634 Might be best to adjust balance accordingly if zero hp is death cause otherwise people are gonna be dropping left and right from enemy crits at moments that aren't very interesting to die in anyways
@@Arnsteel634 personally I'd reason it's a lot more fun to die at a climactic moment to the main villain than to die through no fault of your own to kobold #6 because they rolled 10 damage with their sling against your 9 hp wizard. given the goal of playing games is having fun, I'd rather leave room for players to be healed later in those circumstances, as is the default in the game. High-threat monsters often even have that zero hp clause built in past a certain CR in a similar fashion to Disintegrate, with the exact intention to ensure when players do die it'll be to big threats rather than to lucky goons.
I've been using a fun effect I call "numbness" in a recent game. Basically, when under this condition, the DM tracks their hit points behind the screen. You know when you are hit, but not how much damage. It was really fun and added a lot of tension to the encounter.
Yeah, that's how _Unknown Armies_ RPG does it: The gamemaster runs everyone's HP, and the rulebook spends time stating the GM should never say "you get hit for [n] damage" but instead to vividly describe the injury. But the authors also encourage the GM to fudge enemy rolls or enemy/player character HP if it makes for a better scene, or allow PCs to survive if it's in the middle of the adventure and it would be a pointless death. Although, I must add, _Unknown Armies_ is an Urban Fantasy Psychological Horror Game, with elaborate yet intuitive rules mechanisms for a sanity/trauma system better than Call of Cthulhu's, and combat _is_ meant to be realistically deadly, as you play mostly-normal humans with limited HP, and modern weapons or even swords can potentially kill someone on first hit... so the system differs massively from D&D in that players are meant to try and _avoid_ combat when possible, and injury penalties apply. The vibe of D&D's heroic High Fantasy combat is very different.
Thanks! The dying condition is precisely what I’ve been waiting for. It’s so much more cinematic and narratively interesting. Unconscious is boring because it skips over that dramatic moment where you are aren’t dead yet. You’re dying but you can still talk and move a little. I think a lot of people would enjoy RPing that scene. “I’ll hold ‘em off here. You go on with out me. Remember me, kid.“
You should check out Gurps! It uses a really cool mechanic for "death saving throws." I will explain in dnd terms: Characters do not immediately fall unconscious upon reaching 0hp, but roll CON checks every turn to see if they fall unconscious. I really love this mechanic because it extends the life of the heros, and gives them those cinematic moments. "As blood pours from his wounds, and his vision begins to close in... just one more attack to kill the witch.. ~attack roll succeeds~ And with his blade plunged through the heart of evil, the warrior finally falls." Yes, this would severely imbalance health pools in dnd, but I'm sure you can figure something out 😉😊
I love how natural it feels to see multiples of you in the video. The editing is so seamless I forget that you're just one person. Keep up the amazing work!
Stun could be broken down to disoriented and actual stun. Where you have to disorient and then go for stun. You could throw in other factors that might allow you to bypass disoriented and go straight into stun, like exhaustion level or already suffering from other debilitations. I also just like hammer and nail combos, where one player hits for a setup and another player drives it home.
I disagree, stunning doesn't destroy choice. It's your choice to fight the enemy, if you do that there's consequences. It's like saying dying gets rid of choice, you shouldn't have run into traffic then, you DID choose death. Also, obviously it's bad, it's not fun, it's a bad feeling. It shouldn't be good. Having a game where only the bad things you WANT to have happen is not truly bad, what kind of game is that? What kind of game would it be if we didn't allow something frusterating to happen? Plus it doesn't make sense, you can be stunned in reality, stunning is an actual mechanic that makes sense so it just doesn't make sense for it to just not be in the game. Also, you CAN get out of it. You can probably have dispel magic or greater restoration but you. Yes your team has to do it but so? Why are we acting like that means it's bad? This game requires teamwork and that's a good thing to have something where your friends NEED to save you. Stun isn’t the only time this happens, should we get rid of that? Should we get rid of falling off a cliff unless you personally have featherfall? Even if you jump off? I think it makes sense to have the ability to make multiple saves for every stun, each time you fail you lose that turn.
@@HelloThere..... well, the beauty of d&d is that you can make your own campaign the way you want if you don't want stun, you can rework it or remove it if you want it, you can keep it the way it is choose whatever gives you the most enjoyment!
@@HelloThere.....So you think it's a good idea for party members, or even entire parties, to just sit out of all combats & confrontations just in case stun might happen, rather than just modifying the rule? Also, if you think everyone actively chooses to die irl (and that accidents or unavoidable things never happen), you're really naive. Or like 8 years old.
Kinda an idea I have that when PCs are charmed against their party, the charm takes underlying issues the character might have with their fellow party members and amplifies them ten fold. Like “You ate the last sweet roll and now I have to kill you!” Or it could even bring up underlying narrative tensions in the party such as maybe a Paladin secretly blames the Rogue for the death of his brother even thought it might not have been that simple. It becomes that simple. Secret resentments boil to the surface with murderous intent
I was thinking of this too. How nice it would be to air that stuff out finally and be all, I was charmed I don't know what you mean... Especially nice to put in the face of a player who pulled a "I'm chaotic neutral it's what I would have done" a little while ago on you. It's not a good Idea mind you, it'll just put logs on that fire, but it's FUUUUNNNN. So screw that guy. he needs his medecine.
20:41 “I’M JUST A GUY!” I was stirred by how honest you were when you said your piece here. And I’m just some stranger who never comments on TH-cam videos as a rule - but I had to drop what I was doing and say something, for once. After all, you’ll never know what a great job you did if people don’t let you know! Dude, you’re so genuine. Your opinion matters to you, it shows, and it’s backed by hours and hours of work. And it’s presented in a way that’s so funny! That meta-humour at the end there came out of nowhere. Your humour has this distinct improv-group feel to it, and I don’t usually smile at my screen but there I was, grinning. And your video’s set??? I wanna play MY campaign in that atmospheric room. The globe, the curtains, the books! I guess I really wanted you to know that your effort and your stress has resulted in real, tangible connections with strangers like me. I was already subscribed, but now I’ve hit the notification bell. Sorry for the long comment. You’re appreciated, so keep doing what you enjoy and keep saying your piece. I speak for the strangers: we love ya, man.
For you Blinded just gives you disadvantage on attack rolls, and it also makes it so you can’t target some people with certain spells, unless you were a wizard I don’t see how that’s that bad.
As a PC, I had a fight recently where I got paralyzed for 1 minute on my first turn but our DM forgot to tell me that I could save at the end of each of my turns. I was paralyzed for 7 rounds before he realized I wasn't making any saves. I had even mentioned to him at one point how I was actually kinda annoyed that I couldn't break out of it and he still didn't realize. To put it in perspective: We had 6 PC's, and it was a big boss fight so turns were extra long for people to decide what they wanted to do. I had to sit there for over an hour just watching my friends play our D&D game without me.
That's fucking awful. Getting paralyzed for an entire combat was the second-to-last drop that made me leave my previous DnD group, and at least we remembered to roll saves. I just kept failing them. (To be clear, my list of gripes was already _extensive_ by that point.) Nothing makes a player stop having fun faster than making them unable to act for no good reason. Like, a single round of stun? Still not great but manageable. Several rounds of being unable to act? No. Fuck that. Never do that to a player. No, not even to control the one problem player. It's just gonna piss them off and escalate matters.
@@Tengila Eh, depends on the party make up. Lesser Restoration is a 2nd Level spell that completely negates Paralysis, but is only on Divine spell lists.
@@slayeroffurries1115 It's actually quite obviously the games fault that it's even an option to "roll badly". Don't get me wrong, variance is fun. Horrible consequences as a result of random chance is not fun (...depending on the players, obviously. No one size fits all.).
Certain conditions like paralysis you can put a limit on. Like if a player fails to break out of it in two turns then they automatically break free of it on the third turn. This also helps prevent monsters from completely stun-locking the party since by the time they get to the third target the first will be back up.
I tend to implement a "taking damage gives you another save" rule for these things, plus allowing other players to attempt to help each other break out of the status effect.
@@solosynapse yeah that usually goes a long way, Tho I often also add a creature specific way to break the effect Either giving the target advantage on the save or ending the effect without needing to succeed a save. Usually this means getting hit with a specific damage type and/or amount, But if casting Vicious Mockery guarantees the fighter to wake up, That might just be worth it.
I had to make a rule like that but for restraining-type things due to a certain player of mine who shall not be named. It works quite well! In my case, due to it being for kind of manual restrain-grapple type things (the player kept trapping people under sheets of various fabrics, but it'd apply to things like holding an oven door closed as well), it's based off of the difference between the perpetrator's and the victim's STR.
I think paralysis and stuff have a good place in a fantasy setting. your rule is interesting because it adds a phase between completely fine and unconscious, wich, to me, seems more realistic but also only shifts the problem. but maybe shifts it enough to be more fun.
@@nicholaspitti8171 maybe have it build up exhaustion levels ? since they already simulate slowed movement and limited mobility? sorta like you failed that saving throw against the basilisk, so now instead of not getting to play the game, you are at a serious disadvantage until next rest. but if you fail again the penalty gets much worse until eventually it kills you
Jacob, this video was absolutely stunning. I'll have to restrain myself from being too optimistic, but I really think that these homebrew rules are a real knockout! This has been a revelation, and I'll be sure to incorporate some of these changes into my games. Thanks a bunch, man!
My house rule about stun and similar abilities is that the enemies and allied NPCs (Aka anything the DM has😂) make the save at the end of their turn. But players make it at the start of their turn. That way it feels rewarding for players who build a character around putting conditions on enemies, but it also doesn’t feel too punishing or boring if an enemy do it to them.
Starfinder has an interesting system where you have something called resolve points which effectively act as your death saving throws. Everyone has a limited number of these per long rest and you can expend them to overcome some status effects like stun. The downside being that if you use them too much and enter a downed state with no resolve points left, you die. It is an interesting system to where the player has a choice of doing something now at the risk of dying later, or play it safe and wait for the status effect to wear off.
The downside to this is that if you don't use your RP during encounters and save them up, PCs are extremely hard to kill. As a GM designing encounters, it's nearly impossible to create resource attrition, and usually if I want to challenge my player in a fight I have to go all out with a deadly encounter. I love the system don't get me wrong.
That sounds dumb. Seems like something you’d either never use cuz you’d be afraid of dying instantly the moment you go down, or something that would fuck you over cuz you never go down so you use all your points, then you end up taking like 1 damage from stepping on a Lego brick and instantly dying
@@jules3484 As a GM, I would create situations where players could expend RP. Like giving the players a choice between becoming exhausted or expending a RP to push through a situation without any penalties. Or giving a player an option to expend an RP to boost an attack kinda like Goku increasing his Kaio Ken to boost his Kamehameha.
I've never played DnD, but I've been a fan of your content for a long time simply because of the passion you put into these videos. This one was especially good, well written, researched, developed, performed, and edited.
I definitely agree that losing agency is the worst thing that can happen to a player When I'm not DMing and get stunned or held, instead of disassociating until my next turn I like to get caught up in everyone else's turn, basically shifting from an actor mindset to an audience mindset
That's cuz you understand that you are not a main character, and that you are a member of a party and not a critical role stan that cries at the first sign of difficulty
@@ShugoAWayAnd you are what? A bitter judgmental ass. Being bitter and judgmental doesn’t make people who don’t act like you think they should any better. Meaning you are stuck. You’ll get worse and more bitter and frustrated, and they’ll not be better or learn anything, and rightfully dislike you more the worse you get.
@@nojusticenetwork9309because they treat the game more like a tv show and not a normal game and in the same way people will play skyrim and try to play d&d like it I imagine critical roll fans try to play like the people from the show. Also you just need to step out of the spotlight and let other players do stuff sometimes.
Had a couple PCs go down for the first time in last week’s session, and one of my players sent me this video in response. I go out of my way not to stun or prevent my players from playing but didn’t know how to handle “going down”. This video really sparks my brain on how to allow them more agency when they’re “down” while still keeping it challenging. Fantastic video!
@@BigDaddyWes Thank god I'll never have the misfortune of being a player for you as a DM. One of the worst takes someone can give in regards to DnD or any game in general.
@@rylace You can't imagine any narrative reason or mechanical reason where it would be good for a player to lose agency? That seems kind of shallow minded.
Had a session recently where I got stunned at the start of combat. I never rolled higher than a 5 to get out of it, and my party had to carry me out as we fled from the battle. I ended up falling asleep afterwards and missed a few important things (sorry DM). Definitely captured the feeling perfectly at the start.
Hey man I wanted to give some feedback and cheer you. I’m 37, I’ve never even played DnD but I’ve been fascinated by all these channels like yours Ginny Colby The Dudes etc etc and two years of hearing about this cool game: meta builds, fun combos, role playing tips and I still don’t even have plans to play any time soon!! (I still don’t know where to start - it still feels complex - I’m still fascinated by all of it!) The enjoyment I get from all of these channels must be directly related to the joy you get from making them so keep going- break that fourth wall and tell us how you feel cause that’s why we follow you) Thank you for all the skits and all the best to you and the fam x
As far as the dying state is concerned, I love this alternative that makes it seem more straining on the characters. It's like they're pushing themselves past their limit to keep fighting with a team. The "stun" condition on the other hand should stay unchanged. I feel like that's why good supporting classes will take certain spells that are meant to counter those effects.
Unless it's the support that gets hit by it. Then you're reliant on hoping you have the right saving throw proficiency to make the save in less than 3 turns.
The “dying” condition is also more cinematic. It emulates what happens in the movies: character on the ground, leaning against a wall, hand over their grievously wounded abdomen, speaking through a wincing grimace, “I don’t think I’m gettin’ outta this one. You go on without me. Don’t worry. Just go. GO!” And then they use their last turn making a tripping attack against the bad guy that’s chasing them, or caving in the roof by casting shatter.
Why not just change the stun condition to you roll a dice save or lose only one turn. And the next time you get stunned you're more immune to it than before. And just give players the option to wear things that resist or immunize them from the stun status while wearing it.
being forced to do absolutely nothing on your turn I imagine sucks what about something like "dazed" instead where you can take actions, but they are distorted in some way like while dazed you can't move in a straight line (have to change direction every 5 feet) and are slower or a "stagger" effect, where if you're hit by a particularly powerful strike, you can choose to move away from the attacker (following through with the recoil) or spend your turn "resisting" in order to stay put.
I love the dying condition rule, I would add that if you recover from the dying condition but then your hit points drop back to 0 again during the encounter you immediately gain 1 point of exhaustion. This means that you can’t just healing word the fighter out of the dying condition over and over again without it taking a toll on their abilities.
@zooker7938it actually doesnt work that well, because then if you are already pretty exhausted from say, frenzy, then it fucks your ability saving throws
At our table, whenever you receive healing while dying, you suffer one level of exhaustion. This means that the party has to make a choice about whether it's better for the downed player to get up and take another level of exhaustion, or to be stabilized and sleep it off. Typically, this means our party hangs out around 0-2 levels of exhaustion, or maybe 3-4 if we're pushing through a serious series of encounters we can't avoid, and it makes everything feel a bit more desperate and gritty.
I actually really like your dying rules, and I will be bringing it up to my players at my next session to see if they want to try it out. I know I have one player at my table who's complained on multiple occasions about stun effects and how they aren't fun for him, so I've been sort of phasing them out of my game already.
I feel this so much. My groups Cleric was fighting a vampire, and first got paralysed by them, failing a wisdom save (DC 18, +8 bonus). Then he got charmed into attacking the party instead. Same save. Three separate casts, three saves with a 50% chance each to succeed, and failed all three. This really sucked for him. In another game, we were fighting a big boss and my Level 13 monk got hit by Power Word Stun. No save, you are stunned. That took me out of the fight for the entire combat.
I think Stuns could be used more cleverly outside of combat, like triggering a trap in a puzzle, or drinking a random potion a stranger gave you. But in combat, it's never fun.
Thank you for all the content you make. Being a creator is a difficult job, and it can be easy to forget as a viewer how stressful that can be. Thank you for always providing me with a chuckle and a smile!
It can be a thankless job being the person working behind the curtain, but at the same time it's a privilege to be in that position. I appreciate your videos and I have a feeling they'll lead to something very interesting in your future. Keep it up man. You're doing great!
I think another good alternative is stuff like slow and tasha's mind whip. Similar effects that can limit the amount the players can do in the turn, while still letting them make choices
Plus if you limit what they can do without taking their turn away they can get creative and come up with something clever. Which is just a joy to watch.
I really like your Dying Condition homebrew! I've heard a lot of homebrew rules for Dying to try to effectively do the same thing, but I feel like yours is actually balanced and engaging, while keeping Dying as a threatening effect.
I don't know what I felt the moment Jacob said "The Wizard casts Color Spray, everybody roll saves" because Color Spray is not a save spell you roll 6d10 and starting from the lowest hit point creature the number of HP they have is subtracted from the total rolled and so long as the total doesn't reach zero that creature is blinded. But I definitely did not feel happy.
I really appreciate each of your videos! Thank you for putting in so much hard work and effort into them. They are all humorous and encourage people to think critically about game rules and mechanics in varying degrees of subtlety.
I'm a huge fan of the Death's Door ruleset. It's so much fun and gives the player control of their fate. Will they risk it all to try and save their team/turn the fight, or crawl away? etc.
I’m the cases where it’s caused by a spell or someone in the party can remove the condition, I think it builds good teamwork or shows who may or may not care for your character (as their characters). If nobody has such abilities, it TH-cam 🏀
I came to a similar conclusion myself over the year Ive been DMing.I only use stun/paralyze on VERY specific and very dangerous monsters because it's so annoying, and I've found that when it is that rare the players do stay engaged because they start to panic in fear. I think them not being desensitized to it helps as well. Love the idea of the dying condition
When I played a LARP (35+ years of play!) a common "rule" regardless of what version of rules the LARP was up to was that no spell or monster effect could take a player out of play involuntarily for more than 10 minutes. This applied to things like paralyze, sleep, hold person, and poisons that temporarily took away your ability to move or just use skills. resurrected - There were rules where you could OPT to be out of play for up to an hour, but the ten-minute maximum was otherwise a hard rule. Some examples would be being willing to contest a formal ritual and being "in jail" for a minor offense. And if you chose to commit the crime that led to you being jailed, you could opt to go play a monster for that jail time. - The point, I guess, was that the rules were designed to never take away player agency for a long period of time.
Yeah in our campaign we are currently going up against some mind flayers which of course have their stun, grapple, big damage combo. Our DM also reached the conclusion that stun is too long so they have just changed it to a 1 turn stun.
Certain monsters revolve around their incapacitation ability. I often play Ghouls (who paralyze) this way. The players knows as soon as they succeed a save what it was for. And when a ghoul paralyzes someone, they immediately stop fighting and drag the paralyzed player away if they can. The implication is to eat them. Makes them slightly less of a threat while giving the party a clear goal. Doesn't stop the paralyzed player that's repeatedly failing saves something to do, which is still the issue. But at least it's very few monsters that have it.
yeah feels like exhaustion is sorta underused becuase dms give their players frequent rests and players are like SUPER carefull about not getting it applied becuase the peneltys are huge
It is not a tradeoff, sleeping off a level of exaustion is not hard, but hos system makes any party with a cleric literally immortal, because befor you could target the cleric so they would need protection, because if they go down your support is down so you cant leave your cleric to 1v3. With this idea? Cleric can heal themselves while being at 0 hp, it removes risk from the party because now no matter what their cleric literally cant die while he has spellslots.
A very light and simple version of Jacob's rules that I've run for a while was just to have each failed death save grant one level of exhaustion. This limits them to only a couple near-death bounces at 0hp. But, as a tradeoff, they don't go unconscious at 0hp unless they have that 5th level of exhaustion.
@Graine I don't know. You're right it could be min maxed abhorrently, it only takes 6 levels of exhaust to die, at 2 your speed is halfed. And for the adverage party dungeon crawling having half speed or half ability checks could certainly hurt, you only get 1 level back so unless they bunker for weeks on a dungeon it can slap a little, and mostly I just never interact with exaust so it'd be nice to goof around with it. (Plus the circles I play in don't really worry about "having supports" because they thought having 5 sentient rock barbarians would be a funny party.)
As a student of entertainment design and film making I always appreciate the pulling back of the curtain and I appreciate on a deeper level the explosive release of the "I AM ONE PERSON DOING THE JOB OF A PRODUCTION TEAM!" energy because it's real, it's grounding and in a way it's therapeutic for both you and for your viewers. Plus it's funny to watch the producer, writer and primary actor break the fourth wall with a twinge of unhinged, tongue in cheek humor every once and again. I always appreciate your videos and as a prospective creator who has yet to dive headlong into TH-cam video production as a serious means of financial existence I look at your videos as a form of inspiration, soooo keep on being you my man 🫡 My wizard hat's off to you.🧙🏻♂️
Boss monsters with multiple initiatives and different available abilities depending on which initiative they're currently on is actually a really engaging way to play. Speaking as both a long term player and DM of that style of combat
@@snowys4168it gets complex but it makes balancing "" ganks "" (ie more PCs than boss and add enemies) easier especially when its as simple as "attack phase, movement phase, ability phase"
Jacob went super meta. Can't believe he told the clones to leave the room when he "revealed" the empty room 😅 Though serious, from one Jacob to another, you are super fun!
Our table is trying out PF2E and this reminds me a lot of that system. You get three actions that you can spend in a variety of different ways, and conditions like slowed don't take away your entire turn, they take away a certain amount of possible actions. Conditions like paralyzed and incapacitated still exist, but they feel more rare.
they also usually come with the incapacitation trait, which means only something above your level (i.e. bosses or at least minibosses) actually have a decent chance of inflicting it
They're more rare than in 5e because of the amount of debuff choices available to pf2e as a system. People like to call pf2e overly complex, but additional options like these help players feel less useless at times.
I like the "fighting in spirit" rule from 4e, have the downed player give an advantage to one player per round like the help action, and maybe a reaction to impose disadvantage to one enemy attack
@@ziwuri as they said. advantages don't stack. if half the party are down, the other other half gain ADVANTAGE. not automatic succeed power, just the basic thing used to give people a better chance. if the rogue's attacking from the back, they'd have advantage anyways. if you're fighting on difficult terrain the paladin may already be rolling with disadvantage, forcing the dying to choose whether they give their aid to that person once cancelling it out or twice but maybe now failing to provide aid to someone else. the only thing I'm a little unsure about is how it makes sense, narratively, but mechanically, it's absolutely sweet.
We're always played that Charm isn't "Attack your friends" so much as "That enemy is now your friend. You don't understand why all your friends are fighting, and you need to put a stop to that." Also, one very simple homebrew we've used for stun/daze that sort of works is "When you're stunned at the beginning of your turn, you spend your turn to re-roll your initiative, then you are no longer stunned." A sudden change to the initiative order often kept things fresh in and of itself. You could also use those aforementioned exhaustion levels to allow players the option to 'buy' their way out of stun/daze/etc by taking exhaustion if they fail their saves.
rerolling initiative in general is an extremely interesting concept, i might not implement it how you did but i’m definitely using that! maybe an optional class feature for martials or something, or if an a attack meets a certain damage threshold you take a -2 to initiative to represent the fact that injury’s slow you down
We have a character in our campaign who is under the control of his warlock patron. He has a special ability to enter an “abyssal rage” in which he draws energy from the abyss (his patrons domain) to enter a rage state where 2d6 is added to each attack. However, when he enters the rage, he makes a wisdom saving throw, and if failed, the abyssal energy overcomes him and he attacks everything in sight. It’s a great way to introduce a new issue in a fight.
Or any utility at all, sorcerers, clerics, wizards, druids, bards, all have utility to help this exact problem, and seems really overlooked. Hell, some races get adv on these conditions
@@luigifan4585 the world in which the rogue doesn't just try to do every saving throw. Where your party members can understand threats and has ramifications for not evaluating things properly. Like a strategy/role-playing game?
I made an adaptation to the rules you made up for the death condition specifically with my campaign I run in mind figured I'd put then here for everyone if they feel like using them and also so Jacob can check them out if he sees this. (also yes I roll for death saves for my players in my game, if you do want to use these rules I don't intend people to do it, just go for what you would normally do) Death Condition When your hitpoints are equal to 0, you fall prone and gain this condition. At the start of your turn, THE DM rolls a Death save for the PC. (like normal) On your turn, you can only use your Action, Bonus Action or move Action. Once you use one of these actions, your turn ends. If you use your action, you gain 3 levels of exhaustion. If you use your bonus action, you gain 1 level of exhaustion. While you have this condition you cannot use any of your actions to stand up from being prone. If you use your reaction while you are dying, you gain 1 level of exhaustion Like being Unconscious and due to being prone -you still automatically fail strength and dex saves - you have disadvantage on attack rolls - An attack roll against you has advantage if the attacker is within 5 feet of you. Otherwise, the attack roll has disadvantage. -Any attack that hits you is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature
I'm relatively new to your channel, and D&D in general. I really appreciate your videos and content. Thankyou for uploads and the countless hours of effort for each upload.
Watching your channel has been a really nice way to learn about D&D as a newbie to the TTRPG scene, it's nice having a well of knowledge to better understand how certain things work or common misconceptions, or even drawing inspiration from videos like this that can either be suggested to DMs or to try out if I ever give a shot at DMing, while it's all done from the lens of a hilariously well-done skit that helps me to retain the information in tandem with trying to read up on the books and manuals. Your content alone has been pretty much keeping my interest in D&D sparked for months on end. Thank you Jacob, for all the effort you put behind what you do. :)
One thing I used to do is have an npc tag along with the party, and if a player ever got "stunned", I let them control the npc instead. But I really like the concept of the dying condition instead, and it's inspired me to start homebrewing my own solutions.
I'm a little of two minds on this one. I do like the idea of the dying condition and desperation maneuvers but I also see stun/incapacitated/charmed/etc. as a point that engages the OTHER players into interestingly dire situations that necessitate that players assist eachother. Many a player (myself included) can build a highly efficient damage output machine of a character for combat and I do think it is good to have them in situations where they need to assist their allies and make a team feel more like a "hand", as opposed to "3-5 fingers." as for rules on these "stuns" I think the team dynamic is worth considering: like how able are party members to help each other? how many players can be incapacitated by the stun (the more people in the stun the more unfair it is). as well as thought put into encounter designs to avoid knocking the same player unconscious every turn.
the problem is that you can put the players into dire situations that necessitate players assisting each other without excluding one or more of them from that situation, which is what stuns do. You put a player in time out so that the other players get a challenge, which may be fun for the other players, but the one in time out may as well just go do something else until they are allowed to play the game again.
Remember that your death saves are still normal. If you're unlucky you can still die in two or three turns, and if you have no healing options you can use on yourself, well, you better hope a teammate comes to the rescue!
I personally found content creation so hard when I tried it because I wasn't actually talking to anybody! Its like talking to a hypothetical future person you can't see the reaction of it is nerve wracking! Twitch streams sound like a good way to connect and see that your audience really is real and really does like what you do! Thanks for doing what you do!
Thank you for the video. It was very thought provoking, and I really like the dying condition rather than the unconscious condition. Also, thank you for keeping it real.
This exact problem you're describing, is exactly what has been plaguing me as a DM for as long as I can remember. And this is an excellent solution that I am absolutely going to use from now on. Thank you Jacob, this is going to drastically improve the game for my players.
I was thinking about "stun" in the tactical board game Gloomhaven, and why that "sucks" but isn't "boring" like in dnd, and your analysis of choice really nails it down. In Gloomhaven, you play two cards a turn (this is slightly reductive, but whatever) and those cards are discarded. WHEN YOU ARE STUNNED this does not change that. You still have to play two cards, they have no effect, though, and are discarded. So the stun leads to an interesting gameplay moment where you think about your choice "what two cards will I not need?" Also stun lasts exactly 1 turn unless SUPREMELY unlucky, and even with all of that, it is STILL the rarest effect for enemies to have.
I honestly appreciated you being real talking about the channel & what all you do. I really enjoy your videos, you're one of my most watched dnd channels :)
I like the ability to crawl or act in exchange for exhaustion... feels like someone could really go out in a blaze of glory if they chose rather than "I made your number 0 now so lay down"
I'm really glad you enjoy making videos, and I hope you keep enjoying it. I love your opinions. You're smart, and you care about your players. Your videos are fun and good, and I hope you keep doing them.
I thought the point of those conditions was to provide agency for the other players to react to the problem of one of them being unable to do anything. It is about the choices of everybody else, and it challenges the party to work without a key member.
I'm glad you mentioned the OneD&D exhaustion rules. I feel like a lot of the community glossed over them but I started using them immediately and love it. As a DM I'm not afraid to give out exhaustion and get the players in a death spiral, and as a player it feels fair, and I know what I'm getting into. Additionally using it to continue playing while dying is a really cool way to make hitting 0 engaging while still having consequences.
you could modify the paralyzed condition in a similar way to the dying condition you described; give the players an option to make a highish DC save to see if their character can make a single action that only affects themselves. For example, a character might try to push through the paralysis to drink a potion, or a wizard might decide to set off a spell on themselves as a last ditch effort to hinder whatever paralyzed them. Similarly to the dying condition, you could do the same exhaustion point penalty if they try to make the save.
or you can just take exhaustion points equal to the spells level to break a stun or charm effect. that way you still get to have player agency but at a steep price.
Stunned Alternative: What if instead of being stunned, the enemy creature gets another immediate action/turn? The flavor being that they are still stopped and left open to an attack. But this way, things keep going at a steady pace.
I feel like something like a Darkest Dungeon "Death's Door" mechanic might also work. Like, you hit 0 hp and then the next hit you take has a chance of killing you, and clearing 0 HP gives you a debuff. You could even make it like the Butcher's Circus version and have the chance get higher every time you get hit.
17:20 Don't make all your monsters immune to stun. A key feature of the Monk class is stunning strike. People don't play Monks enough as it is, don't punish your players for taking this class.
I agree with stunning strike hate, but for different reasons. Devs overavlue how powerful it is in practice, which means that stunning strike contributes huge part of monk's power budget despite not being that big of a deal in practice. Which in turn means that... monks aren't allowed to be powerful because stunning strike is there.
you mentioned it super offhandedly, but the idea of the player getting to play the npc’s turn if they’re stunned is really cool. alternatively, you could make your monster only use a stunning attack on the npc just makes me think if the players are about to embark on a quest to kill a monster that can stun, you could try to plan ahead and find an npc to go with them
Jacob if I did half good as you did in these videos talking to yourself, I'd be such a better DM. You are amazing and seeing the upload of your new sketches is one of my favorite things to look forward to each week. Thanks again for putting out so much great content. you give me inspiration.
Tbh i don't mind stun-like conditions, I'm alright with waiting an extra 5 minutes, but that might just be because I play more casually and we tend to make more out-of-character jokes and such in my games
I am glad that Jacob is using his platform to talk about what he loves.
Also those other Jacob clones were rude by casting invisibility on themselves when Jacob was sweeping his camera and saying that he was alone. They are trying to make Jacob look like a crazy person.
Jacob gaslighting Jacob
Damn I really thought I fooled you
@@funkymunky7935 Trust nobody, not even yourself
The were just sating behind him.
Without a 360 camera view, we may never know!
@@XPtoLevel3 Hey, Jacob! Love your content, my guy. Wanted to get your take on a trait that I plugged into a Pathfinder campaign that could probably be adapted to 5E:
LEGENDARY CELERITY
Whether by powers divine, profane, or otherworldly, [INSERT BOSS NAME HERE] draws from their innermost wells of might to move and act at speeds that defy reason. After determining the starting initiative order for this combat encounter, roll an additional initiative check. This character performs their turn on both of these turns in the initiative. This additional turn in initiative cannot be performed before the initiative determined for this character at the start of the combat encounter. At the start of each subsequent round, reroll the additional initiative check to determine the new order of the second turn for that round.
I’m kinda surprised how much my immersion was shattered when Jacob showed us that there aren’t duplicates of himself that he plays dnd with
Conspiracy Theorist. It's very clear to me that the DM is trying to confuse us with his magic and make us believe that all these other people are secretly just one man. Preposterous!
Perception Roll (Nat 1, -3 from Abilities, -/+1d4 from ADHD Feat)
Next you are gonna tell me that Eddie Murphy played all the members of his family in The Nutty Professor, minus the kid. Well I am not falling for it.
ORRR or or Nikko Ortiz plays Army Guy, Navy Guy, Coast Guard Guy, Marines Guy, Air Force Guy, and Space Force Guy....
I was hoping there'd be a potted plant in one chair and maybe a mop in the other with his characters faces on.
CalebCity levels of acting alone with yourself
Don't be fooled! Jacob has perfected the art of flash cloning and memory transfer; the pan was a red herring designed to make you believe there is only one Jacob.
Meanwhile, the Council of Jacob pulls society's strings from the shadows, occasionally stepping into the light to right some egregious wrong, before melting back into the inky blackness.
Advantage to getting stunned:
Get snacks and eat.
Everyone else too busy to get snacks. Get all the snacks
This is the acceptable way to win at dnd
Oh I can't play for the next 10 minutes?
Okay, hey where is your bathroom. I just had some Taco Bell before coming over.
Chaotic Evil and cackling towards the bathroom.
@Kebutor Yeah, most of the time that's a lot longer than 10 mins in a lot of situations lol
The table I played at years ago just designated you “snack bitch” and you had to get everyone snacks 😂😂😂
I love that dying condition rule. It also encourages that dramatic scene of the villain who thought he took care of the hero, only for the hero to be holding their chest, summon their strength, and grab a gun to finish off the villain before collapsing.
Cripes, man. Sometimes I really do forget that you aren't a family of quintuplets. Your storytelling is a powerful charm indeed.
I really like the dying condition. It narratively makes more sense than going unconscious. It lets you role play scenes like borrimier’s death
I agree, it would allow you to make a gambit at finishing off the enemy but getting wrecked in the process.
And I think that would make more sense when you are healead in battle. I hate when you fall unconscious, is healed and can instantly do whatever you were doing, and have "know" what happened while you were unconscious.
@@LucasStraub Yeeeep. Back from the dead with 1 HP? Great! I will now unload at my full killing potential, same as usual, just with a higher chance of going down again with zero consequences unless I die die.
I’m not a fan it makes any fight past 5th level just a bunch of gods who don’t need to fear death. Imagine a Druid who is level 7 and is currently at 0hp. With the dying condition they can bonus action healing word themselves using a 1st level slot then wild shape into an owl to fly away.
That sounds fun in theory but being at 0hp in 5e isn’t even that bad since they can just be healed. If the party was fighting an adult red dragon and this Druid went down from its breath weapon it no longer feels dangerous just more of a mild inconvenience. This rule will make combat’s favor players even more making the game less of a game and more of a spell slot draining simulator. The ideal strategy with it now is going to 0hp then cast healing word and an attack cantrip. Big spells are literally suboptimal to an aggressive degree so much so anyone who understands how valuable of a resource spell slots are now will limit all the actual cool spells they can cast just to avoid true death.
Yeah, Healing Word is dumb!
Stun is one of those "fun when I use it" "not fun used against me"
"Stop healing yourself!"
I agree that its dumb, but its also big part of Monks support role.
It's fine against npcs players should have options to still do things at some cost
It seems like any adversity in the game is horrible design to him.
i look at it more as a plot tool honestly you stun the party then scram but even then it can be meh
Wait... there's only one of him?
He makes a joke of it near the end, but honestly he does such a good job portraying other characters and personalities that I forget that they're all just him with different camera angles and hair styles
I know what you mean, gives me the same feeling as Seth
@@chiefnewo Seth skorkowsky? The call of Cthulhu guy?
💯💯💯
it kind of makes my brain confused when he moves the camara and the clone is not there
To be fair, he makes a living on D&D and DMs regularly. That's kind of the skill he spends the most time honing. :)
"Ya know what rule grinds my gears? No mystics."
- Jacob's friend
Every version of D and D and a few other similar games either seems to want to ban psionicists and mystics or not ban them but make them poorly designed and imbalanced (I've seen both ways too strong and too weak, usually too strong). ~ Some other guy, not the same Jacob's friend, but someone else.
@@Tletna modernity 😔
@@Tletna Mystics are literally just weaker wizard, you're just a brainlet that doesn't understand game design
Yeah imma teleport like 4 miles away, yall can handle this dragon right?
@@benfurnish2052 says the wizard casting teleport
Jacob seemed a little TOO eager to get charmed and murder his allies. He's definitely the kind of guy to go full nova when he gets mind controlled and try to kill his party as hard as possible.
So eager to murder his allies that he decided to ignore what charmed actually does.
@@idiotcube The basic "charmed" condition doesn't do that, but the majority of charm effects against players usually have additional modifiers, ie "On a fail, the creature is charmed. While charmed, they are under the control of this creature" or whatever. While its not the charmed condition itself that's doing it, it is true for most context in which player characters are charmed.
Holding back while dominated and told to fight your previous allies is hella metagaming, and it would really sour the mood (at least at my table).
If you would go all out and nova the enemy, then while dominated you better go all out and nova your allies just the same, no preferential treatments for anyone just because you have out-of-game knowledge and allegiances.
@@Orillion123456 There would still be, on a more instinctual level, an idea that the people you are fighting are good guys. Kinda like how people are lenient to their friends even when they know that something they did was bad and they should be reprimanded for that. Why, in fantasy, people are so much more reluctant fighting former allies even when they know that their actions are irredeemable.
NO… 👀
When you are stunned, Dungeons and Dragons play you.
In Curse of Strahd, our gnome wizard was at 3 exhaustion for about half the campaign. One hag lived from the mill and did their hag things to us every night. Our DM lined up our tokens and rolled to see who was afflicted every night. Out of about 10-15 nights, our poor gnome wizard was rolled about 70% of the time. It was actually pretty hilarious and fun for all of us to plan around and roleplay with so I do like it as an affliction.
Yeah, a wizard can get away with it. It'll be painful to move half and have crappy saves but it's doable. Someone like a melee oriented fighter though, you're fucked.
Jacob: Personally I’m not a big fan of just making up the health
Also Jacob: Gigachad DMs wait until someone just does something cool and then pronounce the monster as dead
There’s a difference!
@@XPtoLevel3 I've been thinking about it... for the... 10 minutes since I heard it in the video... How about waiting until the boss is under a certain HP threshold, and THEN when someone does something really cool, pronounce it as dead? I had a moment where I could have done this in 2 different groups, and I severely regret not doing it like that...
@@XPtoLevel3 What I do is I basically have a range of "this is the actual HP to chew through" and then past that, the coolest blow (or if it would be a narratively satisfying kill for a certain PC) gets the HDYWTDT
There's a difference in these things
@@JJ24x7 In a way: yes this is cool
In another way spiritual weapon has now become sort of a meme within our group because I keep killsniping with it
most extreme example was when my buddies 12th level paladin just UNLOADS like 150+ damage into the BBEG, and then next turn my clerics spell does nothing, but my floating trident (which I almost forgot) pokes him for 6 damage and he keels over dead
its stupid, yes, but its also hilarious. and since our campaign was kind of silly anyway it seemed to strangely fit
Tbh, this is why I love running life clerics and other support. The ability to go "don't worry about going down, I got you homie, now go up there and tear the BBEG a new one" is the coolest feeling especially when the group shows appreciation for you, just as much as they would a tanking paladin or hard hitting barbarian
I also love playing Life Cleric. Best part about that is the panic that sets in when the BBEG Is actually tactical and focuses you down on the second encounter, then watching the sheer panic set in among the other party as they're no longer invincible.
yeah i've found that people that complain endlessly about getting CC'd are ones that NEVER play with a utility player (like a radiant servant of pelor with all util spells). and then you get magic items to make sure that player can't be stunned/etc
@@Gunbudder That's off base from what they were talking about, you're just putting blame on people for making choices which is the entire point of Jacob's video. The other person was just glad as someone who enjoys playing a healer, that they get recognized for what they provide to the group.
You're inverting that, and suggesting that people should play certain characters and use certain abilities whether they want to or not. We all complain at times, especially when we're inconvenienced while trying to have fun, I wouldn't hold it against them unless they were really being unreasonably hysterical about it all.
Same, but Grave Cleric... because I'm waiting for people to nat 1 death saves and be on 0.
Maybe for the dying mechanic you go for something like Darkest Dungeon's death's door? You get something like -3 on every roll (also, this retroactively affects your initiative roll), and everytime you take damage you have to roll a d6 and die on a 5 or 6. People can still act and heal themselves if possible, but you can also just keep swinging and hope for the best when everyone is close to death.
This
Prodigious size does not offer any intrinsic merit… unless inordinate exsanguination be considered a virtue.
there is a darkest dungeon boardgame. which handles death door a little bit better for tabletop then a pc game
Survival is a tenuous proposition in this sprawling tomb
Pathfinder 2e has a concept of stun with a number. That number reduces your actions per round. You've inspired me to change "Stunned X" To have a max of 2 per round. We get three actions per round. This means stun will last for longer, but they will never have all their actions taken from them. Thanks!
I like the dying condition, usually in a D&D game you can't have that last moments scene where a character is dying and saying their last words or doing their last act since you just get knocked unconscious before you die.
That's my biggest pet peeve.
I like zero is dead and that’s it. But I’m more than willing to let the player narrate last words. Players behave so differently when zero means death.
@@Arnsteel634 Might be best to adjust balance accordingly if zero hp is death cause otherwise people are gonna be dropping left and right from enemy crits at moments that aren't very interesting to die in anyways
@@elzed2667 death has nothing to do with being interesting
@@Arnsteel634 personally I'd reason it's a lot more fun to die at a climactic moment to the main villain than to die through no fault of your own to kobold #6 because they rolled 10 damage with their sling against your 9 hp wizard. given the goal of playing games is having fun, I'd rather leave room for players to be healed later in those circumstances, as is the default in the game. High-threat monsters often even have that zero hp clause built in past a certain CR in a similar fashion to Disintegrate, with the exact intention to ensure when players do die it'll be to big threats rather than to lucky goons.
I've been using a fun effect I call "numbness" in a recent game. Basically, when under this condition, the DM tracks their hit points behind the screen. You know when you are hit, but not how much damage. It was really fun and added a lot of tension to the encounter.
What if they were okay with it? Would that be.. Comfortably Numb?
Yeah, that's how _Unknown Armies_ RPG does it: The gamemaster runs everyone's HP, and the rulebook spends time stating the GM should never say "you get hit for [n] damage" but instead to vividly describe the injury. But the authors also encourage the GM to fudge enemy rolls or enemy/player character HP if it makes for a better scene, or allow PCs to survive if it's in the middle of the adventure and it would be a pointless death. Although, I must add, _Unknown Armies_ is an Urban Fantasy Psychological Horror Game, with elaborate yet intuitive rules mechanisms for a sanity/trauma system better than Call of Cthulhu's, and combat _is_ meant to be realistically deadly, as you play mostly-normal humans with limited HP, and modern weapons or even swords can potentially kill someone on first hit... so the system differs massively from D&D in that players are meant to try and _avoid_ combat when possible, and injury penalties apply. The vibe of D&D's heroic High Fantasy combat is very different.
@@10GaugeManiacperfect
@@10GaugeManiac you just gave me Brain Damage
That's such a great idea!
Charmed: Here's an interesting roleplay prompt.
Stunned: The role playing equivalent of having the controller slapped out of your hands.
Thanks! The dying condition is precisely what I’ve been waiting for. It’s so much more cinematic and narratively interesting. Unconscious is boring because it skips over that dramatic moment where you are aren’t dead yet. You’re dying but you can still talk and move a little. I think a lot of people would enjoy RPing that scene. “I’ll hold ‘em off here. You go on with out me. Remember me, kid.“
You should check out Gurps! It uses a really cool mechanic for "death saving throws."
I will explain in dnd terms:
Characters do not immediately fall unconscious upon reaching 0hp, but roll CON checks every turn to see if they fall unconscious.
I really love this mechanic because it extends the life of the heros, and gives them those cinematic moments.
"As blood pours from his wounds, and his vision begins to close in... just one more attack to kill the witch.. ~attack roll succeeds~ And with his blade plunged through the heart of evil, the warrior finally falls."
Yes, this would severely imbalance health pools in dnd, but I'm sure you can figure something out 😉😊
it works, it combines the 5e fatigue mechanics with 3e negative hit points, i like it, I'm stealing it
You can totally do this though? What is stopping you from roleplaying after dropping to 0?
I love how natural it feels to see multiples of you in the video. The editing is so seamless I forget that you're just one person. Keep up the amazing work!
The rule that grinds *my* gears is how murder is illegal
Oh wait the video is about dnd
Haha....
Same.
Not if you murder EVERYONE!
We’re on such a similar wavelength, me too!!!
Stun could be broken down to disoriented and actual stun. Where you have to disorient and then go for stun. You could throw in other factors that might allow you to bypass disoriented and go straight into stun, like exhaustion level or already suffering from other debilitations. I also just like hammer and nail combos, where one player hits for a setup and another player drives it home.
That's a great idea! I know this is 4 months old but just know that I am definitely adding this to my set of homebrew rules.
I disagree, stunning doesn't destroy choice. It's your choice to fight the enemy, if you do that there's consequences. It's like saying dying gets rid of choice, you shouldn't have run into traffic then, you DID choose death.
Also, obviously it's bad, it's not fun, it's a bad feeling. It shouldn't be good. Having a game where only the bad things you WANT to have happen is not truly bad, what kind of game is that? What kind of game would it be if we didn't allow something frusterating to happen? Plus it doesn't make sense, you can be stunned in reality, stunning is an actual mechanic that makes sense so it just doesn't make sense for it to just not be in the game.
Also, you CAN get out of it. You can probably have dispel magic or greater restoration but you. Yes your team has to do it but so? Why are we acting like that means it's bad? This game requires teamwork and that's a good thing to have something where your friends NEED to save you. Stun isn’t the only time this happens, should we get rid of that? Should we get rid of falling off a cliff unless you personally have featherfall? Even if you jump off?
I think it makes sense to have the ability to make multiple saves for every stun, each time you fail you lose that turn.
@@HelloThere..... well, the beauty of d&d is that you can make your own campaign the way you want
if you don't want stun, you can rework it or remove it
if you want it, you can keep it the way it is
choose whatever gives you the most enjoyment!
@@HelloThere.....So you think it's a good idea for party members, or even entire parties, to just sit out of all combats & confrontations just in case stun might happen, rather than just modifying the rule?
Also, if you think everyone actively chooses to die irl (and that accidents or unavoidable things never happen), you're really naive. Or like 8 years old.
That ending was great. It totally feels like you are talking to someone else and the 4th wall break was just awesome.
Kinda an idea I have that when PCs are charmed against their party, the charm takes underlying issues the character might have with their fellow party members and amplifies them ten fold. Like “You ate the last sweet roll and now I have to kill you!” Or it could even bring up underlying narrative tensions in the party such as maybe a Paladin secretly blames the Rogue for the death of his brother even thought it might not have been that simple. It becomes that simple. Secret resentments boil to the surface with murderous intent
This is really neat because even after the condition ends, that tension is still there
this is sooooo evil@@maikomarx
I was thinking of this too. How nice it would be to air that stuff out finally and be all, I was charmed I don't know what you mean... Especially nice to put in the face of a player who pulled a "I'm chaotic neutral it's what I would have done" a little while ago on you. It's not a good Idea mind you, it'll just put logs on that fire, but it's FUUUUNNNN. So screw that guy. he needs his medecine.
Brilliant
20:41 “I’M JUST A GUY!”
I was stirred by how honest you were when you said your piece here. And I’m just some stranger who never comments on TH-cam videos as a rule - but I had to drop what I was doing and say something, for once. After all, you’ll never know what a great job you did if people don’t let you know!
Dude, you’re so genuine. Your opinion matters to you, it shows, and it’s backed by hours and hours of work. And it’s presented in a way that’s so funny! That meta-humour at the end there came out of nowhere. Your humour has this distinct improv-group feel to it, and I don’t usually smile at my screen but there I was, grinning. And your video’s set??? I wanna play MY campaign in that atmospheric room. The globe, the curtains, the books!
I guess I really wanted you to know that your effort and your stress has resulted in real, tangible connections with strangers like me. I was already subscribed, but now I’ve hit the notification bell.
Sorry for the long comment. You’re appreciated, so keep doing what you enjoy and keep saying your piece. I speak for the strangers: we love ya, man.
Are you a painter lady?
One time I was blinded and deafened so I was basically was "stunned".
let's just call it 'flashbanged'
For you Blinded just gives you disadvantage on attack rolls, and it also makes it so you can’t target some people with certain spells, unless you were a wizard I don’t see how that’s that bad.
@@boooster101 lol
Jacob: don't stun people
also Jacob: you are now charmed and unable to take actions for 21:52, enjoy the video
I used my bonus action to make cereal though
Make Intelligence saving throw to be able to do things, while listening the vid
speak for yourself i’m doing a lot of things while watching this. Like lying down. And breathing.
@@elainasynranelt How much damage does your breathing do?
@@u.v.s.5583 1d6 psychic
As a PC, I had a fight recently where I got paralyzed for 1 minute on my first turn but our DM forgot to tell me that I could save at the end of each of my turns. I was paralyzed for 7 rounds before he realized I wasn't making any saves. I had even mentioned to him at one point how I was actually kinda annoyed that I couldn't break out of it and he still didn't realize.
To put it in perspective: We had 6 PC's, and it was a big boss fight so turns were extra long for people to decide what they wanted to do. I had to sit there for over an hour just watching my friends play our D&D game without me.
That's fucking awful. Getting paralyzed for an entire combat was the second-to-last drop that made me leave my previous DnD group, and at least we remembered to roll saves. I just kept failing them. (To be clear, my list of gripes was already _extensive_ by that point.) Nothing makes a player stop having fun faster than making them unable to act for no good reason. Like, a single round of stun? Still not great but manageable. Several rounds of being unable to act? No. Fuck that. Never do that to a player. No, not even to control the one problem player. It's just gonna piss them off and escalate matters.
@@Tengila Eh, depends on the party make up. Lesser Restoration is a 2nd Level spell that completely negates Paralysis, but is only on Divine spell lists.
@@Tengila it's nobody's fault that you rolled badly
@@Tengila Soooo do your players just never suffer status effects?
@@slayeroffurries1115 It's actually quite obviously the games fault that it's even an option to "roll badly". Don't get me wrong, variance is fun. Horrible consequences as a result of random chance is not fun (...depending on the players, obviously. No one size fits all.).
I'm a veteran GM and your style of thinking methods and the rules always inspire me to do better. Thank you so much for your hard work!
The end was the funniest ramble i have seen on this channel. Thank you for that lol
Certain conditions like paralysis you can put a limit on. Like if a player fails to break out of it in two turns then they automatically break free of it on the third turn. This also helps prevent monsters from completely stun-locking the party since by the time they get to the third target the first will be back up.
I tend to implement a "taking damage gives you another save" rule for these things, plus allowing other players to attempt to help each other break out of the status effect.
@@solosynapse yeah that usually goes a long way,
Tho I often also add a creature specific way to break the effect
Either giving the target advantage on the save or ending the effect without needing to succeed a save.
Usually this means getting hit with a specific damage type and/or amount,
But if casting Vicious Mockery guarantees the fighter to wake up,
That might just be worth it.
I had to make a rule like that but for restraining-type things due to a certain player of mine who shall not be named. It works quite well!
In my case, due to it being for kind of manual restrain-grapple type things (the player kept trapping people under sheets of various fabrics, but it'd apply to things like holding an oven door closed as well), it's based off of the difference between the perpetrator's and the victim's STR.
I think paralysis and stuff have a good place in a fantasy setting. your rule is interesting because it adds a phase between completely fine and unconscious, wich, to me, seems more realistic but also only shifts the problem. but maybe shifts it enough to be more fun.
Paralyze certain limbs only. Or give certain amount of rounds until paralysis kicks in could be interesting 🤔.
@@nicholaspitti8171 maybe have it build up exhaustion levels ? since they already simulate slowed movement and limited mobility?
sorta like you failed that saving throw against the basilisk, so now instead of not getting to play the game, you are at a serious disadvantage until next rest. but if you fail again the penalty gets much worse until eventually it kills you
Jacob, this video was absolutely stunning. I'll have to restrain myself from being too optimistic, but I really think that these homebrew rules are a real knockout! This has been a revelation, and I'll be sure to incorporate some of these changes into my games. Thanks a bunch, man!
My house rule about stun and similar abilities is that the enemies and allied NPCs (Aka anything the DM has😂) make the save at the end of their turn. But players make it at the start of their turn.
That way it feels rewarding for players who build a character around putting conditions on enemies, but it also doesn’t feel too punishing or boring if an enemy do it to them.
Starfinder has an interesting system where you have something called resolve points which effectively act as your death saving throws. Everyone has a limited number of these per long rest and you can expend them to overcome some status effects like stun. The downside being that if you use them too much and enter a downed state with no resolve points left, you die. It is an interesting system to where the player has a choice of doing something now at the risk of dying later, or play it safe and wait for the status effect to wear off.
The downside to this is that if you don't use your RP during encounters and save them up, PCs are extremely hard to kill. As a GM designing encounters, it's nearly impossible to create resource attrition, and usually if I want to challenge my player in a fight I have to go all out with a deadly encounter. I love the system don't get me wrong.
That sounds dumb. Seems like something you’d either never use cuz you’d be afraid of dying instantly the moment you go down, or something that would fuck you over cuz you never go down so you use all your points, then you end up taking like 1 damage from stepping on a Lego brick and instantly dying
@@nekomancer47 You don't die instantly when you go down with no resolve points, you have a full round for someone to heal or stabilize you.
@@jules3484 As a GM, I would create situations where players could expend RP. Like giving the players a choice between becoming exhausted or expending a RP to push through a situation without any penalties. Or giving a player an option to expend an RP to boost an attack kinda like Goku increasing his Kaio Ken to boost his Kamehameha.
I've never played DnD, but I've been a fan of your content for a long time simply because of the passion you put into these videos. This one was especially good, well written, researched, developed, performed, and edited.
I definitely agree that losing agency is the worst thing that can happen to a player
When I'm not DMing and get stunned or held, instead of disassociating until my next turn I like to get caught up in everyone else's turn, basically shifting from an actor mindset to an audience mindset
That's cuz you understand that you are not a main character, and that you are a member of a party and not a critical role stan that cries at the first sign of difficulty
@@ShugoAWay not sure what Critical Role had to do with this but okay?
@@ShugoAWayAnd you are what? A bitter judgmental ass.
Being bitter and judgmental doesn’t make people who don’t act like you think they should any better. Meaning you are stuck. You’ll get worse and more bitter and frustrated, and they’ll not be better or learn anything, and rightfully dislike you more the worse you get.
Sure, but not every combat is that interesting. It works when people roleplay, I can just watch but watching combat is often not as much fun.
@@nojusticenetwork9309because they treat the game more like a tv show and not a normal game and in the same way people will play skyrim and try to play d&d like it I imagine critical roll fans try to play like the people from the show. Also you just need to step out of the spotlight and let other players do stuff sometimes.
I spent more time watching your videos than actually preparing characters or playing gamess. Love every moment of it. You are the man!
Those last couple of minutes of real talk were just so enjoyable.
We love you, Jacob. Keep it up my man!
This was by far the best part of the video. More videos of Jacob being Jacob!
Had a couple PCs go down for the first time in last week’s session, and one of my players sent me this video in response. I go out of my way not to stun or prevent my players from playing but didn’t know how to handle “going down”. This video really sparks my brain on how to allow them more agency when they’re “down” while still keeping it challenging. Fantastic video!
Don’t feel like you *have* to do this though! It might be cool, but also getting knocked unconscious or even dying is normal for D&D.
I just don't see it as a problem to lose agency at times. PCs shouldn't feel like they're absolutely in control all of the time.
@@BigDaddyWes Thank god I'll never have the misfortune of being a player for you as a DM. One of the worst takes someone can give in regards to DnD or any game in general.
@@rylace You can't imagine any narrative reason or mechanical reason where it would be good for a player to lose agency? That seems kind of shallow minded.
@@snowys4168unless its just a "cinematic" or something, typically the point of a game is to play it
Had a session recently where I got stunned at the start of combat. I never rolled higher than a 5 to get out of it, and my party had to carry me out as we fled from the battle. I ended up falling asleep afterwards and missed a few important things (sorry DM). Definitely captured the feeling perfectly at the start.
Hey man I wanted to give some feedback and cheer you. I’m 37, I’ve never even played DnD but I’ve been fascinated by all these channels like yours Ginny Colby The Dudes etc etc and two years of hearing about this cool game: meta builds, fun combos, role playing tips and I still don’t even have plans to play any time soon!! (I still don’t know where to start - it still feels complex - I’m still fascinated by all of it!)
The enjoyment I get from all of these channels must be directly related to the joy you get from making them so keep going- break that fourth wall and tell us how you feel cause that’s why we follow you)
Thank you for all the skits and all the best to you and the fam x
As far as the dying state is concerned, I love this alternative that makes it seem more straining on the characters. It's like they're pushing themselves past their limit to keep fighting with a team. The "stun" condition on the other hand should stay unchanged. I feel like that's why good supporting classes will take certain spells that are meant to counter those effects.
👆👆Thanks ⬆️ for watching ⬆️⬆️ and commenting gor a special package for you, messages me on telegram app to claim your prize...🎁
Unless it's the support that gets hit by it. Then you're reliant on hoping you have the right saving throw proficiency to make the save in less than 3 turns.
The “dying” condition is also more cinematic. It emulates what happens in the movies: character on the ground, leaning against a wall, hand over their grievously wounded abdomen, speaking through a wincing grimace, “I don’t think I’m gettin’ outta this one. You go on without me. Don’t worry. Just go. GO!” And then they use their last turn making a tripping attack against the bad guy that’s chasing them, or caving in the roof by casting shatter.
Why not just change the stun condition to you roll a dice save or lose only one turn. And the next time you get stunned you're more immune to it than before. And just give players the option to wear things that resist or immunize them from the stun status while wearing it.
being forced to do absolutely nothing on your turn I imagine sucks
what about something like "dazed" instead
where you can take actions, but they are distorted in some way
like while dazed you can't move in a straight line (have to change direction every 5 feet) and are slower
or a "stagger" effect, where if you're hit by a particularly powerful strike, you can choose to move away from the attacker (following through with the recoil) or spend your turn "resisting" in order to stay put.
I love the dying condition rule, I would add that if you recover from the dying condition but then your hit points drop back to 0 again during the encounter you immediately gain 1 point of exhaustion. This means that you can’t just healing word the fighter out of the dying condition over and over again without it taking a toll on their abilities.
@Zooker I think its cus of the death saves and to keep those fair with no modifiers
@zooker7938it actually doesnt work that well, because then if you are already pretty exhausted from say, frenzy, then it fucks your ability saving throws
At our table, whenever you receive healing while dying, you suffer one level of exhaustion. This means that the party has to make a choice about whether it's better for the downed player to get up and take another level of exhaustion, or to be stabilized and sleep it off. Typically, this means our party hangs out around 0-2 levels of exhaustion, or maybe 3-4 if we're pushing through a serious series of encounters we can't avoid, and it makes everything feel a bit more desperate and gritty.
I actually really like your dying rules, and I will be bringing it up to my players at my next session to see if they want to try it out. I know I have one player at my table who's complained on multiple occasions about stun effects and how they aren't fun for him, so I've been sort of phasing them out of my game already.
Im not the hugest fan but it can add some interesting changes to things like orc ferocity, or the diehard feat.
I feel this so much. My groups Cleric was fighting a vampire, and first got paralysed by them, failing a wisdom save (DC 18, +8 bonus). Then he got charmed into attacking the party instead. Same save.
Three separate casts, three saves with a 50% chance each to succeed, and failed all three.
This really sucked for him.
In another game, we were fighting a big boss and my Level 13 monk got hit by Power Word Stun. No save, you are stunned. That took me out of the fight for the entire combat.
I think Stuns could be used more cleverly outside of combat, like triggering a trap in a puzzle, or drinking a random potion a stranger gave you. But in combat, it's never fun.
Thank you for all the content you make. Being a creator is a difficult job, and it can be easy to forget as a viewer how stressful that can be. Thank you for always providing me with a chuckle and a smile!
Being a creator is a difficult job 😂
@@TheBiomedZed especially with wotc shenanigans
Probably my favourite D&D oriented youtuber, thanks for working so hard man
It can be a thankless job being the person working behind the curtain, but at the same time it's a privilege to be in that position.
I appreciate your videos and I have a feeling they'll lead to something very interesting in your future. Keep it up man. You're doing great!
I think another good alternative is stuff like slow and tasha's mind whip. Similar effects that can limit the amount the players can do in the turn, while still letting them make choices
Plus if you limit what they can do without taking their turn away they can get creative and come up with something clever. Which is just a joy to watch.
Love the dying condition rule, but how did you get all of your identical twins to hide that fast?
I really wanted to like your comment but you have 69 likes soo....
I really like your Dying Condition homebrew! I've heard a lot of homebrew rules for Dying to try to effectively do the same thing, but I feel like yours is actually balanced and engaging, while keeping Dying as a threatening effect.
I don't know what I felt the moment Jacob said "The Wizard casts Color Spray, everybody roll saves" because Color Spray is not a save spell you roll 6d10 and starting from the lowest hit point creature the number of HP they have is subtracted from the total rolled and so long as the total doesn't reach zero that creature is blinded. But I definitely did not feel happy.
I really appreciate each of your videos! Thank you for putting in so much hard work and effort into them. They are all humorous and encourage people to think critically about game rules and mechanics in varying degrees of subtlety.
I would love to see Jacob explain more of his own homebrew. Rules, monsters, mechanics, and lore is interesting!
I'm a huge fan of the Death's Door ruleset. It's so much fun and gives the player control of their fate. Will they risk it all to try and save their team/turn the fight, or crawl away? etc.
Personally, I would take a page out of Darkest Dungeon, when it comes to "below 1 hit point".
Death's Door has a ruleset?
Okay, this is brilliant game design commentary. Subscribed.
I’m the cases where it’s caused by a spell or someone in the party can remove the condition, I think it builds good teamwork or shows who may or may not care for your character (as their characters).
If nobody has such abilities, it TH-cam 🏀
Also, can limit the effect for one turn, so there's still a consequence to a failed save, but it's not awful.
I came to a similar conclusion myself over the year Ive been DMing.I only use stun/paralyze on VERY specific and very dangerous monsters because it's so annoying, and I've found that when it is that rare the players do stay engaged because they start to panic in fear. I think them not being desensitized to it helps as well. Love the idea of the dying condition
" them not being desensitized" " they start to panic in fear"
I like your style of DMing, gotta try that
When I played a LARP (35+ years of play!) a common "rule" regardless of what version of rules the LARP was up to was that no spell or monster effect could take a player out of play involuntarily for more than 10 minutes.
This applied to things like paralyze, sleep, hold person, and poisons that temporarily took away your ability to move or just use skills.
resurrected
-
There were rules where you could OPT to be out of play for up to an hour, but the ten-minute maximum was otherwise a hard rule.
Some examples would be being willing to contest a formal ritual and being "in jail" for a minor offense.
And if you chose to commit the crime that led to you being jailed, you could opt to go play a monster for that jail time.
-
The point, I guess, was that the rules were designed to never take away player agency for a long period of time.
Yeah in our campaign we are currently going up against some mind flayers which of course have their stun, grapple, big damage combo.
Our DM also reached the conclusion that stun is too long so they have just changed it to a 1 turn stun.
Certain monsters revolve around their incapacitation ability. I often play Ghouls (who paralyze) this way. The players knows as soon as they succeed a save what it was for. And when a ghoul paralyzes someone, they immediately stop fighting and drag the paralyzed player away if they can. The implication is to eat them. Makes them slightly less of a threat while giving the party a clear goal. Doesn't stop the paralyzed player that's repeatedly failing saves something to do, which is still the issue. But at least it's very few monsters that have it.
Damn I love the idea of taking a level of exaughstion while "unconscious" to be able to take an additional action. That's such a cool trade off.
yeah feels like exhaustion is sorta underused becuase dms give their players frequent rests and players are like SUPER carefull about not getting it applied becuase the peneltys are huge
Agreed, that's really cool
It is not a tradeoff, sleeping off a level of exaustion is not hard, but hos system makes any party with a cleric literally immortal, because befor you could target the cleric so they would need protection, because if they go down your support is down so you cant leave your cleric to 1v3. With this idea? Cleric can heal themselves while being at 0 hp, it removes risk from the party because now no matter what their cleric literally cant die while he has spellslots.
A very light and simple version of Jacob's rules that I've run for a while was just to have each failed death save grant one level of exhaustion. This limits them to only a couple near-death bounces at 0hp. But, as a tradeoff, they don't go unconscious at 0hp unless they have that 5th level of exhaustion.
@Graine I don't know. You're right it could be min maxed abhorrently, it only takes 6 levels of exhaust to die, at 2 your speed is halfed. And for the adverage party dungeon crawling having half speed or half ability checks could certainly hurt, you only get 1 level back so unless they bunker for weeks on a dungeon it can slap a little, and mostly I just never interact with exaust so it'd be nice to goof around with it.
(Plus the circles I play in don't really worry about "having supports" because they thought having 5 sentient rock barbarians would be a funny party.)
As a student of entertainment design and film making I always appreciate the pulling back of the curtain and I appreciate on a deeper level the explosive release of the "I AM ONE PERSON DOING THE JOB OF A PRODUCTION TEAM!" energy because it's real, it's grounding and in a way it's therapeutic for both you and for your viewers. Plus it's funny to watch the producer, writer and primary actor break the fourth wall with a twinge of unhinged, tongue in cheek humor every once and again. I always appreciate your videos and as a prospective creator who has yet to dive headlong into TH-cam video production as a serious means of financial existence I look at your videos as a form of inspiration, soooo keep on being you my man 🫡 My wizard hat's off to you.🧙🏻♂️
Me when i use Hideous laughter and it works the whole minute: 😄
Also me when the enemy's Hideous laugher lasts for 6 seconds: 😡
Boss monsters with multiple initiatives and different available abilities depending on which initiative they're currently on is actually a really engaging way to play. Speaking as both a long term player and DM of that style of combat
I have seen "Monster with multiple initiative" in a really awful way, and generally, I feel like that kinda messes with the action economy
Seems way more complicated and also worse than legendary actions
@@snowys4168it gets complex but it makes balancing "" ganks "" (ie more PCs than boss and add enemies) easier especially when its as simple as "attack phase, movement phase, ability phase"
Jacob went super meta. Can't believe he told the clones to leave the room when he "revealed" the empty room 😅
Though serious, from one Jacob to another, you are super fun!
I love that his dialogue and cuts are so good. He felt he had to prove there weren't copies of himself in the room.
Our table is trying out PF2E and this reminds me a lot of that system. You get three actions that you can spend in a variety of different ways, and conditions like slowed don't take away your entire turn, they take away a certain amount of possible actions. Conditions like paralyzed and incapacitated still exist, but they feel more rare.
Yeah, stunned in that system makes you lose a number of actions, but with a counter
they also usually come with the incapacitation trait, which means only something above your level (i.e. bosses or at least minibosses) actually have a decent chance of inflicting it
They're more rare than in 5e because of the amount of debuff choices available to pf2e as a system. People like to call pf2e overly complex, but additional options like these help players feel less useless at times.
Wow man I really couldn't tell how much you were carrying because you make this channel so seamless and easy to escape into. Thank you.
I like the "fighting in spirit" rule from 4e, have the downed player give an advantage to one player per round like the help action, and maybe a reaction to impose disadvantage to one enemy attack
Sounds a little too powerful. Once 2-3 party members are down, every action is just an automatic success.
@@ziwuri how to you mean? Advantages don't stack
@@Jupiter065 You know what I mean.
@@ziwuri ...I think the point of his question was that he doesn't
@@ziwuri as they said. advantages don't stack. if half the party are down, the other other half gain ADVANTAGE. not automatic succeed power, just the basic thing used to give people a better chance. if the rogue's attacking from the back, they'd have advantage anyways. if you're fighting on difficult terrain the paladin may already be rolling with disadvantage, forcing the dying to choose whether they give their aid to that person once cancelling it out or twice but maybe now failing to provide aid to someone else. the only thing I'm a little unsure about is how it makes sense, narratively, but mechanically, it's absolutely sweet.
We're always played that Charm isn't "Attack your friends" so much as "That enemy is now your friend. You don't understand why all your friends are fighting, and you need to put a stop to that."
Also, one very simple homebrew we've used for stun/daze that sort of works is "When you're stunned at the beginning of your turn, you spend your turn to re-roll your initiative, then you are no longer stunned." A sudden change to the initiative order often kept things fresh in and of itself. You could also use those aforementioned exhaustion levels to allow players the option to 'buy' their way out of stun/daze/etc by taking exhaustion if they fail their saves.
rerolling initiative in general is an extremely interesting concept, i might not implement it how you did but i’m definitely using that! maybe an optional class feature for martials or something, or if an a attack meets a certain damage threshold you take a -2 to initiative to represent the fact that injury’s slow you down
These are incredible house rules! Adds in a lot of flavor and rp that especially is neat in battle. Going to use them in my next campaign!
We have a character in our campaign who is under the control of his warlock patron. He has a special ability to enter an “abyssal rage” in which he draws energy from the abyss (his patrons domain) to enter a rage state where 2d6 is added to each attack. However, when he enters the rage, he makes a wisdom saving throw, and if failed, the abyssal energy overcomes him and he attacks everything in sight. It’s a great way to introduce a new issue in a fight.
Its literally like werewolfs
This is why you need a rogue in the party, so they can pass all the saves and leave everyone else to die
Or any utility at all, sorcerers, clerics, wizards, druids, bards, all have utility to help this exact problem, and seems really overlooked. Hell, some races get adv on these conditions
In what world are you living in which the Rogue succeeds at all saving throws?
@@luigifan4585 the world in which the rogue doesn't just try to do every saving throw. Where your party members can understand threats and has ramifications for not evaluating things properly. Like a strategy/role-playing game?
I made an adaptation to the rules you made up for the death condition specifically with my campaign I run in mind figured I'd put then here for everyone if they feel like using them and also so Jacob can check them out if he sees this. (also yes I roll for death saves for my players in my game, if you do want to use these rules I don't intend people to do it, just go for what you would normally do) Death Condition
When your hitpoints are equal to 0, you fall prone and gain this condition.
At the start of your turn, THE DM rolls a Death save for the PC. (like normal)
On your turn, you can only use your Action, Bonus Action or move Action. Once you use one of these actions, your turn ends.
If you use your action, you gain 3 levels of exhaustion.
If you use your bonus action, you gain 1 level of exhaustion.
While you have this condition you cannot use any of your actions to stand up from being prone.
If you use your reaction while you are dying, you gain 1 level of exhaustion
Like being Unconscious and due to being prone
-you still automatically fail strength and dex saves
- you have disadvantage on attack rolls
- An attack roll against you has advantage if the attacker is within 5 feet of you. Otherwise, the attack roll has disadvantage.
-Any attack that hits you is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature
I'm relatively new to your channel, and D&D in general. I really appreciate your videos and content. Thankyou for uploads and the countless hours of effort for each upload.
Watching your channel has been a really nice way to learn about D&D as a newbie to the TTRPG scene, it's nice having a well of knowledge to better understand how certain things work or common misconceptions, or even drawing inspiration from videos like this that can either be suggested to DMs or to try out if I ever give a shot at DMing, while it's all done from the lens of a hilariously well-done skit that helps me to retain the information in tandem with trying to read up on the books and manuals.
Your content alone has been pretty much keeping my interest in D&D sparked for months on end. Thank you Jacob, for all the effort you put behind what you do. :)
One thing I used to do is have an npc tag along with the party, and if a player ever got "stunned", I let them control the npc instead.
But I really like the concept of the dying condition instead, and it's inspired me to start homebrewing my own solutions.
Always love your content Jacob, you give me really fun inspiration for my own campaigns! Take breaks as you need, you have a captive audience
I'm a little of two minds on this one. I do like the idea of the dying condition and desperation maneuvers but I also see stun/incapacitated/charmed/etc. as a point that engages the OTHER players into interestingly dire situations that necessitate that players assist eachother. Many a player (myself included) can build a highly efficient damage output machine of a character for combat and I do think it is good to have them in situations where they need to assist their allies and make a team feel more like a "hand", as opposed to "3-5 fingers."
as for rules on these "stuns" I think the team dynamic is worth considering: like how able are party members to help each other? how many players can be incapacitated by the stun (the more people in the stun the more unfair it is). as well as thought put into encounter designs to avoid knocking the same player unconscious every turn.
the problem is that you can put the players into dire situations that necessitate players assisting each other without excluding one or more of them from that situation, which is what stuns do. You put a player in time out so that the other players get a challenge, which may be fun for the other players, but the one in time out may as well just go do something else until they are allowed to play the game again.
Remember that your death saves are still normal. If you're unlucky you can still die in two or three turns, and if you have no healing options you can use on yourself, well, you better hope a teammate comes to the rescue!
I personally found content creation so hard when I tried it because I wasn't actually talking to anybody! Its like talking to a hypothetical future person you can't see the reaction of it is nerve wracking! Twitch streams sound like a good way to connect and see that your audience really is real and really does like what you do! Thanks for doing what you do!
Thank you for the video. It was very thought provoking, and I really like the dying condition rather than the unconscious condition. Also, thank you for keeping it real.
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This exact problem you're describing, is exactly what has been plaguing me as a DM for as long as I can remember. And this is an excellent solution that I am absolutely going to use from now on. Thank you Jacob, this is going to drastically improve the game for my players.
Bro was talking about the dying condition, but legit was dying on the inside at the end of this lol
You're appreciated dude.
I was thinking about "stun" in the tactical board game Gloomhaven, and why that "sucks" but isn't "boring" like in dnd, and your analysis of choice really nails it down.
In Gloomhaven, you play two cards a turn (this is slightly reductive, but whatever) and those cards are discarded. WHEN YOU ARE STUNNED this does not change that. You still have to play two cards, they have no effect, though, and are discarded. So the stun leads to an interesting gameplay moment where you think about your choice "what two cards will I not need?"
Also stun lasts exactly 1 turn unless SUPREMELY unlucky, and even with all of that, it is STILL the rarest effect for enemies to have.
Very interesting game mechanic! I'll check the game out. Thanks for sharing
I also thought of Gloomhaven’s stun mechanic. Love to see one of my favorite games get mentioned.
I honestly appreciated you being real talking about the channel & what all you do. I really enjoy your videos, you're one of my most watched dnd channels :)
I like the ability to crawl or act in exchange for exhaustion... feels like someone could really go out in a blaze of glory if they chose rather than "I made your number 0 now so lay down"
I'm really glad you enjoy making videos, and I hope you keep enjoying it. I love your opinions. You're smart, and you care about your players. Your videos are fun and good, and I hope you keep doing them.
I thought the point of those conditions was to provide agency for the other players to react to the problem of one of them being unable to do anything.
It is about the choices of everybody else, and it challenges the party to work without a key member.
I'm glad you mentioned the OneD&D exhaustion rules. I feel like a lot of the community glossed over them but I started using them immediately and love it. As a DM I'm not afraid to give out exhaustion and get the players in a death spiral, and as a player it feels fair, and I know what I'm getting into. Additionally using it to continue playing while dying is a really cool way to make hitting 0 engaging while still having consequences.
you could modify the paralyzed condition in a similar way to the dying condition you described; give the players an option to make a highish DC save to see if their character can make a single action that only affects themselves. For example, a character might try to push through the paralysis to drink a potion, or a wizard might decide to set off a spell on themselves as a last ditch effort to hinder whatever paralyzed them. Similarly to the dying condition, you could do the same exhaustion point penalty if they try to make the save.
Well, wizards can still cast verbal-only spells whilst paralyzed, which is something.
or you can just take exhaustion points equal to the spells level to break a stun or charm effect. that way you still get to have player agency but at a steep price.
Stunned Alternative: What if instead of being stunned, the enemy creature gets another immediate action/turn? The flavor being that they are still stopped and left open to an attack. But this way, things keep going at a steady pace.
I feel like something like a Darkest Dungeon "Death's Door" mechanic might also work. Like, you hit 0 hp and then the next hit you take has a chance of killing you, and clearing 0 HP gives you a debuff. You could even make it like the Butcher's Circus version and have the chance get higher every time you get hit.
17:20 Don't make all your monsters immune to stun. A key feature of the Monk class is stunning strike. People don't play Monks enough as it is, don't punish your players for taking this class.
I agree. Or at least make those monsters weak to bludgeoning damage in some way for monks to still be useful against them
There are like 10 total monsters immune to stun.
Don't do it.
Even the 5e devs know not to do it.
I agree with stunning strike hate, but for different reasons. Devs overavlue how powerful it is in practice, which means that stunning strike contributes huge part of monk's power budget despite not being that big of a deal in practice. Which in turn means that... monks aren't allowed to be powerful because stunning strike is there.
One could say the only noticable feature of Monks is Stunning Strikes.
@@sipofsunscorchedsarsaparil6052 Which just like the theme with the Monk, there are already spells better than what the Monk offers.
you mentioned it super offhandedly, but the idea of the player getting to play the npc’s turn if they’re stunned is really cool. alternatively, you could make your monster only use a stunning attack on the npc
just makes me think if the players are about to embark on a quest to kill a monster that can stun, you could try to plan ahead and find an npc to go with them
"I'm sitting in a room alone, yelling about stun!" He yelled, not crying for help.
Jacob if I did half good as you did in these videos talking to yourself, I'd be such a better DM. You are amazing and seeing the upload of your new sketches is one of my favorite things to look forward to each week. Thanks again for putting out so much great content. you give me inspiration.
Tbh i don't mind stun-like conditions, I'm alright with waiting an extra 5 minutes, but that might just be because I play more casually and we tend to make more out-of-character jokes and such in my games
Jake's take on the rules always gives me something new and different to think about, and that's just fab
This is actually a great point I hadn’t considered. Thank you for covering this.