Exploration and General Play

Falling and Jumping

• If you intentionally jump, you are not subject to falling distance for any distance you are able to jump; it is subtracted from the height you fell. With few exceptions, you usually cannot hurt or kill yourself just by high jumping, unless you jump off a cliff or into a waiting trap, hazard or other harmful effect. (Seriously, wtf core.)
• If it becomes relevant, when falling a great distance as a character of small through large size, you fall 500 feet in the first round, at which point you hit terminal velocity, as per real world physics. (Falling damage is thus capped at 500 feet.) You then fall 1000 feet per round thereafter. It would thus take you 6 rounds to fall one mile if you take no measures to slow your descent.

Inspiration

• I like the concept of Inspiration as presented in the PHB and DMG, but not necessarily how it is implemented. So let's change that!
• Inspiration is unified with bardic inspiration, so we don't confusingly have Hasbro / WotC implementing two separate systems with the same damn name that work differently. They now work the same, but the main difference now will be that how they are accessed is different.
• Inspiration is a bonus die, like with Bardic Inspiration
  • The die size is the same as the Bardic Inspiration die and the Martial Exploit die - d6 at 1st level, d8 at 5th level, d10 at 10th level, and d12 at 15th level.
  • An inspiration die can be added to an ability check, attack roll, or saving throw. You can wait until after you roll the d20 to decide whether to apply it.
• A bard can hand someone an inspiration die as per usual with their Bardic Inspiration. This lasts for 1 hour, or until your next short or long rest, whichever comes first.
  • Because the die size now automatically improves with the level of the recipient, at every level where a bard previously got a die size increase, they now can hand 1 additional person inspiration with the same action.
  • Some bard subclasses expand the scope of when you can grant inspiration or additional effects that apply while inspiration is granted, and these still apply as long as the inspiration was granted by that bard.
• In addition to having your own personal inspiration due to a bard, there is a group pool of Inspiration. This is initialized at the start of the session with 1 inspiration die per player who showed up on time.
  • When a player who does not currently have bardic inspiration needs inspiration on a roll, they can ask the group if they can use one of the dice from the group pool. As long as more than one player doesn't object, you take one die from the pool and use it as described above.
  • The same player can't dip the group pool again until two other players have done so. Please encourage quieter players to make use of it and be awesome!
• If you take actions in story that are disadvantageous to you personally, but they fit your character's background, bond and flaw - and people agree that it's actually a good story and character moment and not just you trying to game the system - you get an inspiration die, and one goes into the group pool.
  • You also gain inspiration in this way if you have 3 or more piety with your deity and fulfill their conditions, as described in the Deities chapter entries.
  • Unlike bardic inspiration dice, a "roleplaying inspiration" die you gain this way does not expire after an hour.
  • You can have this kind of inspiration simultaneous with that granted by an ability like Bardic Inspiration.
• Inspiration goes away at the end of the session, except for rewards that happened near the end of the session and didn't have a realistic chance to be used. So find an opportunity to use your inspiration, and use it!

Passive Skills

• For circumstances where your character's capabilities are instinctive and should be automatically pass or fail, we will use the suggested Passive Skills “official” optional rule from the PHB and DMG.
• Make sure I know your character's passive Arcana, History, Insight, Nature, Perception, and Religion skill ratings.
• You only have a passive Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion if you are trained in the skill! You have a passive Insight and Perception even if you are untrained.
• Your passive rating is 10 + ability modifier + your proficiency bonus (if applicable), with another +5 if you currently have advantage on the check in question, and by contrast, -5 if you currently have disadvantage on that check.
• Things like whether you feel a draft from a secret door, or know anything about a creature's species and its traits and weaknesses on sight, or whether you can instinctively sense that someone is being untruthful, are all examples of passive checks. You either know / notice it, or you don't - it's not the sort of thing where you can spend a second or two to "look harder," "think harder" or "empathize harder" and call up the information.
• There ARE ways to roll these checks actively, but the key shared factor is that they all take time that you usually don't have in the middle of a standard encounter. Relevant counter-examples to the above would be searching a room to see if you missed something, or researching a monster in a noble's librarium, or holding an extended conversation to interrogate someone or try to trip them up.
• When you do get to make an active check for what is usually a passive skill, you usually have a minimum result floor equal to the passive skill. Even if you rolled a 1, your result will usually not be lower than your passive check.
• The exception is if you are working with false information or sabotaged tools, such as books full of misinformation, or an interrogation partner who is actually on the side of the person being interrogated. Because you generally are not going to know when this is the case, if you fail, I will not tell you if that's because there legitimately isn't anything there to find, or if you were sabotaged and didn't get to apply your passive score.