Campaign Rules

The following are the rules that will be adhered to during the current campaign being run. They aren't exactly house rules, but more about things that I will be implementing for this particular campaign. As always, if you have questions, feel free to ask me about these.

### Hero Points

A characters starts with 5 Hero Points at 1st Level. Each time a character gains a level, they lose all previous Hero Points and gain 5 Hero Points plus 1/2 of their current level. A player can expend 1 Hero Point whenever they make an attack roll, a saving throw or a skill check and roll a d6 to add to their roll. They can make this roll after they make the initial roll, but before the original roll is applied. A player can only expend 1 Hero Point in a turn. In addition, when making a Death save, they can use a Hero Point to add a d6 to their save, possibly turning a failure into a success.

### Additional Languages

Much like in 1st and 2nd Edition D&D, I will be instituting a new chart for learning additional languages based on the character's Intelligence score.  See the following table.

 11-14
 15-19
 20+

### Rare Metals

I removed some of the rare metals from my list after switching over to 5th Edition, because it seems that they had finally balanced some of the issues that I found in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Edition. Now I have chosen to bring them back into the game, though they are not easy to find, they are quite expensive and they don’t work exactly as they used to. Before, there were several of them and they improved ‘to hit’ and ‘damage’, but now, they will only affect the damage portion of things, and not quite to the same degree as they used to. The following is a chart that covers the rare metal, how much it will cost to create a weapon with it, how much the player will need to make a weapon with it and the bonus to damage from the weapon. The second chart will be for armor made from rare metals.

Weapons
 Adamantite
 Black Steel
 Vopelum

Armor
 Adamantite
 Black Steel
 Vopelum

With armor, it will depend on the type of armor the player wishes to have made, but the above statistics are for Full Plate Armor, so if the armor requires less metal, the cost and the amount of ore required will be less. The DM will determine those amounts. ***It must be noted here that rare metals cannot be enchanted magically due to the already magical nature of the rare metal.***

### Enchanting Weapons and Armor

With the return of magic to the land, many players will want to find a wizard who will enchant their gear. Since it requires an 11th level wizard to do this (Enchant Item is a 6th level spell), the cost will be high and it might be difficult to find one to do it. That’s not to say that there are some wizards in larger cities who actually have shops where they enchant items to make a living. Some wizards who have retired from adventuring and have chosen to make some coins on the side by enchanting things for other would-be adventurers. Very rarely will the players find one of those in a small hamlet, village or town. Most of them have taken up residence in cities, where the coin flows much more freely. The following is a baseline cost assessment for enchanting items.

Enchanting Weapons and Armor
 Shield
 Armor
 Wearable Item
 Ammunition

Wearable items include rings, necklaces, bracelets, or earrings. They can be enchanted to perform a specific function (such as Invisibility, for example), but those items will not be permanently enchanted.  This means that they will have a certain number of charges, and once those charges are used up, the item becomes non-magical. They cannot be recharged. When taking an item in for enchantment, the players need to know what kind of enchant they want on the item in question. If they walk in and ask for a “+1”, the wizard will look at them blankly and ask “what’s that mean?”. They need to explain it to the wizard. It can be as simple as “I want to do more damage with this” or as complicated as “I want to punish Goblins with this”, which will net them a +1 weapon, but +3 against Goblins. They need to use their imagination when asking for an enchant. Ammunition is always a pain for the wizard, so it costs more and takes longer. They will only agree to enchant a case or quiver of ammunition, never a batch of them. One thing to note, when a weapon, shield, armor or wearable item is enchanted, there is a change to that item. A weapon enchanted to do more damage might have a wider blade or an extra blade attached to do more damage. The shield might appear more polished or have filigree around the edges of it. Armor might have a slightly different color to it, or have some bordering design on it. A wearable item might have a brighter shine to it than it had originally. The item will have a change to it, that the DM will inform the player of once they get it back. ***Another factor to keep in mind is, an item, no matter what it is, can only have 1 enchantment on it.***

### Rolling 1's and 20's

This might seem redundant, but I wanted to clarify the rules on rolling a 20 and rolling a 1. I’ve played with some ideas, but I think, for simplicity, that I’m going to reverse those old rules and make it much simpler, and faster during combat. If you roll a 1, you miss. That’s it. No additional roll for a critical fumble, you just miss. This speeds up combat  considerably and it eliminates confusion. If you roll a 20, or a critical hit, because some can crit on a 19 or 20, there is no need to roll again for ‘mortal wound damage’, you just roll one additional damage dice, take that amount, add any further modifiers, double it and that is your damage. Spellcasters can roll a critical hit on a spell that requires them to roll to hit. Area of effect spells, such as Fireball, that require a saving throw for half damage, cannot crit.

You cannot crit on a healing spell because it does not require a d20 roll. When rolling a saving throw, a 20 always saves and a 1 always fails. This is a standard rule. On a skill check, rolling a 20 will be considered a success unless there is an opposing check from someone else. For example, opposing Strength checks to avoid grapple. If you roll a 20 and the other creature rolls something well, the modifiers will determine the outcome. The 20 is not automatically a success. This will be explained during the moment by the DM. If you roll a 20 on a History check, where there is no opposing roll, that will be considered an outstanding bit of recall and a success by the DM. If you have questions, ask.

### Spells Known and Spellbooks

I’ve played around with the Spells Known portion of spellcasting, but I feel that the method isn’t really working well for me. Doubling the spells known of Bards, Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards seems a bit much, so I’m scaling back a little bit. I believe that the Player’s Handbook does a reasonably decent job of laying out the amount of spells known for those classes, but I will be adding a caveat to that. I like the idea of making spell scrolls viable again. So to do this, I will allow those classes to scribe spell scrolls into their spellbooks, and those spells will NOT count against their spells known. If they are maxed out on spells known, those scrolls will be bonus spells for those classes. But to do this, each caster must have a spellbook in their inventory. Remember that.

### Hirelings

Sidekicks became a thing not long ago, but I feel that they really missed an opportunity with them. They made them too powerful in a party without the roleplay ability. My change to this is pretty simple. The Sidekick chart in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything is how a Sidekick will be rolled up, but the player will now be in charge of that Sidekick. They need to roleplay their Sidekick the same as they would their main character and they should give them a personality that differs from their character, if even a little. Having two of the main characters isn’t going to work for me, as everyone is slightly different (or vastly different at times). The following chart will determine the cost of hiring a Sidekick to join the party:

 Spellcaster
 Warrior

The party can split the cost if they choose, but someone must come up with the coins. The pay can be negotiated during gameplay as to when it will be paid, but the Sidekick will not accept a split of treasure as payment. And since they won’t accept that, they are not included in the party split of treasure gained, either. Over time, the contract to hire them can be renegotiated to include a split of treasure and to remove the gold per day minimum, but only after the party and the Sidekick have come to trust each other.

Also, the Charisma of the player will come in play.  A player with a low Charisma isn't going to attract too many, if any, followers due to their lack of it.  Those with high Charisma scores could attract quite a few followers, so the follow is a chart to show the maximum number of followers based on Charisma score.

 15-16
 17-19
 20+

Though this is the maximum, that doesn't mean a character can have 250 followers with a 20 Charisma score following them around on adventures.  They would have to pay the followers a wage and most of those are 0 Level NPC's who would just be in the way.  But, if they can afford to hire that many people to do the grunt work, then by all means.

### Putting Magic Back into the Land

After outlawing magic shops in the land for several years, I am bringing them back, but only in a specific way. They will not be called Magic Shops, but instead will be curiosity shops with some magical items in them. Some might have a grandiose name like Marvelous Magical Curiosities or something like that, but they don’t just sell magic items. Also, what they carry will be fairly low level and not legendary items, this way those items can be found adventuring. What they can find in the shops will be of Common, Uncommon and an occasional Rare item. Each shop will have a list of the items they have in stock and that’s it. There will be no chart to roll off of, they will have to choose from the list. Also, the items they might know from the DMG will have new names for them, so when they ask, they need to ask for an item that does a particular thing, not by name. A Carpet of Flying will not be what they find, because the name might be Lancaster’s Magical Rug. Does the same thing, has a completely new name.

### Stat Tattoos

There are now tattoo parlors in Greyfeather that specialize in magical statistic enhancing tattoos. The key to the magic is in the ink they use and only licensed parlors are allowed to do this. Mostly in major cities across the realms there are Eladrin who are trained and licensed to perform these tattoo rituals, by appointment.

Costs for a tattoo depend on the type of enchantment.

A +1 to a stat will cost between 75 and 100 gold. The tattoo will only be about the size of a softball and can be done on any location of the body that the wearer desires. Recovery time is 2 to 3 days and any attempt at doing anything strenuous during that time will require a Constitution saving throw at Disadvantage or they will pass out from the pain.

A +2 to a stat will cost between 300 and 500 gold. The tattoo will take up one half of the side of the body that the wearer wants it done on and recovery time is 5 to 7 days. Any attempt at doing anything strenuous during that time will require a Constitution saving throw at Disadvantage or they pass out from the pain.

A +2 mythical boost tattoo will cost between 1,000 and 3,000 gold. The tattoo will take up one entire side of their body (Upper front or upper back) and the recovery time is 8 to 12 days. Any attempt at doing anything strenuous during that time will require a Constitution saving throw at Disadvantage or they will pass out from the pain.

The first two tattoos can only be for a stat that is not 20. If 2 point would put them above 20, they cannot get the +2 stat tattoo. The +2 Mythical Boost tattoo is the only tattoo that will take a character above 20. Also, they can get more than one +1 tattoo, as long as they have room on their bodies for the tattoo, but they can only get one +2 tattoo or one +2 mythical boost tattoo. They cannot get a +2 tattoo and a +2 mythical boost tattoo, they must choose only one of those. If they wish to get more than one +1 tattoo, they cannot get two of the same stat, and they cannot get them all done in the same day. They have to recover and then return for a second one.