# Drew's (Alternate) Rules

### Consequential Knockouts When you are awakened after being knocked unconscious, you gain one level of exhaustion unless: * Your own class feature is used to awaken you (such as pheonix sorcerer's revive), * You roll a natural 20 on a life or death saving throw, * You are awakened by a successful Wisdom (Medicine) check by a creature that is proficient in the Medicine skill. ### Hard Crits You no longer roll extra damage dice for calculating critical strike damage. Instead you deal an amount of extra damage equal to the sum of the maximum rolls of the damage dice in addition to the normal damage roll. ### Dealing with Exhaustion The *Lesser Restoration* spell may remove one level of exhaustion from a creature. The *Greater Restoration* spell removes all levels of exhaustion from a creature. ### Dexterity-less Initiative A character's Dexterity modifier no longer affects its bonus to initiative. ``` ``` ### Dynamic Initiative Instead of rolling for initiative once at the beginning of combat, you roll initiative at the beginning of each round of combat. Higher initiative goes first. Ties are resolved by choosing at random from the tied creatures. At the beginning of each round, each creature decides what actions it wishes to take on its turn. It consults the table below (or the DM) to determine what Initiative Die it rolls. Then each creature rolls its Initiative Die then adds its initiative bonus to that roll. | Initiative Die | Option | |:--------------:|:------------| | 1d20 | Object Interaction | | 1d12 | Dash, Disengage, Dodge | | 1d10 | Attack (Light Weapon), Use an Object | | 1d8 | Attack (Medium Weapon), Cast a Cantrip | | 1d6 | Attack (Heavy Weapon), Search, Hide | | 1d4 | Cast a Spell | | 1 | Incapacitated | | Special | Help, Ready, Improvised Action | * Bonus Actions do not affect initiative. If you would take multiple actions, use the smallest die of the chosen actions. * The Help Action takes the die of whatever action is being given advantage. * The DM will determine the complexity of an Improvised Action. If a player decides to perform an action other than what they anticipated, they may choose instead to Ready an action from the options with a Initiative Die of greater or equal size to the one they prepared.

This is a rework by [ImFromNASA](http://www.reddit.com/u/ImFromNASA) of Mike Mearl's custom initiative system and other house rules.

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# Drew's (Alternate) Rules (w/ Notes)

### Consequential Knockouts When you are awakened after being knocked unconscious, you gain one level of exhaustion unless: * Your own class feature is used to awaken you (such as pheonix sorcerer's revive), * You roll a natural 20 on a life or death saving throw, * You are awakened by a successful Wisdom (Medicine) check by a creature that is proficient in the Medicine skill. ___ > This rule was instituted for two reasons. The first, was to prevent 'yo-yo-ing' knockouts during combat, and the second was to give a more significant mechanical advantage to the Medicine skill without requiring a feat. ### Hard Crits You no longer roll extra damage dice for calculating critical strike damage. Instead you deal an amount of extra damage equal to the sum of the maximum rolls of the damage dice in addition to the normal damage roll. ___ > It doesn't make sense that a critical strike can deal less damage than a normal strike. The minimum damage for a crit is now greater than the maximum for a non-crit. ### Dealing with Exhaustion The *Lesser Restoration* spell may remove one level of exhaustion from a creature. The *Greater Restoration* spell removes all levels of exhaustion from a creature. ___ >Because of the **Consequential Knockouts** rule, the relatively lackluster performance of the Frenzy Barbarian archetype, and the relatively lackluster performance of the *Lesser Restoration* spell, we buff the *Lesser Restoration* spell. ### Dexterity-less Initiative A character's Dexterity modifier no longer affects its bonus to initiative. ___ > Dexterity is pretty good. It's doubly good with Dynamic Initiative. We have chosen to remove it. ``` ``` ### Dynamic Initiative Instead of rolling for initiative once at the beginning of combat, you roll initiative at the beginning of each round of combat. Higher initiative goes first. Ties are resolved by choosing at random from the tied creatures. At the beginning of each round, each creature decides what actions it wishes to take on its turn. It consults the table below (or the DM) to determine what Initiative Die it rolls. Then each creature rolls its Initiative Die then adds its initiative bonus to that roll. | Initiative Die | Option | |:--------------:|:------------| | 1d20 | Object Interaction | | 1d12 | Dash, Disengage, Dodge | | 1d10 | Attack (Light Weapon), Use an Object | | 1d8 | Attack (Medium Weapon), Cast a Cantrip | | 1d6 | Attack (Heavy Weapon), Search, Hide | | 1d4 | Cast a Spell | | 1 | Incapacitated | | Special | Help, Ready, Improvised Action | * Bonus Actions do not affect initiative. If you would take multiple actions, use the smallest die of the chosen actions. * The Help Action takes the die of whatever action is being given advantage. * The DM will determine the complexity of an Improvised Action. If a player decides to perform an action other than what they anticipated, they may choose instead to Ready an action from the options with a Initiative Die of greater or equal size to the one they prepared. ___ >Advantages of this system: >- Everyone decides what they want to do AT THE SAME TIME. That is a huge slash to metagaming tactics and requires teamwork and preparation beforehand, like real life adventuring would. >- Less waiting for an individual player, it will feel like the turns are occuring with greater simultaneity because you'll already know what you're going to do, you're just waiting for your character to actually do it, instead of waiting to DECIDE what your character will do. >Disadvantages: >- More complex to explain than 1d20 + dex. >- A occasional (though factually incorrect) feeling of "Well, I guess I've gotta Fireball myself now" fatalism.

This is a rework by [ImFromNASA](http://www.reddit.com/u/ImFromNASA) of Mike Mearl's custom initiative system and other house rules.

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