Age of Orion
Home Rules
Drug Addiction and Usage
See Drug Addiction
Serious Injury
Covers Fissures to Compound Fractures, what it means and how you deal with them.
See Serious Injury
Vitality
Some DMs find hit points bothersome. A fighter can survive a fireball, a troll’s rending claws, and a one‐hundred‐foot fall, only to crumple in a heap due to a kobold’s dagger slash. This optional rule more realistically reflects the wear and tear a character suffers from wounds.
Each character has a pool of vitality in addition to hit points. A character’s maximum vitality equals the character’s Constitution score. Whenever a character takes 10 or more damage from an attack or effect, the character loses vitality. Divide the damage by 10 and round down. The result is how much vitality a character loses. In other words, a character loses 1 vitality for every 10 points of damage dealt by an attack or effect.
If a character suffers a critical hit, double the vitality lost, so that the character loses 2 vitality for every 10 points of damage. If a critical hit deals less than 10 damage, it still reduces vitality by 1.
A character reduced to 0 vitality is immediately reduced to 0 hit points. If a character is reduced to 0 hit points but his or her vitality remains above 0, any additional damage is applied instead to the character’s vitality. A character is not unconscious until both hit points and vitality reach 0.
Completing a medium rest increases a character’s vitality by 1 + the Character’s Constitution modifier. Completing a long rest increases a character’s vitality by the character’s level + the character’s Constitution modifier, up to the character’s maximum vitality. Effects that restore hit points have no effect on vitality. However, a character with maximum hit points who receives healing instead restores 1 vitality for every 10 points of healing.
Healing surges
This optional rule allows characters to heal up in the thick of combat and works well for parties that feature few or no characters with healing magic, or for
campaigns in which magical healing is rare.
As an action, a character can use a healing surge and spend up to half his or her Hit Dice. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll.
A character who uses a healing surge can’t do so again until he or she finishes a short or long rest.
Under this optional rule, a character regains all spent Hit Dice at the end of a long rest. With a short rest, a character regains Hit Dice equal to his or her level divided by four (minimum of one die).
Inspiration usage:
The Moment: Spend 1 Inspiration grant advantage.
Bruised and Bloodied: Spend 2 Inspiration to stabilize at 1 health and stand up after rolling a death saving throw that doesn’t kill you. (Turn ends)
Shrug it off: Spend 2 Inspiration to gain Resistance to non-magical attacks for a single round.
Peripeteia: Spend 3 Inspiration to get an extra turn after you have been hit and taken damage.
Deadly Strike: Spend 4 Inspiration to upgrade a hit into a critical hit.
By Any Means: Spend 8 Inspiration, when you need to do the ‘mechanically’ impossible, you make it happen. Can be used during your turn or as a reaction. You are allowed to tell how you’d like the next few moments of the story to go, mechanics be damned as long as it makes story sense it’ll end like you want it to. Some requests will be balanced out by counter actions. For example, you can use By Any Means when your in the middle of combat and the villain finishes their monologue and is walking away to draw your bow and put an arrow through his head, the downside being you’ll take attacks of opportunity from the minions surrounding you. Another example, you and another party member have been split from the group, and get ambushed; the first round of combat goes poorly for your partner and the next will likely go bad for you. Using By Any Means you ask that you manage to defeat the enemies and save your partner, the story is then filled in, you fight the remaining enemies taking arrows and slashes, sinking your blade into the last enemy standing before collapsing from exhaustion.
Resting
Recovery
A short rest is now 5 minutes, it will provide the following benefits.
Hit Points: You may spend a single Hit Dice to regain hit points.
Vitality: You may spend a single Hit Dice to regain 1 Vitality.
Short Rest
Same as PHB p. 186 with the following:
Vitality: Increase Vitality by 1 + Character’s Constitution Mod (Minimum 1).
Long Rest
Same as PHB p. 186 with the following:
Vitality: Increase Vitality by Character Level + Character’s Constitution Mod (Minimum 1).
Attributes
Point buy system.
Sanity
Not included. Sanity will not be tracked via stats, and will be more likely done through role playing instead of mechanical means.
Honor
Will be included, starts at 10 and is earned or lost, certain character backgrounds will start you with a +2 or -2 to honor. Honor represents the honor society says your due, but does not actually depict how honorable you are.
Modified Criticals
Automail
See Auto-Mail