Using hit die in 5e for new things

Artifacts of Amber · January 09, 2015, 11:03:25 AM

I am working on a gamma world conversion from 4th edition (1980s) gamma world to 5th edition D&D. While working on mutations I started using the expenditure of hit dice during short and long rest to represent some of the plant mutations that required "Growing" things like fruit and vines etc. Things that use to regrow over a period of time. I wanted to track less stuff so made it a Expend two hit die (Cumulative) to grow back a fruit during a long rest.

So that got me thinking of expending Hit dice as a means of powering abilities or even magic items. Representing putting personal energy into something to power it.

so I was wandering what the community thought.

Omega · January 09, 2015, 11:18:02 AM

I did something like that with a few mutations from my original Omega World book way back. One was a sort of blood fueled hydro laser, another was a life force powered barrier field. Some players had the option to "speed recharge" a mutation with limited uses per day by spending XYZ HP.

Necrozius · January 09, 2015, 01:02:38 PM

Ooooh that's a pretty cool idea, actually.

I was trying to figure out a simple way to grant spell casters some kind of extra resource to allow them a bit more flexibility with the whole spells per "day" thing (or x spell points). Hit dice might just be perfect for such a mechanic.

To clarify: a Wizard (or whatever class) could spend hit dice to recover a slot (one or more dice per spell slot level) or to recover extra spell points (by rolling the die?) when they're in a pinch.

Unless there's something I'm missing...

Artifacts of Amber · January 09, 2015, 01:13:03 PM

Necrozius

Yeah I was sort of thinking something like that.

Mainly I was thinking cool magic item effects that did something when you charged them with Hit die.

You could create a spell that did a similar thing. I have seen lots of fiction where wizards used energy then and paid for it later. Could be represented by using up hit die like you would during a rest to fuel a spell. A ritual could be used to do it during rest to gain slots or Spell points etc.

Omega
Yeah the power of that depends on how fast you can recover htps. This way you only have so many hit dice and no way of getting them back faster so it is a more controlled resource in my mind. Why I avoided the using hit points route.

Omega · January 09, 2015, 08:33:56 PM

Omega World did not use hit dice, so it had to come off the users HP. There was also a "Blood Gun" which used the users blood to form condensed bullets.

Same thing with the older fantasy book. A Druid could convert HP into spell points and a Blood Blades weapon was created from their own HP. Difference being that they could re-absorb the HP back. Unless they were making blood darts in which case they had to recover the loss like everyone else.

Rincewind1 · January 10, 2015, 03:38:12 AM

It's definitely an interesting experiment to base Blood Magic on something like this - you expend Hit Dice instead of Spell Slots. Of course, with Spell Slots being as flexible as they are in 5e compared to 3e, it'd need to come with additional benefits.

Bloody Stupid Johnson · January 10, 2015, 07:20:49 AM

Normally a hit die has a variable benefit (size of the dice and/or Con bonus), maybe you'd want to consider trying to keep that consistent with other uses?
An ability that lets you say do [+hit die] to damage maybe fine, but with utility effects that are basically fixed (not connected to damage) you might want a minimum roll on the die (or dice) to make it work? So you might end up having to burn 2 HD if you're a wizard, while the barbarian could do it with 1.

Artifacts of Amber · January 10, 2015, 08:01:10 PM

Well hit die correlate directly to hit points so losing or gaining them is proportional. Didn't want to add more rolling in any case. Was just trying to think of new ways to use this concept.

RPGPundit · January 15, 2015, 03:11:49 AM

Quote from: Artifacts of Amber;808551I am working on a gamma world conversion from 4th edition (1980s) gamma world to 5th edition D&D. While working on mutations I started using the expenditure of hit dice during short and long rest to represent some of the plant mutations that required "Growing" things like fruit and vines etc. Things that use to regrow over a period of time. I wanted to track less stuff so made it a Expend two hit die (Cumulative) to grow back a fruit during a long rest.

So that got me thinking of expending Hit dice as a means of powering abilities or even magic items. Representing putting personal energy into something to power it.

so I was wandering what the community thought.

I think that would certainly be viable in certain types of fantasy.

Artifacts of Amber · January 15, 2015, 10:40:48 AM

For fantasy I could see rituals for a S&S game work with this or even bog standard D&D have a sword that worked off this.

A power for a sword may be. During a short rest you can expend a Hit die to be stored in the sword. The sword can store up to 3 hit die. These hit die go away at dawn each day.

By expending a hit die after a successful attack the wielder can inflict an additional +1d10 damage of a type inflicted by the weapon. Only one hit die may be expended at a time.

A dry mechanical example which could be souped up by changing it to bonus necrotic damage and describing the hit die as it is stored as the wielder's skin pales and they feel weak for a moment etc.

FaerieGodfather · January 20, 2015, 11:55:56 PM

I like this idea. Can think of all sorts of abilities that might be fueled by Hit Dice. Maybe not for D&D, but for a similar system...