Roll20 Characters

I'm getting ready to run a game for some of friends on roll20. I know, I know. Still, it's free.

Because I never do things the easy way, I've made different classes along late-medieval themes and modified the d20 ruleset down to the barest bones possible. I doubt that will interest any randos that stumble across my blog, though.

Class Abilities

Anyway, here are the classes. They have strong, thematic capabilities. These assume you agree with the objectively correct, morally superior position of death to ability scores. They also assume that you receive two feats at first level and rely on them for all of your player-driven character customization. So feats have to be pretty chunky, more like 5e feats than 4e or buy-in 3e. Lastly and perhaps most objectionably, they assume that you don't receive more hit points as you increase in level. If you want that so much, take a feat.

A slow, dangerous melee class.

A defensive melee class. 

A standard-fare ranged caster. I'll probably post their Dark Gift table later, after I de-plagiarize it.

"Let's not fight," you say as you discreetly reach for your sword.

"Ze healing is not as revarding as ze hurting." A non-clerical healing class. I know plague doctors are done to death.

Never stop firing. Also, never stop moving.

Sit in the back row and gank people.

A momentum-based class.

Thieves And Minor Magical Item Properties

Thieves have it rough. It's not just spider climb and knock and fly. It's the way DMs put in extra traps if there is a thief and don't bother putting in locked doors if there isn't. Quite reasonably, most DMs react to party composition rather than blindly inserting a quota of thief-only challenges. Being a skill-monkey isn't all it's cracked up to be.

So here's an ability unique to thieves:

When a thief appraises a newly-found magical weapon or suit of armor, they have a 5% chance of noticing or being already aware of an additional magical property of said item.

Sure, wizards study spells and history and magic all day long. But they don't spend all day daydreaming about the magical items that have passed through history and are worth stealing. "I wish I lived a hundred years ago so that I could steal Emilio Gotteson's Improved Cloak Of The Bat. That was much better than this dusty normal cloak of the bat that I just found, even if it looks similar... wait a minute." Nor are bards quite the materialists that thieves are. Sorry, bard, you didn't take any 200-level "Things Worth Stealing" courses in your bardic college.

When the 5% chance occurs, roll on the following table (d20):

1. Lucky: You have +1 to all saving throws.
2. Absorbing: Each day, you suffer half damage from the first source of damage to affect you.
3. Life-Giving: Begins each day with a 15 hp healing pool otherwise identical to a paladin's laying on of hands.
4. ____-Hating: Roll 1d6: animals, dragons, humanoids, undead, outsiders, or aberrations. The item glows when that creature type is near, giving you a +4 initiative bonus if enemies of that type are present.
5. Bloodthirst: Each encounter, the first time you hit with a weapon attack, it inflicts +1d8 damage.
6. Hearty: You have +5 max hit points.
7. Protective: You have +1 AC. Great!
8. Ever-Ready: You can summon the item from anywhere within 100 feet if you were the person who possessed the item most during the previous day. If armor, it appears on your person.
9. Coruscating: Any time you critically hit, you heal 1d8+5 hp.
10. Bewildering: Any time you critically hit, you may teleport 5 spaces. No line of sight needed.
11. Sagely: The item can memorize a single 1st-level wizard spell if you let it read someone else's spellbook. You can use the item to cast said spell.
12. Marching: You know how the DM puts your miniature on the board and tells you to roll initiative? Move your miniature four spaces before rolling initiative.
13. Glowing: Your item emits light similarly to a torch unless you are consciously willing it not to. I feel bad if you rolled this.
14. Reflexive: +2 to Reflex saves.
15. Fortitudinous: +2 to Fort saves.
16. Mind-Shielding: +3 to Will saves.
17. Impenetrable: Any time you suffer exactly 1 damage after resistances and everything have been taken into account, you ignore that damage.
18. Improved: The object has an additional +1 (+1 armor becomes +2, et ceteras).
19. Duplicating: Each day, the item has a 33% chance of producing a copy of itself. That copy lasts until the next day, whereupon it dissolves into blue ash.
20. Soaring: You are flying during the first round of each combat. Your speed is the same as your land speed.

Add the listed prefix to your item, e.g. if you roll a 1 with a longsword +1, it becomes a lucky longsword +1. I tried to keep them from being too complicated or distracting from items existing purpose.

If there are multiple thieves in the party, I suppose you could stack their percentile chance.

New Death Penalties In D&D

People have a lot of conflicting ideas about what should happen when a player dies. Permadeath has some outspoken advocates, while others are perfectly happy with a revolving door of relatively cheap raise dead spells. As written, the 5e D&D raise dead spell has no permanent penalties for death, though I think this is an area of the rules where DM tinkering is especially expected to make his own mark.

(Probably) The Most Popular Ideas

Permadeath

That’s it. You're dead. Dungeon masters espousing this method have a noted tendency to use the words “gritty” and “verisimilitude” in their blog posts. The “system shock” checks from 1e and 2e could arguably represent a form of this.

CON Loss

The way it was in 2nd edition. If you passed your system shock check, you would return to life with a permanent loss of 1 constitution point.

Level Loss

The 3rd edition way. You come back, you lose a level. The drawback here is that having died once, you are more likely to die again, far more than due to the loss of a CON point. In Pathfinder, raise dead inflicts the loss of two levels, while the higher-level resurrection reduces this to one level.

Extended Penalties, Minor

In 4e, a character would suffer a relatively minor penalty for a while (-1 to d20 rolls for six encounters). In my view, it isn't even worth having such a minor penalty. You might as well not do anything. It's not like it's easy to die in 4e.

Extended Penalties, Major

Raise dead in 5e inflicts larger penalties (-4 to attacks and so forth) that disappear gradually over the course of a few days. It seems like temporary inconvenience has been settled on as the best method to allow people to continue playing their character without making players lose their fear of death. I'm definitely down with this.

In all the above cases, the raise dead spell/ritual required the expenditure of gold. In 5e thus far, there really aren't that many ways to spend gold. It looks like raising dead is probably the main thing you spend gold on.

Choose Your Own Deathventure

Death penalties are controversial. They not only touch on a player's preference for D&D edition, but also character/story investment, players' personal loss aversion, and how much a player wants to be challenged or relaxed during gameplay. So why not allow players to select their own personal death penalty?

In one campaign, I allowed players to choose from the following:

Bantamweight

The first time you are mortally wounded in an adventure, you are incurably weak until the end of the adventure (you inflict half damage and your healing effects are reduced by half). If you are mortally wounded again while in this state, you die permanently.

Milquetoast

When you are mortally wounded, you are unable to participate in combat until further notice. You cannot recover from this state until you have had rare medicines applied that cost 50gp x your level and require a full day to apply.

Hardcore

When you receive a mortal wound, you die forever. As compensation, you begin the game at second level (or a level higher than you otherwise would).

Tears Everywhere

When you receive a mortal wound, you cannot take action of any kind for the rest of that encounter and are stable at 1 hp. Additionally, you suffer a permanent -3 max hit points (I feel like this is less painful than a CON point loss, but still completely undesirable).

Postscript

"Mortal Wound" in this case is the reduction to below -15 hp, my favored threshold for death.

You might consider adding a random side effect of returning from the afterlife.