Hands of Fate is a rules compendium created with the goal of creating a more dramatic and player-driven game. Using these rules, players can and should be pushed to the breaking point, while also being empowered to take control of their own fates. If the idea of giving the players lots of power to influence the game and narrative scares you, these rules are probably not suited to your tastes.

GM Notes

Extensive notes on thought process, as well as tips for using these rules in your games and clarifications on rules conflicts.

Higher Level Magic

Magic more powerful than level 3 spells are still possible and still exist in the world, but they are not utility magics that can be cast in seconds or minutes.

Frequently, it takes a coven of witches, a circle of druids, or an order of wizards weeks of planning, preparation and concentration to perform more powerful magics.

While these magics may be available to players, it is not quick, easy, or cheap. Commissioning a high-level spell is like embarking on a construction project, with all the complications that go with it.

Resting

Heroes can recover from injuries quickly, but not overnight. There are three types of rests.

Breather. Taking a breather is a short period of downtime, at least 5 minutes long. During that time players may rest, slake their thirst or hunger, bandage a wound, or just meditate on the task ahead.

A character can spend one or more Hit Dice after taking a breather, up to the character’s maximum number of Hit Dice, which is equal to the character’s level. For each Hit Die spent in this way, the player rolls the die and adds the character’s Constitution modifier to it. The character regains hit points equal to the total. The player can decide to spend an additional Hit Die after each roll.

Short Rest. A short rest is a period of downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 10 minutes of walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.

At the end of a short rest, a character regains 1 Hit Die. A character can’t benefit from more than one short rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

Long Rest. A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 24 hours long. A long rest can only be taken in a safe location, where characters have access to plentiful food, water, and comfort. A long rest cannot be attempted while in the wilderness, while sleeping on dirt or stone, or while wearing armor. Characters must be in a location where they do not feel the need to keep watch or constantly be on guard.

At the end of a long rest, a character regains all lost hit points, and regains all spent Hit Dice. A character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.

Downtime

As a result of the slower resting, there is a greater emphasis on downtime. Players should be encouraged to establish a home base, carouse the city at night, and build connections in new locations.

Leveling Up

Players may hit a milestone or gain enough experience to reach the next level, however they only gain a level at the end of a Long Rest. This again increases the focus on downtime.

Feats, Boons, and Blessings

After reaching level 6, players may still reach milestones while adventuring. At the DM's discretion, in place of awarding further levels, they may grant additional Feats, Boons or Blessings. Players may also specifically train or go questing to specifically gain new Feats, Boons, or Blessings.

Beyond Level 6

While the rules state that level 6 is the default level cap, that cap is not set in stone. Rules are made to be broken.

Fiction is full of stories of those who reached the peaks of human achievement and still wanted more. The Lich is the quintessential example. Faced with the fragility of mortality and the limitations of their own magical ability, the Lich goes to extreme measures to break those barriers that hold back those with weaker stomachs and fewer ambitions.

Great power awaits those who dare to seek it.

Character aspects

Character aspects are aspects that define a player character. These may describe an ideal, bond, flaw, goal, relationship, reputation, title, mental health, and much more. Characters acting in character and compelling their aspects to get themselves in trouble is the most consistent tool that players have available to them to gain more Inspiration. As such, players are encouraged to have many aspects to give them many opportunities to compel them. Some examples might include:

• I need a drink
• Can I keep it?
• Big sister
• Phandalin pariah
• I'll show you a monster!
• The silent type

Environmental aspects

Environmental aspects describe the environment around the players. These can include hazards, weather, sanctuary, or the prying eyes of enemies. Examples include:

• Freezing temperatures
• Danger! High voltage!
• The walls have ears
• Sacred waters
• The stars are wrong

Scene aspects

Scene aspects are able to define the tone and flavor of a scene. They are frequently genre clichés, and can be used to give a scene or adventure a specific flavor. Some examples might include:

• Let's split up gang!
• We're all mad here
• Can't catch a break
• Paranoia
• Love is in the air

One-time aspects

One-time aspects are comparable to a magical boon or a consumable item. These are aspects that are given to party or individual characters. They can only be invoked once, and then they are removed. Below are some examples:

Aspect abilities

Aspect abilities might represent a stunt that a character is so good at that they are able to do very efficently. These can be granted by the DM to players who have a favorite move, or a talent that falls outside the normal scope of the rules. The best aspect abilities encourage teamwork between players, and show off their individual quirks and personalities.

Below are some examples. Feel free to experiment and create your own.

Enemy Planning

During this phase, the DM examines the battlefield and declares the intentions of the creatures under his control. This description should be as short as possible. "The Skeletons are going to focus on taking out the Warlock", "The Dragon is going to ignore the party and attack the church", "The Bandits are going to try to block your escape, while the archers pepper you from out of range", "The Rogue is looking to get out of danger, it's unclear what his intentions are", etc.

What is happening is that the players are reading the battlefield and assessing the current situation. This allows them to make educated decisions and have the opportunity to thwart the enemy's plans.

Player Planning

Now that the players have a broad idea of what the enemy is planning, they come up with a plan themselves, and declare their own intentions. At this stage, actions do not need any more detail than what is needed to determine the initiative roll. Working together is encouraged.

Roll Initiative

Each player and enemy simultaneously rolls initiative. Players roll the largest dice corresponding to their actions. Low numbers go first.

Action

The DM begins by announcing "Initiative Count 1" to the table. If there are any creatures that rolled a 1 for their Initiative are then able to act. If there are any ties, the creature with the highest Passive Initiative goes first.

After all creatures on Initiative Count 1 act, the DM continues counting. "Initiative Count 2", "Initiative Count 3", etc. This process continues until all creatures have acted.

Resolution

Anything that needs to be resolved at the end of a round of combat, such as status effects or magic durations resolve now. Begin the next round, looping back to the Enemy Planning phase.

The "Click" rule

Whenever a trap is triggered, there is an audible "Click!". This is the signal for the players to spring into action. Relevant players may declare their intentions to avoid or sabotage the trap before it goes off. Everyone, including the trap, rolls initiative.

Traps by their nature tend to act quickly and have a very low initiative die size. However, all traps are assumed to have a Passive Initiative score of 1. Therefore, in the event of a tie, player characters always goes first.

Character Creation

1. Determine Ancestry

Players choose an Ancestry for their characters. Functionally, this is almost identical to choosing a Race, with the distinction being largely conceptual.

By choosing an ancestry, you are not determining your parentage, but what racial, cultural and societal forces shaped you. A human raised by Dwarves may claim Dwarven ancestry, and a half-elf may choose to take Human, Elf, or Half-Elf ancestry, depending on what forces shaped them into the person they became.

Ability Score Increases. As a result of this more flexible approach to race, all racial Ability Score Increases may be distributed to ability scores of your choice. For example, choosing a Half-Orc ancestry allows you to increase one ability score of your choice by 2, and one ability score by 1. These must be differnt ability scores.

2. Choose a Class

Select a class for your character as outlined in the Player's Handbook.

3. Determine Ability Scores

Determine ability scores as outlined in the Player's Handbook.

4. Choose Equipment

Choose starting equipment as outlined in the Player's Handbook.

5. Describe Your Character

Once you know the basic game aspects of your character, it’s time to flesh him or her out as a person. Your character needs a name. Spend a few minutes thinking about what he or she looks like and how he or she behaves in general terms.

Alignment. Alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. It may be helpful to play your character for a few sessions before determining what alignment best describes them.

Aspects. Aspects are the things that motivate and drive characters - the things that make them who they are. At character creation, give your character a minimum of three aspects. Choose one high concept aspect that describes your character, one aspect that gets you into trouble, and one that gives you a connection to another character or the world.

Aspects

Aspects are a word or phrase that describes something special about a character. They describe personality traits, important details about your past, relationships you have with others, titles you possess, madness and sanity, reputations you have, obligations to others, problems you're dealing with, goals you're working towards and more.

While core aspects to your character may never change, other aspects will be gained and lost as the game is played.

An example character may start with the following aspects:

• Thief with a Heart of Gold (high concept)
• Gambler (trouble)
• Family Man
• Partially Blind

Background. Your character’s background describes where he or she came from, his or her original occupation, and the character’s place in the D&D world. Choose a background from Chapter 4 of the Player's Handbook, or work with your DM to create your own.

6. Select a Feat

Adventurers are exceptional specimens, and they have the talent to prove it. All characters may select one feat at character creation.

In addition to the PHB+1 selection of feats available, players may also choose from the list of Skill Feats.

7. Death Wish & Living Will

Prepare for the end by determining your Death Wish and Living Will. These are not set in stone, and should be frequently updated so as to accurately reflect the character. A characters' Death Wish should always be public information.

Death Wish

Coming to terms with death is never easy. However, death can be meaningful, poetic, dramatic, and can change the course of history. At character creation, players must note on their character sheets the way that they think would be the most appropriate or most dramatic for their character to die in the line of duty.

Living Will

Your living will lays out the specifics of how your possessions are to be distributed after your death. You can leave a will behind to confirm who the heirs to your property are — this can be arranged in secret with the DM, or as public knowledge. It is up to each character to decide if they wish to bequeath their wealth and tools to their compatriots, their families, or to another noble cause. Additional clauses may be added as desired.

Last Rites

Depending on the particular faith of a character, they may have specific funeral rites to be carried out in order to allow them to pass on to the afterlife. As part of the living will, outline the rituals that must be fulfilled to allow your spirit to join the honored dead.

The Will

The reading of the will usually takes place at, or just after, the funeral. It is up to the players to ensure that their last wishes are carried out.

Burial

No one wants their corpse to be left out in the open, torn apart by birds and wild dogs. If your adventuring party are able to recover your body, bury it properly, and follow the last rites, each mourning party member gains 1 free inspiration token, and the party gains the following one-time aspects.

A New Beginning

It's time to start anew. Once you've added your character's name to the graveyard it's time to create a brand new character. New characters are created at the same level as the previous character was at when they died, up to a maximum of level 6.

Retirement

The adventurer's lifestyle is not for everyone, and sometimes a character chooses to lead a different life.

They may have found an offer too good to pass up, or their injuries became too great, or they had a nervous breakdown — whatever the case, the character decides to retire from adventuring.

Retired characters become active NPCs. Some may join local factions, or provide downtime services, or even become training mentors depending on their skillset.

These rules taken in aggregate are intended to work together to create a specific type of game. Rules influence and shape behavior, and as a result work best when they are working in harmony with the DM's and the player's expectations.

Dying and Stabilizing

These variant rules eliminate the concept of 'dying' and 'stabilizing'.

Mechanically speaking, in the vanilla rules the 'dying' status has always felt like a character has received a "Schodinger's Mortal Wound". They may or may not be actually dying, and a player who is holding in their guts needs only a Goodberry to be back in the fray. Not only that, but it's not fun as a player to have your turn skipped.

Healer's Kit

The Healer's Kit is intended to help stabilize dying players. This variant uses part of the Healer Feat to help make it useful, while keeping the idea of the medic patching someone up to get them out of harm's way.

Healer Feat

The Healer Feat is intended to make Healing Kits more useful. This variant is based on a blog post by Chris Perkins.

Spare the Dying

The cantrip Spare the Dying helps stabilize a dying creature. However, these variant rules eliminate the 'dying' condition.

The original spell is intended to let players help an ally who is already in a dire situation. This alternative is intended to keep the spirit and balance of the original spell while working within the new framework.

Rage Beyond Death

The Path of the Zealot Barbarian from Xanathar's Guide to Everything gains the Rage Beyond Death ability at 14th level. Here's how to adapt it to your game.

Variant: Lingering Injuries

You remove one Death Point at the end of a long rest.

Variant: Heroic

During a short rest, you may expend a Hit Die to remove one Death Point. All Death Points are removed at the end of a long rest.

Variant: Unstoppable

You remove all Death Points at the end of a short or long rest.

Sandman. When this creature reduces a target to 0 hp, they may choose to knock their target unconscious.

Greater Restoration

Greater Restoration is modified so that in addition to all it's previous effects, it is also able to remove death points. This is the only feature, aside from a wish spell that can remove death points during combat. However, if you've managed to get a 5th level spell slot, you've earned it.

Revivify

Revivify is modified so that while it can bring the dead back from life, it's primary function is to heal a mortal wound. Subtle distinction, but for me it improves the flavor.

FATE Points

In the game FATE, there is a resource called FATE Points, which are the primary mechanical inspiration for these rules, though I do take a different approach to the point economy.

In FATE, there are four ways that FATE Points can be spent:

• Invoke an aspect
• Power a Stunt
• Refuse a Compel
• Declare a Story Detail

I'll now outline the four ways that I have proposed for spending Inspiration Tokens, and how they should hopefully accomplish similar goals.

The Economy

The Inspiration Pool is my own twist on the FATE point system. The concept is simple: when you choose to exert your influence, you empower the other side to do the same back to you. While I considered more finite economies, the push and pull of this system is extremely appealing to me. Players know that while you're going to get yourself out of trouble this time, you're setting yourself up for more trouble in the future. And DMs can nudge the story in directions they want, knowing they are empowering their players to be even more heroic. It also removes the burden of adjudicating who earns inspiration from the DM.

Conclusion

I'm not the only one who finds Inspiration as presented by the game to be lackluster. I also find all of my tabletop RPGs to be more satisfying when they allow the players to help shape the story. For me, these rules provide a simple way to introduce a lot of additional mechanical and narrative complexity to the game while adding very few actual rules.

I love this mission statement, and feel it addresses many of my perceived flaws with vanilla initiative. However, the overall conclusion by the D&D community was that Greyhawk Initiative was interesting, but flawed. Some of the objections were:

• Slowed down play too much
• Too complicated
• Too much math
• Too many dice being rolled
• Rolling dice for movement felt bad
• Dexterity no longer impacted Initiative speed

Dynamic Initiative is my attempt to keep the strengths of Greyhawk Initiative, while removing its weaknesses.

Removing dice rolling for movement was an easy first step. Reducing the number of dice rolled to only one (two max) immediately makes the system much more simple and streamlined.

However, this created a narrow range of possible initiative numbers, meaning that having a tied initiative score became extremely common. But by having your Dexterity Ability Score become the tiebreaker, it provided a speedy way to resolve ties while also making Dexterity relevant to speed. From there, making the small change from Dexterity Ability Score to Passive Initiative also allowed features that can modify Initiative, such as the Alert feat, Guidance spell, or a Bard's Jack of All Trades to continue to function. Simply add those numbers to your Passive Initiative score.