The party has a shared resource called Spirit. This is confidence or good cheer. A party gains Spirit by (1) resting in safe places, (2) being entertained, (3) eating good food, (4) having NPC friends, (5) taking a bath. A low-level party might have 5 Spirit when they go into a dungeon.
At any time, any party member can spend Spirit to reduce incoming damage by 1d4 for each Spirit spent this way. If you get double 4s, you also get a +4 bonus on your first d20 roll next turn. You can only spend Spirit if you are with the group. You can spend Spirit to reduce incoming damage that would normally kill you (and in fact, this is probably the best way to spend Spirit).
So, spirit kind of functions like a second, shared HP pool for the whole group.
As a corollary, clerics are no longer a base class. (Yes, this is another anti-cleric push. Sorry.)
Why Clerics Suck
- It often feels obligatory. Lots of groups think that they need a healer.
- Groups often do need a healbot. Sometimes an unlucky PC takes a big lump of damage and they need a heal.
- It isn't very fun for most players to be the healbot.
- Lots of adventures expect you to have a healer/cleric in order to remove curses, etc.
This blog post is mostly a fix for #1 and #2. The goal is to make healing accessible to the party through a shared resource, not a single PC that someone feels obligated to play. Clerics shouldn't be a core class like Fighter / Thief / Wizard.
As for #3 ("It isn't fun to be the healbot.") some of you are probably already saying "But I love playing healers" and "It's not boring to be the cleric--it's actually very interesting and fun to manage the party's HP". I won't disagree with you. (How can you disagree with an opinion?) But I will say that I think that most groups don't always have someone like you in them.
I also think healers can be cool! White mages are cool. Flesh god healers are cool. But I almost see those as optional classes.
With regards to #4 ("You need a cleric to remove curses, negative levels, possession, etc"), I disagree a lot. I don't think it's good adventure design if your adventure needs a specific class feature to progress past an obstacle.
Other Design Goals
. . . besides removing the need for clerics.
#1 Make It Grittier
I almost hate to use the word "gritty" nowadays because it means too many different things to too many different people, but I do think that if you have a magical healer walking behind you who can heal you after you get stabbed in the chest, threats feel a little less threatening.
Because Spirit functions as a second HP pool, we can allow player HP pools to be a little smaller. I think the game "feels" grittier if you have less HP (relative to monster damage). It might be less lethal (depending on how much Spirit the party has) but it might "feel" more lethal.
#2 More Visibility of the Resource
Not everyone knows how many heals the cleric has left, so they don't have good knowledge of how much delving they can safely do.
This is bad! Dungeoncrawling is closely tied to resource management. Resources like torches, spells, and HP. The number of healing spells that your cleric has available is another resource like those--it's just confined to a single person's character sheet (even if the cleric's heals are effectively a resource shared by the whole party).
I recommend putting the party's Spirit up somewhere visible, like the Underclock. Perhaps a small whiteboard?
#3 Diagetic Character Power Advancement
The party doesn't gain Spirit by leveling up. They gain Spirit by building bases, making friends, finding a stream to take a bath in. Engaging with the world.
And this is something that happens naturally, not mechanically. (Relatively naturally, I mean. "I take a bath and gain 1 Spirit" is more naturalistic than "I gain 350 XP and level up.")
#4 Encourage the Players to Make NPC Friends and Go to the Coliseum
Mechanical encouragement for roleplaying. Some people hate it. I think you just have to do it lightly.
#5 Encourage the Players to Build Bases Outside of Dungeons
Basically necessary, if they want more Spirit. Note that they'll probably want to build some small fortification outside of every dungeon they intend to delve repeatedly. It might take more than 1 trip, require some hirelings (guards, cooks). This is probably worth a few rules of its own, actually.
#6 More Opportunities for Roleplaying
We don't normally have a good yardstick for "How happy is my character today?" but if a player wants to have an idea for how chipper they are feeling that day, they could use the current Spirit as a benchmark.
Also, all that diagetic stuff up above gives the DM more opportunities to world build. If the party wants to go see a play (in order to be entertained)
The Specifics
The party can get different amounts of Spirit from different things.
Safety - Up to 3 Spirit. 0 for a tent. 1 for a tree-house. 3 in a castle that you own.
Entertainment - Up to 2. 1 if you have your own bard, visit a brothel, go to Church, etc. 2 if the whole party does something new together for the first time (e.g. go see a play).
Food - Up to 2 Spirit. Good meal -> Amazing meal.
Companionship - Up to 2 Spirit. If you hang out with 1 or 2 friends*, you get 1 Spirit. More: 2 Spirit.
Cleanliness - You get 1 Spirit if you've taken a bath since your last dungeoncrawl.
* Friends are NPCs that you hang out with because they're cool and you like them on a personal level, not because they pay you, give you quests, or cure your curses.
You get Spirit after you eat a healthy dinner and get a good night's sleep. If you are attacked at night and someone is hurt, you get no Spirit.
Gaining Spirit overlaps (does not stack) with previous Spirit. If you gain 5 Spirit in town, spend 2 Spirit on the way to the dungeon, and then go to sleep outside the dungeon where you gain 4 Spirit, you will enter the dungeon with 4 Spirit.
Optional Rules
Ghosts and other undead shit can't hurt your HP, but they can lower your Spirit. (Which is really just attacking a different HP pool. Yes, this is analogous to ghosts removing healing surges.)
If a fighter gets double 3s on their Spirit roll, they heal for an additional +3. This can't trigger more than once per turn.
You can probably do some fun interactions here with drugs, like giving everyone high Spirit but with huge downsides (e.g. everyone fails all Initiative checks).
Final Notes
1. It's easier to gain Spirit in town than it is in the wilderness. Because of this, a party will usually be more chipper on the first day of dungeoncrawling than on subsequent days. I like this. It makes dungeoncrawling feel a bit more naturalistic, and gives parties a good reason to go back to town.
2. This caps out at 10 Spirit, for an average of 25 HP. (Or 40 HP if it is only used by fighters, and only two Spirit at a time.) This. . . is actually a lot of HP.
10 HP of healing is generally better than an additional 10 HP spread across the whole party's maximum HP, because targeted healing is more useful. Like, if your 4-person party had to choose between everyone getting +1 HP, or being able to prevent 4 HP of incoming damage, the second choice tends to be much stronger since it can be applied exactly where it is needed.
If and when you implement Spirit in your own system, you should tweak it as needed. Consider (1) if there are alternate sources of easy clerical healing, or if Spirit is a replacement, (2) how spikey the incoming damage is, or if it tends to be spread across everyone equally, (3) how the size of the spirit pool compares the base class HP.
You might also want to consider scaling the size of the Spirit die for high level characters. I play GLOG, so all the characters cap out at level 4 with 10-20 HP, but it you are playing higher level games with higher character HP, your players might eventually need more healing than just a few dinky d4s.
