Homebrew Mechanics | The Realm Beyond

Beginner's Guide: Key Mechanics

Welcome to our slightly shorter homebrew mechanics rule document for new players! This guide outlines key changes to the mechanics of our server. As a player, you don't need to know everything right away. Our GMs will assist and explain these mechanics during intro sessions. It's still recommended to give a look at the full document at some point, but these are the most prominent for gameplay when introducing a character in their intro session.

Sanity

Sanity represents a character's state of mind. This is introduced as a character's 7th attribute (STR, DEX, etc.) and is rolled during character creation. As they experience any horrific sightings in the world of Shar, characters begin losing Sanity. If not managed properly through rest and relaxation, characters begin to lose parts of themselves, eventually losing control completely and becoming unplayable.

When a horrific or mind shattering event is witnessed by a character, a Sanity Saving Throw may occur to attempt to prevent a character's mind from going insane. You roll a d20 + your Sanity modifier (i.e. a Sanity of 16 is a +3 Mod, same as other ability scores). Sanity Saving Throws can be rolled at advantage/disadvantage at the DM's discretion, depending on a character's relation and involvement to the incident. Short term sanity may be saved against again after taking damage.

Breaking Sanity

A character may attempt to break a short term sanity condition by taking an action on their turn to make the sanity saving throw again. An ally may also use their action for the saving throw to be rerolled.

If you fail to break the sanity condition 3 times, you will only be able to heal it on a short or long rest.

Sanity is tracked in two ways: Current and Max Sanity. Maximum Sanity is your Sanity score. Current Sanity can go down by failing Sanity Saving Throws, which also results in short-term and long-term sanity conditions. When Current Sanity reaches 0, you lose 1 Sanity score and reset yor Current Sanity to your new Sanity. When Sanity reaches 0, the character loses control and becomes unplayable.

Corruption

Corruption is a global curse in The Realm Beyond. It looms in the darkest corner and can only be partially alleviated by the Remove Curse spell. Corruption is highly visible and contagious when gained at high levels, causing the body to become grey and show symptoms such as yellow eyes. All buy prices increase by 5% for each point of corruption.

You gain corruption levels as you are exposed to specific events/sources. Each corruption level grants a deformation or debuff to the character until removed, such as through Remove Curse spell.

Immunity to Disease grants Advantage on Corruption Saves.

Note: Corruption carries over through things like polymorph, wild shape, and reincarnation.

Effects

1 point: The creature's skin starts getting slightly grey like at the points it made contact with the corruption.

2 points: The grey like skin has now spread over a larger portion of the body and black veins seem to pop up here and there. There’s a slight tone of yellow to the eyes. The creatures now have disadvantage on Charisma-based checks (with the exception of Intimidation) versus

people that disgust Hollowfication (most nobles) and a -2 to their CHA mod when buying or selling.

3 points: The Hollowfication is now harder to hide as the creature's entire body becomes dark grey and covered with black veins and it’s eyes have gotten yellow. The creature has disadvantage on all Charisma-based checks (with the exception of intimidation). The creature clearly seems as a Hollow if it doesn’t try to hide it. Expensive make-up being regularly applied can prevent the Charisma disadvantages if the target fails an investigation check.

4 points: Permanent 1 level of exhaustion.

5 points: Permanent 2 levels of exhaustion.

6 points: Permanent 3 levels of exhaustion.

7 points: Permanent 4 levels of exhaustion. The creature loses all hair it has.

8 points: Permanent 5 levels of exhaustion. The creature goes blind as its eyes rot away.

9 points: Only a wish spell or true resurrection can save the PC at this point. ((PC will die and become Hollow on their next turn unless corruption is removed.)) March 9, 2021

Healing/Injuries

In TRB, a character may go below 0 hit points due to taking damage exceeding their remaining HP. Once a character goes below 0 hit points, they become unconscious, make Death saving throws, and also enter bleed-out, in which they lose hit points every turn until stabilized. Characters with 0 HP exactly are always considered unconscious but stable.
Stabilizing via Healer's Kit and Medicine proficiency is also altered to make it more challenging to help those who have fallen, but more rewarding to those who have these skills.
We also introduce Major and Minor injuries that occur from adventurers going down or taking a significant amount of damage from a single attack, possibly leaving a lasting scar.

Healing

Characters do not use hit dice- instead, they have a Healing Pool equal to half of their maximum hit points.

When completing a short rest, 1 charge from a Healer's Kit must be expended for you to spend your Healing Pool points to hit points.

When completing a long rest, you may spend your Healing Pool points to gain hit points. You also regain all your Healing Pool points at the end.

Note: Sleeping/Trancing in Medium or Heavy armor restores half of your Healing Pool and does not remove Exhaustion

Injuries

Injuries are more severe in The Realm Beyond and deaths will result from not looking out for each other.

Characters at or below 0 hit points are unconscious.

Characters that are below 0 hit points also enter the bleed-out state, in which you lose -1 hp per turn until stabilized- in addition to rolling Death saving throws. Bleedout damage does not trigger a Death saving throw. If a creature reaches -25 hp or the negative of their max hp, whichever comes first, the creature dies.

Being stabilized stops bleed-out.

None lethal attacks do not causes injuries.

Minor Injuries

Can only be gained once per attack when:

Taking a single hit dealing at least half of your maximum hit points.

Entering bleed-out from a normal attack

A Minor Injury can be removed by spending 5 hit points worth of magical over-healing from a single source on a character or using the Relaxation downtime. If the same minor injury were to be rolled again, it's rerolled until it shows a different result.

Once a character have accumulated all minor injuries the rolls instead happen on the Major Injury table.

Major Injuries

Can be gained once per attack when:

Taking a critical hit dealing at least half of your maximum hit points.

Entering bleedout from critical hit.

A Major Injury can be removed by visiting the Hospital (30 days downtime, every 30gp spent reduces days by 5 down to a minimum of 5) or with higher level spells. You must be at full health for these spells to remove the Major Injury.

Death Saves

Injuries are more severe in The Realm Beyond and deaths will result from not looking out for each other.

Characters at or below 0 hit points are unconscious.

Characters that are below 0 hit points also enter the bleed-out state, in which you lose -1 hp per turn until stabilized- in addition to rolling Death saving throws. Bleedout damage does not trigger a Death saving throw. If a creature reaches -25 hp or the negative of their max hp, whichever comes first, the creature dies.

Being stabilized stops bleed-out.

None lethal attacks do not causes injuries.

Stabilizing

A Medicine check is required to stabilize a character that is unconscious and in bleedout. Stabilized creatures retain their negative hit points but stop rolling Death saving throws and come out of the bleedout state. A stabilized creature begins a long rest.

The first time you start your turn next to a creature within 30ft that is stable/bleedout you may make a DC15 medicine check or DC 20 perception check to determine whether the creature is stable or in bleed out.

To stabilize a creature the DC is equal to the negative HP of the character bleeding out. Characters attempting to stabilize does not have a healer's kit the the medicine check is made at disadvantage. On a success, the bleeding-out character is stable and heals up to zero. On a nat 1, the dying player adds a failed dead saving throw.

Timeline

Unlike other Westmarches, downtime is not awarded after sessions. Time in TRB is absolute, not relative. Easiest is to imagine it like a line going from 1 to infinity where each character is at a different day on that line. A player may choose to advance however much they want (up to max DTD) but may be excluded from sessions by majority of a player group by doing so if they don't want to advance as far.

Maximum DTD = How far you can advance

Spawn DTD = The day new characters spawn on

Minimum DTD = The lowest DTD a character can be without losing DTD

Notes:

You can keep track of the max, spawn, and min DTD (downtime day) in the patchnotes. 40 days are added each month.

Once a party is set for a session, the character who is the most advance will push all the other characters to that day. You might want to do some downtime activities to advance to the day of the session but if you don't spend it, the days will be saved as downtime that you can spend later.

TRB Gameplay Changes

Combat Changes

Attacks

Natural 1s and 20s are not automatically hits or misses. The target's AC matters.

Non-lethal attacks do not causes injuries.

Minimal damage that can be dealt is 1 from any source.

Plunge Attack: If you're on a higher altitude than an enemy you may make a plunge attack. If the attack hits you may apply fall damage taken from the fall to the damage dealt to the defender.

Ranged attacks

Ranged attacks against a target within 20 ft. do not have disadvantage against prone targets. This distance increases by 10 ft. per size above Medium.

Making a ranged attack against a target with a creature between you and the target provides 3/4 cover to the target. If the attack misses within 5 of the target's AC you instead hit one of the blocking targets if they are same size or larger than the target and the original attack beats its AC - Can be negated by shooting at disadvantage.

Ammunition collected always equals half the amount of ammunition fired. Exception being firearms where nothing is collectible.

Others

All creatures summoned/spawned by you, except for controlled mounts, take their turn immediately after you. If there are multiple summons, the player may set a sequence for the turns but it stays the same on every following round.

Concentration checks and Injuries are based on only damage to hit points, not temporary hit points.

Sources of disadvantage and advantage stack to cancel each other out instead of rolling flat if there is more than one source of each. (e.g. two sources of disadvantage and one source of advantage results in disadvantage for the roll.)

Find Familiar: Owl's Flyby imposes disadvantage to opportunity attacks rather than ignoring them.

Touch spells & unarmed attacks may not be performed against targets smaller than the mount while mounted. Weapons without reach cannot hit a prone target smaller than the mount while mounted.

Frightened and Stunned conditions can be broken similarly to sanity conditions.

On Guard

You may declare your PC is ON GUARD and expecting combat either openly or through PM at any time. This makes you immune to a surprise attack in the current social scenario.

You will act in any surprise round with guarantee. However, enemies trying to have Insight into the party's intentions may roll against your passive Deception to detect you as potentially hostile. If they succeed, your party may have Disadvantage to negotiate with them. (GM's discretion)

Melee attacks

When you make a melee attack, you gain an attack bonus equal to the number of allied creatures flanking the target. An allied creature is flanking a target if it is within 5 ft. of the target and you can draw a line from your token to theirs that intersects any part of the target's token.

Whenever you crit while dual wielding, you may make an extra attack expending your reaction with the whatever weapon you hold in the opposite hand.

Flanking is not limited to creatures within 5ft if Reach applys

Attacking a creature around a hard corner provides the creature half-cover.

If you use an equipped shield to attack, you do not gain an AC bonus from that shield until the beginning of your next turn.

Combat Actions

At the start of your turn, you can drop your initiative to a lower value. You can do this only once per combat.

Picking up an item from the ground & stabilizing triggers opportunity attacks from creatures that have you within their reach.

Disengaging allows for picking up items without taking AOO.

Grappling & Shoving smaller creatures with Athletics are done at advantage unless contested by the defender with Acrobatics.

Whenever you take the dodge action, any attack rolls you make are made at disadvantage until the start of your next turn.

You may replace an attack made as part of an action with an escape attempt of a grapple or restrain.

Moving an unconscious or paralyzed works as RAW depending on encumbrance, no action required.

Abilities that apply to creatures at 0 HP also applies to a creature at negative HP, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Tumble & Overrun do not require an Action or Bonus Action, but instead lose the movement it would take to reach the designated square.

Action Economy

Free Actions

Object interactions and free actions are synonymous. Actions and bonus actions can be used as free actions. You can also spend half your movement to use as a free action.

On any turn, you can use your Reaction to take the speaking option of the Free Action.

A free action can additionally be used to speak three sentences in character. You can give up one of these sentences to someone else so that they can speak when you use the free action to speak.

Clarifications

Using a potion is an action.

Dropping a held item requires no action.

Enlarge doesn't give double advantage on grapple. Advantage is implied as granted from the size increase.

Arcane Foci don't affect save DCs unless special items explicitly says so

Critical Fails

When a player or creature rolls a natural 1 on an attack roll, the DM will request a 1d10 roll to see what happens according to a table of fumble effects depending on the type of attack.

Magical Spell Fumbles

When a player rolls a natural 1 on a spell attack the DM rolls on the wheel of fumble affects and applies the results.

Roll a luck die when trying to remove each spell fumble. On an 11+, the spell fumble is an ongoing magical effect and can be removed by Dispel Magic, if the caster of Dispel Magic beats DC 15 on a check of 1d20+Dispel Magic Spell Level. On a 10 or lower, it is a curse and must be removed by Remove Curse.

Guides

THE REALM BEYOND