Reccomended Rules

Orentia is not your average D&D world, and as such we recommend adopting some additional rules at your table to help fit 5th addition to the sort of high seas hijinks that Orentia was designed for. Some of these rules are very important, and others are more of "house rules". Orentia was designed with these rules in mind, but if you really don’t want to use all of them, we have listed them in order of importance and reccomend cutting out only those near the bottom.  

Gritty Realism

In order to raise the stakes and make timeframes more realistic, use the Gritty Realism Resting optional ruleset found in the DMG. In summary, a short rest takes 8 hours and a long rest takes one week. Exhaustion should be removed via short rests rather than long rests to compensate.    

Additional Skills

In order to flesh out how characters interact with the world and to make Intelligence a more useful attribute, remove the History skill and give your PCs the following additional Intelligence skills: Scholarship, Recall, and Craft. More information can be found on our Skill Checks page.    

Dazed Condition

The Dazed condition is added as a weaker alternative to the Stunned condition.

• A dazed creature cannot use bonus actions or reactions.
• A dazed creature makes all attack rolls with disadvantage.
• A dazed creature moves at half speed.

   

Lifestyle Expenses

In order to give money additional value, PCs should be required to pay for their lifestyles as shown on page 52 of the Basic Rules. To compensate, DMs should make sure to give PCs ample opportunity to seize valuable booty or earn a living through more conventional means.    

Rarer Magic

Magic is rarer in Orentia than in other worlds, and as a result, magic items are more valuable and spellcasters harder to find. As a result, magic is reacted to with awe and fear by most common folk and draws quite a bit of attention. Spellcasters who reveal their powers in public will quickly gain notoriety, and players will not find magic items as readily available for purchase in cities - especially uncommon and rare items.
Characters with spellcasting classes, and especially so subclasses that grant spellcasting, should have a story justification for why their character of all people was endowed with magical powers.
Secondary spellcaster characters may not use the optional spells from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything in order to limit their magical versatility.    

Scars and Maiming

To make characters more “piratey”, when a creature is reduced to 0 hit points, roll a d10. On a 1, it is maimed. Otherwise, if the creature survives they receive a permanent scar from the attack. The appearance and location of the scar is up to the player, or in the case of an NPC, the DM. Try to make them memorable! If a 1 is rolled and the character is maimed, roll a d4 to determine which body part is lost from the table below. The character permanently loses that body part, and loses 1 Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution until they either get a prosthetic to replace the part, find rare magic to regenerate it, or spend time to find some other way to cope with the missing part such as getting a wheelchair or learning braile. If a character should roll a part that has already been maimed, they may choose to roll again until they roll a part that has not yet been maimed.  

D4 roll	Maimed Body Part
1	Eye
2	Hand or Arm
3	Foot or Leg
4	Ear, Nose, or Other.

   

Secret Death Saves

When rolling death saves, the dying player must make their roll privately with the DM, either by rolling behind the DM screen or by whispering the roll to the DM.    

Drowning Death Saves

If a creature with the dying condition is submerged in water, it has disadvantage on all death saving throws.    

No Thunder Damage

To reduce ambiguity of damage types, all Thunder damage is now Force damage.    

Help Action Proficiency

When performing the help action out of combat, if the creature giving help is not proficient in the skill check they are helping with, they must roll that skill check with a DC of 10 to successfully give help.    

Half Price Potions

To encourage use, potions, poisons, and scrolls should be bought and sold at half price.    

Divine Meddling

The gods frequently meddle in the lives of mortals, directly or indirectly. Should a creature gain the favor or ire of a god, that god may tilt fate for or against that creature. A god who chooses to meddle with a creature may change the result of any die roll by 1 in either direction. While this can apply to any die roll, allowing for the gods to force mortals to barely pass or fail ability checks of many kinds, more often this meddling is used to turn any 19s or 2s that creature rolls into critical successes or critical fails respectively as if the creature had rolled a natural 20 or 1. There is no limit to how many times a god may meddle, but DMs should consider how much that god really cares about the creature. A god that has been merely offended or amused may meddle with a creature once or twice before forgetting about them, whereas a god that considers a creature their nemesis or champion may meddle with them at almost every opportunity on their quest. Remember, the gods are fickle beings, and this representation of their personal interest in a creature should represent that.    

Reputation

As your pirate crew grows in fame and fortune, your reputation will grow, determined by how outsiders see the actions of you and your crewmates. Reputation exists on a cartesian plane with radius 10. The Y axis is determined by merciful and cutthroat (good evil) and the X axis is determined by honorable and mad (lawful chaotic). It is often the reputation of your crew and ship rather than the individual that determines how others treat your group as a whole, so make sure that the choices your crew makes align with the sort of pirates you want to be known as.