Prohibitive

One of the more fascinating sage abilities, with an unusual and player-friendly benefit:

The overall structure is game-building because it doesn't rely upon the player to possess the sage ability, for the players to enjoy it (as the page explains).  It provides another reason to enter a city or town beyond the need to buy equipment and restore hit points ... and it makes the Bard Class more valuable to the party as a whole, with something concrete the bard can employ on a regular basis.

I need to add that the ability described above is an extremely minimal skill.  Later on, something that would be gained at 4th-6th level, is Master Instrument, which gives the benefits of the above except that it increases the number of times the skill can be employed to once a week, instead of once a month, and adds an addition +5% experience to the benefits described on the Play Instrument page.  So this is really just a stepping stone.  The larger motive is then for the players to visit even larger cities, where even better musicians can be seen giving performances.  This increases the motivation to travel, by giving real benefits to travelling.

I have other ideas up my sleeve for the bard as well.

I've touched on this before, but I'd like to return to the subject because sometimes it haunts me.  If I could, I would invent metrics for fulfillment, happiness and health and incorporate them into D&D.  These would be influenced by a combination of player behaviours and choices, random events such as weather, the after-effects of combat and the game environments visited.

Let's take health.  Now, personally I wouldn't transform this into an "ability stat" or even concoct the player's health from ability stats.  "Health" wouldn't be fundamentally based on a comparison of one character's health with another's ... but rather, as a metric describing the character's present health vs. the character's potential health.

As an example, let's say that Claire has a constitution of 3, meaning that she's generally in poor health at best.  There are already dozens of circumstances by which Claire's 3 constitution is bound to be tested.  Therefore, if Claire's health were, say, equal to 20 out of a possible 20, it means that she's at peak health for Claire.  She may not be at peak health for someone else, but she can't feel what it's like to be Jerome or Tesha, so who gives a damn what their healths are.

From this, we can argue that health is a characteristic fundamentally applicable to itself, which affects other metrics, but isn't a composite of other metrics.  It means we can use it as a self-defining thing, used to measure functions of the game world that aren't reflected by the player's hit points, ability stats, experience level, knowledge and so on.  Stuff like, say, Claire's tolerance of some perfectly healthy foods over others.  Eating the wrong foods in a state of poor health can kill you.  But we don't have saving throws for "food choices" or "food quality."  And the rules surrounding disease don't sufficiently deal with this problem.   Nor do we expect Claire to make an ability check every time she eats something.

Suppose we define peak health at 20 points, as stipulated.  When the character takes care of his or her self, peak health is maintained.  But taking more than 8 damage reduces health by 1 point.  Vomiting from bad food reduces health by 1 point.  Two days exposure to rain, even in tent, reduces health by 1; and without a tent, by 2.  Entering a big city reduces it by 1.  Climbing down into the sewers; or into a dungeon; or failing a save vs. poison; or catching a cold; or not having a bath; or living on shipboard for a day; and anything else that seems applicable ... each of these things cuts the character's health by 1 point.

Which is fine.  We can set a leeway of 10 points, so that as long as the character's health is between 11 and 20, it's no big deal.  They can wander through a dungeon, get themselves beat up, crawl around in an offal pit, visit a prostitute, whatever ... usually, they're fine.  But as that metric drops towards 10, the character begins to think, "Hm.  Better not push that.  Might be a good idea if I do something healthy for a bit.  Eat a little better.  Have a bath.  Visit a doctor.  Buy a tonic from the apothecary.  Get that number up a bit."

Then, and only then, if the character gets into some very unusual situation, the character's health never becomes a serious problem.  It's just a minor detail that needs to be monitored without stressing over.

At 10 health, however, the character's constitution drops by 1 point.  And it continues to drop by 1 point for every point of health below 10.  At 9 health, the character automatically rolls a 10% chance for disease.  And each point of health below 9 requires a similar roll.  At 8 health, the character's strength drops by 2 points.  And each point of health below eight costs another 2.  At 7 health it's charisma, and at 6 health it's dexterity ... and by then the character is a real mess and seriously needs some kind of serious R&R somewhere.

So it really matters that the character is careful about how many truly stupid unhealthy things he or she does.

With a character like Claire and her 3 constitution, going outdoors costs a point of health.  Eating food that isn't severely boiled costs a point of health.  Alcohol is a point of health.  Even sex, or a lack of sleep, or too much time travelling, are reasons to be concerned about her health.  And for her, once her health drops to 9 overall, she has exactly 1 constitution point.  It can be argued that her constitution can't drop below 1 ... but it follows that for every subtraction after 1, she has to make a save vs. bodily-derived poisons or she absolutely dies.

One could run a character with a 3 constitution ... but under this system, it would be a serious challenge, with serious issues to address.  It wouldn't just mean often missing a constitution check.

I don't implement ideas like this because I recognize the expected push-back from a community that thinks encumbrance is the equivalent of driving the Allied armies to Arnhem.  Therefore, most readers will assume this post is a thought experiment and no more.  "Hey, what about this?  Obviously, I'd never do it."

I'm not sure where this "we must never change the original structure of D&D" came from.  Human beings change the original structure of everything.  Microwave ovens came into being about the time of D&D, and the one I use today is a far sight different and better than the one my parents purchased in 1979.  The video games I play today are spectacularly better, more complicated and more prohibitive — the word being used to describe games with a very high cost and a very high learning curve.  I'm considering finally getting into Europa Universalis, and that's how it's been described to me: prohibitive.  In other words, really consider whether or not we're up to playing this particular game.  And yet, the game is insanely popular, in a way that D&D encumbrance isn't, even though I'm familiar enough with EU to know it's much more brain-crushing that figuring out encumbrance.  I don't know anyone running around saying that we don't need these complicated war games when perfectly good, simple games like Global War were invented in 1979.

It's a little bit like the goal in D&D is to hack off our foot, scream at anyone approaching with a prosthetic, then go online and scream about why everyone should hack off their foot.

Why shouldn't expansive rules for things like health and happiness be implemented into the game?  We've created about a million character classes, two million character races and three million stupid character religions and philosophies, not to mention four million unneeded weapon types and five million ways not to roll dice in a game designed for rolling dice.  Why exactly should a Waterdhavian Noble be a thing, when simple rules surrounding every character's health are a bridge too far?

Answer me that one, and I'll put down ideas of a metric for a character achieving moral, mental or cultural fulfillment.