Take a Downside to Solve the Accomplishing Nothing Problem

The Accomplishing Nothing Problem:

• If you are in combat and get hit by an effect that temporarily takes you out of the fight and you fail your save, you are about to spend an amount of real-world time potentially measured in hours doing nothing. That's a recipe for player disengagement at best.
• If you cast a high-level spell and your target makes their save, not only have you wasted your Action, you have blown one of your main limited daily resource, and accomplished nothing to show for it.

The Swedish TTRPG Dragonbane has a solution where, if you fail a roll, you can take a bane to one of your abilities to reroll.

I've been rolling around in the back of my mind, and trying to remember, the possibility of offering a choice of minor consequence to turn an almost-success into a success.

Then, recently, I had a burst of inspiration in the shower, and hacked together some actual numbers and stuff. The main downside is it may be too complicated, though I laid it out in a way that flows fairly well, at least for my mind.

To wit:

Age Categories in 5.5e

So, 5e and 5.5e doesn't have Age Categories. I'm on the record as enjoying aging effects, but admittedly, it does get a bit fiddly, doesn't it. Figuring out what age category an elf is as compared to a human of the same age, or whatever? Fiddly.

The Modifiers

I do rather like 3.5e's numbers:

• At middle age, a character gains -1 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha
• At old age, a character gains an additional -2 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha
• At venerable age, a character gains an additional -3 to Str, Dex, and Con; +1 to Int, Wis, and Cha

So being Middle-Aged is strictly a sidegrade; Old is a downgrade (with a silver lining); Venerable is an even worse downgrade (with a silver lining). Extreme min/maxers might choose to be Old or Venerable; Middle Age is an eminently reasonable choice for a moderate min/maxer.

What Age Category Am I?

We can probably mostly basically just use 3.5e's numbers for what age category a character of a given species is is at any given age.

(I believe 5.x canon is that elves age like humans until adulthood, and then just stay there; the relevant 3.5e charts indicate that they used to definitively hit Adulthood at 110 years; we could split the difference and let them Young Adult at a more human-like age)

Aging Effects

I used to use specific year amounts for aging magic and effects, but I'm leaning towards, instead: you don't advance specific year numbers; if you fail a save, you straight-up advance an age category; elves just have advantage on the save.

Maybe mix it up with a touch of what 3.5e used to have you do for Negative Levels: at the end of the day, make a save vs it becoming permanent. ...no, I low-key hate that, because I hated that about NLs in 3.5e.

Ooooh, here's an idea: You know how if you have 6 levels of Exhaustion, you just straight-up die? What if, instead of death, if you have 6 levels of Exhaustion (perhaps: "and at least one of them is from a magical or supernatural effect"), you straight-up advance an age category? Or maybe you go unconscious at Exhaustion 6 either way, and if you fail a save you also advance an age category?

Maus Yi Yos!

"Maus yi yos!" was, of course, the traditional Driftmas greeting, in Ilya of old, before Archbishop Usla of Banor waged the War for Driftmas and commandeered the holiday for Numiel's glory, followed by the Inundation erasing all trace of Ilya from the world (...or did it? DUN DUN DUN).

Some Numielites have kept the words as a generic Driftmas greeting, though the common people have no idea what they might have once meant in the Ilyan language (like how a person might sing along to "Feliz Navidad" with at best the barest understanding that it's just Spanish for "happy Christmas", without any understanding that in Spanish they call the holiday "Navidad" which is cognate with "Nativity" (any -ty word tending to turn out to be -dad in Spanish -- eg, "gravity" is cognate with "gravedad", and also I have an idea what the next necromancer I wind up using calls himself), and "nativity" really just means "the process or circumstances of being born", though of course nobody anymore frequently refers to any nativities but Jesus's).

ANYHOW, "Maus Yi Yos" is of course just a generic placeholder name for a Driftmas session... or is it? DUN DUN DUN

On Driftmas Day, the 25th of Ices. The good ship Lollipop has arrived in port. Disembarking, five crew members (Roger, Patty "Doc", Helko "the Axe", Raine, and Rylen) are met by a courier.

"I've been looking for you. Got something I'm supposed to deliver - your hands only." Mumbling, "Let's see here... A letter... not sure who from. She wouldn't say. Just that she was a friend of yours. Looks like that's it. Got to go."

The letter turned out to be a magic scroll. They read the scroll, and it turned out to be a scroll of plane shift, which brought them to what turned out to be the Driftmas Demiplane, all snow and pleasant chill.

The party ended up outside  a cave. The cave is surrounded by inactive (variously permanently disabled, bugged out, and/or entirely dispelled) clay golems.

They saw a peryton flying high above, scared it off, and set off for the source of puffs of smoke on the horizon.

They found Driftmastown, where the Driftmas Fey (drunkenly distracted, as it is their day of celebration, all their work for the year has concluded and they have not yet begun next year's work of crafting toys) greet them with curiosity -- not often they have visitors. Donner, one of Saint Usla's sleigh-pulling perytons, was also there. A chat occurred.

The cave isn't anything any of Saint Usla's minions are allowed to talk about. It may, information wheedled from the Driftmas Fey, have to do with the folks that owned Driftmas before Usla conquered it away from the Ilyans.

Returning to the cave!

It turned out to be the dwelling of Dujha the yeti (?), one of the Argles Get, where she has dwelt since the War for Driftmas -- her 5 siblings, uncle, and grandmother (the previous Embodiments of Driftmas) were all slain by Usla in the War; Dujha managed to escape unnoticed.

As it transpires, Dujha has spent the last many centuries inventing, tinkering, and divining. She is not really a proper spellcaster, is why it took so long.

She got her hands on one or more Golem Manuals and cobbled together invention of a new spell (which she calls disable construct), of which she has one scroll.

She did many divinations, which eventually narrowed down the who, where, and when of recruitment to help with her task. (The specific time of year was always obvious: Saint Usla uses all her store of power on Driftmas Eve, leaving her depleted; the Driftmas Fey have the last 6 days of the year off, as vacation, before working the rest of the year -- an obvious time to do something Usla might not like. But which year, specifically, was harder to pin down.)

Dujha was cagey, but eventually, she revealed that she wanted to retake Temple Zamet, a temple that had been taken by Archbishop Usla in the War for Driftmas, the most sacred Driftmas-related temple on the continent of Kryia, which Usla's Banorite army had seized, put a fortress around, and guarded with various golems and constructs.

She wants to use disable construct to temporarily disable a golem, hack it, and use its help to retake the temple.

She has knowledge of a secret back tunnel into the temple/fortress, which could take them nearly straight to the boss golem: a platinum golem. (The other four golems are gold.) So the party decided to go in that way, not in the front, try to seize the platinum golem and use it on the gold ones.

So Dujha plane shifted them back to the Material Plane, to a ravine on continent Kryia near temple Zamet, and they went up a tunnel to the temple. There was a broken and defiled altar discarded amongst rubble on the way, but the party was in a hurry because there was a gold golem (embossed with the name Rincona) coming, and didn't notice the altar until later.

Into the main temple chamber, where there was a platinum golem embossed with the name Phensipicho, and a gold golem embossed with Sorgiga! Raine cast the disable construct spell successfully on Phensipicho, and Dujha headed over to pop its carapace with a hammer and start hacking! The rest of the party attacks Sorgiga.

Raine notices that the scroll, unlike a normal scroll, has not faded away into illegibility after use.

With the help of Phensipicho, the party took down Sorgiga! Just as Rincona arrived!

But the scroll was successfully was used, and now Rincona was on the party's side, too!

The scroll, ultimately, worked 6 times before fading (6 being a number sacred to Morozz).

(Speaking of sacred numbers: there was 1 platinum golem, 4 gold golems, 9 sunlight-lazer-blasty turrets on the walls, and 16 animated objects that mostly just do upkeep -- any perfect square number is sacred to Numiel. The upkeep constructs weren't doing so hot, after a few hundred years plus 600 underwater. There were shovels, dusters, one was a salt-scatterer construct, diligently trying to scatter salt, its salt store long since depleted.)

Anyway, the party took away the Numielite altar and accoutrements, restored the Morozzite altar. They ended up selling the Numielite iconography to churches of Numiel back north. "Doc" was allowed to peruse Dujha's book collection in detail. Dujha took up new residence in Temple Zamet, to maintain the golems and other constructs, trying to keep it under Morozzite control this time.

Maus Yi Yos!

Origin Ability Points in 5.5e

So, a thing that 5.5e does: it decouples ability score bonuses from species (previously known as 'race', in PF2 known as 'ancestry'; I think 'species' is a fine choice). I don't necessarily disagree with this decision, and I recognize it was done for good reasons, but there is much nuance to be dug through, so let's explore.

This is a hugely contentious issue, so hopefully I don't make too many dumb assumptions or dumb material conditionals. (I almost certainly will!)

Nomenclature

Ok, so the main reason ability scores are decoupled from race is that we Definitely Do Not want to leave ourselves open to real-world biological race conspiracy theories, like "Black people have lower Int but higher Str than white people". Which is fair!

...but, we already renamed it? Nobody can any longer fairly accuse D&D species of being the same thing as Earth race?

D&D species is of course not the same thing as biology science species, but the name change does make the decoupling of ability scores from species slightly goofier -- who could possibly argue that your average standard-issue hippopotamus is not able to lift more weight (ie, is not stronger) than your average standard-issue groundhog?

Introducing Sex, for the Purpose of Clarifying but Probably in fact Muddying the Issue

In OD&D 1e, women had a cap on how strong they could be. That's goofy in at least two ways (probably three: I think female characters didn't get any advantages to compensate for this disadvantage), so let's cut it down to only one way: Pretend (biological, ie, ovary-having?) women had, say, a -2 to Strength score and a +2 to, I dunno, Dexterity. Or, let's make women the Default and pretend they had no modifiers to abilities, and men had a +2 to Str and a -2 to Dex.

It is a source of perpetual mass dumbness that, on average, men, however you define it, are probably statistically basically stronger than women, however you define it. This is the (ostensible) objection to having transwomen compete in women's sports.

Setting aside the very many dumbnesses associated with this argument, the core thing that's maybe true (depending, again, on how you define "woman" and "man", among other things) is that the bell curve of women's strength scores is shifted a bit lower than the bell curve of men's strength scores. The strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman; the weakest man is stronger than the weakest woman; the average man is stronger than the average woman; BUT it's only shifted a little, so of course the strongest woman is stronger than the weakest man.

If ability scores are generated by rolling, this shifted bell curve is of course represented very well by a flat +2 or -2. (This is why 1e's actual thing, a straight-up cap on Strength, is doubly dumb and bad.)

If we wanted to maximize Realism at the cost of everything else, a -2 penalty compensated by a +2 bonus elsewhere (or, like, giving men a +2 Str and women a +2 Dex, nobody getting penalties and everybody getting equal bonuses to different things) would be a fair model of offset bell curves.

Sex is a super-goofy thing to demand be "realistic"ally modeled, of course, but this is how we'd do it. (Why it's super-goofy: among other reasons, consider species with different sexual dimorphisms. Species where the girl is bigger and stronger than the boy, for example.)

Race, Tho?

Let's consider now if ancestry were still called Race.

Let's pretend there's an ability called Melanin, which reflects how much melanin is in a character's skin.

A character of the Black Race should have a bonus to their Melanin score, yes? And maybe a character of the Nordic Race should have a penalty? The average Black person is darker-skinned than the average Nordic person, yes? Still permitting the existence of the darkest-skinned Nordic person being darker-skinned than the lightest-skinned Black person, etc.

Sure, there are Backgrounds which could conceivably have an effect on the Melanin score -- the Beach Bum background, for example -- but most of them probably won't have as much effect as Race.

On the other extreme, we definitely would not want to say any Race has a bonus or penalty to, say, Intelligence, Charisma, or Wisdom. That would be some caliper-wielding chauvinism, away from which we want to vigorously shy.

But... are there maybe actually some Races that average stronger or faster or more hardy than others?

Ok, let's set Race aside again, let's set it from our minds, we're now again talking about Species only.

Curvature of the Struck Idiophone Variety

Ok, so the bell-curve thing doesn't necessarily so much completely apply, for like three reasons: first, we usually don't roll for ability scores anymore, as array and point by are objectively better; second, PCs are Special, so they shouldn't necessarily reflect the broader bell curve of the species population; third, bell curves in terms of populations have, like, a bad reputation, mostly because of a book of that name.

Still... does it actually make sense that the strongest Orc it is possible to produce is exactly as strong as the strongest Gnome it is possible to produce? The most dexterous Dwarf as dexterous as the most dexterous Elf?

Proposed House Rule

My inclination, to make Species at least have the ability to matter, though it doesn't necessarily have to for every character, is a house rule along these lines:

Assign each Species two (or so) ability scores, which will typically be whichever ones they got bonuses to in 5.0e. When you assign your Origin-related ability scores (your choice of { +2 +1 } or { +1 +1 +1 }, as usual), you may pick from the options given in your Background and the options given in your Species. You have the option for only your Background to matter to your ability scores, the option for only Species to matter, or the option for both to matter.

You still have a situation where any Orc and a Gnome Soldier have the same maximum possible Strength, which remains slightly peculiar -- but better than unaltered 5.5e, where a Gnome Soldier had a higher maximum Strength than an Orc Criminal.

Sub-Houserule: Synergy

If there is overlap between your Species and your Background, my first instinct is nothing special happens, but it does happen to provide, like, a soft limit: you have fewer options to choose from, so you are pushed towards choosing what is overlapped, though it is not in any special way required.

My second instinct is to give overlap between Species and Background some sort of synergy bonus. Which is kind of like 3.5e's Racial Favored Class, except it's more of a Species Favored Background, and also not something that every table just ignores because it's too much hassle to bother with.

My first thought here was to give ability scores with Background+Species synergy a starting max in that Ability of 22 instead of 20 -- then I remembered no character will ever start with higher than 15+2=17 in any ability, and I don't want Origin to add a thing you can first plausibly take advantage of at level 8.

Perhaps, if you have Background+Species synergy, then the option is made available to you to, instead of { +1 +1 +1 } or { +2 +1 }, choose { +3 } provided it is used on a synergized ability, thereby allowing a character plausibly to begin with a score of 18 in that ability?

Or, like, if you have synergy, then you have the option to forgo your Origin Feat and 1 point of your ability bonus (leaving you with a choice between only { +2 } or { +1 +1 }), and instead take a regular feat, provided it is a feat that gives you a bonus to the synergized ability (and, of your remaining ability points, the +2 or the +1s can go to any abilities, even the synergized one)?

Edited to Add:

It occurs to me: what if an additional option.

Original option as amended from 5.5e: Add { +1 +1 +1 } or { +2 +1 } to any scores benefited by your Background and/or Species.

New option as laid out in last section above: Instead add { +3 } to any score synergized by both your Background and Species.

New option being laid out now: In addition to any of the above, also add { -1 } (ie, subtract 1) to any ability not benefited by either Background or Species, and add an additional { +1 } to any ability benefited by Background or Species or both (which can be an ability you've already added points to).

So options are sixfold:

• { +3, +1, -1 }
• { +3 }
• { +2, +1, +1, -1 }
• { +2, +1}
• { +1, +1, +1, +1, -1 }
• { +1, +1, +1 }

Where +1 or +2 can be to any score boosted by either Background or Species, -1 can only be to a score boosted by neither Background nor Species, and +3 can only be to a score boosted by both Background and Species.

ALTERNATELY: You only get the choice between { +2, +1 } or { +1, +1, +1 }; but if your Species and Background synergize: you have the additional option to put { -1 } into any ability found on neither list and { +1 } into any ability found on both lists. Still brings the possibility of starting at 18, but you have to pay a little cost for it.

On Bringing Back Ability Damage

In D&D 3.5e, we had Ability Damage. Things (especially poison, but also other stuff, especially various creatures) could deal damage directly to an ability score -- if you take 1d6 Strength Damage, your Strength score goes down by 1d6 (so your Strength modifier correspondingly goes down by about half of 1d6).

If any of your Abilities reach 0 from damage, you are, depending on the Ability, paralyzed (a physical score), unconscious (a mental score), or dead (Constitution). If you take an 8-hour sleep, you heal damage in each damaged Ability by 1; if you take a 24-hour sleep, you heal each by 2. You can also take Ability Drain, which is basically the same but it doesn't heal without magic.

The designers of 5th Edition, of course, judged this all absurdly fiddly and mathy -- not only do you have to track each of your current Ability scores separate from your actual Ability scores (plus keep track of how much is Damage and how much is Drain), you also have to do the (x-10)/2 (rounded down) thing for each one to calculate your current and actual Ability modifiers -- and, probably rightly and correctly, dispensed with the whole thing.

I do find its loss very mildly unfortunate. It did allow a fair bit of differentiation between monsters. This guy just paralyzes you, that guy gradually makes you more sluggish until you're paralyzed, the other guy makes you dumber until you're paralyzed, and so on.

To the rescue: the OSR stylings of Swedish TTRPG Dragonbane!

In Dragonbane, each Ability score can have or not have a Condition. If you have a Condition in an Ability score, every time you roll that Ability for anything, you simply roll with what in 5e would be called Disadvantage (in Dragonbane, it's called a "Bane").

Porting that back to 5e, we could, while maintaining a high level of simplicity, have 3 (or even 4) levels of "ability score damage":

• Regular, undamaged (roll normally)
  If you then fail a save vs Ability Damage:
• Damaged (all rolls with that Ability have disadvantage)
  If you then fail another save vs Ability Damage in an already-damaged Ability:
• Paralyzed/Unconscious (or, if Constitution, unconscious and making Death saves)
  We could also introduce some sort of blessing/boon/etc that goes the other direction:
  
• Blessed or something (all rolls with that Ability have advantage, with the side benefit that you have an extra level of buffer against Ability Damage to that Ability -- failing a save vs Ability Damage when you're blessed in that Ability just brings you down to normal)

We could take Dragonbane's names for the Conditions (Exhausted, Sickly, Dazed, Angry, Scared, and Disheartened), some of which are already used in 5e (plus the term "Condition" itself has a 5e meaning, too). We could just call them Bane and Boon to Abilities, terms which are mostly not already in use.

The "Every NPC Is Miles O'Brien" Principle

My best recent session in terms of player engagement was one where NPCs (whom the players like) suffered a bunch.

You can inflict all sorts of terrible stuff on NPCs that it's not cool to do to PCs. E.g., the PCs in one game I'm currently running are students at a school, so inflicting annoying bullying on them is cruel and unusual and potentially triggering of real-life trauma, but inflicting bullying on their NPC girlfriends was perfectly kosher (and then the PCs get to be Big Damn Heroes about it and rescue their girlfriends from the bullying).

Killing beloved NPCs is, of course, a drastic, uncreative, and cliche step. This is most notorious as a phenomenon where every PC begins as an orphan, so the DM can't mess with their family, because some DMs absolutely will have the Big Bad murder every PC family at the earliest opportunity.

But imagine your PC gets word from home that your parents are being extorted, threatened, or have been kidnapped -- at least as effective a motivator of PC action and investment as having the family killed, plus they get the satisfaction of saving their family at the end of the adventure.

It all boils down to a principle I've come to call "Every NPC Is Miles O'Brien", where any time engagement is flagging you throw an "O'Brien Must Suffer" session at the party. (Named after the writers' habit from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine of writing an "O'Brien Must Suffer" episode at least once a season, because Miles O'Brien was the most likeable everyman in a cast full of alien lizard spies and cops made of goo and goofy capitalist aliens and whatnot.)

Ettin Newcanon

Ettins, ubues, and other giants with extra heads or limbs, are all results of a semi-rare disorder in trolls, sometimes arising spontaneously, sometimes resulting from slashing blows that land in just the right place, where an extra head and/or one or more extra limbs are "re"generated. Such creatures generally lack the natural keen regenerative abilities of trolls, as their natural regeneration is too busy keeping them alive as these abominations to keep up with incoming damage as effectively.

On Fish-People

I have long complained that, of all the array of fish-people and seafolk available in D&D, they're all kind of samey. Let's see, we've got...

• Merfolk are people with a fish tail
• Tritons are people who live underwater and are just kind of slightly fishy -- in earlier editions, they were at least Outsider(native)s, which is something to latch on to. (Although it does make them kind of overlap with water genasi -- but without it, they instead overlap with, like sea elves.)
• Locathah are just kind of generically fishy, although in earlier editions they kind of looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon
• Sahuagin are just kind of generically fishy, albeit with a telepathic connection to sharks
• Kuo-toa are just kind of generically fishy, albeit also slimy

So let's see what I did with that to make it a little less boring (and also options for player characters, because my setting is so heavy on seafolk)...

Merfolk

Species Traits

• Ability Score Increases: Your Dexterity score increases by 2, and your Charisma score increases by 1.
• Type: Your type is Humanoid.
• Size: Your size is Medium.
• Speed: You have a land speed of 10 feet and a swim speed and a swim speed of 40 feet. You begin play with a free Combat Wheelchair, which grants a land speed of 25 feet.)
• Amphibious: You can breathe both air and water.
• Versatility: You gain one free skill proficiency of your choice and one free tool proficiency of your choice.
• Languages: You can read, write, and speak Common and Aquan.

Triton

In previous editions, tritons were native outsiders. In mine, they're still immigrants from the Hellish Plane of Water. So...

Species Traits

As in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, except:

• You have the Humanoid and Elemental types. If any favorable effect would affect either of your types, it affects you. If any unfavorable effect would affect one of your types but not the other, you can be affected by it but you have advantage on saves against it. If any effect would affect neither of your types, you are immune to it. If any effect would affect both of your types, you do not gain immunity or resistance to it from your types. 

Sahuagin

Notwithstanding recent efforts to make them, like, green and lizardy, Sahuagin can just be shark-people.

Species Traits

• Ability Score Increase: Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.
• Type: Your type is Humanoid.
• Size: Sahuagin are larger than humans, ranging from 6 to 7 feet tall. Your size is Medium.
• Speed: You have a base land speed of 30 ft, and you have a swim speed equal to your land speed.
• Superior Darkvision: Within 120 feet, you can see in dim light as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
• Limited Amphibiousness: You can breathe both air and water. However, you cannot receive the benefits of a Short or Long rest unless you are fully submerged in water for the entire duration of your rest.
• Frenzy: On your turn when you reduce a creature to 0 hit points, you can use a bonus action to move up to your speed and make an additional weapon attack against another creature you can target.
• Shark Telepathy: You can telepathically speak to any shark within 120 feet of you.
• Claws and Bite: Your claws and bite are natural weapons, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with them, you deal slashing (claws) or piercing (bite) damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
• Languages: You know Common and Sahuagin.

Kuo-Toa

Kuo-toa shall be anglerfish, complete with anglerfish sexual dynamics: 

• Males are Tiny Beasts with 1 Intelligence (using the Quipper statblock).
• Females are Medium Humanoids (using the Kuo-Toa statblock, or the species traits here).

Biologically female Kuo-Toa have six genders (Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, and Bottom), which they borrowed from the sexual hexamorphism of the Aboleths they chill with. It's not well-understood by surface-dwellers how romantic combinations of these genders works.

Species Traits

• Ability Score Increase: Your Strength score increases by 2. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
• Type: Your type is Humanoid.
• Size: Your size is Medium.
• Speed: You have 30 foot land speed and swim speed equal to your land speed.
• Superior Darkvision: Within 120 feet, you can see in dim light as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
• Amphibious: You can breathe air and water.
• Sunlight Sensitivity: You have disadvantage on attack rolls and Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight when you, the target of the attack, or whatever you are trying to perceive is in direct sunlight.
• Otherworldly Perception: You can sense the presence of any creature within 30 feet of you that is invisible or on the Ethereal Plane. You can pinpoint such a creature that is moving.
• Slippery: You have advantage on ability checks and saving throws made to escape a grapple.
• Bite: Your bite is a natural weapon, which you can use to make unarmed strikes. If you hit with it, you deal piercing damage equal to 1d4 + your Strength modifier, instead of the bludgeoning damage normal for an unarmed strike.
• Languages: You know Common and Kuo-Toan.

Locathah 

I decided Locathah should be axolotl-folk.

The main deal with axolotls is that they are actually the tadpole form of a salamander which just never metamorphoses, just grows to an adult size instead. Thyroid hormone can be administered to induce metamorphosis into a salamander that hasn't been seen in the wild for millions of years. So, naturally, axolotl-folk can do that with magic.

Species Traits

As in Locathah Rising (Extra Life 2019), except:

• Replace the listed Limited Amphibiouisness trait with:
• Limited Amphibiousness. You can breathe both air and water. However, you cannot receive the benefits of a Short or Long rest unless you are fully submerged in water for the entire duration of your rest.

Feat: Metamorphosed

A Locathah shaman can cast the Ceremony spell on another Locathah to induce metamorphosis into a super-adult stage.

Prerequisites

• Locathah species.
• You must be under the effects of the Coming of Age Ceremony cast by a Locathah shaman at time of feat selection.

Effect

• You lose the effect of your Limited Amphibiousness trait, and are now fully amphibious -- you can breathe both air and water, and do not need to be submerged in water to gain the benefits of a Short or Long Rest.
• You have Resistance to Poison damage.
• Your skin turns a vivid color and begins to secrete a poisonous toxin. If you are hit by a Bite attack, the attacker takes 1d6 Poison damage. If you are subject to the Swallow Whole ability, the creature that swallows you takes xd6 poison damage on your turn every round you are swallowed, where x is equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum 1).
• You can harvest your own poison as per the rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide, except you do not need to be incapacitated or dead; you are not immune to your own poison, but you remain Resistant to its Poison damage. The harvested poison can be used as-is or refined:
• When used as-is, this is an Ingested poison that deals 2d6 Poison damage, Constitution save negates. A dose of this poison lasts for 24 hours before it becomes inert.
• Refining the poison follows the Crafting rules, but you have unlimited access to the ingredients. When refined, it becomes a dose of Pale Tincture poison, which lasts indefinitely until use.

The Year Hoobynoob Unaccountably Contrived to Come on Freday the 13th of Octember

Through some celestial mishap or accounting error, for some reason, Hoobynoob falls on Freday the 13th of Octember, in this, the 47th year of the Subsidence. Normally, of course, Hoobynoob falls on the 30th, the last day of Octember. The 13th of Octember doesn't normally even fall on a Freday -- it is typically a Munday.

This calendrical irregularity is known for certain: all the experts agree on this unusual occurrence -- the astrologers; the astronomers; the druids and rangers of Sequoia (who counts the months and weeks, the planets and stars, under her purview); the calendricians and calendrometers; we even asked the janitor, as they know of these things.

Amongst the populace, once the confusion is overcome -- or at least set aside -- the yearly observance of Hoobynoob proceeds as usual, albeit on the 13th. In Endeesy, capital of Gus: gourds are carved; nuts are harvested; costumes are prepared; candies and sweets are purchased or crafted in bulk in preparation for the traditional mass extortion, on threat of prankery, by children.

When the 13th of Octember arrives -- on a Freday, just as (unusually) ordained -- the morning sneaks into Endeesy foggily. The day slugs by: children growing increasingly excited, adults growing increasingly wary of danger, the weather growing increasingly foggy and moist-smelling.

When treat-or-tricking time arrives, it is nigh impossible to find one's way in the fog. But, through some divine Dalyan providence, unusually alert priests of Dalya, and widespread use of the Buddy System, no children are separated from their guardians for long.

The children return to their homes, feast on junk food, and repair engorgedly to their beds. After the foggy day and foggier evening, it looks like it has been another successful Hoobynoob, profitable for the children and fun for all ages! Parents go to bed. Bar crawlers begin the process of acquiring their holiday drunkenness.

Midnight approaches.

The clock tower in the Cathedral of Quasxthe in the Crown District of Endeesy ticks over from 11:59, and the mighty bell begins its twelvefold tolling: BO-o-...

The bell, having tolled half of once, trails off, as if it has forgotten how to bell.

Mournful moans are heard through the increasingly farty-smelling fog.

Zombies! Some of whom are fresh, some of whom are decaying and dirt-encrusted.

Following the trail of zombies leads the party north, to a graveyard in the Resentment Ward. The zombies are discovered to be animated by worms squirming under their skin (a miniboss zombie acts as Spawn of Kyuss).

A 400-year-old mausoleum, dating to the early centuries of the Inundation, proves to be the resting place of the Mermaid Queen Riefya I Arielid "the Black".

A party member recollects a fact about Riefya "the Black": that she was found, after her death, to have secretly been a cultist of Asya, goddess of all that is disgusting.

The lock on the door, being 400 years old and having been underwater most of that time, has become more of a jam. But somebody has already broken the jam. But somebody subsequently cast an arcane lock on the door. But the rogue breaks the arcane lock.

Within the tomb, reality is distorted. The air is fetid and moist. The stairs down are greasy. The walls are fleshy and moist. It is not a throat, but it desperately wants to be a throat.

At the bottom of the stairs, the tomb of Riefya has expanded from a small room to a large acid-lake cavern, as if it wants to be a stomach.

A sarcophagus stands on a raised dais in the middle of the acid lake. A mage stands by the sarcophagus, incanting a ritual.

He is Vyndoc Hogkt, a descendant of the Hogkt family that ruled the Asya-worshipping Plaguelord nation while it existed in the first century before the Inundation. (He is a Mage, with spells swapped out for poison- and acid-related spells.)

His ritual concludes, and an oozely incarnation of Asya possessing the corpse of Queen Riefya joins combat. (She uses the stat of a Black Pudding, except she can throw acid gobbets -- her Pseudopod has a 60' range.)

If the party kills Riefya!Asya first, Vyndoc sacrifices himself to regenerate and empower her. If the party kills Vyndoc first, Riefya!Asya eats his corpse and is regenerated and empowered. Either way, it is a two-stage boss fight. (The amalgamation boss has a combination of the abilities of its components, and then some.)

The party defeats Vyndoc, Riefya, and Asya, and prevents Bad Things from happening.

Time progresses from midnight once they emerge from the tomb.

Hoobynoob did not come on Freday the 13th because of Vyndoc (that's an unsolved mystery), but since it did, and both 13 and Hoobynoob are sacred to Asya, he took it as auspicious to enact his plan.

How the Bonelord Stole Driftmas

On the last day of the year, three Guildmasters of the Endeesy Adventurer's Guild -- Ruthmin Tern the Assassin Rogue, Christopher the Paladin, and Lyra the Stars Druid -- were chilling in the Guildmasters' Lounge when seven driftmas fey popped through a portal, begging for their assistance. It turned out that Saint Usla, in charge of Driftmas, had been kidnapped by fire creatures.

The Guildmasters tracked the scorch-trail from the Driftmas Demiplane, to the Transitory Holiday Demiplane, to the Hoobynoob Demiplane.

They found (and broke into) a laboratory guarded by salamanders, where Saint Usla had recently been, but she (and the Professor, one of Hoobynoob's people) had already been stolen by disgusting creatures.

In the laboratory greenhouse, they found a construct named Sam, who was very concerned that Jaq the Gourd Duke, in charge of Hoobynoob, had been acting very strangely, including with this peculiar plan for Saint Usla.

They went to Jaq's mansion, where they were hired by Jaq to recover the Professor. Jaq's theory was that Neepkag the Bogeyperson, who had been in charge of Hangadh-Buain-Noiche before the Burning Hate took it from Asya and put Jaq in charge as the Incandescent Bonelord of Heckbound Night (long before Dalya took over, renamed it to Hoobynoob, and made Jaq the Gourd Duke), wanted to carry out Jaq's own plan, but to their own benefit.

(Jaq's plan was to split his two personalities -- the Incandescent Bonelord following the Burning Hate, and the Gourd Duke following Dalya -- putting one into Saint Usla, so that each could be in charge of their own holiday. The Professor had all the details, it involved a plant that had been grafted with black dahlias and orange lilies, which through the laws of similarity could split the two personalities if ungrafted, and then graft the orange lilies onto a sunflower, representing Saint Usla's Numiel.)

The Guildmasters went to the Bogeyperson's cave, defeated them, rescued Usla, and were declared Nice and deserving of many presents by Usla. They returned the Professor to Jaq, who now owes them an unspecified favor.