Skill DC Bands

🩸⚖️ Homebrew overrides official 5e. Applies to every ability check, skill check, and tool check.

The GM sets a target DC and calls the band. Numbers exist for the GM. At the table you hear the band.

Assistance Rule

🩸⚖️

Helping another PC grants advantage. Advantage does not stack. Two helpers is still one advantage. Three helpers is still one advantage. The second and third helpers can offer flavor or fictional positioning, but the mechanical grant is capped.

Critical Hits

🩸⚖️

On a natural 20 to hit:

1. Double all damage dice and modifiers.
2. Draw one card from the Pathfinder Critical Hit Deck. The GM adjudicates its effect.

Healing Surges

📖 DMG optional rule, adopted for CT.

Once per short or long rest, spend an action to burn up to half your total Hit Dice (round down). Each die spent this way rolls its face plus your CON modifier. You can stop between dice.

Stress and Madness

🩸⚖️ VRGtR plus custom overrides.

Track your Stress Score on D&D Beyond. Your current Stress applies as a penalty to every attack, ability check, and saving throw. Only the GM adjusts it. There is no self-heal.

Madness runs as three token types: Short-Term, Long-Term, and Indefinite. Resist with a WIS or CHA save. Immunity to the Frightened condition grants advantage on Madness saves. Madness does not fade on its own.

Seeds of Fear

📖 VRGtR.

Pick up to two Seeds of Fear at character creation. Lifetime cap is three. When a scene triggers one, the GM calls a DC Fear save. Roleplaying through the fear earns Inspiration.

Ability Drain

🩸⚖️ Replaces RAW exhaustion and level drain from undead.

Ability Drain is a status distinct from HP damage. It reduces the target’s ability score; the score cannot go below 1 unless the source specifies otherwise (at 0 the target dies or collapses). Recovery is +1 point per drained score per long rest. The condition persists through death and resurrection.

Shadows, wraiths, ghosts, and ancient vampires inflict Ability Drain on top of HP damage. This override supersedes any RAW exhaustion or level-drain effect those creatures would otherwise cause.

Necrotic to Radiant

🩸⚖️ Universal override.

Any spell or effect that would deal necrotic damage to a creature immune to necrotic instead deals radiant damage of the same amount. Applies to every caster on A’Erth. Corollary: creatures that resist one don’t necessarily resist the other.

Corruption of the Dawn

🩸⚖️ Turn Undead d20 table. Triggers in corrupted places, under Umbra, or against formerly-good undead.

Resolve Turn Undead normally, then roll d20 and consult:

Anima Instability

🩸⚖️

Cantrips are exempt. Any spell with a material component rolls d100 on cast. 1% per spell level equals failure. On failure, you choose where the backlash lands.

If every creature in a failed spell’s save succeeds, the backlash dissolves into A’Erth with no damage, but that area’s Anima becomes thin and fragile. Cast there again at your own risk.

Sustainer / Ravager

🩸 Universal to every arcane and primal caster on A’Erth.

Every caster who has drawn on Anima has a stance. Sustainers absorb backlash into themselves. Ravagers let it spill into land, wildlife, and bystanders. Regional traditions have their own names for both. What none of them dispute: once a caster has defiled the A’Erth, there is no returning to the Sustainer’s path.

Druids and rangers are held to the same standard, even though their casting doesn’t use arcane components. Sustainer druids absorb backlash into body, dreams, and spirit. Ravager druids scorch fields, poison rivers, crack ancient trees, twist regrowth. Wildlife notices. Deer bolt, wolves refuse to meet their eyes, sacred groves twist shut, the wind goes still.

Detect Magic Aura Colors

🩸 Codified in-fiction. Players can rely on this as canon.

Moon-Phase Magic Modifiers

🩸

Every full moon buffs a school of magic. Multi-moon nights rewrite the rules for that night. Eclipses can invert or overload the moon’s domain. See the Player’s Guide for the moons’ cycles and named portents.

Crafting modifiers

Under a Luna eclipse in Umbra there is a 50% chance any resurrection traps the soul. Read the sky before you cast.

Curse Removal

🩸⚖️ Remove Curse is not enough on A’Erth.

Curses do not yield to Remove Curse alone. Every real curse has an Anchor. Find it. Identify the curse’s Moon Tie. Break it in the opposing moon’s phase via a three-phase skill challenge, 3 successes before 3 failures:

1. Invocation
2. Confrontation
3. Severing

Moon opposites: Luna ↔ Umbra, Ignis ↔ Nyxvasha. An Exorcism Kit helps.

Named curses in the world

• The Widow’s Hunger — Nyxvasha. −1 CON every 7 days.
• The Iron Oath — Ignis. Cannot receive Inspiration.
• The Erlking’s Claim — Luna.
• Plague of the Red Hand — Umbra.
• Eye of Horus — Ignis.
• Blood Debt of the Danube — Nyxvasha.
• The Gorgon’s Mark — Luna.
• The Draugr’s Breath — Umbra.

Potion Crafting Overhaul

🩸⚖️ Replaces the 5e downtime crafting rule.

Four steps: Gather (Nature or Survival), Prep (a kit), Brew (Alchemy or Arcana), Stabilize. Failure by 5+ leaves the batch useless, corrupted, or explosive. Choose your kit: Herbalism, Alchemist’s, Poisoner’s, or Enchanter’s.

Crafting DCs

Physick Remedies

🩸 Nonmagical medicines.

One Physick Remedy per short or long rest, maximum. Categories: External, Restorative, Medicinal, Comfort. Prices run 1 cp to 1 gp. Most give 1d2 HP or advantage on a save.

Circle of Protection Ritual

🩸⚖️ Requires the Exorcism Kit.

The kit enables Protection from Evil and Good and Dispel Evil and Good as a proper drawn circle, and lets non-ritual spells among those be cast as ritual (10 minutes, no slot expended).

• Ritual Circle — 10 minutes, careful drawing. DC 12 + 1 per foot of radius, max 10 ft. On failure: 1 Stress and Short-Term Madness.
• Quick Circle — 1 action, disadvantage on the check. On failure: 2 Stress and Short-Term Madness.

Song of Rest — Marek Extension

🩸⚖️ Vistani bardic. Applies when the party rests within earshot of Marek.

When Hit Dice are spent on a short rest inside Marek’s Song of Rest, each die grants an additional +1d6 HP. This bonus extends to everyone present at the rest, not only the party.

Firearms

🩸 Legal and licensed in most Kingdom cities. Rare in the East.

Firearm rules

• Reload: bonus action with a free hand and components, else a full action.
• Loud: shot audible at 300 ft.
• Misfire on natural 1: DC 10 Dex (Tinker’s Tools) action to clear, else fouled for 1 minute.
• Smoke and Powder: disadvantage in rain or heavy humidity.
• Dueling Advantage: +2 damage to whoever strikes first in a 1v1 duel.
• Proficiency required to add proficiency bonus. Any character with Martial Weapon proficiency may use them. Some jurisdictions require a license.
• Whisperbrace sleeve rig: 100 gp bracer. DC 10 Sleight of Hand to deploy a pistol as an object, bonus action, or action.

Lockpicking

🩸⚖️ Thieves’ Tools + Dex. DC 5 to 30 by tier.

• Quick Pick: 1 action. Disadvantage if threatened.
• Standard Pick: 5 ft / round of movement. 1 round to 1 minute.
• Deliberate Pick: minimum 1 minute. Advantage if assisted.

Fail by 5+: lock jams for 1 minute. Nat 1: lock jams and permanent +2 DC. Force it with Athletics vs. DC+5. Magical locks add +5 DC without Dispel Magic. Dim light: disadvantage. Rain: +2 DC. Cold: −2 Dex. Improvised tools: +5 DC.

Traps

🩸⚖️

Detect via Passive Perception, automatic.

• Quick: bonus action. Disadvantage in combat. Sprint = auto-fail. +2 DC under attack. +5 DC restrained.
• Standard: action. 5 ft / round. Perception or Investigation.
• Deliberate: 1 minute per 10 ft.

Disarming mirrors detection. Quick fail by 5 triggers. Nat 1 triggers. Standard runs 1 minute at 5 ft / round. Deliberate is 1 minute with advantage if assisted.

Pickpocket

🩸⚖️ Sleight of Hand vs. Passive Perception. DC 5 to 30.

• Quick Lift: bonus action. +2 DC. Not in combat.
• Standard Lift: action. Ally distraction grants advantage.
• Fail by 5: immediate awareness. Fail by less: raises suspicion.
• Concealed items: +2 to +5 DC.
• Reverse-pickpocket uses the same rules.

Secret Doors

🩸⚖️

• Quick Scan: Passive Perception, automatic.
• Standard Search: 5 ft / round. Failure locks out that section until a short or long rest.
• Deliberate: 1 minute per 10 ft. Advantage if assisted. Same lockout rule.

DC 10 to 30 by tier.

Channel Divinity: Divine Spark

🩸 Custom Light Cleric variant.

30 ft heal or damage, 1d8 + Wis. DC 14 Con save. Radiant or necrotic, caster’s choice. 2/day. Regain 1 on short rest.

Mark of Grace — Tempered by the Flame

🩸 Custom boon.

Reaction: fire resistance for 1 minute. Recharges on the next full Silver Moon.

Dawnbound Conclave Restrictions

🩸 Silver Dawn wizards.

Necromancy, planar conjuration, and time or identity magic are forbidden without written High Ecclesiarch permission. Sun-sigil rings enforce the ban and flare in the presence of proscribed spellcasting.

The A’Erth Year

🩸

A’Erth’s year is 336 days: 12 months of 28 days each, 4 weeks to a month, 7 days to a week. Because 336 divides evenly by 7, every month starts on the same day of the week within the year, and every year starts on the same day of the week. Day 1 of Year 0 was a Monday.

Regions call the months by their own names. See the date bar on the Player Home for the current in-world date and the region’s naming.