Inspiration and Other Optional Bonus Mechanics

Here's the house rule on any bonus or modifier that can be used at the player's option, such as Inspiration.

Any optional bonus that a player can apply to a roll MUST be declared before the roll. This is to avoid metagaming or retconning bad rolls.

Justification: in real life, if you have something really important you need to do, you will decide to focus on it before you do it. Once you screw up (i.e. make a bad roll), you can't go back in time & change it. :-)

Examples:

DM-awarded or bard-awarded Inspiration: the player must declare that they are adding the dice before rolling. In Roll20 terms, this is accomplished with /roll 1d20+1d6 (or +1d8, +1d10, etc. per bard ability).

Sharpshooter feat: the decision to take a -5 penalty in exchange for +10 damage must be included with the roll, as /roll 1d20-5.

Other examples will be added as they come up in play.