Are there any guidelines for awarding inspiration?

Question

In D&D Next, Inspiration can be granted to a player for good roleplay and playing your background's bond, personality, ideal or flaw. Because inspiration is not cumulative so you have it or not, it seems like it should be frequently awarded assuming the players roleplay well.

Because inspiration allows you to gain advantage (or cancel an enemy's advantage), I'm wondering if awarding it too much could change how I plan my encounters.

Are there any guidelines on the frequency of awarding inspiration? If they get inspiration only once per 2 sessions, would it change the balance of the game? If I give them inspiration after every fight (like a Lawful Good character sparing an enemy every fights because of its background), would it be too much?

Answer 1

The only real guidance we've seen for awarding inspiration is what you've seen in Basic, and there is a small bit of box text on it in the starter set adventure.

The Starter Set box text suggests awarding inspiration for when a character plays their flaws or their ideals in a way that is negative to them. This provides a small incentive for them to take less than optimal, but more interesting character routes.

As far as frequency, that is going to depend entirely on your game at this point. In general, I would be liberal with the awarding of it as a single die roll with advantage is not a huge mechanical advantage. However, you may want to meter it at least a little bit to encourage players to pass around the inspiration football.