More Action-Type Points to Reward Role-Playing

[Paul Strack]

Cool Points, Destiny Points and Monster Points

These rules introduce more beneficial points beyond just action points: cool points, destiny points and monster points. These rules also change the way action points behave. There are two motivations for these changes.

1) To give more options for rewarding fun in-game behavior and role-playing.

2) To reduce the “whiff factor” of using up and missing with your best powers (incidentally speeding up combat by increasing the damage done).

Cool Points

Cool points can be used for three things:

1) To get a +2 bonus to a d20 check. This bonus can be added after the roll is made, to convert a near-miss into a hit.

2) To gain +2 damage against a target for an attack that hit that target. This bonus increases to +4 at the paragon tier and +6 at the epic tier.

3) Three cool points can be spent as an action point.

Cool points can be spent in non-combat as well as combat encounters.

Earning Cool Points: You earn a cool point whenever you do something interesting or amusing, when you do something “cool”. This could be a bit of clever description by the player, good role-playing or a crack that makes the group laugh. It is a reward for players who make the game more fun for everyone.

Players can earn cool points in combat by making a particular clever move or by describing their action in an interesting way. A player who says “I charge across the room, screaming out ‘death to all goblins’ as I cut a bloody swath through them” should be reward for adding descriptive color to an attack.

The DM should try to give out several cool points per encounter or scene, either immediately or at the end of the scene. Players may also award cool points to each other, though never to themselves. When a player gives a cool point to another player, though, he also has to give a monster point to the DM.

Cool points do not carry over between sessions. Characters normally start with no cool points at the beginning of a session. The DM may award cool points at the beginning of a session for players that do helpful things like bringing snacks or making a record of the previous session’s adventure.

Action Points

Action points can be used for three things:

1) They can be spent for an extra standard action during your turn, as usual.

2) They can be spent to re-roll any roll made by the player, either a d20 roll or a damage roll. The result of the new roll must be taken, even if it is lower.

3) They can be used with abilities such as paragon path features that require action points. Abilities that give re-rolls for an action points, such as Archer’s Action or Daggermaster’s Action, also give an additional +2 bonus to the re-roll for d20 or +2/4/6 for damage rolls (for the heroic/paragon/epic tiers). Abilities that give some benefit for spending “an action point to take an extra action” also give their benefit for any use of an action point.

The re-roll option for action points lets them be spent in non-combat as well as combat encounters.

Earning Action Points: Player characters earn 1 action point per milestone or an extended rest, but only if they do not already have an action point. This means there is little point to hoarding action points. After an extended rest, a character is reduced to 1 action point if he had more than that.

At the end of each encounter, the players choose the most valuable player (MVP) for that encounter. This player earns an extra MVP action point. If the players can’t decide, the DM picks the MVP. If the encounter was a milestone, the MVP action point is in addition to the milestone action point. This is the easiest way to end up with more than one action point.

Action points do not carry over between sessions. A character always starts a new game session with exactly 1 action point.

Destiny Points

Destiny points can be spent as either action points or as cool points. Destiny points are never lost unless they are spent; they carry over from one game session to the next.

Earning Destiny Points: Characters earn destiny points when they reach some pivotal point in their lives. This could be winning a lost love, getting revenge on an enemy and earning some special status or recognition in society. The DM should hand out destiny points rarely, at most 1 or 2 per session.

The best way for characters to earn destiny points is for them to have some kind of personal goal. This goal cannot be about gaining wealth or new powers: meeting those kind of goals is already rewarded in the game. The goal should be something abstract, personal and important to that character. Destiny goals are also separate from adventure quests, which give extra XP for achieving some specific goal within an adventure. Destiny goals should be long-term, something that may span several adventures.

A character earns a destiny point when some important event happens regarding his personal goals. The character earns the destiny point whether that event is good or bad. If a character is trying to win the hand of his true love and she ends up marrying someone else, this is still an important event, worth a destiny point, even though it goes against the character’s goal.

Players should come up with one or two personal goals. The DM can uses these personal goals as hooks for getting the player characters involved in adventures. The DM should make a point of including something related to one or two characters’ personal goals in each adventure, so that those players have an opportunity to earn destiny points. The DM should switch which characters goals appear in each adventure, so that each player has a chance to be the center of the store.

Monster Points

To balance out the benefits that players get from cool, action and destiny points, the monsters get special points as well. These monster points give the same benefits as cool points. The DM starts the game session with monster points equal to the number of players. Every time a player gives another player a cool point, the DM also gets a monster point. When the DM gives out cool points, the DM does not get a monster point.

Elite and solo monsters have action points, as usual, and may spend them in all the same ways as players can (extra actions, re-rolls and as cool points).

Tracking Points

You may spend any number of points in a battle, but you may never spend more than 1 point (cool, action, destiny or monster) on a single action. The only exception is when you spend 3 cool points as an action point.

The easiest way to track cool, action, destiny and monster points is to use poker chips. You can use white chips for cool and monster points, red chips for action points and blue chips for destiny points. You should keep a pool of white chips on the gaming table for the players to award each other cool points, giving the DM a white chip at the same time. The DM can also tell players to take white chips when he wants to award them as well.

You can keep red chips for action points in the common pool as well, but the DM should keep blue chips for destiny awards, since they are special and rare.

EDITS: Removed option that allowed action points to be spent as cool points. Allowed destiny points to be spent as either action points or cool points. Made it clear only one point of any kind can be spent on a single action.

 

[Alex319]

Cool Points

1) To get a +2 bonus to a d20 check. This bonus can be added after the roll is made, to convert a near-miss into a hit.

This makes cool points very good, possibly brokenly so. It essentially says that "one out of every ten attacks, you can spend a cool point to turn a miss into a hit." Since you are giving out several cool points per encounter, and the total number of attack rolls players are likely to make during an encounter is only about 15-25 (5 players times 3-5 rounds) that basically means that almost every time the +2 would make a difference, players will have a cool point to spend to use it. This effectively gives players a +2 to all attack rolls, and they will still likely have points left over to spend on other things. (And they can even get the same effect as above on other things, like saves and skill checks.)

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Also, your action point idea has a similar problem with being able to retroactively alter a die roll. For example, if I have the action surge feat and use an action point as described in option (2), I get a retroactive +5 increase in the attack roll. Retroactive attack roll boosts are very good, normally limited to a small number of powers and racial abilities, and giving them to essentially everybody could easily unbalance the game.

Finally, the way you award action points seems to eliminate any incentive to conserve them. The way it is now, if it is the last encounter of a session or the second encounter in a milestone, there is no reason not to burn your action point if you have one. Normally, conserving action points is a strategic element of the game. I am interested in why you chose to make this change. (Don't forget that under the standard rules, you can only use one action point per encounter, so it is already impossible to hoard large quantities of action points in order to "go nova" with them in a single encounter.)

 

[Exen Trik]

For cool points, I would leave the benefits out of combat entirely, and let it be at most a kind of action point for skill challenges. Make it an extra check with a nice bonus, it can let them pull off some kind of wild, improbable thing once in a while.

As for Destiny points, I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole. Keep roleplaying itself unquantified, it's waaaaay too gray of an area. If the players want to help direct the story the roleplaying should do that directly.

On the other hand, if it works for you guys, more power to ya.

 

[MrBeens]

We use a "cool point" system.

DM hands out tokens for cool stuff (usually works out about 1 or 2 per person per session).

+2 to any roll
Has to be declared before the roll is made
Can only use 1 per round
Cannot horde them - reset to max of 1 at extended rest.

They don't seem to have unbalanced the game

So far they have been given out for the following things (all at DM discression):
Between session write ups of previous session (in character)
Drawn pictures of PCs and other in game events
Good roleplaying
"Blessings"
Quest rewards

 

[mattdm]

wiki points

In our new game, I'm instituting "wiki points". You get one for adding something significant (even if small) to the little wiki site I set up for the game — session history, NPC details, a map, whatever.

I'm not sure exactly what benefits they should provide, though.
I want it to be

• different from action points
• powerful enough to be a meaningful "carrot"
• not so strong as to be unbalancing.

Suggestions? One idea is for them to let you automatically hit with an encounter or at-will power without rolling. I'd like there to be some other options too, though. Ideas?

 

[Paul Strack]

This makes cool points very good, possibly brokenly so. It essentially says that "one out of every ten attacks, you can spend a cool point to turn a miss into a hit." Since you are giving out several cool points per encounter, and the total number of attack rolls players are likely to make during an encounter is only about 15-25 (5 players times 3-5 rounds) that basically means that almost every time the +2 would make a difference, players will have a cool point to spend to use it. This effectively gives players a +2 to all attack rolls, and they will still likely have points left over to spend on other things. (And they can even get the same effect as above on other things, like saves and skill checks.)

This is my intent. Notice that the monsters get points too. The cool points and monster points are intended to effectively give everyone +2 to hit to everything. As the game currently stands, I think misses are simply to frequent. I prefer a system where people are hitting about 2/3 of the time rather than 1/2 of the time.

Also, your action point idea has a similar problem with being able to retroactively alter a die roll. For example, if I have the action surge feat and use an action point as described in option (2), I get a retroactive +5 increase in the attack roll. Retroactive attack roll boosts are very good, normally limited to a small number of powers and racial abilities, and giving them to essentially everybody could easily unbalance the game.

I hadn't considered the Action Surge/Action Point combo. I agree that a retroactive +5 is too good. Maybe I will change it so that action points can only be used for re-rolls, not for the +2 bonus.

Finally, the way you award action points seems to eliminate any incentive to conserve them. The way it is now, if it is the last encounter of a session or the second encounter in a milestone, there is no reason not to burn your action point if you have one. Normally, conserving action points is a strategic element of the game. I am interested in why you chose to make this change. (Don't forget that under the standard rules, you can only use one action point per encounter, so it is already impossible to hoard large quantities of action points in order to "go nova" with them in a single encounter.)

As I see it, the RAW also discourages hoarding action points, since you can only spend one per combat. Once you've accumulated enough action points to cover yourself until you take another extended rest, you should be spending one point per combat.

I am removing the "one per combat" action point limit but I still want to discourage hoarding, so I put in the limit on regaining them.

This is all still untested in play ... right now it just an idea in my head.

 

[Paul Strack]

For cool points, I would leave the benefits out of combat entirely, and let it be at most a kind of action point for skill challenges. Make it an extra check with a nice bonus, it can let them pull off some kind of wild, improbable thing once in a while.

I want to include them in combat because I want to increase the overall hit-frequency, especially with the better attacks. See my posts above.

As for Destiny points, I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole. Keep roleplaying itself unquantified, it's waaaaay too gray of an area. If the players want to help direct the story the roleplaying should do that directly.

I am planning on de-emphasizing both gold and XP as reward mechanisms. Everyone will always get the same about of XP (either a half-level or a level per session) and equipment/treasure will be tied to your level, more or less per the "Starting at Higher Level" rules in the DMG.

So, Destiny Points are supposed to be the primary long-term reward mechanism in my game. I wanted them to be good enough to be desirable, but not so good that players couldn't slough off and ignore them.

On the other hand, if it works for you guys, more power to ya.

Well, I haven't tried it yet, so we'll see.

 

[Paul Strack]

In our new game, I'm instituting "wiki points". You get one for adding something significant (even if small) to the little wiki site I set up for the game — session history, NPC details, a map, whatever.

Suggestions? One idea is for them to let you automatically hit with an encounter or at-will power without rolling. I'd like there to be some other options too, though. Ideas?

I would decide first whether you want wiki-points to be better or worse than action points. An auto-hit is considerably better than an action point. If you want them to be worse than an action point, a +2 bonus is probably about right.