D&D Gamehacks: Character Bonds

[buzz]

Over on Chris Chinn's Deep in the Game, he's been doing a series called D&D Gamehacks. Basically, it's a simple contest where people submit add-on rules for D&D that make interesting changes.

My favorite so far has been Adam Dray's Character Bonds (.pdf, 36 KB).

The Concept

A character bond is a strong tie between your character and something else. That "something else" can be another character (PC or NPC), an object, a place, or even an emotion. Really, it can be anything that can be connected to your character somehow. You can create character bonds to anything that you think is important to your character's definition or story. You can strengthen, weaken, and even destroy existing character bonds.

A character bond represents something that you feel is a vital part of your character's identity. As such, you invest experience points (XP) to grow your bonds. When you ignore your bonds, you may lose XP.

You will be rewarded for exploring stories that test and showcase your character bonds. These rewards come in the form of bonus experience points (XP), in addition to great stories.

Further, you may draw upon your bonds to gain situational bonuses for actions that are closely tied to your character bonds. The stronger the bond, the more bonus potential you'll have.

This may sound sort of familiar to anyone who's played The Riddle of Steel. Basically, the amount of XP you invest in the bond provides a bonus from +1 to +20. When a situation relevant to your bond comes up, you gain use of the bonus. Work in opposition to your bonds, and you lose out on some XP.

 

[Travinkel]

Very flavourful indeed, I like this rule quite a lot. I ought to test it when our (lazy) gaming group get back together.

I guess it's very interesting for roleplaying purposes as well. (especially for the amnesia lovin' player)

 

[buzz]

Here are some more details that came up on Chris' blog:

http://towers.legendary.org/index.php/Character_Bonds
http://towers.legendary.org/index.php/Player_Characters

And...

Oh, hrm. I seem to have left out a section describing bonus multipliers. I'd say:

Typical Action = 10x
Difficult Action = 50x
Significant Action = 100x

I can't remember what we did in actual play. I may have given a bonus of Bonus Multiplier x Bond Level x Character Level. Otherwise, a +30 XP bonus for a typical action is pretty meaningless for a 11th level character, while +330 XP is "worth it."

 

[Travinkel]

To strengthen a character bond, you invest more XP in it. This can be done at any time. You cannot spend XP you do not have but you can reduce your current XP below the minimum required for your current level as long as it is greater than 0. The maximum to which you may strengthen a bond is still +20; realize, however, that the DM will definitely test your largest bonds!

For example, our rogue has advanced to 3rd level with 3400 XP and has a +2 bond to his mentor, the Master of Thieves. The minimum XP for 3rd level is 3000 XP. He decides to increase it by 1 to a +3 bond (cost: 100 XP). His current XP total drops to 3300 XP. He could spend 500 XP (+5) on the bond and lower his current XP to 2900 without losing a level.

This could be unbalanced. It seems that there's nothing preventing me from advancing my bonus to +10, except roleplaying issues. And IMO, lowering your exp. beneath the required to attain your current level, shouldn't be possible.

 

[buzz]

I agree that you should never be able to spend XP below the minimum needed for your current level; nothing else in the system works this way.

The balance issue... I dunno. First, you need to sacrifice XP, which I generally find myself hesitant to do. Second, the bonus will only come up in pursuance of your bond(s). Granted, this is incentive to pursue your bond(s)... but since not everyone will have the same bond(s), this could make for some interesting conflict.

I could think of maybe adding a proviso that if you're level X, then no one bond can have a bonus bigger than Y, and you can only spend XP to increase your bonds at certain times.

 

[Travinkel]

You're pretty right about that, since the bonus exclusively applies to your chosen bond, I guess it's okay.

 

[Sound of Azure]

Cool concept. I think I'll tie it into the Affiliation rules (i.e. you must have an affiliation related in some way to the bond).
The interaction between the two can become an interesting source of tension, since I'm not not using Alignment in my campaign.

Thanks for the link buzz!

 

[buzz]

I think I'll tie it into the Affiliation rules (i.e. you must have an affiliation related in some way to the bond).

Good call! I love the Affiliation rules in PHB2. I wonder about giving a PC both a bond bonus AND the benefits of an Affiliation, though. Maybe their Affiliation score sets the max for their bond bonus?