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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5568056" data-attributes="member: 386">I wanted to get back to this after thinking about it a little more.I think my first post on Currency shows that I don't really understand 4E's Currency any more - I made too many assumptions about my own hack!  I'll try to contribute something useful this time... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />My hack does a similar thing with henchmen and hirelings.  They deduct their own XP value from the encounter (100 XP for a standard 1st-level character); henchmen level up at their own rate.  I am not sure how this works with 4E, but I like the rule (the one presented in the DMG2, I think). (It also has the side-effect of rewarding players who are more callous with their NPCs; my hack has a couple modifiers to determine how NPCs see the PCs that deals with this.) I think my point with the Ebony Fly was that you could reverse-engineer the stats and level/cost pretty easily to get something that would fit with the rest of the game.I think this is one of the places where the Currency of the game speaks up and says something: it's better to achieve things yourself instead of relying on others.  I like that, since it seems to fit with Swords & Sorcery.One of the things I did in my hack was to define those things mechanically; a "Martial Loss" gives you a -4 penalty to Reaction (or is it Influence?) rolls, which determine the number of successes needed in a skill challenge.  (Reaction is how they feel about you, Influence is if they'll do what you say or not.  I wanted to allow characters to be feared and not loved.)  I also took the time to make a list of modifiers that the DM applies to checks, and that's where I'd apply the -2 penalty.This reminds me of a discussion I had with one of my players; she was asking how something worked, and my reply was, "That's how it works."  I wish I could remember what it was.  I'm pretty sure it was something to do with a skill.  For example, I've got an elven racial skill called "Elven Eyesight".  It allows the character to see forever, as long as there's nothing in the way (up to the curvature of the world, I guess).  With that skill you can read the writing on a scroll from hundreds of miles away; without it, you can't.(The interesting thing about that skill is that there's so much to see that you have to know where to look if you want to find something.)I agree.  I think you have to do some work to come up with guidelines for different modifiers, like the way that certain actions can have an effect on the Complexity of a skill challenge in my hack.  I don't think that I've done anything that wasn't already there; I feel like I've codified some things, so that as DM I can apply the rules impartially and still give fictional positioning its weight in the system.Ah, I meant that, using the way that Wizards do their skill challenge write-ups, you could decide that any Diplomacy skill check by the Dwarf in the skill challenge would automatically result in a failure.Anyway, I hope that explains where I was coming from.  I created all these little lists of modifiers to help me make impartial rulings and to allow the players to make informed decisions.  When it comes to GP, I came up with a system to determine how much things cost (based on level).  There are a number of these little tweaks I made; I feel like they are implied by 4E's system, but never actually expressed.  That may not be the case!</blockquote>

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