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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6501015" data-attributes="member: 82106">Hmmmm, yeah, all of this is rather in keeping with my own trajectory. I've thoroughly hacked my game for the next campaign I run to the extent that it really isn't even 4e anymore. I have reworked EVERYTHING into boons, so there's no need for 'mechanics race', you simply take the boon 'Draconic Heritage' instead of 'Highly Adaptable' and your 'human' is now mechanically a 'Dragonborn' except of course narratively they're still human and we'd perhaps consider the implications for any other game mechanic when it came up, though in general they would be tied to the heritage boon, not your narrative race. This is essentially the same thing your GM is doing, just taken to its logical endpoint.As far as items go, I think you can play games whichever way, but I've filed away all the simple expected mechanical effects of items, such as enhancement bonus. I think most of us have already either done that or certainly come to an understanding that it would be for the best in general. I've reduced all benefits of all sorts to boons, so at this point gaining a new power could mean you picked up an item that grants it, or you might have learned a spell, or you might have been infused with necrotic energy during that romp in the shaded lands. Classes and archetypes have some basic mechanics that characters can always access, class features if you will, but everything else is some level of consequence of a boon, and ALL boons are narrative.I also hit on a good solution to build issues. All boons are narrative, and all 'XP' are granted based on acquisition of boons. In fact I made it simple, you get one level every time you acquire a major boon. This way instead of experience driving acquisition of new character elements the acquisition of the elements now drives level, which of course still determines your hit points and other scaling character attributes. What this does is annihilate the concept of methodological character building as its own separate activity. You can of course have your character, as a matter of his goals and ambitions, attempt to acquire specific boons and thus 'build your character' in a certain way. That's fine because there will automatically be a narrative coherence to that, and it will represent a process of RPing. Players can still fiddle around with which powers they decide to learn, and often they'll have a pretty clear choice of whatever boons they want, but it all becomes a much more organic process. Plus when a character finally achieves that really awesome capability its earned, presumably. You actually had to go kill the big bad dragon to get the awesome vorpal sword that lets you lop of people's heads on a crit, and you are guaranteed that achieving it will make your character just that much badder and tougher.  I'm honestly a bit shocked no RPG has previously enacted this sort of mechanic AFAIK.</blockquote>

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