Manbearcat
Legend
4e milestones are dungeon-crawl and combat neutral. You can earn them for dealing with non-combat challenges just as much as combat ones.
On a side to the side-note:
I find this to be their best use actually. In fact, I've only ever given a few milestones out in combat. I've never used them as a balancing mechanic. I use them to reward the PCs for:
- Playing to their character archetype/theme when that choice is sub-optimal (from a metagame perspective).
- Intentionally driving the narrative forward in a dynamic and interesting way (that is coherent both thematically and genre-wise) especially when it involves a sub-optimal choice.
With regards to non-combat challenges, we use them for two explicit purposes:
Skill Challenge
1) Player gets to reroll and use the second roll.
2) Player gets to narrative rights to the results of the roll (pass or fail), thus setting up the next portion of the non-combat encounter for the next player to deal with (which has both meta-game and narrative implications).
Outside of non-combat challenges they are for:
Mechanics-Neutral Narrative
Player gets narrative rights to create something out of whole cloth (an NPC, a syndicate, a locale, even an encounter) for the players to deal with (which, after their exposition of it, of course, I play out).
Combat
We exclusively use them for p42 Improvised Limited Use Exploits/Spells/Terrain effects. We tailor everyones' Paragon Path AP Feature around this usage.
I'm sure that this is "off the grid" for most tables but we're quite happy with the results that stem from the way we reward and use them.
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