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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6097578" data-attributes="member: 82106">I might have, I toss crazy (crappy?, well, sometimes) ideas out there a lot. Of course most of them are sort of a mish-mash of what other people have posted as well, so no doubt many people would deserve credit/blame <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=";)" />I do kinda like 13a backgrounds. I always sort of imagined 4e backgrounds almost like that too, where I would just let the players riff on whatever the background was when it seemed appropriate (in addition to the +2 to a skill/train this skill bennie). I'm going to have to re-read my 13a stuff though at some point and mull on that whole aspect. I like the concept of 4e-type skills as "talents" basically. They're broad and tell you what the PC specifically (beyond ability scores, and even in spite of ability scores at times) is interested in/good at. The more specific skills ala DDN or 13a are OK, if they're narrow enough to represent some tricks/very specific areas the character happens to have some added skill/knowledge in. If they get too broad, like "boating" or something then they imply incompetence as a default, which I kinda don't like that much. 13a's genius IMHO was tying the niche skills to the character's interest and agenda, and then pointing the DM at having that stuff come up. That part is important as otherwise you often just have "obscure skill X, Y, and Z that never matter" and eventually players just only pick the ones the DM bothers with.Anyway, sounds like we have similar thoughts. I agree, boons would generally want to be roughly similar in power (you could have some that have level or other boon prereqs to gain more range there, spells would be a good one to work that way). OTOH if the DM is in control of the narrative, or you have a good collaboration where the players own enough of it to not want to just game the system then balancing the boons doesn't HAVE to be a necessity (IE a boon could be an artifact or a cantrip, but the players and DM will have to tell a story to get the artifact into play, at which point it is a perfectly reasonable boon for that game presumably). Worst case I think you end up with a game that is balanced if you want it to be, and no worse than 1e AD&D if you just go crazy.</blockquote>

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