My Experience with Karma

[Grandpa]

I wanted to share my experience implementing karma points in my homebrew campaign in case it benefits someone else. After a few sessions of experimenting and tuning, I feel enthusiastic about my results.

[SBLOCK=How they work...]

1. Players get 1 karma point if they miss every target on their turn.
2. At the end of each encounter, players get 1 karma point per encounter played since their last extended rest.
3. The DM also rewards karma at his discretion.
4. Players can spend 1 karma point (no action) to add +1 to a roll they make.
5. Players can spend 2 karma points to add +1 to another player's roll.
6. For each karma point spent by the players, the DM gains a karma point to use with NPCs / monsters.
7. All karma points (player + DM) are reset to 0 by an extended rest.

[/SBLOCK][SBLOCK=Why I added them...]The numbers below correspond with "How they work..."

1. I hate the sense of defeat and uselessness that comes from combat rounds where everything misses, and have even seen players give up on D&D due to the resulting frustration.
2. I dislike the 15-minute adventuring day and thought this would add a small incentive to continue on with rules that help enable "heroics on fumes" without eliminating risk.
3. I like giving the players meaningful game incentives to help out with the campaign.
4. Handing out "+1 points" is a meaningful game incentive.
5. But giving others the ability to pool resources to help make magic happen creates a real sense of unity in the team, and gives players another reason to pay attention to combat when it isn't their turn.
6. Before this rule, karma points were too powerful but I didn't want to reduce their incentive for desired player behavior. When unsure how to tune game design, I try to use "risk vs. reward" so players feel like they have actions that increase both during play. Granting karma to the DM seemed like a silver bullet -- a way to offer the same mechanical incentives while adding risk, all while keeping the math roughly even; to my simple mind, at least.
7. To prevent hoarding.

[/SBLOCK][SBLOCK=Results...]The numbers below correspond with "How they work..."

1. This has been a massive help in reducing frustration. Not only because they get a consolation prize but because karma means they miss less in general.
2. I haven't seen a huge effect on avoiding extended rests yet.
3. As I mentioned above, this has been a huge boon for player participation. At the end of each session, I make a list of "easy karma" targets that have the players helping with campaign tasks or adding to their backgrounds, and the players very often participate, especially when they know an important fight is coming.
4. They love being able to squeeze in a roll and even I like knowing they can rely on it. For example, one player "did something cool" (action point + surge to do a narrative action that I adjudicate) to "chop off the hand" of an enemy, and I said a roll of 19-20 would succeed knowing that even he missed karma would likely be used to seal the deal. (This is exactly what happened and they loved it.)
5. Pooling resources feels awesome. Players bond when the others turn a miss into a hit and it really brings them together. Even the DM gets warm fuzzies when this happens.
6. This is an awesome addition to the rules. As a DM it gives me a legitimate way to affect the tide of the fight without feeling like I'm "fudging" and cheating the system -- I simply choose to use or not use bonuses the players hand over to me, but it always increases their tension (awesome). I can make the fight scarier by using karma or if the situation looks too dire, allow karma use to be lopsided in their favor. (I should mention that I keep monster rolls hidden so they don't know when its being applied.) I don't hate fudging; I just love having rules that make it way less necessary.
7. Hoarding avoided.

[/SBLOCK][SBLOCK=Other Considerations...]

• Players will need to know the stats of their enemies. "How much did I miss by?" is common but I don't care what the players know about enemy defenses or HP since I try to embrace the lore-plus-stats approach described in the books -- "You are struck by how difficult it is to penetrate the orc's defenses; his AC is 26."
• There is probably more potential to min / max karma points that my players are not using. For example, never give them to another player (bad conversion rate!), or save and only spend for the final moments of the fight or never use them since all it does is shift when +1s and damage happen. But so far there is a strong human element that kicks in when they are depressed and just want a roll to hit, or their pal is depressed for missing an important role by 3 points and everyone pools 6 karma to help him (bringing them together and encouraging this behavior). And as for saving karma to spend at the end of the fight, in 4E, that's usually when things feel like a slog anyway, and if they feel like the last enemy somehow surviving could end in severe payback, it manages to make those last moments more exciting.
• I haven't tightly defined how karma works for enemies. Right now, I just stack them onto a roll I really want to hit a player with and only subtract karma if it missed by an amount the karma would help it reach. With damage rolls, I just apply as much as I want. I'm considering the ability to spend karma to recharge a monster ability at a karma cost of [min recharge die roll required-1].

[/SBLOCK]

 

[the Jester]

At first glance, I thought, "Meh."

Upon actually reading it and catching your "spend a karma point and I get one for the monsters" clause, I thought, "Hmm."

This looks like a fine system, but I don't think I'd generally use it; it just adds more stuff to keep track of during combat. Still, it strikes me that it is probably a fine, balanced addition to the game, so it's just a matter of taste.

 

[GSHamster]

Is it only +1 to d20 rolls, or can you do +1 to damage rolls too?

If you can, that would be a simple way for the DM to burn karma points, just keep adding in additional damage. That way the DM karma points would still hurt the PCs, but the tracking on the DM side is minimal.

Adding to damage does make DM karma less powerful than turning a miss into a hit, but it might be enough to mitigate the tracking issue.

 

[SensoryThought]

My guess is this would disadvantage defenders and high hit classes like rogues/avengers. Defenders would get hit more often (as the focus of the majority of attacks). High to hit classes would get proportionately less karma and less need for it as hit quite often as their main class perk.

 

[Grandpa]

Is it only +1 to d20 rolls, or can you do +1 to damage rolls too?

It's any roll. In the case described above -- where a player "did something cool" to chop off an enemy's hand and I assigned a 19-20 requirement to succeed knowing they'd dump karma into it -- the hand was carrying an unstable magic element the players wanted, but (on a roll) it shattered and mutated the hand into a combatant. Another player, familiar with the mutating from previous sessions, knocked it into a furnace but on the now-flaming hand's turn, it leapt from the furnace to grapple the chopper's neck. The hand was marked and an OA from the nearby fighter would have been a cool way to end the fight but it inexplicably missed so I reeeally wanted its attack to hit. All the karma granted me from the players chopping the hand off went into the hand's attack and when that hit (it would have missed, otherwise), the remaining went to damage (and I added 5 ongoing fire damage to boot). It was fun.

On the VTT, I add karma as a "+" to hit and return overflow back to my coffers. In real life, we use glass beads to represent karma so they're a snap to track. I think it does make combat run a few minutes longer but not for tracking points so much as being asked "how much did I miss by" followed by player interchange. After using karma for a few sessions, I'm prepared to answer the "how much..." question with every roll so it's the player interchange that adds a few seconds (it's not a complicated decision). But the sense of empowerment, added focus, teamwork, campaign participation, tension (DM karma), and my ability to adjust fights without fudging (granted, with a house rule) has been worth it to me.

And it probably bears mentioning that since players miss less, it takes less turns to end a fight.

 

[Grandpa]

My guess is this would disadvantage defenders and high hit classes like rogues/avengers. Defenders would get hit more often (as the focus of the majority of attacks). High to hit classes would get proportionately less karma and less need for it as hit quite often as their main class perk.

Nice catch. My players haven't brought up this concern (and may never notice) but it's something I'll watch for.

Keep in mind that it's still totally up to the DM how to use karma, and that absorbing damage is bragging rights to a good defender. But the point about strikers gives me pause. Responses spring to mind: (1) My strikers have yet to begrudge another player's consolation prize for being totally worthless for a round -- their hearts go out to players that miss (in fact, I had a brute use an encounter to trample all 5 PCs and when he missed every attack roll, they sympathetically asked if I could get karma for it (no!). (2) With subsequent fights, the karma earned for completing encounters becomes more noticeable than the karma earned for missing. (3) Though strikers miss less, they like the insurance too, and can apply it to bring down enemies even faster with damage rolls instead of attacks. (4) In practice, players acquire more karma as DM rewards than anything else; coincidentally (?) the two strikers in my party help me most between sessions, earning the most karma. (5) And ultimately, less karma for strikers means less for the DM to bash them with, which isn't the end of the world.

One and four are particular to our group so your mileage may vary, but I hope it inspires some fun for someone else. Thanks again for the comment -- I'll be keeping an eye out for what you mentioned.

Now let's see if I can dig up some xp for those last two posts...

 

[Rune]

VERY interesting!

I also use a karma system in my games, but you and I have taken different approaches! (Yours seems to share a lot in common with Trailblazer's Action Point system, by the way.)

I give out karma points for cool/worthy things done in game, but also, frequently for things done out of game to help make my life easier. My karma points can be used for mechanical advantage, but I also give out Paizo's Plot Twist Cards (a fresh batch per session) for the PCs to use karma to directly influence/throw-a-monkey-wrench-into my the campaign. They have used karma in this way to significantly alter the course of the campaign. Because of the way I use let them earn them, earned karma points carry over into other sessions--and even other campaigns.

All that said, I like the mechanics for rewarding misses. Nothing takes the life out of a session quicker than a string of poorly-timed misses.

I also like the idea of rewarding myself a karma point every time they use one. I think I'll do that.

 

[Rune]

Thanks for the ideas -- lemme know how your experiment goes!

My players love it. The amount of work they're willing to put in to earn karma points varies from player to player (from sporadic to frequent). The one who likes to make NPCs and maps and such gives me campaign fodder and stockpiles a few points (but is not hesitant to use them to further the party's interests, either). This stockpiling is not a problem (in fact, it keeps me from having to worry about TPKs).

Even with this stockpiling, I hand them out much more rarely than your system does. This helps them feel like something truly earned--and just rare enough to be too valuable to squander, without being so scarce that they never get used. My players might go through several sessions without using one, but, then again, they might use a few in one session, if they see the need.

I like the elegance of a mechanical approach, but my players have grown to love the Plot Twist cards so much (probably because they know there are a few times they have altered the course of the campaign) that that particular manifestation is certain to remain a fixture in my games.