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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alex319" data-source="post: 5004593" data-attributes="member: 45678">I only read the first article (the one about the mercs) and here are my thoughts. I thought it was an interesting idea but needs lots of editing. In particular, it's not clear whether "bite the hand," "brutality", "experience awards", "ruthless appearance", and "signature kill" are benefits that all mercs get, if they're examples of "special benefits" that badges give you, or if you choose one of them. Also here are my thoughts on them:"Bite the Hand" - This seems well designed. Definitely very flavorful and adds lots of roleplaying opportunities. The only thing is the rewards seem way too small. Remember that most XP comes from encounters, and only a small amount from quest rewards (IIRC, the DMG recommended values were something along the lines of 80% from encounters, 10% from major quests, and 10% from minor quests) so a +10% increase to quest XP is really more like a +1-2% increase to total XP: not even worth keeping track of. I would up the XP values a lot (say instead of +10%/+20%, use +50%/+100%, or even +100%/+200%. Alternatively replace the percentage of XP with a percentage of the amount of XP needed to reach the next level in order to make the system robust to DMs that use significantly different encounter XP/quest XP ratios.Brutality: This seems like a lot of work to keep track of. If there are five monsters in the encounter and five PCs, but only two of the PCs have the Brutality advantage, do you have to keep track of which PCs killed which monsters? Also suppose five PCs take down a 1000 XP solo, so they each get 200 XP, and one of them uses Brutality - does he get an extra 20 XP (+10% of his share) or an extra 100 XP (10% of the monster's XP value)? Can more than one PC Brutalize the same monster? Can you "turn off" your Brutality in order to avoid the penalty to being tracked, and if so how does that work? Also it becomes more complicated when combined with Signature Kill - the PCs must decide which monsters to get Brutality XP from and which to get the SK bonus from.Experience Awards: This part just seems wrong:(1) It's completely unthematic. "Mercenary" as described makes me think of "someone who will do whatever they need to do to get the job done," not "someone who goes around killing random people, even if they have nothing to do with the mission, in order to become more powerful."(2) The 25 XP is low enough that once you've gotten past the first few levels, it's probably not worth the time to do unless you can kill lots of people in one fell swoop. And as described in (1), mass murder doesn't seem very "mercenary" to me.Ruthless Appearance - Does the +1 to Charisma bonus per 4 levels stack with the +2 Diplomacy/Streetwise/Intimidate bonus?Also, you should specify that the Charisma bonus only applies to Charisma based skill checks, not any other Charisma based effects. It seems both unbalanced and silly for a warlock's eldritch blast to get more powerful just because the target recognizes him (or to get less powerful when used against law enforcement trying to capture him).Signature Kill - The benefit should probably reset after an extended rest and not "24 hours". But overall it seems good. Enough incentive to add a little flavor to the end of each encounter, but limited so that it doesn't become overpowering.</blockquote>

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