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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6810177" data-attributes="member: 82106">LOL! Yeah, this is why I decided to stick to d20 and just go with advantage/disadvantage and only static mods. There's likely to be SOME adding and figuring now and then, but not too much. Plus it has more of the feel of being 'D&D', which I like.Yeah, its tempting. Now, subclasses could simply have a bunch of keywords, 'warrior(knight) = martial forceful defender' , 'mystic (dragon sorcerer) = elemental forceful striker', 'mystic(priest) = spiritual ensorcelling leader', 'trickster(illusionist) = shadow deceptive controller', etc. It might get a bit intricate though.  Boons as progress really are the central idea of my concept though. Because they represent progress and 'rewards' in a holistic way the concept really drives the game design in different directions. Its not JUST about 'progress'. What is in the game becomes deeply affected. For instance it starts to become irrelevant HOW you got your 'Superior Presence', is it an item? Is it a 'feat'? Is it a 'class feature'? Whatever it is, its a boon! Obviously an item is materially different in a narrative sense from a feat (one can be lost or sold, the other cannot) but in a mechanical sense even your powers could simply be boons. In fact as a general rule I've decided that I think MOST power acquisition should be in boon form. So you get to actually select powers based on your level, but which ones you can choose from is mostly shaped by the set of boons you have. This can have a lot of narrative aspects to it. For instance I thought about a scenario like this "Go to the altar of Iun and endure the vigil of purification of the mind to gain the boon of Iun (access to power XYZ)" which seems pretty thematically cool, now the adventure structure is VERY VERY CLEAR, all the rewards the game has to offer are suddenly aligned! It also naturally provides for different motivations (the rogue isn't especially excited by this adventure, though he may well find something along the way to make him happy). Now, think of an artifact. It grants a couple of boons, you pick it up, you level, and you can now select the powers associated with it. IT REALLY TAKES OVER THE STORY at least for that character. There's no real doubting what the agenda is right now, and the player picked it! He could have stuck with his other powers, basically said "meh, this is cool, but I'm not going to focus on it". Nope, instead its front and center, and he's going to be going after whatever this here artifact is all about, for as long as its around. This whole thing even provides a pretty good rationale for the 'faded hero', once he had a bunch of boons, he gave the magic sword to his son, the helm of brilliance was lost in the cave of darkness, he retired and the favor of Erathis was withdrawn, now he's just 10th level, before he was pretty much a demigod. Right, but how is the damage done by a magic missile different from that done by an arrow? They both impart kinetic energy on the target. In truth there's nothing to distinguish them in my mind. In fact the ORIGINAL magic missile spell, in OD&D, was exactly that, you simply conjured up an arrow and it flew at the designated enemy and attacked him, with the stats for a heavy crossbow bolt IIRC.</blockquote>

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