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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6967176" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>hehe, well, our games are just cousins then. The path I actually took in thinking about this was that DMG2 talked about giving out basically character features as 'treasure'. Now treasure in 4e is firmly fixed to levels, you just get N treasures per level, so in effect it is exactly what my boons are, character features that are given out based on narrative considerations, at a fixed rate per level! Once I decided those were the main advancement mechanic and hit on the reversing the cause/effect relationship between level and boons, then all the feats and PP/ED/Theme, etc became redundant. </p><p></p><p>In practice you can still give out something like feats, and treasure too. They are the minor boons. Stuff that isn't significant enough to enhance the character's connections to fate and destiny. So a big pile of gold wouldn't advance you in level (though maybe if it was big enough and that was focus of play in that game, then it might actually be a major boon). A potion won't advance you in level. You can learn a new weapon proficiency or language, you won't advance in level then either. </p><p></p><p>I guess in theory a character could be 'sandbagged' and gain tons of minor boons but not advance. I'd actually say that was kind of a FEATURE of the game though, you can keep playing fairly low level stuff and rarely advance. I mean 6th level could be your highest. As you say though, the 6 boons you got from that COULD be 'epic', there's not really rules in HoML that say "you can't do this till level N". I did put a level on each power, but I wonder if I should even do that. I mean, which boons you can get is PURELY narrative. If the story makes sense with a level 6 PC having an earth-shatteringly strong power, well, why not? </p><p></p><p>While I'm not a GIANT fan of so-called 'bounded accuracy', I have cut back somewhat on the growth of bonuses, which means that you can probably take on some fairly tough stuff at, say, level 6, certainly legendary tier material (some of the dragons and such things). So I think the upshot is that the game won't break if you hand super powerful stuff to lower level PCs. The math will shift a bit, but not to total wiff-fest so quickly as 4e does. In any case I retained only 20 levels and designate level 20 as the top of the mythic tier of play. That also cuts down on bonuses. </p><p></p><p>As of now you get a +1 level bonus about every 3 levels, proficiency bonus of +5, max ability bonus of +5 (rare), and maybe another +3 from other sources, tops. So that's something like +26 being pretty much the highest bonus in the game. So if a defense of around 35 is 20th level creatures, then a level 6 guy can ALMOST hit them! Certainly a level 12 guy has some chance. You wouldn't be taking on level + 8 unique monsters, but level + 5 is in the range, and that's a pretty good hunk of the total power curve of this game. I'd say about 50% of all monsters can be 'in play' potentially for high heroic or low legendary characters.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6967176, member: 82106"] hehe, well, our games are just cousins then. The path I actually took in thinking about this was that DMG2 talked about giving out basically character features as 'treasure'. Now treasure in 4e is firmly fixed to levels, you just get N treasures per level, so in effect it is exactly what my boons are, character features that are given out based on narrative considerations, at a fixed rate per level! Once I decided those were the main advancement mechanic and hit on the reversing the cause/effect relationship between level and boons, then all the feats and PP/ED/Theme, etc became redundant. In practice you can still give out something like feats, and treasure too. They are the minor boons. Stuff that isn't significant enough to enhance the character's connections to fate and destiny. So a big pile of gold wouldn't advance you in level (though maybe if it was big enough and that was focus of play in that game, then it might actually be a major boon). A potion won't advance you in level. You can learn a new weapon proficiency or language, you won't advance in level then either. I guess in theory a character could be 'sandbagged' and gain tons of minor boons but not advance. I'd actually say that was kind of a FEATURE of the game though, you can keep playing fairly low level stuff and rarely advance. I mean 6th level could be your highest. As you say though, the 6 boons you got from that COULD be 'epic', there's not really rules in HoML that say "you can't do this till level N". I did put a level on each power, but I wonder if I should even do that. I mean, which boons you can get is PURELY narrative. If the story makes sense with a level 6 PC having an earth-shatteringly strong power, well, why not? While I'm not a GIANT fan of so-called 'bounded accuracy', I have cut back somewhat on the growth of bonuses, which means that you can probably take on some fairly tough stuff at, say, level 6, certainly legendary tier material (some of the dragons and such things). So I think the upshot is that the game won't break if you hand super powerful stuff to lower level PCs. The math will shift a bit, but not to total wiff-fest so quickly as 4e does. In any case I retained only 20 levels and designate level 20 as the top of the mythic tier of play. That also cuts down on bonuses. As of now you get a +1 level bonus about every 3 levels, proficiency bonus of +5, max ability bonus of +5 (rare), and maybe another +3 from other sources, tops. So that's something like +26 being pretty much the highest bonus in the game. So if a defense of around 35 is 20th level creatures, then a level 6 guy can ALMOST hit them! Certainly a level 12 guy has some chance. You wouldn't be taking on level + 8 unique monsters, but level + 5 is in the range, and that's a pretty good hunk of the total power curve of this game. I'd say about 50% of all monsters can be 'in play' potentially for high heroic or low legendary characters. [/QUOTE]
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