Greatest reward


Advice


In a campaign I'm going to be running, I have a secret ritual hidden in puzzles and tomes etc, my PC and the villains will discover this and search for parts. However once the whole puzzle is solved I'm stuck with ideas for a reward, I was thinking divinity, but it just seemed so cliche. Does anyone have any alternative ideas?


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IMO that's very player/party specific: what would they consider the greatest reward?

Some published modules/campaigns (Spelljammer's "Under the Dark Fist" comes to mind) have as the culminating reward what amounts to giving each PC an unusually powerful/extraordinary wish spell that they can use to gain something exceptional, up to (in that example) becoming a demigod.

Unless you're planning on campaigning at Epic levels, or dusting off the old 0E Immortals rules (fun times. . .), it probably doesn't matter what they get 'cause it would be their point of retirement and starting a new campaign.

More modest but very nice rewards suitable for a "normal" (non-epic/non-divine) ongoing campaign would be ones that give characters nice, unique (for character classes, anyway), but not unbalancing untyped bonuses or special/exceptional abilities (somewhat over the power of a normal Feat or Class Ability for their level, but not something that's a gamebreaker; usually these can be things that are very nice, that the PCs will enjoy having and get use from, but not bring them beyond or even to the level of the most optimized characters [Pun-Pun excepted]).

But beyond general advice like this, when it comes to specific "greatest rewards" really it's a matter of getting to know your players goals and wishes. If you're not sure now what they'd like for their characters, leave the possible reward for completing the puzzle/assembling the parts vague for now, until you learn more of what they want. Something like "the legends are this mcguffin can grant one's greatest desire, blah blah blah."

Liberty's Edge

I'd give them a supernatural ability or new feature that helps shore up some weaknesses of their class or gives them a little more versatility.

Melee fighter? X/day supernatural ability that grants a fly speed, good maneuverability, at 60 feet/round for 10 minutes with a bonus on fly checks equal to half character level.

Squishy wizard? Fast healing 1.

Monk? The ability to emit an anti-magic field for a few rounds 1/day.

Cleric? Another domain's spells (preferably one that expands what his cleric can do) with an extra domain slot at the highest level the character can cast. Either that or maybe just flat-out add a few good spells to his spell list and say they can be prepared as domain spells, then give him an extra domain slot. Or maybe the ability to, 1/day, smite (as paladin, using cha and level) members of whatever group they're facing off against.

Alternately, you could give each player Xd6. At any point, they can choose to roll these d6 and add them to any d20 roll their character makes (or maybe to their AC until the start of their next turn, usable as a free action), but once each die has been rolled, it gets turned back into the dungeon master. You might even give them another 2d6 every time they level up, or something. You could also change, in a predictable fashion, the number of dice they get when they level, depending on if the power of the ritual is dwindling or if they're just becoming more adept in its use. So each level, they would reset to (X+/-Y)d6, where Y is the number of levels they've gained since performing the ritual.

I guess what I would consider my "most important" advice is to avoid permanent, untyped bonuses that last forever and don't take an action to activate. After all, the game has enough of those already. Make it consume an action, or flat-out make it a consumable resource. Somehow, limit its use


Axebeard wrote:
Squishy wizard? Fast healing 1....I guess what I would consider my "most important" advice is to avoid permanent, untyped bonuses that last forever and don't take an action to activate.

Well, Fast Healing is such a thing, but Fast Healing 1 probably isn't going to break the game.

Just 'sayin there are good ways even to do such benefits, even in your own examples.

There are bad, gamebreaking ways to do that, too, of course - especially if they stack too easily with other abilities a character has. But that's why I put in the caviate of not giving them anything that would put them at (much less beyond) a CharOp build.*

*Of course if they already made such a build and it's one that works long-term in the campaign, then anything extra will be icing on the cake; but the main point remains that as long as what they get doesn't add too much more than "slightly better than a good feat or good class ability for their level, in a way that won't unbalance or disrupt the campaign," it'll probably be fine even if it is Fast Healing 1 (an untyped bonus that lasts forever and doesn't take an action to activate).

But that's a matter of the DM knowing their players, their campaign, the builds the characters already have, and their non-Monty Haul wish-lists/goals/desires.


Ishpumalibu wrote:
In a campaign I'm going to be running, I have a secret ritual hidden in puzzles and tomes etc, my PC and the villains will discover this and search for parts. However once the whole puzzle is solved I'm stuck with ideas for a reward, I was thinking divinity, but it just seemed so cliche. Does anyone have any alternative ideas?

So your running dragonball z?

Have it give ONE of them immortality and regeneration. Make them Highlanders. As long as they are not decapitated their fine.

Then watch the fur fly as they decide who gets it.

And they are pretty huge rewards that have almost no impact on actual game play. Regen 1 or 3 is nice but hardly game breaking. And vorpal blades will be extra scary

Liberty's Edge

Porphyrogenitus wrote:
Well, Fast Healing is such a thing, but Fast Healing 1 probably isn't going to break the game.

Erm, actually, fast healing is not a bonus. I'm using bonus to mean "die roll modifier." There are a LOT of ways to get +1 to hit or +1 to damage, and many, many of them stack with each other. In my experience, PCs generally achieve adequate levels of success vs. appropriate enemies without them, so giving the PCs additional bonuses that stack with each other means that the game approaches the 95% success rate pretty quickly. It is then that it becomes boring.


If you're going to give an epic reward at the end of a campaign in which the characters are pretty much going to 'retire' after ... give them rewards that aren't based around game bonuses.

Give them land.
Give them titles.
Give them immortality.
Give them the ability to pass something down to their next characters ( perhaps young relatives of the current characters? ).

Basically ... give the characters something that makes their retirement glorious and comfortable, letting the players feel like they 'won' the game.

If you give the game-bonus type rewards ... your players will want to keep on with the characters they're playing ...


Make it empty and say the true reward was the friendship gained..then watch your players attack you.


Watching people have fun playing the game by roleplaying and rolling.


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Axebeard wrote:
I'm using bonus to mean "die roll modifier."
Ok and fair enough - I was using/interpreting it more generically but admittedly that way is open to confusion. ^_^
H.P. Makelovecraft wrote:
Make it empty and say the true reward was the friendship gained..then watch your players attack you.
+1 for a lulzy way to end the campaign. Speaking of lulzy:
mem0ri wrote:
Basically ... give the characters something that makes their retirement glorious and comfortable, letting the players feel like they 'won' the game.

P.S. they may feel it but the two words I bolded mean. . .


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Take a bunch of tiles (dominoes might be easiest, but any kind of markers that could be arranged into a distinct pattern would work) and relate each tile to two cards from a Deck of Many Things, one good and one bad.

Allow the players to divide up the tiles amongst themselves any way they like, two per player might be best, and if they arrange the tiles into the correct pattern you've selected reward them as if they'd drawn the good cards from a DoMTs. Of course, if they get the pattern wrong then you give them the bad ends.


Thanks guys, it's a solo campaign, I'm planning on him solving the secret and catching the first bbeg by level 20, however, I'm looking at endgame being around level 40 or so.


Ishpumalibu wrote:
Thanks guys, it's a solo campaign, I'm planning on him solving the secret and catching the first bbeg by level 20, however, I'm looking at endgame being around level 40 or so.

Just so you know... many major demon/devil gods are lower-level than that. When you start going epic (above 20th level) you are epic. Not normal. Frankly reaching 40th level is a reward in itself.

You're in for far, far more work than you think. If you're not sure what end-game reward would work for your one player, you've got a challenge creating a} epic rules and b} epic challenges. Paizo hasn't published epic rules yet, and there are very few monsters above the low CR 20+ range.

Not trying to argue... just inform, in case you didn't know this.


Anguish wrote:
Ishpumalibu wrote:
Thanks guys, it's a solo campaign, I'm planning on him solving the secret and catching the first bbeg by level 20, however, I'm looking at endgame being around level 40 or so.

Just so you know... many major demon/devil gods are lower-level than that. When you start going epic (above 20th level) you are epic. Not normal. Frankly reaching 40th level is a reward in itself.

You're in for far, far more work than you think. If you're not sure what end-game reward would work for your one player, you've got a challenge creating a} epic rules and b} epic challenges. Paizo hasn't published epic rules yet, and there are very few monsters above the low CR 20+ range.

Not trying to argue... just inform, in case you didn't know this.

thanks for the advice, I actually started writing this adventure about 7 years ago, and I've been beta testing it with multiple groups to try to assess/prepare for any situation without having downtime. I'm just really stuck on this part, which can obviously change every aspect of the campaign if done wrong obviously. We originally ran this campaign to levels 80-90 but combat went to long etc. so I was trying to flesh out a good reward, and lower the end cap a bit.

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