As a DM, Have You Ever Given The Players Any Kind of Boon / Bonus?


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Sovereign Court

I ran some published adventures with two players.

They were gestalt to begin with, then at level 7 they earned the celestial template.

It was easier to buff the PCs than it was to adjust every encounter.


I have never played gestalt, sounds fun.


I would love to get the advanced template as a player character;)


Dragon78 wrote:
I would love to get the advanced template as a player character;)

That's what Heroism does isn't it? ;)


No, not exactly?!


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Dragon78 wrote:
I would love to get the advanced template as a player character;)

Ask your GM if you can get it in place of leveling up for a level. For EXP and WBL, you’d treat your level as if you did actually level up, but your character level doesn’t actually go up, as you got the advanced template instead.

The in universe explanation can be that you focused on training your body and mind, rather than refining talent.

I’ve given the advanced template before like this. Though I wouldn’t recommend giving it more than once or twice to the same character, as even though you aren’t gaining another HD, or anymore class abilities, you still can break the game by stacking the template with itself enough times.


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In my ToEE conversion, the first BBEG has a Staff of Striking that was a +3 staff that could expend charges to double or triple the damage dealt. I converted that to a +3 quarterstaff with Shocking Burst. The 3rd level monk who claimed it was delighted.


You gave a 3rd level monk a +3 shocking burst quarterstaff...nice!


Dragon78 wrote:
You gave a 3rd level monk a +3 shocking burst quarterstaff...nice!

Yep, as it turned out it it was really good for the adventure. The Monk moved up to being a frontline martial type and the group were able to progress further between rests.


I gave my current group the option to roll stats twice and take the preferred set of the two for character creation, and gave them Ancestral Relic as a campaign feat. I have been tempted to give free ranks in certain skills that are used in play, like Profession (sailor) if they work for their passage on a boat for a few months, but so far I can't recall having actually done that.

In a one-on-one campaign all new characters are the descendants of my original PC and get to draw from his DoMT when they become adults, which has lead to some characters (the boring ones) getting nice bonuses. Others (the fun ones) get a ton of s~#* dumped on them; and they all get good stories from this.

I don't consider giving PCs land, titles or other stuff like that to be boons, because it is the sort of stuff they earn through play or background.


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I had a friend run a game where starting at level 6 and ending at 16, every character was allowed to do a minor gestalt of a single 10-level prestige class they qualified for. Basically you only took the class abilities of the prestige class (on top of the normal base class progression) and the HD of the better class, but otherwise maintained your base class progression.

I found it pretty enjoyable overall, though I have no doubt that some corner cases would make doing it again weird.


Bjorn Royrvik, what rolling system did you use?

Wargryph, not a fan of most prestige classes, but I would take those bonuses;)

Maybe one day I will get to play a gestalt character.

Has anyone ever granted the player characters special powers/defenses like a breath weapon, change shape, eye beams, immunity, fast healing, flight, etc.?

Acquisitives

I frequently giving my players boons based on their actions in the game.
Examples:
A Fighter plays a real believer and based his actions on the tenants of his faith, he get something like 1/dy you can cast [insert random divine spell].

If a player really tries to understand a culture, try to communicate with the people etc. he get free language and bonus on know. local checks etc.

Normally I write some examples down in advance to have soem guidelines for myself, but I never tell my players about it, simply so they can't "meta-gaming" to unlock them.

I normally try to stay in the range of "this could also be a feat/alternate racial/spell", simply to keep the game balance.


All the time!

I usually give them Mthic Tiers from Mythic Adventures.

I have given one campaign the option of starting with a scaling weapon of their choosing.

In my Strange Aeons campaign, I gave all of the players a Corruption from Horror Adventures. This is not necessarily a good idea, but I kind of froze the possibility of them turning into NPCs and just let them use the bonus abilities. it was a neat way to add an element to their characters of which they had no idea until they started book one.

In my ongoing Rise of the Drow campaign, I gave everyone Mythic Tiers as well as Mystic Qualities from the 101 Mystical Site Qualities pdf by Rite Publishing. I chose qualities for each and just gave them directly to the PC rather than tying it to a location.

One of my GMs often gives free teamwork feats to the group at every third level. That is pretty interesting and is one way to get teamwork feats into the game as players often overlook them for more direct solo feats.


Dragon78 wrote:

Bjorn Royrvik, what rolling system did you use?

(4k3)d6, assign as desired.

In Hollow World we were given the ability to shapechange into dragons, but that was as a player. My players have been given certain abilities, like invisibility and flight at will, free resurrection upon death, increased ability scores, etc. but, these are rewards from adventures, not something I have introduced.


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The greatest boon I have given my players is the opportunity to be GMed by me.


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First level boons.


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Lathiira Lane: I'd completely forgotten that old gem! Those are such fun ones. I never did quite pull off the "PCs start with a Hamlet" scenario but its a fun thought exercise.

One I wished I'd added that I will throw in this thread: a free Teamwork feat. If the players are willing to say their PCs all came to level 1 as a group, like they were all in the same military regiment or adventurer's guild or something, they've all fought together through many petty fights and battles that got them to the power level they start at in the campaign.

As such all of the PCs receive 1 Teamwork feat they all qualify for at the start of the game. The players all have to agree together - its not that 2 PCs get 1 feat, 2 others get another. This feat represents a group technique they've developed and honed in battle.

Another one I thought would be kind of fun would be encouraging ranks in Craft or Profession skills. If a PC takes a rank in a Craft or Profession that deals with a particular material, such as Craft: Carpentry or Profession: Tanner, they get a +1 to Sunder attempts against that material or +2 to damage against objects made of the material/5 ranks.

You could even extend this benefit to other Craft or Profession skills re: other actions. For example, Craft: Baskets gives a +1 to Sleight of Hand when pulling something OUT of a basket; Profession: Miller gives a +1 on Disable Device on big crank wheel or grindstone type machines. I don't know.

I'm always leery about handing out magic powers, though from time to time I'll give all the PCs in a particularly magic-heavy setting a free useful Cantrip or Orison, usable 1/day or something. My fave was giving a ranger Touch of Fatigue 2/day, giving it to them based on Wis as their casting stat. I figured it'd be a fun little quirk.

The player re-centered his entire build around the perk. Took ranks in Stealth, prioritized Wis and Dex, and gave himself Weapon Finesse and Improved Unarmed Strike as his level 1 feats. We only played level 1 and 2 but he had a lot of fun with his Dark Ranger who pretended he was temporarily draining the vitality out of his foes.


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If someone wants to run a weird race or something, I'll come up with a suitable template for them (I don't mind letting them build with RP, but the way RP is organized usually means they're going to get a better template if I just make it for them) and plunk their race down somewhere in my setting. I generally just let gunslingers have revolvers because I hate having to make someone who wants to play a cowboy inexplicably use a flintlock for the first few levels, but I also have slightly different rules for guns in general. Otherwise if starting a level 1 group, I don't do a whole lot for characters before gameplay starts. Once we're in-game, I'll do all sorts of bonuses and junk as part of the game's story.

As far as rolling vs point buy goes, stat generation is like five minutes of your campaign no matter how complicated you make it, so precisely which dance you do to generate your arrays is like the least important thing ever as long as it's getting you the range of arrays you want. Somehow though, I find talking about the subject online is the quickest way to get accused of badfun and get a laundry list of carefully crafted arguments that are totally irrelevant to the question of whether the group is having fun or not. Just do what feels good and talk it out if there's a problem.


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Saffron Marvelous, any examples of these race templates that you gave the players?


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They're not anything too special. Generally I'm just trying to let players feel like they're being whatever fantasy junk they want to be. I'll usually base how much power I'm going to put into a template on what level a game is starting at. At low levels where racial templates can make a big difference, I try to get little things in for theming that feel like bonuses but don't unbalance things too much, and I'm stingier with more experienced players. A couple years back, I started a level 1 campaign where a player wanted to play something loosely similar to Yuanti (we were mainly going for "snake person, race generally perceived as evil").

I don't have my "snake person" template written down anymore, but I think it was something like Monstrous Humanoid (shapechanger subtype) +2 str/int, 60 foot darkvision, venomous bite attack (I think I had it do con damage),+2 stealth +2 swim, ability to shapechange into a snake, access to the kitsune shapechanging feats but for snake junk instead.

So a bit more than a standard racial template, but not in such a way as to blow level 1 gameplay right out of the water for the other players. At least not aimed that way. But to do it with RP would be... quite a bit, and there's a couple bits I don't think you could get. Not that there's anything wrong with RP, I just find that it's easier for me to make something for a player than try to figure out a fair amount of RP to give them that lets them get what they want.

From memory, another I did was a harpy template. My setting has a sect of harpy monks (founded by an old matriarchal harpy who is suppressing the soul of a dracolich that tried to revive itself through her because birds are basically reptiles), so they're a little more present in civilised places. A player did make one but no one ever got around to playing one. I think I did +2 dex, +4 cha (idea being this made them really effective scaled fist monks), -2 int, +1 natural AC, fly speed 60 (good), Captivating Song same as the monster (generally I let 1/2 level count as racial HD for save DCs since no one is taking monster levels for the sake of one ability and this still lets it function), LLV, 2 claws (1d4), +2 perception, +2 fly. This would have been starting at level 8, so the captivating song would have been situationally nice, but not terribly busted.

Lets see, my personal campaign setting has a wide variety of insectoid races, including a number of thrikreen-like mantis ones. One such variety is a bunch of families of scheming vizier types who've been controlling their breeding for generations to get better psychic abilities. They're smaller and prettier; they look like orchid mantises (think Salarian in how they deal with each other, Asari in how they deal with everyone else). I won't bother with the nitty gritty stat stuff, but their biggest thing is their "Voice." In my setting, some of the insectoid races have a low level telepathy that lets them communicate in languages they understand without having the right mouth parts to use those languages. These guys take it to a higher level where use of their Voice makes all the words come out exactly right, slick as oil every time, so they get considerable bonuses to social rolls against anyone who doesn't actually speak their private language. It doesn't work on people who do, because they hear the words as they're spoken. A player wanted to play as one, so I did up a template for it and formalized the bonuses.


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In a campaign a while ago my players became members of a knightly order at level 4 or 5 and received special training from them. That training amounted to some bonus skills, a bonus feat, bonus hitpoints and improving their amor proficiency (no armor could now use light armor and ignore arcane spell failure from light armor, light armor users could use medium, medium could use heavy and heavy no longer had movement and skill penalties). Nothing gamebreaking but enough to make players feel stronger.


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After a couple of years of playing 20th level characters my players finally got a bonus feat and some skill points. Getting gear and working towards Immortality is all well and good, but at some point you just want some character advancement. I'll probably be handing out some more on a regular basis from now on. Sort of Epic 20.


Has anyone ever given the players extra class features like more rogue talents to rogues, more rage powers to barbarians, extra bloodline powers to sorcerers, etc.?

Has anyone ever improved a class feature like making fighter's bravery better, shifter claw damage better, better familiar/animal companion, etc.?

Has anyone ever given every player character spell powers? If so what did you give them?


Now we're really straying into the area of house rules, which everyone has. For example, I made Bravery +1 per level, though only for purposes of the bravery itself rather than all the other effects in AWTs and so on that happen to use that number.

For individual characters, the rogue IMC has a permanent Prot v Evil effect against anything affected by cold iron (essentially demons and fey), after he breached a Mythic-level anti-demon seal which went up with a bit of a bang. The party had been tricked into it. But essentially, that's just like an item he can't give away or sell.


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Dragon78 wrote:

So as a DM, have you ever given the players any kind of boon/bonus? If so what did you give them?

Examples
Higher starting money
Better stats
Free magic item(s)
Bonus feat(s)
Altered class feature
Bonus class feature
Altered racial ability(s)
Bonus racial ability(s)
Extra skill points
Max HP per level
More class skills
Spell like abilities
Free weapon prof.(s)
Free armor prof.(s)
Bonus traits

All the daggum time.


The rules-crazy "mechanic" in me wants to say: I give my players a boon every time they aren't starting with a 15 point buy, more GP than standard for their class and any Traits. In other words, if you're not stuck with a Core PC, you've got boons.

But the real me doesn't say that. That'd be mean. Instead I just slightly raise the numbers on every monster the PCs face, depending on the build numbers and optimization of the PCs.


IMHO, the point of boons like this isn't to make the PCs more powerful - that just leads to the need to make the monsters more powerful - but to enable certain builds or character concepts or story elements that aren't otherwise possible. Sometimes it's just a matter of fixing gaps in class abilities where a feature (Bravery, for example) is so weak that it doesn't achieve what it sets out to.


Bravery is a good example of a class feature that most think is subpar.


My fix for Bravery: starting at Fighter 2, include tons of monsters that deliver a Fear effect.

I like boons that provide out of combat utility. See, every single one of my players optimizes their PC for combat. Oh sure, they might start the game with a roleplaying quirk on their character, or perhaps take one silly non-combat wondrous item early on, but by about level 6-8 the players are all business and there IS no out-of-combat for them anymore.

Early game I give my players the extra rank in a Craft, Profession or Perform skill I mentioned above. I also hand out things like Contacts - specialty NPCs that can provide unique favors or services.

I also tell my players that eventually they'll get the Leadership Feat for free, but after a couple campaigns of trial and error I tell the players up front that the followers and Cohort they attract won't be adventuring WITH the PCs as a resource in battle.


Mark Hoover 330 wrote:
My fix for Bravery: starting at Fighter 2, include tons of monsters that deliver a Fear effect.

But if you're looking at Will saves, the fighter is still much worse off than the cleric, on a par with the wizard and little better than the rogue (in the classic 4-man party).

Because of the poor Will save and no particular use for Wisdom bar Will saves and Perception, a fighter will have a save of something like level * 0.533 + 2. The cleric is more like level*0.7 + 5 and the wizard level*0.5 + 3 (assuming 12 Wis for fighter & wizard, 16 for cleric with later investment).

And then there's the paladin who just ignores the whole concept.


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Games are not without risk. Case in point: I have a guy that likes playing Wizards in my games. He also does a pretty good job using his familiars as an out-of-combat utility. You'd think a guy that knows he's going to play a d6 HD PC with bad Fort saves and a resource that gets only half his total HP would strengthen his Con right?

In one of the games he's playing with me his PC is level 10, has abysmal HP and only a cloak of resistance +2 for his Fort saves. Am I supposed to not have monsters/foes target him with poisons, necromancies and other Fort save-or-suck effects, just cuz his class does a poor job of preparing him?

No. In fact, he almost got on the Mark-is-a-killer-GM bandwagon when, at level 5, an ogre spider using Compression was able to get into a Large sized side hallway and bite him for a crud-ton of damage AND ongoing Str and Dex damage.

Point is - some class abilities are either non-existent or not as useful as we want them to be. I like to think that the fighter gets so bad a Will save boost b/c they have a combat feat at EVERY level. If you don't hulk out your build to insane levels of either tanking or DPR, some of those odd levels could be devoted to non-combat feats like Iron Will, Improved Iron Will, Heroic Will (if Human), and Extra Traits: Heroic Champion and Indomitable Will.

A fighter by level 10 likely has the WBL to afford an item to boost their Wis and thus their Will saves (+2 Wis) as well as a Resistance +3 item. They start with a 12. They could easily also have Iron Will (+2 untyped bonus to Will saves) and either start with Indomitable Faith trait or pick it up from a feat (+1 Trait bonus to Will saves). They now have a standard Will save of +11 with a Save vs Fear effects of +14.

The standard CR10 monster/foe, based on the Monster Creation rules has an average "high ability DC" or the DC of it's best save-or-suck ability as DC 19. Now, does a +14 equal total immunity to Fear effects by level 10? No, but you've got an 80% chance of resisting any Fear effect and a 65% chance of resisting any Will save in general, with minimal expense ot the build and resources of the PC.

But whatever; if you take a paladin or other class immune to fear, then compare that to a generic fighter with Bravery of COURSE the class feature looks worthless. If the GM rarely uses monsters with Fear effects and instead focuses 90% of the game on mind-controlling aliens... and someone is playing a generic fighter in THAT game, Bravery is next to worthless.

However, if you ran a game based on Core stuff and core monsters, Bravery has its place next to a Ranger's tracking ability or other niche, useful stuff.


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I think this counts: the evoker in my campaign (who seriously should have rolled a druid, given how much he begs for druid spell access) has earned access to Speak with Animals.

At 10th level, depending on which side he takes in an upcoming encounter, he'll gain one of two high level boons.

- If he sides with the rabbit, he'll gain a valet rabbit as a second familiar.
- If he sides with the fox, he'll gain Halcyon Magic (as the ability from the Magaambyan arcanist PrC.)

----

In the other game, the druid has run into a quite interesting situation. As the child of a pure-line Sovyrian elf druid and a more "ordinary" elf ranger, she had latent powers due to the mingling of different natures; those had been sealed away, at least until her recent visit to the Isle of Arenway.

After the Wildwoods performed a ritual, it weakened the seal; the boon she's gained from this is the bloodline arcana of the Stormborn bloodline. Whether she has a Stormborn bloodline or not remains to be seen.


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Dragon78 wrote:

I agree, we should get max HP per HD every level.

20 point buy would be fine if it was an actual 20 point buy. What I mean is you get 20 stat points to distribute as you wish, 1 point is 1 stat point(16 base max). So you could start with 16, 16, 16, 12, 10, 10 before racial and level mods.

I can understand people who want to roll, but I rarely every have luck with rolling;)

Any one let the players have the benefits of both their base class and a NPC class like aristocrat, expert, etc.? Basically you get the better of each in HD, BA, skill points, weapon and armor prof. class skills. Maybe if you choose commoner you a +2 con bonus since it gets nothing otherwise.

I would totally gestalt sorcerer with expert in that case. Any 10 skills as class, 6 skill points, d8 HD, and 3/4 BA? I might not use light armour, but sign me right the heck up for the rest of that.

Even have the background for it. (:


Because I want to encourage my players to consider using combat stamina, the Stamina Pool, and its associated combat tricks, (as they appear in Pathfinder Unchained) in my current campaign I give every character the Combat Stamina feat automatically at level 10. (The PCs in the campaign happened to be close to reaching level 10, so I said everybody gets it free at level 10.)

This grants every character a Stamina Pool based on their Constitution and unlocks any of the associated Combat Tricks for any combat feats they have or will take. There's no penalty to having a Stamina Pool if you never use it, so giving them the feat free just opens up the option. (And the Combat Stamina feat itself allows spending Stamina points to add a bonus to your attack.) For future campaigns, I will probably give it as a universal bonus feat at level one.

Also, because I see no downside to all rogues being unchained rogues (it appears to be a straight upgrade), I just declare that all rogues are unchained rogues whether they were built with the extras or not. This means they all at least get Weapon Finesse as a class feature instead of costing a rogue talent. Also, unlike all the other classes with sneak attack, unchained rogues can make sneak attacks against targets with concealment (but not total concealment), so that's another perk of the automatic upgrade. Whenever the player wants to calculate the rest of the upgrades of unchained rogue (trap sense becomes danger sense, DEX to damage with a chosen weapon type, rogue's edge, etc.), they can do so, or I can help them, or they can elect to just not care. (I have some NPC rogues I haven't converted on paper yet as well.)

But, on the downside, my players agreed to try out Gritty Mode Wound Levels so they probably need all the boons and bonuses they can get.
(Though I've been applying it equally to monsters too, instead of just one penalty at 50%, and they do like that.)


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I suspect everyone uses Unchained Rogues now. The core Rogue is pretty hopeless.

Combat Stamina just doesn't work. The obvious problems are:
a) It helps in combat and only in combat, and the full-BAB types can generally fight OK anyway. Fighters (for whom it was introduced) need help with everything except combat. Second-line melee characters (rogues, bards, clerics) might get more use out of it.
b) By far the most efficient use for it in 90% of situations is the default 1 stamina = +1 to hit after the die is rolled. Boring...
c) Many feats' combat tricks are just a worse version of that default use, and the rest tend to be too situational to be relevant. And as only Combat feats have such tricks, most characters won't have many/any tricks to use. There are a few exceptions, though often on feats people don't take (Whirlwind Attack, Blinding Critical or Combat Patrol, for example).
d) It comes back quite fast and (by 10th level) you probably have enough stamina to last the whole fight. So all attacks where you might miss are at +5 to hit.
e) The rule about 0 stamina is irrelevant because nobody will ever use their last point unless absolutely 100% utterly necessary.


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f) Reading through the list of combat tricks makes me lose my will to live. The majority of tricks is just numerical bonuses, but conditional, so I have to read through multiple lines of text to find out that under specific conditions, I can spend stamina for an effect that's worse than the default "retroactively improve attack roll" option.

The main problem with combat stamina is that combat feats are too limited in what they're allowed to do in the first place, and thus the system doesn't have enough to work with. Martials have problems in combat with with flying/unreachable enemies, invisibile/hidden enemies, defensive abilities (e.g. Displacement or DR), and swarms. Where are the combat tricks that help with that? I don't need a million "if you're already advantaged in a fight, here's something to make you even better" options.

As it is, the best combat trick options are those "you can ignore the int 13 prereq that are on every other combat feat because someone lacked the brain capacity to understand that just because a feat is called Combat Expertise doesn't mean that every character to be considered an expert at some form of combat has to have that feat" options. *yawn*


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ALL the time. Like, seriously.

The best thing to do is familiarize yourself with the party and it's players. Some groups would rather stick to the standard rules, WBL, power level etc. while others like variance. My groups tend to like higher-than-average power and sometimes it can be a challenge for me to balance around it.

Most importantly, note the increase in power that such boons and buffs do. I am frequently guilty of 20+ PB (AFAIK the books are written for 15 PB, correct me if I am wrong), Max starting cash, increased wealth in game, special powers, and other misc. boons like deals with trapped devils/demons. Currently, my group is in book 5 in Rise and I have created a custom magic item that provides significant boosts on the party based on their personality. My goal is to provide tailor made effects for each member that finalizes the builds they emulated. By increasing the accessible wealth, their starting PB, their access to 1pp material and providing them custom items, I made the book Trivial, so I've adjusted encounters as required to keep the struggle real.

Just be ready to increase the power of encounters if/when needed if your party gets to strong and subsequently bored of the ease of combat.


Mudfoot wrote:
I suspect everyone uses Unchained Rogues now. The core Rogue is pretty hopeless.

I agree, but I've encountered a player or two who will use the core Rogue because it can use an archetype that the unchained rogue can't.


I presume that's for PFS or one of those weird tables that slave themselves to PFS rules? Because barring PFS restrictions, I don't think there're any cRogue archetypes that don't work for unRogue.


A quick Google search confirms that (with the only archetypes in question being allowed if the GM allows Danger Sense to count as Trap Sense), so I'm wondering if I wasn't confusing that anecdote with Unchained Monk.

So... nevermind!


Andostre wrote:
(with the only archetypes in question being allowed if the GM allows Danger Sense to count as Trap Sense)

"Danger Sense (Ex): (...) This ability counts as trap sense for the purpose of any feat or class prerequisite, and can be replaced by any archetype class feature that replaces trap sense."

Andostre wrote:
so I'm wondering if I wasn't confusing that anecdote with Unchained Monk.

Probably - unRogue can use every single cRogue archetype, but while unMonk is a clear and significant upgrade for a regular unarmed or melee wepaon based build, there are some archetypes for cMonk that allow specific build impossible to do with unMonk, and those archetypes (Zen Archer or Far Strike for ranged, Sohei for mounted, Sensei for supporter, Tetori for grappler) make cMonk worth playing. unBarb and unSummoner are downgrades (although unBarb has a higher floor than cBarb), so there obvious reasons players would prefer them.

There are some Rogue Talents unaviable to unRogue (and contrary to what wannabe-munchkins like to claim, you can't get those via Ninja Trick -> Rogue Talent), most notably Ki Pool and Offensive Defense (which stacks with itself), but those can't save cRogue from being strictly worse than even just Ninja and unRogue, respectively.


Not sure what unchained classes have to do with boons.


Dragon78 wrote:
Not sure what unchained classes have to do with boons.

I mentioned that I allow my players to upgrade from rogue to unchained rogue at any point, so if they started with the simpler rogue class, they can add complexity later. This is a boon only in the effect that they're not married to core rogue just because they started as one, which has the boon of potentially getting weapon finesse (and the other unchained rogue stuff) free later.

I also said I gave Combat Stamina free to all characters in my campaign at level 10 (which was their next level-up), and people complained about how bad Combat Stamina is. Well, it was free, so they'll be fine.


But did they (I assume you mean your players) complain that Combat Stamina is "bad" = weak, or "bad" = a bad rule? It's not weak. But it is a bad rule.

Not as bad as Sacred Geometry, mind you...


Anyhoo, boons. So I've decided what the boons will be for both players. It's not exactly balanced, but then this is a fast and loose casual sandbox game anyway. While this is based on homebrew, everything should be familiar.

The cleric worships... let's say a cross between Erastil and Mielikki (more like the original Finnish version than the FR adaptation.) Due to campaign events and reaching 10th level, these are her custom boons.

- Resilience of Mother Bear:
You gain a +4 inherent bonus to Constitution. Once per day, when you would be brought below 0 hp by any attack, you may reduce that damage by half as an immediate action. If you would still be brought below 1 hp, you are left at 1 hp and staggered on your next turn.

- Sword Art of the Knight-Errant:
While you do not have a Spiritual Ally active, or when you are flanking with a Spiritual Ally, your proficiency with critical hits improves. If you would fail to confirm a crit and did not roll a natural 1, you instead confirm. If you would normally confirm, you may cast one standard-action (or faster) spell targeting you or your target as a free action that does not provoke. If your confirm roll is a natural 20, all damage dealt by your critical hit is increased by 50%.
(A way to encourage the cleric to explore more spells; she strongly favours Ally in combat.)

- Kindness of the Ruby Light:
Your healing is more efficient. Whenever you cast a single target heal and would overheal, you may apply the excess healing to another living creature within 30 feet. When you channel energy to heal, you may select one target to receive twice the healing.

----

The evoker's boons are somewhat simpler:

- Boon of the Animal Friend:
Your friendship with the animals has granted you a magical gift. Each time you would gain new spells in your spellbook, you may also add one Druid spell. This must be of a level below your highest spell level unless it is also a Wizard spell; either way, it cannot be of one of your opposed schools : divination and necromancy. This effect is retroactive.
In addition, you gain Yuelral's Blessing as a bonus arcane discovery.

- Ward of the Death-Touched:
Your nasty encounter with the Beyond has left you less than eager to return there. Once per day, when you would take more than 40 damage from a single attack, you may reduce that damage by 50% as an immediate action. If this would reduce you below 1 hp, you are left with 1 hp and staggered on your next turn.


Anyone ever give the party a bonus/boon based on what deity they worship?

Never though the stamina system was all that great, but getting something for free is still free.


I give reputation based traits to my pcs in my campaigns (sorry Herolab). So bonuses to diplomacy or intimidate for a particular community for example after achieving a key milestone. Also things like a price discount, or free board & lodge. I also have applied negative effect traits secretly for some communities to represent infamy or notoriety.


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Derklord wrote:
There are some Rogue Talents unaviable to unRogue (and contrary to what wannabe-munchkins like to claim, you can't get those via Ninja Trick -> Rogue Talent), most notably Ki Pool and Offensive Defense (which stacks with itself), but those can't save cRogue from being strictly worse than even just Ninja and unRogue, respectively.

I opened a new thread about the few things where a Core rogue is better.


Has anyone ever given their players' characters more money then you should have?

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