[StupidIdea]Accomplishments Instead of Feats

[Chamomile]

If you write down a solid reward for things like "save the feywood" or "kill 100 gnolls" or whatever some players will have read the appropriate sourcebooks, decided they like the ability, and then derail the campaign to get said ability, doing stupid things like "I look for the nearest gnoll village," or asking, "So, is the feywild in danger?"

Or conspire with villains to put the feywood in danger so that he can save it from them.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The "achievements as treasure" technique is far from perfect, but I don't think it suffers from that problem, as long as you avoid having a one-to-one correspondence between enemies and achievement awards.

While this stops every fucking fighter from being tempted to hunt down the Goblinstomper achievement reward, it's still bad. It still creates a sense of player entitlement and discourages players from going on narratively interesting quests that nonetheless don't guarantee a reward like named examples.

[Chamomile]

The "achievements as treasure" technique is far from perfect, but I don't think it suffers from that problem, as long as you avoid having a one-to-one correspondence between enemies and achievement awards.

While this stops every fucking fighter from being tempted to hunt down the Goblinstomper achievement reward, it's still bad. It still creates a sense of player entitlement and discourages players from going on narratively interesting quests that nonetheless don't guarantee a reward like named examples.

Only if the GM's an idiot. Using mechanical incentives to make players want to follow your plot is like the oldest trick in the book, doing the reverse is just stupid.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Only if the GM's an idiot. Using mechanical incentives to make players want to follow your plot is like the oldest trick in the book, doing the reverse is just stupid.

Again, there are plenty of potential plots where their resolution provides nothing or even sets the PCs back. Most people don't willingly choose or want those resolutions ahead of time, of course. But nonetheless, there are very few players who will say that 'after getting promoted to general, you turn out to suck at it and the zombies overrun the city' or 'two PCs died on the trip to the dungeon and we had to leave their loot-riddled corpses to the dragon' or even 'the amount of money we spent on scrolls and hireling pay and tools doesn't cover the amount of treasure we found in the horde' shouldn't be possible outcomes as quests.

But when you draw up a list of quests and then say that the rules guarantee that you will get something out of saving the Feywild or repelling the Goblin Hordes no matter how the adventure resolves, people are going to gravitate towards those adventures and demand that they get their Regen 5 or +2 AC versus magical beasts or whatever the fuck. As well as they should, because the rules say that you should get such and such out of it no matter how the adventure resolves!

[Chamomile]

Only if the GM's an idiot. Using mechanical incentives to make players want to follow your plot is like the oldest trick in the book, doing the reverse is just stupid.

But when you draw up a list of quests and then say that the rules guarantee that you will get something out of saving the Feywild or repelling the Goblin Hordes no matter how the adventure resolves, people are going to gravitate towards those adventures and demand that they get their Regen 5 or +2 AC versus magical beasts or whatever the fuck. As well as they should, because the rules say that you should get such and such out of it no matter how the adventure resolves!

So how about we write the rules like people with two braincells to rub together and add the disclaimer that the quest must actually be resolved successfully to get the reward?

[Lago PARANOIA]

What do you mean by 'successfully'? From my three examples, quests two and three did complete successfully. They just ended up having a higher cost than payout.

And even if you define successful to 'had absolutely no costs, only rewards', that's still not going to change the fact that an adventure where you curbstomp the goblins without using any resources and find 10x the standard treasure pile and get the Goblinstomper achievement will be more attractive than getting the same rewards with Mermaid slavers. Because Mermaid slayers don't have a writeup.

[Chamomile]

What do you mean by 'successfully'? From my three examples, quests two and three did complete successfully. They just ended up having a higher cost than payout.

Yes, and those two examples were stupid, which should come as little surprise to anyone seeing as how you wrote them and you are the king of stupid examples. If people get used to getting a mechanical reward for completing a quest regardless of other costs, that is seriously okay. That is, in fact, how I run my games, just with XP instead of feat-like bonuses.

that's still not going to change the fact that an adventure where you curbstomp the goblins without using any resources and find 10x the standard treasure pile and get the Goblinstomper achievement will be more attractive than getting the same rewards with Mermaid slavers. Because Mermaid slayers don't have a writeup.

So the GM should make one. It is really totally okay to have the system be based on the assumption that every quest comes with an achievement bonus dealy, and encourage GMs to reskin existing achievements to suit alternative bonuses.

I'm still not convinced that just letting people pick whatever bonus they want wouldn't be better, but figuring out how to use arbitrary mechanical incentives so that the players do what you want instead of what you don't want is goddamned trivial. It's seriously as easy as figuring out what it is you want your players to do, attaching the mechanical incentive to doing that thing, and then communicating said incentive to the players. That's it. This is not some deep and mysterious social engineering conundrum. It is so easy that I learned how to do it a few months into my very first high school D&D campaign ever.

[virgil]

What makes achievements different from being given cool magic swords? Is it because you can't sell them to give yourself that sword you had planned out at the beginning?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yes, and those two examples were stupid, which should come as little surprise to anyone seeing as how you wrote them and you are the king of stupid examples.

What, are you saying that people don't suffer setbacks in your games? People don't fail to convince the Elf King to send reinforcements in time, causing the battle to be lost? A PC gets mind-controlled by an artifact at the last minute and wrecks the resolution of a quest? Soldiers don't kill their hostages to show that they're not bluffing? The heroes wheeling and dealing to expose a conspiracy fails and the secret police turn into quislings to overthrow the only peaceful city on the continent?

If people get used to getting a mechanical reward for completing a quest regardless of other costs, that is seriously okay.

Look up Comparative Advantage, Chamomile. It doesn't matter if every quest comes with a consolation prize, people are going to pick the quests that hand out the largest promised rewards in addition to the consolation prize. Which in your system, will all things being equal be quests that hand out some kind of bonus.

So the GM should make one.

That is flat out impossible. It's just impossible to exhaustively come up with a list of quests that you, the game designer, feel that should come packaged with a reward. We don't even have to get into combinatorially balancing the bonuses, we already know that you've proposed a fool's errand.

It is really totally okay to have the system be based on the assumption that every quest comes with an achievement bonus dealy, and encourage GMs to reskin existing achievements to suit alternative bonuses.

And this is different from the default system of 'The GM hands out artifacts/divine boons/story rewards' that every non-stupid game uses... how?

I'm still not convinced that just letting people pick whatever bonus they want wouldn't be better, but figuring out how to use arbitrary mechanical incentives so that the players do what you want instead of what you don't want is goddamned trivial.

It's seriously as easy as figuring out what it is you want your players to do, attaching the mechanical incentive to doing that thing, and then communicating said incentive to the players.

Please tell me that you're not serious here.

[TarkisFlux]

You were complaining that it's lame, but I don't see it as any more lame than people taking quests or side-quests based on loot results rather than story concerns.

Firstly, people taking quests or side-quests based on expected loot results is seriously the lamest kind of adventure that people non-parodically embark on. The sidequest of Roy Greenhilt getting Starmetal is easily the most boring and uneventful arc in Order of the Stick -- the only reason why people cared about it at all is because the author inserted plot elements that proved to be important later. The consequences and subplots were interesting, but the actual sidequest was not.

Secondly, the more specific the end result the more people will have to stick their dicks in the plot to achieve it. A sidequest of 'find Masamune!' can take on a huge number of forms that 'kill 8 trolls in one-on-one combat' or 'sink 4 fully-crewed pirate ships' cannot.

Firstly, I didn't say that it wasn't lame. I just said it wasn't any more lame than things that already happen. If you don't have other pressing business and want to go on a power up sidequest with no larger impact on the game, why the fuck should I care?

Secondly, yeah, those achievements suck and are bad for the table for all of the other reasons you put up that I didn't disagree with. Which is why I don't advocate for that model, but instead a site based model more like the places of power that Frank talked about ages ago. Now, if you want to talk about why the act of taking and holding a Fire Nexus that grants the same (potentially selectable) benefits to everyone who holds it is a bad thing for the game then feel free. The rules there declare that you get something for completing a thing in a specific way that includes the potential of losing it, and leave open your chances of getting something else for completing it a different way (closing the nexus, altering the nexus, whatever). Otherwise, I'm pretty much on board with what you said and just quibbling with you over details where I think you're overstepping or conflating.

What makes achievements different from being given cool magic swords? Is it because you can't sell them to give yourself that sword you had planned out at the beginning?

Very little.

[Chamomile]

What, are you saying that people don't suffer setbacks in your games?

I am genuinely baffled as to how you could've gotten from my statement of "whether they suffered setbacks is irrelevant so long as they are successful" to "nobody ever suffers setbacks at all."

It doesn't matter if every quest comes with a consolation prize, people are going to pick the quests that hand out the largest promised rewards in addition to the consolation prize. Which in your system, will all things being equal be quests that hand out some kind of bonus.

In my system all quests come with some kind of bonus. Therefore the incentive between bonuses is flattened. That is the point.

That is flat out impossible. It's just impossible to exhaustively come up with a list of quests that you, the game designer, feel that should come packaged with a reward.

"All of them forever." And I am done. It's not only possible, but very easy to just make quest rewards that can apply to more than one specific quest.

And this is different from the default system of 'The GM hands out artifacts/divine boons/story rewards' that every non-stupid game uses... how?

In terms of incentives, it's not. That's kind of the goddamned point. The only difference is that now you hand out feats, too.

Lago, please try not to be a solipsistic idiot. Just once, try to make a response to my post that isn't founded upon completely ignoring what I have actually said in favor of some bizarre delusion.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I am genuinely baffled as to how you could've gotten from my statement of "whether they suffered setbacks is irrelevant so long as they are successful" to "nobody ever suffers setbacks at all."

Because you're not grasping that 'success' is so ephemeral a descriptor for quest completion that the only way "whether they suffered setbacks is irrelevant so long as they are successful" means anything is if you attach "nobody ever suffers setbacks at all."

Again, you go on a raid of a dragon's lair where everyone but one person dies but you get the One Ring. Is that a success or a failure? What if you fail to stop the zombie apocalypse before it spreads but you stop it before it engulfs the entire city. Is that a success or a failure? What if you're supporting a political ally for ascension to the throne and they win it but it's at the cost of alienating so many people that they're guaranteed to get overthrown? Is that a success or a failure? So on and so forth.

The only way you can say that a quest was definitely a success is if all objectives were achieved at no real cost and with no caveats or blowback? Anything else pushes a quest into the grey area. That pretty much means 'no setbacks', Unless you're letting the DM call the shots such that the DM can declare that a quest was a success based on their own intuition.

In my system all quests come with some kind of bonus. Therefore the incentive between bonuses is flattened. That is the point.

"All of them forever." And I am done. It's not only possible, but very easy to just make quest rewards that can apply to more than one specific quest.

Great. Yes, that does solve the problems with the OP's proposal, but it's at the cost of being totally pointless. Do you realize what you've done with your proposal? You're proposing a system where:
[*] The possibility of quest rewards are not a priori tied to the nature of a quest. If it's not on the proposed list, feel free to make your own addition.
[*] The kind of quest you undertake does not necessarily preclude you from getting a particular kind of reward/bonus/boon/whatever. If the proposed reward doesn't fit, find one that does and reskin.

Guess what? This is the system almost every TTRPG defaults to. Even the most mediocre of games use the system of 'gee, if you do a certain quest, something tailored to the events and resolution of the quest just might happen to you!' You trying to paint this as an insight, let alone a system, is just laughable.

Of course, you try to nitpick your way out of this obviousness with this:

The only difference is that now you hand out feats, too.

WTF is that statement supposed to mean? Do you hand out feats for free that people just add to their character? Or do you allow players to use one of their feat slots to purchase one of your (probably reskinned) accomplishment feats?

ED: Edited to be less catty.

[Chamomile]

Unless you're letting the DM call the shots such that the DM can declare that a quest was a success based on their own intuition.

Do you have an argument for why this would be bad that is not "what if the GM is shadzar?"

Guess what? This is the system almost every TTRPG defaults to.

What? No it isn't. I can't think of any TTRPGs where you expect to get a little feat-like bonus for completing a quest. Sure, it's a thing that the GM could possibly add in, but that's just Oberoni. The actual rules do not typically support you getting a feat or something like a feat for completing a quest, and certainly do not say that you can expect to get one from every single quest.

WTF is that statement supposed to mean? Do you hand out feats for free that people just add to their character?

Yes, you unbelievably stupid asshole, that is the premise of the thread in which you are posting. Good job on catching up to that only 40 posts in. Holy Hell how did it take you this long to figure out the foundation of the conversation? Handing out feats for free by meeting plot pre-requisites is the system which has been discussed since literally the very first post, when this concept was very clearly spelled out for the sake of discussion. Are you even reading?!

[hogarth]

The "achievements as treasure" technique is far from perfect, but I don't think it suffers from that problem, as long as you avoid having a one-to-one correspondence between enemies and achievement awards.

While this stops every fucking fighter from being tempted to hunt down the Goblinstomper achievement reward, it's still bad. It still creates a sense of player entitlement and discourages players from going on narratively interesting quests that nonetheless don't guarantee a reward like named examples.

I think you're just confused by how the system is supposed to work.

The idea is that if a CR 6 encounter is supposed to have 2000 gp in treasure (say), then instead you can substitute 2000 gp's worth of achievement boons, or any mix of treasure and boons adding up to a 2000 gp value. You don't get the boons on top of normal treasure; they're a substitute, not an addition.

[John Magnum]

This is the part where we notice that the implementation details are super unfixed in this thread. Some people have been saying that you should write a bunch of pairs "Quest A, Feat 1", "Quest B, Feat 2" where if you accomplish the appropriate quest, you gain the feat--or possibly you just gain the opportunity to take the feat at a later occasion with a feat slot.

That's different from writing up a big pile of feats and saying "Every time you finish a quest, give out (access to?) one of these feats". And then that's still different from deciding that boons should become a fungible alternative to treasure as a quest reward.

So while indeed a lot of people have been saying that you would be granted the feats free, there have seriously been like six different implementations suggested in this thread so don't jump down Lago's ass for not knowing exactly which one you personally have in mind.

[hogarth]

So while indeed a lot of people have been saying that you would be granted the feats free, there have seriously been like six different implementations suggested in this thread so don't jump down Lago's ass for not knowing exactly which one you personally have in mind.

Fair enough. I thought "permanent boosts in lieu of monetary treasure" was relatively clear, but a one sentence explanation probably doesn't do it justice.

Note that I'm not claiming it's a great idea; it has all the problems of the usual wealth-by-level system, and on top of it you can't even sell your boons if you don't want them any more.

[deaddmwalking]

Fair enough. I thought "permanent boosts in lieu of monetary treasure" was relatively clear, but a one sentence explanation probably doesn't do it justice.

Note that I'm not claiming it's a great idea; it has all the problems of the usual wealth-by-level system, and on top of it you can't even sell your boons if you don't want them any more.

I think that's pretty clear.

Lago is assuming the worst possible implementation of the idea to explain why it's bad. I don't think it's bad at all.

Giving someone a magic sword is a 'reward' that can be slotted into any game. Typically, you do something that makes you likely to receive magic sword. Maybe you kill someone wielding one. Maybe you delve into a dungeon and find one. Maybe you develop your mystic blacksmithing skills and make one. Whatever - you get a reward.

When you go on a quest, you often get a reward of XP. Whether that's because you kill things, or because the DM gives story awards, or you burn down the Feywood. Whatever. You get XP (reward).

Here are some examples from play that not only worked, but worked brilliantly.

We were playing a low-magic game. My PC (Ginther Gutherson) was based on this mini:

http://www.reapermini.com/FigureFinder#detail/02295

The mini is wielding a warhammer and a sword. To build my character after the mini, I went with two-weapon fighting feats. But I seldom actually needed to have two melee weapons in hand. With alarming regularity, I threw my hammer as a ranged weapon. It was fun and it made me feel like Thor.

Per the rules, throwing a hammer isn't very effective. It never really became effective, but I was committed to doing it anyway. After a number of such attacks, the DM eventually awarded me the feat 'Throw Anything'. That greatly reduced the penalties and actually let me use the attack somewhat effectively. It was not worth a feat, and ultimately, it just made my character more fun to play.

The DM awarded a bonus feat as a reward. It made me happy as a player. Since the DM chose the reward based on my actions, rather than me throwing things 100x so I could unlock the award, it enhanced, rather than detracted from the game.

A bonus feat can be a 'reward' just as much as a magic item or XP. In fact, the DM could have given me a magic hammer of throwing/returning that would have done the same damn thing, but since it was a low magic setting, the bonus feat was better.

Alternatively, if you are on a quest to save the Feywood, it doesn't matter if you burn the thing down - if you do, you're not going to get the favor of the fey. But if you do happen to complete your quest in a way that makes the fey favorable to you, there's no reason they shouldn't give you a reward. Maybe they give you a magic item. But maybe in your campaign you don't want the fey to be sitting on big piles of treasure you can take by killing them all. So maybe if you save their wood and don't murder them all, their leader kisses each hero on the forhead. They gain:

Fey Favor. Next time you roll a save against a Death attack, if you fail you get an immediate new save with a +4 bonus. You must take the results of the new save, even if lower.

That's like an item, but it's not. That's something they make a note of on their character sheet and maybe it comes up sometime down the road. That's something nice to have, and it seems to fit the narrative. The DM could have created a magical item that does the same thing, but once again, the reward seems to fit the setting better if it isn't that way.

As long as the PCs don't know ahead of time that if they get a kiss from the fey queen they'll get this specific benefit, there is no problem.

Literally everyone in the game world has something that they COULD give to the players. The King has an armory full of weapons. The Evil Lich has the artifact of destruction that he's planning on using when the circumstances are right.

The fact that players know they can get things from other people doesn't turn them into stupid dicks. They still adventure, and if they want powerful allies, they try to get on their good side. And yes, they can have major setbacks. You can try to get on the king's goodside by murdering the intruder to his room. But if it turns out it was his mistress sneaking in he's going to be mad at you. Setbacks happen. But if you accomplish your objective, maybe you get a reward. There's nothing wrong with that, and there's nothing wrong with making that reward either a bonus feat, or making a new feat available to players based on their past actions.

[echoVanguard]

What about just "Your character gains a bonus feat of your choosing, that you feel thematically matches something your character experienced during this adventure." ? People tend to view free feats with equanimity since they were, well, free. Probably best handled in tandem with normal rewards instead of in lieu of them.

echo

[Kaelik]

Lago is assuming the worst possible implementation of the idea to explain why it's bad. I don't think it's bad at all.

Giving someone a magic sword is a 'reward' that can be slotted into any game. Typically, you do something that makes you likely to receive magic sword. Maybe you kill someone wielding one. Maybe you delve into a dungeon and find one. Maybe you develop your mystic blacksmithing skills and make one. Whatever - you get a reward.

When you go on a quest, you often get a reward of XP. Whether that's because you kill things, or because the DM gives story awards, or you burn down the Feywood. Whatever. You get XP (reward).

No, Lago is assuming any implementation in the actual books by the game designer at all. XP and loot prove that any implementation by the designer is going to be bad.

Magic items are made up by the DM with basically no real input from the game designer. XP is literally completely arbitrary bullshit that can be redeemed for anything.

Therefore, any system must be either: totally fucking MTP about what you get, in which case you didn't really do anything, or you are giving feat points to be spent on feats, in which case that is literally just XP, and the system doesn't actually have anything to do with what quests you go on.

[Chamomile]

What about just "Your character gains a bonus feat of your choosing, that you feel thematically matches something your character experienced during this adventure." ? People tend to view free feats with equanimity since they were, well, free. Probably best handled in tandem with normal rewards instead of in lieu of them.

echo

The more I think about it, the more I think it's better to just hand out a feat of the player's choice rather than making the GM figure out which feats are relevant to what happened in the quest.

[ishy]

Per the rules, throwing a hammer isn't very effective. It never really became effective, but I was committed to doing it anyway. After a number of such attacks, the DM eventually awarded me the feat 'Throw Anything'. That greatly reduced the penalties and actually let me use the attack somewhat effectively. It was not worth a feat, and ultimately, it just made my character more fun to play.

The DM awarded a bonus feat as a reward. It made me happy as a player. Since the DM chose the reward based on my actions, rather than me throwing things 100x so I could unlock the award, it enhanced, rather than detracted from the game.

Wouldn't you be happier in a game that didn't punish you for a while before you could have fun?

[deaddmwalking]

Wouldn't you be happier in a game that didn't punish you for a while before you could have fun?

Not really. I mean, I could have spent a feat to be able to throw a hammer with fewer penalties, but ultimately, the opportunity cost on it was pretty high. It certainly wouldn't have justified giving up Combat Expertise or any other number of better feats.

So, in the sense that I could have had it if I wanted it bad enough I don't think I would have been happy because the whole time I had it, I'd be thinking 'I wish I had this better feat instead'. But since I got it for free and it did help my character with his theme, it actually did make me happy. As a bonus, it was fine.

From a setting perspective, we could have just said 'everyone can throw hammers'. But if we did that, I would have felt a little 'small in the pants'. Instead of having a special ability that I earned, I'd just be taking advantage of a sub-optimal attack option.

And that's the crux of the issue. Although, by the rules, it was a 'free bonus reward', it felt like a bonus I had earned through play. Ultimately, it was no different than a non-magical hammer of throwing, but again, a magic item is easily transferable the way a feat was not. It was something that served to make my character 'special'.

Ultimately, having a character with an interesting ability is more rewarding/fun than having an item with an interesting ability. If you lose all your equipment, you still get to retain your innate abilities. And there are times where the ability might work that you wouldn't normally have access to your normal weapons. At the king's ball, for instance, you might grab a halberd and surprise people by throwing it over a line of guards and pin the assassin to the wall.

I mean, if the character had actually sucked in general terms, I probably wouldn't have been happy. But he was actually good at the important stuff - this was just flavor and with a free bonus feat he stopped sucking at the flavor bit. It helped reduce the cognitive dissonance between doing something that's cinematic but ineffective and doing something that actually is likely to help the situation.

As for Kaelik, I assume that we are talking about not including these things in the base rules. At worst they're included in published modules as alternative/additional reward for various potential resolutions. While I would expect players are often familiar with books, they shouldn't be familiar with modules that you're using. And if you're writing your own modules, again, they can serve as a template from which to design your own story rewards.

Having a player say 'I killed 4 minotaurs in single combat, I've unlocked Powerful Charge' would be pretty annoying. But if the player likes to make charge attacks and have used it many times, there's nothing wrong with giving them a bonus of what is otherwise a pretty terrible Feat. Better to do that than have them waste a selection on it.

[Kaelik]

Having a player say 'I killed 4 minotaurs in single combat, I've unlocked Powerful Charge' would be pretty annoying. But if the player likes to make charge attacks and have used it many times, there's nothing wrong with giving them a bonus of what is otherwise a pretty terrible Feat. Better to do that than have them waste a selection on it.

If having the DM make something up is better than any rules you can actually write, then clearly you have failed the very first rule of game design: Every rule you write needs to be better than MTP.

If MTP is better, that is a criticism of the idea of writing a system for granting achievements based on completed quests.

Presumably this thread is not asking if, as an individual DM, he should give his PCs free benies based on accomplishments, but is instead asking if a game should be designed with that as a codified method of advancement. Everything you have said points to the answer to the second question being no.

[deaddmwalking]

If having the DM make something up is better than any rules you can actually write, then clearly you have failed the very first rule of game design: Every rule you write needs to be better than MTP.

If MTP is better, that is a criticism of the idea of writing a system for granting achievements based on completed quests.

I get it. I don't disagree. What we have is a very nebulous idea about a reward system, that may or may not be formalized. Even if it is formalized, there are all kinds of ways this can be implemented. It's been a long time since I played original Deadlands, but they had something similar. After successfully completing a quest, they had something with 'counting coup' that allowed you to potentially capture a special ability based on the BBEG you defeated. I was a player, not a Marshal, so I'm not sure how it was supposed to work.

Maybe the specific implementation was crap. But I don't think the idea needs to be rejected outright.

Presumably this thread is not asking if, as an individual DM, he should give his PCs free benies based on accomplishments, but is instead asking if a game should be designed with that as a codified method of advancement. Everything you have said points to the answer to the second question being no.

It's unclear from the original post what his intention is. But if the question is 'should I give my PCs free benies based on accomplishments' I think that he should seriously consider it.

If he is writing a system, I don't think there's anything wrong with writing a chapter on 'alternate rewards' and explaining that sometimes, when you have an adventure, something meaningful happens to a character and it can be represented by a special benefit that's outside of the normal rules. When you provide this type of advice, you can offer suggestions and guidelines on what types of things are appropriate rewards and how they should be awarded. There are a couple of potential benefits I see from this system.

1) Lots of DMs like the idea of rewarding a player for contributing a backstory that helps advance the campaign. If a PC includes family, friends, enemies, etc, this can be a way to reward them in a fashion that avoids the ultimately meaningless awards of 'extra XP' etc.

2) If you like the idea of 'organic growth' more than starting at high level, this can be a way to reward 'play from level 1'. A player that goes on full adventures from level 1 to level 15 may have picked up a few of these bennies along the way. While it might not be a huge increase in power, it could be a noticeable difference between a character created at high level and someone who 'earned it'.

I'm a big fan of Player Empowerment. I preach it at the RPGsite all the time. And while I'd like to move away from fellating the DM for action resolution, I'm not totally convinced that taking them out of the reward equation is totally necessary. If I trust my DM to determine and place treasure and encounters, I can trust him to determine potential 'alternate rewards' that fit in with the setting as well.

I can't say if Ancient History's 'system' is good or bad, but having some encouragement around these kinds of rewards is not, on the face of it, a bad thing.

[ishy]

From a setting perspective, we could have just said 'everyone can throw hammers'. But if we did that, I would have felt a little 'small in the pants'. Instead of having a special ability that I earned, I'd just be taking advantage of a sub-optimal attack option.

Why does it need to be a subpar option? Just let everyone throw hammers as an option that is sometimes good (because you can't get close or something), sometimes not (because you lose your hammer or whatever)?

But if the player likes to make charge attacks and have used it many times, there's nothing wrong with giving them a bonus of what is otherwise a pretty terrible Feat. Better to do that than have them waste a selection on it.

Better to not write terrible feats in the first place. And just allow everyone to be able to use charge attacks without feeling like they are wasting everyone's time?