Friday, January 6, 2012

Boon Cards

Here is a PDF of 9 Boon cards you can hand out to your players during your D&D game. What the hell am I talking about?

Boons won't break the game. They are just little extra bonuses you can hand out to your players when they do something awesome. Say they make a hard choice based on their alignment, for example. Or get a critical hit at a critical time.Or any other awesome thing players do. Players like little rewards like these.

The boons I came up with are as follows:

Action Point: Take an extra action
Bring the Pain: +1 to damage on your next attack
Close Call: Gain 1 Experience Point (note: this is peculiar to Microlite, which uses a 1HD=1XP system; use an XP bonus appropriate to your particular system)
Dodge: +1 to AC for 1 round
Guided Strike: +1 to hit on your next attack
Second Wind: regain 1d6 Hit Points
Stroke of Luck: +1 to any roll
That Was Close: +1 to any saving throw
Try Again: reroll any die roll. You must take the second roll

I haven't tried these out yet, but I'll be testing them in my Kids' Game. I have not yet decided how often to hand them out. My original thought was that it would be something cool to hand out in lieu of treasure, when they defeated a monster that didn't have anything precious to leave behind. Especially with kids, these kinds of rewards can be a bit tricky to balance, so we will have to see.

The PDF has pretty pictures. This file is usable in MagicSetEditor but doesn't have the pictures. If you are an artist and I've used your art and you would like me to remove it, I will. Just leave me a comment or email me at sully33 at gmail dot com.

Do you have ideas for more boons? I'd prefer to have boons that are usable by any character, and not specifically tied to spellcasters or fighters or elves, etc. Leave a comment!

3 comments:

  1. Cool art choices, some of those are my favorites.

    How about a boon, "Re-roll any single damage die. If the roll is a 1, roll again."
    I know my players really hate it when they roll a 1 for damage against a hard to hit opponent, or when they roll a critical hit. It overlaps a bit with the retry card, but I think its sufficiently different to warrant a new card.

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  2. Thanks for the comment Victor! I'll file your suggestion away for the next batch. There's nothing worse than rolling a one for damage.

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