Hero Token Adjustments

[hot hazel]

Folks who don't like the implementation of Hero Tokens RAW and want to discuss tweaks & houserules, here you go!

Personally, I like the idea of tying Hero Tokens to Victories. Might be more of an abstraction & less dissociated.

[tropic lotus]

It was mentioned elsewhere that tokens replenish "per session". Would making them "per respite" be a better mitigation of their strength?

[silk blade]

Per respite seems right to me, at least, I think what I wouldn't want them to turn into is dnd 2014 inspiration

On that note I just had a DM who had us all roll a d20, highest gets inspiration, that was per session if anyone would be interested in that method

[dusk mica]

I don't mind them existing as a reward, like how Inspiration works in the Seattle game, but I would like some less arbitrary way to dole them out initially. Tying them to victories could be good, though I'm (academically, not experientially) a little concerned about doubling up on the curve of power increase that victories already offer

[hot hazel]

It avoids a lot of that "we have X hero tokens we haven't used and this is the last challenge of the session etc etc" nonsense

[hot hazel]

2014/2024 DM/Heroic Inspiration is per-PC, per-session but boolean.
If Hero Tokens were "you have 1 or you don't" then per-session is a reasonable arbitrary limit for it as a meta currency.
But instead they're a group resource

[silk blade]

Honestly I forgot about that

[hot hazel]

I like @raw pasture 's idea of replenishment on level up

[raw pasture]

If that's too infrequent then on a respite would be the next obvious step

I was recalling Eberron's hero points (3.5e) when I suggested level-up

[hot hazel]

Group Resource, # per PC, acquire/replenish on level up
You could make it Echelon × # of PCs

Then at level 10, you get them back per respite

[tropic lotus]

Honestly, anything "per session" is far to variable to be of use. Its running headlong into the issue with long rests/short rests in d20 where you have to run the appropriate amount of "encounters' or the math falls apart. And that wasn't even a session based issue.

[dusk mica]

I like per-level up, off the top of my head. Per-respite adds in a bit more attrition/reason to take a respite before you strictly need to

[silk blade]

I mean, maybe but giving up victory scaling for a hero token seems not worth it right?

[warm garnet]

I think the first incarnation of them made the most sense — You get them for actually doing a heroic thing, not just for playing the game. That makes them a pretty direct lever the director has to encourage certain behavior, while also maintaining control over how many the party can accumulate.

[tropic lotus]

Ooooh, how about they group replenish on level up, but you can choose to regain 1 for your group as one of your respite actions. Now I'm just brainstorming...lol

[dusk mica]

Maybe. But if you burn all your hero tokens on your first encounter, then you're only losing one or two victories. So idk. I also haven't actually played or Directed a long-form DS adventure yet, so I'm talking without a lot of experience atm

Hero Tokens being a group resource is also a mild concern of mine; I have some players who are happy to utilize any resource they have at their disposal, while others might be rather worried about "taking away" from the group's capabilities, and might not spend them ever, but that's a per-group issue and probably not worth trying to solve at the rules level

[raw pasture]

Having the natural replenish point be infrequent may also incentivize heroic actions. The players might strive to earn them through their actions since they know it'll be a while to get them naturally.

[dusk mica]

That's a good point. It also lets the Director work them into adventure rewards while you're prepping: "if they save X villagers from the burning inn, they get Y hero tokens"

[raw pasture]

I think an echelon multiplier might be a bit much, but # of heroes + echelon I wouldn't be opposed

[hot hazel]

Thought: in a game where a Director still says "I don't want to deal with XP, I want level ups to be Director fiat", Victories could convert to Hero Tokens

[warm garnet]

I will say that having been running them in the older style as essentially a granted consumable rather than something that replenishes on any predictable basis, I think my players are basically only ever going to use the recovery and test success options, and only when death or a huge consequence are on the line, respectively. I don't mind that, but other directors may want to encourage their more frequent use. Though you could also presumably do that by granting them fairly freely and having a cap on the max you can accumulate at one time, like inspiration in Baldur's Gate.

[foggy path]

I am also not very happy with the current state of hero tokens and thinking of doing the replenishment per respite instead.

But then, one of my players took the "Thrill Seeker" complication where they don't get a hero token at the start of a session but instead at 3, 6 and 9 victories.

Tweaking this to a respite replenishment or even to the option where you get hero tokens for heroic things would have the drawback of the complication become a benefit really. Any ideas on how to change the complication to make sense with the hero token adjustment?

[hot hazel]

...that Thrill Seeker complication drawback sounds like what I was thinking for tying Hero Tokens to Victories: you get a Hero Token when you gain a Victory

[foggy path]

Ah, well there you go 😅

[hot hazel]

Normal: you get a Hero Token every Victory
Drawback: whenever you gain a Victory, you can choose to either gain a Victory or a Hero Token but not both (if you ever acquire two Victories from 1 encounter, you can choose to gain 1 Victory and 1 Hero Token)

[dusk mica]

Maintaining the same benefit? Extra hero tokens at certain victory thresholds?

[foggy path]

That sounds reasonable!
I'm also thinking if awarding a hero token only to the player who "finished" the encounter might be something? Like the How do you want to do this reward. Otherwise, getting 4-5 hero tokens every victory might be quite a lot normally. Unless its capped of course. Or only at reaching certain victory points, like in thrill seeker.

But this would of course change the complication again.

[hot hazel]

Hero tokens (tied to Victories) would probably be a Per PC resource

[warm garnet]

I think that hero tokens replenishing on victories would be way more of an issue in terms of trivializing non-combat challenges than replenishing each session

[foggy path]

Maybe thrill seeker gets some stuff like: When at 0 recoveries you earn extra hero tokens per encounter?
And drawback is that they otherwise get none?

And normally it could be that all heroes gain 1 hero token at x number of steps victory intervals? where x is equal to the number of heroes in the party

[hot hazel]

It wouldn't replenish, more like gain. For example: party gains a Victory, each PC gets 1 Hero Token. PC A spends that Hero Token, yada yada, Party gains another Victory, PCs B-D now have 2 Hero Tokens, PC A has 1.

But again I'm imagining Hero Tokens as a Per-PC resource

I admit: It's a bit of double dipping in terms of increasing power level with increasing Victories, especially if PCs hoard them

[warm garnet]

You wouldn't have the 'use it or lose it' problem that way, at least, but you would end up with way more tokens overall than the current model. I would expect they'd mostly get used in combat, but I think there would be enough that any test with notable consequences would end up always being a success.

If you're going for a granted vs replenished model, what do you see as the advantage of tying them to victories or some other specific marker like that compared to just treating them as a reward given out whenever the director thinks it's appropriate?

[hot hazel]

The "Director awards" model is how Heroic Inspiration works in 5e, and my experience with that is a bit... take it or leave it. Easily forgotten, mother may I'd, etc.
It's why I'm still inclined to remove Hero Tokens all together. They really do seem superfluous to the game engine as a whole

[warm garnet]

I'll definitely agree on them being easily forgotten when they aren't being spent frequently. I've started putting representations of them in the corner of battlemaps as a reminder that they're there to be spent.

[desert mauve]

I'm in the camp of "cut them entirely" 1) because I never remember them, 2) I dont like the new implementation. I liked the last packet where they were basically Inspiration and gave a free-action healing potion. That was useful for me as a new Director

but even in that version, I'd cut them eventually. More just useful as a crutch for me to lean on while I figured out encounter building, and it helped teach the new players the heroic expectations of their characters

I guess I can see them being great as an adventure-mechanic for 1st level starter adventure play

[hot hazel]

100%
Working as a free-action healing potion is one of my other problems with them. It's very non-diagetic
The character does not know Hero Tokens exist. They represent nothing in the abstraction of the game world. If they do represent something, it's a post-hoc invention that must be constructed on the fly dependent on the circumstances in which they are used.

[desert mauve]

that's fair, I've kinda given up on trying to justify mechanics with game world stuff, I just keep telling myself "pretend we're reading a comic book, not actually there" which feels gross to write out, but in the moment I can convince myself it's good

[warm garnet]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that part of them, either — Like D&D's inspiration they definitely feel like more of a 'we're playing a game here' mechanic than a 'this is an abstraction of what these fantasy heroes are doing' kind of thing.

I do mostly like them as a handy reward for Doing The Hero Thing, but I think there's a good chance I end up dropping them, too.

[fast ruin]

That's really interesting because I feel they've only gotten better in use. I find my players really appreciated having an OH No resource. In fact, I wish they did more things, maybe even tied to your class like 4E paragon paths

[warm garnet]

I think converting a token into 1 HR would be a totally reasonable use to add

[tropic lotus]

Hitting the demand side of a supply/demand issue isn't a bad idea either. I don't dislike your idea, but then that becomes a defacto +1 to HR per session. If that's the case, then could you simplify the mechanic (and increase versimilitude to "once per session you can spend a heroic resource to do [insert hero token things]". Now, consuming 1 HR makes them a bit weaker as they now have a greater cost. But, you could really add to the fun/drama with something like...."Each individual hero may spend 1 HR to perform the following heroic actions [hero token things]. The total cost to perform a subsequent heroic action increases by 1 HR after each use before a respite." Edit: reworded the cost for clarity (I think).

[dusk flicker]

I know I was considering a system for a west marches campaign, where hero tokens were per respite (though that's often just per session if I'm doing long single sessions). I was also thinking about making the regular hero token generation be something they needed to earn, by achieving campaign goals. Give soemthing for the group as a whole to work towards.

[sacred glacier]

Honestly there's already so many cool things going on, I think they'll probably be forgotten in games that I'm playing.

[warm garnet]

I disagree with the premise, and the way HR works you couldn't really flip it around like that

[tropic lotus]

Which premise? And "couldn't" is doing a lot of work in place of "shouldn't". You clearly CAN homebrew it to work that way. If you SHOULD or not is what we are discussing 🙂

[warm garnet]

I guess I wasn't very clear, sorry. I meant the premise that making one of the uses gaining 1 HR could then make hero tokens analyzable as costing 1 HR. Or at least that it wouldn't make any more sense to talk about spending two surges for a hero token usage or a recovery's worth of stamina for two. Basically, I'm not saying that you couldn't homebrew something where you spend HR for what you could get from hero tokens, I'm saying that as an ephemeral and dynamic resource, the thought of flipping them around and considering them back-convertible doesn't directly work.

[tropic lotus]

Hmm...I'm not saying that the math works out one way or the other. But, if your idea is to provide another outlet for spending a hero token (converting it to 1 HR), then you've created the valuation and the opportunity cost is real (once you've spent your token on something else, you cannot get a HR). It is what it is. While you can't normally spend a surge or a recovery to "purchase" something else, it is a perfectly reasonable thought exercise to consider it. If I would instantly trade two surges for a hero token every time I could, then I've hit upon the fact that I likely would NOT spend a token on two surges as I don't perceive the value as being appropriate (this is just a hypothetical to illustrate how the thought exercise would work).

The origin of this whole discussion stemmed from a group that used their hero tokens to trivialize a negotiation and the thought that most groups would do the same. In other words, do hero tokens have the most value in affecting negotiations versus their other possibilities? If so, how can that be homebrewed to something more balanced.

Option 1 - Change the supply of hero tokens in some way. Option 2 - provide other enticing options besides cheesing negotiations. There could be other options.

[fast ruin]

So, i missed this first part. Is the issue with this dynamic have to do with maybe the time in a session that a negotion takes up vs a combat?

[foggy path]

Perhaps the thing that is troubling then is the spending hero tokens for turning a failure into a success? So instead of those options it could be something like removing a bane on a roll, so that there isn't a situation where you just skip a negotiation by spending all hero tokens

[fast ruin]

A system I always had for inspiration in my 5E game was players could use inspiration to just flat reroll - and they only spend the token on a success; but they have to keep the new result.

[foggy path]

I like that actually

[fast ruin]

That would work rather well for both tests and power rolls; though for power rolls - since you 'can't fail', you will always keep the second result

[fast ruin]

Actually, a house rule I was mulling was 1 HR per echelon; so it scales a little bit at higher levels

[fast ruin]

Here is the wording I think I'm going to use: "You can spend a hero token to reroll a power roll, and can keep either result. If the second roll is equal or lower than the first roll, you regain the hero token."

[dusk flicker]

maybe specify equal or lower tier?

If I roll a 7 the first time, then re-roll into an 8, it'll feel bad

[fast ruin]

Oh yeah, I see what you mean - I suppose all power rolls are tiered, so that makes more sense

Ok, so I actually wrote this up a couple weeks ago, but these are my house rules for spending hero tokens:

[small epoch]

One thing i did with my hero tokens besides the one that they gain at the start of each session stay until a respite

[fast ruin]

So they potentially acrue?

[small epoch]

Yes i have them marked as two differnt sleeved cards

How are other peoples experences my group has used them excuslivly to recover

[versed wigeon]

This is the right question to be asking when monkeying with the mechanic. How are people actually using them at the table. I agree I see most players hoarding them to exclusively recover. Has anyone seen more wider use of the options?

[small epoch]

My group litterally keeps the pool with one player asking players their health levels

[versed wigeon]

Yeah my group literally renamed Hero Tokens to the Fury's name

I think I had one case where they converted failure to success.

[small epoch]

For our group i think it was always the Shadow using them

[versed wigeon]

Which was in a montage

I'm not a particular fan of the reroll. It's alot of extra work. I think something called a Hero Token should make you Heroic, and re-rolling with a null result is a kind of feels bad.

[small epoch]

I have played alot of games with Hero Points inspriartion and the like and the hero token with the free healing have been the most used by the players on the regular for sure

[versed wigeon]

Maybe to prevent them being used to trivialise montage/negotiations would be to limit them to one per m/n?

But I agree that most of the time they will be hoarded for free heals.

Maybe it should be 1 HP at the start of the session? Make them earn those additional ones.

[small epoch]

Yeah each player starts with 1 and then any they have earned and not used will roll over to the respite. But i ratchet up the level of combat by planning for 6 when i have 5 players and most combat not including victories are at the 7 or 8 level

[spiral mortar]

I’ve been planning to use hero tokens to represent godly favour, kind of similar to the way Piety is outlined in the Mythic Odysseys of Theros. I make hero tokens individual rather than group, and you can have a number of hero tokens equal to your level. If you do something your god likes, you gain a hero token, if you do something against your god’s wishes they take a hero token away. Hero tokes are spent in the same ways as before with the same effects

[fast ruin]

Regarding hero Tokens and healing, what if instead of healing without recoveries, spending a token, just 1, allowed you to spend 1 or more recoveries per the original conditions

[versed wigeon]

I like it. Not sure if it would stop hoarding for recoveries. Would need to test it.

[fast ruin]

With the catch breath now being a maneuver, it should make it a more situational at least. Then just hand out recoveries as rewards when warrented

[versed wigeon]

Making it an individual resource works for me but I know players will beg Directors to allow them to spend it on others.

[fast ruin]

I split the difference. They are individual, but players can choose to share theirs if they wish

[versed wigeon]

Blades in the Dark does an interesting thing. They require 2 points to improve yours odds by one step, but when someone else helps you, it is only 1 point to improve their odds. I like it in that game as it encourages teamwork but not sure if that's necessary here.

[fast ruin]

Ooh, I'll keep this in mind. My players are a little skittish about triggering a bane on helping allies

[versed wigeon]

Yeah it's a bit table dependant

[small epoch]

So I am trying to keep things as RAW as possible with small exceptions. The players need the recoveries at my table so I won’t change that and keeping them a community resources pushes the heroes as a team so I like that

[versed wigeon]

Has anyone seen hero tokens used for 2 surges? I'm guessing the design intent is to increase potency but not sure if that is obvious to players.

[feral patrol]

So I’ve definitely run into issues with the hero tokens replenishing on session start, the players just never fail lol

(And this is with using the changes so that they allow a re-roll instead of an auto-success)

How have people found it best to change the way they are generated? Once per respite? Per victory?

There’s just a lot of text above to read through 😔

[hot hazel]

If you're keeping it as a group resource: Per respite is probably best

[feral patrol]

Oh okay, so there’s also an option to do it as an individual and I guess that’d be per victory. Though I like the team based aspect of group so I think I’ll go with that, thanks!

[feral patrol]

Interesting, my group are not so keen. They want to go with reset on victories. I think the biggest issue we have at our table is we play for 2.5 hours a week so they always have tokens to spend on RP sessions to not fail, and sometimes combat goes over two sessions so using them during combat is very common

[foggy path]

Hmmm, i think, personally, i'm just not very into the idea of the automated hero token generation. It just seems to run into problems here and there. The alternative, with only the Director awarding Hero Tokens might make them more rare (especially cause the director can forget) but then they are tied to specific circumstances and they are controllable by the director

[restive escarp]

Was chatting this over with my players. I posited this idea:

At the start of the session, the players decide as a team if they want to try to gain Hero Tokens. Each time they gain one, the Director gains 1d3-1 Malice. The can keep going until either they decide to stop or they gain Hero Tokens equal to the number of heroes.

I personally like the Tokens being a shared resource but also find it strange that you just have a 'reserve' of heroism that resets at a seemingly random point in the story. I wonder if this rule would be a fun little back and forth where the players are deciding how much to "amp up" the story - on both sides of the screen!

[dusk flicker]

I think a Hero token is probably worth more than 3 Malice on it's own, so that's a trade I'd make all the time.

[restive escarp]

Is there a scenario where we get the potential Malice value high enough that it becomes a genuine, interesting moment? 1d6 for example?

I'm just wondering if it's a good idea in principle but the maths needs to be right, or if its a bad idea in principle

[dusk flicker]

1d6 sounds about right? But in a fight of Infinite Hero tokens vs Infinite Malice (or even arbitrarily large Hero Tokens vs Infinite Malice), the Heroes win every time. And hero tokens stick around, while Malice goes away at the end of a fight.

[restive escarp]

True but it's not infinite Tokens, they're still limited to no. of Heroes max. And I don't think my aim here is to gimp Tokens completely - I like them! - but just add a bit more risk/reward to them. If you pick up one Token and the Director gains 5 or 6 Malice, do you really want to risk going for more Tokens? I guess that's the experience I'm aiming for