Death Boons

Death Boons are a way of rewarding players for Character death. Usually this is a setback- having to create a new character, and as such, players will typically try to avoid having their characters die at all costs. This can lead to cowardly and overly-cautious actions on the part of the players (unless they're immune to death somehow), and teamwork starts to suffer.

Thus I've created the benefits below. A Death Boon is granted to the replacement character as a reward for the circumstances of the death of the first character.

Apply benefits (GM Discretion) based on the nature of the characters death (as seen on the chart below):

Death Was	Modifier
Mechanical- This just happened as a natural consequence of the dice rolling in battle.	+0
Unlucky- This happened as a result of a nat 1 on a saving throw	+1
Sacrificial- The PC purposefully sacrificed themselves to help the team succeed, holding off enemies, or shielding them from a blast, etc	+2
Cowardly- The death resulted from cowardly or evil actions by the player (trying to escape from a combat everyone else was involved in, betraying the team, etc)	-2
Fiat- The death resulted from a GM fiat or some story purpose where mechanical rolls could not save the character.	+2
Unprepared- The death happened when a character MIGHT have survived a situation but didn’t (such as drowning after a submarine was damaged or being ejected into space without a space suit)	+1
Retirement- The PC retired his character due to him no longer wanting to play the character (or he lost the sheet, etc)	+0
Forced Retirement- The PC gave up his character AFTER PLAY BEGAN due to the GM request- PC was overpowered or similar.	+1*
Betrayal- The PC died as a result of betrayal or negligence of the other party members	+2
Blaze of Glory- Death was a result of a blaze of glory or other play feature.	+1

*Only apply this bonus once in a campaign, don’t encourage players to make multiple BROKEN characters jut to get a death boon on replacements. Also, only use this if a character grows to powerful, don’t reward them for a character you outright ban. 

Total up the points and apply as follows:

Negative to Zero: No death boon

+1: Minor Boon

+2-+3 Major Boon

+4 or higher: Grand Boon

Then consult some possible boons below. Maybe you do random, let the player pick, or choose yourself. 

Death Boons
Minor	Major	Grand
+1 to one of your saving throws (fort/ref/will)	1 free feat (1 point)	+1 hero point per session
4 free skill points	+1 to attack or defense	1 free headquarters
5 free equipment points	+1 to toughness saves	+1 Power Level

The idea here is that if a player dies in a particularly heroic or story relevant way, he is rewarded by having his new character get some benefits. He still must sit out the rest of the session, since he died, and the GM needs time to review and approve a replacement character, but his new character has some benefit to offset the loss of the previous character and to encourage heroic role-playing.

Character Creation Gimmicks

So let me venture a guess. If your group is like mine, you have the following players: the power gamer, the player who plays the same archetype every time, the guy who copies other people's character concepts, the role-player, the roll-player (not a power gamer, but doesn't waste any time on non-combat abilities), and maybe the guy whose just there because he has nothing to do and creates characters who "look cool" but don't do much of anything.

Close to home? Well here are a few character creation gimmicks you might pull when running a new campaign.


Character Swap: The party all makes characters, but they don't play the characters they create- they randomly draw characters from a pile- so they might get their power min-maxed character, or another player's role-playing specialist. That guy with a specific archetype is forced to play outside his comfort zone.

Sidekicks: The players make characters and sidekicks. In the first session, all the main characters die and the sidekicks become the primary characters. The min-maxers will probably have sidekicks who are little more than point-boosts for their main character and are now forced to play an underpowered or niche sidekick, while they guys who made everything normally will have a relatively more powered sidekick.

Multiple Characters: The players make 2 characters. The GM then choses (or its random): 1 is played by the player, the other is an evil NPC controlled by the GM- a min-maxed villain team for you to fight against!

Premade Characters: Certainly makes for a quicker first session, though the downfall is that there's little connection between the players and the characters. The upside is you can make a team that works together.

Team Flavor: The players must decide on a them for their superhero team, and make a character that fits that theme. For example, the Holiday Squad, where each character's powers are based on a holiday, or The Artists- where each power is based on a style of art (sculpting, drawing, etc). Causes more creativity from the players and forces them to work together.


Any other gimmicks GMs have used? Share in the comments.

Secret Codes

So often it comes up that the heroes need to communicate with each other on the battlefield to lay out strategy, or to discuss what's going on. But how to do so without alerting the enemy.

Well, there's telepathy, that's an easy one for superheroes, but what if you don't have it, or if someone's immune to mind-affecting (and thus can't receive telepathic communications)? Or what if someone can overhear your telepathic communication?

There's having your team carry radios, but those could be overheard with radio powers (or tricked into saying the wrong things), or even overheard with someone with really high notice ranks.

You can create a language called Codespeak that the team members all learn to communicate with each other, though comprehend might be able to identify spoken languages. Below are some thoughts on ways to communicate between team members (or enemies) to allow for unified tactics.


1) Telekinesis: You could telekinetically "tap" morse code or a team code onto someone's skin. Must have precise and not full power on your TK, and it only allows TK people to communicate. Very difficult to pick up, because even if the villain detects the TK, he may not know what it means.

2) Illusions: Especially if the illusion is selective, you can have an illusion of words or a speaking person that only certain party members can see/hear (though a villain with detection powers might be able to crack the code). The illusion might also communicate through a secret language.

3) Sounds: Whether music, or sounds humans can make, or animal sounds, the ability to create sounds to clue in your team is useful. Anyone could hear it, but not everyone would know what it means. (A dog sound means attack, while a cat sound means use diplomacy, etc). You could make the sounds above or below the audible spectrum if you're team is able to hear them.

4) Sign Language: Completely silent, though requires team members to see each other (can't be transmitted over a radio). Anyone could learn that language unless it's a "secret" language you spent a point on, and comprehend may or may not identify your "interpretive dance" as a language.

5) Lights: Flickering lights, especially of various colors, could translate into a language. Difficult to decipher even with comprehend, as they're flickering lights. You could also make them of the non-visible spectrum (ultraviolet/infrared) if you're team is able to see them.

6) Scents: Rounding out the basic senses is scent- perhaps a certain odor could indicate a certain action- flowers means attack the minions first, skunk means flee, cookies means stop fighting to save the civilians, or whatever. Of course, you'd need the ability to create the scents, which requires some powers.

7) HUDs: Like radio, your teams could have eye-pieces with text that pops up and advises them of what to do. Someone has to be controllign it- a sidekick back at base, or a technopath perhaps, and anything seen by the PCs might be seen by the villains also.

8) Emotion Code: With the ability to create emotions, each emotional feeling could indicate an action. Since all data can be broken down with as little as a 0 or 1 (morse code is an example), you could have some complex communications with sequences of emotions by spending a point for the language. Some D&D mages have taken this at low levels for detailed communication with familiars over distances.

Lots of ways to communicate with your team out there, though many require some prep work or powers, but when you're trying to give direction to a team and don't want the enemy to overhear, all the preparation is worth it. A good way to reward PCs with certain powers is to have the enemies use these techniques and have 1 PC who is able to "overhear" them.