boons... Boons... BOONS!

Well, makes sense that something the party all has as a communal resource is powerful enough to make it worth seeing. I'd be on board with that.

Uh.... *shrug* Depends on what the results looks like I suppose.

Very much agreed:
I basically ignore boons when planning leveling at current. They just... don't do much I would find useful.
Granted, I still haven't got a character with a level high enough to even acess the second boon tier. At L3, the response tends to be more "mehh, a boon" than "oh yay, we get to pick a boon".
The boon is shared by the entire party (and IMO preferably accessible by any character, not carried by a single player). It should be something powerful/useful/awesome enough for the entire party to work towards.

I kind of... disagree. Better boons would indeed be appreciated, but they should still be inferior to destiny powers.

^
But boons are balanced compared to destinies because everyone gets their own destiny, while a boon is shared between a party of 4-6. So they balance. Not precisely, but close.

While power may be a major factor, could a lot of the lack of excitement come from flavor? Along with that vein, rather than making the boons more vertically powerful (hitting things with a bigger stick), perhaps they should be made more laterally powerful (your stick can also be used as a splint for a bone fracture). Might even help in giving them a new role since a lot of stuff seems based on becoming more powerful than more versatile. Just a random thought and I have no clue how to balance this.

Versatility is a major factor when we say "more powerful". Versatility counts as part of power. For example, creating a boon worth 5 utility talents might mean that it's 5x the effects of one utility talent... Or that it covers such a broad array of situations that it would normally take 5 utility talents to cover them all.

In general though, making things more broad in their scope is an issue because of the following:

1) Two little things is often less exciting than one big thing. Not always of course.

2) The broader we make a boon, the less space there is for new boons to fill.

For example, if we make a stick that you can play fetch with and splint an arm with... Suddenly two ideas are combined into one - meaning we could have had two very different boons. Naturally, this can be a very good thing a lot of the time (Magical Tricks, Enchanting and Magecraft are fun because of how many options they give you) but if we make too many all-encompassing boons or utility talents - we can run out of design space for new ideas pretty quickly. Just something we try to keep in mind. =)

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:
1) Two little things is often less exciting than one big thing. Not always of course.

2) The broader we make a boon, the less space there is for new boons to fill.

The first is true for many situations, but is ultimately up to the situation and party preferences, there should be a mix of powerful and versatile choices.
The second is trickier, but depends on how many different boons you want in the system. Staying away from It's Witchcraft levels of versatility would probably be enough unless you want pages upon pages of boons.

It might even be possible to make a genetic engineering style "Build your own boon" doc, with a number of point-based functionalities for the players to choose from (say, "can be entered", "can be used to heal", "used for [skill] checks with +[x]", "tiny size", "huge size", gives access to [utility talent]). Might be a lot of work to balance though, and there would probably need to be a few categories which modify the points available (example: Building, vehicle/automaton, portable object).

Actually, we already do have that sort of scale, just not specifically for boons. It's something I've been meaning to compile for a while, and probably will once my spring break starts: The Genetic engineering "homebrew" scale. Homebrew is in quotes because in an open beta system, anything can end up added to the system.
Basically, with Genetic engineering, a utility talent is worth 2 racial points, and from there we can extrapolate everything else. A racial trait that give you spellchild is equal to two utility talents, or 2 cutie marks, or 4 freaky knowledges. If we have a set number of utility talents boons are supposed to be worth, than we can make them based on this scale.

I suppose we could use the compiled scale to make a "create-a-boon list," but with all the quirky stuff we have for boons already (whirlygig I think is the only thing in the game that ever makes a magic point last longer than a day.), it's probably better to come up with our own stuff.

Very true. One quick thing though - any specific utility talent in genetic engineering is technically worth 1.5 trait points. That's what we balanced around. We put it as 2 trait points in the document though because of the versatility offered by grabbing *any* utility talent... And because we don't want to encourage min/maxing of just using racial traits to grab more utility talents that you want.

That makes sense. It also gives me an idea of how to score situational abilities...

Around Friday I should be able to set up the non-combat balance scale. What forum should that go in?

Feel free to toss it in utilites or a general game mechanics post.