Destiny: Family First

Family First
You have a wife, husband, daughter, son, sister, brother, nephew, relatives, or simply anypony you consider "family" (adopted ponies, legal guardians...) somewhere in Equestria. You care deeply for their well-being and protection, so you insisted they do not come along with you on your dangerous journeys, but are still motivated to continue and conclude your epic quest, for their sake as much as yours. The family is self-sufficient and can endure most non-extreme hardships where they preside, without the help of the PCs.

TIER 1

Letters from home - Daily
You regularly receive letters from home through telepathic means, via a otherwise mundane item, linked to your family in some way. These messages arrive once every day and cannot be prevented, intercepted or otherwise detected by anyone other than you. The messages can be chosen to be received at any time you are not dead / unconscious. Your family knows if the messages "went through" or not and may assume the worst if they are unable to send a message for a lengthy period, as far as attempting to contact the rest of your party. When you choose the hear the message, you will boost the next three non-combat rolls you make to do one of the following, triggering automatically:
- Prevent a natural 1 from occurring and cause it to succeed normally.
- Cause a natural 18 or natural 19 roll to count as a critical success (non-cutie mark).
- Increase the value of the roll by an extra 1d10 (if the previous two don't occur first).

TIER 2

Extended Family - Daily
In the absence of your own family, you have adopted your own party members as part of your "extended" family, treating them as honorary family:
- You can receive a telepathic message from any one of them, once a day, as long as they are conscious. The message can consist of up to 25 words.
- They gain the same benefit you do from you using "Letters from home", but only for one roll. They have to be near you when you use it to be affected.
- You gain a +40 bonus to checks/rolls for preventing an immediate harm or threat to your personal family members, both in and out of combat. This counts as +10 for the "extended" family members and only out of combat.
- Once per session, you can add a friendly creature to your list of "Extended Family".

TIER 3

Blood thicker than Friendship
Your resolve towards your family (extended and otherwise) reach new heights. The following changes occur:
- You can now receive "Letters from home" even whilst unconscious. Doing so causes you to regain consciousness and gain 10 hit points, as well as gain the normal roll effects. You can pretend you are still unconscious until the situation suits you.
- Triggering "Letters from home" whilst conscious automatically breaks you free of any form of physical, mental or supernatural imprisonment or restraints, as though you rolled a cutie mark critical success, as well as gain the normal roll effects.
- You roll three times to prevent your own death, once a day OR roll twice to prevent the death of an "extended family" member, once a day. Neither can critically fail.

You also receive the following utility:

Family Support - Daily
Preparation time: 10 minutes
This utility requires an object of relatively high value, or a high sum of bits, typically enough to cover the monthly costs of supporting a family (or unexpected high costs such as roof repairs...). You send this object to your personal family to support them. Doing so resets all of your boon "daily limits" and gives you an additional use of "Letters from home", that can be used throughout any session (you can only have one such extra use at a time, however).

Nice. I like the idea. A few thoughts:

I like Tier 1, I think it's pretty balanced as it stands.

Tier 2: First benefit sounds good. Second one seems a bit odd flavor-wise, but could work. Third benefit seems a bit vague to me, and also perhaps slightly overpowered. (+40? Even the most powerful interrupts are only +20) Nice idea though. Fourth one seems fine.

Tier 3: First benefit sounds pretty good, though I'm not sure if destinies are supposed to work in combat. Second one sounds good, although the "breaking out of all restraints" might be a bit overpowered. Maybe just leave it at the making rolls into critical successes? For the third one, what exactly would count as rolling to prevent death? Like for a Heal check to stabilize someone's wounds? 'Cause if someone gets killed in combat you don't normally get to roll to stop it, I don't think.
Family Support, while a neat idea, seems a bit vague and counts on having an appropriate item to send. Maybe make it a 1/session use utility, with the flavor of sending some special message back to your kin?

Philadelphus wrote:Nice. I like the idea. A few thoughts:

I like Tier 1, I think it's pretty balanced as it stands.

Tier 2: First benefit sounds good. Second one seems a bit odd flavor-wise, but could work. Third benefit seems a bit vague to me, and also perhaps slightly overpowered. (+40? Even the most powerful interrupts are only +20) Nice idea though. Fourth one seems fine.

Tier 3: First benefit sounds pretty good, though I'm not sure if destinies are supposed to work in combat. Second one sounds good, although the "breaking out of all restraints" might be a bit overpowered. Maybe just leave it at the making rolls into critical successes? For the third one, what exactly would count as rolling to prevent death? Like for a Heal check to stabilize someone's wounds? 'Cause if someone gets killed in combat you don't normally get to roll to stop it, I don't think.
Family Support, while a neat idea, seems a bit vague and counts on having an appropriate item to send. Maybe make it a 1/session use utility, with the flavor of sending some special message back to your kin?

The +40 bonus is there merely to discourage/prevent DMs from trying to have the family permanently harmed or something similarly tragic as a plot point, or to prevent a tragedy due to bad rolls, or other DM schenanigans that could interfere with the destiny. Alternately, DMs could use this for clever manipulation without needing to worry about luck or player incompetence interfering. Plus, it encourages the player to actually care about them.

The tier-3 benefit isn't supposed to be combat-oriented, apart from the death-prevention thing. The 10 health is just a placeholder, in case combat occurs the moment you would have stopped faking unconsciousness (You'd start combat with 10hp and 0 PiPs). If you died in combat, you'd roll to "stabilize" yourself (you still cant be revived and are useless in battle, but you "survive", as you only appear to be dead and enemies ignore you). Out of combat, it would be for heal checks to stabilize yourself/others.

I like your idea of family support as well, but I think I'd have to nerf it then, to lose the bonus letters from home use (or at least prevent it from being session-transferrable).

Family Support - 1/Session
Preparation time: 10 minutes
You send a well-written, well-though, heart-felt letter or message to your personal family. Doing so resets all of your boon "daily limits" and gives you an additional use of "Letters from home". The additional use does not transfer through sessions.

Zarhon wrote:The tier-3 benefit isn't supposed to be combat-oriented, apart from the death-prevention thing. The 10 health is just a placeholder, in case combat occurs the moment you would have stopped faking unconsciousness (You'd start combat with 10hp and 0 PiPs).

I'm not saying it's combat-oriented, just that I'm not sure if destinies are supposed to have any combat effects. I don't have a problem with it as it stands, personally.

Zarhon wrote:If you died in combat, you'd roll to "stabilize" yourself (you still cant be revived and are useless in battle, but you "survive", as you only appear to be dead and enemies ignore you). Out of combat, it would be for heal checks to stabilize yourself/others.

What would you roll, and what would count as a success? I think as it stands, if you die in combat, that's it. You don't get any sort of "saving throw" or anything. I like the idea, but how would it work in practice?

Zarhon wrote:I like your idea of family support as well, but I think I'd have to nerf it then, to lose the bonus letters from home use (or at least prevent it from being session-transferrable).

Family Support - 1/Session
Preparation time: 10 minutes
You send a well-written, well-though, heart-felt letter or message to your personal family. Doing so resets all of your boon "daily limits" and gives you an additional use of "Letters from home". The additional use does not transfer through sessions.

This definitely feels more balanced to me. Good work.

Though an issue I just thought of: for the tier 3 ability

Zarhon wrote:- Triggering "Letters from home" whilst conscious automatically breaks you free of any form of physical, mental or supernatural imprisonment or restraints, as though you rolled a cutie mark critical success, as well as gain the normal roll effects.

On a first reading, this would appear to make the player impossible to capture/incarcerate/imprison as they could just break free using this power, simply waiting till the next day if they had already triggered their Letter From Home for the day. Or is it more like, if a character is chained up in a dungeon, they could use this power to break their chains but would still be in the dungeon? That would seem a bit more balanced (and dramatic).