The Dilemma
TL;DR Version: I want to come up with a minor Benefit that all Kits can use to reward characters who follow a classic fantasy archetype (anytime when the archetype isn't just automatically encouraged by the game's mechanics).
Ideas I've Played With
Idea: Have Kits give players a Bonus Talent whenever they fulfill an Optional Prerequisite.
- Pros: Talents are easy to come up with. They don't add any complexity to the system that's not already there.
Cons: When I tried to build some high-level sample characters using this method, the number of Talents they ended up with started to feel pretty overwhelming. Also, if an Optional Prerequisite consists of just a Talent, that Talent essentially becomes a free option for the Kit ... maybe that's not a bad thing, but it just felt like the reward was a little too big.
Idea: Give players Talents for fulfilling Optional Prerequisites, instead of getting Talents normally as they level up.
- Pros: This led to much more reasonable numbers of Talents on a character.
Cons: This means every Kit more or less needs to have Optional Prerequisites attached to it, even if it's something like Wizard that's easy to write meaningful Benefits for anyway. Worse, sometimes characters would get stuck in a rut where they were having trouble qualifying for any new Optional Prerequisites from any of their Kits, so they would go several levels without gaining any new Talents ... and then, when they finally got ahold of a Talent, they used it to fill an Optional Prerquisite, which gave them another Talent, and so forth. So they got a bunch of Talents at once in a cascade effect. That's a terrible way to have characters grow and develop in an RPG.
Idea: Grant XP Bonuses for fulfilling Optional Prerequisites. (And I'm pretty sure I would go with one-time XP bonuses, not +10% XP bonuses like the old 2e rules.)
- Pros: A very meaningful benefit for PCs, yet also totally optional. Aesthetically, it's kind of nice to tie XP to the character-building mechanics in a new way, since they often seem oddly separated.
Cons: Meaningless to NPCs, generally. Also, can lead to different party members leveling up at different times instead of the whole party leveling up together. Some groups like that, but I tend to find it means slowing down play as some players wait for other players' characters to level up.
Idea: When characters roll to gain Momentum at the start of combat, instead of adding their Heroic Bonus (or anything else) to the roll, have them add a number equal to the Optional Prerequisites they've fulfilled for their Kits.
- Pros: A good very-minor benefit that all characters will find useful. And I really do want Momentum to be one of the defining pieces of the CRE8 system.
Cons: Involves adding another number to the character sheet. And another stat to the character sheet, just to rate how archetypical a character is. One of my friends really dislikes this idea. Feels inelegant.
Idea: When characters roll to gain Momentum at the start of combat, they still add their Heroic Bonus to their d20 roll, but the DC they have to meet is lower if they have fulfilled their Kits' Optional Prerequisites.
- Pros: Again, a very minor benefit that will still tempt any character. Feels a less redundant. This is currently what I'm leaning towards using.
Cons: Still involves adding another number to the character sheet that wasn't there before.
Any votes? Or even better, brilliant new suggestions?