Boons

Boon is the general name for a host of abilities that make the Hero more effective. These are abilities the Hero pays xp for and in general can not be permanently lost or taken away. Which is not to say they can’t be temporarily lost.

Whenever the Hero is trying to do something uncertain the player makes their Attribute Roll which consists of rolling the die for each attribute and adding up the total.

• Boons allow the player to roll one or more attributes with some level of advantage.

• Each attribute can have up to one boon during any given attribute roll.

• Boons do not stack on a single attribute.

The Boon is attached to a specific attribute based on the Strategy of the attribute roll, and has an appropriate die size based on that attribute.

Boons are not inherently tied to specific Attributes, but some Boons have clear pre-dispositions. It is pretty easy to tell a story about how Strong Arm is used with Power, it’s trickier to tell a story of how it’s used for Precision. Depending on circumstances, a Boon like Sniper Rifle could easily be used for the Power, Precision or Possibility die.

Boons come in four types: Talents, Gear, Kith and Locations.

In Gnosis, Excalibur and an Orbital Death Laser are equally impactful in most games where they might appear. They are probably both tier 3 Boons in most games. The key question is how effective they are in helping Heroes overcome challenges.

Tiers

Boons are rated in tiers from 1-3 which corresponds to how many advantage dice are rolled with an attribute. No matter how many dice are rolled, only one die, usually the highest, is used for each attribute.

Tier	Advantage Dice
Tier 1	+1 advantage die
Tier 2	+2 advantage dice
Tier 3	+3 advantage dice

Rolling a d12 with a tier 2 Boon would cause the player to roll 3d12 and choose the highest die.

Players may not start with tier 3 Boons and even after play they take work to acquire and usually only apply to narrow circumstances.

Maximum Tier vs Effective Tier

The descriptions of Boons will discuss the criteria for a Boon being of each tier, but this is the maximum possible tier for a given Boon, and Heroes may purchase a Boon at a lower tier than its maximum, and for many types of Boons higher tier versions are bought on top of lower tier equivalents. A tier 2 Talent, Doctor of Physics is built on top of its tier 1 equivalent, University Professor.

Even for Boons that don’t have this sort of hierarchy, a Boon can always be bought at less than its maximum potential, with the understanding that the Hero hasn’t yet mastered its full potential.

While Excalibur is a tier 3 gear, that’s really its maximum potential tier, while Swords and Daggers will never exceed tier 1.

Example

When Talia was a young girl, she had no special skills but got in a fight anyway. Her player made an attribute roll which was a simply a d12+d10+d8 with no advantage.

Later she acquired a tier 2 Magical Dagger, but she only had 10xp so bought it as a regular Dagger.

When she next gets into a fight her player uses her Dagger with her Precision attribute which is her d12, so her player rolls two d12s and chooses the highest one and adds it to her d10+d8. If it had been a Magical Warhammer it would likely have had to go with her Power attribute.

Much later she has a whole set of Boons to choose from, including full use of her Magical Dagger. When in a fight her go to Strategy is tier 2 Magical Dagger, tier 1 Tough Skinned and tier 1 Seams and Gaps.

At this point when her player rolls an attribute roll using this preferred Strategy, they roll 3d12 for Precision, 2d10 for Power and 2d8 for Possibility, and choose the highest d12, d10 and d8 from the roll and add them up.