Granting Rewards

You should have as much fun giving out treasure, Renown, wealth, and titles to the characters as the players have earning those rewards (see Chapter 13: Rewards). But what's the right amount of treasure to give out without turning the heroes into total badasses who can simply cut down every dragon they meet? How often do the rules of the game expect a hero to earn Renown? What about titles? This section has answers for you!

Granting Treasures

Whenever you're planning on awarding treasures to the heroes, focus on items that are useful. Finding a magic bow isn't likely to excite a group that doesn't have a hero who loves ranged weapon combat. The players might even tell you (or you can ask) which treasures their heroes most desire.

Once you have treasures in mind, you can use the following progression as a baseline for the heroes to earn those treasures:

A party should earn two leveled treasures per hero by 10th level. Some heroes need only one leveled treasure to be happy, though, so if you feel as if giving out another leveled treasure wouldn't actually help a character, you can swap that item out for a trinket of the character's current echelon.
A party should earn one trinket per hero per echelon. Any trinket earned should be of a character's current echelon or lower.
A party should also earn one to three consumables of their current echelon or lower each level.

You don't have to award the full complement of treasure to heroes especially those using their downtime to craft things! You can spread out the pace at which characters earn treasures by having them find the project sources and item prerequisites for crafting an item instead of finding an item outright.

When you're planning an adventure, put the treasures and crafting materials the heroes can earn into your adventure outline (see Creating Adventures earlier in this chapter). Enemies who have access to treasures that can help them against the heroes don't keep those treasures hidden away. They use them in battle, after which victorious characters can claim them!

Treasures Above 1st Level

For a campaign in which the heroes start at 2nd level or higher, you can give those heroes the following starting treasures:

At 1st echelon, each hero starts with a 1st-echelon trinket.
At 2nd echelon, each hero starts with a leveled treasure and a 1st-echelon trinket.
At 3rd echelon, each hero starts with two leveled treasures, a 1st-echelon trinket, and a 2nd-echelon trinket.
At 4th echelon, each hero starts with two leveled treasures, a 1st-echelon trinket, a 2nd-echelon trinket, and a 3rd-echelon trinket.

The players can choose their hero's treasures, and can replace any leveled treasure or trinket for a consumable treasure of the hero's echelon or lower.

Making New Treasures

You can easily create new types of leveled treasures for heroes to find using the enhancements from the Imbue Treasure project in Chapter 12: Downtime Projects.

You can also take any of the treasures in this book and easily reskin them. Do you wish Gecko Gloves were actually boots? Just change the description and the Hands keywords and you're good to go. Do you want the Icemaker Maul to be a dagger that creates pools of acid instead of an ice field? Change the Heavy Weapon keyword and swap the damage types, and you're ready to rock! Simply changing keywords, damage, and descriptions for treasures isn't going to break the game.

Awarding Titles

You don't need to grant heroes every title they qualify for. In fact, you probably shouldn't, lest they become too powerful too fast. As a general guideline, a hero should gain a new title about every other level, which you can accomplish using either of the following options:

You can grant a hero a title during a significant moment in a campaign, such as after defeating a villain. The heroes are each awarded a title they earned that is chosen by you.
You can allow a hero to choose a title they've earned from the titles available at their echelon each time they achieve an even-numbered level.

You should check in with your players occasionally to see if they have any specific titles they want to earn, then give them a chance to earn those titles. Doing so gets the players more involved in the campaign and gets the characters more driven to adventure.

Awarding Renown

The heroes earn Renown whenever they do something of significance, such as saving a town or... well, saving the world! As a general guideline, heroes should earn 1 Renown per level.

If you want the characters to be less famous than in a standard heroic tale, you can adjust this to give out Renown every other level. Alternatively, you can award Renown after each adventure if you want the heroes to become power players in the world more quickly.

How Many Retainers?

You can set limits on the number of retainers the heroes can have in their service. For a large group of heroes, having too many retainers can make combat complex, long, and unwieldy. Likewise, retainers are a great way to help a smaller group of heroes stand up to larger challenges. In general, it's a good idea to use retainers to help the heroes get the size of their party up to four but no larger than seven.

Granting Wealth

The heroes increase their wealth whenever they score a big payday or recover a huge hoard of treasure. Characters should earn 1 wealth every second level.

Awarding Hero Tokens

You can award hero tokens to the players for taking risks with their heroes beyond what the game typically expects of them. For instance, battling a group of monsters is part of the game and doesn't earn a hero token. However, the following activities might:

A hero stands alone against a group of enemies to allow their comrades to escape.
A hero willingly jumps into quicksand, into lava, off a cliff, or into similar peril to save another character.
The group is presented with an easy way out of a difficult situation that involves lying, cheating, stealing, or the like, but they take the more arduous and honorable path.
A hero gives away an important resource, such as a Healing Potion, to help another creature in need.

Awarding Victories

Use the following guidelines for awarding Victories to the heroes, increasing these values as desired for notably difficult challenges.

Combat Encounters

A successful combat encounter in which the party's objectives are achieved earns each hero 1 Victory. Particularly difficult encounters are worth 2 Victories when completed successfully. Draw Steel: Monsters has more information about Victories and combat difficulty.

Montage Tests

Each hero earns 1 Victory when they achieve total success on an easy or moderate montage test, and 2 Victories for total success on a hard montage test. They earn 1 Victory if they achieve a partial success on a moderate or hard montage test.

Negotiation

Each hero earns 1 Victory if the party ends a Negotiation with an NPC's interest at 3 or higher, with that interest 2 or more higher than it started, and with agreement on a deal.

Hazards and Traps

If the heroes overcome a complicated hazard or trap that required multiple tests to detect and survive, each earns 1 Victory.

Puzzles

If the heroes solve a complicated puzzle that feels to you as if it would take most people at least 10 minutes to complete, each earns 1 Victory.

Story Goals

If the heroes achieve a major story goal that accomplishes a quest, such as saving a prince trapped by an evil baron or stopping a necromancer from performing a world-ending ritual, each earns 1 Victory.

Clever Thinking

If the heroes use clever thinking to easily and surprisingly overcome or bypass a combat encounter, a negotiation, a montage test, a trap, a puzzle, or some other challenge that would have awarded them 1 or more Victories in a more difficult fashion, award each character the Victories they would have earned had they faced and overcome the problem head on.