As a narrator, you are in control of the rewards the legends get, when they gain a level and what kind of artifacts/trinkets they can get. We got some tips on how to manage this to (hopefully) make it satisfying for your legends.
Rewarding using Levels
Every player wants to see their legend get stronger. A big part of this is leveling up: A Legend will get core stats (which gives ability points and battle stats) and a new class skill. it is important that you find a good timing for this. Late Legends does not include an experience system, and this is for a reason: the narrator should be in control of when the group of legends gains a level. This will remove all the meta-gaming aspects of grinding for experience and will let you be the judge of when they’ve earned it.
Here are some tips on how to handle the level gains:
- Be sure to level all the legends at the same time, you should not be punishing any bad behavior with level penalties.
- At the end of a session is usually the best time to announce a level up, this will not clutter the story, the ones that immediately want to level can do so, while the others can do it at a later time. This also ends the session on a high point, which is always nice.
- Level up can be given after battling lots of monsters, but also take social interactions into account. If a legend has never helped anyone in his life, it is a big step forward if he helped someone, no matter how small the task was.
Rewarding using Artifacts / Trinkets
In a story, the Legends may have found something in a dungeon by solving a hard riddle or won a prize in a singing contest. No matter the reason, you can reward them with trinkets and artifacts. Trinkets give the legends something fun for role-playing (non-battle) and artifacts are purely for battle (either battle stats or a skill).
Here are some tips on rewarding trinkets and artifacts:
- When introducing this for the first time, be sure to give something to all legends (or something that can be useful for all legends).
- Be sure to give artifacts that help the legends, it should give battle stat increases or skills that make battles more interesting for the player.
- If an artifact or trinket is a way too impactful and not fun anymore, you can try to find a narrative reason for the item to not work anymore. Maybe it ran out of magical power, is it cursed and will it wound the user or will it just break after a certain amount of uses.
Be sure to check the Artifact list and the Trinket list for inspiration.
A quest for the class Ultimate
A legend gains their class ultimate on level 6 by default. You can change this and instead keep it for a special dungeon or quest (this means it can be gained whenever it is appropriate in the story). This can be a dungeon that is themed after the Legend or some kind of nightmare realm where they truly face their fears. A dungeon like this could really drive home a legend’s motivations in the story, giving more perspective on their backstory that might have been overlooked up until that moment. Maybe you could even let the player storytell the dungeon, allowing them to add all neat details while you play a side character for the time being. It can be really fun and add to the specialty. Of course, by the end of the dungeon, the legend would learn their class ultimate!