Personally I find it somewhat frustrating if none of the gadgets offered to a coglin feel “good”.
What would you think if instead of getting a choice of 3 at XL 14, you invent gadgets at XL 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 23 and 26. You can still only pick 1 gadget. You can pick the XL 8 gadget at any point after XL 8, or you can pick the 2nd gadget at a point after XL 11, or wait until XL 14 to have a choice between 3, etc, so if you never pick you have a choice between 7 gadgets at XL 26.
I think it would give a better feeling of agency, and also enable a good trade-of between “getting strength as soon as possible” and “getting the best gadget possible”.
3 Thanks
I don’t think so. In general, most people would just pick the XL8 gadget because there is no guarantee you will survive long enough to get the other choices, and the gadget helps with survival.
I’d like something more than the same Oka/?Acq one shot and you’re done mechanic.
XL8 is pretty early and you probably don’t have much to reskill with yet if the thing doesn’t match your needs. I’m not sure @petercordia 's OP will ever necessarily get an XL17+ roll unless RNG has just been shit, at which point you’re getting into feels bad territory… or RNG has been so good everywhere else that it doesn’t matter much and you’re just min-maxing your char.
But even a reroll if you stick it out a few levels… maybe something like the mutation mechanic so its like you’re tweaking the current set of things. Or you get to add to a single gadget every few levels with a random of egos. Like xl8 could be one of (slay, ac, ev, etc) then xl11 might be the rev and special type things, xl14 lets you pick a resist or something.
I’m certainly not married to my ideas, I just crapped them out in the last 30s… but I’d like to see something a bit more interesting than the one and done roll of the dice even if its as straightforward as the OP.