If you've played a mini-campaign you know that there's no way to get reward cards that would normally come from side missions. Some of the missions in the mini-campaign are side missions and have their own rewards, and if your hero comes from the mini-campaign you might play their mission and get their reward. But there's no way, for example, for Diala to get her lightsaber in the Bespin Gambit campaign.

This isn't a huge deal (the designers obviously planned for it), but I was thinking about how you might include those rewards. @a1bert has come up with a system for integrating side missions into a mini-campaign, but I wanted a system that does it without increasing the length of the campaign.

So I realized that there are some side missions that award the rebels with Credits. I think the reward is usually about 100 credits per hero (sometimes it changes based on degree of success in the mission), which for 4 heroes is 400 credits. If that's the mission reward that's placed alongside other side missions as an option then maybe 400 credits is approximately the value of a lot of these mission rewards? So maybe you could add the side mission rewards to the item pool, or have a separate shop where you sell them for 400 credits each. Do you think that would be reasonable? Or does it depend too much on the particular reward? Or are credits missions a lot easier for the Rebels?

tl;dr: Could side mission rewards be offered in the item shop for 400 credits each, because that's the reward for a side mission that just awards credits?

Would you also be shuffling the reward cards into the item decks?

Shu-Yin's Lightsaber is probably worth around 400cr, but something like Shyla's Mandalorian Heritage would be worth around 600cr.

Probably not a bad way of doing things. For reference, though, lightsabers are a decent place to look, as they're awarded from multiple sources (mission reward, bought with credits, XP upgrade).

Diala's mission reward

Purchasable for 1000 Credits

Purchasable for 3 XP

Now, obviously these lightsabers are not all equal. The Ancient lightsaber is probably the best (depending on observation) but its surge abilities aren't really anything to write home about (and in fact, as long as Davith is hidden he has even better surge abilities, plus a guaranteed yellow die). In the hands of someone like Fenn, the Ancient Lightsaber would be demonstrably worse than shrouded. In the hands of Biv (observation a single blue die) it would be abysmal. But, we can assume our Rebels wouldn't spend 1,000 credits to give Biv this weapon- so, yes, it's extremely variable.

Diala's may be the one we're most interested in, as it's a reward. The surge abilities are okay- a pierce 3 that seems standard with lightsabers, but the +1 damage +2 cleave is likely to be important in campian, where the heroes are so often outnumbered Plus, it works pretty well with Diala's abilities. While the dice combination also gives her a guaranteed red die, it doesn't guarantee her any surges.

So, especially since Shu Yen's saber is guaranteed to go straight to Diala and the abilities set to her will always be available, I'd say it's both better than the Shrouded lightsaber and less situational than the Ancient Lightsaber- though not necessarily better across the board as the Ancient Lightsaber (in Diala's hand, it's actually quite good too).

But, to be honest, it's really hard to assign any sort of meaningful tangible value to rewards. Look at what we have so far- it's better than 3XP (as long as that XP is Diala's and she's spending it on a Shrouded lightsaber, which would never happen anyway as its impossible) but probably not quite as good as 1,000 credits (as long as that's 1,000 credits buying Diala an Ancient Lightsaber). It's all so incredibly subjective. Then, there are other rewards:

Just a kind of random spattering, but can one honestly say that any of these rewards are totally equal to one another? Is having C-3P0 and R2 on the field at the same time the same as having Diala's lightsaber? Is Relief Effort demonstrably better than Iron Hand? Is Under the Radar really worth it for some teams?

Really, it's impossible to say. But I'd say that 400 might be just a little too cheap (as the Rebels typically get 100 credits per hero at the end of a mission anyway, which basically gives them a reward for free). I'd guess around 500-600 should do it.

I dig this idea. You could also offer them to players as XP unlocks too, usually 2-3 covers most of their personal abilities.

I was thinking about hero-specific rewards only. The generic ones would need much more thought, or less, if it turns out that way.

"Roll a green die. The cost is the accuracy result times 50cr + 450cr."

So it looks like there would have to be some adjusting; I agree that some of them seem meaningfully more (or less) valuable than 400 credits. But 400 credits is probably a good starting point, and I could adjust a little in either direction as needed.

Maybe I could offer equipment rewards for 400 credits, and other rewards at an XP cost? Seems like 3XP is probably the norm for reward cards. I would probably have a separate reward card shop of 2-3 cards, as shuffling them into the item pool wouldn't necessarily make sense (and the card backs wouldn't match).

2 minutes ago, a1bert said:

I was thinking about hero-specific rewards only. The generic ones would need much more thought, or less, if it turns out that way.

Since the credits reward is a generic reward, maybe the other generic rewards are more balanced against it?

What if you sold the reward cards for Influence or IP-XP? You could look at the mission rewards for a rebel loss (or win) and tell your rebels they can purchase the reward card for 1 influence and 1 xp (for the IP) or similar. Again, I'd look at the mission results as a guide.

Are you going to let the Imperial buy any card they want too, like Imperial Industry?

1 hour ago, Union said:

Are you going to let the Imperial buy any card they want too, like Imperial Industry?

I was thinking about this; I would probably just change the mini-campaign rule about removing Mission cards from the agenda deck, and just say the Imperial gets the mission reward automatically if they spend influence on the mission.

10 hours ago, Stompburger said:

I was thinking about this; I would probably just change the mini-campaign rule about removing Mission cards from the agenda deck, and just say the Imperial gets the mission reward automatically if they spend influence on the mission.

The Imperial player gets really low influence. I haven't checked, but I think they'd be lucky if they could even buy one?

I have done it , i used 3-4 XP to purchase rewards. I also use that system, if a hero is playing a new campaign with the same character and they have already completed the side mission in a previous campaign.

9 hours ago, Union said:

The Imperial player gets really low influence. I haven't checked, but I think they'd be lucky if they could even buy one?

Okay, I'll have to take a look at that. Maybe there isn't a good way to adapt it to the Imperial side.

The minicampaigns are very low on influence. The regular minicampaign setup does not give any, normally the IP would have at least 2 influence at the corresponding mission in the long campaign. For the latest extended minicampaign I added 1 influence to the setup, but it will probably still be low. (And I won't even have agenda missions in this one.)