A bit of a noob to Runebound (let alone rpg board games) but I had a thought.

When Leveling what about to force an encounter level change (from green to yellow or yellow to blue etc...) every 3 or 4 levels?

And/or still allowing you to take a lower color level challenge from the level you are at however you get no xp. for it but do get the reward. Being an old D&D player I steal the idea from the idea that you can still fight lower level creatures but you just don't get the xp for it. I like this because it doesnt make the low level cards obsolete and also a way you can make a quick buck. To offset this (mainly for 2+ player games) you are "wasting" time when the other player(s) may be leveling up and moving towards the end.

Love the game, just thinking about more detail. It was rough coming off of Arkham Horror to this. Both are amazing games...now just to find a great Sci-fi board game with PCs (as opposed to a empire build set up).

Thanks to all on these boards, love reading them

There's a good house rule that I like that says each level increases the XP required. So your first XP token only needs 1 Xp to buy, then 2 then 3, etc. I forget off the top of my head if there was a cap but there probably was (maybe 5?) Anyway, it makes it easy to get power when starting up, but sort of forces you to move on to higher challenges in order to keep up with the increasing cost of tokens. You can still stick to greens forever if you want, but other players will quickly outpace you in power.

The only time you can't fight/encounter 'lower' level encounters if if you purchase +1 hearts with your XP.

The first time you gain a +1 heart token you can no longer draw green encounters. When you gain your 2nd +1 heart token you can no longer encounter green and yellow encounters. After you gain your 3rd +1 heart token you can not ecnounter green, yellow and purple encounters. You cannot gain a 4th +1 heart token because then you could not encounter red cards.

+1 heart tokens are the only thing that prevent you from drawning a certain color encounter.