Question: I noticed Lugh lost Dexterity and Wits. As the god of skill this seems a strange choice since more skills require Dexterity than Strength. Wits also seems strange since it includes knacks like Jack of All Trades, Talent Mirror, and Don't Read The Manual which would be of great help to Lugh which makes more sense than claiming he has all skills maxed. Even the myth of his contest with Ogma is better explained with a use of Talent Mirror.
This question brings to light a common misconception in Scion: that if a god doesn't have an Attribute or Purview associated, they must not have any of it. I'm not sure where this idea comes from - after all, how many Scions buy only a couple of things to maximum and have absolutely nothing in any other areas? - but it's definitely not a viewpoint we share. Just because a god doesn't have Epic Wits associated with him doesn't mean he can't have, say, six dots of it. In fact, most gods probably do have at least a few dots in most Epic Attributes, and probably a smattering of boons across other purviews. There's just no reason they wouldn't, and it would certainly help explain weird cases in which gods do things that normally fall outside their purviews - say, when a war god heals his lame horse or a fertility god manages to blunder into the underworld.
So, in the case of Lugh, I'm sure he does have very serviceable Dexterity and Wits - but he's not a god of either, so he doesn't end up with them associated. As god of skills, it seems more likely to me that he just has those skills than that he's faking them with Epic Wits knacks; he doesn't need Jack of All Trades because he is actually a jack of all trades, all by himself. That's his thing. Lugh probably has ten dots in pretty much every ability, because that's what he's all about. And while it'd be difficult to have every Art/Control/Craft/Science imaginable maxed out, it only takes one dot of Epic Wits for Lugh to pick up Don't Read the Manual and Jack of All Trades. That's not enough of a reason for him to have Epic Wits associated; he doesn't have any myths in which he behaves particularly wittily or thinks on his feet more than anybody else. I'm sure he probably has five to seven dots of Epic Wits, but there's no reason for him to have it associated.
The myth of his contest with Ogma certainly could be a use of Talent Mirror, but it could also just be a straight-up normal contest; both have Strength and Thrown associated by our reckoning, so they're actually perfectly evenly matched without any need for Lugh to borrow Ogma's expertise. Lugh's already good at throwing things, as evidenced by the story of him spearing Balor's eye right out the back of his head; Lugh's big draw is that he has all the skills the other Tuatha have, not that he can kind of fake those skills for a scene.
Dexterity's basically the same story; while I'm sure he has a respectable number of dots of Epic Dexterity, enough to hit bad guys and successfully perform craft and skill abilities, he doesn't actually come off as a god of Dexterity. He's not particularly faster than anyone else, or more lithe, or renowned for deft hands, or anything like that. We didn't see any reason for him to have Epic Dexterity associated except for the same vague reasoning of "well, he's good at skill", but again that's more likely to be illustrated by him just having tons of dots in Abilities, not Epic Attributes. A goddess who weaves the fabric of the universe with her fingers has Epic Dexterity associated; a god who is so swift he can run across the world in the blink of an eye has Epic Dexterity associated. Lugh doesn't have any comparable Dexterity imagery or stories, so we dropped it like it was hot. Strength, on the other hand, not only plays into his contest with Ogma but also makes a strong showing when he hits Balor's eye so hard that it shoots out the back of his head. So Strength is in, Dexterity and Wits, neither of which have any real basis with Lugh other than vague association with skills, are out.
And at any rate, many of the skills Lugh boasts of having wouldn't have anything to do with Dexterity or Wits anyway. Being a physician, sorcerer, historian or poet, for example, all things he includes in his list of talents, are not exactly heavy Dexterity things; he's not talking about all manual labor tasks, he's talking about whole spheres of expertise, and those are best expressed as Abilities.
We spent a lot of time during our discussions over Lugh just wishing we could give him a zillion Abilities associated instead of just six. Or Arete. But alas, he is not Greek and has to remain fair in comparison to other deities when it comes to lending XP to his Scions, so we chose the six Abilities that seemed most strongly present in his stories and acknowledge that, should Lugh appear in person in a game, he is a goddamn dynamo of Ability dots far beyond just those six.
On a similar tack, I'd been meaning to ask: why'd he get Industry? I wouldn't have pegged him for a smith-god or creator-god.
ReplyDelete~terriblyuncreative
ohai, it's right there in his story section on his page: "offered to be a poet, a warrior, a CRAFTER, a sorcerer, a SMITH, a musician". Dur.
ReplyDelete~terriblyuncreative
Heh. While we wouldn't give it to him solely on the basis of that - after all, we didn't give him Health or Magic even though he calls himself a doctor and a sorcerer - Lugh actually does craft things in some of his stories and serves as the patron god of craftsmen and smiths, so it seemed appropriate.
ReplyDeletePatron god of crafters is also a big push in the direction of Industry. I then usually demand they have a story where they create something. The specifics are fuzzy, I'm sure anne will cite them in a second for me, but basically they need poison...or something...and so lugh builds 100 metal cows to brew it in..giant metal actually milkable cows...that milk poison.
ReplyDeleteYeah, in his quest to ruin Bres even though he totally said he was going to spare his life after he taught them agriculture, Lugh decides that the easiest way to get rid of him is to poison him by building a herd of fake poisonous cattle out of metal and wood, milking them, and then feeding the poison to Bres.
ReplyDeleteCraft gods. Can't just poison a dude the normal way.
I guess I can see your point about dexterity, but I think you guys are stuck on the idea that having those wits knacks means you are just faking it when it is the perfect way to represent a god who really is good at every skill. If you stopped thinking about them as fake dots then he would definitely still have wits. Also, he's an amazing improviser and the myths support that, so I've gotta say you made a mistake on this one.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it the perfect way to represent being good at every skill? If you actually know those skills(even having one dot in them) then you get nothing from the Wits knacks. Why would you stop thinking of them as fake dots? They represent your ability to think on your feet and figure out something you arent actually good at. But Lugh IS actually good at those things. Can you list the support him being an "amazing" improviser, and not just a good improviser?
ReplyDeleteAlso anne is posting at the same time. I assume she'll say similar but betterly worded things.
It's not the "fakeness" of the dots; it's just that Lugh should actually have those dots. He's the god of skills, not the god of improvisation. Since he's a playable god and things like XP bang-for-buck don't matter, there's no reason at all to assume he doesn't actually have them; why decide he's always doing those things off the cuff instead of that he's actually good at them, all the time, because that's what he's about? When you're talking about a guy who is god of skills, it seems totally zany to me that you would not give him all the skills and instead give him powers that make up for the deficit. That sounds like crazysauce.
ReplyDeleteNow, if Lugh were a PC Scion working his way up, I could totally see him just using a few Wits knacks and gaining legends about being epically skillful without actually having those skills; that would be totally legit from a player point of view. I wouldn't demand that player buy all the Ability dots instead of relying on knacks for some of them. But Lugh isn't a PC. He's a god, and that means we don't have to find backdoors or side reasons why he does what he does; he does it because that's what he's good at. That's what he's the god of.
I am actually going to side with the previous poster about Epic Wits being associated for Lugh. While Lugh probably does have all those skills maxed, if he had Epic Wits favored it would better represent his children having supernatural proficiency with skills. Your current version does not offer much to distinguish his children as being better at skills than any other god.
ReplyDeleteBut again, wits doesnt make them actually better at more things. It gives them the ability to pretend to be better at things for a short time. That is not the same thing.
ReplyDeleteI get the desire to give Scions something to represent Lugh's multi-talentedness beyond the normal six favored Abilities, but I don't think Wits is the way to do that. Not only is it still giving them psuedo-skills instead of a way to actually be good at skills, but it's literally only justified on the strength of three knacks, which you could get with a single measly point of Epic Wits (Talent Mirror wouldn't be super-useful without more dots, but the other two function just fine). Wits itself isn't even used to roll any skills except vehicle driving.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm not worried about the children of Lugh, and that's because they have their own version of Arete: Ability geasa. Something I would suggest any Irish Scion (even not of Lugh!) invest in heavily if they want to be awesome at all the skills, and something I'm sure Lugh himself is absolutely covered in. That geas type exists specifically because of Lugh the Unreasonably Multi-Faceted.
If one can 'pretend' to be better at things all the time does that not make one effectively better at things all the time? Legendary Geas makes even a 1 die stunt sufficient to power Jack of All Trades infinitely, and that assumes your players are not pulling 2 die stunts constantly.
ReplyDeleteWhile Don't Read the Manual confers only a single dot, Jack of All Trades reads "as if she had dots equal to her Epic Wits dots in that ability". Also, wits is used any time speed is a concern. Page 176 of Hero references Wits + Occult, Page 185 references Wits + Science, page 186 references Wits + Survival, Page 197 & 198 references Wits + Medicine. You can literally substitute wits as the governing attribute any time there are time limitations on trying to accomplish tasks that are not remarkably difficult.
As for Ability Geasa, that would indeed go a long way towards helping a character follow in the footsteps of their divine father but the player has no ability to control what geasa he is going to get so it falls into the realm of Storyteller Fiat.
No. That does not effectively do that. It mechanically does it, but that is not the same. Whenever we get to talking about gods and the conversations leans to something like "well, he could just pay x legend from this to power this and that and this" we try to reroute ourselves to the myths. We try to never base associateds on what can they do in the world of scion with different amounts of legend. And never do we say "well he could have used this knack, so he has to have the attribute associated".
ReplyDeleteWe try to focus on the actual myths, and the things they actually do.
Wits can be used with many abilities. No one is arguing that.
We are saying, in myth, Lugh is God of doing all these things. Not God of doing all these things in super witty time crunch situations. He can do the things just as well quickly as he can over long periods of time. He is not just an emergency surgeon, but also a strong doctor. He has all these abilities all the time.
As a side note, if you want to get technical, he doesnt have jack of all trades either. Because he needs Bres to teach him agriculture, because he has no idea how to do it. So if you were coming from a which knack might he have point of view(which we arent, but you are), he doesnt have jack of all trades.
If you have some examples of him actually using world changing levels of witsin his myths, and not actually just being a god who has pretty average wits. I would love to hear them. And Im not being sarcastic. I really enjoy hearing new myths I havnt heard before.
That seems like a tall order since it hinges entirely upon your opinion of what makes average wits versus world changing levels of wits. For example, the fact that he came up with a clever way to gain entrance to Nuada's court could be evidence of astounding wit but then you could say it demonstrates merely average wit. The fact that he came up with a clever way to trick Bres into drinking poison could be evidence of astounding wit but then you could say it demonstrates merely average wit. The fact that he is identified as a sorcerer capable of performing miracles of fire, divination, and fortune would indicate not just some facility with magic but also with at least one epic attribute affiliated heavily with that purview.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, your arguments about him being talented at skills regardless of the need to be fast or do it slow lends support to him being both a god associated with Wits AND/OR Intelligence. Intelligence for knowing his crafts and learning skills swiftly and Wits for his clever ideas, facility with sorcery, and covering any skills that he might lack. On a humorous academic note, Intelligence and Wits are also possessed by Loki who some anthropologists and historians theorize has strong roots in Lugh.
But I think I am getting ahead of myself here. I would like to know if anything short of an astounding act of rhetoric is going to convince you to change your minds, because I do not want to invest the time doing even more research than I already have if the decision is immutable.
"The fact that he is identified as a sorcerer capable of performing miracles of fire, divination, and fortune"
ReplyDeleteCitation needed. He mentions he is a sorceror, the rest is BS. He certainly performs zero miracles related to the two.
"would indicate not just some facility with magic but also with at least one epic attribute affiliated heavily with that purview. "
We never ever give someone skills just because they are related to a purview, nor vice versa. You have to get magic on your merit in magic, and wits on your merits in wits.
Being good at many skills does not mean you are a genius. It means your good at many skills. Your conflation of these different ideas continually is disturbing. There are several Irish Gods known as wise, praised at being incredibly wise. Lugh is not one of them.
Our Loki doesnt have intelligence(like most gods), and anthropologists love tying up gods with similar names. Its an easy doctoral thesis.
I despise rhetoric, so Im not sure what you're getting at. But if shown to be wrong we'll happily change anything we have. Our rules are always in a constant stage of adjustment based on constant learning and play testing. However, our project to rework each pantheons associateds clocks in around 250 man hours per pantheon. We read all the first hand(or second hand when a written original accounts arent available because of lack of literacy on the part of the culture), we read several(8 for the celts) comparative and scholarly works on the subject, and then we double check the internet to see if we missed anything. Not to mention long debates that slowly wittle down the associateds(originally wits and intelligence were both on the table for Lugh). So if you want to put in similar time and effort and come up with some good sources we may have missed or different ways to look at things that prove to us he should have wits. We'll certainly change it. However the stories you list above are a level of wits that 75% of gods have. We arent going to give 75% of them wits associated.
Sure, let me see if I can dig up some good sources for you in next couple of days.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the mechanics of Scion is that they place a finite limit upon merit. For example, a death god without charisma is going to be less proficient at most death boons than a god that does have charisma. It's an unfortunate limitation of the system that has tangible consequences in the game. But this just goes back to our difference of opinion where I state that being good at something is an aggregate of Attribute and Ability and you start that being good at something is Ability only.
Specifically regarding Wits, which is the actual topic, I really don't know what to tell you. If you don't think that coming up with the idea that resulted in Bres being poisoned counts as being sufficiently 'world changing' as far as the Celts are concerned then I don't see how I can convince you that it probably was.
In fact, the only way to get a good metric for what you consider sufficiently 'world changing' is for you to list a couple of examples of myths that you think qualify a god as Epic Wits Associated. What we're looking for is something really definitive, where another person would be hard pressed to say "That sounds more like Epic Wits 7 to me, not Epic Wits 8"
Not to get too far into the melee here, but a couple of notes: we've moved away from the eight dots of Epics level at which gods get something associated. It was weird to begin with - more gods tend to be strongly associated with purviews than with attributes anyway - and we didn't much like it. When we talk about someone being associated with an attribute, we're assuming they have the Ultimate in that attribute, just like someone associated with a purview has the Avatar. It's not anybody here's fault that wasn't clear - we haven't finished our Ultimates tinkering and that rule needs to be on the house rules page, so our bad there - but it makes a significant difference between a god with seven Epic Wits and a god with Epic Wits associated.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree, there is a weird conundrum in Scion where, because Attributes and Abilities affect your purview rolls, certain gods are "less good" at their purviews than others; the Death god with Ultimate Charisma is generally going to better than the Death god without it (unless that Death god is cheating with Arete, Hades). But the fact remains that lots of gods with Death are also pretty Charisma-less, and we're not going to give them Charisma associated just because the purview they like to use uses it; they don't have Charisma. They just don't.
Our Fatebond system, in all its insane, clunky glory (oh, lord, I need to update that, too), is intended to in part redress this failing in the system; even an Earth god who doesn't have a ton of Strength can pull off some amazing earthquakes thanks to the power of humanity believing he can do it. Gods that are stuck with a purview that they aren't attribute-maximized for aren't bad at build; they just ended up with certain things because Fate and the power of their own Legends pushed them into it.
Luckily, as I said above, gods aren't PCs, so we don't really have to worry about whether or not they're all super-maximized in specific areas. That's a problem for PCs, and in fact the slightly less-than-perfect nature of gods' stats is a pretty great thing once you have god-level PCs running around; not only are they actually on track to be better than their parents when they hit Legend 12, thus becoming the big cheeses of the universe if they play their cards right, but they can have seriously cool moments wherein they discover that they can do something a higher-Legend god can't thanks to their better stat setup.
My favorite to date, I think, was the scene in which a Legend 8 Aurora asked Baron Samedi to remove a Demand a Labor someone had dropped on her; when he failed the first time due to his lack of as much Epic Manipulation as the spell's original caster, she had to pile on with Trading Fates and various other buffs to help him succeed, which not only made the player feel like hot shit but also resulted in a pretty entertaining flounce in-game.
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ReplyDeleteThat is a very insightful post you have written Anne. On the one hand I still think there are enough instances of Lugh being clever that it probably justifies even having Ultimate Wits, there are just about as many myths involving him coming up with a clever solution as there are about him being incredibly strong. The real point of contention is just how clever do you have to be before you become associated with being clever.
ReplyDeleteEven though your rule about Epic Attributes being 11 dots instead of 8 dots is not on the house rules section I want to say that I really enjoy that rule. As a storyteller I always feel a little cramped by unassociated Epic Attributes being limited to 7 and your proposed change goes a long way towards ensuring that gods can have whatever epic attribute spread you want them to have without feeling like you are just hand waving a god to be better at something. I look forward to seeing the final version of that rule. My only concern would be the wealth of Legend 9-11 gods with nothing associated but their PSP.
But I'll do some digging in the next couple of days.
O yeah. Thats a very good point.
ReplyDeleteLong ago I looked at the scion rules and how gods got associated purviews and thought to myself, "that is strange". I get that it makes sure new gods have at least some associateds, but it makes their progress through god very strange, and makes some gods attribute set very difficult to work with.
For example, Sangria would already have wits, strength, dex, stamina associated.
The solution to this, was:
At legend 9 you get your highest purview associated automatically(You automatically get your 8th dot in a purview when you hit god in our system, so you get to choose whichi purview as long as you already had been building it).
then at legend 10 you get to choose a purview or an epic associated, and again at legend 11.
The choices at 10 and 11 are based on which of the purviews or attributes you have the most fatebonds to, or if there is a tie you can choose.
At legend 12 you get those 3 and anything else that you get ultimates or avatar in.
This streamlined acquisition of associateds and solved a lot of problems with most gods. Especially ones like Lugh.
Im certain that lugh has 8 epic dex and wits, and probably intelligence, and maybe also stamina, and appearance, and perception.
But that creates some gods with a LOT of associateds. Instead Im able to stat out gods however I think they should be, and only give them their few associateds that we find extremely prevalent in their myths.
That method seems quite interesting and could work very well for a lot of gods instead of having a sudden explosive of Epic Attributes associated at L9 and a subsequent explosion of Avatars at L12.
ReplyDeleteThough it is somewhat enlightening that it means GBN considers such gods as Persephone, Ares, Artemis, and Aphrodite (and I just browsed a single pantheon) to be Legend 11 since they only have 3 associates.
Not at all, they're Legend 12! But they didn't exhibit in more than three purviews, so that's all they've got. In the specific case of the Dodekatheon, they can get away with that because they have Arete instead; they probably have several Aretes maxed instead of having other associated purviews/attributes. (Which is a neat solution, since Greek gods tend to really focus on one thing and not branch out a bunch.)
ReplyDeleteOther, sans-Arete pantheons currently have a hard rule of a minimum of four associateds for Legend 12 gods.
Greek gods are generally gods of very specific things. You picked the only pantheon that has gods with only 3 associateds.
ReplyDeleteNo one gains associateds at legend 12. They just get all things they have ultimates and avatars in. Those gods dont have anything besides the original 3 they have by legend 11.