Question: The Monkey King as you have statted him doesn't have Epic Dexterity associated with him. Why is that, exactly?
It's because of that one player. You know that one player. Everybody has him (or in this case her) from time to time.
She was that one player that, to use old World of Darkness terminology, was just out to get the Holy Trinity: she wanted Strength, Dexterity and Stamina as associated and damn the rest. There wouldn't be anything wrong with this under normal circumstances, but she had no idea who Sun Wukong was, had no interest in learning his legends and had no character concept beyond "I want to be better at killing the monsters than everyone else". No matter how much we tried to guide her toward considering other deities who were also famed badasses or at least coming up with a concept that was more solid than "I want to punch things until I win", she would not let go of the Handsome Monkey King. It wasn't because she liked him, which is a pity because he's pretty epically hilarious; she just wanted the XP discount on playing a minmaxed combat monster.
Obviously, it's difficult to construct meaningful stories when one of your five players can't see past the XP to come up with a personality, so we were a bit stumped. Our quick-fix solution was to bring Sun Wukong down to the level of other deities, thus forcing her to make decisions based on more than just how many points she could get toward stabbing people in the face (incidentally, Ryujin got the same treatment, though in his case there was much less reason for him to have all three physical attributes associated anyway). Dexterity was the one that got cut, not because Sun Wukong probably doesn't have it, but because the avalanche of evidence for Strength and Stamina was so intense that we couldn't imagine cutting either of those.
But you're right: Sun Wukong ends up with kind of the short end of the stick. It's my opinion that he should have all three physicals, and we'll probably be restoring it to him as soon as we get to revamping the associateds for the Celestial Bureaucracy (we're currently about halfway through our odyssey through the pantheons, so it won't be tomorrow but it should hopefully be pretty soon). I would go right ahead with letting his Scions have all three associated - this is a case where our edits just haven't caught up to the website quite yet.
Incidentally, while that player did stick with playing a Scion of Ryujin, she ended up coming up with a character who was actually full of personality and a lot of fun for the duration of her run as well as being a very capably badass swordswoman.
Doesn't Houyi also have Strength/Dexterity/Stamina? Or was Animal/Chaos/War a sexier combo than just having Sun associated?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure you guys have HR'd both of these examples, and I can't think of any others offhand, however: what are your feelings on the 'Holy Trinity' when it's applied to Mental or Social Attributes (specifically, Odin or Aphrodite)?
terriblyuncreative
I personally dont have a problem with social/mental holy trinity. It just doesnt seem to come up as much(if ever). Anne can correct me if she finds one(she'll actually look through all the characters instead of doing off the top of her head). But I dont think we've ever had a character work towards maxing all their mentals or all their physicals. I think someone who is aiming to go for max mentals or socials usually has a character concept in mind. However, with physicals, it seems that any character that wants to be a fighter type at all feels the need to max all physicals.
ReplyDeleteHouyi doesnt have stam in our version. We did our run through chinese about a year ago(maybe longer). The reasoning isnt fresh in my mind. However we recently spent a few months in deep study on the asian religions and we really should re investigate them(you know....when there is time..)
He's right; we've never had anybody try to go for all three of either socials or mentals. I think it's a function of the fact that they're so different in playstyle; using Manipulation is vastly different from using Charisma, for example, and having a bunch of Wits is very different from having a bunch of Perception. They aren't "trinities" that players seem to have any interest in trying to conquer together. I think there's also a factor at work of not being able to realistically, because almost everybody needs at least some physical stats, so focusing exclusively on socials and mentals is likely to get you killed.
ReplyDeleteBut, as John pointed out, people automatically lump the three physicals together as "if I buy these and ignore everything else, I can still win the game". And for some characters, that's a valid choice; Eztli and Zwazo Fou Fou, for example, are holy trinity maxers, and that works for them. But they both arrived there through in-game roleplaying and soldiered through buying the one that wasn't automatically associated for them (Dexterity, in both cases). The holy trinity nerf wasn't meant to stop people from becoming badasses in all three physicals if that's what they really want; it was meant to encourage players to look at more than just point spread when making characters. Everybody does look at point spread, of course, but it's nice to have them also looking at flavor, myth and character personality at the same time.
In any case, Sun Wukong will probably get his Dexterity back so he can go on somersaulting across the entire world in one bound and other ridiculousness of that nature. Ryujin probably will not, because I can't come up with a single reason the cranky old dragon had Dexterity in the first place, and Houyi will probably stay sans-Stamina considering that he was beaten to death by a bunch of mortals (though he does get resurrected, so the jury may still be out on him).