Question: Some of your players have spent tons of experience on Art, Control, Craft, or Science. Why don't you use knacks like Divine Arts from Modern Mythos?
Mostly because we don't want to, really. We like the wide variety of specialized abilities and how they let a player personalize a character into exactly what skills they most want to be known for. Giving a character Art (All) strikes us as boring, taking away all the interesting flavor of different kinds of arts and lumping them into a generalization, and it also brings up weird questions - like, if Vivian has nine dots of Art (All) but the Dexterity of a three-legged chihuahua, somehow she's a master contortionist as well as being good at whatever arts she had in mind that made more sense for her character. More to the point, however, it's just always seemed like more fun to have specializations to us; sure, always being able to roll your Science (All) is nice, but there's a special sort of joy to being able to say, "Ooh! Ooh! I have Science (Botany) - I bet I can figure this plant monster out!" or "Well, I have Craft (Jet Fuel)... so I have invented a car that is jet-powered. Everyone hold on." We enable that whenever possible.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with something like Modern Mythos' Divine Arts or Secrets of Science; on the contrary, if your game doesn't feel like fiddling with specialized skills or feels bogged down by all the options, it's an elegant solution that lets players feel like their points in those abilities are well-spent and they won't be caught flat-footed without the appropriate Craft or Control. It's a matter of flavor in the end; we prefer them specialized, lots of people don't, so I'd encourage any Storyteller to see which one you like better for your game and run with it.
We actually offset the many possibilities of specialized abilities with knacks like Born Behind the Wheel, Polymath, Renaissance (Wo)Man and Smith Among Gods, which provide free dots in new specializations. They're basically the same idea as the Modern Mythos knacks - making it easy for Control/Craft/Art/Science characters to get a lot of bang for their buck - but they do it by encouraging specialization and unique talents instead of by providing a generalized umbrella skill.
We've actually been talking a lot lately about possibly making Academics a specialized skill, too, so that characters could invest in Academics (European History) or Academics (Dead Languages). But that's a project for another day!
My biggest worry about spreading the specialization is a slippery slope issue of where does it end? Does Occult get specialized into Occult (Giants), Occult (Norse Myths), Occult (Titans), etc? Medicine almost screams to be specialized. What about Melee, where using a sword has little to do with using a fighting chain? Archery hasn't got a lot to do with sharpshooting, either. Really, over half the Abilities in Scion could be specialized to nearly infinity.
ReplyDeleteI'm not even a big fan of using the existing specialities, but I go along with it. Instead of using Brent's Knacks, I roll that functionality into Ultimate Abilities. When someone learns Ultimate Art, they convert their highest-rated Art into Art (Anything) and get an XP refund for any now-useless Art traits. It makes sense to me that when someone masters every function of an Ability (by learning the Ultimate), they don't need to be bound by mortal limits like specializations.
I do like that someone who specializes in Botany is especially useful when faced with plant monsters, but I'd probably be tempted to come up with a system that rewards players for working inside their specialization instead of punishing them for moving outside it.
We tend to give spot bonuses for good use of specializations - for example, the other day the EP band was trying to identify a weird music coming from seemingly nowhere, and we gave Mohini five extra dice when she pointed out that she had Art (Sitar) and was therefore something of a connoisseur of stringed instruments. It's something an ST has to pay attention, to, but if you remember to say, "And anyone with Science (Physics) gets ten extra dice to this," now and then, that helps a great deal.
DeleteI'm inclined to agree with Source J, here.
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to give bonus die for specialization, why not use something like the specialization rules from nWoD or Exalted? They can also be very useful for personalizing a character and giving them a unique touch.
The nWoD specialization system is something I could definitely see working, but it would really depend on whether or not a particular game or Storyteller wanted to work with it - if they juts want to give spot bonuses when it works for the story and not worry about it the rest of the time, having a fully codified system like that might be more dead weight than useful. If, on the other hand, a group really wanted to have specific, constant mechanical benefits to every specialization, then I could see it working. For our games, I fall somewhere in between; I like those rules in WoD, but I also recall them being a pain in the ass and bogging down gameplay sometimes, and I don't think we really need them considering that our players are not even slightly perturbed by getting ten zillion different kinds of Science or Art or whatever. (Seriously, Aiona's player periodically says things like, "I'm getting three new Sciences - anyone have suggestions for what ones I should get that I don't already have?")
DeleteAs I said above, if you have a group that feels like Science/Art/Craft/Control specializing is too narrow and makes it hard to play, by all means cut it down to an unspecialized skill or provide a specific benefit (like nWoD does) to specializations or an outside power (like Modern Mythos does) to give you the ability to do whatever you want with it. It's mostly a matter of flavor: we don't like de-specializing those skills because we enjoy them the way they are, but a different ST or different players might want to do things a different way.
What....? nWOD specializations are just horrible. Im a master of all science but im extra good at biology and only biology? Thats almost the opposite of the scion system. I think thats a fun thing to add to, maybe academics. But in scion, especially with the epic intelligence it is easy to eventually have ALL things as your specialization. Singling out one and not allowing others just is nonsensical.
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