Question: How much of a shit-wrecking force of nature has Sangria become?
Somewhere, all the Better Next Time players are cringing and they don't even know why.
Eztli is not really a force of nature, at least not inasmuch as she goes around breaking stuff on a whim. Eztli doesn't have whims. She has jobs she's in charge of doing and she does them, so really you (or your architecture, or your landscape) are only really in danger from her if you happen to be in the way at the time. Or you threaten Sowiljr or the kids. Or you threaten any Aztec anywhere. Or she goes into Courage extremity. Or she needs a quick Legend fix and you're convenient. But other than that, she's perfectly safe.
The problem for everyone is that Eztli is extremely predictable, but also extremely difficult to stop; you'll know what she's doing well in advance, usually because she just marched in and started doing it, but trying to stop her is like trying to stop a bullet train with a road sign and a wooden gate. She can't be reasoned with, because she doesn't care about whatever you're saying that might contradict with what she thinks she's supposed to do. You can try to mind-whammy her, but you'll have to get through a resist roll that averages 45 when she's not trying and 70 when she is. You can always go for the physical beatdown method, but... nobody likes going for the physical beatdown method. It always ends in tears and dismemberment. Eztli's band pretty much handles her by just shoving Sowiljr at her because she usually listens to him, but even he has been heard to mumble darkly about needing to go see Ptah about a wife-leash.
Since it's hard to describe a character's wrecking-ball potential without crunch, here, let me give you a scenario:
Eztli's going to hit you. She has a base pool of 17 dice with 29 autos to hit, and a base pool of 9 dice with 29 autos to deal damage. You have an average Legend 9 DV of 26. She has the following active modifications:
Positive Fatebonds to Dexterity and Brawl = +10 dice & +10 autos (acc)
Animal Aspect (Bat) for Dexterity = avg. +57 dice (acc)
Animal Feature (Bat) for Brawl = +22 dice (acc)
Sacrifice of Will = +14 dice (acc & dmg)
Storm Augmentation = +11 dice (dmg)
Channel Courage = +11 autos (acc)
Lucky Star = +10 autos (acc)
Legendary Deed = +9 autos (acc)
Faunaphagia (Bat) for Brawl = +3 dice (acc)
Relic Necklace = +1 die (acc)
Double attack = -4 dice (acc)
120 dice + 69 autos = avg. 129 to hit
129 - 26 (DV) +9 (Str) + 14 (SoW) + 11 (SA) = 137
137 dice + 29 autos = avg. 98 damage (first roll)
127 dice + 29 autos = avg. 93 damage (other rolls without LS)
Armor Crusher = Attack ignores armor
Disfiguring Attack = Attacks are aggravated
Opening Gambit = Attack first
Between the Ticks = Attack again one second later
Blessing of Bravery = +2 Courage
In the space of two ticks, Eztli has just hit you for a total of 377 armor-ignoring aggravated damage.
Go on. Hit her back.
This is how Aiona ended up almost being instantly dead with 2 blows from Etzli.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, she was totally asking for it.
DeleteI don't think I would be able to hit her back as I would be a pile of mush and gunk scattered across the landscape. This is what I was asking but didn't word right, about how much power and destructive potential she has amassed, and I think I have my answer. If she hits legend 12 and maxes out can she go punch for punch with thor?
ReplyDeleteBrawls maybe. Hammers, no. But that's kind of t
DeleteThe point. Also Anne's deleted comment above was me logging in wrong again
DeleteYeah, Mjolnir makes Thor pretty much the melee king, but if she maxed all her stuff, she'd probably be able to pull off an impressive pound for pound brawl royale with him.
DeleteHo.
ReplyDeleteLee.
Shit.
Perhaps the saddest thing from this exercise is that now I'm trying to envision how my character, an Aztec Stamina-maxer with a penchant for Guardian, could possibly survive such an assault at equal Legend (answer: Almost assuredly not)
Generating numbers like that takes a whacking hunk out of your resources. You only have to avoid the attack or survive it a few times, and there's ways to do that. DDC it and now it's all Lethal damage which your absurd Soak can mitigate considerably. Skin-Shed it or pull a Solipsism and ignore the attack 100%, etc.
DeleteScion is no-doubt geared towards the idea that if you get hit (which can be hard with how easily DV can inflate), you're gunna be hurt. It's very, very hard to design a soak-monster build going by RAW alone.
Earth earth earth.
DeleteMaking all your soak immune to armor ignoring is clutch for soak monster pcs.
You're right that with a normal scion, generating those numbers would use up all resources very quickly and the opponent could maybe get away. But, this is Etzli. She has high level Itztli. She gains legend almost as easily as she spends it. That means, those hits just keep coming!
DeleteAnd yes earth! all the earth. Kettila is a super soak monster.
Well, you know, characters all have different strengths. Your Guardian Scion can probably do things like basic math and conversation that Sangria can't. She not only can't add two and two and get four, it takes a really good day for her to even recognize those squiggles on paper as being numbers.
DeleteSource J is right, though - you can tank out early in the game, but at high levels it stops really being viable as a sole build. Things like Guardian and panic-buttons like Skin-Shedding help, but just taking hits is something you can only do for so long.
Also, yes, Earth all day long.
I am gunna have to go invent a buncha stuff to make non-DV defense more viable at high levels... man, y'all, shining lighs on holes in the system and makin' me wanna patch em..
DeleteNon DV defense not viable? How is DV defense viable vs that? Nothing in the game will get you close to 129 DV
DeleteStam defense is actually the only thing that can start to defend against it.
DeleteBut, truly you need both, just like to do all that damage, sangria has both dex and strength(and a ton of purview). So if you want to counter it fully, you need dex and stam, and purviews that accent both.
Oh. I mean more generally, that from my own game experience, it's been continually a battle for big-bruiser type characters to survive, despite that being a perfectly valid archetype. So is the man-of-steel. They don't duck and weave, they just laugh off whatever you hit them with. Scion is lacking in that department.
DeleteOverall, I think Scion tends to favor attacks because they feel "cooler" than defenses. It's just easier to sell fireballs than asbestos underwear, I guess. For many reasons.
Sangria is that archetype as well. Shes probably, physically speaking, the closest we have to super man. It just all has to be balanced. And, because its a system of dice vs static values it must always slightly favor the attacker, else attacking will "seem" to yield impossible results. And that is unfun.
DeleteIm not explaining myself well. It'd actually require a full paper on the psychology of success vs failure in a game and how odds on dice effect that....itd be long. You'll have to trust me that for any combat system to work it has to slightly favor the aggressor.
Why the 11 automatic successes from Courage? She only has 3 Courage on her character sheet.
ReplyDeleteWhy only +3 dice from Faunaphagia? She should be getting a lot more than 3 successes and there is no limit in the boon.
/nit
Cause bats only have 3 brawl so that is max. She has blessing of bravery for plus two courage
DeleteI was going to ask about that... so the intention is that the Boon can only grant you as many dots in something as your animal has? What if you find a Nemean Bat with Brawl 10, and eat it? More stats?
DeleteWhy would a bat have 3 brawl? They are no more skilled than a housecat and those have 1 brawl. The boon doesn't have a max of the skill the animal possesses. And even if it did, Eztli already has 9 dots of brawl and a bat nagual. She should already know everything there is to know about brawling like a bat. :P
DeleteBiting and clawing fall under the heading of Brawl for animals, so most creatures have at least a dot or two; vampire bats live by their teeth, so to speak, so we ruled that three dots of Brawl seemed about right for them. (Also, we seldom use any stats from the book since so many of them are wonky, so we often don't exactly match up to their vision of what a normal creature's stats might look like.)
DeleteWell, sure, but unless you want to rule that no Aztec Scions with nahualli can ever use Animal boons, that's something you'll have to gloss over. I mean, she also has all the attributes and visage of a bat if she wants them, so does that mean she can't use Animal Aspect or Animal Feature? Nahualli should make Animal something you're better at, not close parts of it off, so we have it enhance boons and leave it at that.
The success pool on Faunaphagia can be spread around among many different abilities, but it can't give a Scion more than the animal itself has. So Sangria can only gain +3 Brawl, but since she got a lot more successes, she could also gain whatever Athletics or Fortitude or Survival or whatever else the little chiropteran might have had.
Actually debating the brawl value of a vampire bat is probably a matter of opinion so I'll move on.
DeleteI wouldn't dream of ruling that an Aztec with a nahualli could not use Animal Boons. In fact, I completely encourage the dice bonus from Faunaphagia because it assumes that you transcend the sum of your parts. It just strikes me as 'not transcending' if your dice pool is limited to that of the animal itself, as if the animal could give no more than it personally knows (because an Aztec already knows everything it personally knows).
Of course, Faunaphagia is written in a way that is currently pretty broken. I would definitely clarify the text of the boon to make it resemble what you guys apparently intended.
You only get a part because its a low level boon. When you get animal feature it gives you many more dots in abilities, and other things.
DeleteSpending 1L + 1W for a 1-3 dice bonus (the average an animal is gunna have) is kinda lame, though the duration of that bonus is a big plus. Still, depending on your totem, you're gunna be putting in some effort to get the meat. Giant Panda Jerky isn't sold in stores and people frown on it when you eat their pet dog.
DeleteIt's no biggie for someone with Animal (Cow) to wolf down a few burgers or someone with Animal (Deer) to go hunting and get himself some venison, but a lot of totems are harder to find. The food requirement is a limiting factor there, until you get to Create Animal and then you still have to fuel that Boon, kill the animal and carry the meat around.
I was about to make an argument against limiting the bonus, but then I argued myself out of it by reminding me that you can split your successes among several abilities and get small bonuses to a buncha stuff and have them last quite a while. So, yeah, that's nice.
Still, if that's how y'all're running it, ya might wanna update your text, cause the limitation is not written in. I played a character with it and routinely used it to get 10 or so dice to my Brawl rolls by eating strips of bear jerky. Mmm. Bear.
"As long as the animal possesses those abilities"
DeleteA bear does not have 10 dots in brawl, he does not possess that. So you cannot take that. It seems pretty clear.
I read that more as a "No getting a bonus in Science by eating Owl-Wings" clause. I will have to ponder how to run it in my games. I don't think any of my players have actually used it, though three of them HAVE it.
DeleteThe guy with Animal (Dragon) is having trouble finding dragons to eat. The one with Animal (Jaguar) isn't doing much better, unless he wants to take bites off his nagual.
Its simple balance. It has to be balanced with animal feature and be much less powerful. When you get animal feature its giving you max 8 dots, but its way more xp and demigod level. Faun has to be much less powerful, or very differently powerful.
DeleteWe also dont allow them to ingest relic creatures of any kind for faun, otherwise its just too easy.
Dragon guy obviously made mistakes choosing dragon.
When I thought of using Faunaphagia for many small bonuses instead of one big bonus, I came over to your side. It's not just +3 to Brawl, it's +3 Brawl, +3 Awareness, +3 Athletics, +2 Stealth and +1 Presence. And that IS a cool Boon that remains useful well into God.
DeleteI've told Dragon-dude that he should use Nemean Form to become a giant dragon, then bite off his tail and use it to make dragon-steaks. He'd be the OuroBORIS!
"As long as the animal possesses those abilities"
DeleteNope. That clearly means to me that you cannot get science from owls, and you cannot get academics from bears. Source J apparently thought the same thing. I asked around, and my friends apparently thought the same thing too.
So it probably needs some more clarity.
"When you get animal feature its giving you max 8 dots"
DeleteAnimal Feature gives you max 20 dots.
Not when you first get it at legend 6 it doesnt.
DeleteOh, you meant to say "when you get Animal Feature at legend 6".
DeleteNono. I meant to say what I typed. I cannot be held responsible for your poor ability to comprehend and see what things mean.
DeleteThen you seem to have forgotten that you can 'get' lower level boons at higher levels of legend. Did you know that you could select Hive Mind instead of Animal Feature? Did you know that when you are Legend 7+ you could go back and buy Animal Feature? Did you know that you could be buying Animal for the very first time, and begin working your way up when you are a god?
DeleteIf you don't write an accurate sentence, you can't laugh at people for poor comprehension. ;)
I was aware of all of those things. Mostly because I wrote the rules that make all of those things possible. However, there is 1 and only 1 way in which the sentence I wrote makes sense. I give a very exact number, and that very exact number only makes sense in one possible instance.
DeleteAll of the questions you asked obviously invalidate the sentence I wrote, so they are not appropriate questions to ask. Take a logic class then come back and talk to me.
You seem to want other people to infer information you do not provide, when the requirement to provide concise information is on the speaker. If your statement is untrue under many circumstances then the statement could use clarification, not stern insistance that anyone who fails to infer what you did not say is lacking in comprehension.
DeleteThere is nothing wrong with screwing up something you said, but this conversation only continues because of your excellent people skills. When you act like this, you paint a very large target on yourself that dares anyone and everyone to take a shot at you.
Welcome to my website where Im always right and the points dont matter.
DeleteI note that you're staying anonymous, thats all well and good, but dont get righteous on my while doing it.
This conversation continues cause Im enabling you, which is my mistake. I do people skills for a living, Im not forced to do it on my own website. In fact one of the reasons to have it is so i can throw people skills to the wind. Have you read the site FAQ? It pretty much outlines my philosophy.
Don't mind me poking my head in here, but I want to derail this onto a semi-serious topic. Have you guys considered that you are role models for the scion community? How do you both feel about that? I don't mean in relation to the flame war going on, but just in general. Should I make this a separate question?
ReplyDeleteHmm... is role model the right term? We certainly try to create useful things, provide useful information and have fun and creative discussions, but lots of people do those things. I guess it's more that we (or I - I guess I shouldn't speak for John since I haven't asked him and he's embroiled in an MMO at the moment) want to do as much awesome for the community as it does for us, and that's a lot of awesome to measure up to.
DeleteSpeaking of which, back into my writer's dungeon.