Question: Why did you keep the Frost purview? There is way too much overlap with Water and almost anything Frost can do you could justify Water doing as well, except for the emotion effects.
Actually, we don't feel there's any overlap at all, and the reason is simple: symbolically and mythically, Frost and Water have almost nothing to do with one another. While we (and ancient humans, too) are perfectly aware that frost and ice turn into water if you melt them and vice versa, that doesn't make them the same thing. They represent entirely different areas and concepts - water has to do with life, flowing, change and sudden overwhelming force, while frost has to do with cold, barrenness, winter, death and stagnation.
If you look at myths from any culture, you will never see a god of water who is therefore a god of frost, and that's exactly the reason. They do and represent entirely different things. A god like Uller, who is aligned with snow and ice, has nothing at all to do with water; a god like Poseidon, in charge of the watery depths, has nothing whatsoever to do with frost. I don't know of a single deity that does both things, and that's because mythology treats them as entirely different areas; they may be changeable, but that doesn't make them the same.
Just because a single Hero-level boon lets you use the rules of science to change the state of water or ice does not mean that the two purviews are interchangeable, or even that they overlap that much. It'd be asinine to tell Scions they had to buy up Water through the roof if they wanted to be gods of winter; those things just aren't the same.
(Also, I'm really not sure why you think you could duplicate Frost boons easily with Water, because it just ain't so. At the very best, some of those boons could be duplicated if you were willing to waste a lot of extra actions and Legend on using Changing States first and then doing whatever it was you wanted to, but that doesn't exactly sound like a barrel of fun, and some, like Uller's Stride, Flash Freeze or Blizzard Call, can't be successfully imitated by Water at all. I'm not sure why anyone would want to bother trying to use the one instead of the other.)
no gods with both frost and water? Hmmm sounds like a good opening for an up and coming young god stake a claim
ReplyDeleteSowiljr's already angling for it, what with being a Frost-god who the Aztecs inexplicably think is the god of small ponds.
DeleteCool new combinations like that are totally the places where Scions should come make their mark. And hey, if a new Scion wants to buy up and fuse Water and Frost and be in charge of all H2O everywhere, he totally can - but it'd be a new thing, not a thing that already exists in mythology.
There's also the glaring fact that Frost is focused on "Cold" not so much "Ice", and Cold is definitely not rooted in Water.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly. Frost is about much more than just ice - it's about cold, winter, and things dying under the grip of both. The relationship to water is really a cosmetic one.
DeleteThis was a question I was going to ask in the ask box but I'm glad I now have an excuse to ask it elsewhere - what is the Boon that Geoff uses in 'Motherblood' to create the bridge of Frost in the sky to escape the Helicopter?
ReplyDeletehttp://gothambynight.com/scion/frost.htm#stride
DeleteJumping with Uller's
thanks!
DeleteI think Changing States is the real culprit here since it gives you the impression you jumped into the territory of Frost. I wonder if changing states is actually necessary to water?
ReplyDeleteJust off the top of my head you could water control to create stiff slides under your feet and slide around on it like Uller's Stride. Changing states if you want to make it ice for authenticity.
You could water control to turn water gaseous and then freeze it to turn it into snow. Water control can also allow you to attack with that snow, so it ends up looking just like Blizzard Call but less efficient.
With dessicate you can deal unsoakable bashing and then changing states the water vapor that spews forth to cover them in ice like Flash Freeze. They may or may not shatter depending on how cool your stunt is, so it ends up looking just like Flash Freeze but less efficient.
Yeah, we've actually discussed seriously several times whether Changing States really needs to even be there. I think it's reasonable as a boon, but it definitely isn't a convert-purviews kind of power.
DeleteYou could certainly create skis with Water Control + Changing States, but that wouldn't be the same as Uller's Stride, which just lets you freely slide at will on any and all surfaces and objects. You'd just be skiing as normal, albeit with icy skis. And where Uller's Stride is a single action to activate and use all scene, you're having to use one to Water Control create the skis, another to freeze them with Changing States, and then you're still bound by normal skiing rules. It's clearly not nearly as nice a solution (and costs a lot more!).
You could probably create snow on a small scale by doing the extra steps you describe, but nothing approaching the giant areas covered by things like Blizzard Call and Ymir's Hand. Those frost boons create legit blizzards; you just can't do that with the Water ones, not on the same scale and definitely not as only one action and cost.
Someone who'd been Dessicated wouldn't shatter; you wouldn't be freezing them very thoroughly, and in fact they'd be more devoid of water and less likely therefore to go all crystalline and smashable. They'd have all their tough leathery non-watery tissues instead.
But the point for all of these is that even if you theoretically could perform a bunch of extra actions, pay a bunch of extra activations and stunt perfectly so that it looked like something a frost-god could do... it would still be way less effective and cool (ha!) than if you were just a frost-god. A water-god might, in a pinch, pull something like that off if he had a really good reason, but it's not viable as an alternative build for being a god of cold/snow/winter/ice/whatever.
Without Changing States, you can't be Katara. That is not ok. Just sayin'.
DeleteI had to google "katara." And now I need to punch you through the internets.
DeleteNothing wrong with a little Avatar to inspire stunts. If more people buy the books so they can play bender style scions then the better for us all.
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