Question: Fate Meditation. The activation cost is 10 Legend and TWO Willpower, and if you succeed on it you get ONE Willpower back? Why would anyone ever use that as a means of getting Willpower?
Not quite - I think you might have missed how this boon works. You're not regaining one of those resources based on how high you rolled; you're dividing your successes among them any way you choose. You regain a point of Willpower per three successes you decide to spend on it, so unless you don't think you can get more than six successes, the boon can always pay its own Willpower cost itself. If you can't get more than six successes on this roll at Legend 8, Prophecy may not be the career for you.
For example, Vala, at Legend 8, had 8 dots of Intelligence, 7 dots of Epic Intelligence and 8 dots of Occult. Even without any of her many buffs (including Fatebonds, relic bonuses and Animal Aspect), she'd be rolling into Fate Meditation with an average of 30 successes. If all she wanted was to refill her Willpower, that takes her from zero to ten in one shot; if she wanted to, say, regain two Legendary Deeds, she'd still have enough successes left over to pay for the two Willpower she'd used and be back at whatever level she was before she used the boon. This boon is a favorite for our prophetic PCs, and they tend to end up getting more things back than they had planned on, not the reverse.
It's not the most efficient method of regaining Willpower, certainly - things like Refuge in Logic, Believe Your Own Press or just bandmates with cheerful Charisma knacks are simpler solutions. Fate Meditation's main draw is the ability to regain normally unregainable Legendary Deeds and Virtue Channels, but it does just fine for Willpower in a pinch.
Yeah, Fate Meditation is more about getting deeds and channels (which you normally won't regain until the end of a story or, occasionally, under other special circumstances) back than anything else. Why would you spend 10 Legend *and* an hour meditating just for some WP, unless you were completely stranded somewhere without anyone else to help you regain WP?
ReplyDeleteAnd, if you're part of a Sanctified Band (like in Woody's case), the chances of you being stranded like this are even slimmer.
Yeah, if you were Sanctified everyone else in the band would have to be incapacitated or totally out of Willpower themselves, or they could be shooting you some if you needed it, too.
DeleteDo you guys use a house rule where Virtue Channels cannot be regained?
ReplyDeleteJohn sometimes gives Virtue channels back for completing a task that really exemplifies that Virtue. For instance, running off into the middle of a dangerous fight and coming out victorious might give you a Courage channel back. Spending days upon days studying in a library for some essential bit of knowledge might get you an Intellect channel. Unfortunately, these aren't things we can plan, and they tend to be surprises when John doles them out. The only sure way to get Virtue channels back for us regular folk is to complete a story or go up in Legend.
DeleteThat's not a house rule; in Scion original, as well as in ours, you don't regain your Virtue Channels until the end of the story, just like Legendary Deeds.
DeleteAnd yes, once in a great while we award one for super awesomeness, but in general you wait until the end of the story to refresh those.
Alright, now you have me really confused :P
DeleteI know in Hero, Page 176 one of the rewards for a two die stunt is regaining a virtue channel if it resonates with your virtue.
So you could channel a virtue, then perform your stunt, and if it was a good enough stunt you could regain the virtue you just channeled. It was kind of a gamble.
I know some storytellers might be more lenient or strict about what resonate means. Is John somewhat strict about what might resonate or did you guys miss this rule?
The RAW do indeed mention Stunts of sufficient awesomeness and Virtue-related-ness being able to return Channels. I also allow sufficiently awesome deeds to occasionally return a Deed, but mostly not.
DeleteI have to be fairly careful with returning Virtue Channels because of the Russian PC. He already has an assload thanks to a Prav Boon, and they're hugely powerful because of other Boons of Prav. The others get them back a bit easier, but still, it doesn't come up that often.
It says "strongly" twice in that little bit about virtue channels. It should be pretty rare to give them out as stunts. It has to be to balance the other option, 1 point of willpower or two legend.
DeleteIts also exactly what anne and amy said. It has to be a stunt that resonates STRONGLY with the virtue. It has to happen rarely to be meaningful.
I don't think strongly has to indicate scarcity. It would take two things to create strongly resonant actions; the storyteller putting forward situations where a strongly resonant action could happen at all, and the character acting upon that virtue strongly.
DeleteI think scarcity should depend on the benefit gained. For RAW, regaining 5 dice at god would not be a very big benefit and should happen moderately. For JSR, regaining 11 successes at god would be a very big benefit and should happen rarely.