The other side of the problem to the question of last week. Which knacks and boons do you feel are under powered in your games? Which stuff is never taken? Anythings you feel is never worth taking? Can you not imagine any situation where the cost might be worth an appropriate value?
I know this one will probably get a lot more(especially some of the very specialized knacks). Hopefully we can either shed some light on possible uses of the power that you didnt think of. Or we'll throw it up on the table for looking at next go around.
Remember try to compare it to other things at its level. If you feel at least 20% of other powers at that level are much more powerful, then it probably deserves to go up here. Also a good metric for here is if a power NEVER gets taken in your games.
Some of my picks:
Cloud sculpting
Selective palate
Trimarkisia
I know this one will probably get a lot more(especially some of the very specialized knacks). Hopefully we can either shed some light on possible uses of the power that you didnt think of. Or we'll throw it up on the table for looking at next go around.
Remember try to compare it to other things at its level. If you feel at least 20% of other powers at that level are much more powerful, then it probably deserves to go up here. Also a good metric for here is if a power NEVER gets taken in your games.
Some of my picks:
Cloud sculpting
Selective palate
Trimarkisia
I do nt have time right now to list a few of those I think are a tad underpowered, but I have to say that I think Trimarkisia is not one of them. It might be underused, but it's very very effective.
ReplyDeleteThe ability to lower an opponent's DV by 6, for yourself, and two other allies, is a fucking great thing. Especially so at the Hero level.
Pheromones. And maybe similar mechanic boons. Giving dice seems underwhelming, whatever the level. I would give automatic successes, or maybe dice and half successes.
ReplyDeleteI'd definitely have to disagree with Pheromones. It may not be all that powerful at lower levels, but when you hit god level and have 16 Fertility boons, that is a lot of extra dice.
DeleteThis is going to be a work in progress broken up across multiple posts because of work and life concerns!
ReplyDeleteAnimal Obedience is slightly underpowered because you can accomplish many of the same things with a mundane Charisma + Animal Ken roll.
Ride Animal is moderately underpowered because you do not get any epics, and you're a Demigod by this time so epics are necessary for most challenges you would face.
Animal Form is dramatically underpowered for the same reasons as Ride Animal, except you can actually die in this form, and the challenges are much higher while you still do not have most of your epics.
Hornet's Nest is not described as reflexive and has no listed duration, so the boon does nothing without more clarification.
Labyrinthine Lingering is moderately underpowered because it does not stop anyone from leaving the area of effect. People can just pick the wrong path and walk out unless the wrong path leads to horrible things, and depending on how you resolve the power they might even pick the right path on accident.
Crawling Chaos is very dangerous because you can easily inflict it on yourself, and your entire party, if you even look at an infected target. The Scion cannot even see the target he is about to infect because the moment the target is infected he gets hit by his own power.
We actually already changed Animal Form so that you can't die while in it; if your animal form is killed, you just pop out of it with one Aggravated, similar to a slightly more painful Skin-Shedding. Good points to look into all around, though. Keep going. :)
DeleteObedience I sort of agree. Its better for legendary creatures that you cant just charisma anken usually.
DeleteRide animal mostly for stealth. But I can see that.
Animal form. re: annes comment.
Hornets nest is/should be reflexive/while something is happening. If anything a wits+ awareness roll vs the speed of whats happening to use it.
LL: They should generally not be able to leave the area til boon ends. It should continue leading them back to the center of the area of effect.
Crawling Chaos: You are immune to your own use of it.
Ride Animal: I thought about it being used for stealth but without epics you would probably have a hard time hiding your motivations from observers. People will start noticing your strange behavior very quickly and sense your motive as being a spy, unless you are riding a legendary beast with enough epic dexterity to avoid notice in the first place.
DeleteLL: That seems like the intent of the boon but beside using the word 'trap' once it is not entirely clear about the fact. Perhaps something like, 'targets tend to either stand in confusion, unable to make up their minds, or set off in a direction only to discover it has lead them back to the same place'.
Shadow Mask is significantly underpowered because there are so many alternative ways to identify you even if your face is covered in shadow. Forensic evidence, physical build, body language, voice if you speak, mystery question, people knowing you are a darkness god, and people just having Night Eyes.
ReplyDeleteShadow Refuge/Absorb Light/Shadow Bodies/Shadow Plunder are great powers, but Night Eyes is so easy to get and such a great power that there is rarely a reason to not pick it up.
Heart of Darkness is just weird. Virtues do not necessarily define your personality, just what your divine ichor forces you to do. Someone inflicted with this can pay willpower to resist his virtues for a while, so the value is directly related to how easily the victim can replenish his or her willpower.
Strike Blind is slightly underpowered. Blindness is only a -4 dice penalty, so unless you are stacking dice penalties for a botch strategy or have a large number of enemies this does not tend to make a noticeable impact in game.
Delay Rot. I can see the function, but in any game I have played in almost nobody uses it. Situations where it is necessary just don't seem to come up. Death has few boons that count your total death boons so this tends to get passed up constantly.
Euthanasia is in the same boat as Delay Rot. When you first get it you can kill mortals, but once you get higher in legend there are almost never opportunities to use this boon. Corpse Oracle is dramatically more useful so there is little reason to pick this boon up.
Mother's Touch is not described as reflexive and has no listed duration, so the boon does nothing without more clarification.
Bleak Census is moderately underpowered. Either it's cost is too high or it should be a lower level power. Summon Ghost + Corpse Oracle provides better results for a cheaper cost so the only circumstance you might want to use Bleak Census is when you cannot find a corpse/personal item or when you want to ask something even the corpse does not know.
Unquiet Corpse/Shambling Horde/Revenant all have different dice pools which is not underpowered but seems to have a certain thematic disharmony.
Ghost Control is seriously underpowered. Summon Ghost + Command the Soul does the same thing for almost the same cost, minus a few bells and whistles like long range communication. Nothing about this power seems godly to me. You can mess with mortal ghosts and possess mortals? You've been doing that since Legend 5. There is so much wrong with this boon that I could write a small essay on it.
More to come if you guys still check this entry.
We're still checking!
DeleteAs an errata to the above, Ghost Control does let you eat ghosts to regain legend and this is very useful. But it feels like maybe THAT should be the focus of this boon, not a bunch of things about controlling mortal ghosts.
DeleteIll respond to some of these that I think you might have the wrong idea about, but otherwise will take this list and go over it when we do boons, thanks for taking the time to write it all out. And I know there is more coming.
DeleteAll of darkness: You could say the same thing for all of fire. Which maybe you will. Because of fatebonds(and slightly chicken and egg scenario here) we dont have people with many 1 dot in purviews. Those get bought off really quickly because they're cheap and shitty.
DeleteHeart of darkness: We're probably playing virtues different from you. We have found it to be one of the most powerful powers in the game, possibly too powerful. It has completely changed entire plots. I disagree with you saying virtues arent part of your personality, because by the time you can get heart of darkness, yes they are.
Strike Blind: I agree, it should be lower level.
Delay Rot: Is it really underpowered for its level? You compare it to corpse oracle which is double its level(yes just plus one, but you get my factual hyperbole). Ive seen it most often used to preserve bodies for funeral rights and for saving body parts of foes for relic making
Euthanasia: Again is it being powerful forever important? If its useful for its level...is that enough? Should all powers somehow scale forever?
Mothers touch should take an action and last a scene. Will edit it soon.
Bleak Census I agree.
Zombie boons: Yeah, not sure how I feel about that. Its either odd and dissonant that they're all different, or its interesting. And I cant tell which.
Ghost control. I agree underpowered. We generally dont like the eating ghost parts cause it makes no sense and is sort of the antithesis of what almost all death gods do. But definitely underpowered. It needs work.
Yeah. I am sure there will be a lot of little nuances in your game that are not printed on the website, just like there will be nuances from my own games. A lot of players in my groups and the groups of my friends tend to pick up 1 dot boons or relics that replicate those boons and Night Eyes seems to be even more popular than the immunities (those are still pretty popular of course).
DeleteI think you are definitely playing virtues differently from my groups. The way we play it is a lot like Brent explained in a previous blog. A man with Courage 5 might be a coward but compelled to act according to his virtue in spite of his personal preference.
The corpse oracle comparison was made against euthanasia, not delay rot. But, either way neither of them seem to come up very much in any game I have played past the hero level and this is a census on other people's games. Perhaps someone else could chime in?
The questions you ask with Euthanasia are rather interesting because most of the answers seem to be yes, based on looking at the majority of low level boons you can find across most purviews. As a god I can still find legendary creatures to Obedience, chaos to avoid with Eye of the Storm, people to scare with Afraid of the Dark, corpses to question with Corpse Oracle, earth to search with Echo Sounding, etc.
The frequency of finding people who genuinely want to die, and cannot be killed by more mundane methods that do not cost legend, seems to be fairly niche. Even mortals and normal animals have to be incapacitated before they can be killed. Perhaps if the boon was free to use you could wander around hospitals and war zones putting the willing out of their misery for roleplaying reasons.
Yeah. I definitely don't allow boons, especially the level one immunities on relics cause that is inceredibly lame.
ReplyDelete