Question: With Ariadne's Thread, can you apply it to a person, or only an object/place? For instance, if you wanted to locate someone who didn't want to be located, could you use Ariadne's Thread on their person, or would you have to tie it to an object you know they keep around?
While the original form of Ariadne's Thread in Scion: Hero did allow you to target actual people, ours does not; you will need to target a place or object, not a living being. The major reason for this change is exactly the reason you asked the question: people want to use it to track other people, and it's wildly overpowered if they can. There's no resistance to it and it works by simply giving you a perfectly accurate signpost thanks to harnessing Fate, so tracking people would be game-breakingly easy - there's no way in hell a Legend 2 Scion should be able to unerringly track Loki if Loki doesn't want to be found, but with the original version of Ariadne's Thread, that's exactly what could happen. A power that obviates all other stealthing, hiding and manipulation powers in the game is overpowered, and it's especially overpowered if it can do so at the very first level of the game.
So Ariadne's thread now targets only places and objects, which can still let it help you track people if you happen to know of an object they carry or place they frequent, but won't let you automatically track Manannan mac Lir through fifty different worlds without breaking a sweat. It gives Storytellers a lot more cool options for how to run the power and what might happen in the story - sure, if you track an object someone owns you'll probably be led right to them, but what if they don't have it, or it was stolen, or they knew you might do that and laid a trap, or you get to it and discover key information about the person you were seeking even though you didn't find them in the flesh yet? It's more interesting as a story vehicle, and less of a simple PC Wins Button.
Also, considering that the power is based on the thread of Ariadne, who gave it to Theseus in order to help him make his way back out of the Minotaur's lair, we don't see any reason thematically that it should track people. It was very specifically used to navigate a place, not track a person, so we see no reason its scope needs to be widened that much when it's already darned useful for a level one spell.
I fully support this use of Ariadne's Thread, including the intent behind it. But what's to stop a clever player from using a Bad Penny + Ariadne's Thread combo to track a living thing?
ReplyDeleteBad Penny binds an object to the living thing, while Ariadne's Thread tracks that object, effectively providing a reliable trail to that living thing. Sure, it costs more Legend and is only active for a few days - but a Scion could still be doing this to Loki at Legend 2, if they had the misfortune of happening across him to begin with.
I imagine in Loki's case he'd just unmake the spell with his own Magic awesomeness - and probably be none too pleased either. But what about folks without Magic? What can they do against this powerful combo?
Nothing stops a player from doing that, and it's a very savvy combo, but it's not really foolproof. Bad Penny only Fatebonds the item to its target; it doesn't glue it to their body or anything, so while you know the item will keep turning up in that person's area, it won't necessarily be there all the time, nor will the person it's tied to always be nearby when you find it. You're just as likely to find the object somewhere the person recently was but isn't anymore, somewhere they will be soon but aren't yet, or in the right general area but not exactly with them (as opposed to using Ariadne's Thread on a person, which would enable you to track them to the exact closet they were hiding in). A Legend 2 Scion could find the object that was probably in Loki's vicinity if it had been tied to him with Bad Penny, but they'd have no prayer of finding Loki himself unless Loki allowed it, since it wouldn't get around his stealth powers or ability to just get up and walk away.
DeleteAriadne's Thread + Bad Penny is an excellent tool for generally following someone, though - it gets you to areas that they are or were or will be, and thus allows you to be in the right general area to use your other, better skills to try to find them. It won't automatically find them, though, nor have any degree of precision unless you're lucky enough that they decided to actually pick up and carry that Bad Penny'd item around with them.
I stand by the original version, and your example of Loki is disengeneous. for one thing yes you can track almost anything, but on the other hand, do you really want to do that with something more powerful than you? and for another, Loki the master magician he is can unmake ariadnes thread as soon as it settles on him, and any other god would smite you for the impertinacne of tracking him/her. being able to track living beings with ariadne's thread is not overpowered, it give players the option to get out of a game stall if their target gets away from them, and adds the depth of choosing whether or not you want to track something that could probably stomp you or find your fled enemy and battle them again. There are multiple uses to it's living tracking feature, and getting rid of that I think hurts gameplay.
ReplyDeleteShe shouldnt have used loki, that was a bad example. Not because its not true at all, but because people can use holes in the example to find holes in the logic. Pick any god that doesnt have magic. Apply the same example to any other god. Legend 2 scions should not be able to track gods. End of story.
DeleteWe arent saying that there arent uses for the boon as written. We're saying the opposite. There are insanely many uses. Yes of course its nice to be able to do tons of ridiculously powerful things at legend 2. That doesnt mean its good.
And then the reverse. Is it fair to have this used on the pcs? If there is a pc great at hiding and sneaking, is it fair that a level 2 scion can destroy all their hard work? Or that anyone who buys a level 1 boon at any level can just pick it up and destroy the best stealth roll on the planet?
No.
Other then: It was written in the original books, there is no reason to keep it as is.
In my game I've placed a few caveats on the spell. First, and most logically you have to have something you can track the target with. For places or things, this might be a solid piece of material, or it could be something more along the lines of mental picture in your head. For people, you have to have something that directly connects with the person, i.e. hair, blood, skin, personal item. This firstly holds to certain ideas of sympathetic magic, a piece of something, no matter how small is still tied to the whole of it by Fate. Secondly this means that the characters cannot merely use the spell to track down whatever/whomever they please.
ReplyDeleteFor example: In our first game one of the PCs had a relic knife stolen from them. In the second game another PC used Ariadne's Thread to locate it. The thief however had almost lost the item at one point earlier while battling a fish-man in the sea nearby. Had he lost the item, finding it would have meant some difficulties would have to be overcome. As the thief (another PC) was able to hold onto the item though, no such issue arose and the PCs were eventually able to track it down.
That said, the PCs are trying to find a sleeping Kraken, and a group bent on awakening it. Because of the caveat placed on the spell they cannot merely say "Where's the Kraken, and it's kooky cult?". They have to find something with a link to the beast or those bent on unleashing it then world, then they can track it down...assuming they want to take on a Kraken or the kind of people who would know how to unleash/awaken one.
these caveats are kind of what I imangined were built into the spell the first few times I read it. What I thought it meant was that you had to really know the person or place you wanted to track for the spell to even work, you couldn't just name anyone you liked, and I think that is the real way it should work. You can track people, but only those people and places you are really familiar with or have at least met and spent a reasonable amount of time with. also, for gods, just rule that divine beings of a certain legend are untrackable until you are closer to them in legend yourselve.
DeleteI agree with these kind of restrictions. Or, have powers like White Stag work against it. In this regard, I find Psychopomp should win against Ariadne's Thread.
Deleteagree with papy, have psychopomp outmuscle ariadne's thread. There are a lot of ways to powerdown the human tracking without having to completely ditch it.
DeleteIm not sure papy is saying what you think shes saying. Yes, pyscopomp boons mess with ariadnes thread(especailly higher level ones), but you shouldnt need to get higher level pyschopomp to combat a level 1 boon.
DeleteThe other problem, which you sort of bring up, is that ariadnes thread completely devalues and eliminates all character types that focus on successful tracking. why buy up all my survival and perception if a level 1 boon does it for me?
The problem here is one of scope - Ariadne's Thread is simply overpowered when it can track living beings. It makes it so that the zillions of powers in the game, all higher level than it, that provide stealth and hiding are worthless; Moon, Darkness, Illusion, super Epic Dexterity stealthing, all of it is somehow easily gotten around by that level one spell that any Scion could pick up for four or five XP. And, on the other side as John mentions, it also breaks all the hunting powers in the game - it makes Epic Perception, Sun, Justice and all the other powers that give you the awesome ability to track and find things in the game totally pointless, because again you could just get this level one spell instead. It does not make sense that, if you wanted a Legend 2 Scion and Artemis, goddess of the hunt, to both hunt Hades, lord of invisibility, that the Legend 2 Scion would be likely to be better at it. That shit is broken.
DeleteYes, it would help if you added caveats to Psychopomp, Darkness, Moon, Dexterity et cetera to make some powers immune to Ariadne's Thread. And yes, it would also help if you did things like making it not apply to gods, although that still wouldn't fix its fundamental brokenness (there's still no way in hell a Legend 2 Scion should be able to track a Legend 8 Scion with this kind of facile ease, or a Legend 5 one, and so on) and added a bunch of caveats to its power level to try to make it balance.
But that's fixing eighty things to fix a single problem, and the much easier, simpler and more reasonable thing to do is just to not allow Ariadne's Thread to do the thing that is broken. It doesn't track people. That's the right way to fix it.
It's not like that somehow prevents Scions from being awesome at tracking people - as pointed out above, it can still track objects, meaning you have a decent chance of finding a target if you know of something they're carrying or going to, and the game is already full of powers designed to make people good at tracking, especially Perception knacks. We're not trying to prevent Scions from getting to awesomely track people across the world; we're saying that doing it for one Legend at Legend 2 with a Magic spell that ignores all other attempts to avoid it and completely supersedes all other methods of tracking is more broken than a china doll on the freeway.
You can't track a person, but you can track that relic amulet she always has around her neck?
DeleteIf it's an item you know about, yes. You could say, "I want to track a specific amulet I've seen her wear before," but not "I want to track something she's carrying" if you didn't know of a specific object.
DeleteIf you're lucky and that person never removes or loses that item, you may be able to use Ariadne's Thread to follow the object and find the person. But, of course, items don't always stay where you want them to, so it's not foolproof.
So you can target Herme's boots, or Odin's spear/Thor's Belt, and hope they have it on them?
DeleteAssuming you've been in the presence of that item before, yes. You have to concretely know it exists; having heard about it from afar but never actually seen or been around it means you don't know for sure it isn't made-up, so you'll have to actually encounter something at least once to try to track it.
DeletePast that, yes, you can. If you've seen Gungnir before, you can try to track it to wherever it is right now and hope that place is in Odin's hand. It's a loophole; it kind of lets you track people, because usually they keep their important items with them, but it's not a sure thing because anything could theoretically be happening with that item when you're not around to see it. It'd probably be most useful for finding other PCs, who you know are keeping their relics on them; while it should sometimes work on NPCs, I know that as a Storyteller I definitely wouldn't have it work every time. Remember that gods, especially, can leave their relics in their Sanctums and still have access to their benefits, so they're hardly going to need to carry them around all the time.
Then why not run the same rule for people? If you have to know the item, then it's simpler to just know the person, and not just having heard of them, but having met them. I still do not think it is overpowered, I believe it's power is relative to the power of the player. Yes you cant track anyone anywhere but take into account how easy it is to get to them. If who you are tracking is a continent away do you really want to go to the time and energy to get to them? and if you are powerful enough to be able to get to them (psychopomp, socialing up a ride etc) wouldn't you already have enough other powers to find them without the spell? Also by your logic, other boons such as the unlidded eye and Demand a labor is just as overpowered. the unlidded eye allows you to find a god no matter what he uses to hide just like thread and even with the willpower resist a low level 3 scion can get a god to fetch him a soda with demand a labor if he rolls right. Magic in and of itself can be considered overpowered, and I think that's the point. It shows how much more different magic and affecting fate are from any other power in that it grants even low level scions powerful abilities at the beginning of their careers.
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