Happy six months of vlogging, everyone! We are dedicated people! Today, we talk about random stuff from our question queue while we race around trying to get other stuff done!
Question: I know that in previous posts you've explained that some pantheons are more against some purviews than others, like Fire and Frost for the Norse or Stars for the Aztecs. But what happens to a Scion who picks up that purview and becomes proficient? Do they become less trusted or cast out in some cases? I ask because I'm playing a character that is specializing in something that his pantheon seems to be totally against and wanted to know what I could expect.
Question: According to one myth, Demeter once attempted to make the mortal son of a Greek king immortal by anointing him with ambrosia and bathing him in flames. If you were to stat this out, would it be a Fire or Magic boon, or something else entirely?
Question: Please add aggravated ranged attack knacks, even if they are more expensive than melee ones. Having none makes baby Apollo cry. :(
Sorry, person whose question got bumped, but I'm going to answer it in the regular blog with EXTREME PREJUDICE!
Back to Africa!
Exclamation points!
Lol, damn it. My question gets answer awesomely it sounds and doesn't work out. KKKKKHHHHHHHAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!!!!
ReplyDeleteAnyways, is there anyway to get the more in depth version? :P Cause the whole 'Set may not like you' is a good clue and I would like to know more. lol.:P
Basically, a god who is personally strongly opposed to a purview you pick up may be crankier about it than the pantheon as a whole. The Pesedjet will probably find a Scion aligned with Darkness vaguely unsettling and worthy of keeping an eye on, lest he be tempted by the dark powers of Apep. Set, who directly fights Apep and is the official guardian against the darkness of the pantheon, is likely to be that much more strongly opposed to those who use the "evil" powers he's used to fighting, so he's likely to be downright hostile toward such a Scion if he's in a bad mood or thinks he can get away with it.
DeleteThe same is true in the opposite direction, too. The Pesedjet as a whole may be suspicious of Darkness, but Nephthys, who is herself a darkness goddess, may be more understanding of a Scion who wants to pursue such less-traveled paths.
See, I don't mind that much. You read through the story I sent you guys and got some understanding of him. The issue is the ST does not like to do stuff with mythology most of the time. Had to argue slightly with him on allowing one of the minor goddesses to be allowed in just to give me a relic. Forget her name, I am sorry that I have, but she is a spider goddess with war connotations.
DeleteThe reason I say this is cause while I would get the negative of Set hating me and others mistrusting me, there is no Nephthys around, whether cause she is dead or alive but missing, he does not want to have her in the game, even if for a cameo. We had some... disagreements on some stuff, but he always used the ST trumps player rule.
I would of liked to have her in there, maybe as someone to learn the purview from instead of going out of the pantheon. Cause unless s/he is written into the normal scion books, he does not like putting it into the world at all.
Anyways, this helps me with talking to future STs about certain stuff or if I run a game.
I'll add that Solipsistic Well-Being can undo the advantage of ranged attacks... at least for the first volley. Of course, surviving the first volley is the most helpful thing that can be done, since then you have options while the sniper reloads.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, Agg damage makes for a battle of attrition between the attacker spending 5L per attack and the defender spending 5L per Divine Damage Conversion. Whoever runs out of Legend first wins. Aztecs will be very happy in those cases.
Relics that reduce the Legend cost of either DDC or any Agg power would be more valuable than anything else (If your ST allows it).
However, in those battles of attrition, Lethal attacks suffer just as much, given that vanilla Damage Conversion is just as easy, making such a volley much more easily survivable since the target has greater Bashing soak and can usually survive a Bashing assault more easily thanks to wraparound.
Differences in bashing/lethal are MUCH lower then differences between lethal/agg. Like....at god we're talking a difference of 5 vs a difference of 31? Thats gigantic.
Delete(note: sangrias soaks are not correct. just use the stamina).
SIX MONTHS OF VLOGGING? Seriously? It feels like only yesterday we were watching the first vlog.
ReplyDeleteI hang around here too much.
:)
DeleteHooray!
DeleteAggravated ranged attack knacks already exist. I'm not sure why someone was asking for it. Hurl to the Moon causes agg and the throwing distances are better than perception distances up to 35 capacity.
ReplyDeleteThey were obviously speaking of ranged weapon attacks, non thrown.
DeleteThat's true - we mentioned it in the lost first draft of this vlog, but didn't get around to it in the redo.
DeleteI think the question-asker was specifically looking for something for the Marksmanship Scions among us, though, if mentioning Apollo is any indication.
I wonder why thrown gets the right to have those knacks but marksmanship does not, when their ranges can be fairly similar?
DeleteTheir ranges aren't comparable. Thrown doesn't get things like Crack Shot or Divine Marksman. Throwing ranges are dependent on derived values from the Strength table and top out at about 15,000 miles with all the throwing knacks; shot missiles with Divine Marksman can go more than six times as far (or more than sixty times as far, with Telescopic Senses).
DeleteOn top of that, thrown weapons larger than darts actually can't deal aggravated damage if thrown to their maximum distance, because you can only use Hurl to the Moon to throw max distance or deal agg, not both at once.
In contrast, marksmanship-shot weapons can deal full lethal damage at one million miles away from the target if the marksman has all his shit together.
So yeah, that's why one gets agg and the other doesn't.
Base throwing ranges are superior to base perceptive ranges up to a rating of 30 when perceptive finally catches up. And thrown does get things like Crack Shot which specifically applies to any ranged weapon, which thrown weapons definitely are.
DeleteAlso, how many games even get to the point where needing to hit someone more than 15,000 miles away comes up more than a couple times a year?
I think you may be forgetting here that it's much more difficult to be that awesome at throwing weapons because it requires buying up three Attributes - Strength, Dexterity and Perception - in order to aim and throw from far away, versus those using Marksmanship weapons who only need to buy Dexterity and Perception. The Perception gun bunnies and archers have a significant XP advantage over the thrown warriors because they can already see a zillion miles to shoot, while those with throwing weapons have to buy a whole extra set of Epic Attributes to be able to see far enough to hit stuff outside their immediate area.
DeleteThrown does not get Crack Shot. Trust me; I wrote it. It says "ranged weapon", and it also very clearly says a Scion "can shoot across distances" immediately following. It applies to weapons that shoot. Because thrown weapons do not use Perception for damage the way shot weapons do, they have nothing to do with the Perception knacks that refer to shooting.
Thrown weapons get aggravated damage because they're inherently far less powerful than shot weapons, both in terms of XP investment and prospective range. Max your Perception and Dexterity and you can potshot someone from unreal distances at little extra effort; to get similar results from throwing, you have to also max Strength and you'll still be at a significant range disadvantage.
As for how many games get to thousands of miles of distance, I really couldn't say; I know that when we have throwing characters in our games, they tend to throw shit a lot, because that's what they're built to do and throwing things a long way is awesome. Not everybody's game gets to God, but some do, and some even start there; the game needs to be balanced all the way up the ladder, not just at Hero.
The definition of shoot includes numerous entries involving any kind of thrown or launched projectile. You shoot a dart, you shoot a javelin, you shoot a pool ball, you shoot an atlatl, you shoot someone a drink, you even shoot dirty looks at people if you want to get figurative about it. You can find an exhaustive amount of examples of these words being interchangeable with the word thrown.
DeleteSo you don't even need all that much strength. You could be a thrown based character with Divine Marksman. Since being a god in your game requires a minimum of epic strength 5 unless that is your dump stat, you can pick up the throwing knacks to compliment your offense.
If you really meant those knacks to be used only with firearms, you could reword it to specify firearms or "any attack made with the the marksmanship skill".
Nope....shoot means shoot. Nice try though. You cant argue semantics with people who write the copy.
DeleteShoot means what it means in the oxford english dictionary. You don't have a definition in your house rules, and there's no definition in the core book lexicon. As long as you keep using vague wording you're going to keep having people arguing semantics.
DeleteMagic the gathering had the same kind of problem with inconsistent wording and frequent semantic arguments early on. It helped a lot when they started using specific terminology and keywords, and it could probably help you too.
throw verb \ˈthrō\
Delete6: to deliver (a blow) in or as if in boxing
7: to twist two or more filaments of into a thread or yarn
17: to put (an automobile) in a different gear especially quickly or suddenly
Guess we better use a different word for the throwing knacks as well....o wait no. That would be stupid. If you are too dense to use context to figure out the meanings of words you should probably spend less time playing games and spend more time in an english class.
Probably don't need a different word for throwing knacks because the word throw is on the character sheets. Feel free to show me where the word shoot is on the character sheet.
DeleteAnonymous is being kind of a pedantic snork, but the point about terminology and keywords isn't a bad one. It'd be nice to have a keyword that means "number of boons in relevant purview" because that concept comes up a LOT in y'all's system. I think that's the biggest one, but there may be other similar oft-repeated phrases that could be condensed down to a single keyword.
DeleteI may be coming off as an ass, but Source J is right. I had no clue you couldn't use crack shot or divine marksman on thrown attacks.
DeleteTrick shooter works for both, so the name alone is not an indication. And now you've got me doubting if you can even use shot to the heart with a thrown weapon.
Some clarity of terminology in the knacks themselves would help a lot.
Anon is being pedantic and rude, but both he and Source J do raise a FAIR point about semantics. However, if it's a choice between John and Anne spending time writing a rules glossary or working on all the other awesome things they want to get done, I'll take the other stuff 9 times out of 10.
DeleteMost of the time we can get by on context when learning JSR's rules. The other 10% of the time we have the novel option to actually ask the creators how something works.
I'd like to clarify that anyone capable of reading comprehension and contextualization can figure out that Trick Shooter and Divine Marksman are for guns/bows, not for throwing knives. My comment was specifically for things like "total number of Boons known" being repeated so often and being such a key concept that it could use a term.
DeleteI completely agree. We've spent a fair amount of time trying to find the perfect word for "total number of boons". Nothing has stuck so far, but we talk about it fairly regularly. It bothers us a lot.
DeleteSo what is the official ruling on Shot To The Heart?
DeleteTrick Shooter can be used for both; Shot to the Heart is for marksmans only. Throwing fighters can already ignore or mitigate their target's armor with Mighty Heave.
DeleteAfter spending a while thinking over the issue, I do not feel there is anything thematically wrong with a perception based throwing character. I can definitely see players asking about that kind of character concept with no intention of trying to create anything overpowered.
ReplyDeleteSo the real danger seems to lie in combining the throwing and marksmanship knacks. Perhaps one possible solution would be to allow crack shot and divine marksman to apply to both, with the caveat that these attacks cannot be combined with any strength based knacks?