Saturday, April 20, 2013

Boom!

Question: My player wants to use Industry to build a relic rocket launcher. What the hell kind of stats would that have?

We're still working on our Industry and relics revamp, so we aren't ready to slap you with a magic formula for building relics, rocket-filled or otherwise. But we can do just some general advice for handling this specific request!

Start with stats for a normal, basic rocket launcher, the kind any mortal with the right government or mob connections might be able to get hold of. Scion: Companion lists stats for a bazooka on page 269 that might be useful for a quick template, or you can come up with your own idea of what kind of range and damage it ought to have.

Once you're armed with that, talk to the player about what they want the rocket launcher to be able to do outside of a normal, non-relic weapon's capabilities. Does the player want it to deal more damage or splash in a larger radius? Never run out of rockets? Provide any passive bonuses to anything? Grant increased effectiveness at other powers when using it? Whatever it is, your player needs to have a clear idea of what it's supposed to do before you can set the relic cost or determine the difficulty involved in making it. If the player isn't sure what it's actually supposed to do besides being a relic, work together to provide suggestions, and if they suggest something too wacky and insane ("I want it to deal ten million dice of damage and instantly vaporize anyone not named Dave!" No.), be on hand to rein it in or explain why such a thing would be game-breaking or too many relic dots. If the Scion in question only has Industry, make sure to remind the player what things are and aren't possible with the boons provided; if they have CtE, there'll be much more flexibility in what it could potentially do and you may need to do more work to decide what its requirements and power levels are.

After you know what the player is trying to create, you could use the relic points system detailed in Companion starting on page 150 to determine how many dots the thing will end up being, which should in turn give you some idea of how difficult it will be for the Scion to produce it with Concept to Execution or Industry boons. If you don't like the Companion table or use different criteria for relic costs, roll with those instead, but you should have the basic tools needed to build your relic.

That's all we've really got for you, but hopefully it's somewhere to start, at least. Our advice past that point is to just make sure that the relic balances - either that it's in line with the relics already in the game for the other players, or that it represents enough of a significant investment of time, energy or both for the Scion building it that it's justified in being more powerful.

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