Which purviews, if any, do you think are 'lackluster'? Which purviews do you think could and should do more than they do right now? I'm mostly talking about boon choice and number, but if you see this from another angle, please, address that, too.
Hrmmm..... Im not happy with animal....cause I think its too "powerful" and the power comes too early in the purview. It could use less dice adding, and add more neat variation. A next pass on this purview should fix it.
Chaos: A little underwhelming. Some powerful stuff, but then some levels that are pretty "eh".
Darkness: Hits the sweet spot imo. I dont think any purview is ever really "done" or has "enough" but I think darkness has a nice wide selection and usage spread.
Death: is fine. boons need reworking, but it does what it should.
Earth is fine....maybe ill start skipping the ones i think are fine. Just know what across the board, I think everything needs work, just some need so much less that they are fine to me.
Fertility needs a lot of work. It needs more stuff that is eye catching and fun. More "draw" to it.
Fire could use some help at the low levels, but is otherwise good. The higher level boons that do damage need a lot of work, but they have the "right" number and types.
Frost is like the opposite of fire. Good at low end, but needs top end work. I dont like what it does at the moment.
Guardian is mostly good. It needs some retooling and fewer boons that do the same thing. but I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do.
I kinda hate illusion. Its VERY hard to do correctly (hello, Ravnos) but obviously needs to be there. Its a constant difficult thing for me to work on and figure out. Its also difficult to make work in games because when an illusionist is around people just stop believing stuff. Its annoying.
Industry: currently being worked on. Its a big ol fuckin mess.
Justice: Similar problems to illusion. Hard to make it accurate, not broken but not useless...frustrating
Prophecy needs a bit of a kick in the balls, not sure how to accomplish that though. (Ed. note from Anne: probably needs more than one boon per level. Just saying.)
Psychopomp needs major low legend clean up...its a mess down there.
Sky needs a full shift around. We did part of a vlog on this before.
Water needs some changes...it needs hella work.
So....yeah, I guess I think a lot of things need work. But Im a perfectionist, so thats kinda what I do. Hope this helps. Everyone feel free to voice your opinion on what needs work (I think a lot of it has to do with what characters you're playing atm).
Hi Anne and John, huge fan!
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that Stars isn't on this list, particularly for the lower levels. It has few boons, and many of those rely on "Number of Star Boons" to define their scope and power.
This leaves Star Boons less powerful than similar boons in other purviews, and with less potential for growth.
More importantly, it seems very constrained and boxed-in, with far less scope for growth as part of a character's legend.
I'd wonder why this wouldn't be on the revision list, while more fully-formed and versatile Purviews like Fertility, Water, Chaos and Sky are?
Whoops, posted below Samudra for some reason.
DeleteI'm not sure why Stars wasn't on the list. I love the #boons mechanic and wouldn't want to change it, but I also would love to have more excellent Stars boons in there giving the purview more meat. Some of the constraints are mythological - star gods don't do a lot of the same things that sun/moon gods do and are rarer - but I'm sure there's still ground we could cover.
I'd say, speaking from a purely flavour perspective, that some of the Purviews are really missing some thematic areas.
ReplyDeleteFor example, one of the biggest, most mythic aspects of the Stars for ancient people was their role in navigation, yet the closest power Stars has at the moment that approximates this is Axis of the Heavens, and even that is really stretching it. It also seems unfair that Sun and Moon Gods can bring about day and night with Daybreak and Moonrise, but Star Gods can't rearrange the heavens? Shouldn't a Star God totally be able to create omens and messages in the night sky?
Chaos is a Purview I love, but my complaint with it is that while it has plenty of powers for the tricksters (Murphy's Law, Shuck Fate) and for madness Gods (Insanity, Instant Riot), it doesn't seem to have many powers that it in the mould of "God of the Primordial Chaos", like Shiva and Kali. Both of them are Chaos Gods, no doubt, but the kind of primordial, almost Titanic aspects of Chaos they represent aren't really covered much, short of popping The Void itself.
Frost, it surprises me to see, has no power short of Blizzard Call that lets me shape existing ice and snow. It seems odd that I'd need to pop a blizzard when all I wanted to do was turn this block of ice into a statue *I know I could just create an ice statue with Frozen Panoply, but if I'm in an area with already extant ice and snow, why not use it? It feels like making Water Gods use Create Water in the middle of the sea.
Finally, I'm surprised to see that Sky has no Beast Boon, making it the only Elemental Purview thus handicapped. Why?
Samudra, I have many many boons in our "maybe add these someday!" box, and Stars boons involving navigation are among them. :) I'd point out that star gods can rearrange the heavens very concretely by using Constellation Weaver to permanently add or remove constellations, but I do see your comparison. Part of the problem is just that star gods don't do the same things in mythology that sun and moon gods; you expect a sun god to be like, "The sun rises when I say it rises!", but a star god is unlikely to mess around with the area as much as use and represent it. (Same problem Moon has, really, but on a larger scale.)
DeleteMurphy's Law is the go-to Chaos power for people who want to come in and cause chaos just by existing, but I agree, the purview could use more things like that at higher levels. (Also in my new boons file!) (John, let me write new boons!)
You make a good Frost point. I feel like maybe it hasn't come up much so we've never noticed? Even during Fimbulwinter, our frosty PCs never showed much interest in messing around with the already existing snow, so we didn't think about it. It should definitely be somewhere, though (maybe folded into Frozen Panoply?).
Sky has no beast boon because there's no mythological precedent for one that we could come up with. Legends of creatures fashioned of water or earth or flame are par for the course, but there really isn't much in the way of a corresponding air-beast, and even cultures that do assign a creature to reign over the air element usually make it a solid creature with representational connections. I think we probably also thought it might not be totally necessary since the purview is rocking ninety kinds of lightning death. ...buuuuut I could totally see working with the idea possibly. You know. If certain things I want to happen happened.
Anon, not sure why Stars wasn't on the list. I love the #boons mechanic and wouldn't want to change it, but I also would love to have more excellent Stars boons in there giving the purview more meat. Some of the constraints are mythological - star gods don't do a lot of the same things that sun/moon gods do and are rarer - but I'm sure there's still ground we could cover.
Basically I always want more boons in everything.
I realized ten seconds after I made that post that Stars has Celestial Beacon, so it does have a Boon for navigation (kinda).
DeleteAlso, I'd argue that just as Sun and Moon Gods are in charge of keeping those heavenly objects going in their paths, Star Gods are also tasked with keeping the order of the heavens, and Gods like Isis are responsible for making sure that the Stars move around the year the way they're supposed to so humanity knows when to plant crops. As an extension, if Sun Gods can choose to disrupt this order by making the Sun rise when it isn't supposed to, Star Gods too should be able to move the order of the heavens around if they get pushed too far. And aren't there legends of Gods sending messages to humans through celestial phenomenon like meteorite showers? Surely, Gods should, thus, be able to make changes in the tapestry of the night sky (though I freely admit that Stars is my all time favourite Purview, and so I'm just a wee bit prejudiced when it comes to arguing for it).
As for Sky Beast, I get your logic, but in this case I'd have to say I find the sheer asymmetry so...displeasing that I'd advocate its inclusion. I kind of think of it as Sky's Liquid Form, as in, I cannot think of a single case of Water Gods in myth that turn into water (with the possible exception of Ganga, but my jury's still out on that one), yet Liquid Form is a Boon that totally should be in Water (of course I'd love to be corrected on this point, learning about some real Gods shapeshifting into water would be super cool!).
Also, I would kill to see what's inside that box.
It's a big box. A lot of things you mentioned are already in it. :)
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