Question: I love your Heku rewrite, but I have some questions about it. First, can Call Sekem be used to provide the Legendary Deed for Funnel Ka? Second, isn't Speak Hu (and for the record, I absolutely adore this boon) a bit overpowered for a first level Boon, stepping on a whole bunch of toes? Third, how many new Fatebonds can a mortal Spreading your Ren generate? Fourth, why can't I use Grant Akh on someone Fatebound to me?
Numbered questions! We'll do numbered answers!
1) Yes, you can combine Call Sekem's ability to exceed your normal limit on Legendary Deeds with Funnel Ka's Legendary Deed cost requirement, although we don't recommend it unless you're in a situation of dire need. Unless you're planning to spend absolute buckets of Legend in a scene that will be brought significantly down by Funnel Ka, just paying for Call Sekem may be more expensive than it's worth. It scales up depending on your Legend rating, of course, but using both boons together costs 10-14 Legend total, so you'd better be planning to blow more than 20-28 Legend on boons and knacks during this scene or the investment won't be worth it.
2) This is really two questions. To the first, no, we actually don't think Speak Hu's overpowered, though we understand the concerns. It's restricted by the social knacks a Scion actually has, so it requires creativity and luck to use the boon effectively, and we've really enjoyed watching Scions come up with neat ways to convince the world around them to bend in their favor. However, it's a loosely structured boon in that it's up to the Storyteller to set the difficulties to influence various objects, so it's directly the Storyteller's job to make sure that the boon doesn't get overpowered. If a Storyteller sets the difficulties too low, Speak Hu gets bananas really quickly, with Scions effortlessly convincing enormous powers and objects to do their bidding in a way that much higher-Legend versions of themselves might find challenging. If you let Legend 3 Scions cause buildings to stand up and swat people for 10 successes, then of course the boon's heinously overpowered, so make sure that you're paying attention to the difficulty. If you're a Storyteller that has trouble coming up with numbers on the fly, you may want to make up some tables of general item sizes or complexities ahead of time so the pressure isn't on when your Pesedjet PCs decide to get creative. For perspective, our PCs have successfully used the boon to do things like convincing a lock to open, encouraging a vehicle's wheels to grip the ground during dangerous car chases, cajoling a security camera into switching itself off at a key moment or commanding their clothes to slip off and help them wriggle out of a grapple.
The second half, the toe-stepping part, is somewhat complicated. For the greater Scion world, the power doesn't really infringe on any other powers; it's the ability to use your social knacks on objects instead of people, which as a generality isn't duplicated anywhere else. Of course, convincing a truck to drive a little better could be said to be very similar to the Wits knacks that involve driving, but it's being done in a different and interesting way, which is good enough for us. Scion often has multiple possible paths to the same result, which helps foster different kinds of character types. The problem of overlap is with Amatsukami Scions who use Tsukumo-gami; their specialized purview is all about conversing with and manipulating the spirits of inanimate objects, which is certainly similar to Speak Hu. It's one of those places where different cultures touch on the same idea - control over the universe - but in different ways, and those are always kind of sticky. We're pretty comfortable with both powers being in the game, however; the Egyptian idea of the words of power that shape the world and the Japanese ideas of the spirits of important objects being tangible and intelligent beings aren't mutually exclusive, and we'd actually like to see what neat ideas might arise from interaction of the two. Speak Hu affects an item whereas Tsukumo-gami affects the spirit inhabiting an item, so there might be interesting conflict if different powers and ways of looking at the world came into contact.
3) Hmm, maybe the wording of the boon is a little unclear? Spread Ren affects one mortal, who can in turn create two new Fatebound mortals of one Legend lower than himself. That means if you use it on a mortal with a Fatebond rating of 7, he'll go out and create two new Fatebound mortals with ratings of 6 each. Your original one Fatebound mortal has become three. It doesn't chain down any further than that because it would get obnoxious to keep track of and lower Fatebond ratings tend to disappear without the Scion's direct presence anyway.
4) You can't use Grant Akh on someone Fatebound to you because doing so would be super overpowered... when we originally wrote it, but subsequent rules changes have affected it, so we're glad you brought it up! Originally, we disallowed using the boon on Fatebound mortals because it was providing too much of an easy "out" from your Fatebonds; normally Scions who don't like their Fatebound mortals' expectations have to pull off some Magical wizardry to try to change it, but with Grant Akh you could just make the mortal Legendary, instantly erasing all of her expectations and sending you home scot-free. However, we've since changed the way our Fatebond system works at god-level, introducing the idea of cults providing Fatebonds instead of individual mortals, so that rule no longer really matters. So, we'd say go ahead and make any old mortal you like into your chosen soul; losing one mortal from a cult won't make the cult disappear, and if you tried to spend 10 Legend per person to erase a whole cult that way, you'd end up creating a new one even larger.
Boom! Heku!
Thanks! I've been waiting for this answer forever! :D (Seriously, Heku is the only reason I might consider abandoning the Devas or the Dodekatheon, who are my two absolute favourite pantheons on the site right now)
ReplyDeleteAnd to clarify, yes, my confusion regarding Speak Ren was whether it chains down any further; incidentally, could the original Herald could make more believers in time? And how long after I use the Boon would I start seeing results (man, this boon makes me wanna ask lotsa questions!)?
The original Herald can make new believers over time, and will probably try start a cult or religion or following on behalf of the Scion. The new believers won't be Fatebound to the Scion unless he comes around and spends Legend around them, but that doesn't mean they can't know about his deeds or believe in his divinity.
DeleteSpeak Hu is so overpowered, but I absolutely love it despite the unbalanced things you can do with the boon. It reeks of flavor and allows players to do some really inventive things.
ReplyDeleteI've seen players convince bombs not to explode, bridges not to collapse, acid to stop burning, snake venom to stop spreading, ask magical barriers to change shape, convince thrown rice to jostle around so an ancient vampire lost count, an elevator to deliver someone to the wrong floor, and cold iron to pretty please not hurt a faerie just this once (it said no).
I'd say the best way to balance Speak Hu is to make sure that no matter how well you roll, the object can't do something impossible for itself. Buildings can't just stand up and walk around on their plumbing-pipes, fires can't just put themselves out, rivers can't suddenly rear up and turn into a team of watery horses, rocks can't explode or melt into magma.
DeleteYou can't, after all, use Overt Order to tell a human to grow wings and fly. Nor could you order a human to spit acid, because humans can't do that. In fact, you can't even order a human to give themselves a brain aneurysm because that's not something that a person can just decide to do.
If you keep the limit of "what can this object possibly do" in mind, then, yep, Speak Hu is awesome, but not totally overpowered. Locks can unlock, cameras can turn off, trucks can self-drive, bombs can disarm, but bridges can't just resist collapsing anymore than a person can resist dying when they've been shot in the face.
This is all the good points, here.
DeleteAlso, I'd suggest keeping it limited to natural or man made things only: telling an Unseen Shield to bend and change shape, as anon up there mentioned, should be a strict no no.
DeleteAs an aside, I wouldn't allow it to do something like stop a river from flowing. Slow it down, speed it up, sure, but not stop. A river that stops isn't a river anymore, it's just a long winding lake. And it goes without saying that the speed change will only affect your stretch of the river.
Hmm, that's a really good point that should probably be in the boon - you can't talk to an Unseen Shield or a Spirit Lamp to make them do things with Speak Hu. Weird to quantify, though, because some boon effects maybe could be affected - for example, you might be able to ask an object created with Frozen Panoply to do things once it was in existence, since it's a solid, separate object. Hmm. Gotta think about that one.
DeleteFor that matter, not to sound overly critical, but telling cold iron not to hurt a fae is like telling water to change its boiling point. I don't think Speak Hu should do that either.
DeleteYeah, I'd agree there. Some of the stuff anon mentioned is totally awesome, but some of them also sound like someone's stretching the definition of what an object can do a little much. I probably also wouldn't allow acid to not burn - it's acid, yo, that's not an option it has. Although you could instead try to convince it to move away from whatever you didn't want to be burned.
DeleteThe boon is actually vague about what it can and cannot do.
DeleteCan it create movement? If yes, then it can make a rock fall, a bridge not collapse, a tree rustle, a car move, and poison to leak out of a wound.
Can it influence properties? If yes, then it can change the time on an electronic clock, it can stop a bomb from exploding, it can stop acid from burning, it can stop gas from combusting, and it can make a computer do computer things.
Hmm, I disagree. The whole point of the boon is that it doesn't actually do anything; it allows you to use your social knacks on objects as if they were living things, and that's it. Source J is spot on that, just as you can't Overt Order someone to spontaneously combust, you shouldn't be able to Overt Order an object to do something it isn't normally capable of. It's only vague if you feel that the social knacks themselves are vague.
DeleteI'm afraid I also have to disagree. The problem is that most objects are not capable of doing anything at all. Only living things have any locomotion of their own, and most plants tend to move too slowly to be of use.
DeleteSo the boon has to add locomotion, or change a property, or it doesn't do anything.
Not at all! Objects normally don't move without force behind them, but they can move and do things. It's not exactly the same as the way a living thing does, but we're in the realm of magic here.
DeleteA door can close or open; it's designed to do it. A computer can turn on or off, a lock can open or lock down, a wire can carry current or not. But acid can't not be acid. That's not possible without it actually becoming something other than acid.
As the boon directly says, you "may not order any object or creature to do something of which it is not capable". You're just arguing semantics here.
I'm not arguing semantics, I'm arguing function.
DeleteIf a door can open or close, then the boon can add locomotion to an object because doors do not move on their own. If the boon adds locomotion then that's cool, I can understand how adding locomotion affects objects in the world around me.
But if the boon does not add locomotion, then I am genuinely at a loss for what it actually does. You can say it is magic, but that does not help me understand what the boon does. "Do what it was designed to do" could possibly work, but a rock is not designed to fall, and the boon says it can make a rock fall.
Hmm. Maybe background will help?
DeleteThe boon is based on the Egyptian idea of hu, the sacred word of creation, said in various myths to have been uttered by Ra or Ptah when they called all things into being. The god who controls hu directly controls all things that have been created with it, because it is the source and power that made them. When Ptah spoke the word, things were created into being; when he speaks it again, they perform at his will.
The point here is to duplicate, on a small scale, that power of the Egyptian gods to speak to the world and cause it to obey them; they made it and they know how to make it do tricks if they want to. There have to be obvious limitations - it can't work on living things, for example, because they need to have their own resists and self-determination, and it can't really create new things, either, since those powers are covered all over regular APPs. It's an early-level boon and shouldn't be too overpowered, so its scope is more limited that the original hu that created the world, but it still calls upon that ancestral Egyptian power to speak and be obeyed.
If it helps you to think of it as the boon adding "agency" to objects that normally don't have it, that's cool. It commands and creation, which is normally inert, responds thanks to its power. It doesn't "grant locomotion" because those rocks didn't just gain the power to walk or anything, nor does it grant true consciousness, even though you're "talking" to them; it just models your ability to command the world to pay attention and do things for you.
But the important thing here is that it can command things to do, but cannot change them into other things. It cannot make something into something else, nor can it cause something to somehow shut down an innate, unchangeable aspect of itself. A rock sitting on the edge of a cliff could fall off of it, but it couldn't stop being a rock, nor could it turn into a different kind of rock or set itself on fire or explode into sand or anything else that fundamentally causes it to no longer be a rock. It's the same thing for any substance or object that has innate qualities, so you can't ask acid to not burn, because if it didn't burn it wouldn't be acid anymore, and there is nothing you can do to acid that could cause it to stop burning without transforming it into a new substance. You could never ask iron to not harm a fairy; it's not the iron doing something to the fairy, it's that fairies are allergic to iron, and you can't make the iron not be iron.
Does that help?
First, thank you for the background information.
DeleteSecond, it kind of helps and kind of does not. I know that is probably frustrating, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around what is allowed and is not allowed by the boon.
I now understand what you mean about not changing the nature of an object. If acid stopped burning it would no longer be acid.
But can you convince a bomb not to explode? As soon as it is combined with another reaction, it's natural state will involve explosions. Can you make a burning fuse stop burning? It seems like you can, but only by making the fire snuff out or move away from the fuse, because if fire doesn't burn then it's not fire. It definitely seems like you can change the time on an electronic clock.
So while you explanation definitely helped some (unless you're reading this and still think I am off base), it created a lot of really hard and esoteric questions about the nature of a substance and how it reacts with other substances.
You could, using Anon's example, make poison flow *out* of a body. I don't know if you could order blood to stop leaking out of that chest wound, or to clot faster, because the blood is still part of the person. I'm leaning towards "no".
DeleteI want to say a haunted house would be a good guideline. Doors that slam themselves, lamps that turn on and off, TVs that turn on and set themselves to spooky channels. But the TV doesn't animate itself and run you down, or jab your eyes out with its rabbit ears. The lamp doesn't come to life like Luimere and start hopping around.
Yeah... sadly, science tends to do that with Scion. Different Storytellers choose to do it in different ways, but everyone at some point has to say, "Okay, normally science would say X but this is the point where we say magic invalidates that."
DeleteI would say that you could convince a bomb not to explode, but you couldn't convince a fuse not to burn; the bomb could theoretically just stay in its original, not-blown-up state (if it hasn't already started blowing up, anyway - once that chemical reaction's happened, it's too late), but the fuse that's being burned can't do anything about the fire affecting it. You also couldn't tell the fire not to burn the fuse, because it's fire and has to keep being fire, but you could perhaps convince it to change direction - say, instead of following the fuse to the bomb, veer off and go burn some carpeting or something that is within reach. Electronic clock, definitely, you could convince it that it actually had ninety minutes left on the timer or whatever. The bomb example is one where I think it could go more than one way depending on what the PC did exactly.
My advice is to not give yourself a headache over it; you won't be able to plan everything ahead of time, so just keep in mind that Heku should 1) make sense for the idea the boon is based on, and 2) not be overpowered like crazy. If a stunt isn't too overpowered and is neat, then go for it, and if players are trying to do something and you don't want to let it happen, explain why (i.e., "I agree that it would be awesome to order that jukebox to poke its wires out and electrocute that robber, but that's not really within its capabilities") and offer alternatives ("But you could probably convince it to fall over on top of him if he's near it").
Also, I agree with Source J - substances that are part of living beings are immune to Heku and should be handled with the Health purview. But foreign substances in a body, like bullets, could be affected.
Man, no wonder people think Speak Hu is overpowered - if they're letting it do things like prevent fire from burning or shut down an Unseen Shield, it'd be bananas out of control. I'll have to think about ways we might be able to reword to try to clear things up.
Man, doesn't it suck when you write something that makes perfect sense to YOU but then everyone else is like "it does WHAT NOW?!" because they're viewing it some totally weird way you never even considered?
DeleteAnyway, yeah, it's gunna be super hard to rewrite Speak Hu, because on the one hand it can allow objects to do things they normally can't (objects can't fall by themselves!), but on the other hand it can't make them do things they *especially* can't do, like telling a broken bridge to hold itself together or a fire hydrant to melt into slag. It's easy to tell what Social Knacks can do to people. We understand how people react to given orders and what people have the ability to do. It's much harder to figure out exactly what degree of agency a given inanimate object has to follow your orders. It's basically a judgement call.
I would suggest that Speak Hu just fails when used on magical items or effects. They're magic and they're probably stronger than a Rank 1 Boon. But then you get into stuff like the ice-objects created by Frozen Panoply. Are they magic? Yes/no? So, still it involves a lot of judgement calls.