Question: I know that players cannot get negative Fatebonds towards their PSPs, but can Dodekatheon Scions get negative fatebonds towards Abilities they have Arete in? Can Anunna Scions get negative fatebonds towards purviews they have Me in? What happens if the Abilities or purviews drop below the dots they have in the respective PSP? What happens if the Ability or purview hits 0?
Actually, yes, and this is a really great question!
Because Arete and Me are purviews that are attached to specific stats, they don't get negative Fatebonds themselves but they are affected by Fatebonds that affect the stats to which they're joined. No one will ever get a negative Fatebond to Arete, but unlike other PSPs, Arete dots can be bought off by negative Fatebonds.
If you have some dots of Arete (Athletics) and a negative Fatebond to Athletics, that Fatebond will buy the Arete dots off as well as the regular ones. This is largely because it simply doesn't make sense for you to have incredible mastery in something you actually don't have any of, and just like Epic Attributes can't exist without the attribute they depend on, so Arete dots can't exist without the ability they're supposed to be mastering. It's also a mechanical no-brainer, because otherwise people with Arete and Me would be cheating the entire Fatebond system by getting their stats bought to zero but still having a bunch of dice or powers surrounding them, effectively ignoring Fate's decrees through no effort on their part.
To use an example, let's say that Goze has seven dots of Fortitude and three dots of Arete (Fortitude), and he's just gotten a negative Fatebond to it (for purposes of this demonstration, we'll pretend he has no discounts and is rocking normal XP costs). Because the Fatebond buys off the highest-XP level, it buys off his seventh and sixth dots of Fortitude (14 and 12 XP, respectively) first. It then buys off his third dot of Arete (Fortitude) for 12 XP as well, as the next highest-cost Fortitude dot he has, and then moves on to buying off his fifth regular dot for 10 XP. It'll keep doing that until both Arete and the stat are reduced to zero, and due to the fact that Arete is more expensive than normal dots, Goze will run out of Arete before he runs out of normal dots.
(Actually, those costs are really 14 XP for the seventh dot, then 13 for the sixth dot, then 14 for the third Arete dot, then 13 for the fifth dot, and so on, because every time a dot of Fortitude is bought off the price of buying off the next goes up by one. But I figured you guys'd care more about the demonstration if it wasn't full of confusing math. The end result is the same.)
Now, this sucks, of course, and some players have staged theatrical fainting scenes at the realization that they happen to have one of the only two PSPs that Fatebonds can take away from them. Woe, cruel world! Even worse, where normally a Scion can max out an ability for his level to prevent Fatebonds from buying it off, those with Arete or Me have to also max those to cut off the Fatebond train. This is the worst PSP ever!
But actually, it's not, even if you ignore all the fabulous benefits of nine million dice/total purview domination. While you can't max out a stat to avoid Fatebonds as easily, it's also much more difficult for a Fatebond to buy a stat down to zero when you have Arete or Me; the Fatebond has to eat through alllll that extra XP to take those away, which gives the Scion in question way more time to fight back by spending XP on the stat or trying to find ways to change his Fatebonds so it's not an issue anymore. A god-level Pesedjet Scion suddenly afflicted with a negative Fatebond to Illusion, something she has eight levels in, would be looking at the daunting task of trying to buy two level nine boons before the Fatebond could take away one she already has, something that's almost certain to fail (at best, she'll end up getting some bought off, managing to rebuy them and maybe finally get the high-level ones while slowly seeing the XP cost increase, and that's only if she doesn't buy anything else). But the same Scion, if she were Anunna, could instead buy some lower-level Me for the purview; since it's cheaper, she'd stop the Fatebond for a while and give herself more time to deal with the problem, and she's only making herself better at the purview to boot.
So yes, Scions with Arete or Me are prey to Fatebonds more than Scions of other purviews, but they're also uniquely capable of fighting those Fatebonds more effectively than most others could.
Neat answer!
ReplyDeleteIn that case, does it go the other way, too?
That is, if an Anunna or Dodekatheon Scion gets a positive fatebond towards a purview or ability they don't have dots in, could they end up getting some of the PSP for that purview or ability?
It does indeed! Arete and Me are the only PSPs that can also be bought for you by Fatebonds; if you have a positive Fatebond to Sky, they'll buy you Me (Sky) as well.
DeleteProbably easier to allow all PSP to be bought off with fatebonds. If a bunch of mortals see you acting in a way that is totally nothing like being a proper Deva, there goes your Samsara. If a bunch of mortals see you caring absolutely nothing about maintaining face, there goes your Enech.
ReplyDeleteBetter than having strange exceptions.
If you start lying and tricking people constantly, you get fatebound to loosing your Asha?
DeleteWhy is that easier?
DeleteUniversal rules are always easier to remember than individual ones, especially if future pantheons may have skill adders and the list of exceptions starts growing.
DeleteThe problem with that is that Fatebonds depend upon Legend expenditure, and PSPs spend Legend far less than normal APPs. That means it's going to be rare to get a Fatebond to them one way or the other, and more importantly that if you did get a negative Fatebond to your PSP, it would be way, way harder to try to reverse than any other purview. If they don't like you having Earth, you can go spend ninety Legend on Earth boons and reverse that, but if they don't like you having Ori, well, you're probably up shit creek. We want Fatebonds to shape you, but we also want you to be able to shape yourself.
DeleteAlso, Fatebonds affecting PSPs too much treads on some very weird conceptual territory. It suggests that some Devas are more Deva than others, which is unfair, especially since most pantheons have a wide range of gods doing different things and espousing different roles and values. A Scion's commitment - or lack thereof - to his pantheon's values and culture is something we feel strongly should be under his personal control; Fate can decide what he'll be god of, but it can't change his personality or what he decides is important to him.
Besides, "APPs get Fatebonds, PSPs don't" is no more fiddly a rule than "APPs are open to everyone, PSPs aren't." They're already a specific case with their own rules.
DeleteThat's not a problem, that's a feature. It should be relatively hard to get a negative fatebond to your PSP. It should be equally hard to break that fatebond, and any storyteller is going to work with you if your character tries hard enough to reverse a negative fatebond to something like Ori. How did you even get a negative fatebond to Ori in the first place, for example?
DeleteThere's nothing wrong with the conceptual territory of being less of a Deva. Of course some Deva are more Deva than others. Not everyone has the same level of Samsara, not everyone is buying Samsara, and most importantly some people might be acting in a way that is ABHORRENT to the ideals of the Deva.
"All purviews get fatebonds" is less fiddling a rule than "APP's Get Fatebonds, PSP's don't, except Arete, Me, Enech, and MAYBE Jotunblut (bonus str sta), MAYBE Samsara (Tapasya), MAYBE Ori (thirst for sensation), MAYBE and Samsara."
(oops, said Samsara twice)
DeleteI strongly disagree. Some Fatebonds, despite one's best efforts, happen at random; either because mortals misunderstood or the ST just rolled bananas unlikely on the chart. You can never guarantee that you won't get a negative Fatebond to something, even if you do it awesomely all the time, and while that's fine for normal purviews where you can reverse it with some elbow grease (if you want to commit to the pain of doing so), it's not fine when the odds are stacked heavily against you ever fixing it. To use Ori as an example again, there is literally only one Ori boon that ever uses Legend - a single point - and trying to come back from that would be not just punishing and difficult but actively unfair.
DeleteThe disagreement here is not that there aren't some gods with more or less Samsara than one another, but that that decision should always be with the Scion, not mortal Reverence. It should be an individual Scion's or god's decision how much they want to invest in their culture's identity; it falls under the realm of free will and personality rather than powers and skills, which is a domain that we keep Fatebonds out of. It's the same reason we don't apply Fatebonds to Virtues; those are the choice of the Scion, because they directly relate to and are part of his free will as a person.
It's totally fine for one Deva to have more Samsara than another, but it's not fine for that to be something that wasn't determined by themselves. Unlike general purviews or attributes, which are simply things they can do, PSPs represent their spiritual and cultural identity. Shaping their abilities is something that Fate should do, forcing them into the roles they most strongly embody; shaping their personalities or beliefs is not, because that's something every god does for themselves, which is what gives rise to the wide difference in different gods' behavior, even among a single pantheon's deities.
And while there are all kinds of hefty penalties for behaving abhorrently by your pantheon's standards - from losing access to Asha to getting executed for crimes against the pantheon to inducing Piety extremities across the board - randomly losing your PSP actually shouldn't be one of them. Plenty of gods behave against their pantheon's morals - either regularly or in times of crisis when they snap or see no other way out - and that's an issue of free will.
Fundamental to our Fatebond system there: Fatebonds can fuck around all day with what you can and can't do, but they can never change who you are. That's all on you.
I'm not sure where you're getting all these maybes, but they don't exist. No PSP is affected by Fatebonds ever except for Arete and Me, as this post clearly stated. Enech, Jotunblut, Samsara and Ori are in no way affected by Fatebonds, which cannot add to or subtract from their effects, nor buy or remove them. Things like Tapasya or Thirst for Sensation affect a Scion's stats regardless of whether any Fatebonds are also in play.
And, as I said above, in all technicality Arete and Me don't get Fatebonds, either; only the purviews or abilities get them, and Arete and Me are only affected because they're expressions of greater mastery of those things. Nobody can get Fatebound to Arete. They can only get Fatebound to abilities, and then get better at them than everyone else by Virtue of being Greek.
*sighs* I would try to write a response, but you would just throw another 20 paragraphs at me and agree to disagree in the end. So what is the point? There's never any point.
DeleteWtf else do you want. We're never gonna agree with you out of hand. Your options are long well thought arguments that might eventually have an outcome.....or not participate.
Delete"I want to argue...but arguing is hard and you're better at stating your opinions....whine"
I've already done long well thought our arguments in the past. Many of them. It never matters. Ever. :P
DeleteI'm sorry you feel that way. I can't promise to agree with things you or anyone else say, just to read and consider them and tell you my responses in return.
DeleteAnon, if you don't like something, why don't you just change it for your games? It's not like you're forced to follow these rules and fixes to the letter. (Though, I'm sure John will disagree with that, sorry!) They're provided as-is.
DeleteRemember that first and foremost, John and Anne wrote them for their games. Trying to convince them to add/remove/change the stuff that they've worked on for longer than any of us can pay them for should be a long, heated and well-thought out debate, because the ramifications of such changes affect their games and their players, and I'm pretty sure they care more about those than some anon on the internet who won't even bother with a discussion.
Mario, usually its because they're players or their ST or something only wants to use our rules, and so they think if they argue with us they can change their games.
DeleteThat... makes sense I guess (and it's messed up).
DeleteI see where anon is coming from, because I know the feeling of wanting to use JSR for everything and feeling a little offput doing your own house ruling. If that IS his reason, anyway. I'm still not over the Dodekatheon, for example, and even though J&A have given their reasoning for them...I still want to whine and complain forever. And sure I could just HOUSE RULE Aphrodite to have Epic Manipulation because we don't have a Love purview and that's the best we're gonna get, or give Zeus Stars back...and all my players would be totally on board with it, I still feel like I'd be cheating? Like I totally understand the desire to get the permission of the learned ones on your storytelling decisions.
DeleteAnd I can even understand that maybe he's frustrated that JSR sometimes comes across as a community, but that the community doesn't really have much say in a final product. But in the end, whether you're satisfied with the product or not, this is John and Anne's site and they can do whatever they want and they don't NEED to change anything...you can't just argue and expect things to change because you've yelled long enough. If Anne has nine paragraphs worth of reasons why she doesn't want to use your idea, that's a pretty good sign that she doesn't want to use your idea, and unless you can shoot down every single one of those nine paragraphs, then your just going to have to live with it.
So I feel for anon but he's going to have to move on. I don't think he's messed up, he's just fighting a losing (and unnecessary) battle.
GBN is now involved in Scion: Origins.
DeleteThat means you're going to start catching pressure from people who want their own opinions about the future of the game to be heard. Even if nobody has any idea how you guys are involved.