Dodge This

Question: Ignoring Relics, what's the highest possible DV and Soak that a Legend 12 God can have, assuming they've maxed on every appropriate stat to increase those abilities?

Okay, roll up your sleeves - theoretical math post!

Let's start with maxed Dexterity and Athletics, which are the basic stats for DV. With maximum dots in those, our starting DV for a Legend 12 god is 62 ([10 Dexterity + 10 Athletics + 12 Legend] / 2 + 46).

Powers a goddess can add to bolster her DV include:

Animal Feature: adds half Animal boons (10, assuming the maximum of 19 boons) to DV for scene
Assumption of the Land: adds Legend rating (12, assuming the maximum) to DV for scene
Finger Moon: adds Moon boons (23, assuming the maximum) to DV against projectiles for scene
Form of the Jotun: adds +2 to DV for scene
I Say Thee Nay!: adds successes (114 on average, assuming maximum stats with Animal Aspect) to DV for scene if protecting someone
Rabbit Reflexes: doubles base DV in response to a surprise attack (adds 62 again)
Riastrad: adds Courage dots (8, assuming the maximum) to DV for scene
Solar Shield: adds half Sun boons (9, assuming the maximum of 17 boons) to DV for scene
Solar Crown: adds Sun boons (17, assuming the maximum) to DV against projectiles for scene
Tornado Tamer: adds double Sky boons (40, assuming the maximum of 20 boons) to DV for scene
Untouchable Opponent: adds Epic Dexterity dots (10) to DV for scene
Water Control: adds Water boons (19, assuming the maximum) to DV for scene
Water Vortex: adds double Water boons (38, assuming the maximum of 19 boons) to DV for scene

In addition, she also has the option to use Lightning Reflexes to base her Dodge DV on her Wits instead of Dexterity or Empowered Deflection + Legendary Parry to use her Parry DV and base it on her Strength instead, and she can invest in Monkey in the Middle to avoid letting multiple foes drop her DV by overwhelming her with numbers.

Now, obviously some of these are mutually exclusive; our hypothetical DV-happy goddess can't have both Enech and Jotunblut to stack those bonuses, and it's unlikely that she could be both surprised into using Rabbit Reflexes and already protecting someone from danger with I Say Thee Nay! (or protecting anything at all if she's in Riastrad). But, with all that stuff above, our best possibilities are:

If surprised by a projectile attack while flying around in her combination tsunami-tornado during a warp-spasm, our Tuatha goddess has a maximum possible DV of 310. If she is attacked without surprise by projectiles while protecting someone from danger in the middle of a water-tornado, her maximum possible DV is 354. If she is not surprised and has no one to protect because she's freaking out in riastrad, she has a maximum possible DV of 248. The last one's the only one she can probably sustain for long; Rabbit Reflexes applies only to a single attack and is then gone, dropping the first possibility of 310 down to 248 again a moment later, and the second one is more steady but requires her to do nothing but continue to defend her target, making her unable to take any actions not associated with that defense lest she drop down to 240. In every case, Monkey in the Middle will ensure that her DV can never drop lower than 46, even if thousands upon thousands of enemies are all trying to hit her at the same time.

Technically, because I Say Thee Nay's DV bonus is based on a roll, the defender DV option can actually go higher; 354 is based on the average roll of 114. If you were some kind of freak of nature who pumped everything into that roll - maximum Bona Fortuna, maximum Animal Aspect, maximum Arete (so dropping the Enech bonus), Faunaphagia, a Become the Herald bonus, a juicy Final Countdown bonus, maximum Fatebonds and somehow getting a ten on every single die rolled for all of those rolls, you could rock a DV of a whopping 800.

But the chances of achieving that are something along the lines of 1.e-456%, which is a number so small I don't want to put it here because the number of zeroes would take up too much space. You have a much better chance of being the sole person on the planet to be struck and obliterated by a tiny meteor with your initials on it than of ever getting that roll.

This game's theoretical math is stupid.

Not in the Face!

Question: Something I've had a discussion with my ST lately: he thinks that you do not add Epic Dex to DV at the Hero level. I went and looked at the character sheets of your current players, and it looks like a lot of the numbers are just not calculated right. In some cases, Epic Dex has not been added, in some cases Legend hasn't been added, and in some cases neither seems to have been added in. It left me seriously confused, though I suspect it's just that some of the sheets aren't up to date.

Well, first of all: your Storyteller is wrong. Epic Dexterity is always added to dodge DV, regardless of a Scion's level. Randomly not adding it at Hero doesn't make any sense at all, and I'm not sure where he could have gotten that idea unless he's confusing it with the fact that parry DV doesn't add Legend (but that's always, not just at Hero).

However, it is totally true that the DV values on our character sheets aren't always accurate, and we apologize for any confusion. As a generality, we update their stats and powers every week after game, but we (by which I mean I, Anne, because I do the updating) sometimes (and by sometimes I mean often) forget or don't bother to update the calculated values. Other pre-calculated values like run speed, lifting capacity or resistance rolls might also be wrong on some sheets; we usually redo them after a large event like going up in Legend or a big stat shift, but the rest of the time don't waste a lot of time on it. Our players know how to calculate those things, so as long as the stats are right, they can figure out their DV and soaks.

But you're right; that's confusing for everyone who isn't actually at our table, and I apologize. Since I know that pledging to do better in the future won't help you right now, I'll do a couple of different level DV calculation examples here; a god-level example who primarily uses dodge DV (Eztli), a god-level examples who uses parry DV (Sowiljr) and a hero-level example of both.

Eztli is Legend 10 and has nine dots of Dexterity, eight dots of Epic Dexterity, nine dots of Athletics and nine dots of Melee. DV is calculated according to the normal formula - (Dexterity + Athletics + Legend) / 2 + Epic Dexterity successes - so her normal dodge DV is 43. If she chooses to use Untouchable Opponent, she can bump it up to 51 for the scene. Her parry DV is calculated with its normal formula - (Dexterity + Melee) / 2 + Epic Dexterity successes - but since that only comes to 38, she'll almost always be better off using her dodge DV instead.

Sowiljr is Legend 10 and has six dots of Dexterity, six dots of Epic Dexterity, seven dots of Strength, seven dots of Jotunblut bonus Strength, seven dots of Epic Strength, zero dots of Athletics and six dots of Melee. His normal dodge DV calculation would be (6 + 0 + 10) / 2 + 16, which comes to a DV of 24. However, he also has Empowered Deflection and Legendary Parry, knacks which allow him to add his Legend to parry DV and use his Strength instead of his Dexterity, so the calculation for his parry DV becomes (Strength + Melee + Legend) / 2 + Epic Strength, giving him a DV of 37. He'll almost always want to use his parry DV instead of his dodge DV.

And for some examples from a current Hero game:

Yadi is Legend 4 and has three dots of Dexterity, one dot of Epic Dexterity, three dots of Athletics and two dots of Melee. Her dodge DV calculation is (3 + 3 + 4) / 2 + 1, which equals a DV of 6. Her parry DV calculation is (3 + 2) / 2 + 1, which equals a DV of 4. She'll almost always want to use her dodge DV.

Darrius is Legend 4 and has two dots of Dexterity, one dot of Epic Dexterity, three dots of Athletics and one dot of Melee. His dodge DV calculation is (2 + 3 + 4) / 2 + 1, which equals a DV of 6. His parry DV calculation is (2 + 1) / 2 + 1, which equals a DV of 3. He'll almost always want to use his dodge DV.

Paniwi is Legend 4 and has three dots of Dexterity, one dot of Epic Dexterity, four dots of Strength, three dots of Athletics and five dots of Melee. Her dodge DV calculation is (3 + 3 + 4) / 2 + 1, which equals a DV of 6. She has Empowered Deflection, so her parry DV calculation is (4 + 5 + 4) / 2, which equals a DV of 7. She'll almost always want to use her parry DV.

Hopefully that helps clear up any confusion we may have caused with our lackadaisical sheet updates. Dodge DV always adds Legend, no matter what Legend rating a Scion is; parry DV never does unless a Scion has a knack to cause it to.