Question: I've noticed with the Quicken boon in Fertility, you can give plants Epic and Mundane Appearance, and Mundane Charisma or Manipulation, but it doesn't say anything about Epic Charisma or Manipulation! Is this intentional or an oversight? Also, the rest of the bits beneath the table are a little confusing to me - can you clear them up? Thank you!
It’s on purpose. While we allow for plant-manipulating Scions to give their creations a few social stats if they really want to, we excluded Epic socials simply because they’re not something plants could express most of the time even if they had them. The vast majority of plants, even magical ones, can’t talk or interact with people in a meaningful way unless those people have Gaia’s Touch, so them having Charisma or Manipulation knacks would be straight up useless and pointless. And besides, we do like it when different purviews are distinctly different in what they can do; while talking plants isn’t impossible with Fertility, it’s not what most plants do as a default, so plant powers are designed to work with the kinds of plants that almost everyone has access to, rather than a few weird specialized ones.
However, we do recognize that many Fertility-based Scions would love to be able to create Audrey II and give it the ability to sucker some poor fool into getting a little too close at suppertime, so we’re considering whether or not this needs changing. :)
As for the text underneath the table, it’s explaining that plants gain the basic ability to think when this is used on them – probably not very intelligently unless you loaded those stats up, but at least at the level of a normal animal like a frog or chicken. If you give them at least one dot of Dexterity, they can also move by themselves. The rest of the text is putting a cap on how high you can enhance any one category that you grant bonuses to; nothing can go higher than the plant’s Legend x 5, which means that if you create a Legend 5 self-aware morning glory with this boon, it can’t have more than 25 dots total in mental and social Attributes combined, nor can it have more than 25 dots or points added total to its physical Attributes and attack stats. If you want to add more to either of those categories, you’ll need to increase the plant’s Legend first.
Showing posts with label Fertility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fertility. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Saturday, September 14, 2013
There Are Many Plants, but This One is Mine
Question: The Fertility purview, unlike the Animal purview, is rather unspecific in its designations. My question is, how do you deal with specific associations? Do you give bonuses or advantages to gods associated with particular plants, such as Dionysus with the grape vine or Xipe Totec with corn?
First of all, here's an in-depth post on the topic of specialized totem plants in regards to the Fertility purview. You're right; it doesn't have the same kind of narrowed focus Animal does, so gods with particular plants associated with them don't have anything particularly fancy happening within the purview itself.
However, we would assume that most gods who are really and truly tied strongly to something have some kind of relic power that bolsters that association. Dionysus, for example, probably has a relic (perhaps that kantharos he's always carrying around?) that gives him mad bonuses when he uses his Fertility powers on grapes or grape products, enabling him to specialize in his chosen drunken plantlife the same way Zeus probably specializes his Sky boons with powers granted by his relic lightning bolts. Individual Scions can do all kinds of stuff with relics that relate to specific things they want to be associated with, so they might as well extend it to plants if they happen to be gunning to becoming the Gods and Goddesses of holly and ivy or something.
I usually don't put site spoilers on the blog, but since you asked, we're also talking lately about adding a boon to the Fertility purview to help handle the idea of specialized plant totems; I don't know what mechanics it might use yet (or even if we'll end up formally adding it), but it's also definitely something that we'd consider a reasonable approach to representing gods of specific flora or fungi.
First of all, here's an in-depth post on the topic of specialized totem plants in regards to the Fertility purview. You're right; it doesn't have the same kind of narrowed focus Animal does, so gods with particular plants associated with them don't have anything particularly fancy happening within the purview itself.
However, we would assume that most gods who are really and truly tied strongly to something have some kind of relic power that bolsters that association. Dionysus, for example, probably has a relic (perhaps that kantharos he's always carrying around?) that gives him mad bonuses when he uses his Fertility powers on grapes or grape products, enabling him to specialize in his chosen drunken plantlife the same way Zeus probably specializes his Sky boons with powers granted by his relic lightning bolts. Individual Scions can do all kinds of stuff with relics that relate to specific things they want to be associated with, so they might as well extend it to plants if they happen to be gunning to becoming the Gods and Goddesses of holly and ivy or something.
I usually don't put site spoilers on the blog, but since you asked, we're also talking lately about adding a boon to the Fertility purview to help handle the idea of specialized plant totems; I don't know what mechanics it might use yet (or even if we'll end up formally adding it), but it's also definitely something that we'd consider a reasonable approach to representing gods of specific flora or fungi.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Mad Horticulture
Question: How would you stat a being that had Human Hybrid with an Impossible Hybrid of a venus flytrap, kudzu and peyote?
Shit. We wouldn't, unless our players made us, in which case they're bad people who want to see us suffer. That looks like a hell of a lot of work.
Obviously, it would be some kind of legendary plant-person, but past that point there are a lot of things you could do with it. You could give them bonuses to grappling from their kudzu-like tenacity, intoxicating or hallucinogenic pheromones from their peyote ancestry, sharp, scary flytrap teeth with industrial-strength digestive juices, and whatever else you thought was appropriate. We're not going to actually stat this because it looks like a ton of effort, so apologies. You'll have to build your own plant people.
We'd say that you should first figure out what the Impossible Hybrid plant exactly does and what qualities it possesses before anything else; you're combining human DNA with whatever weird Audrey II plant you've already created, so make sure you know exactly what it's like. That'll give you a better basis to then move on and figure out how to combine it with humanoid features. A lot also depends on what the player is trying to do; what are they trying to make here? Do they have any other powers they plan to use to contribute to it, and how will those change it? What's the end goal, and is it something they can realistically achieve? Most players will have an idea of what they're hoping to see.
And then... go forth. Create. Use templates for other similar creatures as your base. Tell us about it when you finish!
Shit. We wouldn't, unless our players made us, in which case they're bad people who want to see us suffer. That looks like a hell of a lot of work.
Obviously, it would be some kind of legendary plant-person, but past that point there are a lot of things you could do with it. You could give them bonuses to grappling from their kudzu-like tenacity, intoxicating or hallucinogenic pheromones from their peyote ancestry, sharp, scary flytrap teeth with industrial-strength digestive juices, and whatever else you thought was appropriate. We're not going to actually stat this because it looks like a ton of effort, so apologies. You'll have to build your own plant people.
We'd say that you should first figure out what the Impossible Hybrid plant exactly does and what qualities it possesses before anything else; you're combining human DNA with whatever weird Audrey II plant you've already created, so make sure you know exactly what it's like. That'll give you a better basis to then move on and figure out how to combine it with humanoid features. A lot also depends on what the player is trying to do; what are they trying to make here? Do they have any other powers they plan to use to contribute to it, and how will those change it? What's the end goal, and is it something they can realistically achieve? Most players will have an idea of what they're hoping to see.
And then... go forth. Create. Use templates for other similar creatures as your base. Tell us about it when you finish!
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Powering Up the Gremlins
If you have the boons to make crazy-awesome hybrid creatures (the 9-dots of Animal, Chaos, Fertility, and Health), then what do you need in order to give them cool powers? F'r example, if your Scion wants to make a species of craftsbeings for their pantheon comparable to dwarves or tengu, or if you want to make fire-breathing jaguarmadillos or make trees that are immune to lightning and capable of storing the electricity from lightning strikes to use on enemies. How do you make that work?
Tough question. I wish I could give you a better, straighter answer, but I really think its gonna have to be on a case by case basis. Its definitely something you are able to do with those level 9 powers. But its something that has to be handled delicately. And since there are an infinite number of ideas you could add to these creatures, a system either isnt gonna work, or is gonna take forever to come up with.
So some thoughts Id have if someone was bringing this to me.
How powerful does that make the creature. What legend are they probably?
Is the power something that the maker of the creatures is god of?
Are these creatures going to earth on masse? How will that effect humanity?
How many of these creatures are getting this power?
How often and fully to they breed?
Id add a legend cost, probably starting at the same cost again of the creating them boon. And depending on how powerful they are, or more importantly how many of them are, MAYBE add a permanent willpower to give them this permanent power.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more likely the permanent willpower is.
Then probably some mechanic about when they spend legend, you get fatebounds to their creation story until you have a full cult that remembers you created these beings.
I know that probably wasnt the straight answer you were looking for....sorry. But theres just too many variables. Its the kinda thing I could work on with a specific example. But its also one of the things that I spend a lot of time on as an ST and cant kinda do on a massive for everyone scale.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
God of Greens
Question: From a mechanics standpoint, how do you feel about reworking Fertility to be more like Animal (such as with a totem plant)?
We've actually talked about this occasionally, because mythology does have specialized fertility gods, from Idun with her apples to Mayahuel with her maguey. It's a tempting thought, because how cool is it to have Fertility (Venus Flytraps) instead of plain old Fertility? So cool!
But we've always decided it's not a viable route to pursue in Scion, and there are both mechanical and symbolic reasons for that. I know you only asked about the mechanics, but you're going to get the whole package (don't worry, you can always stop reading when I start talking about symbolism and association!).
Mechanically, while at first glance it seems like this would work about as well as Animal's specializations, the reality is that totem plants have a lot more problems than totem animals do. For one thing, they aren't easily portable; you can carry seeds around, or maybe a potted plant, but they can't move under their own power and you can't call them to you or have them handy as companions to use your boons on the way you can for animals. You can still go find them if they aren't around - but so can folks with Animal, and they then have the option to take their new friends with them and keep performing neat tricks with them, whereas the guy with Fertility (Redwoods) has no such luck. Plants also can't defend themselves or run away from danger, meaning that they're much more likely to get destroyed, stolen or otherwise rendered unusable for the Scion with Fertility than animals are for the Scion with Animal, simply because they have no ability to self-preserve at all. Unspecialized Fertility can handle this because there will probably be some kind of plant most places you go, but a totem-driven Fertility purview would be hamstrung.
Later Fertility boons that allow you to grow plants instantly, give plants limited mobility and defense or commune with large areas of plants of course mitigate a lot of these concerns - but those boons don't show up until a Scion is Legend 7+, and a purview in which half its powers are gimped until mid-Demigod is not a purview that is working very well (especially in comparison to Animal, which certainly doesn't have to wait for Legend 7 to be fun and useful).
Just as important as the mechanical issue is the conceptual one; Fertility and Animal are actually polar opposites when it comes to the ideas of specialization and totem associations. While the vast majority of animal gods are overwhelmingly tied to a single totem animal, with a handful who are generalists who affect all animals, the vast majority of fertility gods are nonspecialized, with the handful of odd men out being the ones with specific plants they stick to. Where most animal gods have one or two totem creatures that represent them and their power, most fertility gods are vastly generalized, affecting such gigantic ideas as the fertility of the fields and crops, of the forests and oases, of the bounty of the earth itself. There certainly are gods of fertility who have a single specialized plant they watch over, but they're greatly outnumbered by the hordes of fertility gods that are in charge of all plant life everywhere.
Which is not really surprising; animal gods have singular totems because they represent that god's personality and other powers, and most of the time different animals represent such different things that they don't need to have anything to do with them. Fertility gods, on the other hand, are humanity's providers of food, shelter and sustainable life, and therefore need to affect all the plants humanity relies on to survive. Ancient cultures needed to know that their fertility gods could preserve all the crops they needed to live, not just one plant, so there are far fewer major gods of a single plant than there are those with power over the whole plant kingdom.
So, much as we have occasionally entertained fantasies of Scions running around with Fertility (Eggplant) or Fertility (Pointsettia), we've kept the purview generalized; it doesn't make sense, mechanically or mythically, to break it down that way. Scions who do want to specialize in a single plant can, of course, always find ways to do so, using that plant conspicuously and frequently and making sure mortals know what plant is his special favorite. I'd also consider tailored Birthrights, as well, whether for Scions of gods with "totem" plants or Scions who are planning to specialize in a plant themselves; a budding god of lilypads getting a relic that allows him to get bonuses to his Fertility when using it specifically on lilypads is an elegant solution for those occasional cases.
We've actually talked about this occasionally, because mythology does have specialized fertility gods, from Idun with her apples to Mayahuel with her maguey. It's a tempting thought, because how cool is it to have Fertility (Venus Flytraps) instead of plain old Fertility? So cool!
But we've always decided it's not a viable route to pursue in Scion, and there are both mechanical and symbolic reasons for that. I know you only asked about the mechanics, but you're going to get the whole package (don't worry, you can always stop reading when I start talking about symbolism and association!).
Mechanically, while at first glance it seems like this would work about as well as Animal's specializations, the reality is that totem plants have a lot more problems than totem animals do. For one thing, they aren't easily portable; you can carry seeds around, or maybe a potted plant, but they can't move under their own power and you can't call them to you or have them handy as companions to use your boons on the way you can for animals. You can still go find them if they aren't around - but so can folks with Animal, and they then have the option to take their new friends with them and keep performing neat tricks with them, whereas the guy with Fertility (Redwoods) has no such luck. Plants also can't defend themselves or run away from danger, meaning that they're much more likely to get destroyed, stolen or otherwise rendered unusable for the Scion with Fertility than animals are for the Scion with Animal, simply because they have no ability to self-preserve at all. Unspecialized Fertility can handle this because there will probably be some kind of plant most places you go, but a totem-driven Fertility purview would be hamstrung.
Later Fertility boons that allow you to grow plants instantly, give plants limited mobility and defense or commune with large areas of plants of course mitigate a lot of these concerns - but those boons don't show up until a Scion is Legend 7+, and a purview in which half its powers are gimped until mid-Demigod is not a purview that is working very well (especially in comparison to Animal, which certainly doesn't have to wait for Legend 7 to be fun and useful).
Just as important as the mechanical issue is the conceptual one; Fertility and Animal are actually polar opposites when it comes to the ideas of specialization and totem associations. While the vast majority of animal gods are overwhelmingly tied to a single totem animal, with a handful who are generalists who affect all animals, the vast majority of fertility gods are nonspecialized, with the handful of odd men out being the ones with specific plants they stick to. Where most animal gods have one or two totem creatures that represent them and their power, most fertility gods are vastly generalized, affecting such gigantic ideas as the fertility of the fields and crops, of the forests and oases, of the bounty of the earth itself. There certainly are gods of fertility who have a single specialized plant they watch over, but they're greatly outnumbered by the hordes of fertility gods that are in charge of all plant life everywhere.
Which is not really surprising; animal gods have singular totems because they represent that god's personality and other powers, and most of the time different animals represent such different things that they don't need to have anything to do with them. Fertility gods, on the other hand, are humanity's providers of food, shelter and sustainable life, and therefore need to affect all the plants humanity relies on to survive. Ancient cultures needed to know that their fertility gods could preserve all the crops they needed to live, not just one plant, so there are far fewer major gods of a single plant than there are those with power over the whole plant kingdom.
So, much as we have occasionally entertained fantasies of Scions running around with Fertility (Eggplant) or Fertility (Pointsettia), we've kept the purview generalized; it doesn't make sense, mechanically or mythically, to break it down that way. Scions who do want to specialize in a single plant can, of course, always find ways to do so, using that plant conspicuously and frequently and making sure mortals know what plant is his special favorite. I'd also consider tailored Birthrights, as well, whether for Scions of gods with "totem" plants or Scions who are planning to specialize in a plant themselves; a budding god of lilypads getting a relic that allows him to get bonuses to his Fertility when using it specifically on lilypads is an elegant solution for those occasional cases.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
A Rain of Thorns
Question: Would you allow a low-level Fertility boon that allowed the Scion to 'create' arrows out of any plant material?
Probably not. That sounds incredibly narrowly focused, and, more importantly, it sounds like something we'd let Scions do on their own anyway without a boon. If you've got a dot of the appropriate Craft (or Jack of All Trades), you could already use plants to help you create arrows or javelins by whittling them to point, twisting them to make them stronger, using existing thorns, or whatever else you happened to stunt. Plants are, after all, one of the great raw materials of the world anyway; if humans can turn them into weapons with a little hard work, I don't know why on earth Scions would need a boon to do so.
Such a boon would also be rendered completely irrelevant by the time the Scion was able to get Twist Plants anyway, and putting powers into the game that become literally useless when a Scion gains Legend is pretty counter-productive. It sounds to me like what a Scion really wants in this situation is just a dot or two of Craft (Fletching) (which will help them make arrows out of everything, not just plants!) and then stunt it to go along with their Fertility, possibly along with using Fertility boons to enhance/grow plants to use in arrow-making. That provides a character with more options, not fewer, and doesn't require either losing cool flavor or creating a specialty boon that appears to be mostly pointless.
I'd also consider letting Scions use a Toxic Thorn as an arrowhead if they stunted it well.
Probably not. That sounds incredibly narrowly focused, and, more importantly, it sounds like something we'd let Scions do on their own anyway without a boon. If you've got a dot of the appropriate Craft (or Jack of All Trades), you could already use plants to help you create arrows or javelins by whittling them to point, twisting them to make them stronger, using existing thorns, or whatever else you happened to stunt. Plants are, after all, one of the great raw materials of the world anyway; if humans can turn them into weapons with a little hard work, I don't know why on earth Scions would need a boon to do so.
Such a boon would also be rendered completely irrelevant by the time the Scion was able to get Twist Plants anyway, and putting powers into the game that become literally useless when a Scion gains Legend is pretty counter-productive. It sounds to me like what a Scion really wants in this situation is just a dot or two of Craft (Fletching) (which will help them make arrows out of everything, not just plants!) and then stunt it to go along with their Fertility, possibly along with using Fertility boons to enhance/grow plants to use in arrow-making. That provides a character with more options, not fewer, and doesn't require either losing cool flavor or creating a specialty boon that appears to be mostly pointless.
I'd also consider letting Scions use a Toxic Thorn as an arrowhead if they stunted it well.
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