Lightning Crashes

As promised, we tried not to make you wait too long - here's the new Thunder purview!

Where the old Sky purview combined weather, storms, air and a ton of other ideas, it wasn't quite able to handle all of the above in a way that was coherent and useful to Scions, and ended up as a sort of messy grab bag of vaguely related powers. When we split it into Sky and Thunder, we were thinking of the difference between gods of the firmament and the air within it and the lords of storm and destruction, and this new purview is definitely for the latter. Thunder is the purview of lightning, thunder, storms, rain, and the instinctive fear that such awesome natural events inspire in even the hardest of hearts. Sky was the purview for gods who want to make the heavens their sole, powerful domain, but Thunder is for those gods who want to run rampant across the countryside as the terrible forces of nature they are.

Most of the information on the split, including which gods have what and how to handle transitioning your games, can be found in the Sky release post from a couple of weeks ago. (Incidentally, for the gods among us, Tempest Blast over in Sky now has some concrete effects in conjunction with Thunder boons, so that's now got some usability.)

If you have questions about Thunder, hit us up in the comments, and game on!

Edit: Yes, the question box is down right now. Please ask questions about Thunder in the comments here instead of there, so you don't end up going without answers!

Sky vs. Storm

Question: I'm curious as to why you and Anne decided to eliminate the electricity based boons from the Sky purview. Given the number of sky gods that rely on such powers as a mode of attack, electricity/lightning based boons seem pretty fundamental. Just curious, thanks!

Sounds like you might not have been following the blog much and missed out on a lot of what we're doing.

We haven't erased lightning powers from Sky; rather, we've split the old Sky purview into two new ones, Sky and Thunder, with the former containing all the wind and air and cloud boons and the latter all the storm and thunder and lightning boons. While there are some gods who do both things (although very few who have the Avatar of both purviews), for the most part they are very separate creatures; sky gods are normally in charge of the vault of the skies, the shapers of the clouds and rulers of the winds, as opposed to thunder gods who are the ones in charge of destructive storms and life-giving rains. Since the old Sky purview lumped them together, we've all gotten pretty used to referring to both as powers of a "sky god", but we're really looking at two different kinds of deities, which is why we decided on the split. It's the difference between Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc, or Vayu and Indra.

So if you want to be primarily a Sky god, your offensive powers will be Sky powers: knocking your enemies far afield with blasts of wind, denying them breath with your suffocation powers, and so on. If you want to use thunder and lightning instead, you're going to want the forthcoming Thunder purview, which we hope will be released fairly soon. (Or maybe you want to buy both! Chase your dreams!)

You may want to check out this recent post from the release of Sky for more details and suggestions about how to convert to the two split purviews.

To Clarify...

A little housekeeping - a couple of questions about the new Sky boons!

Question: I want to make sure I understand the Flight boon. You spend the moment of truth or willpower dot. Its gone forever, but you can fly now. No further activation's or costs, you wanna fly, you can fly, at will. UNLESS your grappled, in which case you can't fly anymore until your not grappled, at which point you can fly again right? Sorry if this seems like an obvious question, I just am a little confused on the wording of the boon.

No worries, we want to make sure it's not confusing. :)

Flight lets you fly, period, once you have spent that cost. Any time you want, anywhere you want, as long as you're not underwater. You are no longer constrained by gravity and all three dimensions are your playground.

The grappling clause is just trying to say that if you are grappled by someone who can't fly, you're under their control. You can't fly out of the grapple, nor can you take your grappler into the sky unless you gain control of the grapple yourself. And if you're already in the sky when you get grappled, you'll start falling, because your attacker has control of the grapple and he can't fly. Just like with groundbound grapples, whomever has control is in charge of whether or not you guys are moving and where, so if your grappler has hold of you, you're stuck with him on the ground. If you're the one winning the grapple, you can totally haul your helpless victim into the air with you, though (provided you can lift him, of course).

Question: Sky doesn't seem to have any way of creating weather, is that going to fall under Thunders purview?

As we said in the last post, Thunder is the purview in charge of storms, rain, thunder and lightning, so any boons that involve creating rain or storms will be in there. The Sky purview can create some kinds of weather - for example, with the Whirlwind or Obscuring Mists boons - but not all. In essence, "weather" is too big a category for one purview, and there will be weather-like effects among all the different elemental purviews.

Question: Does Cloud Travel stack with the lightning Dex knacks? Cause if not, it seems like you could travel faster for the same price with those knacks.

If you have Lightning Flyer, yep, sure does! It and the knacks after it (Fast as Thought and Peregrine Fleetness) can stack with Cloud Travel. If you don't, you may indeed find that you run faster on land with your land-based speed knacks, if that's how you've specialized yourself.

Question: "When he spends this boon's cost, he immediately and permanently gains the power of flight, able to soar through the skies completely regardless of gravity at a top speed of double his top level of Sky as if it were an Epic Attribute in yards per second" Does this mean (assuming someone has the avatar) your speed is determined as if you had 22 epic attribute levels, or you treat it as a maxed out epic attribute, then double the number on auto successes it would give you and use that for speed?

The second one. You're doing Sky rating x 2, not some weird crazy math stretch that tries to make the epic scale worth more somehow for only this power in the entire game. The maximum base flying speed for a Legend 11 god with all 10 levels of boons and no other modifiers is 92. Avatars are separate powers and don't count as a level, the same way Ultimate Attributes don't count toward successes from Epics.

Question: Does Arrow Storm work with magic attacks like Levin Fury or throwing a fireball? Cause if it DOES, you guys just made Zeus legit scary. ER. Scarier. Especially if his Thunderbolts are a relic he can give Rainbow Mantle to.

It does not - the same as in Heavenly Domain, it applies only to normal projectiles, not magical powers (although it should say so, so thanks for pointing it out!). However, Zeus' thunderbolts are in fact a relic, so he might very well be able to use them with Rainbow Mantle and Arrow Storm to devastating effect. There's a reason that after losing to Typhon in a battle of strength, he curbstomped him with thunderbolts on the rematch.

Question: Skys Grace - how much does each individual boon in Sky add to your move speed? 1 boon = 1 yard?

Yep, that's it.

Shoot in more questions if you got 'em, folks!

Ten Questions with Excited Waving Arms

On today's blog, project updates, future possibilities, a call to action for you guys, and a whole bunch of questions!

Question: How do you handle "secrets" in myth? Things that supposedly certain gods do not know (and would have extreme reactions if they found out) yet are an established part of the myths about them?

Question: How do you explain the story of King Midas? I mean, the guy's an ordinary mortal who gets the power to turn anything he touches into gold. What Scion powers can give such a power to a mortal?

Question: Can you kill a death god? Should you be able to kill a death god? Does killing a death god really accomplish anything?

Question: What do you think would happen if a Scion, who has not yet received a Visitation, were to simply stumble across a Birthright relic that doesn't belong to an active Scion? Could that result in a kind of "triggered activation" of the Scion's divine blood? Or would nothing happen since it isn't a true Visitation?

Question: How do you determine the damage from some of the more extreme attacks that Scion's power allows? If my Strength monster picks up the Empire State Building and hurls it at a Titan Avatar, or some other powerful foe, how do I determine how badly such an impact hurt the target? If I used Create Earth to conjure up a mess of diamonds, then threw the diamonds into a tornado conjured by Tornado Tamer and hurled the whole thing at a bad guy? How would I determine THAT damage?

Question: How far is too far for you guys at GothamByNight when it comes to PC morality? When do you take one of your Players to the side and ask them if their PC could still be considered "a good guy/aligned with the Gods" and not some Chaotic Evil Titan in waiting that is deserving of a Dark Virtue or two? For example, do you think that a God-level PC Band's active attempts to wipeout humanity or kill off their parents for their own ambitions justify them gaining Dark Virtues?

Question: Do you guys have anyway of setting apart gods and goddesses of hunting mechanically? I'm working on some homebrew and I feel like these hunt gods need some association to really drive the point home, but I don't know what. I almost find myself wanting to make a Hunt Purview, but that's a heck of a lot of work. But what else to use? Is War fitting? An attribute that most fits their hunting style? I'm really at a loss here.

Question: You said in an earlier vlog that the difference between Followers/Creatures and Guides were that Creatures and Followers were below you and Guides were beings above you. Now what if I have a character who's got contact to the Valkyries as a Guide from Hero - would it be possible at Demigod that they turned into more like an equal ally type of thing? That instead of them just giving you good advice, they help you out physically when you really need it.

Question: Nut is a Titan, Shu is a Titan, and Geb is probably going to be a Titan as well - but the most ancient of them, Ra, is not?

Question: So! If everyone on Earth, for whatever reason, suddenly got a point of Legend, and the Gods were then able to get up to their old tricks without having to worry about Fatebinding, would they? If they could without having to worry about Fatebinding, would the Gods return to Earth? Related question, is there anything you can think of from any mythology that would be capable of giving everyone on Earth a legend point? Some Uber Relic or ritual that, if done, would give everyone that kind of power?

To our sixth questioner, we now realize that while we talked about PC morality in answer to your question, we didn't really address Dark Virtues. Our rule of thumb is that Dark Virtues are something PCs gain by contact with Titans or otherwise through magical events, so for the most part we would not give them any Dark Virtues automatically just because they're being jerks. It is entirely possible for Scions (and gods, too!) to be sometimes or even often malicious without actually having Malice, just as it's possible to be interested in knowledge and learning without having Intellect or to bravely run into battle without having Courage. However, Scions who are consistently evil or often do things that are in line with the goals of the Titans are likely to attract their attention, in which case it is entirely possible they might end up corrupted by a Titan Virtue later on.

If you want to email us boons, do it here! Go nuts!