Question: A few boon combination questions, all with Army of One. What happens when you use Army of One in conjunction... with Natural Army? with Colossus Armour? with Unseen Shield? with Shadow Bodies?
Well, first let's quantify the idea of "in conjunction with". As I'm sure you know, you cannot use any knacks or boons once Army of One is activated, so any of these powers you wanted to have active would need to be used before Army of One. In addition, it technically doesn't work to use any of them in a double action with Army of One; because Army of One only includes powers you already have active when you activate it, and the power you used on the same action would not yet be active, technically that boon or knack would just fizzle, since it wouldn't be active when Army of One was spent for but couldn't be activated after it was already in use.
But you can absolutely use a bunch of boons, and then use Army of One and have them all carry over, so we assume that's what you're talking about and we'll go from there.
Colossus Armor is easy; all ten of you (or whatever) running around from Army of One have Colossus Armor, as long as you used it first. Hooray! Indestructible army!
In contrast, Unseen Shield and Shadow Bodies don't change. Shadow Bodies simply creates shadow copies of yourself that can run around, but they're already created and rocking themselves out by the time of Army of One, and they aren't an ongoing effect on you that would be duplicated. You'll end up with ten of yourself from Army of One and the same five shadow copies of yourself you already had. Similarly, the Unseen Shield has already been created and is now a free-standing construction that is not attached to you, so you won't sprout a bunch of new Unseen Shields around all your new selves. The one shield is still there, protecting whomever you told it to protect, and will remain so until it's broken or the scene ends. All of the Army of One bodies are you, however, so they're all automatically included in the Unseen Shield as long as you haven't gotten yourself kicked out of it for violence yet.
And finally, you can't use Natural Army with Army of One at all. The only powers you can use while in your animal army form are your mental Epics and knacks; you can't activate boons while transformed into either a single or multiple animal form. You'd need to turn back into your humanoid form before you'd be able to use Army of One anyway, and wouldn't be able to use another boon afterward.
Army of One is honestly kind of a mess of a boon, so we sympathize with the difficulties inherent in using it.
Showing posts with label boons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boons. Show all posts
Friday, March 21, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Crusading for Equality
Question: Small mechanics issue: due to the large number of existing boons for some purviews (Animal, for example) and small number for others (Stars, for example), there's an uneven tradeoff for those boons whose effectiveness depends on the number of boons in that purview known (Web of Stars, for example). Is there any kind of quick workaround someone could use (like using the greater of Epic Strength or number of Stars boons, for example)?
I'm not going to go super in-depth with this one, simply because we're in the middle of rewriting purviews right now so a lot of numbers and mechanics are in the middle of changing right now anyway, and any advice I give you would end up being old news pretty quickly. But for those who are still using purviews that haven't been overhauled with, there are a few things to touch on.
First of all, you're right, there's inequality between how many boons are in each purview; but that doesn't actually cause any mechanical problems in most cases. The powers that use or roll a total number of boons almost never oppose one another; that is, it doesn't matter that you have fewer Stars boons than Animal boons, because you're never going to roll Animal vs. Stars so the issue actually doesn't exist. There's no conflict because those powers' boon totals don't interact, and are present only as measurements for the boons themselves. There are a few rare cases where that cross-purview conflict does come into play, and there you're totally justified in worrying about possible imbalance; for example, there are a few times boons require people to roll their Darkness vs. someone else's Sun or vice versa, and since there is one more Sun boon than there are Darkness boons, the Sun people are technically at a small advantage. It's a very tiny imbalance so we aren't too worried about it, and I'm sure we'll be addressing it when we get to rewriting the celestial purviews, but if you're concerned you could always give the Darkness guy an additional die to make it fair if you're dealing with a situation where two people with maxed purviews are rolling off against one another.
The only place there actually is an issue is with rolling against Titanrealms; those do have a standard difficulty, which means that purviews with fewer boons are at a disadvantage when trying to overcome the primordial realms that oppose them. We actually recently noticed that come up when Eztli had to roll her Stars boons against a Titanrealm, and we realized that even though she has every Stars boon in existence, she still had far less chance to beat the realm than users of other, more populated purviews. That is totally a problem, and we are aware of it and working on it. Honest. Our in-the-meantime solution, for those of you with god-level Scions, is to lower the difficulty for particularly slim purviews like Illusion or Stars in those situations.
However, within boons that don't target one another - like your Web of Stars example - there is no imbalance or "uneven tradeoff", because there's no comparison happening. Each of those boons is designed to use the total of boons in its home purview, not a mythical "number of boons" standard that doesn't actually exist. We knew how many boons were in the purview when we wrote the boons, and designed them accordingly. We intended for Web of Stars to last for only a few days at a time; if there had been twice as many boons in the purview when we wrote it, we would have had it last for 1/2 Stars boons in days.
We definitely do not suggest replacing those numbers with any kind of mechanic that involves an Epic Attribute instead of boons. The total number of boons mechanic is used to represent power over your purview and investment in its sorceries, and Epic Attributes are in no way a substitute for that (not to mention allowing a lot more powergaming for those who just stack the Epic instead of bothering with their actual godly powers). We do like Epics involved in boons in certain places, which is why so many have rolls, but if we used the number of boons mechanics, it was because we wanted that aspect of the boon to hinge on your control over the purview. Your Web of Stars sticks around because you're great at Stars and stars answer your call, not because you're strong. That makes way less sense and is way less mythically awesome.
However, all these purviews are in the middle of getting rewritten, y'all, so don't have too big a meltdown over any specifics right now. There's a good chance it'll just end up changing in the near future anyway!
I'm not going to go super in-depth with this one, simply because we're in the middle of rewriting purviews right now so a lot of numbers and mechanics are in the middle of changing right now anyway, and any advice I give you would end up being old news pretty quickly. But for those who are still using purviews that haven't been overhauled with, there are a few things to touch on.
First of all, you're right, there's inequality between how many boons are in each purview; but that doesn't actually cause any mechanical problems in most cases. The powers that use or roll a total number of boons almost never oppose one another; that is, it doesn't matter that you have fewer Stars boons than Animal boons, because you're never going to roll Animal vs. Stars so the issue actually doesn't exist. There's no conflict because those powers' boon totals don't interact, and are present only as measurements for the boons themselves. There are a few rare cases where that cross-purview conflict does come into play, and there you're totally justified in worrying about possible imbalance; for example, there are a few times boons require people to roll their Darkness vs. someone else's Sun or vice versa, and since there is one more Sun boon than there are Darkness boons, the Sun people are technically at a small advantage. It's a very tiny imbalance so we aren't too worried about it, and I'm sure we'll be addressing it when we get to rewriting the celestial purviews, but if you're concerned you could always give the Darkness guy an additional die to make it fair if you're dealing with a situation where two people with maxed purviews are rolling off against one another.
The only place there actually is an issue is with rolling against Titanrealms; those do have a standard difficulty, which means that purviews with fewer boons are at a disadvantage when trying to overcome the primordial realms that oppose them. We actually recently noticed that come up when Eztli had to roll her Stars boons against a Titanrealm, and we realized that even though she has every Stars boon in existence, she still had far less chance to beat the realm than users of other, more populated purviews. That is totally a problem, and we are aware of it and working on it. Honest. Our in-the-meantime solution, for those of you with god-level Scions, is to lower the difficulty for particularly slim purviews like Illusion or Stars in those situations.
However, within boons that don't target one another - like your Web of Stars example - there is no imbalance or "uneven tradeoff", because there's no comparison happening. Each of those boons is designed to use the total of boons in its home purview, not a mythical "number of boons" standard that doesn't actually exist. We knew how many boons were in the purview when we wrote the boons, and designed them accordingly. We intended for Web of Stars to last for only a few days at a time; if there had been twice as many boons in the purview when we wrote it, we would have had it last for 1/2 Stars boons in days.
We definitely do not suggest replacing those numbers with any kind of mechanic that involves an Epic Attribute instead of boons. The total number of boons mechanic is used to represent power over your purview and investment in its sorceries, and Epic Attributes are in no way a substitute for that (not to mention allowing a lot more powergaming for those who just stack the Epic instead of bothering with their actual godly powers). We do like Epics involved in boons in certain places, which is why so many have rolls, but if we used the number of boons mechanics, it was because we wanted that aspect of the boon to hinge on your control over the purview. Your Web of Stars sticks around because you're great at Stars and stars answer your call, not because you're strong. That makes way less sense and is way less mythically awesome.
However, all these purviews are in the middle of getting rewritten, y'all, so don't have too big a meltdown over any specifics right now. There's a good chance it'll just end up changing in the near future anyway!
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
I Spy
Question: How does Tantra use interact with bonuses/penalties to Intelligence/Perception? If a Scion with negative Fatebonds to Perception uses Tantra, do the negatives still apply? On a similar note, if he has positives to Intelligence, do those make the roll easier? I know the answer will probably be the obvious one, but I wanted to make sure in any case.
That's okay, making sure is good!
Fatebonds apply to the roll your Scion is actually making; Tantra allows him to make a different roll, but it doesn't affect any Fatebonds one way or the other. That means that if he rolls Intelligence instead of Perception, he's subject to his Fatebonds to Intelligence instead of any he might have to Perception.
So if Padma has a bonus to Intelligence but a penalty to Perception and needs to see through an Illusion (likely, what with being married to Shadan and all), Tantra allows her to roll Intelligence + Awareness instead of the usual Perception + Awareness roll. She's not rolling Perception, so its negative Fatebond doesn't apply; she is rolling Intelligence, so its positive Fatebond applies.
That's okay, making sure is good!
Fatebonds apply to the roll your Scion is actually making; Tantra allows him to make a different roll, but it doesn't affect any Fatebonds one way or the other. That means that if he rolls Intelligence instead of Perception, he's subject to his Fatebonds to Intelligence instead of any he might have to Perception.
So if Padma has a bonus to Intelligence but a penalty to Perception and needs to see through an Illusion (likely, what with being married to Shadan and all), Tantra allows her to roll Intelligence + Awareness instead of the usual Perception + Awareness roll. She's not rolling Perception, so its negative Fatebond doesn't apply; she is rolling Intelligence, so its positive Fatebond applies.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Plants with Personality
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.
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.
Monday, February 3, 2014
Shade and Sweet Water
Question: If someone uses Aqua Vita on a fountain (for a permanent WP dot), and then the party bottles water from said fountain, would the effects still take place? Or would they have to physically drink the water FROM said fountain?
That would indeed still work! If you have a fountain that has permanent Heal on it, and you take a water bottle full of that water with you, it grants you the effects of Heal any time you drink it, no matter how long it's been since it was taken from the source. You still can only drink one dose per day, just like all other Health boons, so you can only drink one water bottle of it at a time to get an effect. The Storyteller's the arbiter of how much water constitutes a "dose", but we would probably always say that something like a water bottle is one dose - don't try to cheat by drinking only a quarter of it at a time or anything.
Keep in mind, though, that it's seldom possible to carry Aqua Vita doses around for long. Scions are exposed to constant supernatural and mundane dangers, and those often have unfortunate consequences for any non-relics they might be carrying. Water bottles, plastic jugs, canteens and other normal gear easily get broken, melted, smashed or otherwise destroyed during the course of a Scion's adventures, so unless you happen to have a relic container, you can never be sure that you won't lose that dose when unexpectedly jumped by monsters. Our Scions who take advantage of Sowiljr's permanent spring o'healing in Mexico usually use those doses as soon as they need healing, because while the people with Health boons will probably be intact later, there's no similar guarantee for the water they're carrying around.
That would indeed still work! If you have a fountain that has permanent Heal on it, and you take a water bottle full of that water with you, it grants you the effects of Heal any time you drink it, no matter how long it's been since it was taken from the source. You still can only drink one dose per day, just like all other Health boons, so you can only drink one water bottle of it at a time to get an effect. The Storyteller's the arbiter of how much water constitutes a "dose", but we would probably always say that something like a water bottle is one dose - don't try to cheat by drinking only a quarter of it at a time or anything.
Keep in mind, though, that it's seldom possible to carry Aqua Vita doses around for long. Scions are exposed to constant supernatural and mundane dangers, and those often have unfortunate consequences for any non-relics they might be carrying. Water bottles, plastic jugs, canteens and other normal gear easily get broken, melted, smashed or otherwise destroyed during the course of a Scion's adventures, so unless you happen to have a relic container, you can never be sure that you won't lose that dose when unexpectedly jumped by monsters. Our Scions who take advantage of Sowiljr's permanent spring o'healing in Mexico usually use those doses as soon as they need healing, because while the people with Health boons will probably be intact later, there's no similar guarantee for the water they're carrying around.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Mix and Match
Question: Why do you need Unintended Purpose rather than Breath of Life to create human/machine hybrids with Human Hybrid?
Well, the flippant answer is that Breath of Life didn't exist yet when Human Hybrid was written, but we'll get more in-depth for you.
There's a fundamental difference between the way Artistry creates things and the way other purviews create things. Artistry, for the most part, doesn't create life; instead, it creates things, and only the most powerful of creator gods are able to use Breath of Life to invest those things with thought and purpose. Artistry is intended to be the purview of arts and sciences, craftsmen and builders, but it is not the set of powers intended to create living things. Those powers belong to the purviews associated with life; Fertility for the growing of plants, Animal for the husbandry of beasts, and Health for the life of humans. The Breath of Life boon is intended to give life to something that is already unliving, that was created without the spark of existence in it, but it was never meant to participate in the creation of life on its own. It can make your creations live, but it cannot give you the power to force your creations into other living things.
But, you say, Chaos isn't meant to create life, either! And that's true, for the most part. Unintended Purpose is a creation boon in the limited sense that it can reform things into new things, but it isn't supposed to make living creatures, either. However, what it is supposed to do is change and combine old things into new things; it is doing the same thing as Human Hybrid (and Impossible Hybrid over in Fertility and Hybrid Chimera in Animal), just with inanimate objects instead of living ones. So, since they're all doing the same basic thing - combining things that didn't go together into new things that now do - they're the boons that can cross over.
Well, the flippant answer is that Breath of Life didn't exist yet when Human Hybrid was written, but we'll get more in-depth for you.
There's a fundamental difference between the way Artistry creates things and the way other purviews create things. Artistry, for the most part, doesn't create life; instead, it creates things, and only the most powerful of creator gods are able to use Breath of Life to invest those things with thought and purpose. Artistry is intended to be the purview of arts and sciences, craftsmen and builders, but it is not the set of powers intended to create living things. Those powers belong to the purviews associated with life; Fertility for the growing of plants, Animal for the husbandry of beasts, and Health for the life of humans. The Breath of Life boon is intended to give life to something that is already unliving, that was created without the spark of existence in it, but it was never meant to participate in the creation of life on its own. It can make your creations live, but it cannot give you the power to force your creations into other living things.
But, you say, Chaos isn't meant to create life, either! And that's true, for the most part. Unintended Purpose is a creation boon in the limited sense that it can reform things into new things, but it isn't supposed to make living creatures, either. However, what it is supposed to do is change and combine old things into new things; it is doing the same thing as Human Hybrid (and Impossible Hybrid over in Fertility and Hybrid Chimera in Animal), just with inanimate objects instead of living ones. So, since they're all doing the same basic thing - combining things that didn't go together into new things that now do - they're the boons that can cross over.
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Art Above, Art Below
Question: How does the Artistry Purview interact with Caan Cab (Tal'ich 6)?
We would go ahead and attach Artistry to the Earthly aspect of Caan Cab, since it has to do with the creation of things and working with your hands, rather than the more effervescent powers of the heavens. That does give Earthly one more purview than Celestial, but sadly we don’t have an even number of purviews right now.
We would go ahead and attach Artistry to the Earthly aspect of Caan Cab, since it has to do with the creation of things and working with your hands, rather than the more effervescent powers of the heavens. That does give Earthly one more purview than Celestial, but sadly we don’t have an even number of purviews right now.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Powers from the Future!
Question: Frost and Illusion, the two purviews introduced in Ragnarok, are incredibly light in terms of boon numbers. Do you have any ideas for other boons in those purviews?
Throw in Stars, too, which was introduced in the Yazata supplement. The three purviews have seventeen, sixteen and thirteen boons respectively, which puts them significantly below the beefier sets of parties in the game.
We do indeed have ideas for new boons in these purviews. We have ideas for all kinds of boons, but we haven't been working on them as a project since they seem to be unpopular in the voting. However, we can give you some idea teasers here, and you guys can either let them inspire you to lobby for more boons or use them as starting points to write your own.
Frost: For this purview, we're considering more powers involving temperature and environmental effects, imprisoning others in ice, or imparting spiritual chill rather than physical.
Illusion: For this purview, we're considering powers involving dreams and the creation or control thereof, effects that give longer lasting duration or permanence to illusions, glamours and mirages, or things that the illusionist can make use of as if they were real.
Stars: For this purview, we're considering powers that allow Scions to see through the stars, embody stars and constellations themselves, guide others, or create portents or signs in the heavens that can be seen by all.
So hopefully that will give you some idea of what we're thinking of, and some hope for the future of purviews. We're aware of which purviews need the most love, and we hope to give them that love someday soon.
Throw in Stars, too, which was introduced in the Yazata supplement. The three purviews have seventeen, sixteen and thirteen boons respectively, which puts them significantly below the beefier sets of parties in the game.
We do indeed have ideas for new boons in these purviews. We have ideas for all kinds of boons, but we haven't been working on them as a project since they seem to be unpopular in the voting. However, we can give you some idea teasers here, and you guys can either let them inspire you to lobby for more boons or use them as starting points to write your own.
Frost: For this purview, we're considering more powers involving temperature and environmental effects, imprisoning others in ice, or imparting spiritual chill rather than physical.
Illusion: For this purview, we're considering powers involving dreams and the creation or control thereof, effects that give longer lasting duration or permanence to illusions, glamours and mirages, or things that the illusionist can make use of as if they were real.
Stars: For this purview, we're considering powers that allow Scions to see through the stars, embody stars and constellations themselves, guide others, or create portents or signs in the heavens that can be seen by all.
So hopefully that will give you some idea of what we're thinking of, and some hope for the future of purviews. We're aware of which purviews need the most love, and we hope to give them that love someday soon.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Two-Faced
Question: What are the reversed Virtues given to people via Heart of Darkness? Like, would Courage be replaced with Cowardice, or with an alternate Virtue that's deemed an opposite... somehow?
Hmm. Well, we first got this question and we were like, "Duh, question-asker, it is obvious, they are the opposites, this person was probably drunk when they sent it in," and then we went to go congratulate each other and eat doughnuts and generally be assholes. But then we thought about it a little more and we were like, "Oh, wait, this is actually pretty complicated," so here we are to apologize for our earlier behavior.
The problem with Heart of Darkness is that it seems totally straightforward and easy in its assertion that a Virtue is reversed to its opposite number, but in reality that is actually a totally subjective call, so it's understandable that there's some confusion. While what something's "opposite" is usually looks pretty obvious, it's got room for interpretation, so one man's obvious may be another man's second-best, I-guess-that-makes-sense version of what they think should actually be the Virtue's opposition. One person might say that the opposite of Order is obviously Chaos, moving that person to support entropy, breakdown and madness at every turn; but another might say that the opposite of Order is obviously Injustice, moving that person to intentionally commit crimes, subvert the law and otherwise be a massive pain in everyone's ass.
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you a quick table of about what we would consider the opposite Virtues for Heart of Darkness (some of which have been used in our games before), so you can refer to it as a handy reference if you want to. But it's pretty off-the-cuff, so if you happen to be a Storyteller who firmly believes in a different interpretation of a given Virtue's opposite, feel free to go wild with it instead.
The idea here is not just to have a Virtue with a word that is opposed to the word that represented the original Virtue, but also to encourage those afflicted to behave in ways directly counter to how they would normally act.
I feel like, in that faraway future when we rework Darkness, we will probably end up making a similar table. But in the meantime, this should give you a basic jumping-off point.
Hmm. Well, we first got this question and we were like, "Duh, question-asker, it is obvious, they are the opposites, this person was probably drunk when they sent it in," and then we went to go congratulate each other and eat doughnuts and generally be assholes. But then we thought about it a little more and we were like, "Oh, wait, this is actually pretty complicated," so here we are to apologize for our earlier behavior.
The problem with Heart of Darkness is that it seems totally straightforward and easy in its assertion that a Virtue is reversed to its opposite number, but in reality that is actually a totally subjective call, so it's understandable that there's some confusion. While what something's "opposite" is usually looks pretty obvious, it's got room for interpretation, so one man's obvious may be another man's second-best, I-guess-that-makes-sense version of what they think should actually be the Virtue's opposition. One person might say that the opposite of Order is obviously Chaos, moving that person to support entropy, breakdown and madness at every turn; but another might say that the opposite of Order is obviously Injustice, moving that person to intentionally commit crimes, subvert the law and otherwise be a massive pain in everyone's ass.
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you a quick table of about what we would consider the opposite Virtues for Heart of Darkness (some of which have been used in our games before), so you can refer to it as a handy reference if you want to. But it's pretty off-the-cuff, so if you happen to be a Storyteller who firmly believes in a different interpretation of a given Virtue's opposite, feel free to go wild with it instead.
| Virtue | Opposite |
| Ambition | Complacency: This person wants to keep the status quo. |
| Conviction | Apathy: This person doesn't believe in or care about anything. |
| Courage | Cowardice: This person is terrified of and actively avoids danger. |
| Duty | Irresponsibility: This person refuses to accept accountability. |
| Endurance | Sloth: This person avoids difficulty and revels in laziness. |
| Expression | Censorship: This person shuts down all forms of expression. |
| Harmony | Excess: This person destroys balance wherever she sees it. |
| Intellect | Ignorance: This person hates knowledge and learning. |
| Loyalty | Treachery: This person looks for every chance to betray others. |
| Malice | Compassion: This person wants to help and take care of others. |
| Order | Anarchy: This person hates rules of all kinds. |
| Piety | Hubris: This person accords respect to no one but herself. |
| Rapacity | Asceticism: This person avoids all sustenance and pleasure. |
| Valor | Sadism: This person revels in the suffering of others. |
| Vengeance | Victimhood: This person refuses to stand up for herself. |
| Zealotry | Divinity: This person opposes the Titans and supports the gods. |
The idea here is not just to have a Virtue with a word that is opposed to the word that represented the original Virtue, but also to encourage those afflicted to behave in ways directly counter to how they would normally act.
I feel like, in that faraway future when we rework Darkness, we will probably end up making a similar table. But in the meantime, this should give you a basic jumping-off point.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Now You Don't
Question: Darkness: it gets no love and I feel it's underdeveloped. Tried to think of boon ideas that are 'mythical', and that was hard. Want your opinion - I had an idea for a Darkness boon that lets you use darkness to 'obscure' something from everyone else. The idea is that 'darkness is a force that can keep things from people in mythology, at least until they overcome it', so I'm trying to utilize that for a boon. The Scion points at a thing, and that thing gets put into darkness so that only the Scion (or a stronger Scion) can find it. Whatcha think?
Well, first we think that we agree with you. Darkness is underdeveloped and does get no love, the poor thing. While we do have Scions in our games who have been big fans of the purview - Vivian Landry, now the goddess Jioni, and Mitchell Gozer, now the god Terminus, are the two big superstars - it's never been particularly popular for most of our characters. We're not sure why, but our guess would be that it has less range than some of the other purviews (especially originally, although we've tried to add some stuff to make it more useful since we started messing around with purviews) and that it's traditionally a "bad guy stat", meaning that our shining heroic Scions are often loath to associate themselves with it. Darkness is, in most mythologies, a force for evil or at least unpleasantness, which is why it has comparatively few gods associated with it and why it seldom wins any popularity contests for most-wanted set of powers. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be there - there are very important darkness gods, like Tezcatlipoca or Kali or Nephthys, who should definitely have it - but it does mean it's sometimes more of a struggle to use it in games.
As for your boon idea, we're often horrible grouches about peoples' proposed boons because sometimes they're overpowered or unresonant, but in this case, we like this one! (You dodged the Angry John Bullet! Go you!) Things being obscured or hidden by darkness is indeed a valid mythological theme, and while the Darkness purview can kind of already do this if you happen to either carry the item on you or stand next to it and blow something like Shadow Shroud, it doesn't have the capability to directly target an item or make that effect last after you leave. It sounds like something a god who commands the shadows should be able to do, though, and I can think of at least a few cases where a divine or monstrous being with power over darkness commands it to "hide such and so" that might be an example, so we think you've got something here!
Our suggestion would be this: make it a fairly low-level boon, and allow Scions who use it to obscure an item using shadows so that people who would normally see it don't notice its presence. It won't make the item actually go anywhere (that's what Oubliette does - hey, that boon should totally allow you to do that with stuff and not just people, why doesn't it say that?!), just make it hard to see in the gloom, and it won't work on living creatures, but it does make it effectively "invisible" (obscured would be a better word, or easily-missed) to normal, unaugmented eyes. Throw a roll on it - Manipulation + Stealth? - and have onlookers roll Perception + Awareness when they encounter it (possibly with bonus successes if they have Night Eyes, or maybe they just succeed with Night Eyes because darkness holds no mysteries for them), with the higher roll winning out. If the Darkness-wielding Scion rolls higher, the item stays hidden; if the Perception-seer rolls higher, they notice it (although no one else with them does unless they do something like moving it). Have it last for a while, so that it's differentiated from other Darkness boons that only hide things while you're standing there - days equal to Darkness boons, maybe. Add a system for light powers to combat it, either again doing roll vs. roll with Sun or Moon purview powers or maybe just saying whoever has more boons in their purview wins, and presto, you have a pretty solid boon. Scions could use this to hide things they think should go unseen for a variety of reasons, including that it's precious or important but they can't move it right now, they want its owner to think it's lost, they are offended by it and don't want anyone else to see it, or anything else that might come up during the course of their adventures. Making things unseeable is, after all, what Darkness Scions are supposed to do.
We hope it might comfort you to know that we're aware that Darkness needs some more tender care and affection, and we hope to be able to give it some, with any luck fairly soon in the future. Our personal log of possible new boons for darkness includes powers revolving around the ideas of doing more with causing fear and benefiting from the fear of others, exploring darkness' ability to be formless and invade all kinds of places with boons that allow Scions access to the normally inaccessible, working more with physically inhabiting darkness, and doing more with directly opposing light. And now, your suggested boon! I can't promise that we'll use it, but we'll put it on our list and in that beautiful future when we get a chance to brush Darkness up, it'll be one of the things we think about adding.
In the meantime, keep rocking your Darkness, brave Scions of the night. Someone's got to do it.
Well, first we think that we agree with you. Darkness is underdeveloped and does get no love, the poor thing. While we do have Scions in our games who have been big fans of the purview - Vivian Landry, now the goddess Jioni, and Mitchell Gozer, now the god Terminus, are the two big superstars - it's never been particularly popular for most of our characters. We're not sure why, but our guess would be that it has less range than some of the other purviews (especially originally, although we've tried to add some stuff to make it more useful since we started messing around with purviews) and that it's traditionally a "bad guy stat", meaning that our shining heroic Scions are often loath to associate themselves with it. Darkness is, in most mythologies, a force for evil or at least unpleasantness, which is why it has comparatively few gods associated with it and why it seldom wins any popularity contests for most-wanted set of powers. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be there - there are very important darkness gods, like Tezcatlipoca or Kali or Nephthys, who should definitely have it - but it does mean it's sometimes more of a struggle to use it in games.
As for your boon idea, we're often horrible grouches about peoples' proposed boons because sometimes they're overpowered or unresonant, but in this case, we like this one! (You dodged the Angry John Bullet! Go you!) Things being obscured or hidden by darkness is indeed a valid mythological theme, and while the Darkness purview can kind of already do this if you happen to either carry the item on you or stand next to it and blow something like Shadow Shroud, it doesn't have the capability to directly target an item or make that effect last after you leave. It sounds like something a god who commands the shadows should be able to do, though, and I can think of at least a few cases where a divine or monstrous being with power over darkness commands it to "hide such and so" that might be an example, so we think you've got something here!
Our suggestion would be this: make it a fairly low-level boon, and allow Scions who use it to obscure an item using shadows so that people who would normally see it don't notice its presence. It won't make the item actually go anywhere (that's what Oubliette does - hey, that boon should totally allow you to do that with stuff and not just people, why doesn't it say that?!), just make it hard to see in the gloom, and it won't work on living creatures, but it does make it effectively "invisible" (obscured would be a better word, or easily-missed) to normal, unaugmented eyes. Throw a roll on it - Manipulation + Stealth? - and have onlookers roll Perception + Awareness when they encounter it (possibly with bonus successes if they have Night Eyes, or maybe they just succeed with Night Eyes because darkness holds no mysteries for them), with the higher roll winning out. If the Darkness-wielding Scion rolls higher, the item stays hidden; if the Perception-seer rolls higher, they notice it (although no one else with them does unless they do something like moving it). Have it last for a while, so that it's differentiated from other Darkness boons that only hide things while you're standing there - days equal to Darkness boons, maybe. Add a system for light powers to combat it, either again doing roll vs. roll with Sun or Moon purview powers or maybe just saying whoever has more boons in their purview wins, and presto, you have a pretty solid boon. Scions could use this to hide things they think should go unseen for a variety of reasons, including that it's precious or important but they can't move it right now, they want its owner to think it's lost, they are offended by it and don't want anyone else to see it, or anything else that might come up during the course of their adventures. Making things unseeable is, after all, what Darkness Scions are supposed to do.
We hope it might comfort you to know that we're aware that Darkness needs some more tender care and affection, and we hope to be able to give it some, with any luck fairly soon in the future. Our personal log of possible new boons for darkness includes powers revolving around the ideas of doing more with causing fear and benefiting from the fear of others, exploring darkness' ability to be formless and invade all kinds of places with boons that allow Scions access to the normally inaccessible, working more with physically inhabiting darkness, and doing more with directly opposing light. And now, your suggested boon! I can't promise that we'll use it, but we'll put it on our list and in that beautiful future when we get a chance to brush Darkness up, it'll be one of the things we think about adding.
In the meantime, keep rocking your Darkness, brave Scions of the night. Someone's got to do it.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Hired Help
Question: You've designed a lot of summoning boons. How useful have they been in your games? They all seem like they are combat-oriented, but how useful can they be against gods that are specced for combat? I'm not trying to sound critical, I don't doubt that they ARE useful, I just would like to know how so.
Well, you're not wrong about one thing: most of the mid-to-high-level summoning boons are not meant to be able to go toe to toe with a fully maxed-out god of wrecking things. They weren't designed to be replacements for actual combat characters, nor to make the elemental boon-users who call them up immune to combat problems, so if you're coming at them thinking that they're supposed to be able to take out your mortal enemy, you will be disappointed. A god that has truly invested in murder is going to be able to cut them down pretty quickly in a one-on-one fight.
However, they are in fact useful in combat in a myriad of other ways! One is simply that they are bodies you can hurl at your opponent, and in Scion's system, that's always helpful. Thanks to the five-man rule, once at least four people attack the same target, the fifth person gets a shot at them at a DV of zero, which means that if you summon a bunch of elementals, they may not do much damage on their own but may be able to give your resident badass a perfect opportunity to wreak delicious agg-soaked mayhem on an enemy from behind. This ability to overwhelm with numbers can also help people who aren't quite combat-heavy enough to hurt an enemy under normal circumstances be able to get in a few good shots. Having large numbers also makes your little army perfect for including in Coordinated Assaults, which, with enough participants, might give everybody a chance to make a dent in the opposition.
In addition to helping with big enemies, summonable creatures also make fantastic crowd controllers for combats in which there are more than one opponent or in which a large monster brings a bunch of little monsters with it. They can soak up hits that would otherwise be murdering your bandmates, buy time for people to use their powers to best effect, and mop up smaller, less dangerous opponents on their own, freeing you and your friends from the danger of being overwhelmed or taking damage from anything but your central foe. They can also do things during combat that need doing but that aren't fighting - protecting civilians, for example, guarding important items, supplying the fighters, or anything else that you and your bandmates now don't have to do so you can concentrate on the battle instead.
Also, while elementals (and even the big showstopper creatures, like the Flame Beasts and Water Beasts) aren't usually able to compete with truly badass fighting gods, they can still help you out with enemies who are less maxed out for beatdowns, and you will undoubtedly encounter a few of those in your adventures. Even the mid-level elementals can theoretically get pretty beefy; if you choose to just summon one and use all your extra successes to buff its stats, it can get up to where it can compete with middling-level Scions and monsters. Sowiljr can get a 100 on his Charisma + Command roll pretty easily, which means he can send a Frostborn Spirit in with an attack roll of 50 dice + 10 autos, soaks of 40 and a DV of 35, which is probably about comparable with a high-level Scion who hasn't really decked themselves out for combat all that much. It's not going to take down an Eztli, but it could probably manage to handle a Terminus, at least for a little while.
And, of course, they can also do non-combat things, like building stuff, guarding stuff, running errands, looking impressive when you want to be impressive, and all of that (in fact, that's all the third-level summoning boons can do anyway, since those creatures won't fight for you at all). They're not going to take over combat so all your battle Scions can go take a coffee break, but they're still versatile and useful for a lot of different things, and we've enjoyed watching Scions use them.
Well, you're not wrong about one thing: most of the mid-to-high-level summoning boons are not meant to be able to go toe to toe with a fully maxed-out god of wrecking things. They weren't designed to be replacements for actual combat characters, nor to make the elemental boon-users who call them up immune to combat problems, so if you're coming at them thinking that they're supposed to be able to take out your mortal enemy, you will be disappointed. A god that has truly invested in murder is going to be able to cut them down pretty quickly in a one-on-one fight.
However, they are in fact useful in combat in a myriad of other ways! One is simply that they are bodies you can hurl at your opponent, and in Scion's system, that's always helpful. Thanks to the five-man rule, once at least four people attack the same target, the fifth person gets a shot at them at a DV of zero, which means that if you summon a bunch of elementals, they may not do much damage on their own but may be able to give your resident badass a perfect opportunity to wreak delicious agg-soaked mayhem on an enemy from behind. This ability to overwhelm with numbers can also help people who aren't quite combat-heavy enough to hurt an enemy under normal circumstances be able to get in a few good shots. Having large numbers also makes your little army perfect for including in Coordinated Assaults, which, with enough participants, might give everybody a chance to make a dent in the opposition.
In addition to helping with big enemies, summonable creatures also make fantastic crowd controllers for combats in which there are more than one opponent or in which a large monster brings a bunch of little monsters with it. They can soak up hits that would otherwise be murdering your bandmates, buy time for people to use their powers to best effect, and mop up smaller, less dangerous opponents on their own, freeing you and your friends from the danger of being overwhelmed or taking damage from anything but your central foe. They can also do things during combat that need doing but that aren't fighting - protecting civilians, for example, guarding important items, supplying the fighters, or anything else that you and your bandmates now don't have to do so you can concentrate on the battle instead.
Also, while elementals (and even the big showstopper creatures, like the Flame Beasts and Water Beasts) aren't usually able to compete with truly badass fighting gods, they can still help you out with enemies who are less maxed out for beatdowns, and you will undoubtedly encounter a few of those in your adventures. Even the mid-level elementals can theoretically get pretty beefy; if you choose to just summon one and use all your extra successes to buff its stats, it can get up to where it can compete with middling-level Scions and monsters. Sowiljr can get a 100 on his Charisma + Command roll pretty easily, which means he can send a Frostborn Spirit in with an attack roll of 50 dice + 10 autos, soaks of 40 and a DV of 35, which is probably about comparable with a high-level Scion who hasn't really decked themselves out for combat all that much. It's not going to take down an Eztli, but it could probably manage to handle a Terminus, at least for a little while.
And, of course, they can also do non-combat things, like building stuff, guarding stuff, running errands, looking impressive when you want to be impressive, and all of that (in fact, that's all the third-level summoning boons can do anyway, since those creatures won't fight for you at all). They're not going to take over combat so all your battle Scions can go take a coffee break, but they're still versatile and useful for a lot of different things, and we've enjoyed watching Scions use them.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Fates Intertwined
Question: I use a lot of your rules, but not your Fatebonds. What numbers would you use for Akunleyan if it were just bonuses and penalties?
Question: In Akunyelan, can you pick purviews or abilities you don't have any dots in to get the negatives? If not, what if you only have 1-3 purviews?
Question: In Akunlegba, do you have to pick one item from each of the three columns? Can you pick the same choice more than once, as long as it is not for the same ability/purview/whatever?
I'm lumping these questions about Ori together today because they came in all together, and I'm pretty sure they're from the same person. If not, well, two or three people went in on an Ori conspiracy, so they're sitll getting answered together.
Your first question is hard to answer, because we don't know what Fatebond rules (if any) you do use or what other house mechanics might get involved. However, I can tell you that our maximum-level Fatebonds are 10 dice and 10 automatic successes to or from a given stat up through Legend 10, so that's what the boon was designed by us to provide to most Scions. Scions of Legend 11 have a maximum of 15 dice and 15 autos, and Scions of Legend 12 have a maximum of 20 each.
In fact, you can choose things you currently have no dots in for Akunleyan, either for positive or negative. However, we designed the boon to work with both our Fatebond system and the rest of the Ori purview; under our rules, those positive Fatebonds will begin buying new boons/attributes/dots for the Scion who has them, while the negative Fatebonds will begin subtracting powers the same way. This is intended as a balancing tool to prevent Scions from just choosing negative stats to things they don't have any of anyway free of consequences - the Fatebond will, when they swap to their alternate identity with Iwa Pele, buy them some of those things, meaning that they do get some (which may then be bought back off next time they switch) and at the very least involves their XP in a meaningful way to illustrate that they're actually a being with two distinct aspects, not just a guy with some penalties that don't really matter anyway. Similarly, the fact that switching to the alternate persona might cause the now-negative Fatebonds to buy off stats the Scion was using forces them to weigh how they want to be seen as a god, what situations merit a shift to a new personality and set of skills and what these different personas mean to them.
So if you're not going to use Fatebonds at all, you're going to pretty much need to completely rewrite this boon, along with the terms of Iwa Pele as well. As it stands now, if you remove Fatebonds, all the boon does is give you semi-permanent bonuses to stuff you want to do and dump all your negatives into stuff you don't do anyway, and Iwa Pele loses all of the mythic resonance of trying to balance your different personalities and how they interact with the divine world, not to mention removing the part of the boon that really relates to the core concept of Ori (your destiny, here represented by Fatebonds). You'll need to find a different mechanical way to make sure that Scions aren't just using it for mad bonuses without having to actually be particularly Yoruba about it.
You could just reduce the bonuses to make them less overpowered without the counterbalance of Fatebonds, but most players would probably find a level 4 boon that just gives them +5 dice or whatever pretty underwhelming. There are already a lot of powers in the game that do things like that. We'd suggest maybe exploring actual stat-swapping - maybe when they switch personas with Iwa Pele, they lose their previously positive Sun boons but suddenly gain a bucket of Moon boons, and vice versa when they switch back - or otherwise finding a way that the switching of personas actually seriously affects Scions and gives them the opportunity to become completely different creatures or aspects of themselves.
(Of course, most of this doesn't apply to Scions who never buy Iwa Pele, but we should probably design the purview for Scions of the Orisha who want to buy all their powers, not the ones who want to just buy up to level 4 for a quick bonus and then never touch it again.)
As for Akunlegba, that one's easier. As the boon says, you must choose one from each of the categories, which is intentional so that Scions get one power from each of the three "types" of abilities that Orisha gods and Scions usually manifest, affecting their bodies, spirits and divine powers rather than only one or two of the three. Ori is about the Scion's destiny, in fact her entire being, so especially at these early levels we want characters to see it affect all different facets of their lives. Of course, we do want players to be able to specialize later in the game, which is why the later powers added by Afowofa can come from any category the Scion wishes, allowing her to commit more fully to a particular aspect of her destiny now that she's high enough Legend to know who and what she is as a deity.
Hopefully that helps you on your way to becoming the best non-Fatebond user of Ori that you can be. (And by the way, you may also want to explore giving users of Gun another small benefit or two of some kind, since the protections from negative Fatebonds that boon provides don't matter in your game.)
Question: In Akunyelan, can you pick purviews or abilities you don't have any dots in to get the negatives? If not, what if you only have 1-3 purviews?
Question: In Akunlegba, do you have to pick one item from each of the three columns? Can you pick the same choice more than once, as long as it is not for the same ability/purview/whatever?
I'm lumping these questions about Ori together today because they came in all together, and I'm pretty sure they're from the same person. If not, well, two or three people went in on an Ori conspiracy, so they're sitll getting answered together.
Your first question is hard to answer, because we don't know what Fatebond rules (if any) you do use or what other house mechanics might get involved. However, I can tell you that our maximum-level Fatebonds are 10 dice and 10 automatic successes to or from a given stat up through Legend 10, so that's what the boon was designed by us to provide to most Scions. Scions of Legend 11 have a maximum of 15 dice and 15 autos, and Scions of Legend 12 have a maximum of 20 each.
In fact, you can choose things you currently have no dots in for Akunleyan, either for positive or negative. However, we designed the boon to work with both our Fatebond system and the rest of the Ori purview; under our rules, those positive Fatebonds will begin buying new boons/attributes/dots for the Scion who has them, while the negative Fatebonds will begin subtracting powers the same way. This is intended as a balancing tool to prevent Scions from just choosing negative stats to things they don't have any of anyway free of consequences - the Fatebond will, when they swap to their alternate identity with Iwa Pele, buy them some of those things, meaning that they do get some (which may then be bought back off next time they switch) and at the very least involves their XP in a meaningful way to illustrate that they're actually a being with two distinct aspects, not just a guy with some penalties that don't really matter anyway. Similarly, the fact that switching to the alternate persona might cause the now-negative Fatebonds to buy off stats the Scion was using forces them to weigh how they want to be seen as a god, what situations merit a shift to a new personality and set of skills and what these different personas mean to them.
So if you're not going to use Fatebonds at all, you're going to pretty much need to completely rewrite this boon, along with the terms of Iwa Pele as well. As it stands now, if you remove Fatebonds, all the boon does is give you semi-permanent bonuses to stuff you want to do and dump all your negatives into stuff you don't do anyway, and Iwa Pele loses all of the mythic resonance of trying to balance your different personalities and how they interact with the divine world, not to mention removing the part of the boon that really relates to the core concept of Ori (your destiny, here represented by Fatebonds). You'll need to find a different mechanical way to make sure that Scions aren't just using it for mad bonuses without having to actually be particularly Yoruba about it.
You could just reduce the bonuses to make them less overpowered without the counterbalance of Fatebonds, but most players would probably find a level 4 boon that just gives them +5 dice or whatever pretty underwhelming. There are already a lot of powers in the game that do things like that. We'd suggest maybe exploring actual stat-swapping - maybe when they switch personas with Iwa Pele, they lose their previously positive Sun boons but suddenly gain a bucket of Moon boons, and vice versa when they switch back - or otherwise finding a way that the switching of personas actually seriously affects Scions and gives them the opportunity to become completely different creatures or aspects of themselves.
(Of course, most of this doesn't apply to Scions who never buy Iwa Pele, but we should probably design the purview for Scions of the Orisha who want to buy all their powers, not the ones who want to just buy up to level 4 for a quick bonus and then never touch it again.)
As for Akunlegba, that one's easier. As the boon says, you must choose one from each of the categories, which is intentional so that Scions get one power from each of the three "types" of abilities that Orisha gods and Scions usually manifest, affecting their bodies, spirits and divine powers rather than only one or two of the three. Ori is about the Scion's destiny, in fact her entire being, so especially at these early levels we want characters to see it affect all different facets of their lives. Of course, we do want players to be able to specialize later in the game, which is why the later powers added by Afowofa can come from any category the Scion wishes, allowing her to commit more fully to a particular aspect of her destiny now that she's high enough Legend to know who and what she is as a deity.
Hopefully that helps you on your way to becoming the best non-Fatebond user of Ori that you can be. (And by the way, you may also want to explore giving users of Gun another small benefit or two of some kind, since the protections from negative Fatebonds that boon provides don't matter in your game.)
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Custom Jobs
Question: Would you allow a God-level player/character to create custom boons for one or more of their purviews to reflect what kind of god they were? I.e., a scientific-minded god of the Sun, Moon or Stars (or something related) creating a boon or two for those purviews using gravity, radiation or similar effects?
We would not. While we know some games out there do this kind of thing, we never allow players to create new boons (or knacks or spells). The purviews aren't meant to be customized; they represent ancient, primordial powers of the underlying concepts of the universe. If a "custom boon" was resonant enough with the purview's ideas and mechanically and mythologically sound enough for us to accept it, it would just be a normal boon in the purview that anyone could buy.
We've actually written about this before, so you can check out a more in-depth answer here. That question-asker was also thinking about scientific-style boons, so you'll see us address that in there as well.
We do, however, encourage as much customizing with relics (the much better place to invent things that have custom powers that don't fit into any purview), followers, cults and character appearance and behavior as our players' wildest dreams can design and pull off.
We would not. While we know some games out there do this kind of thing, we never allow players to create new boons (or knacks or spells). The purviews aren't meant to be customized; they represent ancient, primordial powers of the underlying concepts of the universe. If a "custom boon" was resonant enough with the purview's ideas and mechanically and mythologically sound enough for us to accept it, it would just be a normal boon in the purview that anyone could buy.
We've actually written about this before, so you can check out a more in-depth answer here. That question-asker was also thinking about scientific-style boons, so you'll see us address that in there as well.
We do, however, encourage as much customizing with relics (the much better place to invent things that have custom powers that don't fit into any purview), followers, cults and character appearance and behavior as our players' wildest dreams can design and pull off.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Mechanical Mysteries
Question: So, Bestial Nature states that it adds Animal only as dice to Mystery, rather than successes as in other purviews. Since this was presumably written before you revamped Mystery's autosuccesses, does this mechanic still work this way, or should that be reworked?
This is a good question, and definitely one we've been debating. Prior to our overhaul of Mystery's mechanics, using the purview had no automatic successes attached, so every power that affected it needed to use dice-based mechanics to avoid being wildly overpowered. Now, however, Mystery rolls do get automatic successes based on the level of Mystery the Scion possesses, so all those older powers that affect them need a fresh look.
On the one hand, it's very easy to want to just add automatic successes to Mystery just like we do to everyone else. Having a separate mechanic in each boon just to handle Mystery is annoying, and it would be a lot more streamlined for both Storyteller and player if a given power's effects were more global and had fewer fiddly exceptions. Since Mystery now does get autos, it shouldn't hurt anything to start letting it be affected by other auto-adding powers, right? It's on the same scale with everything else, at least generally.
However, we're not convinced yet that that's a great idea. Mystery still uses a unique mechanic in our system: where other purviews get their automatic successes from the corresponding Epic Attribute that a given boon uses, Mystery's successes are always based only on the level of Mystery the user possesses. That means that every other boon requires investment in two stats where Mystery requires only one, which in turn means that it's still not running on the same system as everything else. Mystery gets more bang for its buck, XP-wise, than other purviews, which in turn means that adding to its autos is more powerful. Someone with Fire could potentially not have invested in a corresponding Epic Attribute and be pretty terrible at the roll, but someone with Mystery always has the autos automatically, so adding yet more autos on top of that is still a balance concern.
We're thinking at this point that we'll probably have to go through all the boons that can potentially buff Mystery and evaluate whether they should stay at dice or be bumped up to successes on a case-by-case basis. Until we get around to that, the official rules remain dice-only. Personally, I would be inclined to let Bestial Nature, which is a pretty big investment all on its own, go up to successes, but John the Ogre of Balance might come bite my head off if I said so publicly.
This is a good question, and definitely one we've been debating. Prior to our overhaul of Mystery's mechanics, using the purview had no automatic successes attached, so every power that affected it needed to use dice-based mechanics to avoid being wildly overpowered. Now, however, Mystery rolls do get automatic successes based on the level of Mystery the Scion possesses, so all those older powers that affect them need a fresh look.
On the one hand, it's very easy to want to just add automatic successes to Mystery just like we do to everyone else. Having a separate mechanic in each boon just to handle Mystery is annoying, and it would be a lot more streamlined for both Storyteller and player if a given power's effects were more global and had fewer fiddly exceptions. Since Mystery now does get autos, it shouldn't hurt anything to start letting it be affected by other auto-adding powers, right? It's on the same scale with everything else, at least generally.
However, we're not convinced yet that that's a great idea. Mystery still uses a unique mechanic in our system: where other purviews get their automatic successes from the corresponding Epic Attribute that a given boon uses, Mystery's successes are always based only on the level of Mystery the user possesses. That means that every other boon requires investment in two stats where Mystery requires only one, which in turn means that it's still not running on the same system as everything else. Mystery gets more bang for its buck, XP-wise, than other purviews, which in turn means that adding to its autos is more powerful. Someone with Fire could potentially not have invested in a corresponding Epic Attribute and be pretty terrible at the roll, but someone with Mystery always has the autos automatically, so adding yet more autos on top of that is still a balance concern.
We're thinking at this point that we'll probably have to go through all the boons that can potentially buff Mystery and evaluate whether they should stay at dice or be bumped up to successes on a case-by-case basis. Until we get around to that, the official rules remain dice-only. Personally, I would be inclined to let Bestial Nature, which is a pretty big investment all on its own, go up to successes, but John the Ogre of Balance might come bite my head off if I said so publicly.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
We Also Say Thee Nay
Question: Guardian boons can't be used to hurt others, and you've talked about Unseen Shield before, but what about something like I Say Thee Nay? Is a Scion forbidden from fighting back against someone trying to hurt their charge? That seems awfully restrictive.
Of course not. You can fight back against an enemy all you want. You just lose the benefit of I Say Thee Nay! as soon as you do, because you've decided to take an action that involves attacking someone else instead of devoting yourself to defense.
The boon is restrictive, and it's restrictive very much on purpose. Adding your successes to your DV is bananas-cherry-pie craziness level of powerful; as we recently noted in posts about maximum defense capabilities, a god with this boon who uses Animal Aspect easily adds over 100 to their DV, making them literally untouchable to anyone who isn't completely frontloaded for attack (not to mention a lot less hurtable, thanks to cutting over 100 off the threshold successes that would otherwise have become damage dice). And not only do you get that DV, but you also get to give that DV to someone else, something that no other power in the game can duplicate and which is incredibly useful for protection of vulnerable people or other party members. I Say Thee Nay! is one of the few ways in the game, along with the Wits knacks that allow Scions to force enemies to target the user instead of others, that Scions who are not yet gods can reliably protect friends, loved ones and other important people from being hurt in the constant high-stakes craziness of the Titan war.
More to the point than power level, however - that can always be adjusted, after all - is the point of the boon, and the Guardian purview as a whole: it's for protecting other people, period. It's not for making you better at fighting; it's not for making yourself invincible; it's not even for using to get rid of enemies who might hurt those you want to save. It's a purview that is conceptually built around the idea of defense and defense only, and its powers should never be used to enable damage or danger against anyone, friend or foe. Guardian boons can never be used to hurt others, period, and that means that the second you start doing that, whatever Guardian boon you already had active stops functioning.
Just like you can't take a shot at anyone and still stay safe inside an Unseen Shield, you can't use I Say Thee Nay! to protect yourself while wreaking havoc on the battlefield. If that were the case, it would be a mandatory boon for all combat characters thanks to its incredible power; everyone would buy it specifically to hurt other people without being hittable in combat, which is the exact opposite of what the Guardian purview is supposed to do.
So yes, if you want the badass DV bonuses of I Say Thee Nay! for yourself and your target, you can't attack anyone, even if they're trying to attack you. Guardian is here to protect you and your friends, not to make it easier for you to kill your enemies, even if said enemies are the ones you need protecting from. The boon enables you to be incredible at defense only, and is not intended for any other use.
It's true, it would be incredibly awesome to mow down enemies on the battlefield while being almost completely invincible thanks to your crazily boosted DV and ensure that Unconscious Comrade A was similarly teflon, but it would also be broken as fuck. So you can't do that. Sorry.
There are a few minor exceptions, but as a general rule, any time you think you can use a Guardian boon to hurt, kill or make yourself better able to hurt or kill someone else, you're probably doing it wrong.
Of course not. You can fight back against an enemy all you want. You just lose the benefit of I Say Thee Nay! as soon as you do, because you've decided to take an action that involves attacking someone else instead of devoting yourself to defense.
The boon is restrictive, and it's restrictive very much on purpose. Adding your successes to your DV is bananas-cherry-pie craziness level of powerful; as we recently noted in posts about maximum defense capabilities, a god with this boon who uses Animal Aspect easily adds over 100 to their DV, making them literally untouchable to anyone who isn't completely frontloaded for attack (not to mention a lot less hurtable, thanks to cutting over 100 off the threshold successes that would otherwise have become damage dice). And not only do you get that DV, but you also get to give that DV to someone else, something that no other power in the game can duplicate and which is incredibly useful for protection of vulnerable people or other party members. I Say Thee Nay! is one of the few ways in the game, along with the Wits knacks that allow Scions to force enemies to target the user instead of others, that Scions who are not yet gods can reliably protect friends, loved ones and other important people from being hurt in the constant high-stakes craziness of the Titan war.
More to the point than power level, however - that can always be adjusted, after all - is the point of the boon, and the Guardian purview as a whole: it's for protecting other people, period. It's not for making you better at fighting; it's not for making yourself invincible; it's not even for using to get rid of enemies who might hurt those you want to save. It's a purview that is conceptually built around the idea of defense and defense only, and its powers should never be used to enable damage or danger against anyone, friend or foe. Guardian boons can never be used to hurt others, period, and that means that the second you start doing that, whatever Guardian boon you already had active stops functioning.
Just like you can't take a shot at anyone and still stay safe inside an Unseen Shield, you can't use I Say Thee Nay! to protect yourself while wreaking havoc on the battlefield. If that were the case, it would be a mandatory boon for all combat characters thanks to its incredible power; everyone would buy it specifically to hurt other people without being hittable in combat, which is the exact opposite of what the Guardian purview is supposed to do.
So yes, if you want the badass DV bonuses of I Say Thee Nay! for yourself and your target, you can't attack anyone, even if they're trying to attack you. Guardian is here to protect you and your friends, not to make it easier for you to kill your enemies, even if said enemies are the ones you need protecting from. The boon enables you to be incredible at defense only, and is not intended for any other use.
It's true, it would be incredibly awesome to mow down enemies on the battlefield while being almost completely invincible thanks to your crazily boosted DV and ensure that Unconscious Comrade A was similarly teflon, but it would also be broken as fuck. So you can't do that. Sorry.
There are a few minor exceptions, but as a general rule, any time you think you can use a Guardian boon to hurt, kill or make yourself better able to hurt or kill someone else, you're probably doing it wrong.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Eye of the Tiger
Question: Could a single Animal Feature count for two or more abilities, assuming that you pay the requisite Legend and the connection makes sense (example, Eagle eyes adding to both Awareness and Marksmanship, or a wolf nose adding to Investigation and Survival)?
Yes, but also no. Really, it's a Storyteller call that depends entirely on what you're doing and why.
If you have an idea for different Animal Features that are in some way unique, interesting and fun and want them pseudo-combined because it makes for cool flavor, that is totally doable. Maybe one of your eyes adds to Awareness and the other to Marksmanship, and they look slightly different for stunting awesomeness; maybe you want to grow two separate extra rows of teeth to grant you Brawl and Presence because you're terrifying and dangerous. That kind of things's fine, especially as you gain more Animal boons and therefore need to come up with more features, and especially at god-level if you have Bestial Nature and have already filled up some of those "slots" with permanent animal parts.
What's not doable is when features are combined in such a way as to allow the Scion to overall be less animalistic. If you're trying to add all your Animal Feature bonuses to a single thing - like your nose, or one of your hands or something - then you're clearly acting counter to the spirit of the boon and the Animal purview as a whole by attempting to gain all its benefits while not actually becoming very animal-like. You get those benefits because you're more like an animal, not in spite of it, so trying to weasel out of being critter-like because it's socially smarter or easier to hide that way won't cut it. You're in training to be a god of animals; you don't get to confine all your animal-ness to a tail that you hide in your pants all the time anyway. That's a fundamental failure at the point of the boon, which is to draw upon the beast-like nature of your powers to enhance your performance.
It's also no fun if you're just combining features because you can't think of any other feature to use, or because you're avoiding tarnishing an "image" of yourself that doesn't include creature parts. If your mental image of what your character should be like can't include animal body parts, you probably need to rethink your decision to invest in the Animal purview at all - what are you even doing with it, in that case? If you only took it because you wanted the sweet bonuses, suck it up and start picking some features to claw or fur or scale up. If you took it because you want to be the commander-of-beasts kind of animal god instead of the embodier of their animal nature, that's totally fine, but that boils down to a roleplaying decision; if you want to appear as more human at a particular moment for whatever reason, don't use the boons that make you more animalistic right then. Just like the folks with Sun sometimes don't use their powers because being lit up like a runway can be inconvenient or counter to what they're doing, you may not always be able to conveniently animalize yourself without attracting notice. If you legitimately aren't sure what other part of you would make a good choice, or you have a really hard-to-use animal (like Jellyfish, for example), getting together with the Storyteller or other players can help spark new ideas.
Basically, this is a rule-of-awesomeness moment: if you're doing it because it's awesome, then yes. If you're doing it for any other reason - it's more convenient, it's less noticeable, you don't really like Animal but you do like dice bonuses, or anything else - then no. The Animal purview is about animals, not dice, regardless of how some powers are mechanically represented in the system. If you don't want to be involved in animal stuff, you don't want this purview.
So for your examples, we might allow the eyes, if you had a cool reason why each individual eye was doing something different, but not the nose, which is a clear example of double-dipping with no enhancement from having both "features" in the same place. As a general rule, we encourage players to choose very different features for each bonus unless the animal in question gives them a reason not to, so most of the time eyes, hands, ears and other paired organs or body parts are considered one "feature" together.
Yes, but also no. Really, it's a Storyteller call that depends entirely on what you're doing and why.
If you have an idea for different Animal Features that are in some way unique, interesting and fun and want them pseudo-combined because it makes for cool flavor, that is totally doable. Maybe one of your eyes adds to Awareness and the other to Marksmanship, and they look slightly different for stunting awesomeness; maybe you want to grow two separate extra rows of teeth to grant you Brawl and Presence because you're terrifying and dangerous. That kind of things's fine, especially as you gain more Animal boons and therefore need to come up with more features, and especially at god-level if you have Bestial Nature and have already filled up some of those "slots" with permanent animal parts.
What's not doable is when features are combined in such a way as to allow the Scion to overall be less animalistic. If you're trying to add all your Animal Feature bonuses to a single thing - like your nose, or one of your hands or something - then you're clearly acting counter to the spirit of the boon and the Animal purview as a whole by attempting to gain all its benefits while not actually becoming very animal-like. You get those benefits because you're more like an animal, not in spite of it, so trying to weasel out of being critter-like because it's socially smarter or easier to hide that way won't cut it. You're in training to be a god of animals; you don't get to confine all your animal-ness to a tail that you hide in your pants all the time anyway. That's a fundamental failure at the point of the boon, which is to draw upon the beast-like nature of your powers to enhance your performance.
It's also no fun if you're just combining features because you can't think of any other feature to use, or because you're avoiding tarnishing an "image" of yourself that doesn't include creature parts. If your mental image of what your character should be like can't include animal body parts, you probably need to rethink your decision to invest in the Animal purview at all - what are you even doing with it, in that case? If you only took it because you wanted the sweet bonuses, suck it up and start picking some features to claw or fur or scale up. If you took it because you want to be the commander-of-beasts kind of animal god instead of the embodier of their animal nature, that's totally fine, but that boils down to a roleplaying decision; if you want to appear as more human at a particular moment for whatever reason, don't use the boons that make you more animalistic right then. Just like the folks with Sun sometimes don't use their powers because being lit up like a runway can be inconvenient or counter to what they're doing, you may not always be able to conveniently animalize yourself without attracting notice. If you legitimately aren't sure what other part of you would make a good choice, or you have a really hard-to-use animal (like Jellyfish, for example), getting together with the Storyteller or other players can help spark new ideas.
Basically, this is a rule-of-awesomeness moment: if you're doing it because it's awesome, then yes. If you're doing it for any other reason - it's more convenient, it's less noticeable, you don't really like Animal but you do like dice bonuses, or anything else - then no. The Animal purview is about animals, not dice, regardless of how some powers are mechanically represented in the system. If you don't want to be involved in animal stuff, you don't want this purview.
So for your examples, we might allow the eyes, if you had a cool reason why each individual eye was doing something different, but not the nose, which is a clear example of double-dipping with no enhancement from having both "features" in the same place. As a general rule, we encourage players to choose very different features for each bonus unless the animal in question gives them a reason not to, so most of the time eyes, hands, ears and other paired organs or body parts are considered one "feature" together.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Phenomenal
Question: If every natural phenomenon is created by a God or Titan via Avatar, does that mean there are no 'mundane' things and everything is technically magical?
Not at all! Just because something was created by magic doesn't mean it's magical itself. Dirt created by the Earth Creation boon is not magical. It's just dirt. Ditto things made by any other boon or power. Unless something specifically says it creates a magical item - some Artistry boons, for example - it doesn't, and whatever was just created is a perfectly normal, non-magical example of its kind.
So when it comes to solid objects, if it's not a relic, trophy or piece of a magical creature, it's mundane. The vast majority of things that exist in the Scion universe are mundane, which is pretty normal - after all, that's how you know the Legendary things are special. Similarly, living things are always mundane unless they're expressly acknowledged to be Titanspawn, lesser immortals, Scions or some other magical creature. Tigers created by the Paper Tiger boon are just normal tigers; you have to use Nemean Scroll, which specifically says it makes Nemeans, if you want to end up with magic tigers.
If you're thinking more along the lines of the elements, that's where things are a little more tricky. If you can use Fire or Sky boons to attack people with elements and those are magical attacks that are specially treated in Scion's system, aren't all fire and lightning in the entire world also magical? They're not, actually, but there is a little bit more to it. The basic idea is that at some point the god of that element used their Avatar to create a permanent phenomenon in the World, and that phenomenon now runs itself and obeys its own natural laws, becoming a natural and mundane thing rather than a direct use of a power.
We explain it in much more depth in this vlog, starting at about 33 minutes in, so check it out if you'd like to listen to us jibber-jabber about it for a little while.
Not at all! Just because something was created by magic doesn't mean it's magical itself. Dirt created by the Earth Creation boon is not magical. It's just dirt. Ditto things made by any other boon or power. Unless something specifically says it creates a magical item - some Artistry boons, for example - it doesn't, and whatever was just created is a perfectly normal, non-magical example of its kind.
So when it comes to solid objects, if it's not a relic, trophy or piece of a magical creature, it's mundane. The vast majority of things that exist in the Scion universe are mundane, which is pretty normal - after all, that's how you know the Legendary things are special. Similarly, living things are always mundane unless they're expressly acknowledged to be Titanspawn, lesser immortals, Scions or some other magical creature. Tigers created by the Paper Tiger boon are just normal tigers; you have to use Nemean Scroll, which specifically says it makes Nemeans, if you want to end up with magic tigers.
If you're thinking more along the lines of the elements, that's where things are a little more tricky. If you can use Fire or Sky boons to attack people with elements and those are magical attacks that are specially treated in Scion's system, aren't all fire and lightning in the entire world also magical? They're not, actually, but there is a little bit more to it. The basic idea is that at some point the god of that element used their Avatar to create a permanent phenomenon in the World, and that phenomenon now runs itself and obeys its own natural laws, becoming a natural and mundane thing rather than a direct use of a power.
We explain it in much more depth in this vlog, starting at about 33 minutes in, so check it out if you'd like to listen to us jibber-jabber about it for a little while.
Monday, November 4, 2013
Feats Foretold
Question: Hello, when checking out a Prophecy boon I noticed it was talking about Legendary Deeds being used like a resource. What was that referring to? Currently my Scion group is using your template for our game and my character was given a relic for Prophecy. Just trying to figure out how it works exactly.
It's true! Two Prophecy boons use Legendary Deeds as currency: Become the Herald, which requires the spending of a Legendary Deed when its bonus is activated, and Fate Meditation, which allows prophets to recoup spent Deeds through their divinely inspired perceptions.
Legendary Deeds are a slightly different kind of currency from things like Legend or Willpower, but they - and Virtue channels and health boxes, while we're at it - are still a resource that your Scion has available to him. Run out of health boxes and you die; run out of Legend points and you can't use any powers; run out of Willpower and you go crazy; run out of Virtue channels or Legendary Deeds and you can't be the best you could otherwise be. The more you have of each, the better off you'll usually be. They're all resource pools that can be drawn upon at the moments a Scion needs them most.
Legend and Willpower are the simplest form of resource: spending them powers him so that he can do things, like supernatural gasoline that he needs to make his abilities run. Legendary Deeds, on the other hand, are used to enhance something he's already doing. They're more like a turbo charge that he can use to make his actions even more awesome than they would normally be.
Most APP boons don't use Legendary Deeds as resources, although many PSP boons do, but in Prophecy we have an exception. Fate Meditation's purpose is to allow Scions with the ability to see into the future to decide what tools they will need for said future and redistribute them accordingly; Legendary Deeds are one of those tools, just like Willpower or Virtue channels. Become the Herald, on the other hand, actually requires the spending of a Deed, and by the target of the boon rather than the Scion using it (unless they're the same person, which can happen). This is because whatever action the Scion saw with that boon was a shining moment that Fate highlighted as a destined future and incredible feat; it is by default now a Legendary Deed, even though the Scion hasn't spent it yet.
Because the boon isn't too clear about who exactly the target of Become the Herald is, we'll tell you how we do it. When someone decides to use the boon (our players call this "heralding", as in, "God damn it, Woody, herald someone, you selfish bastard, you can sleep later"), someone in the current scene is chosen at random by the Storyteller to be the recipient. John usually rolls a single die and counts around the room, but any method of randomly choosing someone is fine. The boon never targets the same person it targeted last (so if Aurora uses this boon and Woody gets the Herald, and then uses it again after he uses it, someone else will get it this time) and will never stack on someone who already has unused dice from it, even if those dice came from someone else's use of the boon. It also automatically skips anyone who doesn't have any Legendary Deeds left, unless there is nobody around with Deeds who isn't already disqualified, in which case it's still possible to get it while deed-less (even mortals can theoretically get it, although it's not likely).
Once that person has been chosen, they have the dice bonus of Become the Herald in a "bank" that they can use at any time. They have to spend a Legendary Deed and use all the dice on a single action, but it can be any action they choose (even an action taken against the prophet, and believe me, that has happened). We don't actually have prophetic powers so the person who used the boon doesn't actually know what they saw in their vision of the future until the dice are used, but once they are he's free to say, "Yes, that's what I had a vision of, you doing X! I knew it all along." And it's true, he did. Prophecy just requires us to not know what we know at the table once in a while, to preserve free will for all the players.
Hopefully that all made sense, but if it didn't or you needed to know something else, feel free to let us know!
It's true! Two Prophecy boons use Legendary Deeds as currency: Become the Herald, which requires the spending of a Legendary Deed when its bonus is activated, and Fate Meditation, which allows prophets to recoup spent Deeds through their divinely inspired perceptions.
Legendary Deeds are a slightly different kind of currency from things like Legend or Willpower, but they - and Virtue channels and health boxes, while we're at it - are still a resource that your Scion has available to him. Run out of health boxes and you die; run out of Legend points and you can't use any powers; run out of Willpower and you go crazy; run out of Virtue channels or Legendary Deeds and you can't be the best you could otherwise be. The more you have of each, the better off you'll usually be. They're all resource pools that can be drawn upon at the moments a Scion needs them most.
Legend and Willpower are the simplest form of resource: spending them powers him so that he can do things, like supernatural gasoline that he needs to make his abilities run. Legendary Deeds, on the other hand, are used to enhance something he's already doing. They're more like a turbo charge that he can use to make his actions even more awesome than they would normally be.
Most APP boons don't use Legendary Deeds as resources, although many PSP boons do, but in Prophecy we have an exception. Fate Meditation's purpose is to allow Scions with the ability to see into the future to decide what tools they will need for said future and redistribute them accordingly; Legendary Deeds are one of those tools, just like Willpower or Virtue channels. Become the Herald, on the other hand, actually requires the spending of a Deed, and by the target of the boon rather than the Scion using it (unless they're the same person, which can happen). This is because whatever action the Scion saw with that boon was a shining moment that Fate highlighted as a destined future and incredible feat; it is by default now a Legendary Deed, even though the Scion hasn't spent it yet.
Because the boon isn't too clear about who exactly the target of Become the Herald is, we'll tell you how we do it. When someone decides to use the boon (our players call this "heralding", as in, "God damn it, Woody, herald someone, you selfish bastard, you can sleep later"), someone in the current scene is chosen at random by the Storyteller to be the recipient. John usually rolls a single die and counts around the room, but any method of randomly choosing someone is fine. The boon never targets the same person it targeted last (so if Aurora uses this boon and Woody gets the Herald, and then uses it again after he uses it, someone else will get it this time) and will never stack on someone who already has unused dice from it, even if those dice came from someone else's use of the boon. It also automatically skips anyone who doesn't have any Legendary Deeds left, unless there is nobody around with Deeds who isn't already disqualified, in which case it's still possible to get it while deed-less (even mortals can theoretically get it, although it's not likely).
Once that person has been chosen, they have the dice bonus of Become the Herald in a "bank" that they can use at any time. They have to spend a Legendary Deed and use all the dice on a single action, but it can be any action they choose (even an action taken against the prophet, and believe me, that has happened). We don't actually have prophetic powers so the person who used the boon doesn't actually know what they saw in their vision of the future until the dice are used, but once they are he's free to say, "Yes, that's what I had a vision of, you doing X! I knew it all along." And it's true, he did. Prophecy just requires us to not know what we know at the table once in a while, to preserve free will for all the players.
Hopefully that all made sense, but if it didn't or you needed to know something else, feel free to let us know!
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Power Plays
Our vlogging spree continues! This is only the second of the many vlogs we filmed at the same tinme, so we barely look fatigued at all yet! This week's theme is boons, knacks and powers, because you guys never run out of questions about those things. Never.
Question: If a player wants to dip into a new general purview, how should accessing these new powers be handled? Do they always need a new relic, or can divine forces add access to new purviews to old Birthrights? If the latter, is there any mechanics involved or is it a strictly storytelling decision when that happens?
Question: So, Scion of Hermes/Mercury. Super speedster, concept of "Flash wannabe". Assuming maximized Dexterity, Epic Dexterity, and Psychopomp to facilitate dash speed, what are your thoughts on the Justice League "around the world punch"? Ultimate Dexterity? Use of The Way? What about speed-based bonus damage? When you punch a person at Mach 17 in Scion, what happens?
Question: What kind of penalty/bonus should exist for sexual orientation? If Zeus tries to sleep with a straight guy or gay girl, do they get some moderate +X bonus to resist?
Question: The writeup of Emamu mentions "attacks made by Death or Health boons". Obviously negative Health boons can be used offensively, but what Death boon can hurt something that isn't a ghost?
Question: How many Avatars do you have to pop to make a planet? How do you accomplish anything meaningful in space without constantly using Avatars and Ultimates?
Question: Is it possible for a craft god like Hephaestus to use the Creator to "forge" a full grown adult Scion with human blood along his own ichor? The idea came to me when I read about Hephaestus' sentient robo-maids in the Iliad and thought it would be a neat concept. So, would this actually create a Scion, or would it be some kind of Lesser Immortal or construct?
Question: I have been immensely curious about something lately as I am going back through and reading the core rules, specifically about Animal. I've noticed that as the Scion Seth Farrow goes through his ascension, he begins to naturally look much more like a snake, which to me it seemed was implying an evolution in his natural state over time. How would this be done, handled or represented from both a player perspective and a ST perspective?
Question: Is it possible that Machu Pichu could be a massive Huaca (possibly to Inti)?
Question: In Scion, would you have storms without storm gods? That is, are ALL storms caused by storm gods, or are some (most?) storms natural unless the local storm god chooses to intervene? In Scandinavia, would ALL lightning be directly caused by Thor, or just some? As a corollary, if all storms are directly created by the storm gods more or less at their whim, how come meteorology often works? (This obviously goes for other phenomena as well, like sunrise or love, but storms make a nice example.)
Wandering from cosmology to sexuality to space travel. We are like frontier vlog pioneers.
Question: If a player wants to dip into a new general purview, how should accessing these new powers be handled? Do they always need a new relic, or can divine forces add access to new purviews to old Birthrights? If the latter, is there any mechanics involved or is it a strictly storytelling decision when that happens?
Question: So, Scion of Hermes/Mercury. Super speedster, concept of "Flash wannabe". Assuming maximized Dexterity, Epic Dexterity, and Psychopomp to facilitate dash speed, what are your thoughts on the Justice League "around the world punch"? Ultimate Dexterity? Use of The Way? What about speed-based bonus damage? When you punch a person at Mach 17 in Scion, what happens?
Question: What kind of penalty/bonus should exist for sexual orientation? If Zeus tries to sleep with a straight guy or gay girl, do they get some moderate +X bonus to resist?
Question: The writeup of Emamu mentions "attacks made by Death or Health boons". Obviously negative Health boons can be used offensively, but what Death boon can hurt something that isn't a ghost?
Question: How many Avatars do you have to pop to make a planet? How do you accomplish anything meaningful in space without constantly using Avatars and Ultimates?
Question: Is it possible for a craft god like Hephaestus to use the Creator to "forge" a full grown adult Scion with human blood along his own ichor? The idea came to me when I read about Hephaestus' sentient robo-maids in the Iliad and thought it would be a neat concept. So, would this actually create a Scion, or would it be some kind of Lesser Immortal or construct?
Question: I have been immensely curious about something lately as I am going back through and reading the core rules, specifically about Animal. I've noticed that as the Scion Seth Farrow goes through his ascension, he begins to naturally look much more like a snake, which to me it seemed was implying an evolution in his natural state over time. How would this be done, handled or represented from both a player perspective and a ST perspective?
Question: Is it possible that Machu Pichu could be a massive Huaca (possibly to Inti)?
Question: In Scion, would you have storms without storm gods? That is, are ALL storms caused by storm gods, or are some (most?) storms natural unless the local storm god chooses to intervene? In Scandinavia, would ALL lightning be directly caused by Thor, or just some? As a corollary, if all storms are directly created by the storm gods more or less at their whim, how come meteorology often works? (This obviously goes for other phenomena as well, like sunrise or love, but storms make a nice example.)
Wandering from cosmology to sexuality to space travel. We are like frontier vlog pioneers.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Murder on the Move
Question: If, under your rules, someone purchases Riastrad at a lower Legend, could they purchase it then again later on to override the current Riastrad to add boons and knacks to it as they grow? Or if they want to do that, must they wait until they are higher Legend to purchase it or can they add boons and knacks to it as they progress if in fact they want it that way?
I tried a scientific experiment for you on this one. I waited until John was going over the plot stuff for Sunday's god-level game, and then casually asked, "Hey, if I want to change what's on Eztli's Riastrad, could I buy the boon again to put a new set of powers on it?"
He said, "No, go to hell," and then got another energy drink and went back to Fatebond sheets.
So there's that. That's generally the answer to any "Can I buy X twice" question, since if he wanted it bought twice he'd already have put it in the power's text. But let me go into it in a little more detail and explain why that is and what you can still do to keep your Riastrad relevant and powerful as you go up in Legend.
The main reason we don't allow re-buying Riastrad is that it's intended to be a boon that grows with you - not just new powers you get later, but also the early powers that build the foundation of your warrior identity. Riastrad isn't just a convenient way to use a lot of powers at once and destroy your enemies, but also the battle-fugue that is individual and unique to you as a warrior; it's horrible, but it's also something that is specific and tailored to you, very seldom the same as anyone else's. What happens to you during Riastrad is part of your Legend, which means it is immortalized along with you. We know exactly what Cu Chulainn does in his Riastrad, to the point where we can probably pinpoint almost exactly what powers he used in it, because it's described as part of his Legend in the stories about his exploits. We want it to function that way for Scions in our games, too!
But that doesn't mean your Riastrad can't grow with you; in fact, it will grow exactly as much or little as you want it to. Riastrad activates powers equal to your total number of War boons; when you buy it, that means at least four powers, probably closer to six or seven. But the great thing about Riastrad is that you can add to it as you go along, at almost the same pace as you get new powers, because every time you buy a new War boon, your total goes up and Riastrad needs one new power added to it. You're not stuck with only whatever you assign when you first buy it; if you want new powers, all you have to do is buy another War boon and bam, you add a new skill to your Riastrad bonanza.
So let's use Eztli as an example, because she's our most dangerous and obvious berserker danger to the world. When she bought Riastrad, she had only four War boons total; she loaded it up with Warrior Ideal, Animal Aspect, Do Not Want and Armor Crusher, making her a terrible juggernaut of damage for as long as the boon's effects last. When she next got Mortal Stroke, she added Mother's Touch to the lineup; when she then got Blessing of Insight, she added Lightning Flyer, and so on and so forth until today's Riastrad mess (which is probably wrong on her character sheet thanks to her getting new War boons lately unless we've finally gotten the stupid outlet situation in our house fixed so I can get my computer loaded up and edit it before this goes to press).
So never fear! Your Riastrad does grow with you, provided you continue to invest in the warlike powers it embodies. You'll gain new capabilities and perform new horrors as you get higher in Legend and gain more powers, and those legendary qualities that people have always heard about on your Riastrad will still remain intact and active as you go.
I tried a scientific experiment for you on this one. I waited until John was going over the plot stuff for Sunday's god-level game, and then casually asked, "Hey, if I want to change what's on Eztli's Riastrad, could I buy the boon again to put a new set of powers on it?"
He said, "No, go to hell," and then got another energy drink and went back to Fatebond sheets.
So there's that. That's generally the answer to any "Can I buy X twice" question, since if he wanted it bought twice he'd already have put it in the power's text. But let me go into it in a little more detail and explain why that is and what you can still do to keep your Riastrad relevant and powerful as you go up in Legend.
The main reason we don't allow re-buying Riastrad is that it's intended to be a boon that grows with you - not just new powers you get later, but also the early powers that build the foundation of your warrior identity. Riastrad isn't just a convenient way to use a lot of powers at once and destroy your enemies, but also the battle-fugue that is individual and unique to you as a warrior; it's horrible, but it's also something that is specific and tailored to you, very seldom the same as anyone else's. What happens to you during Riastrad is part of your Legend, which means it is immortalized along with you. We know exactly what Cu Chulainn does in his Riastrad, to the point where we can probably pinpoint almost exactly what powers he used in it, because it's described as part of his Legend in the stories about his exploits. We want it to function that way for Scions in our games, too!
But that doesn't mean your Riastrad can't grow with you; in fact, it will grow exactly as much or little as you want it to. Riastrad activates powers equal to your total number of War boons; when you buy it, that means at least four powers, probably closer to six or seven. But the great thing about Riastrad is that you can add to it as you go along, at almost the same pace as you get new powers, because every time you buy a new War boon, your total goes up and Riastrad needs one new power added to it. You're not stuck with only whatever you assign when you first buy it; if you want new powers, all you have to do is buy another War boon and bam, you add a new skill to your Riastrad bonanza.
So let's use Eztli as an example, because she's our most dangerous and obvious berserker danger to the world. When she bought Riastrad, she had only four War boons total; she loaded it up with Warrior Ideal, Animal Aspect, Do Not Want and Armor Crusher, making her a terrible juggernaut of damage for as long as the boon's effects last. When she next got Mortal Stroke, she added Mother's Touch to the lineup; when she then got Blessing of Insight, she added Lightning Flyer, and so on and so forth until today's Riastrad mess (which is probably wrong on her character sheet thanks to her getting new War boons lately unless we've finally gotten the stupid outlet situation in our house fixed so I can get my computer loaded up and edit it before this goes to press).
So never fear! Your Riastrad does grow with you, provided you continue to invest in the warlike powers it embodies. You'll gain new capabilities and perform new horrors as you get higher in Legend and gain more powers, and those legendary qualities that people have always heard about on your Riastrad will still remain intact and active as you go.
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