Question: What do you think of the idea of Boons that come from two or more Purviews at once? Example, your Out of the Frying Pan Boon in Chaos feels like it should have a dash of Psychopomp in there.
When we read this question, John and I both said aloud, "Oh, man, someone wants combo disciplines?" This is our old World of Darkness roots showing.
While combo disciplines were certainly a thing in Vampire: the Masquerade and its related games, they aren't in Scion, and that's really okay with us. They're messy to keep track of and a huge bitch to try to keep consistent across all purviews, which you really kind of need to do to prevent players feeling that it's unfair that the three purviews they invested in don't have any cool cross-powers but the three that other guy did do.
I definitely see what you're saying, though, question-asker - Out of the Frying Pan is a power that potentially teleports you across several worlds, so it certainly feels a bit like it belongs in Psychopomp. (For the record, we agonized over it for quite a while, trying to make sure it wasn't stepping on Psychopomp's toes too much, but ended up feeling that it was a legitimate expression of the power of chance and chaos and didn't really horn in on the other purview's territory.) There are a couple of different approaches to combo powers and I'm not sure which you're talking about, but here're our general feelings on both:
Approach A: The boon seems to have elements of two different purviews, so you need boons from both Psychopomp and Chaos to get Out of the Frying Pan. This was the classic oWoD approach, with the basic thinking that if you combined power A from one discipline and power B from another, you'd get power C, the combo version. The reason we don't like this is that, with Scion's stunt system and a creative player, it's completely unnecessary. The World of Darkness powers did one specific thing and could not deviate from it, not even for flavor; most of them were very narrow and didn't tap into the levels of crazy awesomeness that Scion does, which means that combo disciplines were reasonable powers that let the PC do something they normally wouldn't be able to do. In Scion, however, purviews are literally expressions of everything that area of power should be able to do; if you stunt well, or you have two boons from different purviews and just use them together, odds are you can achieve that effect without any problems and certainly without needing to buy a whole separate power. We're not going to make PCs buy Psychopomp just to use Out of the Frying Pan any more than we would make them buy Earth to use Fertility boons; the two can be related and used together to great effect, but they don't have to be. Instituting this kind of thing would be limiting in Scion's system, whereas it was liberating in the World of Darkness.
Approach B: The boon seems to have elements of two different purviews, so you can buy Out of the Frying Pan as either a Chaos or Psychopomp boon. We see this suggested in Scion more often, but unfortunately don't really like it any more. As noted above, it's a messy thing that ends up playing favorites - great if you happen to already be gunning to be a Chaos or Psychopomp god, but what about the guys who bought War or Fire and don't get any option to pick up free boons outside of their purviews? Some STs and players aren't worried about that kind of lack of consistency, but there's a bigger reason to avoid this kind of setup, and that's that it has no useful purpose to the game. In this case, there's pretty much no good reason to buy Out of the Frying Pan as a Psychopomp boon instead of a Chaos boon - it's not doing anything that Psychopomp can't do except that Psychopomp also lets you decide little things like where and how far away you want to go, and Out of the Frying Pan doesn't. In fact, the only reason to get Out of the Frying Pan instead of just buying Psychopomp boons is to get the ability to teleport (albeit randomly) a few Legend earlier than you could have gotten it in your normal powerset. There's no reason for this to be a combo power other than players wanting to game the system and avoid having to purchase Chaos to get this Chaos power. And if the only reason for the system to exist is to let a few players who choose a few select powers cheat on their XP, while everyone else still has to buy some of different purviews if they want to get different powers, that's a flawed system.
In the end, it's usually a better bet to just try to make sure that each purview has all the reasonable boons it needs to have; Psychopomp doesn't need another less-controllable teleportation power when it already has a bunch of travel and teleportation boons, so there's no reason to transplant Out of the Frying Pan into it and no reason to make it suddenly available to psychopomps as a freebie. It's not like Chaos gods are going to ever be comparable to the Psychopomp users when it comes to getting the band around; Out of the Frying Pan can be a good panic button, but it's utterly useless for trying to get where you want to go, so it's not infringing on the Psychopomp god's ability to be the king of travel.
Man. The idea of how much work it would require to come up with combo powers between all purviews is giving me legitimate hives. Yikes.
now would be a good time to mention our Come Along ruling.... unless it's in the House rules... sadly i'm at work and don't have the moment to do so.... bbl!
ReplyDeleteIt's noted on Come Along itself.
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ReplyDeleteOur PCs are pretty afraid of it, to be honest. We did have one who used it repeatedly, but it ended up eventually killing him, which was about as perfect a cautionary tale as you could get (at least that time he used it alone rather than taking everyone with him). We found that, at least at mid-Demigod level, it was too expensive to want to use a lot (if you're taking your whole party, that's 7 Legend and a Willpower, which is about a seventh of your entire resource pools), so it served its purpose as a get-out-of-jail-maybe card in serious emergencies but was never used for anything else. We didn't have a problem with it derailing the story (well, except for Theo eventually teleporting himself to the Colossus and getting incinerated, but that only ended his personal story), but depending on how you run it might pose some unique problems.
DeleteWe actually found that it was a fun way of keeping more story threads tied together. When you accidentally teleport to an enemy, you get to find out what he's been up to lately and enjoy more of your rivalry or whatever plot is between you than you might have otherwise. When you accidentally teleport to a helpful place or person, you can often pick up tools for your current mission that you wouldn't have otherwise had.
But yeah, be aware, everybody: this boon will eventually kill you if you use it too much. (Which is fine with me, since that's a phrase you could apply to a lot of Chaos boons.)
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DeleteThat first case sounds like somebody's mortal enemies aren't mortal enough. That kind of thing definitely wouldn't work in our games - not that they wouldn't have a chance of defeating a dangerous mortal enemy if they accidentally ended up at one, of course, but we'd try to make sure that the mortal enemy consequence was a serious one. They probably aren't going to get him in the shower; they're going to get him ready to rock with an army of minions, or whatever else presents a suitable challenge and danger to the group. If he's not badass enough for them to be in serious danger of dying if they have to fight him, he's not badass enough to count as a mortal enemy for OotFP's purposes.
DeleteThe underworld issue you point to is definitely more of a problem; we don't usually have a problem with that, and our PCs tend to find loads of ways to run around places we weren't planning for them to go, but if you're an ST who doesn't like having to come up with something on the fly like that or who wants to limit the PCs to a single set of goals, you're right, OotFP is probably going to be counterproductive. You can also just have OotFP always play into those goals anyway - you're the ST, after all, so if they end up in an Underworld, there's no reason you can't put them near an exit that might lead them back to approximately the place they need to be, or include an NPC or item to be found there that ties into the story goals they statred with.
I'd note that an even easier fix is to make that single die-roll absolute and not allow the PC to spend Legend to reroll it; the inability to get out of rolling a bad result might rein in some of the more determined abusers of the power.
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DeleteHmm, I did sound a little bit like an elitist jerk up there, didn't I? Shame on me. I don't mean to suggest that it can't be an issue for STs, or that anybody should feel like they're not "good enough" in any dimension. Some STs are good at rolling with the punches and coming up with things on the fly; others, who are still great STs, need time to plan and have an idea of what they're doing going in. Both are totally valid, so you're right - if you're of the latter school and you like to have things mapped out ahead of time, OotFP is going to be a big headache for you. (I guess you could always "plan" for OotFp, too, by having a preprepared list of places it would go on each number and an idea what to do as the ST if that happens, but that's a lot of extra pre-work that not every ST may want to do.)
DeleteNo, the absolute roll definitely wouldn't stop the boon from being used repeatedly, but using the boon repeatedly also wouldn't necessarily stop there from being any consequences. If the PCs happen to show up somewhere environmentally hostile, I'd probably have them take damage in the five ticks before the boon could be used again; if they happen to show up somewhere with an enemy, they'd better beat his Join Battle roll or there's a good chance someone's getting beat in the face before they manage to get out of there again. I'd try to avoid letting bad results just be ignored by reusing the boon; even if you escape the worst of it by doing so, it should still be something that hurts you in some way at least a little.
Those things still don't necessarily mitigate your concerns; I think a lot of it depends on the flavor and tenor of game, Storytellers and players, how much stunting typically happens, who's using the power for what and so forth. We've never had a problem with it being abused, but that doesn't mean it might not happen with different players or STs. I'm not sure what else could be mechanically tinkered with to make it more "fireproof" - maybe John will have some insight when he wakes up.
My reply got too long and so I made it its own post. To your comment about stunting though. Boons have prices for a reason, if your pcs dont shun away from spending 7 legend on things then they're either aztec or irish, or you have some issues with how stunting is awarded(or how pcs spend legend?). At the level you can get this boon, 1/5th of your legend pool should be a huge sink that you have trouble getting back. I think it might be the most expensive boon at this level.
ReplyDeleteYes, 7 stunt dice isnt that much, but they should be spending legend on all types of other things too so that the 7 legend dont necessarily come back.
Not to derail the awesome stuff about Out of the Frying Pan (I'm sending my player that has that Boon here and to the new post, note), but kinda back on the general idea of multi-Purview Boons.
ReplyDeleteI use them in my game, and mostly the ones we have are the result of players asking for abilities that don't quite fit into any single Purview, or very specifically draw on two different Purviews in an extremely obvious way.
Your point about using Stunts and using Boons together to create new effects. I agree, that is what those things are for. However, they aren't consistent. If you have a specific effect you want to invoke over and over again, is a Stunt really the best way to handle that?
If you're a Shark God and you want to turn into a flying shark that can live in the air as well as the water, you can do that with a stunt every so often. If it's something you're going to be doing on a regular basis, I think it need somethin else. Since I actually have this situation, I jotted down a rank-1 Boon from Animal and Sky that allows water-dwelling animal-shapes to survive in air-based environments with no penalties. To be a Flying Air-Shark, the character bought Wind's Freedom to fly in all his forms.
To buy a Multi-Purview Boon, I require the PC to have at least 1 Boon in each Purview and a Relic for all the Purviews involved. So even if you only have Chaos 1, you can still buy the Rank 4 Out of the Frying Pan Boon. You do have to have some previous experience with a Purview to start mixing it around with others, though.
I don't know that Multi-Purview Boons need to be common, but I think they should be an option. It seems to me they open more doors than they close. I like that they represent the ability of Gods to mix their powers in unique ways that every other God out there isn't going to have. If you're a God of Fire and Frost, you can whip up some frozen ice-flames that burn forever without heat. While it would be really cool if Scion was designed on more of a Mage-Sphere-based system where each rank in a Purview allowed you to create all kinds of different effects, it's actually designed on something much closer to the Gifts of Werewolf. Discrete, individual powers with fairly well-defined limits.
Basically, while the idea of combo-disciplines might be limiting in comparison to Scion's aesthetic and fluff, it's actually pretty liberating in context of Scion's system. The system doesn't reflect the fluff as well as it could.
(I was the question-asker.)
Im trying to brainstorm this situation(cause its a good situation). So was the only problem that he wanted to be able to fly, but obviously couldnt because he had gills?
ReplyDeleteSo he still had to use winds freedom to fly anyway, but he couldnt breathe? How often was he a flying shark? Or rather, when he was a shark, how often was he not in water?
His chosen animal is Sharks (and fish by extension); he wants to be able to use Animal Form and Nemean Form without being under water. At first he wanted to have a Relic that flooded whatever area he was in so that he could swim around as normal. That was rather problematic.
DeleteSo we settled on the flying air-shark idea to keep his animal shapes from being limited to aquatic environments. The flying part is just so that he can move around instead of flopping hilariously from place to place like a fish out of water.
The issue is theoretical at the moment, since he hasn't learned Animal Form yet. He was waiting for a solution to the breathing problem before learning it.
Why couldnt he just turn into a shark on land and fly? I guess Im confused why there needs to be a separate boon. Couldnt they just make themselves a shark on land and then fly?
DeleteYeah, but then he couldn't breathe. I suppose he could just buy a no-breathing Knack. There are always lots of ways to fix a problem in Scion.
DeleteWell, stamina alone lets you hold your breath for quite a while. I think some of the legend 9s can hold their breath for months?
DeleteI probably would have just bought Whale's Breath and Omnidexterity and been the amazing landshark, but I can see that the jokes alone would be daunting.
DeleteI don't understand why it would be okay for a player to buy a level 4 boon if he only currently has a level 1. The boons are meant to build on each other, and if you don't have levels 2 and 3 in between, how can you justify being able to use the level 4? If there is a specific boon that a character needs to be able to access and he doesn't have the preview, why not tie it to a relic. For example, my character Kettila at legend 6 had a relic with Legendary Surge on it, even though she's not a mage, so that she would be able to help the group with Itztli.
ReplyDeleteBecause that's how the system works. You can buy Boons regardless of level. You can buy a Rank 6 Fire Boon without knowing any other Fire Boons at all.
DeleteIt's just that when you're buying a Multi-Purview Boon, I think you need some previous experience with the Purviews involved, so I require you to have at least one Boon from each Purview used by the Multi-Purview Boon. The rank is immaterial, you just gotta have at least dabbled in the Purview before.
If you look at the Purviews, most of the Boons actually don't build on each other. There quite often isn't a logical progression along a fixed path. Sky in particular is all over the place. Darkness and Chaos, too. Animal is fairly linear, depending on which Boons you pick up.
Purviews aren't like Disciplines, though. They don't go in order. There isn't any order. They're like Gifts from Werewolf. There's not necessarily any relationship between a Rank 1 Boon and a Rank 6 Boon, other than that they share a Purview.
Actually, we do require that boons be bought in order (it's on our HR page). Scion vanilla doesn't, but we tossed that idea out pretty early on - we much preferred having PCs invest in a certain area they wanted to be good at instead of cherry-picking powers all over the field, since it usually yielded better thematic results. It didn't make much sense to us that you could have something like Devil Body, but not, you know, the ability to actually start or be immune even to normal fires. I've always thought it was a really interesting new system experiment for WW, when they normally do everything in a one-then-two progression, but after watching it in action through our first game, we pretty quickly found that it wasn't adding enough to the system to justify itself.
DeleteTotally understandable confusion, though, and plenty of folks do play using that rule.
That certainly makes looking at your question a bit different - the problems of "this isn't fair XP-wise!" isn't there if there are no prerequisite powers for a boon in another purview. I'm still not sure it's a can of worms I'd want to open, but if it's working for you, more power to ya. It's definitely less problematic in the original system.
DeleteContrariwise, I now understand your position in opposition to Multi-Purview Boons a lot better. I had totally forgotten that you guys had that buy-in-order rule and did not even think of such a thing.
DeleteI can easily see there would be situations where someone might feel compelled to buy a new Purview to get a cross-Purview Boon.. but if there weren't Cross-Purview Boons, wouldn't they still want the same power and have to buy the new Purview to get the abilities involved anyway? It's just a different way of representing things.
Ok, I didn't realize that buying in order was not an original rule. It just made sense to me, so I never questioned it. i completely agree with Anne, why would you be able to high level boons without basics? By that rule, does that mean at Legend 12 you could just buy an Avatar of anything you want? It completely throws the game off balance.
ReplyDeleteAvatar's the one thing you can't do that with - you have to have one boon at every level, in the original rules, to get an Avatar.
DeleteI'm with you, though - since the change, long ago before Better Next Time started, I've never looked back. I don't see any reason that every god out there can pick up Rain of Fire or The Best Trick even if they have nothing to do with fire or have never before cast so much as a single illusion.
Also, Epics always have to be bought in order - seemed silly to have separate rules there.
DeleteI feel like this is all going to lead to John making a bonus post again.
I actually prefer the not-in-order system because it encourages people to look at the Purviews as big, messy clouds of powers instead of a linear progression of abilities.
DeleteThe issue of someone suddenly developing the ability to rain fire down on a village is kinda a thing, but not a big thing, I think. There'd have to be a reason they needed that ability and it would probably relate to their character in an understandable way. I push pretty heavily for my players to invest only in Purviews that are relevant to their concepts. So far while people might skip Animal 4 (it sucks), they aren't just dipping into Darkness to get Shadow Step if Darkness has nothing to do with their character.
I honestly really wish that every Purview had gotten at least two Boons per rank in the books because I think giving them only one per rank lead to people seeing them as more Discipline-like than anything else. I'd much rather them be like Gifts or Spheres.
Hmm. Someone should come up with an awesome system for using Purviews as Spheres.
I think there have actually been several attempts at using purviews in a more Mage-sphere way on the forums - here's a thread on the subject. It'd not something I'd pursue personally, but there are lots of like-minded folks over there, it seems - you could probably get a bandwagon going to work on such a project over there. :)
DeleteThat's why I specificed an "awesome" system :(
DeleteSo far I've only seen boring systems. I don't know if it could really be done in an Awesome manner. I wasn't the biggest fan of Mage, actually. Still, the idea is interesting. It fits the fluff. A God of Water, with every Water Boon up to Rank 8, should be able to do all kinds of crazy Water things even if they don't have a Boon that specifically handles whatever they want to do.
Right now, that just kinda falls under Stunts. They're cool and all, but as I said before they're not terribly reliable or consistent.
Aww, I'm with you. We've tried to do experiments with that sort of thing, but results have been inconsistent. For a while, we ran with the idea that if it made sense for a purview you were heavily invested in to do it, and there wasn't another boon that specifically does that in play somewhere, that you could pull it off with a sufficient stunt, but it was really hard to quantify and confusing for players. (And for us, trying to remember on the fly exactly how all purviews of all boons worked at all times.)
DeleteIt's a noble goal, though. Purviews are big, encompassing things, so it does feel a little limiting to break them down into small, specific-power chunks.
Ok, that makes me feel a little better that you can't just buy Avatar, but yeah, why wouldn't every god have all the level 10 boons? I know that's probably what I would try to do if we used that rule. (well, you know, the ones my fatebonds would let me have)
ReplyDeleteYup...
DeleteI don't use y'all's Fatebinding system (math scares me), but basically the same thing that you mentioned comes up. Your fatebonds wouldn't let you keep all those unrelated level 10s because they don't make sense for your Legendary Role.
DeleteSure, Athena could learn Stars 10 and blast her enemies with cosmic radiation. But she could also just hit them with her spear. The spear is far more in keeping with her Legend. So that's why, even though she COULD learn Starfire, she hasn't.
But how does it work for pcs? What fatebinding system do you use and how does it keep them from picking and choosing all the purviews?
DeleteI haven't actually picked a "system" for Fatebindings. My current approach is collaborative and narrative. The PC's are Demigods and they've reached the point where mortals are getting a lot of ideas about them.
DeleteWhen they do something that supports the perception of them (their Legend), it feels right and they might get a few nudges towards the easiest way to do things.
If they struggle against that perception, ideas start creeping into their heads. Recently our Russian Scion (a murderous batman type who beheads criminals in his free time) has been having problems NOT beheading people when they do things he disagrees with.
Specifically regarding Purviews, I haven't had many problems with that. Only one, really. A player out of the blue asked if he could learn Starfire. I asked him why and he said he wanted a way to do Aggravated damage and it seemed the cheapest. His character had Darkness, Animal and Fire. Nothing about Stars at all and, to boot, he was an Aztec where the Stars are their enemies and principle Titan antagonist. I pushed him for a story-related reason and he wanted a way to kill people that couldn't be tracked back to him and figured if he used Starfire he could stunt it into an overdose of invisible cosmic rays that would cause cancer and radiation sickness. No one would connect it to him. So it turned out he didn't want Stars, he just wanted a way to assassinate people. We found another way that fit with his Legend.
It does rely heavily on your players going along with the idea of their character's Legend, but so far I haven't had any significant problems.
After all, why would a Storm God even want to cause an earthquake? He can just whip up a monsoon.
I can see your point and understand that most of your players are going to want to have things consistent with their character's myths, but what happens if that storm god goes up against another storm god that's better at monsoons that he is? Wouldn't it be handy to be able to throw him off with an earthquake, because earth is something he doesn't do?
DeleteIf you're not having problems with it, bully for you, but that conversation just seems like one I want to avoid. Because when it comes down to it, without a good reason, why cant he buy stars?
DeleteIt would seem to make a lot of arguments crop up. And I generally make rules to avoid arguments.
What Ive found(the worse part) is people just ignore boons til they get good(demigod) and then suddenly pick and chose the awesome ones.
It also encroaches into ugly ground of "Im gonna pick whatever does the most dmg with the stats Im good at".
Exactly like you were talking about with your player, well, im good at this stat, which boon is good with that stat? Ok, im gonna be pick up that boon even though Ive never done anything in that purview before.
Which leads to an answer to your question. The storm god doesnt have the right stats for monsoon, but he could wreck stuff with earthquake. So he does something completely off character for an ooc reason of dmg. Which I hate.
But again, if you've made it to at least 11 and its working for you, Bully. But Id hate it.
I'd much rather change the rolls that a Boon uses than have a character pick up a Boon just because they're good at it. If the Monsoon God is terrible at making Monsoons but awesome at making Earthquakes, I'd rather adjust the Monsoon-Making roll so that he can keep in-theme with his character
DeleteInstead of asking "why can't he just buy Stars 10?" I'd ask "Why would he ever want to buy Stars 10?" and look at it from the character's point of view. He, the character, wants to assassinate things. Wouldn't he figure out a way to do that using the stuff he's good at instead of learning this whole new cosmic power that he has no familiarity with or experience in?
I do offer an incentive to my players to stick with a Purview, by giving them a small discount on Boons when they are purchased in order. It isn't such a huge discount that it's a problem for them to skip a level or two if there's nothing useful at that level for them. Death 2 and Animal 4 come to mind.
Also, they often go back to those skipped levels later and fill them in with a custom Boon when someone invents on. But nothing forces them to, and I kinda like that.
Buying out of order also solves, for me, the issue of multiple different aspects to Purviews. Recently there was a discussion about Stars and how it covers (even in revised forms) a lot of territory. Maybe someone only wants to buy the astrological Boons and have nothing to do with bringing constellations to life or acting as a human sextant. They can do that without trouble, because they don't need everything in the Purview.
I admit that cherry picking top-level Boons could be an issue, but it hasn't been one for my group and the benefits I see from letting players skip around seem to outweigh that potential problem.
Moon, Earth, Darkness, Sky and Stars of the published Purviews are really scatter brained. I don't necessarily see that you need to be able to use Echo Sounding before you learn how to do Earth Armor.
While I have not done so in my game, I would recommend divorcing Purviews from Epic Attributes. One of the most popular alternatives being tossed around in my circle is giving Purviews a dice pool of [Legend + Ability + Automatic Successes]. In this case, the total levels of your purview grant you a number of automatic successes as if you had an equivalent Epic Attribute.
DeleteSo, if someone had Fire 1 - 4 they would gain +7 Automatic Successes when channeling the Fire purview. There has been some debate over using an alternative dice pool from the one I mentioned above, but we're going to put the changes into effect in the next game I or one of my associates run to see how it works out.
Doesn't that fall apart when people have multiple Boons of the same level?
DeleteI think source you'd do it like we do with Hippocratic oath. Doesnt matter how many of a level you have, it just goes off your max level in that purview(and you stick to the buy boons in order rule).
DeleteIry, we brainstormed around with something like that when originally playing with the system and decided it was kinda boring and took a lot away from the importance of attributes, especially non physical ones.
John has the right of it; it does not matter if you have multiple level 4 Fire Boons only that you have four different levels of Fire Boons.
DeleteThe main issue we keep encountering is the reliance on Attributes to be good a your Purviews which limited the kinds of character concepts you could play. If you played the Fire god mentioned above you must invest in Charisma or any other Fire god that wanders by who does invest in Charisma is going to be mechanically superior to you.
It also helps limit cherry picking (which we still allow for mythical reasons). In the current system if someone cherry picks a boon from a different purview they could suddenly be better at it than a God that focuses extensively on that purview but does not have the right attribute.
The goal is to allow players to build their characters based on whatever personality and/or attributes you desire without that miserable feeling that you should have taken another attribute to be better. The example god of fire above would be good at fire because he genuinely invested a lot in fire, not because he happened to be charismatic.
It may take away some of the importance of attributes but I have a suspicion that this will not be the case except in circumstances like Animal and other attribute based dice adders. Either way it is going to be playtested in the next game I or one of my friends runs , and I would be happy to report the results to this blog in a couple of months.