Question: How do you guys feel about the fluff surrounding Titan-Seeking Spear? Its mechanics?
Ooh, an opinion question! I'm going to jump on it before John gets to his computer today, but I'm sure he'll weigh in if he has different ideas than I do.
The Titan-Seeking Spear leaves me with a great and overwhelming feeling of "eh," in terms of its fluff, to be honest. It's not that the idea of a universal spear of badassery isn't cool - it is, and many cultures have one, from the one that Izanagi used to create the world to the one Hades used to battle the Titans - but the vague generality of the book's description of it leaves me cold. If the spear is always granted to the most badass Scion of their generation, and is always used to do amazing and colossal feats, how come nobody remembers any of the people using it? Why are they all a name lost to time or an unrecorded anonymous soldier? You'd think the most badass Scion of an entire generation would be someone who was, you know, Legendary. Enough to at least let us remember his or her name, right? I realize that this is an attempt by the writer to avoid attaching any specific Legend to it, the better to leave it a blank slate for a new Scion PC to write his own, but it runs weirdly counter to the whole idea of Legend and renown in Scion. Weird for me, but possibly not a problem for a lot of players (so if you have no issue with it, don't sweat it).
I have more of an issue with the fluff that states that the spear is always "handed down to the mightiest warrior of each generation of Scions". It's nifty if you're running a small game with only one fighter character, but if there's more than one person in on the titanspawn-killing game, giving the spear to one of them is tantamount to telling the others they just aren't as badass as warriors, which is no kind of fun for them. And how would you judge who's the "mightiest warrior" anyway? Is it the guy with all the Epic Strength and Melee? What about the guy with poor physical stats but the ability to set his enemies aflame? What about the girl who can give enemies sudden, crippling cancer when they piss her off? If you want to use the Titan-Seeking Spear, I'd leave that part out entirely - I'm not about to tell one PC they're a mightier warrior than another unless they're in a band with literally no other fighters of any kind.
As far as the mechanics of the thing go, I actually have no problem with them; in fact, it's a little bit ho-hum, to be honest. The +1 bonus is negligible and the Guide access only works for PCs that are interested in having a Guide in the first place (not that common in our games at least - out of 58 characters, only 5 have ever started with one). The summoned Followers are cool (though again only useful if you already wanted to have Followers - I'd suggest making them actually a part of the spear's powers instead of separate to give it more oomph) and the reroll-without-Fatebonds power is very nice, but on the whole it's not anything I'd sit up and notice. It's a perfectly serviceable (and power-level appropriate) starting relic for a warrior Scion, but it doesn't live up to its own hype (at least, in my opinion).
In most cases, I'd rather give the Scion a weapon that fit their character or culture more closely and gave them the same powers, instead of using a vaguely-worded prefab relic from the book that doesn't seem to be doing anything all that interesting.
I always viewed it as lazy filler material by White Wolf.
ReplyDeleteAlso I wish my PC's did not have guides - of the three of them one has a guide 5 and the others have guide 3.
Trying to make this work and it not turn into Mr exposition is great fun...
That... is a lot of Guides. Holy smokes.
DeleteAynie and I have been brainstorming a more concrete value to Guides. They are already incredibly useful as sources of information but sometimes you want them to have a tangible benefit besides constant color commentary and exposition.
DeleteA somewhat neat option suggested is that, in addition to offering useful information once per story per dot of guide you possess, you also gain one automatic success in a skill of your choice per dot of guide you possess.
For example, Giles is a retired sorcerer and a 5 dot guide. 5 times per story he offers vital insight into an issue the characters are having trouble with. His training also rewards a character with +2 Automatic Successes to Occult, +2 Automatic Successes to Brawl, and +1 Automatic Success to Empathy.
In a more comedic sense, Master Pai Mei is a grumpy old martial artist willing to impart his knowledge if you kowtow to his ego. 5 times per story he berates you viciously in a way that leaves you with some personal insight. His training also rewards a character with +5 Automatic Successes to Brawl.
This obviously has some balancing issues at Hero, in which case you may want to make the benefit of a guide be Dice instead of Automatic Successes until they hit Demi-God. It takes time for all those lessons to sink in!
DeleteWe're actually doing something pretty similar, only with bonuses to purviews instead of abilities! That's a good idea, too, to go from dice to successes - though I suppose if a Scion dumped all his points into a super badass Guide from the get-go, I might be willing to let him get the successes to start with.
DeleteThis is some good thinking.
DeleteThe trouble I have is the players end up consulting the guides whenever something comes up - in order to not give too much away I have to be cagey which makes them come across as useless and a waste of time which is unfortunate
We try to skew the Guide's wisdom depending on the subject - they're probably experts in some areas and not others, so when a Guide turns out not to be very helpful, we usually gently remind the PC that there's no particular reason their magical physician Guide would know anything about, say, a foreign culture's battle tactics. We try to let them shine when it's an area they probably specialize in (aha! we need to know about ghosts/underworld politics/possessions! call your ghede, Jioni!) and let them shrug their shoulders when it's not (when we need to know about the capabilities of a monster or the Chinese black market, Pierre is probably not all that helpful).
DeleteEven of our people who do have guides, they dont use them too often. I dont think its because they're not useful, but I have guides as real people(gods, etc) who do have shit to do. So when you summon them for info(summon is a strange word, I more have them appear similar to how a hologram would work), they're stopping them from doing the other stuff they're doing. Even if you have an awesome uncle that will help you with anything, if you call him everyday with your little problems, even when hes at work, hes gonna get tired and stop picking up, but before that hes probably gonna become rather hostile. But he loves you so if you leave him alone for a while he'll be happy with you and help you again.
DeleteFrom what I've seen in the characters section here, John and Anne have something going on similar to your idea, Iry. I think its something like a dice bonus or autos to Purviews instead of Abilities, though. Doesn't Sverrir get a ridiculous number of things from all those Vanir sitting around to advise him?
ReplyDeleteYeah, Sverrir is cheating a lot. Almost all of the Vanir have kicked the bucket by this point in our about-to-hit-Ragnarok game, so their spirits hang around in his Sanctum and try to direct him as the last representative of their people. It's a great help but also a lot of backseat driving and political manipulation that goes over his head, poor guy.
DeleteAnd yeah, we generally have Guides add a bonus to a purview - the usual base model is +X successes to uses of three or so purviews that make sense for the Guide to have access to, where X depends on how many dots the Guide is. For example, Jioni's Guide is a ghede ghost spirit, so he grants her bonuses to Cheval, Psychopomp and Death; Faruza's Guide is a yakshini who guards graveyards and cremation fields, so she grants her bonuses to Death, Guardian and Health; Terminus' Guide is Pan, so he gets bonuses to Animal and Chaos, and so forth.
I can definitely see the Abilities being a valid other option, too - especially if it's a Guide that seems to make more sense for Abilities or who has only one or two Purviews they might add to.
I expanded it beyond what Iry had to include purviews as well. Currently in MIST, The Morrigan provides Claire with +5 autos to War activations which has come in handy. Of course, as she's a triple goddess, I allow Claire to swap the bonus to either abilities or another purview that the Morrigan's favored in if she chooses to bring along the Maiden or the Matron instead of the Crone.
DeleteBeyond the mechanics, the guides will do minor things for free and plot-related stuff willingly per their dots. After that, the player could ask, but there'd be some fun sacrifice if they want more free rides so to speak.
Sverir has....10A to 6 purviews and 15 dice to 6 abilities I think? He cant contact his guide though, he has to march back to vanaheim for info. And theres a chance he could lose part of his guide if he doesnt protect them in ragnarok.
DeleteCrap! Sorry if this is a double-post, my first attempt at a reply got eaten.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember if it was BlaineTog or Iry that had a visceral reaction on the forums against Fast Learner/Star Pupil being unbalancing free XP, so they probably won't like this idea, HOWEVER...
What if, rather than functioning as yet another die adder, Guides provide an effect like Teaching Prodigy and/or Favored Abilities? For instance, your Scion of Poseidon's 1-dot swim coach gives him 1/2 xp off of Athletics and Fortitude. The 3-dot animated statue of a Tibetan geshi that serves your Scion of Guanyin grants her 1/2 xp off of Empathy, Integrity, Presence, and Occult, as well as -1 xp off of each purchase of Health.
I like it. Might need to boil that in somewhere.
DeleteIry and blaintog, two of my least favorite people from the WW forums.
Last game my players asked me to publish a "blaintog is the worst" song.
That was Blainetog. He has the same reaction every time I try to shake up the mechanics in MIST. I think he grows hives.
DeleteBut to the original post, I like that thought as well. It wouldn't really work in my games though because we've swapped to using just flat BP to advance (and while it's working, I'm not sure I like it, really).
Oh, yeah? Are you just awarding BP per game, or only advancing at Legend jumps?
DeleteI currently award 2BP per game and they have the option of earning a third point via the journals. But even I think that's too much, and it's also hard to judge if it'll really mess things up because we had so much XP bloat in Hero.
DeleteI'm considering for the Scion High game I'm running, to just do 2BP period per session and see how that goes.
I'm not sure if I like BP over XP, but so far it's... working all right.
Oh, me, I have a visceral reaction of blinding hatred to those knacks! I have that!
DeleteI am not BlaineTog.
I do oppose unequal XP rates between PCs. It just bugs me that one guy's XP goes further than the next guy's because he invested in Epic Intelligence and the other guy invested in Epic Perception.
BP?
ReplyDeleteBonus Points.
DeleteO, so they buy stuff like at character creation? Very interesting. Why the switch? Does each boon just cost the 4-5 BP no matter what level? Do in clan abilities just cost the one BP per level?
DeleteYep! I think we switched because it was coming down to a difference of 100xp between folks who bought boons before attributes, or the number of favored abilities against unfavored and it was making some folk disheartened.
DeleteEverything is a flat 4-5 BP per level and so far it's worked out because Attributes are still 8-9BP altogether and this way allows some double-up on boons because there's really neat stuff at certain levels.
In-clan. Hehe, that's an old saying :D But yeah, favored abilities still cost 1BP, and we dropped knacks to 2BP.
Hrm...thats...seems confusing. I guess not confusing, but I just cant wrap my head around all the implications/ramifications of it. Its very simple at its core, but changes many things about rewards stat wise in the game. Ill have to think more on it.
DeleteLike I said, I'm not actually sure if I prefer it to experience points but it's something that I'm willing to playtest through one entire game and see how it turns out. So far, it's been all right. In Iry's game it works out to about one attribute every three week or a boon every two.
DeleteIn MIST, we haven't hit the Legend 6 bump so it'll be interesting to see what they do with their saved BP.
Going in line with terriblyuncreative,
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could work it the way Trainers work in Orpheus. Each guide could have a set of Skills/Attributes/Purviews (one per dot of guide?) that lowers the XP cost for the Scion. Of course, it means you actually have to spend time training with the guide. The ST would choose the most appropriate for the Guide the Scion chose. The teacher Knacks somewhat supports this already. I would give an edge on purviews tough, as they need love especially on higher levels.