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!
Do you guys plan to do anything in the rework to address how the system favors Epics heavily over Boons? Both of them cost around the same (depending on associateds), but when you buy an Epic dot you get:
ReplyDelete-A free power whose effectiveness is based on the same attribute you are buying.
-Exponentially larger pool of automatic successes
-They determine how good you are at many things (including Boons)
Compared to when getting a new Boon, where you get:
-A new power, very specific in its use (and which can be useless if you don't have a high Epic Attribute of whatever its roll is).
Because of this, in most of my games players quickly learn to prioritize Epics, because it's the smart thing to do.
We have blogged at length about how much we love that many boons require epics, so I won't go into that again right now (except to say that it's because we want even those who are very good at their purviews to have strengths and weaknesses among those powers).
DeleteHowever! Here is what I would tell your players:
It is very easy to get Epics instead of boons, especially at low levels. They make you succeed at rolls, which is great. Especially in combat situations, they can make you excellent even if you have no other powers. And there's nothing wrong with doing that if you want to.
However, you will eventually hit a wall: you won't be able to compete in a divine world if you have no divine powers. You will hit a point where the fact that you can do the best available punches won't matter, because what's needed now is magic and you don't have those skills. Once you leave Hero level behind, things become more and more magical and divorced from simple "fight the monster, save the humans" ideas; you need powers to travel to other worlds, powers to communicate with and interact with other legendary beings, powers to shape elements and find solutions where mere Attributes cannot and never could. And for all those things, you need boons. You need Health to survive the beatings you're always being dished, Psychopomp to travel the legendary landscape, Animal or Death or Guardian or Justice to affect people and creatures in a way that matters even when you're not in the room, Magic and Prophecy and Mystery to try to learn more about and fight or accept your place in your own destiny.
This is the very reason that so many of our boons use mechanics that depend on the total number of boons you have in a purview; they force you to say that if you want to be good at a purview, which you inevitably do, you have to invest in it, not just buy a single power and call it a day. If you want to have Water boons that do awesome stuff, you need to have more than one skill that pertains to Water. That system is far from designed to punish players for buying boons instead of epics; it's to make it clear to them that they need both if they want to be continuingly useful, epic and interesting.
Because yeah, you can buy only Epics, especially early, and you will succeed at rolls. But there will be times - many, many, many times - when you can't do anything, because just being very smart or very fast or very strong or very beautiful won't do the trick. By buying only epics, you're choosing not to be part of the world of the godly, and that means you're going to be very poor at being a god.
So we let our players buy whatever they want. And they always realize that they need boons, and they buy boons, because boons are way too important to ignore, and just having a good pool of successes means exactly nothing if you're faced with a situation where you can't just make a roll to succeed. If, as the ST, you're feeling like your players aren't branching out, provide them with opportunities to see how boons would have made situations way easier or even that not having them is impossible; put them in a story where all the answers lie with the dead and therefore Death is key, or it's miserable to try to escape the prison they're in without Psychopomp, or where they could have incredible allies among the local intelligent animals if only they could actually talk to them meaningfully. If you keep running stories where they can just easily win by punching something hard enough, they'll keep buying just the punching-stuff stats.
Incidentally, we actually require a certain investment in purviews/boons before we let Scions increase in Legend, which we don't allow them to buy on their own. So a Scion who has tons of Epics but never buys any boons in our games would not go up in Legend much, because he'd be intentionally choosing to be a superhero rather than a divine hero, and we wouldn't reward it until he learned to branch out. An exact scale for that isn't on the site yet, though, so I don't blame you for not seeing it. You can check out our requirements for godhood here, though.
DeleteI agree with you 100%, I'm not a big fan of streamlined systems that use the same purview to roll for everything.
DeleteWhat I'm suggesting, however (and as a personal House Rule this is something I'm already doing to see if it helps) is to either lower the xp costs of Boons or increase the costs of Epics.
I think the two need to coexist as they are, but the two aren't equal in terms of cost/benefit in any way (especially when one depends very heavily on the other, while the other can exist on its own).
Actually, Epics already cost more than boons. You have to buy the regular dots before you can buy Epic dots, which effectively makes them way, way more expensive. Again, it's a little easier at Hero since you can start with five dots in a regular Attribute and stave that off for a while, but as soon as you run out of regular dots, Epics become expensive as hell.
DeleteTo better illustrate: a level six boon (associated) has a cumulative cost of 84 XP - the cost of the boon plus the five boons at previous levels you had to buy to get access to it. A level six Epic Attribute (associated) has a cumulative cost of 180 XP - the cost of the Epic, all the Epics before it, and all the regular dots before it (not counting the level 1 and 2 regular dots, which all characters get for free). That's a massive XP gulf, and it only gets wider as you go up in Legend. At the extreme end, a level 10 boon has a cumulative cost of 288 XP, while a level 10 Epic has a cumulative cost of 588 XP.
So there is already a massive favoring of boons over Epics, cost-wise, once you get past Hero-level (or even at Hero-level, if you didn't start with that Attribute maxed at 5).
Different Anon. Definitely still encouraging you guys to switch over to a system where purviews are divorced from epics. Me and my friends are incredibly tired of being told "GET THE FUCK OUT" by the Scion system whenever we want to play a low-epic high-purview spellcaster character.
DeleteThank you for your "different anon" ness. Its helpful.
DeleteNot looking at a full divorce. But if you look at our magic and prophecy rewrites so far it should give you a hint at what you'll be looking at for the others.
I actually had noticed that, while there were still epics present in Magic/Prophecy, it seemed like there were quite a lot less than the old versions.
DeleteIf that was intentional, thank you so much!
I also note you've changed the text colour on magic and prophesy so it is no longer colour coded to the books.
DeleteLooks pretty :)
I have never had too large a problem with the Purview depends on Attribute system, but I admit the focus on making Purviews more dependant on themselves is something I like very much.
DeleteOur goal is to represent both types of mechanics where most appropriate - sometimes Epics, to represent that this purview has skills outside of just the magical connection to it that allow gods of the purview to have varying levels of specialty and effectiveness within it, and sometimes boon numbers or levels that hinge a power on a Scion's investment in their area of expertise.
Delete(First commenter here) I actually see your point and it's true that Epic Attributes end up tanking a lot more XP than Purviews at a certain point.
DeleteYou also make a good argument about moving on to Godhood with enough powers.
I admit, I've never been in a game past Legend 6, but like you mentioned, before getting there there's still a point in the game where the difference is really big... it can't just be disregarded because it gets sort of fixed later on...
Like the RAW, where the game looked pretty cool before Legend 3 but then became a total mess after that, I believe there should be balance at all points of the game. Like I mentioned before, so far I've implemented a lower xp cost for Purviews (similar to that of the books where you pay for the level you have instead of the one you're buying) and increased the Fatebond bonuses/penalties to them a notch... I'll try and see if it becomes a mess later on.
With that said, I hadn't finished reading your rework of Magic and Prophecy (thanks for pointing it out), it looks like the Epic involvement is much lower than it was, which is a step in the right direction!
Thanks for the responses!
Another issue with attaching purviews to epics is that you can always justify fluff for multiple attributes. Even if you convince yourself that only one attribute fits the current fluff, you can just change the fluff to make it fit another attribute.
DeleteI don't get it...the whole Strength adds to melee damage, Dexterity adds to ranged damage Intelligence adds to Magic damage type of conceit has been around for RPGs for aeons. Scion, and GBN, are hardly the first to do it. A lot of them don't make sense (Dexterity for ranged damage, seriously, how do game companies THINK bows work) or could be fluffed to something else, but the needs of the game world require a consistent base system.
DeleteHowever, there is something I've been considering...I cannot remember if I saw this on one of your character sheets, or if it was in the reliquary, but isn't there a Relic that allowed you to change the required Attribute for a Boon into something else? If that is the case, and I could almost swear it was, then someone choosing to use Water but with shit Dexterity could surely invest in a Relic that lets him change those rolls to Charisma (or whatever), couldn't they?
And if you do not have a Relic to that effect, would you consider allowing it to be a Relic power? Relics can do all sorts of crazy things, this hardly seems a strange, or even very broken, power for one to have.
We have allowed relics along those lines, although they're very limited - usually they only affect one or two things. For example, Sangria has a relic that allows her to roll Stamina instead of Intelligence for the Antidote boon provided she deals some damage to herself (that is, she actually uses her own blood to fight off the poison). We would be unlikely to ever allow a relic that let you roll Stamina for all Health boons, though - that would be super overpowered.
DeleteThat sounds reasonable...I remember once considering a Scion of Sarasvati who had a Relic Violin that let him use Charisma for Water Mastery, but only so long as he was actually playing for the entire duration of the Boon. I suppose something like that would be all right? (In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Sarasvati's own Veena had similar properties).
DeleteYep, sounds like a neat relic to me. :) We do make substitutions like that kind of pricey, but the more restricted the use (i.e., must be playing for whole duration of boon), the less expensive the relic, generally.
DeleteI'm not surprised it hasn't come up in your games, but both Incorporation of Me and Mantle of Me are more powerful, if the associated purview has more boons.
ReplyDeleteOoh, that is a great point, thank you. We'll take a look at that.
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