Question: How feasible is the use of Faunaphagia at Hero level when you have things like Leopard, Lion or Orca as your choosen Animal? Does conserved meat work, like leopard, lion, orca jerky?
One of the challenges of the Animal purview is that some of its boons are easier to use when you choose a commonly available animal, and some Scions who choose very exotic totems will have a harder time finding critters to use them on. This isn't just a problem for Faunaphagia, but also for things like Animal Communication, Animal Command, Call of the Wild and Ride Animal; if there aren't any gila monsters around and that's your chosen beastie, well, you're just out of luck and will have to find some.
Feasibility of the boon really depends on where your Scion is and what's happening, so it'll vary over the course of your adventures. Scions who pick up Animal (Orca) are going to have difficulty using some of that purview's powers any time they're inland and not at Sea World, and even if they're asea, trying to catch and eat a killer whale is probably going to prove to be something of a challenge. Unless your Scion happens to be a whaler or the sort of wealthy and unscrupulous dude who can pay poachers to import wildly illegal meat from the endangered predators on your list, he probably isn't going to be able to get much out of his Faunaphagia at Hero level.
Most Scions in our games who choose animals that are difficult to sink their teeth into pick up Animal Command as Heroes instead of bothering with Faunaphagia, which they can go back and grab after they're more mobile or able to make their own animals as Demigods. Scions who choose more commonly available animals, like Cattle or Dog or Tuna, are more likely to get mileage out of Faunaphagia at early Legend ratings.
But, a happy answer to the second half of your question: yes, you can use Faunaphagia with preserved meats, as long as they are legitimately made of the animal in question! Salted and smoked leopard-meat is just as legit for Faunaphagia as the raw steaming guts of a freshly-killed beast, so if you think it's possible you won't have access to your chosen animal for a while, you can always take some pickled monkeybrains or vacuum-dried sloth with you wherever you go, or even just put fresh meat in a plastic bag and drop some Delay Rot on it. The normal problems with carrying supplies apply here - they're easy to lose, may make stealthing more difficult and can be instantly destroyed by things like fire or hails of bullets - but at least you'll be no worse off than if you hadn't brought any with you.
Having a rare animal totem is more challenging than having one that hangs out on every streetcorner, but as always, make sure that players know that and that you don't push them one way or the other. Some will take Animal (Rat) so they can know they'll never be without tiny friends or have to worry about lacking things to use their boons on, and some will take Animal (Electric Eel) and damn the consequences, waiting until later so their awesome concept can truly (and literally!) shine. Either's fine, and it's all about what the Scion in question wants to do.
Showing posts with label Faunaphagia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faunaphagia. Show all posts
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Animalia
Question: So I have a few questions about some Animal boons. How effective is Faunaphagia when used with insects? What's the "units per success rate" for Create Nemean Animal? Finally, when using Hybrid Chimera, do you need Animal boons for both of the animals you're combining?
And we have a few answers about some Animal boons!
If a Scion is intrepid enough to put bees in his mouth, Faunaphagia works just fine for insects. You'll get bonuses from eating a mayfly just as you would from eating a bite of flesh from a crocodile; the only difference is in what abilities you get bonuses to, since they'll depend on what the bug in question has (just like every other use of Faunaphagia). Of course, it's a little easier for a Scion with a convenient totem like Animal (Fly) to try to grab and eat one, but then again, it's also easier for a Scion with Animal (Cow) to pull off Faunaphagia than it is for Scions with less traditionally edible totems. One of the perks of choosing a very commonly available animal to be associated with.
There is no per success rate for Create Nemean Animal; you're only creating one creature with that boon. While normal Create Animal creates animals with normal stats and therefore needs a lot of fruitflies to equal one elephant, Nemean creatures don't have that problem. A Nemean treefrog is going to be just as badass and magical as a Nemean lion (though of course in more frog-like ways), and creating one is a big feat all on its own. Nemean beasts are capable of effortless destruction, can perform monumental labor and are very difficult to kill; creating just one is a big deal, and creating a bucket of them at once would be overpowered. If you need a second Nemean ostrich, you can simply pay the cost to use the boon a second time.
Good news about Hybrid Chimera, though - you only need to have the boon for one of the two animals you're using, not both. As long as you have Hybrid Chimera for Animal (Porcupine), you can cross porcupines with any other animal you wish, regardless of whether or not you have animal boons for those other beasties.
And we have a few answers about some Animal boons!
If a Scion is intrepid enough to put bees in his mouth, Faunaphagia works just fine for insects. You'll get bonuses from eating a mayfly just as you would from eating a bite of flesh from a crocodile; the only difference is in what abilities you get bonuses to, since they'll depend on what the bug in question has (just like every other use of Faunaphagia). Of course, it's a little easier for a Scion with a convenient totem like Animal (Fly) to try to grab and eat one, but then again, it's also easier for a Scion with Animal (Cow) to pull off Faunaphagia than it is for Scions with less traditionally edible totems. One of the perks of choosing a very commonly available animal to be associated with.
There is no per success rate for Create Nemean Animal; you're only creating one creature with that boon. While normal Create Animal creates animals with normal stats and therefore needs a lot of fruitflies to equal one elephant, Nemean creatures don't have that problem. A Nemean treefrog is going to be just as badass and magical as a Nemean lion (though of course in more frog-like ways), and creating one is a big feat all on its own. Nemean beasts are capable of effortless destruction, can perform monumental labor and are very difficult to kill; creating just one is a big deal, and creating a bucket of them at once would be overpowered. If you need a second Nemean ostrich, you can simply pay the cost to use the boon a second time.
Good news about Hybrid Chimera, though - you only need to have the boon for one of the two animals you're using, not both. As long as you have Hybrid Chimera for Animal (Porcupine), you can cross porcupines with any other animal you wish, regardless of whether or not you have animal boons for those other beasties.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
How Much Elephant Can One Stomach Hold?
Question: Why is Faunaphagia so powerful? I know Abilities get rolled less than Attributes (9 vs 24), but Faunaphagia lasts an incredibly long time. Animal aspect only lasts for one action per Legend. I'm better off using Faunaphagia over and over again until all my Abilities are sky high.
Nope, actually you aren't, because Faunaphagia doesn't work that way. Faunaphagia doesn't stack with itself; once you've gained it for a single animal, you can't gain it again until it runs out. If you have Faunaphagia for multiple animals, you could use the boon on each of them to get more different abilities with buffs, but you still wouldn't be able to stack the effects if they had overlap. Faunaphagia lasts so long because it gives a comparatively small buff; you only get a few dice, but you get them for the rest of the day instead of the giant dice-dump that vanishes in a few seconds that you get with Animal Aspect. If anything, we hear more whining that Faunaphagia isn't as powerful as the players want it to be, not the other way around.
This isn't listed on the boon, and maybe that's an oversight on our parts, but it seems obvious that it's not intended to be used that way. Powers in Scion almost never stack with themselves, and I'm not sure why Faunaphagia should be different. You're not trying to pay to pop Body Armor ten times in a row in the hopes that it'll stack ten times the soak, right? Why is this different? We have, however, added a note to the boon on the website to avoid further confusion.
The same goes for Animal Aspect, but even more narrowly; you can only have one Animal Aspect active at a time, period, so you can't use it to give yourself infinite Stamina before using that infinite Stamina to give yourself infinite Strength (it is listed in that boon, because despite the fact that letting it stack is ridiculous, someone always seems to think they should be doing it). This is because that's obviously a powergaming misapplication of the power that the original rules accidentally failed to notice; there's no good reason for it in-game, and it makes a single level 3 boon more powerful than everything else sub-Avatar. That's obviously not good game design and not the intention of the writers of the boon; the only reason to try to do it is to score an obviously broken and unfair advantage, and that's not helping anybody's game out any. Again, it's a common sense ruling - powers generally don't stack with themselves in Scion, especially when doing so would make them ridiculously overpowered.
I'm not trying to go after you, question-asker, but anything that you look at in a game that seems to give you a literally infinite advantage is probably broken. It's always good practice to check with your ST to make sure they really wanted to allow it to work that way in the game before you start planning to use it, because more often than not they probably don't see it being used that way at all or just didn't notice that that power had a crack in it that needed patching.
Note: We read this question a few times and it seems like you might also be asking why you shouldn't just use Faunaphagia because it's the same benefit as Animal Aspect but for abilities. It also doesn't work that way; as the boon says, your roll is spread out across all abilities you plan to gain, and you can only gain abilities the animal has, meaning that your average dog is only going to be able to give you two or three dots of Brawl, not thirty. The boon was a little vaguely worded on this point, however, so if that's what you were asking, we apologize for the confusion. It's been corrected to read more clearly.
Nope, actually you aren't, because Faunaphagia doesn't work that way. Faunaphagia doesn't stack with itself; once you've gained it for a single animal, you can't gain it again until it runs out. If you have Faunaphagia for multiple animals, you could use the boon on each of them to get more different abilities with buffs, but you still wouldn't be able to stack the effects if they had overlap. Faunaphagia lasts so long because it gives a comparatively small buff; you only get a few dice, but you get them for the rest of the day instead of the giant dice-dump that vanishes in a few seconds that you get with Animal Aspect. If anything, we hear more whining that Faunaphagia isn't as powerful as the players want it to be, not the other way around.
This isn't listed on the boon, and maybe that's an oversight on our parts, but it seems obvious that it's not intended to be used that way. Powers in Scion almost never stack with themselves, and I'm not sure why Faunaphagia should be different. You're not trying to pay to pop Body Armor ten times in a row in the hopes that it'll stack ten times the soak, right? Why is this different? We have, however, added a note to the boon on the website to avoid further confusion.
The same goes for Animal Aspect, but even more narrowly; you can only have one Animal Aspect active at a time, period, so you can't use it to give yourself infinite Stamina before using that infinite Stamina to give yourself infinite Strength (it is listed in that boon, because despite the fact that letting it stack is ridiculous, someone always seems to think they should be doing it). This is because that's obviously a powergaming misapplication of the power that the original rules accidentally failed to notice; there's no good reason for it in-game, and it makes a single level 3 boon more powerful than everything else sub-Avatar. That's obviously not good game design and not the intention of the writers of the boon; the only reason to try to do it is to score an obviously broken and unfair advantage, and that's not helping anybody's game out any. Again, it's a common sense ruling - powers generally don't stack with themselves in Scion, especially when doing so would make them ridiculously overpowered.
I'm not trying to go after you, question-asker, but anything that you look at in a game that seems to give you a literally infinite advantage is probably broken. It's always good practice to check with your ST to make sure they really wanted to allow it to work that way in the game before you start planning to use it, because more often than not they probably don't see it being used that way at all or just didn't notice that that power had a crack in it that needed patching.
Note: We read this question a few times and it seems like you might also be asking why you shouldn't just use Faunaphagia because it's the same benefit as Animal Aspect but for abilities. It also doesn't work that way; as the boon says, your roll is spread out across all abilities you plan to gain, and you can only gain abilities the animal has, meaning that your average dog is only going to be able to give you two or three dots of Brawl, not thirty. The boon was a little vaguely worded on this point, however, so if that's what you were asking, we apologize for the confusion. It's been corrected to read more clearly.
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