Few Questions from a returning player.

[Baroness Nerak]

Hey, I ran a lot of Scion back in the day, like two seven year campaigns and a game that ran about two years. While I burnt out on it I am returning to it now and have a few questions.

1) It seems like over the course of a very long game, several years real time, the Players could quickly run into a ceiling of stuff to buy, since Boons, Callings and Legend are not purchased with XP (which is fine, system works as is). How are people with long campaigns managing?

2) Related to 1, are you restricting to one Specialty? Also, the Specialties seem strange. Are people doing it out of the book or using house rules

3) With the Attitude system, how are folks handling Foe Yay? I am all about some romantic tension all over the place, and while the Attitude system seems pretty cool, I am not sure how to apply it to "Enemies with intense attraction." If I am going to have a Princess Prom style scene it seems like the system is straightforward enough to do this.

4) How are folks handling the Metamorphosis Innate? It seems like straight up shapechanging if requiring boons or marvels for game effects beyond appearance. Cool as it may be for people to be T-1000ing into people, I am not sure the intent. Due to circumstances mostly outside my control my group leaned very heavily into Theoi so I expect it to come up.

5) The Blinded stunt works for the level of stunt it is, but is this the full rules for being unable to see. It seems like it makes seeing in the dark not a big deal.

6) Can other people coming from 1e to 2e give me anything else that they encountered which is good to know? I am seriously not looking for any conflict between editions here, just stuff good to know.

7) If I can wheedle my players into putting up journals is there interest in reading them here in a dedicated thread?

I ran...a lot...of 1e but have only run one session of 2e so a lot I am figuring out. I have a mix of veterans and new players to scion in my group. Thanks.

[wyrdhamster]

Hi Baroness Nerak ! Glad to see you returning on forum!👋

Myself, I'm new Scion 2E Storyguide only, having just 1 year of running Sc 2E under my belt, from Origin till Legend 1 Hero ( for now, we coming slowly to L2 ). I will answer the best as I can on your questions.

1. Did not got to the 'celling' - but there ARE costs to buy Knacks and Specialities. ( Hero p. 185 ) Knacks works as 'lower level powers' ( like Merits in CoD, much lower than Boons ) - so you can buy them. I think you could also make up yourself cost for Boons - they are 'only' memorized powers, like Rotes in Mage.

2. Specialities are simple - they just gives you extra +1 Enhancement on the appropriate roll. So treat it as 'free extra Success, if roll went good' - it's simple as that. Also, by RAW, you CAN buy next Specialities.

3. Did not play with Aptitudes, yet. But gladly will read what other have to say on matter.

4. Got 2 of 5 players that are Theoi. They already used Metamorphosis - one of them 'cursed' enemy to change in to rabbit, so he 'would on outside be rabbit he is in heart'. Very cool scene come from this, I must add.

5 & 6 - Waiting for others inputs.

7. I would LOVE to read your journals topics! ❤️ They were great, previous ones!

[Baroness Nerak]

Hi Baroness Nerak ! Glad to see you returning on forum!👋

Myself, I'm new Scion 2E Storyguide only, having just 1 year of running Sc 2E under my belt, from Origin till Legend 1 Hero ( for now, we coming slowly to L2 ). I will answer the best as I can on your questions.

Excellent

1. Did not got to the 'celling' - but there ARE costs to buy Knacks and Specialities. ( Hero p. 185 ) Knacks works as 'lower level powers' ( like Merits in CoD, much lower than Boons ) - so you can buy them. I think you could also make cost for Boons - they are 'only' memorized powers, like Rotes in Mage.

Yeah that is a place to spend XP. How much do you give on average in a session?

2. Specialities are simple - they just gives you extra +1 Enhancement on the appropriate roll. So treat it as 'free extra Success, if roll went good' - it's simple as that. Also, by RAW, you CAN buy next Specialities.

Noted

7. I would LOVE to read your journals topics! ❤️ They were great, previous ones!

Thank you. I will pass that along to those players. The hard part is always getting journals from players, but good to hear there is interest.

[wyrdhamster]

Yeah that is a place to spend XP. How much do you give on average in a session?

There is table on XP gain in Origin on p. 113 and Hero on p. 185 - I use this, only add one extra possible reward for doing Band Deed step = 1 XP. Generally, characters get 3 to 5 XP per session, but up to 7-8 XP if it's action heavy ( so large amounts of Momentum are spend ) or larger story sum up.

[Mateus Luz]

1) I have the same feeling. You end up with “all your dots marked” just because all the rest is locked to Legend, and Legend don’t need XP. Yes, you can buy lots of knacks, but can use only a few per game session.

2) RAW Specialities don’t work like that! RAW, In Scion Speciality is something like if you fail in a roll in your speciality area you gain an extra Momentum (2, or 3 if botch). It is a bit weird, I know, but it is ok, just a lot less important than an extra success.

3) Attitude and Atmosphere are 2 aspects that change the social rolls, Attitude is a person to person and atmosphere is “general feeling”. Let’s say you have a antagonist it’s that is secretly in love with the PC and they are in a intrigue moment, the antagonist would pretend to have a bad attitude towards the PC (just like a little boy that pulls the hair of the girls he likes) until something happen and the attitude becomes positive (real risk to the person the antagonist loves, for example, or something less extreme, like the PC succeeding in a social test). There is no rules for this kind of situation, but you can improvise easily (one good thing in Storypath).

4) I have more than once read some complain about Metamorphosis, and I must say, I would prefere Arete as Theoi purview. The innate power is not bad, you have facility to pretend to be someone else, very classic, people pretend to be others all the time in myths, but changing people into animals is not a exclusivity of Theoi nor it’s a common power among them, at least in Hero level, the gods themselves do a lot all the time.

5) Not seeing at all have a lot of impacts, but it changes from person to person. I worked with a lot of blind and low vision people while working in Dialogue in the Dark, and I must say, when in the dark, they are much more capable than us just because they practice it everyday all day. In practice, it would be a Condition impact in on any action you must use your vision to complete, like aiming, reading a book, recognizing a person at distance, possibly failing/not being able to do that action, other than that it may add some complications in some situations or increase some difficulties, for example some people think it’s weird to talk to someone that is not actively looking to you (prejudice to be fair) or when walking among many objects, you may add a complication related to not seeing them, you may cause more noise because you need to touch them to detect.

6) Injuries work different (main thing), Scale is absolutely better then rolling tens of dice, you have more options than what is written in your sheet (Marvels are awesome) and spend your momentum.

[literatzi]

1) As people mentioned this can be a problem. I will say I've been running a weekly game for a bit over a year now and we haven't run into that issue yet, and they're just over Legend 2 right now. Something we struggled with early on were players picking good short-term Deeds. Often they'd pick something that wasn't going to come up anytime soon but keep it and just not achieve a Deed in a session. Recently we started going over everyones Deeds at the start of each session and the players tweaking or discussing how they'd work together to make sure everyone achieved at least one Short-Term Deed.

2) Specialities are hard, so we haven't hit many situations where more than one might apply. Remember that Specialities offer enhancement to rolls using a Skill other than the one the speciality is associated with, which is neat but not how any other system handles the concept. A year in my players and I are just now starting to get good at picking good specialities that actually come up. With that in mind, I haven't limited how many they could buy for a single skill, or how many could apply to a single roll (well, beyond the usual cap at 3e from a single source).

3) For your smoldering tension between two foes scenario, I'd consider tweaking how you define the Attitude. Attitude really just boils down to a situational Enhancement on some rolls. So the Attitude could easily be defined as, "Sexual Tension between two Foes, 3e" and it applies whenever you think it makes sense. Storypath has really good bones, so little tweaks like that are easy to accommodate without shattering anything.

4) I've treated it as they're not full on morphing into someone, but they just need the pretense of a disguise for it magically be super effective. A Theoi scion just needs to drape a shawl over their head and hunch their back and suddenly they're an old woman! The Metamorphosis innate still requires they take steps to disguise themselves, it just makes it very very easy for them to do so. The Trickster Knack In Sheep's Clothing is probably more of the full magical illusion since it doesn't even require a roll or pretense of a disguise.

While I love Metamorphosis and think it's a great representation of the Theoi who are always disguising themselves or turning themselves and others into things, you might consider looking at a homebrew version of the Arete Purview for your table. You may have characters who are either uninterested in disguise, or use other methods to get around. The Theoi character at my table uses the Liminal Knack Beyond Memory to go about unnoticed, or the Moon Purview Boon Phase Cloak to just become invisible. Being good at disguise is really cool, but lots of characters will either have other ways to achieve the same goals or not need to go about in disguise, in which case Arete might be a better fit since "excellence" is more broadly applicable.

5) I think other people covered this well. I aways viewed the Blinded stunt as the equivalent of throwing sand into someones eyes or a cut across the brows that causes blood to get into their eye for a moment. As others stated, a Condition a better reflection of a more serious blinding, and have it either increase the Difficulty of actions where sight matters, or impose a Complication depending on how you want to run it.

6) I never played 1e!

7) That would be really neat!

[Baroness Nerak]

1) I have the same feeling. You end up with “all your dots marked” just because all the rest is locked to Legend, and Legend don’t need XP. Yes, you can buy lots of knacks, but can use only a few per game session.

Right. We are considering having swapping happen more freely. We will see how it works out. Thanks

2) RAW Specialities don’t work like that! RAW, In Scion Speciality is something like if you fail in a roll in your speciality area you gain an extra Momentum (2, or 3 if botch). It is a bit weird, I know, but it is ok, just a lot less important than an extra success.

I am aware, just seeing how folks are handling it.

3) Attitude and Atmosphere are 2 aspects that change the social rolls, Attitude is a person to person and atmosphere is “general feeling”. Let’s say you have a antagonist it’s that is secretly in love with the PC and they are in a intrigue moment, the antagonist would pretend to have a bad attitude towards the PC (just like a little boy that pulls the hair of the girls he likes) until something happen and the attitude becomes positive (real risk to the person the antagonist loves, for example, or something less extreme, like the PC succeeding in a social test). There is no rules for this kind of situation, but you can improvise easily (one good thing in Storypath).

Oh yes indeed. I may just have to flex this a bit when it comes up, and it will.

4) I have more than once read some complain about Metamorphosis, and I must say, I would prefere Arete as Theoi purview. The innate power is not bad, you have facility to pretend to be someone else, very classic, people pretend to be others all the time in myths, but changing people into animals is not a exclusivity of Theoi nor it’s a common power among them, at least in Hero level, the gods themselves do a lot all the time.

This is true. I have had no complaints thus far, though it does really work better for some concepts than others compared to Arete, but Arete in the old game was very universal.

5) Not seeing at all have a lot of impacts, but it changes from person to person. I worked with a lot of blind and low vision people while working in Dialogue in the Dark, and I must say, when in the dark, they are much more capable than us just because they practice it everyday all day. In practice, it would be a Condition impact in on any action you must use your vision to complete, like aiming, reading a book, recognizing a person at distance, possibly failing/not being able to do that action, other than that it may add some complications in some situations or increase some difficulties, for example some people think it’s weird to talk to someone that is not actively looking to you (prejudice to be fair) or when walking among many objects, you may add a complication related to not seeing them, you may cause more noise because you need to touch them to detect.

Well I know when one is used to low version, one can cope with it better. A condition does sound like a good plan. Thank you!

6) Injuries work different (main thing), Scale is absolutely better then rolling tens of dice, you have more options than what is written in your sheet (Marvels are awesome) and spend your momentum.

Cool, yeah, I look forward to seeing that in action!

[Baroness Nerak]

1) As people mentioned this can be a problem. I will say I've been running a weekly game for a bit over a year now and we haven't run into that issue yet, and they're just over Legend 2 right now. Something we struggled with early on were players picking good short-term Deeds. Often they'd pick something that wasn't going to come up anytime soon but keep it and just not achieve a Deed in a session. Recently we started going over everyones Deeds at the start of each session and the players tweaking or discussing how they'd work together to make sure everyone achieved at least one Short-Term Deed.

Right. My group really dislikes uneven XP, so we are using Deeds for Momentum. Glad you have not had an issue yet but yeah I am keeping an eye on it.

2) Specialities are hard, so we haven't hit many situations where more than one might apply. Remember that Specialities offer enhancement to rolls using a Skill other than the one the speciality is associated with, which is neat but not how any other system handles the concept. A year in my players and I are just now starting to get good at picking good specialities that actually come up. With that in mind, I haven't limited how many they could buy for a single skill, or how many could apply to a single roll (well, beyond the usual cap at 3e from a single source).

Apologies I was unclear. I meant buying more than one specialty for a Skill, to have different areas of expertise, not to stack. Sorry my bad.

3) For your smoldering tension between two foes scenario, I'd consider tweaking how you define the Attitude. Attitude really just boils down to a situational Enhancement on some rolls. So the Attitude could easily be defined as, "Sexual Tension between two Foes, 3e" and it applies whenever you think it makes sense. Storypath has really good bones, so little tweaks like that are easy to accommodate without shattering anything.

Right, cool, thanks!

4) I've treated it as they're not full on morphing into someone, but they just need the pretense of a disguise for it magically be super effective. A Theoi scion just needs to drape a shawl over their head and hunch their back and suddenly they're an old woman! The Metamorphosis innate still requires they take steps to disguise themselves, it just makes it very very easy for them to do so. The Trickster Knack In Sheep's Clothing is probably more of the full magical illusion since it doesn't even require a roll or pretense of a disguise.

While I love Metamorphosis and think it's a great representation of the Theoi who are always disguising themselves or turning themselves and others into things, you might consider looking at a homebrew version of the Arete Purview for your table. You may have characters who are either uninterested in disguise, or use other methods to get around. The Theoi character at my table uses the Liminal Knack Beyond Memory to go about unnoticed, or the Moon Purview Boon Phase Cloak to just become invisible. Being good at disguise is really cool, but lots of characters will either have other ways to achieve the same goals or not need to go about in disguise, in which case Arete might be a better fit since "excellence" is more broadly applicable.[/QUOTE]

Right. I will give it a look thanks!

5) I think other people covered this well. I aways viewed the Blinded stunt as the equivalent of throwing sand into someones eyes or a cut across the brows that causes blood to get into their eye for a moment. As others stated, a Condition a better reflection of a more serious blinding, and have it either increase the Difficulty of actions where sight matters, or impose a Complication depending on how you want to run it.

Makes sense, thank you.

[Heavy Arms]

On how to handle #3: I would use the Bonds system more frequently than the Attitude system (though an Attitude should be set for each character). Bonds are easier to apply outside of Intrigue scenes, and allow a more fluid shifting of the situation as the characters spend Bond successes rather than needing to change Attitudes.

[Baroness Nerak]

I have a few more questions
8) Those of you who use Bonds, how many do your PCs typically have, and are Bonds between PCs common?

9) So, my understanding is the Defense for Antagonists in the book is supposed to be set, not rolled. Is this correct? How do you separate armor for the Piercing Quality or The Way of All Flesh, or if using Scale to determine soft armor for resisting multiple wounds? That seems to take a good system and make it work less well for the sake of simplicity, but I have not played a large number of combats so I could be mistaken.

10) Books seem to shift somewhat the definition of God and Titan between books. I like the "Titans as elder beings driven by one of their previews" version over "Enemies of the Gods" version, because that makes for more complicated narratives. How do folks usually do with that for their games?

[Mateus Luz]

8) My group used to have a few scenes every session to reinforce bonds. All bonds that matter in game are the bonds between PCs, basically, because that’s mostly about how the PCs work together.

9) Correct. As a GM I would suggest to break every relevant NPC defense in Defense and Armor, let’s say it’s 3, you break 1 defense and 2 armor for a though guy, or 2 defense 1 armor for a fast guy, or what ever as long as defense is at least 1. It largely doesn’t matter for most targets (you can do in the fly if you need for some once you get used to it). Scale attack against an antagonist, consider it causes +1 injury per scale above +1 if critical, so a scale 2 x scale 0 will cause 3 + critical injuries with a single hit.

10) Usually, the difference is largely political, without that big difference Titans have from gods in 1e. Treat Titans as Gods and you are safe, while they may have some different callings. Not really a big deal because they are just too powerful for a Hero to face directly.

[Baroness Nerak]

9) Correct. As a GM I would suggest to break every relevant NPC defense in Defense and Armor, let’s say it’s 3, you break 1 defense and 2 armor for a though guy, or 2 defense 1 armor for a fast guy, or what ever as long as defense is at least 1. It largely doesn’t matter for most targets (you can do in the fly if you need for some once you get used to it). Scale attack against an antagonist, consider it causes +1 injury per scale above +1 if critical, so a scale 2 x scale 0 will cause 3 + critical injuries with a single hit.

Ah I had it in my head soft armor was applied against each level if any. Clearly I was mistaken. Thanks.

10) Usually, the difference is largely political, without that big difference Titans have from gods in 1e. Treat Titans as Gods and you are safe, while they may have some different callings. Not really a big deal because they are just too powerful for a Hero to face directly.

That's mostly what I am doing. My players wanted social first so I am trying to build complex political situations. My inclination is still to have Titans as beings who were never Scions, and Gods as beings that were, but that is a me thing.

Thanks for the feedback it is appreciated

[Mateus Luz]

Ah I had it in my head soft armor was applied against each level if any. Clearly I was mistaken. Thanks.

On 9 you are correct to apply soft armor for every scale, and an antagonist with scale attack PCs would apply that way, but if you have scale above a target you are probably facing it without any difficulties, so it’s a matter of making it easier and worth the legend you spend to gain scale, I mean, Legend is expensive in game, so it must worth some overwhelming deeds. The only exception is if you are attacking a target that is particularly powerful or meaningful, so you may ask for a few more successes to apply scale.

[Baroness Nerak]

Hopefully last ones, my appreciation for the answers so far.

11) Path Invocations: Is the once per session per Path, or for Paths in general?

12) This is mostly a question for how people GM. So, since Players can pay for Birthrights with XP, how do you handle finding Relics, vs. Crafting Relics vs. Gifting Relics? Do Players need to pay for Relics from any Source in your game? Can they pay XP and have their Relics upgraded or find new ones? How do you do that?

13) With Scent the Divine, does it only apply to Gods and Scions? Do you have it apply to Titans? Primordials? What about critters tied to a Pantheon, such as Nymphs or Gorgons or Dwarfs? How about Undead? If you have it affect more than just Gods and Scions, do you have it so people can tell a difference, or does a Raksashi smell like an Indra Scion?

Thanks, as always, for insights here and earlier questions.

[Mateus Luz]

11) 1 per path.

12) As a general rule in my games, anything that you get without spending XP is temporary, so you may build your relic, but you must spend XP on it (maybe the next XP must be used only for paying for it).

13) As I see, it applies to all things myth related, so a voodoo zombi will smell different from the dead in the asphodel fields, for people with this knack, not a fresh smell, still largely rotten, but with some of the pantheon scent in the back.