Questions on Powers specifically for New Aberrant

[SpectacularTentacular]

How will the new Power-Analogues work? Will it be like in the old Aberrant, or will there be something like Psions' psychic abilities or even a Verb/Noun thing like Ars Magica? Because I'd love the old superpowers thing to be back (with better options to customize powers), but since Aberrant's roots were always more sci-fi than superhero...why not make a change?

It does appear that Mega-Attributes will be making a comeback, of sorts, and that's just hunky-dory with me! Those were my favorite part of Aberrant.

And can I just say how happy I am that you've decided to do the 3x3 thing from Chronicles of Darkness? Now the Power/Physical attribute can be speed-based or strength-based depending on the character concept! Yay, no more howling about Dex being a "god-stat!" Soooo happy to have that die! And even better, now Mental and Social have Resistance Attributes, so there will be no crying to either nerf Social Mega-Atts or letting them overpower poor little Willpower. Another big chunk of howling and crying goes up in flames before it can even begin! Woohoo!

Now, if only you folks could NOT separate or better separate Brawl and Martial Arts, that would be a thing of such joy...

[IanWatson]

How will the new Power-Analogues work?

_¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[SpectacularTentacular]

I only asked because I thought things might be far enough along that we could get some nominal spoilerage. I saw some minor spoilers over in the Scion forum and thought I'd try over here.

[IanWatson]

The main TC book and Aeon aren't even out yet; I'm not planning on dropping any substantial Aberrant spoilers until they are.

[Baaldam]

I only asked because I thought things might be far enough along that we could get some nominal spoilerage. I saw some minor spoilers over in the Scion forum and thought I'd try over here.

I think you - and everybody else, for that matter - will have to content itself with what we can glean from the Sardonyx teaser and some bit of creative homebrewing. :P

[Wolfgar]

Now, if only you folks could NOT separate or better separate Brawl and Martial Arts, that would be a thing of such joy...

Ideally we won't need to see a split between Punching People and Punching People in An Infinitely Better Way Because Asia Is Magical. M20 may have pissed in my cereal on this.

Honestly for modern era games (post 1800s) I don't think there is a need for even going so far as multiple skills for close-combat. Yeah, hitting someone with a stick and hitting someone with your fist are not nearly as disparate as analytic chemistry and agricultural meteorology, which are the same goddamn skill. Most modern concepts that would call for one skill also call for the other: Cops might have melee skill for truncheons and tasers*, but also need brawl for takedowns and holds. Gang members will have it both for knives and for good old fashioned punching, kicking, and biting. Your hard nosed biker bar brawler type will be well versed in the use of improvised weapons as well as fists. Special forces training is going to teach you to use whatever weapon is at hand, including your bare hands if necessary. Most of the world's martial arts include weapon elements - the idea that martial arts is largely performed without weapons is recent and pretty much wrong. Yes, you might see something like an Olympic fencer, but that is a very specific concept, and having to have a separate skill for that one concept in such a small skill pool is silly - I could just as easily be a chess grandmaster or a lumberjack, but we aren't going to have Chess or Jackin' It be their own full skills. Honestly I think Deadlands did it best with just one Fightin' skill and being done with it.


*The New Police Brutality RPG soon available on Drive-Thru

[Baaldam]

Ideally we won't need to see a split between Punching People and Punching People in An Infinitely Better Way Because Asia Is Magical. M20 may have pissed in my cereal on this.

True, so much stuff might be simplified and glossed over if one just adopted "Hand-to-Hand" to make room for either fast & loose brawling and more elaborate fighting techniques with higher skills - and some merits - for those who are into investing on this kind of thing.

Your point on fighting as a whole is actually pretty spot-on and also works as a fun accidental argument for D&D style attack bonus...

[Queen Anne Country]

Ideally we won't need to see a split between Punching People and Punching People in An Infinitely Better Way Because Asia Is Magical. M20 may have pissed in my cereal on this.

I get where you're coming from; krav maga is certainly more similar to Brazilian Jiu Jitus (or Filipino knife fighting or American football, for that matter) than flying helicopter is to flying an airplane. However, I appreciate, at some level, that the game tries to make dexterity less of a "god attribute" by having one mode of fighting tied to another attribute. While the system has a flaw or two, I really like how Force & Destiny allows different attributes to govern lightsaber combat. I know that most seasoned players like a little nuance to their RPGs (particularly a setting as rich as Aberrant) but combat is such an important part of the trope/system that it bears having some mechanical flavoring in the rules. I'd love if the next version had a dedicated martial art (or brawl or melee or whatever) for different super power types (i.e. super strong guys who fly are masters of Kal El Do or some fan service silliness) in a way similar to Exalted but without making it too too top heavy.

I had an ongoing conversation with an engineering professor in undergrad about renaming physical sciences to just physics as all the hard science disciplines fall under the umbrella of understanding the interplay between atoms (or their subatomic constituents), maybe that's where the WW and OP designers are coming from . Then again, they list engineering separately, so maybe not .

I have a sneaking suspicion that I should probably read the Sardonyx thread but I'll be damned if that thing isn't a little daunting in it's length (yes, that's what she said). Amped for the Trinity Continuum and grateful to have the conversation on this forum as tide-me-over.

[Wolfgar]

For differentiation, I would go with just switching up the Attributes and use of specialties, personally.

As far as importance of fighting, I'm not so sure. It's important to some games of Aberrant. I'd argue it's relatively unimportant to Aeon - stealth, investigation, and politics seem to be a bigger player there than dueling and fisticuffs. It's modestly important to Adventure, but I'd argue Adventure should really be more about [/i]peril[i] than combat per se most of the time - thrilling escapes and dangerous situations, like running out of a temple before you're crushed by a giant boulder.

[Neall]

It does appear that Mega-Attributes will be making a comeback, of sorts, and that's just hunky-dory with me! Those were my favorite part of Aberrant.

And can I just say how happy I am that you've decided to do the 3x3 thing from Chronicles of Darkness? Now the Power/Physical attribute can be speed-based or strength-based depending on the character concept! Yay, no more howling about Dex being a "god-stat!" Soooo happy to have that die! And even better, now Mental and Social have Resistance Attributes, so there will be no crying to either nerf Social Mega-Atts or letting them overpower poor little Willpower. Another big chunk of howling and crying goes up in flames before it can even begin! Woohoo!

Hell, we don't even have Willpower anymore.

I can't comment on much of Aberrant's design yet, but I can speak to this. The 3x3 thing brings up some issues (some of which were raised by the Sardonyx commenters), but it does solve a lot more.

[Neall]

On the topic of Megas and Epics, from the Scion perspective. This isn't how Aberrant will do things, or even early Aberrant design. This is me musing on similar design challenges.

Scion and Aberrant both had the same approximate division of powers, though I'd argue Aberrant's is cleaner and more advanced despite being eight years older: you had Megas/Epics as superhuman expressions of capability, with facets/Knacks stemming from that; and you had Quantum/Legend powers and Purviews as the "flashy" superpowers. The former were generally more passive expansions of what you were capable of, while the latter were activated and beyond the scope of superhuman capability (as defined by, "what humans are capable of, but better").

Scion's gotten rid of a lot of methods from the old edition, but while we want Epics to still be in there, we're not tying them to Attributes for precisely the reason you stated - it could run contrary to character concept. Is Atlas using Physical Power when he's lifting the World, or Physical Resistance to maintain it?

So how do we work Epics - superhuman capability - back into the equation? The Scion team is looking at a few different ways to do this, and we're trying to figure out which works best in playtest. One way is to relate Epic capability to the Callings (Scion's extremely rough and muddy equivalent of Exalted Castes) and work them in through Purviews (elemental expressions of divine power); another is to simply have Epic expansions as Edges (read: Merits) that broadly expand capability, with the specific Knacks spread throughout Purviews and Callings. The why and what you're doing is probably more important than the how.

[Queen Anne Country]

For differentiation, I would go with just switching up the Attributes and use of specialties, personally.

As far as importance of fighting, I'm not so sure. It's important to some games of Aberrant. I'd argue it's relatively unimportant to Aeon - stealth, investigation, and politics seem to be a bigger player there than dueling and fisticuffs. It's modestly important to Adventure, but I'd argue Adventure should really be more about [/i]peril[i] than combat per se most of the time - thrilling escapes and dangerous situations, like running out of a temple before you're crushed by a giant boulder.

Right on, on both accounts. I think what we'd call in video games "button mashers" might not be especially interested in the Trinity Continuum but they certainly produce and sell a ton of material around weapons and armor and hybrid fighter jets.

[Wolfgar]

Which means Mega-Attributes are likely not making a comeback, which is fine by me. I don't see the new Attribute set as working all that well with mega-attributes conceptually anyway, as there is always too much overlap between Mental and Social resistance stats.

[SpectacularTentacular]

Well, if Mega-Atts won't be coming back in the form we all know and love, I have another question.

Is it still going to be more efficient to stack a few Mega-Att Analogs with certain attributes, or will it be possible to play a Jack-of -All-Trades/Swiss-Army Nova this time around without falling behind everyone else? (A "Swiss-Army Nova" being one who had a roughly even amount of Mega-Attribute dots for each Attribute. Sort of "more-human-than-human". I always wanted to play one of those, but they seemed very fragile compared to the other Novas who dug into their niche and blew up accordingly.)

[Baaldam]

Well, if Mega-Atts won't be coming back in the form we all know and love, I have another question.

Is it still going to be more efficient to stack a few Mega-Att Analogs with certain attributes, or will it be possible to play a Jack-of -All-Trades/Swiss-Army Nova this time around without falling behind everyone else? (A "Swiss-Army Nova" being one who had a roughly even amount of Mega-Attribute dots for each Attribute. Sort of "more-human-than-human". I always wanted to play one of those, but they seemed very fragile compared to the other Novas who dug into their niche and blew up accordingly.)

Actually played one with little to no trouble at least once. Also, not every character has to be calibrated based on white room efficiency against a mega-strength or quantum bolt 5 character. Also, efficiency can be quite debatable, as i found out first hand when a player as Aberrant mole managed - much to mine and his own surprise - to take down Cestus Pax on one-on-one.

Raw power is notable, but as i have pounded in my players heads all too many times, viciousness is what you watch out for, specially if you're trying to be a more heroic type - what some call hostages and innocent bystanders, others call chaff. Ruthlessness ups the ante like very few powers will.