/scg/ - Scion General

The Manitou purview is neat and I think I'd like to play a Scion of one.

Anyone else hear the rumor that Kieron Gillen also wrote the Theoi entry? That's complete bullshit, right?

>>49786496
Probably since while he probably would write some interesting fluff he also commands a higher freelance price than any given RPG freelancer. I don't know if they'd have paid for his work till they met the stretch goal specifically for getting some fiction from him.

>>49786959

I would certainly hope that Marvel, Avatar, and Image all pay higher rates than a company with only four or five people on staff. They're probably paying him at like five times the rate they would pay their other freelancers.

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>Scion art
I don't have anything specifically made for Scion or a setting like it, but I find Real-Life PC photos work well.

I can't wait to shitpost in this general with a million queer Netjer scons.

>>49786060
Only a few more days anons. WOO WOO

>>49787215

I can't wait to shitpost! I don't know what my artistic statement will be yet, but expect big things from my shitposts in the future.

>>49787383
Dream big, anon.

>>49787172
Is that painted on or are those tats? Either way, cast him for Fat Cobra in Iron Fist.

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>>49788432
Tattooed would be my guess. I don't know for sure though, the anon who posted him in the thread a few months back would probably know for sure.

>>49786496
>The Manitou purview is neat and I think I'd like to play a Scion of one.

I kind of want to play the most non-American Manitou scion humanly possible who then has to learn about them. Like, not just not a native tribe member. Not even a US or Canadian citizen either. Like, a Korean dude whose entire mental image of Native Americans is from subtitled westerns having to suddenly deal with cultural significance from a people he's never known anything about.

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>>49786060
The one thing I hope new Scion has, more than a fourth book about generic mythological urban fantasy, is a comprehensive bestiary with a functioning and playtested encounter balancing system for ST's. People rail against things like this in many systems because it beaks their immersion, or because it doesn't make sense in setting for encounters to actually be balanced, but in Scion's setting it specifically DOES make sense. Fate is the most powerful force in the universe, and manipulate the stories of Scions, and it specifically has a sense of fair-play.

If ever there was a setting where an encounter-building system and comprehensive bestiary actually made sense, Scion is it.

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>>49788432
Painted.

His name is Jinsei Shinzaki, 49 and still wrestling in Japan.

>>49789045

The current stretch goal is a Bestiary, starting with a section on giants with more to come.

I really hope they give us a section on Egyptian demons.

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>>49786060
>Also does anyone have some good Scion art ?Most of my god images are from fantasy settings, less real world stuff, let alone just cool art for the game or PCs
There is always Smite skin card art.

>>49789088
>I really hope they give us a section on Egyptian demons.
I see you, jakki

>>49789258

Yeah, and? Don't you wanna fight poop crocodile demons?

>>49789278
No, because what my players are facing now is a bit more central asian so I'm kind of winging it

Fuck you, poopodiles

>>49789298

What kind of fun Central Asian stuff are you dealing with?

While not Central Asia, I do really want to see a Tibetan Pantheon solely because one of my other furry OCs is based off of it.

>>49789088
The fact that in a game where there's an in setting reason for balanced encounters that's arguably the core of the setting, all those other things came before encounter balancing and bestiary.. bugs me. Being able to easilly create challenging but not squash-match encounters is much more fundamental to actually running a campaign than.
>fiction intro
>additional art
>cults
>Audio Drama

Also, I want to know if the balancing assumptions in the bestiary are going to work under the assumption that players start at Hero (as the majority of fans want to) or with an entire campaign's worth of XP from a prequel campaign. There's a big difference between balancing encounters for the former and the latter, and you can't really do both at the same time.

>>49789358

I'm not a big fan of the fiction and audio drama, but the additional art statistically helps RPG books sell and cults are essential to a game about gods and their worship. Don't be silly.

Plus, you're ignoring the part where they added three new Pantheons and a conversion guide both full of crunchy rules, and the Create Your Own rules are gonna make sure this game lives forever.

>>49789318
They're in Shambhala and hunting a Yeti which is pretty Himalayan than central Asian I guess but I'm going to do what I can to tie in a khaganate because fuck it.

I tend to wing it when you look past one adventure's duration

I am a bad GM

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>>49789513

Who are your player characters? I'm sitting on a ton of concepts myself.

>>49789582
I'm the first playtest anon (I think there's two of us) if that helps. I'm a bit drunk to really type a whole bunch right now. Its been a day

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>>49789387
>Plus, you're ignoring the part where they added three new Pantheons and a conversion guide both full of crunchy rules,
No, I only mentiones all the bits that it's an agregious absurdity to put before a bestiary... and additional pantheon aren't that.

Honestly, in a perfect world, the first 4 books would be
>1: Hero (Includes the player's half of the core rules)
>2: ST's Guide/Bestiary (Includes the ST's half of the core rules)
>3: Demigod
>4: God
And the strech goals would be
>1st: Origns Prequel
>2nd: Companion
>3rd: Additional Art
>4th: Additional Pantheons
>5th: all that silly extra stuff that they put up front.

>>49789619
>>49789582
Eh fuck it. Here it is again

Gwyn, scion of Dionysus. Social hammer, party girl, somewhere between Indiana Jones and Paris Hilton she has a magic chalice that lets her fill any ambient vessels up with booze at will and she charms her way through damn near any violence.

Heather, scion of Hades, she's out to make a profit and help the unquiet dead find peace.

Travers, scion of Odin, a London based on artist who is out on a quest to uncover all the occult lore he can after his visitation disturbed his nice orderly reality.

Nuri, a scion of Set who was in an actual 'drink the punch to meet the ayyyygods' kind of cult. Her father burnt it down in her visitation, essentially removing her entire social group and casting her adrift. She responded by using crime to slowly drift across Europe and Asia.

Miaomiao, Scion of Bastet, a Chinese woman who former Olympic athlete of the 'oh they're totally 16!' sort who joined the military after she washed out of the gymnastic squad before 2012, and her military experiences showed her some human darkness which she is now dedicated personally to fighting. With guns. She's sort of like a nicer Punisher.

>>49789045
I disagree and feel like most systems don't really allow for the D&D style "Challenge Rating" thing.
We're getting a Bestiary, but building an encounter is likely to be up to the ST no matter what. There's unlikely going to be some CR math.

>>49789358
>>49789710
Balance is not something that you should need a book for in the first place. I also disagree that Fate is all about fair play.
There's no way to do "balance" in a game like this, partly for the reasons you mentioned. There isn't a level up system. There's no minimum assumption of party competency. There is no way to have balance. All you can do is have a bunch of sample monsters and some monster creation rules.

I mean, how would YOU create a balancing system for Scion? How would you determine in guideline format how to stat an encounter that has the right difficulty level?

Also, stop ragging on Origins. The thread doesn't need more of that. And for someone who hates Origins so much, why would you want to separate the ST section from the player section of the core rules? Then again, there are no "ST rules" in most Onyx Path games.

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>>49789909
>I disagree and feel like most systems don't really allow for the D&D style "Challenge Rating" thing.
I agree with you that most systems don't allow for the D&D style "challenge rating" thing... [though arguably "challenge rating" is one of the least effective instances of that type of system in the history of game design but that's an argument for a different thread]

Scion is not most systems, nor is it most settings. The nature of Fate almost specifically demands it in Scion. It doesn't fit in Vampire, or Exalted, or Trinity, or even D&D (despite that being the origin of the idea)... but it DOES fit into Scion extremely well... almost necessarily so.

I'm not saying it's necessary to be able to run a game at all, I'm saying that it's necessary to properly allow the ST to play the role fate without having to do a SHITLOAD of extra-work and statanalysis (and come-on, give your ST some slack, he works hard enough already to entertain you every week.)

>>49789987

>Game balance is impossible and it's dumb anyways

The Cult of White Wolf strikes again, I see.

>>49789987
>And for someone who hates Origins so much, why would you want to separate the ST section from the player section of the core rules?
First, I don't "hate" origins. I think it's a really neat idea, and even made it the FIRST stretch goal in my perfect world. I take issue with Origins being a necessary book to play scion.

Second, the reason I separated the rules is because Onyx Path CLEARLY wants, and NEEDS to sell 4 books, rather than 3, to make the game profitable: keeping the ST stuff seperate allows them to do with without forcing the players to buy a splat book to make the core books work. Honestly, I'd prefer to just spread the bestiary out evenly through the Hero, Demigod, and God books, like the original, but just have the bestiary not be utter shit and have a half-way decent balancing system, but OP wants to make a 4th book necessary to play, so I included that in my assumptions.

>>49790101

Don't be retarded. Origins needs to exist because OPP owns Scion whereas they're merely licensed out for World/Chronicles of Darkness and they know there's good money in urban fantasy, so they want a 'street level' game that belongs to them in case White Wolf ever decides to pull the rug out from under them.

>>49790252
>Origins needs to exist
Like I said, it's a really neat idea, and I made it the first stretch goal in my perfect world scenario. I also want it to exist.

It existing, and it being necessary to play Scion are two very different things. I like the former, and take issue with the latter.

I never once said it shouldn't exist. Multiple times I've said I would be extremely excited about the idea if they didn't make it a necessary purchase in order to play a game I've been waiting like five years for. That's a rather bitter aftertaste to an otherwise tasty cocktail... bitter enough to lose my patronage.

>>49790310
>two things I like exist
>so I'm unwilling to spend $20 to play them

This is what you're saying, anon. What the fuck is the problem with Origins? It stands to reason that most Scions were up to something before they were godlings, and even if you don't like that it's trivial to just start at Hero tier and get on with your life same as you would starting as Vampires or Mages or Changelings.

>>49790077
Tell me how to balance it, then. Specifically, how to create guidelines for balancing it. Tell me how you balance a game where character growth is often wide instead of high. Where challenges aren't met and defeated in one go. Where who you know and what you can get are often more important than what's on your sheet.
Please, give me advice here.

>>49790043
I disagree that Fate is going to give you defeatable challenges. But my point is not the narrative. Narratively, I'm not ever going to kill a PC at all, unless it's some situation where their death is inevitable.

My point is that because of the way that a game like Scion is made, there's no real way to rule-of-thumb what challenge a group can or can't defeat. In D&D, you can math up the character levels and how many people are in the party and get a *good enough* sense of things. You can know that this or that enemy makes something X amount harder. It works in D&D because everything is numerical. At the end of the day, D&D is a game focused around encounters: You typically play a murderhobo cut off from the world, traveling around and getting into problems. It's a game about adventuring. everybody increases their levels on a very set very defined path.

Scion isn't. Scion is a high octane urban fantasy game where you're not intended to use a bestiary or monster manual. The ST is meant to use the things presented in the book to create their own antagonists who may or may not follow the same rules as the player characters. It's a game where characters level up however they choose, and they may completely shirk certain things. The closest any White Wolf property comes to having some sort of challenge rating is the scene ratings in the SAS modules, where things are given a 1-5 rating of Mental/Physical/Social.

>>49790101
>>49790310
If this was Scion 1e, you wouldn't even care that Origins is the first one. Also, >>49790252 that's not just the need for Origins, that's the need for Storypath in general.

>>49790043
>still thinking of roleplaying games in terms of combat encounters

Scion can just as easily be a game entirely without combat. You're putting too much focus on an optional third of the system.

>>49790548
>Scion isn't. Scion is a high octane urban fantasy game where you're not intended to use a bestiary or monster manual. The ST is meant to use the things presented in the book to create their own antagonists who may or may not follow the same rules as the player characters.
As the default ST/GM/DM, it kind of upsets me that a player would be so opposed to their being guidelines from which to deviate to make combat-encounter-crafting easier. A good ST/GM/DM doesn't NEED a baseline to deviate from, but having one never hurts, and is helpful in every system that has one. Do you deviate from the baseline? Yeah. But it's really nice to have a baseline there. DEMANDING that a system require the ST/DM/GM to homebrew every single antagonist from scratch is asking for a game to have signifigantly fewer willing ST/DM/GM's. That's one of the reason most Scion 1 games I played in rather than ran just wound up just being the printed modules.

TLDR: Having tools to make the GM's job easier isn't an affront to the philosophy of a system.

Transcript of the recent Q&A with Neall:

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/scion/985876-q-a-with-neall-transcript?p=986187#post986187

>>49790706
I really want a section specifically about Titans, what makes on mechanciallly vs. groups who just see Titans as it were

>>49790548

>Tell me how to balance it, then. Specifically, how to create guidelines for balancing it. Tell me how you balance a game where character growth is often wide instead of high. Where challenges aren't met and defeated in one go. Where who you know and what you can get are often more important than what's on your sheet.
>Please, give me advice here.

You understand the mathematical probabilities of the game you made, so you have an idea of what something will look like at the table when you put numbers on the antagonists. Then you playtest your antagonist, because what's mathematically true isn't always true at the table, not to mention that things that make sense on paper may not feel "balanced" in a psychological sense, or just might feel off in regular play.

The only difficult thing about it is that it's a lot of time and effort for something for something written by an army of freelancers, who understandably can't be expected to do something like that because that's not what they're being paid to do. It's certainly not impossible, however, and the base system for Storypath was balanced and playtested far before Scion 2e development began. Scion's playtesting will further this process.

To straight up say that there is no way to have balance for a system with medium-crunch, especially with antagonists, is complete nonsense. Either you'd have to be a complete newbie to game design or a serious White Wolf Cultist to honestly say that as a defense. It's actually kind of insulting to the developers and writers, really.

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>>49790606
>You're putting too much focus on an optional third of the system.
You have summed up my problem with how OPP is handling Origins better than I ever could have.

>>49790606
Not the guy you're responding to but a Bestiary does not necessarily equate to combat. Since the majority of NPCs in Scion are at least humanoid-esque or Scions themselves, it helps to have premade stat blocks to pull from to get a swift determination of "Would they call the PC out on this obvious bullshit? Would they go along with it? Would they just say 'Fuck you' and walk away?" The only reason I ended up buying the Companion for 1E was for the premades for NPC usage, mainly due to not having time stat out and write backstories/characterizations for every single NPC they'd encounter.

As for combat being optional, it all depends on the players. You can plan a non-combat session all week but players following your planning is the wildcard. All it takes is one PC having a bad day before coming to the game and punching your NPC Scion of Aphrodite's pompous ass into the ground because, quite frankly, he doesn't want to deal with an hour of bullshit where that NPC wasn't actually going to help the PCs but instead was trying to frame them.

Hell, it's one reason why in almost any game I've run I always have flyers or commercials in the setting for some type of Arena so, just in case they need to get a murderhobo fix, there's an Arena/Superhuman Wrestling/Whatever waiting for them. Which gives in and of itself some Fatebinding/roleplaying options as they start getting famous/infamous/whatever. But sometimes players just want to punch something. Hard.

>>49790606
>>49790845

>System literally designed for action-adventure games
>Combat is only an optional third of the game

You people cannot be serious. Yes, combat isn't the end-all be-all but come on now.

>>49790845
Except that you're wrong. All of Scion is just as optional as Origins. I could start at God level and ignore all the other books.

>>49790698
I'm also the designated ST. That's why I find the notion ridiculous. There are no hard and fast guidelines. There's no way to manage that with guidelines. You can't crunch the numbers and determine what is or isn't too powerful, because the system doesn't facilitate that. You can't GET a baseline any deeper than
>Don't give it enough damage to one shot anyone
>Don't make its defense so high it can't be hit
>Don't give it more health than can reasonably be dealt with
Anything more than that is going to rely on knowing your players. Hell, especially that last one is already getting into territory that's hard to figure out.

It's not about the ~philosophy~ of the game. It's about what the system does or doesn't facilitate.

Whether you have a monster manual or just a few sample antagonists scattered about and rules for creating them, that's still going to be true. Look at World and Chronicles of Darkness. They've had a ton of monsters over the years, and a ton of Storytelling sections, but rarely if ever have they given guidelines or a rule of thumb on how to handle an "encounter", because it's not really a system that facilitates segmenting sections of the game like that.

>>49790826
You start out with the premise of infinite time and money, so that's already a facile argument.
And no, it's not being a "White Wolf Cultist", and it's not insulting to the developers.
This system doesn't facilitate what you're saying.

But that's not even what I asked. You're telling me how to find out the information. I'm asking YOU, how YOU would do it. how would you format it. How would you give information. Should everyone's combat dice pools be tallied up and averaged? How do you ~balance~ an encounter in your games?

You completely misunderstand what "balance" even entails.

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>>49791038
>Except that you're wrong. All of Scion is just as optional as Origins. I could start at God level and ignore all the other books.
Okay, I'm going to spell this out slowly for you

1: There's going to be a bestiary. They're almost there, and OPP fanatics are... fanatics, so they're going to reach it.

2: The bestiary's standard monsters for each tier are going to be playtested at-least SOME, and they're either going to be playtested against PC's with XP from Origins-tier or against PC's without XP from Origins-tier.

3: When a bestiary with some balance assumptions exist, those balance assumptions become the default for the majority of ST's, because most ST's are the "it's your turn to ST Jim" tier ST's. Yes, there are some great ST's who can homebrew everything from scratch, but they are few and far between.

4: For most play groups that aren't blessed with a god-tier ST, this makes going through Origins-tier basically mandatory

5: Most groups are excited to play Scion... not generic urban fantasy.

>>49791268
>4: For most play groups that aren't blessed with a god-tier ST, this makes going through Origins-tier basically mandatory

what in the fuck are you talking about

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>>49791461
Oh my god you're dense

IF the GM tool for creating encounters is playtested against PC's who have a full Origin's campaign worth of XP, then it is only helpful in crafting encounters for players with a full Origin's campaign worth of XP. Therefore, groups who like SCION, and want to play SCION, but who don't have ST's who are willing to spend all of their free time running statistical models to create encounters from scratch, rather than modifying and refluffing existing challenges from the bestiary (this describes most groups) have two choices.

>Waste months playing through Richard Thomas's pet project game that they didn't want to play in order to GET TO the game they want to play
OR
>Hand out a metric fuckton of XP at Character-Creation, making character creation a clusterfuck of a mess.

Because of this, I hope that the bestiary is playtested against Hero-tier PC's who don't have a full campaign-worth of XP under their belt already. However, given the attitude of OPP, and their insistence that Origins is the game everyone's REALLY excited about, I find this the less likely outcome.

>>49791531

I think you have autism, anon

>>49791565
I think you've never GM'd anon

>>49791585

And I don't think Scion has D&D 4e-style encounter design where there's a curve of linear progression that determines combat difficulty

Notice how no CofD book has ever said "your coterie should be Blood Potency 4 or higher to fight this threat" and yet nobody bitches about that

Fuck off and stop obsessing over combat

>>49791268
I feel like you're making a ton of assumptions, most of them completely incorrect. Have you ever played a White Wolf game? Are you aware of how they work, and how their sample antagonist work?

The Bestiary's monsters aren't even going to need to be playtested. They're not going to be ranked or anything. At best, they'll be separated into tiers, and that's about it.

What's really weird is that your assumptions about how the system work already go against what they've told us about the system. For one thing, You seem to think that more XP = Stronger character. But that's not really how it works. That's not how it works in World of Darkness and that's not how it's likely to work in Scion. More XP means a character that can do more, not necessarily a character that can overcome stronger enemies. This isn't like D&D where your combat ability jumps up passively and you get more BAB and health and powers. Everything in Scion is completely up to the player. It's possible to have a pool of XP and still suck at combat because you've chosen not to bother.

More than that, we've already BEEN TOLD that going up the tiers is not some measure of having more XP. It's based on templates and Legend. When you go up the tiers, you don't get more dice, your target number decreases.

>>49791531
Again I ask if you've ever seen how White Wolf/Onyx Path handles bestiaries and antagonists. There is not a list or guide to what antagonists are good for what kind of party. There's only an Antagonist, a bit of ST advice for playing or using the character or monster, and a sheet.

Your problem here stems from wanting something similar to D&D. That's not going to happen because Scion is a much less constrained game.

It is not a matter of how much XP you need to fight the baddie.

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>>49791607
>And I don't think Scion has D&D 4e-style encounter design where there's a curve of linear progression that determines combat difficulty
It literally makes more sense in Scion than it does in 4e.
>Notice how no CofD book has ever said "your coterie should be Blood Potency 4 or higher to fight this threat" and yet nobody bitches about that
And in CofD, one of the core story-driving devices isn't narrative force of nature, above the gods, who manipulates the assumed protagonists into interesting and narratively satisfying challenges that divine adventurers CAN defeat but aren't GUARANTEED to defeat

Scion does... explicitly. It's not even metaknowledge; it's straight-up in-setting in-character knowledge, and one of the driving forces behind the conflicts in the Scion setting.

>>49791585
I've STed several WoD games and I think that what you're asking for is utter bullshit that shows you don't know how the system works.

This is not a system where you can get an accurate measure of "power" by how much XP something has.

>>49791694
>It literally makes more sense in Scion than it does in 4e.
No, it doesn't. Your assumptions of how Fate works aside--and keep in mind I don't even necessarily disagree, but you seem to think Fate guarantees you'll never face something out of your league--Scion's MECHANICAL SYSTEM makes an encounter curve impossible, or near enough to it to be unfeasible.

You keep going on about how Fate is important, but Fate is just as likely to throw you into the fire and see if you burn. Nevermind that CofD actually does have the same thing. There's even a literal Destiny merit. "Fate" is the ST.

But, again, and I cannot stress this enough: THE ACTUAL MECHANICS OF THE GAME MEAN THAT WHAT YOU WANT DOES NOT WORK.

Or, again: Tell me how you would do it.

>>49791694

I don't know how you're making this weird assumption that because Fate and Fatebinding exists, there should be some sort of encounter design advice for combat, to say nothing of the fact that a combat-focused game is a series of optional rules in the corebook and that you can easily make a whole Band of character with no supernatural combat abilities whatsoever.

Fate doesn't say "looks like Keftiu has hit Legend 3, let's send some level-appropriate demons out of Duat to challenge her properly."

>>49791679
>White wolf games aren't supposed to be balanced, or offer challenging but defeatable challenges.

Except FATE. A common role-playing trope makes more sense in-setting for Scion than it does for literally any other setting I know of (except maybe Amber) and you're fighting it THIS hard because D&D does it poorly, and because you're used to WhiteWolf NOT doing it?

Sounds almost like you're the WW cultist.

>>49791694
>And in CofD, one of the core story-driving devices isn't narrative force of nature, above the gods, who manipulates the assumed protagonists into interesting and narratively satisfying challenges that divine adventurers CAN defeat but aren't GUARANTEED to defeat

It is in Mummy, and does precisely none of the shit you're describing.

>>49791731
>Fate guarantees you'll never face something out of your league
No, but it's all but explicitly stated in old scion that Fate guarantees you'll never face something SO out of your league that you don't have at-least a slim chance.

>Balancing the system is too hard
Stop being lazy. You build a game, you include a balancing mechanic. If the players don't want balanced encounter, the ST/GM/DM can ignore them. Refusing to make any balancing mechanic at all, is just lazy game design.

>>49791747
>It is in Mummy, and does precisely none of the shit you're describing.
Then WW's failure to include a balancing mechanic at-least as an optional system was, indeed, a failure to create the narrative world they created mechanically.... then again that's something WW has repeatedly failed at. Maybe I expect a little more of OPP than late 90's early 00's WW.

>>49791743
It sounds like you're a slack jawed idiot who just wants to make excuses. Fate doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
I'm "fighting this hard" because what you're asking is impossible and shows a fundamental lack of familiarity with the mechanical systems involved.

In fact, I honestly can't think of ANY modern game with some sort of progression or difficulty curve, especially not ones that are point buy and non-leveled.

>>49791747
Mage, too, where it's literally a physical concept.

>>49791774
>No, but it's all but explicitly stated in old scion that Fate guarantees you'll never face something SO out of your league that you don't have at-least a slim chance.
No it doesn't.

>>49791774
>>49791799
>Stop being lazy.
Anon, you're literally saying the game developers are being lazy because you need ST crutches. Do you see Shadowrun or GURPS giving a "balancing mechanic" in the form of a challenge rating?

You honestly don't even seem to understand what "balance" means. So I want you to describe it. Define balance for me. Tell me what makes a game balanced.
And if the system isn't too hard to balance, then explain it to me. Explain to me how you would balance it.

>>49791799

Scion isn't a combat-heavy game unless you choose an optional Mode of play. I don't know why you aren't getting this.

You don't need combat balancing in a game that doesn't revolve around it, and Scion has just as many optional rules for investigation, social drama/politics, and even fucking romance as it does for "hurr Fate wants me to punch things."

Again: nWoD/CofD hasn't bothered with the balancing you're obsessed with and has been perfectly fine for the last decade.

>>49791774
>>49791743
Children, children. You're arguing with Aspel, he does this same thing anyone ever brings up the SIN of expecting game devs to actually have a properly working game, to have properly playtested their shit.

Just ignore him, he hates it. There is literally nothing you can do when someone screams and throws a tantrum about wanting the game to work properly.

>>49791868

Aspel is a girl, anon.

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>>49791822
>Anon, you're literally saying the game developers are being lazy because you need ST crutches.
No, I'm saying, if they want their game to thrive, in the tabletop community, where most ST's aren't dedicated master ST's but "your-turn-Jim" ST's. I'm talking about most tables.

Personally, as the default ST/GM/DM of my table, I can function just fine without a balancing baseline (though it's still very nice to have one.) However, I'd also like to occasionally play, and if they don't include a balancing mechanic, I can guarantee that either I won't be able to, or when I do, the ST is going to be too new to do it right.

>Do you see Shadowrun or GURPS giving a "balancing mechanic" in the form of a challenge rating?
This is literally one of the reason there are so few tables running those games, especially GURPS; this is one of GURPS's biggest failings.

>So I want you to describe it. Define balance for me.
Balancing Mechanic: A system, that's user-friendly enough for casual DM/GM/ST's to follow, with at-least general guidelines on how to create an encounter that the players will
A: Feel challenged by
B: Probably defeat
C: Might not defeat
You can then deviate from this up or down, depending on the circumstances, or throw them out entirely if you're one of those "games shouldn't be balanced" types.

Creating this is indeed difficult.... this is why every chucklefuck with a homebrew doesn't publish... and those who completely forgo it aren't much better than a chucklefuck with a homebrew.

>>49791747

Mummy is a very different game with a very different approach to Fate than Scion.

>>49791930
>so few tables running those games

Shadowrun is likely in the top three most popular games in existence, what are you smoking?

And why are you so fixated on combat when it's just an optional Mode? The average Scion game isn't going to focus on it to the point where as much wordcount as you're asking for would be dedicated to it.

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>>49791957
>The average Scion game isn't going to focus on it to the point where as much wordcount as you're asking for would be dedicated to it.

Either you know you're lying, or you're living evidence of the meme "/tg/ doesn't actually play games."

>>49791930
GURPS sort of has one in 'How to be a GURPS GM', where it mentions that because of the broad range of things you can spend your points on, the point total of a character isn't actually much use in comparing their abilities in a fight, so you have to run off something like the number of points spent in combat abilities, or their skill ratings.

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>>49791868
Oh shut the fuck up. Jesus fucking Christ, shut the fuck up. You're showing profound fucking ignorance of the system and when called out on it, you start with the "you're arguing with Aspel" bullshit.

Stop acting like I'm just going to bat for the developers for no fucking reason. I'm calling someone out for asking for something impossible. The game works properly as is, you just want it to work different. You want something that can't be done. It's not out of laziness, it's out of the fact that this system is fundamentally not capable of doing what is being asked of it. Most systems aren't. And I don't find idiots begging for "balance" to be meaningful discussion. It's not just World of Darkness, it's fucking everything. Is there a GURPS system for balancing encounters? What about Apocalypse World? Does ANY system other than D&D really have any method of "balancing" encounters?

Tell me how you would balance this encounter. Tell me how you would determine whether a party can defeat La Vouivre. Give me her CR. Tell me how it differs from, say, Rachel Rafn or the Black Eyed Children from CofD core.

>>49791930
What you're saying is that you want something that isn't possible, you don't understand that it's not possible, and you can't understand why no system has it except for D&D.

Tell me HOW you balance things. Show me. Teach me your ways. What do you do to balance your game, and how do you feel that could be transferred into a rule of thumb for other STs to follow. How do you determine the CR.

Hell, the definition of balance you give has little to do with actual balance.

>>49792006
Bingo. That's literally as close as you can get.

>>49791996

SCION HAS THREE MODES OF PLAY IN CORE, ONLY ONE OF THEM FOCUSES ON COMBAT

A DECENT NUMBER OF THE POWERS IN THE GAME HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH COMBAT

WHY ARE YOU THIS DENSE

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Tee hee, someone's pissed they got called out as a fucking retard who sucks dev cock~

But seriously, guys, just stop talking to the retard. We know he'll have his feet dug in at anyone that DARES to speak out against the almighty devs. Just don't fucking bother. Ignore the shithead, and have a far better day then you would otherwise.

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>this shit again

How are you people this fucking autistic.

Go find something more constructive to argue about.

>>49792025
What three modes of play? It's not just "Social/Mental/Physical", is it?

>>49792040
No, you stupid fuck, I'm pissed that you keep trying to derail the argument with "anyone who points out the numerous flaws in my logic is clearly just a shill".

STOP SHITPOSTING AND POST CHARACTER CONCEPTS

>>49788606
LMAO

>>49792066

The three Modes in core roughly map to the three Attribute types, but more Modes will come later. Action-Adventure adds extra depth to combat and is the Physical Mode, Procedural is all about investigating mysteries (it steals from GUMSHOE which is a good thing in my eyes) and is the Mental one, and then Intrigue focuses on social attitudes and influencing people as the obvious Social Mode.

They've mentioned wanting to do more Modes later, with Romance as one I specifically asked about (they said it was likely.)

>>49792020

>White Wolf Cultist doesn't know how to balance their own game's encounters

That's sad.

>>49792363
No, I know how to balance an encounter. It starts with me ignoring the concept of "balance", because there's no such thing. This isn't a computer game. Balance is a meaningless concept that doesn't actually facilitate a fun game.

This isn't limited to White Wolf games, either. No game works the way that you're asking. D&D tries to, and that's as close as any game can go, and that's bad at it, and leads to "tier" lists. There's a reason that GURPS gives this to say >>49792006
>it mentions that because of the broad range of things you can spend your points on, the point total of a character isn't actually much use in comparing their abilities in a fight, so you have to run off something like the number of points spent in combat abilities, or their skill ratings.

That's true of Scion as well. It's true of any game

Hell, even computer games have that issue. There's actually an article talking about why Dragon Age Inquisition or whatever doesn't have any healing spells because it made balancing encounters impossible because they could never know how much health the players had. And that was the closed system of a computer game, where balance *does* matter.

But again, I ask: Tell me how YOU would balance things. What guidelines would you suggest to calculate CR?

>>49792115
Hell, even the OPP adventures in all the 1E books have a basic outline of the encounters at the beginning of the story, broken down into the three attribute categories. And for every one that has a Physical dot count indicating a possible combat, there's an equal or lesser amount for Social. The encounter descriptions themselves even go so far to say "If the PCs are able to convince X/bypass Y/etc., here's how the NPCs they would be fighting would react."

>>49792647

>White Wolf Cultist fell for the "balance doesn't exist" meme

All you're really saying is "I don't actually know how the game that I worship works". The fact that the end-all be all for you when it comes to balance is "CR", and not how the actual developers balance and create their antagonists says it all. Your question is meaningless.

You don't know the math of the game, and you don't know how to design games. That's OK, but don't go around talking like you know how to do it. You're just a lore hound that begrudgingly rolls dice.

You're going apeshit over the idea of a balanced Bestiary, of all the things.

>>49792020
>Balance isn't possible
Yes it is, maybe you just suck.
Yes, it's not easy.... that's why you get paid to do it.
>>49792647
>there's no such thing [as balance]
Yes there is. Maybe you think balance SHOULDN'T exist in your games... in which case ignore the balance section. A balanced bestiary hurts you in no way, and helps the majority of tables a lot.

Calm the shit down.

And this thread is why we should have let the Scion generals stay dead, at least until the books actually come out.

>>49792995
>Yes it is, maybe you just suck.
Show me. Prove it. You can't even give me a reasonable definition of balance that would require some kind of challenge rating to begin with.

Fuck, you honestly don't even seem to understand what I'm telling you in the first place.

You don't even understand balance and yet you're freaking out that no one is telling you how to balance things.

>>49788691
Heavens, forbid, no! That would be so offensive! Don't you know only the Scions of white, western pantheons should be the farthest thing possible from white and western? When you do that, it's clever and subversive! But to make the Scion of a nonwhite, native pantheons non-nonwhite and native? I hope you understand what this means, shitlord.

>>49793347
I can't even parse this.

But I will say that making a Korean Manitou Scion means having to learn about Korea and the Tribes.

>>49793151
>You can't even give me a reasonable definition of balance
Please read
>>49791930
>Balancing Mechanic: A system, that's user-friendly enough for casual DM/GM/ST's to follow, with at-least general guidelines on how to create an encounter that the players will
>A: Feel challenged by
>B: Probably defeat
>C: Might not defeat

>>49793151
>you honestly don't even seem to understand what I'm telling you in the first place.
Sure I do, you are saying balance is impossible, and that balance shouldn't exist in the first place. I disagree on both fronts.


>You don't even understand balance
You yourself seem a bit confused on the topic.

>you're freaking out that no one is telling you how to balance things.
No. Actually, I very clearly explained why having a balancing mechanic is an important feature for most tables, who's ST's aren't dedicated ST's and have jobs and real lives etc...

As I've said before, I can balance things just fine, it just takes a lot of extra work, and having a balancing mechanic is a nice streamline. Having a balanced bestiary helps almost everyone, and hurts nobody. At worst, there is a small percentage of tables that are ideologically opposed to the concept of balance, and they will ignore it (I would guess that describes your table, but... honestly... it sounds more like you don't actually have a real table and just philosophize about games on /tg/)


If you're going to take the time to make a bestiary, then you should playtest it and balance it.

If you're going to playtest and balance it at the hero level, you're going to need to chose between playtesting/balancing it against heroes who DO have a full prequel campaign's worth of development, or against heroes who DON'T.

This decision will influence the default assumptions of most tables.

I think they should balance it against new heroes who DO NOT have a full prequel campaign's worth of development under their belt.

>>49793901
>Please read
And that's not fitting the criteria of "useful".
For instance, in D&D, they can know generally what is available to players at certain levels, so the Challenge Rating is able to give a meaningful level range of a party. It's far from a perfect system, but it's workable. It gives you something more defined than "a challenge for the party". You're not telling me what in particular makes an encounter balanced. You tell me that you're capable of balancing an encounter. Tell me how, then. Tell me what method you use to determine whether an encounter is "balanced" for your players. And more than that, tell me how you would put that into a mechanic that can be used as a guideline.

>At worst, there is a small percentage of tables that are ideologically opposed to the concept of balance, and they will ignore it
I think that considering the utter lack of any balance mechanics in any game I've seen other than Dungeons & Dragons, it's more accurate to say that it's a small percentage of tables that think of balance the way that you do.

>If you're going to take the time to make a bestiary, then you should playtest it and balance it.
>you're going to need to chose between playtesting/balancing it against heroes who DO have a full prequel campaign's worth of development, or against heroes who DON'T.
>This decision will influence the default assumptions of most tables.
These are all mistaken assumptions.
First off, no, you don't need to really playtest the bestiary. Honestly, no one but Wizards and Paizo has the money for this, and frankly it's pretty clear they don't do it that often. This is not the kind of game where you create a monster based on the party's XP level. That doesn't work. You can only rule of thumb it, and make guesswork. There is no APL, there is no CR. No amount of playtesting would give you much meaningful data because there is a near infinite amount of character options.

>>49794060
>D&D
>Challenge Rating
>Dungeons & Dragons
>CR
Ugh, CR is one of the WORST and least effective instances of a balancing mechanic that it's basically a straw man. Calm your shit.
>you don't need to really playtest the bestiary
If you're not going to playtest it, don't bother making it in the first place..... and you're a shitty dev.
>You can only rule of thumb it, and make guesswork.
Only if the devs suck at their job. I expect a little more of OPP than the literature-nerds at WW who basically make fluff to run with other, better built, systems.

>>49794060
>These are all mistaken assumptions.
To continue:
>If you're going to take the time to make a bestiary, then you should playtest it and balance it.
As I said, not really. The monsters aren't going to be balanced at all. They'll be statted up however the creators feel they should and that's that. If you feel the party is ready to go up against the Nemean Lion or an adult Hydra, that's your business.

>you're going to need to chose between playtesting/balancing it against heroes who DO have a full prequel campaign's worth of development, or against heroes who DON'T.
See above. No playtesting can really be done, and, frankly, none can be done. There's too much variation. All you can really do is make the monster and provide advice like "this is an incredibly powerful creature that's befitting the penultimate showdown of a combat campaign" or "despite seeming frail, this monster can provide quite a challenge for scholars that try to disturb it".
Moreover your obsession with proving that Origins is detrimental is getting in your way of thinking clearly. The book isn't going to give a shit how much XP you have. It's going to make the monsters and that's that. Take a look at Grim Fears. It has both the Bunyip--a relatively weak little hedgebeast that preys on children and has only four health--and then two sections later it has A FUCKING DRAGON.
That gets no sort of rating or guideline for how to determine if your party is ready to face him. In fact, it says NOT to face the dragon in combat, because it will probably not end well, because Dzarumazh the Deathless has 32 dice for combat, 7/7 armour, 30 health, and is also a fucking dragon.
The monsters are not going to be statted for someone who has played through an entire chronicle of Origins. Because "has played through an entire Origins chronicle" could be anywhere from 10 to 100xp or more.

>>49794060
>This decision will influence the default assumptions of most tables.
Considering the lack of such information, it would appear to be the opposite.

>>49794147
CR is the WORST and least effective instance of a balancing mechanic... but it's also the only one there is, to my knowledge.

>Only if the devs suck at their job. I expect a little more of OPP than the literature-nerds at WW who basically make fluff to run with other, better built, systems.
You're honestly trolling me here, aren't you?
Again, this isn't just a White Wolf/Onyx Path problem. This is something that modern gaming makes impossible, which is why it by and large doesn't exist.

You keep bitching, but you still haven't told me how you do it. I'm going to take a guess and say that it amounts to rule of thumbing what your players can hit, and what kind of hits they can take. That's all you can do. Anything else is impossible. You're not going to get "this is a challenge for a ##XP party". That flat out doesn't work. That is not feasibly possible within the framework of the system.

You have repeatedly shown that you don't understand the system. All you've done is go "with playtesting!" as if you understood what was being playtested for. I'll give you a hint. It isn't really for the math. Playtesting has more to do with the gamefeel, and narrative uses.

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>>49794223
>The monsters aren't going to be balanced at all. They'll be statted up however the creators feel they should and that's that.
Only if the devs either cater only to shitty "balance is a falacy" fags like you, or assume that all tables are like that. If they do that, they are bad devs.

If you're just going to throw random stats against a wall randomly, then there's no point in making the bestiary in the first place. Anybody can throw darts against a dartboard and randomly make whatever because none of it matters. We expect a little better of professional game devs.
>No playtesting can really be done, and, frankly, none can be done.
No, plenty of playtesting can be done. They are playtesting the game RIGHT NOW. You're saying playtesting SHOULDN'T be done, and that's stupid.
>The book isn't going to give a shit how much XP you have.
Only if the system is built to make XP worthless... which I can guarantee you the devs are not trying to do.
>It's going to make the monsters and that's that.
No, that's what any two bit casual GM with a homebrew and five minutes of free time can do... pretty easilly actually. If you want people to actually PAY REAL MONEY for your game, you need to provide them with something they couldn't have already done easily without you.

You seem to just hate the idea of balanced encounters... and that's fine... don't use them, and encourage your GM/DM/ST not to as well. What weirds me out is your instance that nobody ever use balanced encounters ever.... like they are somehow an affront to your core ideology. Calm the fuck down. A majority of tables like balanced encounters enough that at-least having an easy means of creating them would be appreciated. If they're going to make a bestiary anyway, this would be the ideal place to put this. Why are you so violently opposed to the mere concept of balance? If you don't like balancing mechanics.,ignore them, but don't insist that devs never make them to begin with.

>>49794320

Psst. Friend. No fucking game uses "combat encounters" once you get outside the D&D sphere of influence. Move on with your life. Scion cares just as much or more about crafting stories and solving mysteries and swaying political webs of influence than it does about figuring out how many dice a kitsune should have to punch someone. OPP has literally never given a flying fuck about combat.

>>49794320
You seem to have an utter lack of understanding of what balance is. I can't stress this enough.

>If you're just going to throw random stats against a wall randomly, then there's no point in making the bestiary in the first place. Anybody can throw darts against a dartboard and randomly make whatever because none of it matters. We expect a little better of professional game devs.
Except that's exactly what professional game devs do. This isn't a video game. Do you honestly think Steve Jackson Games goes through and plays a ton of games using the monsters and sample characters? Do you think that's what professional game designers do? Either they use what they had in their own chronicles, or they make something up on the spot to fit a niche. This is how it works. You don't go through iterative testing to determine of a monster "works". That's something that only happens in video games.

Your understanding of things seems to be that playtesting is made to hammer out mechanical math, and that XP is a measure of "strength". Playtesting is meant to hammer out things like "this doesn't really make for a fun session" or "this could be more impressive", or maybe "this fringe case comes up and makes things difficult". That's it. It's not "this monster is good against this level party", because parties don't have levels.
XP in this system is a measure of how MUCH you can do, not necessarily how well you can do it. Again, I could have 100xp and have nothing over 3 dots. Experience Points are not a good measure of 'strength'. And considering this is a game where my Social skills can allow me to shoot fireballs or something, neither are dots in Strength.

The XP system isn't useless. It's just useless for what you seem to think it can do, which is provide a metric for player competency.

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>>49794332
>Psst. Friend. No fucking game uses "combat encounters" once you get outside the D&D sphere of influence.
You mean like Exalted.... oh wait
You mean like Legends of the Wulin... oh wait
You mean like MHR.. oh wait
You mean like FIGHT! The Fighting Game RPG... oh wait
You mean like Anima!.... oh wait
You mean like Mutants and Masterminds... oh wait.
You meal like Mekton Zeta... oh wait
You mean like BESM... oh wait
You mean like WIld Talents... oh wait
You mean like Hi-Lo Heroes... oh wait
You mean like Busty Barbarian Bimbos... oh wait
You mean like Dogs in The Vineyard... on wait
You mean like Song of Swords... oh wait

Psst. Friend. Sounds like you've only ever played old-school WW games. That's a gaming philosophy... a valid one at that, but not the only one outside of D&D... not by a long shot.

>>49794320
>What weirds me out is your instance that nobody ever use balanced encounters ever.... like they are somehow an affront to your core ideology
No, the problem is that you don't understand what balance is. The best you've given me is "a challenging encounter". That's not balance. That kind of balance doesn't exist. You're basically asking for monsters that only exist for combat. That's not the kind of game this is.
This isn't a game where you're meant to be going toe to toe with a monster that is statted equivalently to your character. This is a game where your breadth of skills are as likely to come into play in a scenario as your ability to punch things. And considering the breadth of skills is expansive and effectively infinite, there isn't really a way to "balance" things, because there's no telling what the average party is going to be like. You don't have the assumption that there's going to be one person in each party role of healer, tank, expert, crowd control, DPS.

>A majority of tables like balanced encounters enough that at-least having an easy means of creating them would be appreciated.
Again I point out that all evidence seems to be to the contrary. Dungeons & Dragons is the only game that has this. GURPS doesn't. World of Darkness doesn't. Chronicles of Darkness doesn't. Mutants & Masterminds doesn't. Apocalypse World doesn't.

I'm not violently opposed to the mere concept of balance. I'm incredibly annoyed that you keep talking about things you clearly don't understand.

>>49794443
Those games have combat. Almost all of them do not use combat encounters in the manner that D&D does.
For fucks sake half the games you list there make NOT fighting just as if not more viable.
Shit, every Dogs in the Vineyard encounter starts as a conversation and only escalates to fighting when you realize that you're both dead set on getting your way, and neither of you wants to back down.

None of those games are meant to be played like D&D.

>>49794468

>World of Darkness doesn't

XP values.

>Chronicles of Darkness doesn't

CofD uses XP values and occasionally the SAS challenge rating system

>Mutants and Masterminds doesn't

Power Levels

>Apocalypse World doesn't

Fuck off, I don't think you've ever played an AW game, and I honestly doubt you're capable of even running one. It is explicitly the most balanced game possible, both in its mathematical design and in its economy of Moves. It ensues that all players fit their own niche and have a time in the spotlight and face hard choices, even if they can straight up declare that someone is dead or lead an entire micro-nation.

>Shit, every Dogs in the Vineyard

Again, fuck off. The entire encounter is mathematically focuses and balanced around that escalation.

You sure can run your mouth, Aspel, but it's clear that you barely know anything about how games are designed beyond a surface understanding of CofD and Dungeons and Dragons. You clearly don't even understand where Matt McFarland was coming from when he wrote that essay about game balance. You accepted that more or less verbatim and you couldn't even get that right.

You want to come in here and talk about a game you don't even care about beyond hacking it for your mediocre homebrew and you think you can pontificate in this thread? Don't make me laugh.

>I'm incredibly annoyed that you keep talking about things you clearly don't understand.

Yeah, you keep talking about "understanding", you projecting pseudointellectual.

As everyone can see, once more, by this display, nothing is gained by engaging Aspel the WW Cocksucker.

Just ignore him, everyone's life will be better for it, and maybe if we're all truly lucky, he'll kill himself because no one's paying attention to his retarded jackassery anymore.

>>49794589
Mate, you tried. You gave your best. But fuckface has his heels dug in, and he won't ever stop whining about how much he hates balance, and wanting balance is an affront to the devs. Just ignore him, he gets violently angry about it.

>>49789358
Maybe not a CR system per se, but what most games lack is a quick way to stat monsters based on a general guideline of expected powerlevel. Seeing that CofD has one as of the last corebook makes me hopeful though.

>>49794607
You aren't even giving a compelling argument. You're just bitching about me personally. I don't even think you read my posts, you just make up something that you *think* I might have said. It's not about me hating balance, or thinking it's an affront to the devs. And, no, I don't get "violently angry" at being ignored.

>>49794589
Do you know how XP values work? Also, Power Levels in M&M don't work as a balance rating. In fact, the M&M book outright says that the game is a broken mess and the GM has to keep a close eye on what the party is capable of and what they want to allow in their games.

Yes, Apocalypse World is balanced. But it's balanced narratively (and due to the fact that it has so few actual choices for the characters). It's balanced by making having a micronation be on par with being able to declare someone dead. It's about hard choices and spotlight time. It is not, however, about determining which characters can take which in a fight.

Likewise, Dogs in the Vineyard is based on increasing escalation, and whether or not something is important to the characters. It's not about mechanical balance in the sense of who can take who in a fight. It's a game where threatening to shoot someone can often be more effective than actually shooting them.

I understand quite a few systems. I know more than you, it seems. You've done nothing but go on about how this or that can be done, but you've yet to show me how. You've yet to explain to me what you do in your game to make them balanced. You've really yet to tell me what balance is, other than "a reasonable challenge". You seem to think that characters with more Experience Points are automatically more powerful. I honestly wonder if you've ever played the game.

>>49794589
>You clearly don't even understand where Matt McFarland was coming from when he wrote that essay about game balance. You accepted that more or less verbatim and you couldn't even get that right.
Actually, I've repeatedly pointed out that Matt clearly doesn't understand what Game Balance is. His essay is all about how the wizard and the fighter can belong in the same game and both players can [theoretically] have just as much fun. He thinks that party balance is a myth because you can have fun even if your character is weak. He isn't even talking about the same kind of balance you are to begin with, so it's frankly pointless to bring it up. Where he's wrong, though, is that he doesn't realize that when people talk about "balance" in a party, what they really mean is character agency. The wizard has much more agency when compared to the fighter. The wizard is more meaningful and useful. The fighter can still have fun, but frankly he's just along for the ride.

You can call my homebrew mediocre all you want, but I clearly know the system more than you do. I also know how modern game development works, and what modern games are and aren't capable of. The kind of balance you want really is just a sort of Challenge Rating, but that's not feasible. At best you could get the very very loose SAS challenge rating, but that's vague to the point of useless, and really tells you nothing other than a very very general rule of thumb. Something with Physical ●●● and Physical ●●●● aren't really going to be all that different. It amounts to a "Easy/Medium/Hard" rating, and that's about it. You get more from reading the actual write ups. It does nothing to tell you whether a party could deal with those things, especially when you introduce magical powers where social stats can be used in combat.

I've explained to you the flaws in your logic at every step, but you still haven't been able to explain your position at all. Show me what you do.

>>49794629
You mean the whole Horror Potency level, and the three ranks of Brief Nightmares? Scion will likely have something similar, based off of Legend. But that's hardly a balancing mechanic.

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>>49794671
> Power Levels in M&M don't work as a balance rating.
Stopped reading. You have no idea what you're talking about.

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I think a happy medium between
>>49794629
>a CR system
and
>>49794729
>Horror Potency level

would be nice.

Let's ignore Aspel and discuss what sort of balancing mechanic we WOULD like in Scion, rather than yelling about whether balance is posible (protip: it is)

>>49794730
He's only slightly right, but given the amount of garbage he's vomiting onto the page, it was likely accidental. Still, probably best for all. Just ignore the retard, and the thread will be so much nicer.

>>49794730
Have you fucking played M&M?
Motherfucker I could create a character that can kill everyone in the world while sitting on the Goddamned toilet at PL 10.
There's literally a section in the book that warns the GM that power level is only a rough guideline. That's not even mentioning the parts where you can ignore or bypass PL.

>The power level guidelines built into the rules help ensure Mutants & Masterminds characters of the same power level are at least in the same ballpark in terms of overall effectiveness. Still, there may be times when a particular combination of abilities and effects makes a character too powerful compared to the other heroes or to the villains in your series.
>When this happens, talk to the player and ask him or her to change the character’s traits to something more balanced and better suited to the series. If necessary, explain that the character makes things less fun for everyone as-is and changing the character will make the game better for everyone. Suggest some possible changes to make the character balance out better.

Hell, I even double checked with someone who's got M&M as her favourite system.
Despite what you seem to think, yes, I know what the fuck I'm talking about.

>>49794753
You mean the thing I've been asking for repeatedly?

>>49794766
I'm entirely right. Saying "he's not right" doesn't show how I'm wrong. Jesus Christ, make a cogent argument.

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>>49794791
>You mean the thing I've been asking for repeatedly?
Ugh, no, you've been railing against the existence of any balancing mechanic at all, calling it impossible, and saying that the best the devs can possibly do is literally nothing.

That is both wrong, and contributes nothing.

Go to bed.

>>49794828
You're right. I haven't asked that all. Not in any of these posts.
>>49794060
>And more than that, tell me how you would put that into a mechanic that can be used as a guideline.
>>49793151
>Show me. Prove it.
>>49792647
>But again, I ask: Tell me how YOU would balance things. What guidelines would you suggest to calculate CR?
>>49792020
>Tell me HOW you balance things. Show me. Teach me your ways. What do you do to balance your game, and how do you feel that could be transferred into a rule of thumb for other STs to follow. How do you determine the CR.
>>49791822
>And if the system isn't too hard to balance, then explain it to me. Explain to me how you would balance it.
>>49791731
>Or, again: Tell me how you would do it.
>>49791038
>But that's not even what I asked. You're telling me how to find out the information. I'm asking YOU, how YOU would do it. how would you format it. How would you give information. Should everyone's combat dice pools be tallied up and averaged? How do you ~balance~ an encounter in your games?
>>49789987
>I mean, how would YOU create a balancing system for Scion? How would you determine in guideline format how to stat an encounter that has the right difficulty level?

The best you've given me is "playtest lots". But what will you do with that information. You tell me that YOU, personally, can balance your games. Well, how do you do it?

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>>49794873
>The best you've given me is "playtest lots"
Yes, because that's one of the hard and time consuming hard part about building a game. I can't come up with a balancing system off the top of my head, by myself, in a few minutes, in the middle of the night, on /tg/ for free. Any group of gamers can hobble together a homebrew in a night if nobody is concerned with balance at all. An effective balancing mechanic for a given system is, however, really hard and requires a lot of playtesting. If if were easy it wouldn't be worth $247,689

Yes, I expect OPP, the professional game developers with the well funded kicksarter, to do what I can't do by myself off the cuff at midnight on /tg/ for free.

Imagine that, I expect people to do their job... mind blown.

>>49794936
You told me that you've repeatedly balanced games. You told me that you know how to, you just think that other people might need that help.

You don't want them to do their job. You want them to do something that isn't their job, but that you think should be part of it. That's not how game design works. You want them to completely redefine their entire workflow because you don't understand how games work.

You can't even give me an example of a game that uses the system you want--other than a complete misreading of Mutants and Masterminds that even the book itself says doesn't work. You think that having a bigger pile of XP means the characters are going to be stronger.

I mean, I can tell YOU how *I* 'balance' my "encounters".
It has nothing to do with playtesting--which really wouldn't be useful here in the first place--and more to do with looking at what powers and abilities the players have (and like to use) and then basing the antagonists off of that. If my players have an attack of 6, I'm not going to give them a -7 to attack. If they've only got 6 health, I'm not going to give an antagonist a 5L attack. If I want the players to defeat something easily, I might have it go splat after a single hit, regardless of how hard that hit is. If I want it to be challenging, I may not bother giving it health, and simply read the situation.

There aren't challenge ratings, though. Because it's nearly impossible to figure that out. You can't make reasonable expectations of how many dice someone is going to throw based on how much experience they've got. They could have spent all that research on Driving or Academics. At best, you can look at the player's stats and compare them to the antagonists'. No more, no less.

>>49795001
Oh my god. How fucking dense are you?
>I can tell you how I balance my encounters: ["Just eyeball it"]
The "just eyeball it" system works for veteran GM's within a given system afferr they've gotten a feel for the game by playing and running lots

9/10 tables don't have veteran GM's who can "just eyeball it" so, a well playtested balancing mechanic is a reasonable thing to expect, especially considering this is a brand new system so that number increases to 10/10 for a while.

A crunch-system, that's friendly to GM's who aren't experienced enough to "eyball it" that gets you in the ballpark of an effective encounter, is a hard thing to do. If it were easy, making games wouldn't be a job. However, it's a really important part of the process for most games. On top of that, Scion is a setting where such a system actually makes literal in-setting in-character sense... not metaknowledge, but in-character knowledge. I forgave WW for not having that, because beyond Hero the system didn't function at all to begin with, so there wasn't a baseline to balance against. If they can't do a better job of balancing than Scion1e, then they should find new jobs.

I didn't begrudge FIGHT! for not having an effective system like that, because that was made by a single guy self-publishing. Expecting OPP to provide more than a solo self-publisher is not unreasonable.

>>49792647
How about, pretty simply, just dividing challenges by tier within the modes of play previously mentioned. CRs don't need to be rigid or anything, and I don't think anyone is asking for that - but say... obviously for example Aphrodite is a God Tier Intrigue Threat (nobody really cares about her Mystery or Action Adventure threats, because you aren't likely to use her in that capacity)
MEanwhile, maybe actually say... a Beanan Sidhe is probably something worth dropping an Intrigue and Action Adventure threat rating for - those things will fuck you up (Probably Scion tier Action Adventure, but Origins tier social threat - heroes outdoing Leanan is pretty common)
Now, what this does is specifies that a band of Scions that is specialised in Social stuff will probably be able to deal with a Scion tier Social threat.
Job Done.
(The Wyvern as previously mentioned is probably a High Potency Physical Threat, Mid Potency Social/Mental. You can outwit her quite nicely, and probably talk your way around her too.)
When I balance encounters for my Scion bands in 1e, I tend to track the dice pools of everyone in the group - we tend to have a lot of diversity in encounters and an overall light theme, from dance battles with Sun Wukong to fights with Black Agnes and Selkies. I tend to pitch around just above average dice pools for everyone, skewing up or down depending on whether I want it to be the social/physical/mental PC's time to shine.
That is undeniably a lot of GM legwork though, I don't think anyone is gonna deny that, and I don't always pitch it right (Though the accidental death of a Scion did lead to a fun Orpheus-themed side adventure for a while.)

>>49794729
"Balancing" might not be the right word, or at least it evokes images that are different from what I'm talking about. The key is expected results, at least as a benchmark. "Appropriate opposition for starting characters is around X points", stuff like that. It's something so simple and yet so often overlooked in games, that usually go with "just eyeball it".

An extreme version of this (not that I want anything at this level) is D&D4 monsters - level X means that monsters have X attack and Defense and so on, so you know what to expect. OTOH D&D3 CR is definitely not that, as it's not really indicative of powerlevels if not in a very general sense.
Again, I don't really care for a system as rigid as that, but a general guideline of tiers of opposition would be great.

>>49795105
>. CRs don't need to be rigid or anything, and I don't think anyone is asking for th
If they're going to have a dedicated Bestiary, I feel like
>Beginning Hero
>Intermediate Hero
>Experienced Hero
>Beginning Demigod
>Intermediate Demigod
>Experienced Demigod
>Beginning God
>Intermediate God
>Experienced God

Is not too much to ask. Especially, that way, you can go up or down a tier, and still be reasonably channeling, or go up two steps and make an "oh fuck" scenario.

It's a dedicated gaming book, and I'm not paying for Richard Thomas' fanfiction about monsters.

>>49795118
>An extreme version of this (not that I want anything at this level) is D&D4 monsters - level X means that monsters have X attack and Defense and so on, so you know what to expect. OTOH D&D3 CR is definitely not that, as it's not really indicative of powerlevels if not in a very general sense.
>Again, I don't really care for a system as rigid as that, but a general guideline of tiers of opposition would be great.
People have brought up D&D in this conversation about balance, but it's a really bad example. Of the many MANY iterations of D&D, only 4 of them even tried to have a balancing mechanic (5 if you separate AD&D2e and AD&D2e revised.) Of that 4, at-least two of them are abject failures (3e and 5e) while 4e and AD&D2e succeeded differently (both with the XP budget chassis, but with extremely different implementation and different results.)

>>49795160
It's not a bad example if you take the one that works, no?

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>>49795205
True. The nature of how they're probably going to do XP (probably smaller numbers to emulate WW) means it probably can't literally be an XP budget, but a "Fate Budget" might actually make some sense. Low Hero is worth X Fate Points, Mid Hero is worth Y Fate Points, High Hero is worth Z Fate points. Something in-between is.... well... inbetween. That's where the eyeballing comes in. If Jimmy optimized for combat, and Bob took fluffy but ineffective choices, Jimmy would be worth more Fate Points in an encounter and Bob would be worth fewer. Spend Fate point how you see fit, though the antagonists themselves are broken up by Hero/Demigod/God, because that's a MAJOR division. Finally, 2e and 4e also had one thing in common: they didn't remotely TRY to make PC's and Antagonists built off of the same chassis. They operated differently mechanically, and that's okay, because they're not the protagonists (hell, in Scion, they might MEASURABLY be "not the protagonist.") I like this idea.

>>49795069
You keep acting like OPP should be expected to do things that way, yet that's not how ANY game is done. You essentially want them to do something that's not standard and not how any other developer handles things.
They can only give rough guidelines, like "La Vouivre is likely to give even an experienced cabal a run for their money".
And considering how almost every system relies on "just eyeball it", I really don't see why you're acting like that's so much to ask.

>>49795105
That's likely exactly how it will be handled. You'll have, at best, "things with this Legend rating will have between X and Y Attributes".

>>49795118
The problem is that there's no way to have anything like that in any game but D&D, because no other game is as standardized. Having a bunch of Experience Points doesn't really gauge your competency in specific fields like combat, it's just your overall competency, and how much you've been playing.
The way systems like Scion differ from D&D is also that you can't be expected to face something with only your character sheet. You can call in back up, you can trick the enemies, you can talk them down. It's not a matter of punch-punch-dodge-punch encounters.

>>49795139
"Experienced" means nothing. Again, at best you'll have Legend ratings or the general tier. You're not going to get a rating scale of difficulty, because that's not how this system works. It doesn't facilitate that.
>I'm not paying for Richard Thomas' fanfiction about monsters.
Yes you are. Is all you're going to do in this thread bitch about how it's not what you want?

>>49795160
Actually, I'm hearing that AD&D and 5e are the only ones where CR actually worked. Though I think 4e's works.
The problem with saying "no, D&D is a bad example" is that it's literally the only example.

>>49795300
They are not at all going to do anything even remotely like that. That is exactly the kind of thing I keep explaining is not possible within this system.

>>49795325
>Actually, I'm hearing that AD&D and 5e
AD&D doesn't even try. AD&D 2e tries, and succeeds relative to the time-period in game design. 5e... fails... horribly. They even have an entire disclaimer basically explaining how their CR system doesn't work at all, and why that's a good thing, because balance is a fallacy. You'd love it. It's one of my biggest grievances with 5e, but this is not the thread for that.

>>49795348
>You'd love it.
Grow the fuck up.
Unless you can tell me why balance is great and how balance works and what it is, just stop. Just... stop. Period. Unless you can make a cogent argument, I don't want to hear your aimless whining that everyone who makes these games is wrong and you totally know best.

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>>49795325
>Having a bunch of Experience Points doesn't really gauge your competency in specific fields like combat, it's just your overall competency,
If you make every purview have combat utility, it actually kind-of does... you know... like how 1e gave every epic-attribute combat utility: that's actually one element of balance that 1e succeeded
>>49795325
>The way systems like Scion differ from D&D
at.... You can call in back up, you can trick the enemies, you can talk them down.
Literally nothing is stoping you from doing that in any game, even D&D. That is a function of your GM, and has nothing to do with the system, and is therefore not worth paying the OPP any money for.

>>49795337
>They are not at all going to do anything even remotely like that. That is exactly the kind of thing I keep explaining is not possible within this system.
It sounds perfectly possible to me. Maybe you're just stupid.

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>>49795359
>Unless you can tell me why balance is great and how balance works and what it is, just stop.
That is the most autistic thing I've read in this thread yet. WOW.

>>49795395
>I need mathematically certain ratings to determine what is or isn't an appropriate challenge for my group, and anything less than that leaves me panicky and uncomfortable
>But *I'M* not the autistic one!

>>49795359
>whining that everyone who makes these games is wrong and you totally know best.
Actually, most games that have even the slightest combat focus, and aren't made by either white-wolf or someone self-publishing DO have guidelines for balancing combat... some are better at this than others, but they almost all have them. It's like you've only played D&D and WW, and you've equated WW with "everything else."

>>49795431

No, you see D&D is only combat and WW games put us about those combat plebs so we don't need rules for balancing things for such pathetic sorts of characters!

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>>49795359
>why balance is great
Most tables want to fight in combat encounters that are challenging but winable, at-least sometimes.
>how balance works
You have a system or set of playtested guidelines, that even an inexperienced GM can use, to quickly create an encounter that is challenging but winable on the fly
>what it is
Challenges that are challenging but winable.

Understanding "what is balance" is not rocket science. Making a working system for a given system is hard, but knowing what balance even is is not.

>>49795381
Being called retarded by someone who clearly doesn't understand things is pretty fucking annoying, I gotta say.

You want the game to be something that it's not, though. And it's never going to be that thing you want. You're just going to have to get use to it. All of us ~expert STs~ will just get by without needing detailed guidelines for determining what the party can deal with, the same as we do in every other game.

Maybe we can ask the playtest anon how well they've been faring without these guidelines you propose.

>>49795431
Give me examples. Closest that's been said in this thread is Mutants & Mastermind's PL system, which is nothing more than a rule of thumb at best, and meaningless at worst. Anyone who's ever played that system knows that it's unbalanced and requires a group that isn't looking to break the system.

I've played several games that weren't D&D or White Wolf, yet none of them have had any sort of challenge rating system to determine what a party could or couldn't handle.

>>49795455
Stop assuming this is about White Wolf versus D&D. Most modern games don't have 'balance' the way that you're talking about.

>>49795463
>Most modern games don't have 'balance' the way that you're talking about.

Such as? I can't think of a single game that has nothing for GMs about 'How to balance stuff for players'

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>>49795461
>Wants a game about divine adventurers fighting titanspawn and manipulated by fate to fight difficult and overcomable odds to have guidelines for creating difficult but overcomable odds in fights
>>49795463
>You want the game to be something that it's not,

>>49795483
You want the mechanics of the game to be simple enough to boil down to challenge ratings.
I'm talking about the mechanical systems. Stop acting like the narrative conceit justifies what you're asking for. It doesn't.
Because frankly what you're asking for is advice so simple that I'm honestly stunned at how stupid it is. I've been sitting here for five minutes now unsure of how to respond to >>49795461 with anything other than "are you sure you're fit to run a game?" or something similar. I literally question your competence at basic Storytelling. Storyguiding, I guess.

>>49795481
Then you won't have trouble finding me an example of a system with a "balancing mechanic".
I know plenty of games that essentially give advice on how to wing it, and good rule of thumbs for not overwhelming players, but that's about it. Hell, here's what M&M has to say:

>UNBALANCED HEROES
>The power level guidelines built into the rules help ensure Mutants & Masterminds characters of the same power level are at least in the same ballpark in terms of overall effectiveness. Still, there may be times when a particular combination of abilities and effects makes a character too powerful compared to the other heroes or to the villains in your series.

And later
>SAYING NO TO YOUR PLAYERS
>Note that the GM has the authority to say “no” to a particular power effect or other trait, even if it is perfectly “legal” in terms of the game rules and the power level of the series. It’s virtually impossible to present a “one-size-fits-all” system of game balancing characters as diverse as comic book heroes without heavily limiting potential concepts, so Mutants & Masterminds goes the route of presenting a wide range of available power effects (omitting some real game-breakers). The GM can—and should—choose to limit others on a case-by-case basis, as best suits the needs of the game.
This is the game that was listed earlier as an example of one with a "balancing mechanic".

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>>49795463
>Give me examples
Off the top of my head?

Power Level in FIGHT! (It's not great, but it's great considering it was self-published by one guy)

4e XP Budget

Pic-Related in SR4

Power Level in M&M (Honestly, as long as you dissalow anything that's OBVIOUSLY exploitative of the RAI, it works great.)

The Escalation in Dogs in The Vineyard has been discussed already

The Jobber/Low-carder/Mid-Carder/Upper-Mid-Carder/Main-Event tiers in World-Wide-Wrestling

>>49795529

Through the Breach has ratings for NPCs too for helping them build encounters. Peon, Minion, Enforcer, Henchman, Master.

IKRPG has encounter budgets to help balance them.

>>49795510
>challenge ratings.
Oh my god, you keep caying CR or Challenge Rating. Neither of the systems that use that work. The only two instances of D&D having a working balancing mechanic were both XP budgets that you spent on an encounter. CR never worked.

>I literally question your competence at basic Storytelling.
And I severely question your ability to run a competent game that has any combat in it whatsoever.

>>49793347
That its time for some fucking bibimbap and fry bread?

>>49795529
None of those are balancing factors, though. You're just listing off XP charts. You might as well say that Level is a balancing factor. At this point you're giving me nonsense and telling me it's exactly what you want... but it's also what White Wolf games already have.

Creating an NPC with the same XP as the players doesn't tell you how well the players will be able to beat that character, or even how challenging they'll be.

>>49795558
>Oh my god, you keep caying CR or Challenge Rating
You want a rating that determines how much of a challenge something will be, don't you? What the fuck else would you call that?

>And I severely question your ability to run a competent game that has any combat in it whatsoever.
Well, I'll admit I'm out of practice, but considering every time it's come up my players seemed pretty satisfied and I've got them begging me to come out of retirement even though some of them are better STs than I am...
I'd say I'm pretty good. Hell, I've got people who don't like me telling me that I was pretty good at the whole thing.
If there's one thing I'm confident in, it's my ability to make scenes in a roleplaying game interesting.

>>49795604
>but it's also what White Wolf games already have.
>Creating an NPC with the same XP as the players...
>>49795461
>You have a system or set of playtested guidelines, that even an inexperienced GM can use, to quickly create an encounter that is challenging but winable on the fly
>quickly create an encounter
>quickly

Fail

So I guess I maybe went to bed a bit early last night and missed the arguing. Playtest anon here to summarize from my phone at work as best I can how enemies work. Though I could have sworn this shit was in the preview doc.

Enemies have three dice pools for primary, secondary, and tertiary actions. You don't give them an explicit slill list, you write in actions they use each pool for. This covers social to mental to physical. Like a villain could ise his primary pool for romance and sword fighting if he's some kind of a Casanova figure.

Enemies are tiered so you get mooks, professionals, and villains who have increasing capabilities in both larger primary and secondary dice pools and how nasty of tack on knacks and powers you want to give.

So it is in fact a system where balance for fighting exists in an easily identifiable system with both tiers of the game ( hero vs origins) and tiers of adversary and does allow for quick GM adversary construction. However a bestiary will help out by having more toys to play with that you don't need to assemble on your own.

While there isn't anything like the slap on number system of CR it does make for gauging enemy threat, both physically or socially depending on the avenue you're likely to challenge them, pretty easy. Any questions or clarifications? Sorry for how rough this is, typing on phone is pretty rough for this long

>>49795679
Not everything I'd hoped for, but not everything I'd feared.

It has definitive tiers of power, scaling guidelines, and they don't try to make challenges use the same chassis as PC's, both of which are big improvements upon. Those are all three very good things that I can be sort of satisfied with. Though, if that's the antagonist system, what's going to be in the bestiary... Richard Thomas' shitty fanfiction about monsters?

Cautious yes on the antagonist system

Subsequent pass on the Bestiary

Bittersweet ultimately

>>49795642
Then none of what's listed >>49795529 counts.
Creating a Shadowrun or M&M character sure as fuck isn't quick. I'm also not sure how Escalation counts.

As far as I'm aware, most of those games have sample characters to use as antagonists and don't at all bother to list them by how much XP they were made with.

>>49795723
The Bestiary is likely to be more defined monsters with full character sheets. Stop calling it "Richard Thomas' shitty fanfiction about monsters".
Look at the Night Horrors line from WoD. That's what you can expect. Or maybe the Antagonists book from early nWoD.

>>49795766
>Creating a Shadowrun or M&M character sure as fuck isn't quick.
That's true for shadowrun, yes. That is in-fact a major problem with shadowrun. However you can EASILLY create a M&M character based on power-levels if you only concern yourself with the outward stats, and not the inner crunch. Just pick the powerlevel of the villian, max out each paired-derived-value how you want, pick a couple powers, and max them out. A power-level or two above the party for a boss, power-level around the party for team fights, and a powerlevel lower for mooks. It can actually be done in the time it takes a party to get into an unintended fight seamlessly. I know, I've done it. If it weren't for the power-level guidelines, the game would have to stop for a few minutes while the encounter is created.
>The Bestiary is likely to be more defined monsters with full character sheets.
Soo... a worse system than the one described by>>49795679 no thank you. Literally every system I've seen try to build antagonists and PC's on the same mechanical "sheet" has failed at balancing. PC's and antagonists should not work on the same chassis.

>>49795797
>Literally every system I've seen try to build antagonists and PC's on the same mechanical "sheet" has failed at balancing. PC's and antagonists should not work on the same chassis.
You literally just listed M&M and Shadowrun. There's also World of Darkness and Chronicles of Darkness. And GURPS.
More systems have NPCs statted the same way as PCs than otherwise. I've never had "balance" issues with any of them.

>>49795797
Have you ever actually played Mutants & Masterminds?

>>49795823
>You literally just listed M&M and Shadowrun.
Honestly, Shadowrun did indeed fail. At-least they tried though.

I literally just described how the Power-level system allows you to 100% forgo building the extranious inner-crunch of a character and skipp RIGHT to the outer-crunch. It takes seconds, and it's a great system.

>>49795766
>The Bestiary is likely to be more defined monsters with full character sheets
Nah, that's not how the enemy system works. They're meant to be simpler for the gm to manage than full sheets. Even enemy scions you could either choose to build like a pc or use the antagonist rules since antagonists can get knacks and use boons too but you just have the three dice pools to worry about.

The bestiary will likely be a bunch of just premade antagonists and information about how you're likely to interact with them, where to find, etc. Simpler antagonist rules or not, having stuff already made for you is one less weight as a GM

>>49795844
In the corebook, sure, but that's how it is in CofD as well. The corebook has super simplified sheets, the actual game books have more detailed ones. I don't doubt that it'll be similar in Scion.

I mean, like I said, I expect it to basically be a mythological Night Horrors book.

>>49795833
You honestly don't seem to know anything about M&M.

>>49795874
>I mean, like I said, I expect it to basically be a mythological Night Horrors book.
That would be a travesty and a waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

>>49795896
>A Bestiary that lists a bunch of monsters and gives detailed descriptions about their personality, habits, how they might come into a chronicle, and several plot hooks as well as detailed character sheets explaining their special abilities would be a travesty and a waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars
???

>>49795874
>You honestly don't seem to know anything about M&M.
Do you not understand how the power-level system works. It has a clear set of value-pairs that add up to a maximum value. Easy template

Dodgyness(Parry and Dodge)
Toughness
Pick any two values that add up to the max

Attack 1
Accuracy
Effect
Pick an SFX, and any two values that add up to the max. Maybe make it multi-target if you're feeling frisky.

Attack 2... do the same thing

Default for Skills: Half-Max
Skill Relevant To Villian Gimmick: Max
Skill that's a specific weakness: Quarter Max

Fort
Will
Pick any two values that add up to X


Done

Unless you can't add and subtract, this takes seconds.

>>49795919
I'm very sorry for your group that they have a GM like you. You're so obsessed with balance that you have to be boring.

>>49795993
I feel sorry for your group that you don't know how to make things simultaneously interesting and balanced. They are not at all mutually exclusive.

>>49796054
But >>49795919 is not interesting, and is only balanced in the loosest and most purely mechanical sense of the concept.
It doesn't present a challenge.

>>49796119
If it doesn't present a challenge, pick different SFX for the attacks, raise the antagonist PL, increase the number of antagonists, give an assumed variable power where it can slide the attack within a min/max effect (and the corresponding assumed max,) increase the number, change the maxed-out non-attack powers selected. All within the possibility of

This is literally no different than building a character normally, except the villian only has the stats that are likely to interact with the PC's. This is a goof thing

If you can only have fun in an encounter that isn't balanced, than just randomly make shit up with absolutely no balance in mind, TPK every other session, squash match that the party has no challenge every other session, and occasionally, very rarely, when the fates align, they have an encounter that's both challenging and not immediately instantly fatal? Not that they'll care because people generally aren't invested in theri 7th character in three months. Personally, I find that having a baseline from which to deviate increases the GM's ability to present an entertaining challenge that doesn't end the game, and thus the fun.

>>49796182
Or I can make enemies like a competent GM.

>>49796242
>spends hours planning his encounters out before the session, assuming the pc's will follow his railroad
Have you never actually played a real game, or do you just shove your railroad down your player's throat and assume they love you for it.

Protip: they don't.

>>49796242
You know what. I'm sorry I resorted to name calling. I still vehemently disagree with your philosophy on GMing and Game Design, and hope the devs don't listen to any of your suggestions, but name calling should be beneath us

>>49797353
civility has doomed this thread to obscurity!

>>49791891
It's an annoying cunt is what it is.

>>49793347
Making caucasian Scions of any but the traditionally "white" pantheons (Celtic, Greco-Roman, Norse, Slavic) is Cultural Appropriation and a big No-No, Scions of non-caucasian ethnicities can otherwise belong to any pantheon just fine. At least I think that was supposed to be the general gist of it.

>>49799061

I just want to play a Scion of Odin tasked by dad to beat up the skinheads who keep appropriating his imagery.

Maybe even make them trans to tie into the whole "seidr is girl magic" thing and to really rile up the neo-Nazi crowd.

>>49799135

That you Atamajakki?

>>49799454
>transgender character mad at neo-Nazis

Yeah, it's me alright.

Relics got an upgrade, and there's another story in the Anthology

>>49799454
>transgender character, period

On this board that means either Atamajakki or Aspel.

>>49799695
And after that the process goes something like: Did the post make the poster come of as an insufferable cunt? If no: 'jakki. If yes: Aspel.

>Relics preview goes up
>they call him Osiris instead of Azar
>this on top of Hathor being merged with Aset/Isis and Sekhmet being merged with Bast(et)

I'm growing increasingly miffed with the treatment of the Netjer.

>>49799815
He was Osiris in 1e. He's Osiris to just about everyone who would be reading this thing. Isn't Azar literally something they made up for Mummy anyway? Like, googling that doesn't even turn it up as an option under the disambiguation page on wikipedia. As far as I can tell it is a given name for some and a month of the Iranian calendar.

>Irish Muscle Car
>Ford Mustang, Dodge Charger
>Irish
Fuckers appropriating our culture!

>>49799061
Appropriation is an invented, meaningless term. It doesn't exist and the very idea is an insult to anyone with a basic understanding of cultural anthropology.

>>49800150
From the playtest, I can tell you the real winner example relic is the iGjaller. There's rules for how to design relics too, but I had to start telling people they can't all just reskin the fucking smartphone, do some different shit just so we can try all the system has to offer.

I mean, guaranteed phone reception anywhere on or off earth is pretty amazingly useful but come on people

>>49800291
But unless two people have them isn't it basically useless for anything other than sending tweets from Hell? Also adding 'i' before anything is a good way to get sued by Apple.

>>49799954

I've seen Asar, Azar, Wesir, and Uesir all get used.

Neall said they'll switch it anyway, so the point is moot.

>>49799954

Azar is an alternate spelling of Asuir, which is another name for Osiris. Asuar is another alternate spelling.

>>49800396

Dang, really? I just figured they were going to keep him Osiris since that's the most recognizable name.

>>49800437

Why would they call an Egyptian god a Greek name, especially in a world where their worship never went away? You don't see a text of Alexander the Great call him Iskender all the time just because the Persians messed his name up.

>>49800327
The phone can connect you to a an old phone found in the garbage or a severed landline.

Though you're right, can't call the iGjaller from one of those examples. I caved and did allow two instances of it in. The Greek one is now the open source Hermes system because Android joke, something.

I wonder if sphinxes are in?

>>49801279
I can't see them not being in some book or another. If not the core, the bestiary. If not that, demigod. The Sphinx is iconic

>>49800197
What *isn't* an invented term? I don't see how a basic understanding of cultural anthropology means you'd be insulted by the notion of not taking religious iconography and using it in offensive ways.

>>49800565
>Why would they call an Egyptian god a Greek name
Because that's what people know him as. Same reason it's Hercules instead of Herakles.

>>49801908

The word "bark". It turns out that's the real, actual word for the sound dogs make, and all other culture's words for it are only corruptions of the Platonic perfection of "back". This was probably caused by the Tower of Babel.

You may be disturbed by this, but you'll have to live with it. I don't make the rules.

>>49802000
What?
Anon, have you been hitting the sauce again?

>>49802000

This is a very Unknown Armies post.

>>49802284

There are words that exist in every language that were not mere social inventions, but both the actual idea of the thing as well as the thing itself. These words are sprinkled through out every language, both living and dead, with all other similar words being imperfect copies.

"Bark" is only one of them. "Nakama", for example, is the only actual, true word for "friend". That's why you'll often find it untranslated in fansubs: its presence in them is part of an elaborate attempt to sift every possible True Word that the Japanese language may have. There's usually only one word per language, though. We'll never know what'll happen if you manage to assemble all the True Words together, since there's so many dead languages.

>>49802492
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6oIEr06CSo

File: game night 5.jpg (78KB, 700x557px)

78KB, 700x557px

>>49799135
I feel like the general concept of "god wants their Scion to do something about their wacko pop-culture image" is really rich for fun character concepts.
>Scion of Hades who's really tired of Disney
>Scion of Anubis tasked with curbing furry subculture
>Scion of Lugh who wants to work for Square Enix so he can get them to stop portraying Cu Chulainn as a disgusting disease god

>>49803187

I doubt Anpu is too mad about furries giving him constant worship and effigies. Plus any Netjer are bound to get animal heads themselves.

>>49803229
If they were actually worshiping him, instead of just drawing him shitting in diapers, then sure.

>>49803356

It's mostly just him fucking their fursonas.

And the Scion Kickstarter hit 1000%. Shame I'm too broke to get on it myself.

ONE THOUSAND PERCENT!!!

>>49787370
Well, until the kickstarter is over. After that its still like half a year till pdfs come out

>>49789045
>and it specifically has a sense of fair-play.
Well I agree with the idea of a bestiary, this isn't exactly right. There are plenty of examples in mythology where certain people just got paired up with threats that completely and utterly outclassed them and just got fucked because thats how the dice fell

If I'm descended from the theoi am I expected to fuck cute boys or can I opt out of that bit of Greek culture?

>>49804768
>Not wanting to fuck cute boys

What are you, gay?

So wait, the bestiary is only for people with books in their reward, not just pdf's?

So I just need to throw 20$ to get every pdf?

>>49806015
Every meaning two, but yeah.

>>49806254
>To start, at $45,000, we'll kick off the Scion Companion PDF with the Loa Pantheon. Backers who pledge for any reward tier including PDFs of Origin or Hero will receive this PDF.
But this means I will get the Companion pdf too

>>49806337
Oh and the bestiary too right?

>>49806370
>At $245,000 we will start the Scion Bestiary with a section on Giants! Backers who pledge for any reward tier including physical copies of Scion: Origin or Scion: Hero will receive this as a PDF.
Well no, need to get the dead tree tier
But who cares I will get them elsewhere, not gonna spend too much after Exalted 3E fiasco

>>49806421
For what its worth, this game seems much more done than Exalted was at the same time.

Expanded relics segment will probably be funded tomorrow sometime