Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Composure, Resolve, Reflexes

(at the Scion Forums) kagetora0 wrote:
In my gaming group, we have decided to experiment with two things: using the nWoD stats (Basically, nixing Appearance and Perception, and adding Composure and Resolve, as social and mental 'resistance' stats) and then using those stats to make a social and mental "DV"
...
The main trouble we've run into is knacks. It's been a challenge to come up with a variety of knacks for Epic Resolve and Epic Composure; and equally a challenge to slide the old Appearance and Perception knacks in again.
Another option would be to go for a 12-stat system instead of 9-stat.

You'd keep Appearance and Perception, but still add Composure and Resolve.

For the 12th Stat, you could add "Reflexes". Reflexes is about reaction time, speed, and gross/full-body movement. Dexterity would remain the stat of precision and accuracy.

In this way, you'd break up attack pools and DV to be based upon two different stats. This would allow for more variety amongst PCs as well as making it easier for the GM to craft antagonists that were hard to hit or good at hitting, but not necessarily both. This could solve a lot of Scion's problems.

Of course, it would have other impact, and you'd need to make some other tangential rulings to support it:

  1. At character creation, you'd get 10/8/5 (Or maybe even 11/8/6) points for Attributes.
  2. At template/upgrade you'd get 6/4/3
  3. Possibly raise the standard per-session XP award by 1 since your points have to go a little further to shore up all your weaknesses.
  4. You'd still need plenty more knacks for Composure and Resolve, plus a couple extra for Dexterity and Reflexes (assuming the original Dex knacks were now split between them)
  5. Numerous boons would need their dice pools altered to make the new stats worthwhile
  6. I'd be tempted to base starting Willpower off Highest Virtue + (Average of Composure and Resolve)

I kinda like that. I think it would solve a lot of the systemic flaws of Scion. Unfortunately, it's too sweeping a change to implement to my campaign at this stage.

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