Bitching about Scion

I'm in a mood. Where to start?

• Turns out the system "they stole from me" wasn't nearly as stolen as I thought. :) I missed one really important thing they changed from my old Improvised Weapon System: the Damage calculation.
  Damage went downhill, pretty seriously. Big skyscrapers are now (at best) +13 dice. Smacking someone with an entire Armored Personel Carrier now does less damage than a mundane axe. A 3,500 lb dumpster full of garbage dropped from +4 autosuccesses (and a bonus die) to being merely +3 dice. Across the board, the damage bonus on everything dropped by at least half, and in some cases down to a 1/3 what I'd had it at.
  This is worth mentioning, since by far the most common complaint my system ever got was "things don't do enough damage" - the new official version of the system actually amplifies that flaw. At the risk of sounding a bit pompous, my system is better.
  
  
  
• Scion: Ragnarok released today. Turns out the fixed version of Jotunblut they'd promised us isn't better. The problems with Jotunblut were that it was narrow, underpowered, and had no real basis in any of the norse myths. I'm told they only addressed the underpowered part, and made it stronger only if you also have corresponding boons in the Animal Purview. Perhaps I'm being hasty, since I haven't read it myself yet, but it sounds like a big failure. Sidhe16's alternate version is much better. Unless I hear something wonderful about some other portion of the Ragnarok book, I'll be passing.
  
  
  
• White Wolf just announced they're getting replacing their forums, and all the old threads will be going away. If there's anything there you'd like to keep, copy it to your computer before March 1st. Man, if only I'd heard about this during National Threaten To Stop Posting Week, then I could have threatened my little heart out. The fact that my threads, posts, and username will all be deleted from their site might just be enough to stop me from compulsively checking their forums every couple of days. I mean, my campaign wrapped up months ago, why do I keep putting myself through this..?
  Answer: 'Cause there's some cool people there, and I love gaming, and the core concepts of Scion are pretty nifty even if half the mechanics blow.
  

Pleasantly Surprised

The fourth section of the Scion Companion released yesterday. (I think. I noticed and downloaded it at like 2 am.)

Flipping through it, I was quite pleasantly surprised to see my own words in it. My Improvised Weapon System is in there. It's not likely to be a matter of independent parallel invention, like Terrible As The Dawn / Visage Great And Terrible was. I can say that because the system presented there uses the exact same categories, names, and nearly exactly the same stats as my system.

I put that system on the Scion Wiki, and the Scion Forums, because I intend it for other's use. I'm quite pleased and thrilled and honored that they chose to use it. It's work based on their game, and they absolutely have every right to use it.

How neat. I'm on cloud nine.

Ultimate Mass

I was about to provide someone on the forum with a link to James McMurray's big ol' Scion mass chart, when I realized it had an error.

Epic Strength 1 gives +500 lbs lifting capacity. The 2nd and 3rd dots double that. The 4th to 7th dots Quintuple the bonus at each level. The 8th to 10th dots multiply the total of the previous dot by 10.

It would appear the chart at James's site (which I and formorach69 helped create) didn't take that last transition into account. The chart was made before any of us were playing God-level PCs, and may have been made before the God book was published (I don't remember). Whatever the timing, the chart seems to progress levels 8 through 10 at the same x5 multiplier of levels 4 to 7. As a result, it lists the Empire State Building as Mass 11, when it's actually Mass 10. Military Tugboats should be adjusted to Mass 8. The entries for Loaded Freighter, Cruiser, and Large Bridge should all be downgraded to Mass 9.

I'm gonna try to contact James McMurray and get it fixed. He's not currently active on the Scion forum, so I might not be able to get it changed. Update: I got in touch with him, and he updated/fixed the page linked above.

Nukes in Scion

...should do about 50 dice of damage.

Arthur3535 at the forums eyeballed it at 50 levels, and then I did some math to confirm that he was in the right ball park.

Here's some math and notes that lead to that conclusion:

4184 terajoules in 1 megaton explosion

W = F x D

W is foot-pounds. F is force (in pounds). D is distance (in feet).

1 horsepower = 550 foot pounds

1 joule = 0.737562149277 ft·lb

1,000,000,000,000 joules = 1 terajoule

1 terajoule = 737,562,149,277 ft lbs

Epic Strength 11 can lift 1,250,000,000 pounds
and throw 125,000,000 pounds a distance equal to (Str+Ath) in yards
that distance is probably 11+5+46 = 62 yds = 186 feet

125,000,000 x 186 = 23250000000 foot-pounds of energy



0.737562149277 x 23250000000 = 17,148,319,970.69 joules
which is 0.017148319971 terajoules

that's without knacks, but obviously anyone with Epic Strength 10 is going to have a few knacks. Hurl to the moon allows you to throw that same mass as far as you can throw a dart before penalties set in. that's 30 feet times 5,000,000 from epic strength. 150,000,000 feet!

125,000,000 x 150,000,000 = 1.875e+16 foot pounds
1.875e+16 mean 18,750,000,000,000,000

0.737562149277 x 1.875e+16 = 1.38292903e+16 joules
1.38292903e+16 means 13829290300000000
which is 13,829.290298944 terajoules

13,829.290298944 divided by 4,184 is the energy equivalent of 3.3 megatons

The most powerful nuclear weapon in US service is 1.2 megatons.

The God of Strength would do around 13 dice + 46 successes with his bare hands, or as high as 26 dice + 46 successes with a by-the-books relic labrys. (And my improvised weapon system would rate the hurl-to-the-moon attack above at 11 dice + 56 successes). He does more damage than the nuke to a single target, which makes sense since his attacks could have 3.3 megatons of energy. But he doesn't have the multi-mile undodgable blast radius the nuke would presumably have.

Cool.

Here's some other things I wrote on the forums in the process of convincing myself that 50 dice is the way to go.

I'd suggest starting with Nukes. Figure out how much damage you want a nuke to do in the system, then reverse engineer everything less by plotting where it falls on the rifle to nuke scale.

In another thread, Arthur suggested 50 levels for nukes, which sounds pretty good. According to the list on page 201 of Scion, only stone walls and blast doors would survive that, and the former would have holes blown in it big enough for humans to walk through.

Epic Stamina 7 would guarantee survival... from the first blast. And as a fun bonus, anyone with Epic Strength 9+ would be able to claim they punch with the force of a nuclear device. That'd be flavorful.

Since damage dice become levels against inanimate objects, you could probably just make the nuke be an undodgable 50 dice of lethal with the penetrating tag. That'd be more than enough to fry humans - it'd be pretty rare that 50 dice doesn't turn up the 10 successes needed to kill a non-extra in riot gear. At the same time, it'd allow PCs a chance to survive as far down the power-scale as Legend 6 or so. Making it dice would seriously downgrade the killing power in regards to Gods and Titans, but it'd still be an effective weapon against the titanspawn army depicted in the wicked illustration on page 156 of Demigod.

By Legend 5 or 6, the PCs have the Epic Manipulation to get themselves an A-bomb, or the Epic Intelligence to build their own, or the Epic Physicals to rob a bank to pay off some terrorists...etc. You can't keep the PCs away from it if they want it. Sure, they probably won't want to start nuking the earth, but, they might not think twice about dirty-bombing Helheim or dropping some Atomic Depth Charges into the Drowned Road.

That's why I vote to keep Nukes in the range where a stamina-heavy god (or god-level antagonist) is almost certain to survive it.

Otherwise, the aforementioned deadman's switch starts looking like the optimal in-game tactic, and that's not the game i want to run.

and here's the explanation of the deadman's switch comment:

Or imagine a God carrying a briefcase nuke with a deadman's switch on a 1-second delay. You take a guard action till your target takes any 3 to 5 tick action, then interrupt yourself to spend 1 tick dissolving your physical form. When the bomb goes off, you're safely immaterial, but the target's still waiting a tick or two before they can react. Ugly.

Scion Throwing Rules

Helpful stuff I wrote at the Scion Forums. I'm duplicating it here so when it inevitably comes up again, I can cut and paste.

Scion Forum FAQ wrote:
Q: How far can I throw things? Where are the throwing rules?

A: The throwing rules are most clearly stated in Demigod, page 54.

Other information relevant to throwing can be found in Hero, pages 126-127, page 181, and page 203.

Here's a more specific question:

PapillonV wrote:
So, a Scion has Strength 4, Epic Strength 2, and Athletics 2. He's throwing a baseball across a field. He doesn't have anything like Hurl to the Horizon yet.

Ignoring Str+Athletics rolls and the like, what's the base distance he can chuck it, and how's it calculated?

IMHO, the furthest he can throw the baseball is 160 yards.

Here's how I arrived at that number:

A baseball is something just about any mortal can throw with one hand, so definitely this Scion can, too. That means it's normal range will be modified by his Epic Strength. Per page 126 of Hero, it's normal range is quadrupled.

But what is it's normal range? That's not clearly spelled out anywhere. We can compare it to thrown weapons, to get a place to start. All the thrown weapons have a range increment of 10 or 15 yards. I'd suggest going with 10, but that's really up to the GM.

But that 10 isn't it's maximum range. According to page 203 of Hero, even a mortal can throw it (or any 10-yard range weapon) up to 20 yards at +2 to difficulty, or 40 yards at +4 difficulty.

So the scion, with his Epic Strength, can throw the baseball 40 yards at normal difficulty, up to 80 yards at +2 difficulty, up to 160 yards at +4 difficulty.

Quote:
Say the same Scion then wants to throw the oft-cited manhole cover (he stole one on the way to the field just to practice). How's it calculated then?

He probably throws the manhole cover about the same distance, but it's technically up to the GM. Here's what makes the area somewhat grey...

Well, first we need to know if its a "normal throw" or a "feat of strength" throw. Demigod page 54 indicates he can the former category is things he could hold in one hand without his epic strength, the later category is things he needs his epic strength to hold.

He's got Str 4, Ath 2, so that totals to 6. We look up 6 on the chart on page 181 to see that this lets him lift 550 pounds, presumably using both hands. Sadly, no where do the rules exactly state how much one hand can hold. But since the manhole cover weighs around 1/3 his lift capacity, we can probably assume it's a one-hand item for him.

Since it's a one-hand item, we use the same math as a baseball. Therefore, "officially" it's the same 40/80/160 yards.

Ultimately though, it's the GMs call. I'd be tempted to trim it's range a bit, just 'cause it weighs more and really isn't designed for throwing. In fact, I'd give it a range of 5 yards, which he quadruples to 20 due to epic strength. He can toss it to 40 at +2 diff, or 80 at +4 difficulty.

________________________________________________

But, I'm not sure that's enough of an answer, so here's the extra credit. Let's talk about something he can't throw with one hand, something a bit bigger, like a motorcycle.

He can throw a motorcycle 8 yards.

Demigod says he can throw "as a feat of strength" anything he can lift if his Mundane Strength + Athletics total were 5 lower, or if his Epic Strength total were 1 lower. Most of the time, you can just forget the first part. The Epic is what's going to matter, unless the PC has 1 or 0 dots of Epic, or has just frankly tons of Arete: Athletics.

For example, by the Mundane system, he can throw (as a feat of strength) things of up to 40 pounds (since Str+Ath-5=1), but by the Epic system, he can throw things of up to 500 lbs (the amount of bonus that 1 dot of Epic strength adds to your lift total). Epic's just a heck of a lot better.

So, we decide he can throw the motorcycle. But how far?

The answer is on Demigod page 54, but the formula is never stated explicitly. From the example, we can conclude the formula is Mundane Strength + Athletics + Epic Strength Successes in yards.
In his case, that's 4+2+2=8

There's no range "increments" for feat of strength throwing. There's no penalty at up to 8 yards, and he just can't throw it further than 8 yards. (Unless he stunts. Stunt dice and other bonus dice add to the formula, so a 3-die stunt would let him throw a motorcycle 11 yards. There's still no range penalty for that.)

Brains Over Brawn - Wits Knack

This has been back-burnered for a long time. It's a knack idea aimed at boosting Mental-focused Scion PCs more helpful in combat. The idea has been that I wanted some way for lots of Perception, Intelligence or Wits to be as useful as lots of Strength or Dex. The problem has been that doing so always undermined the importance of those physical stats. However, I figured out a way finally for cleverness to be devastating about once per fight scene without it outperforming Physicals on every attack.

Brains Over Brawn - Wits Knack - No Prerequisites

Your quick thinking and clever stratagems make you a deadly force in battle. You find clever ways to use scenery and situation against your enemies, or to exploit their weaknesses.

When stunting on an attack or damage roll, you may spend a Willpower to use any Mental Attribute (and the corresponding Epic Attribute) in place of Dexterity or Strength. Which Mental Attribute to use is your choice, though it should make at least some sense to the situation. For two-die and three-die stunts, if you spend a Legend as well, you can use a different Mental Attribute (and corresponding Epic) in place of the other Physical Attribute.

Example: Fred, Scion of Thoth, is facing a vampire. His stunt involves impaling the villain on a wooden fence. For a willpower, he could use Intelligence (instead of Dex) on the attack roll to lure it into position. Alternately, he could justify using Perception (instead of Strength) on the damage roll because he lined up the shot with the vampire's heart. If he spent both a Willpower and a Legend, he could do both.

In most circumstances, you may only do this once per scene. Having fallen victim to your clever traps (or having watched their comrades or henchmen fall victim to it), they become more cautious and are unlikely to leave you an opening a second time. However, if a foe is in the throes of a Virtue Extremity (or has 0 dots in one or more Mental Attributes) they may leave themselves open repeatedly, at the GMs discretion.

Sweep Two - Isolate vs Brock

GM's notes from a fight in my Continuum Campaign over a year ago. The battle was a true time combat, with Frag, physical attacks, and even a Gemini Flush. Borik and company went down in like 2 or 3 sweeps, though it looks like the physical sweep involved 16 bouts. Time Combats are hard to grok, and very difficult to relate the narrative of after-the-fact. Here's my notes taken at the time, plus a few italicized comments to explain them...

Frag: 1 + 2 + 7 Pretty sure this is how much Frag the PCs did to Brock/Borik. 10 is ugly. At 7 you get amnesia, at 8 you become a ghost. The chart doesn't go to 10.
Kail: Frag 2
Emily: 1
Lee: Frag These list how much Frag each PC took. Mostly from each other.
Kelly: 1

Successes: Not sure what exactly this is. Successes, sure, but on what? Are the numbers bouts?
1- Kelly -
4 - Kail -
5 - Pam -
6 - Lee -
7 - Aaron -
8 - Emily -
9 - Critical Success - Izzy Funny the one crit of the whole fight is rolled by NPC mentor...
12 - Kelly - 3
13 - Lee - 2
16 - Kail - 2

Failure: The beehive explains it to me. These are failures on the fragging rolls. The first number is the bout (like combat rounds) number. The second is the indication of what sweep it was for that PC, I think. If so, then the same is true for the previous chart.
2- Kelly - 2
3 - Crit Failure - Sean ...and the one crit failure is by the NPC sidekick
10 - Calvin
11 - Elizabeth
14 - Beehive (this penalty affects Lee and Izzy)
15 - Izzy - 2


Amy has sharp sticks
Kail puts logs across path
I love those notes. Hard to say why they were so important.

Successes - So these would be attack rolls that succeeded. IP is impairment, effectively damage.
2 - bullets - 7IP, 5IP- then gun jammed Oh, Kelly must have crit-failed too. 3 shots? autogun?
4 - deadfall
5 - circle & rubble - physics
6 - bullets - 8 IP
7 - thorns in way
9 - laser - 5 hits, 2 crits
12 - bullet - 8IP
13 - pegged the beehive
15 - laser - 2 hits
the whole block is damn cool. laser vs thorns. pegged the beehive. :) what an awesome game

Failures -
1 - flashbang That's Kelly. IIRC, he fragged himself too.
3 - thrownspears
8 - deadfall
10 - he sleeps past him That's Calvin, the Corner's narcoleptic archaeologist
11 - gun jam
16 - kail’s martial arts believe that Brock fragged out before he could attack

Updated again

Yet again, I did a little more editing and tweaking on my Improvised Weapon systems for Scion. In this version, I added a new negative trait "Soft", boosted damage by a die across the board, and altered references to stunting to more properly reflect my current views on how the game's stunt system should work.

Wiki version:
Improvised Weapons
Squishing and Pinning

Blogger version:
Improvised Weapons
Squishing and Pinning

updated on White Wolf Wiki

Today I did a little more editing and tweaking on my Improvised Weapon systems for Scion, and then posted them to the White Wolf Wiki. I keep toying with the idea of having them grant auto-successes instead of dice, but haven't made up my mind yet.

Wiki version:
Improvised Weapons
Squishing and Pinning

Blogger version:
Improvised Weapons
Squishing and Pinning

Revisions.

Revised my Improvised Weapons and Squishing systems from yesterday, but then buried them under other posts. (They take 4B/Minute from the weight of the posts). Either scroll down or just click on the ImprovisedWeapons label.

Squishing and Pinning

Edit: Ran some more numbers and revised the system I'd use for squishing & pinning in Scion. It is as follows:

When trapping someone under a mass of 1,000 lbs or more, treat it as an environmental effect, with:
Damage = 4 + (dots of Epic Strength required to lift it) B / minute
Trauma = 4 + (2 x(dots of Epic Strength required to lift it))

The trauma roll may be made with Stamina+Fortitude as per normal "sucking it up", or with Strength+Athletics to represent that you are "pushing back".

Remember that soak does apply to environmental damage, but armor does not.

So parking a Semi-cab (9.5 US Tons, requiring Epic Strength 5 to lift) on someone does 9B/minute , trauma 14. A fully-laden Semi (37.5 tons) with all of it's weight somehow applied only to them would be 10B/minute, trauma 16.

It conveniently works out to the level of Epic Strength necessary to lift the truck is roughly the same as the level of Epic Stamina necessary to lay under the wheels and survive indefinitely. It breaks down a little at higher levels of Epic Stamina, but the result is just that if you want to hurt a God, you have to swing a mountain at them, not just bury them under one.

For example, if I drop all 6,000 tons of the foundation of the Space Needle on my PCs next weekend it'll do 13 dice of Bashing with a Trauma rating of 22. You need Epic Strength 9 to lift the Space Needle, but Epic Stamina 7 will let you survive indefinitely pinned beneath it's mass. Call me evil, but I like being a possibility in my game.

Using this math, if you put a 1-ton weight (damage 5B/minute, trauma: 6) on a mortal for a minute they could get lucky and emerge unscathed, but it remains a potent danger vs even the best mortal athelete.

It's neither a terribly complicated nor horribly broken system, so I think it'll work.

Link to the extremely useful table of weights of big things with which you can squish.

Scion Improvised Weapon System

Edited: Revised 3 times. This post will always host my latest version of this system.

Here's a quick & dirty Improvised Weapon system for Scion. It quickly generates reasonable stats for any item you want to swing at somebody. The system is designed to be fast and rough, and it intentionally keeps most improvised weapons as less powerful than intentionally manufactured weaponry.

Basically, the system is just a series of tags that can be applied to an item you want to use as a weapon. A given improvised weapon may have any number of tags, even zero. (In fact, most objects a mortal could use as a club would have zero tags)

The tags are: Long, Huge, Sharp, Pointy, Massive, and the negative tags of Fragile, Awkward, and Soft.

Tags do NOT replace stunt dice. Creativity should be rewarded, so most improvised weapons will generate 2 stunt dice when first picked up and used. Clever description of the things you do with a weapon (improvised or not) will of course continue to wrack up stunt dice. But even without stunt dice, a rock or pointy stick may prove more useful than your bare fists.

Assume all improvised weapons have the following baseline stats, except when modified by tags:
Acc:+0 Damage:+1(bashing) Defense:+0 Speed:5

---

The applicable Tags work as follows:

Long: The item is at least 5 feet long, making it possible to keep a foe well beyond arm's length. It adds +2 to Defense for calculating your Parry DV.

Wide: The item sweeps a very broad area when swung, such that a person can't just duck to get out of the way. Typically, this means something at least as wide as a compact car. If an item is wide, it gains Accuracy +2 (on top of any stunt dice being awarded).

Sharp: The item has a sharp edge, so it slices rather than bludgeons. It does +2L damage.

Pointy: It has one or more very sharp points, and is used to pierce the foe. This does +2L and has the effect of the Piercing Tag on the weapon chart (meaning armor is halved). The effects of Sharp and Pointy are not cumulative - Pointy overrides Sharp.

Massive: Mass increases inertia which can result in greater damage. Massive is a little different from the other Tags in that it includes a numeric code. For objects that way 5001bs to 1700lbs, add +1 die of damage due to the mass. This could be recorded as Massive1d. For even more massive objects, assume that the minimum Epic Strength required to lift the item becomes the number of bonus levels of damage that item does when swung as a weapon. The shorthand for this tag is MassiveX where X is the Epic Strength required to lift the item.
If you're unsure the mass of an item, a good list can be found here. That list includes as it's first column the Minimum Epic Strength requirement.
And yes, this is intentionally a very small bonus. Most of the damage in swinging a vehicle at someone is done by your Epic Strength. Deliberately pinning someone under a huge item will use a slightly different system, detailed in another post.

And now for the three penalizing/negative tags: Fragile, Awkward, and Soft

Fragile: Items made of glass, paper, unreinforced dry wood, etc, will tend to break when swung with Epic Strength. Any item labeled as Fragile by the GM will break the first time it deals damage. When that happens it loses the Long or Wide tag (if it has both, the player may choose which one it loses on the first hit), and if it has the Massive tag the bonus damage dice it adds are permanently reduced by half. If it already had none of those tags, the item breaks apart into bits.

Awkward: If an item weighs more than 1/2 of the maximum weight your character can lift as a Feat of Strength (see the chart on page 181 of Scion: Hero) then it is considered Awkward for him or her to use. Alternately, an item that is extremely poorly balanced or annoying flexible and spineless may be ruled Awkward by the GM. If that is the case, the item is used as a Speed: 6 attack, and has Defense -2 penalizing your parry DV.

Soft: An improvised weapon that is soft and yielding, such as a pillow, does lesser damage. In such an instance, you roll five fewer dice. Only threshold successes and superhuman strength (whether mundane at 6+ or actual Epic Strength) will cause damage in these situations.

---

Implementing the system is pretty easy: the GM can just keep a list on their screen (not using a screen, I'll keep them on a note card) as simple as

"Long:+2Defense,
Wide:+2Accuracy,
Sharp:+2Lethal,
Pointy:+2L+Piercing,
Massive:+Levels=EpicStrRequired,
Fragile:BreaksWhenHit,
Awkward:Speed6DV-2,
Soft:-5damage.
Don't forget the stunt dice!"

If a character relies on the same item again and again, you can record the relevant data on their character sheet.

Scion needs an Improvised Weapon system

I've become convinced that Scion needs an Improvised Weapon system. I may have to design one myself. My preference would be more like AEG's system from 7th Sea, less involved than Atlas Games' system from Feng Shui. But, unlike either of those systems, it has to handle using 18-wheelers and Naval Vessels as projectiles.

Edit: I have a system worked out, and have since posted it. Click on the ImprovisedWeapons label to see everthing I've written on this topic.