Scion: Hero

[Asmor]

I figured I missed the discussion on Scion, but I just searched titles of threads for "scion" and the only thing I found was one about a one-shot game in Talking the Talk.

So... what do you all think about Scion? I picked it up because a friend was thinking about running it, and the book looked interesting... I'm really not a big fan of the whole d10 dice pool system White Wolf is known for, but Scion has some very interesting aspects to it.

In particular, I'm absolutely in love with the "tick-based" combat, especially with the "battle wheel" example they give you for keep track. I've always wanted a system where different actions had different delays, but everything I've thought of has been too unwieldy and cumbersome. The battle wheel nicely addresses that. The only problem is that you're limited to having things which take no more than N-1 ticks (where N is number of segments in your wheel)... That could be easily addressed by adding "delay tokens" or something, where if you have any delay tokens, instead of taking an action when the tick counter gets to your slice you remove a delay token.

Uhh... but I guess that's a totally different tangent. Sorry for the rambling. Back on topic... I'd heard that Scion feels like a watered down Exalted. Having never played or even read exalted, I can't comment, but looking at the character I made for a game tonight I really don't think that's going to be true... In particular, I made a character who focuses on ranged-combat and he's got some potentially heinous dice pools (5 dex, 4 marksmanship, 4 auto-successes for 3 epic dexterity, potential of 6 extra dice for aim with trick shot knack, and then the possibility to spend legend points to add even more dice).

I also love the flavor, which has always been WW's strong points. I used to love reading the WoD books even though I hated the system, and this game doesn't let down. I love the variety of pantheons they chose, and I'm glad they chose some more obscure ones like the Aztec, Japanese and Voodoo pantheons.

Well... I'm playing my first game of it tonight, so hopefully I'll have some more insights after that.

 

[bento]

You'll find many, many threads on Scion over on RPG.Net.

They live for that kinda game.

 

[EditorBFG]

Well... I'm playing my first game of it tonight, so hopefully I'll have some more insights after that.

Coincidentally enough, so am I, apparently. So I'll share thoughts then.

I have some trepidation. I am surprised they used the Exalted system, which runs slower for combat, instead of the much slicker new World of Darkness rules. I fear it may be hobbled by endless combats.

 

[Master of the Game]

I've been runniung a weekly game for a while now and my players love it. If anyone has any questions I'd be glad to answer.

 

[Odhanan]

How complicated is it when compared to say... d20 Modern? I heard tales that the combat system with its "ticks" mechanic can get pretty heavy quickly. Is that true?

What about the actual powers of Scions? Are they comparable to Vampire's disciplines or... what? How does that work? Care to share some examples of cool powers for PCs with us?

 

[papastebu]

I've not actually read the book, but I got the impression that these are the descendents of the gods in the Sidereals. Is this a fairly accurate assessment? I have been meaning to buy it, but I haven't had the time to get up to Nashville.

 

[hong]

IIRC, Scion has nothing in common with the Exalted setting, only the rules.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I've not actually read the book, but I got the impression that these are the descendents of the gods in the Sidereals. Is this a fairly accurate assessment? I have been meaning to buy it, but I haven't had the time to get up to Nashville.

As Hong mentions, this has nothing to do with Exalted, save in (vague) theme and sort-of system.

Exalted is very much related to the oWoD, not the current one.

Of course, if Scion:Hero was based on Exalted, God-Blooded would be much more congruent than the Sidereals.

Brad

 

[Asmor]

Well, the game wrapped up. It was largely an interesting learning experience, and it turns out I knew the rules better than most (including the GM). In particular, noone had understood the connection between relics and boons. When I mentioned this in the game, everyone had to stop for about half an hour to get their sheets straightened out, and lots of people had trouble understanding it (I'm a poor teacher, I think). Boons are basically "super powers," and come in groups of three under a thematic "Purview" (purviews would be something like Sky, while under the sky purview you'd find a power that allows you to fly, one that allows you to jump high, and one that allows you to summon thunder and lightning). In order to use a boon, you not only have to purchase it, you must also have a relic which grants access to the purview. Think of the relic as a key or a focus. There is an exception to this rule for the pantheon-specific purviews (each of the pantheon has a purview which is unique to it; every member has it, and no other god in a different pantheon does). You may always use a pantheon-specific purview's boons.

Before I go any further, here's my initial impressions of the system: Great ideas, absolutely horrendous organization. I've looked for many things in the "index" in the back, and I've literally found none of them. Not a single thing of the dozen or so I've had to look up were in the index. Not even such basic and important things as soak and weapons! Important "totals" like defense values are buried in the middle of combat examples. (I hesitate to use the word stats primarily because there's no place on the default sheet at the back of the book for them... I highly reccommend these sheets I found on WW's forums. Much more verbose, and I learned a lot just looking up things to fill in everything).

I fully intend to go through and make a combat cheatsheet/flowsheet, both because I still have a little trouble wrapping my head around it and I think just making the sheet should help, and also because it would help the other people.

The book includes several examples of how to keep track of damage with the "ticks" system. This was a huge mistake. There's basically one way where it's incredibly simple and intuitive, and if you don't use that way then it is just unimaginable difficult. The way I reccommend using, which is one of the suggestions in the book, is the combat wheel.

[sblock=Combat Wheel Explanation]Combat wheel setup: Basically, draw a big circle on a piece of paper divided into 8 pie slices. Number them 0 through 7. People start somewhere between 0 and 6; everyone who ties for the highest "Join Battle" roll (initiative) goes to slice 0. Everyone who is 1 less than the highest goes to slice 1, everyone 2 less than the highest goes to slice 2, etc. Everyone 6 or lower than the highest goes to slice 6; you can't join battle lower than 6). This is easily where we wasted the most time the first time, because we didn't have tokens ready and had to use dice... I volunteered to run the combat wheel since I was the only one who'd read that section (others had assumed combat worked like in the WoD), and had to spend about 10 minutes making a list of which die belonged to who... i.e. "black d10: me." Next time I'll bring poker chips and masking tape or dry erase markers so that we can actually label them accurately...

Beginning combat: Take a seperate counter, easily distinguishable from the ones for the players, and use it as your "tick counter." Place the tick counter on tick 0.

Actions: Whenever your counter is in the same pie slice as the tick counter, you take your action. Obviously, it's common for multiple people to be in the same slice; these people act simultaneously (in game terms! For the sake of all that is good and holy, please take turns IRL and just resolve them simultaneously!). Every action you could possibly take has a speed, usually between 3 (fast) and 6 (slow). Move clockwise around the pie a number of spaces equal to your speed. For example, if you took a speed-3 maneuver, move 3 slices around the pie. If you were on 1, you'd move to 4. If you were on 6, you'd go to 1 (remember! The pie slices go from 0 to 7! So you'd count 3 slices and go "7, 0, 1")

Moving the tick counter: Once the slice the tick counter is in is empty (i.e. everyone in that slice has taken an action already and moved to their next slice), move the tick counter 1 slice... from 0 to 1, from 1 to 2, etc, until you reach slice 7 and move back to 0.
[/sblock]

There's not a whole lot else I can really think of that's worth mentioning. It was just a short session today (less than 3 hours, and much of that was spent sorting things out). We only had one really brief combat against 4 mooks.

So... overall, I like it, I think it has a lot of promise, but I think whoever laid out that book should be shot. It could benefit greatly from some clearer explanations, better documentation, and an actual index... If you think a lack of an index is bad, it's not nearly as frustrating as an index which doesn't actually list anything important.

 

[Master of the Game]

How complicated is it when compared to say... d20 Modern? I heard tales that the combat system with its "ticks" mechanic can get pretty heavy quickly. Is that true?

Personally I didn't find it complicated at all. In fact, the "ticks" system was a primary selling point for me in both Exalted 2nd edition and Scion. Asmor gives a great explanation of how it works. My group uses a magnetic dry erase board, with specific magnets for each character, and color-coded magnets for bad guys. Just about anything will work really (I've also used 'pente' pebbles), but the magnets are extremely versatile and I use them for just about all of my games.

What about the actual powers of Scions? Are they comparable to Vampire's disciplines or... what? How does that work? Care to share some examples of cool powers for PCs with us?

For our group we get the most use out of Epic Attributes and their Knacks. Knacks are special 'tricks' that characters with epic attributes have access to. A character with Epic Dexterity, for example, can run fast, and has automatic successes with any Dex action. Take the Lightning Sprinter Knack, and he can run on water. Characters with epic strength can lift heavy loads. With the right knack, you can throw a car at someone.

Boons vary a lot. One sky boon allows a character to fly, a moon boon can tunr a character invisible. There are boons for healing, investigation, and even magic.

Compared to disciplines... They lack a lot of options I think. Scions get most of their power from their epic stats and Legend. Boons just give them some neat tricks.

My only real complaint is about the book itself. The system is great, the idea is fun, but there's just not a lot of information given. Instead of setting information we get a 39 page short story that takes up the beginning of the book. Instead of a reasonable number of example birthrights or titanspawn, we get a 60 page adventure module that is really only designed to be used with the pregenerated characters. It's not even a particularly great adventure. It manages to be both too railroady and too wide open at the same time.

Also, as was mentioned earlier, the index sucks. It doesn't even have Join Battle in it, which was a huge source of frustration the first couple of times we ran combats.