Scion: How to wrangle the worst parts of the system?

[Drakefall]

Hey there Playground.

So, as the title may have caused you to believe, my friend is starting up a Scion game. It'll be his first time gming, so he's a little nervous. Now, knowing that it's his first and being aware of Scion's reputation for having a mucky, unbalanced system, I thought I'd ask here as to what you ladies and gentlemen do to smooth out the worst problems of the system.

All the players have been made aware that the system is clunky and not-amazing, so we are going in forewarned. The gm is also ready to houserule anything that is needlessly mucked up and the game is more about narrative and story than combat. So I think we at least have the right approach to the game.

So far we've done/know the following:

• Everyone starts at Legend 3. Legend goes up for everyone at the same time when the gm decides it does.
• The gm is aware that anything more than 1 Legend above us is a not something we can handle in combat in any way, shape or form, and that anything 1 Legend point above us is a super difficult boss fight that'll we'll probably have to be clever to survive, but can be done.
• Dex is a god (Hah! Pun!) stat, so to make it a little less so attacking with melee or brawl can use either Dexterity or Strength, player's choice. Scions of Ares can be burly and punch things.
• Untouchable Opponent should be houseruled. We don't really know how to houserule it though. Is one extra point of DV per point of Epic Dex as opposed to the exponential growth it normally gets acceptable?

So far it looks a lot like CWoD: Vampire to me, which I am vaguely familiar with, and while a poor system it wasn't quite like swimming in raw sewage, so I'm thinking we'll be alright maybe.

I've heard that Hero is alright for the most part, but it gets messed up in Demigod? Is there a simple way to curb this or stuff we can watch out for to avoid the worst of it? Or are we doomed? Depending on when Scion 2nd Ed comes out we could switch over, and were considering waiting for 2nd Ed Demigod to come out before venturing into that water, but the gm would like to start now.

We're dead set on playing it, so please no recommending we use FATE instead, as better as that may be.

So yeah, any advice for running and playing with the system would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[The_Snark]

Untouchable Opponent should be houseruled. We don't really know how to houserule it though. Is one extra point of DV per point of Epic Dex as opposed to the exponential growth it normally gets acceptable?

That helps, certainly; it's the most common houserule I've seen. You could also just scrap it entirely, since it's not terribly interesting, but up to you.

Another popular houserule I've seen is letting Epic Perception add to firearms damage, or introducing a common Knack that lets you do this. Otherwise, guns end up being generally worse than Strength-based weaponry.

I've heard that Hero is alright for the most part, but it gets messed up in Demigod? Is there a simple way to curb this or stuff we can watch out for to avoid the worst of it? Or are we doomed? Depending on when Scion 2nd Ed comes out we could switch over, and were considering waiting for 2nd Ed Demigod to come out before venturing into that water, but the gm would like to start now.

The biggest problem is the way Epic Attribute bonuses scale. At Hero, a 1-dot difference between Epic Attributes (let's say Dexterity) will mean a gap of 1-2 successes; this matters, but it's manageable. At Demigod, a 1-dot difference means a gap of 4-6 successes, which is a significant difference and likely to determine the course of a fight on its own. At God we're looking at gaps of 7-9, which just doesn't work. (Most characters generally won't be rolling more than 10-15 dice, so you have to roll really, really well.)

The easiest way to solve this is to change how Epic Attributes scale. 1 bonus success per Epic Attribute dot would probably work (although you may want to reduce XP costs in that case). I've also seen a houserule where heroes get 1 bonus success per Epic Attribute dot, demigods get 2 successes per dot, and gods get 3 or 4 per dot; this is less lopsided than the standard rules, although you will still encounter a bit of lopsidedness as you get to the higher tiers, and makes the difference between Legend 4 and 5 (and 8 and 9) very pronounced.

Also, be careful about armor. Wearing heavy armor is probably the easiest way to break the game as a starting character.

As a general rule, keep in mind that dice probabilities in Scion are not linear: you're more likely to get an average result than an extraordinarily high or low one. (Contrast with D&D, where a 20 is no more unlikely than a 1 or a 10.) This becomes more pronounced the more dice you roll. So the GM should keep an eye on what the players' average result for common rolls (attacks, damage, etc) will be, and be wary of anything that deviates too much from that standard.

Being willing to houserule things as you go is definitely a good thing. In addition to the systemic problem I describe above, Scion has a lot of Boons/Knacks/other things which are unbalanced on an individual basis; some are too good, others clearly aren't good enough. (My favorite example comes from the War purview: the 7-dot boon turns you into a giant metal colossus with awesome stat boosts, while the 8-dot boon gives you infinite ammo, a power which is trivially available for a starting-level hero.) It'd be a pain to go through and try to fix all of these, but you can tweak them as they come up. The silver lining of Scion's rules is that there's very little you can do to mess them up worse than they are by default.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

It has been a bit since I've played Scion, but your proposed houserules all look reasonable. I wouldn't try taking the game past demigod, but that's the system for you.

One minor thing, but barring legend cost issues, the knacks from the higher tier books are fair game. I know a few people who thought you needed to be a demigod to get any of the knacks in that book, but as long as you have enough legend, it's fair game.

[fallensaviour]

Make it so a point of willpower doesn't automatically free one from mind control or compulsions but instead offer a chance to roll, you also might want to look into the fact that as written mental disciplines flat out fail against someone of higher legend

[Friv]

So far we've done/know the following:

• Everyone starts at Legend 3. Legend goes up for everyone at the same time when the gm decides it does.
• The gm is aware that anything more than 1 Legend above us is a not something we can handle in combat in any way, shape or form, and that anything 1 Legend point above us is a super difficult boss fight that'll we'll probably have to be clever to survive, but can be done.
• Dex is a god (Hah! Pun!) stat, so to make it a little less so attacking with melee or brawl can use either Dexterity or Strength, player's choice. Scions of Ares can be burly and punch things.
• Untouchable Opponent should be houseruled. We don't really know how to houserule it though. Is one extra point of DV per point of Epic Dex as opposed to the exponential growth it normally gets acceptable?

These are all excellent starts. And yeah, generally giving UO a flat bonus equal to your Epic Dex is still very strong, but not nearly as stupid. There are a few other major hiccups that you're going to want to look at; there are various discussions about how to solve them.

Hiccup #1 - Relic stats are wildly unbalanced. Getting a soak boost is twice as strong as a damage boost, the base weapon stats are nowhere near balanced so taking some weapons or armor as relics is massively superior to taking others, and you never, ever, ever want to let someone's Speed go below 3. Trust me. I know the rules say Speed 1. Don't listen to them. Speed 3.

Hiccup #2 - Things get a lot worse in Demigod, because of the speed with which Epic traits ramp up, but the insane costs of those traits mean that this is unlikely to be a major concern for your game. And God, well, unless you're planning on handing out 10 or 20 XP per session, no one will ever be able to buy a God trait, so no worries. You can potentially fix this by changing the scale of Epic boosts and making XP costs a lot flatter.

Hiccup #3 - As written, most mental powers are either totally useless or unstoppably powerful. They tend to fail outright against anyone slightly stronger than you, utterly lock down anyone slightly weaker than you, and be just a minor WP drain on equal-level antagonists. As you get stronger, this becomes decreasingly true, because they continue to use Epic Attributes and remain opposed by only Willpower. Pretty soon you're rolling eleven auto-successes plus ten dice against six to ten dice. Guess how that ends up.

Hiccup #4 - Fatebinding is, sadly, a massive book-keeping nightmare and also totally pointless, since it mostly creates weird relationships to individual mortals, who are totally powerless to affect you unless you want them to.

Hiccup #5 - The character creation minigame that White Wolf is so infamous for is really on full display here, with three different starting currencies, none of which are the currency you'll be using to power up later, and all of which have different prices for things. I don't recall how to 'win' it offhand, but it's a bit of a nightmare. It's really easy to start about 100 XP ahead of another player, by mistake.

Hiccup #6 - Mortals are useless, which makes Followers pretty much useless. A single dot for 'having a few guys who can run around and do chores for you' is about as good as they get.

[fallensaviour]

i'd also recommend looking over this https://sites.google.com/site/scionoverhaul/