Scion Rules Tweaks

[foxtown]

So I am thinking about running a more long term game of Scion, but as shown by my few runins with my peusdo-one shots a couple of things need to change.  Here are some ideas.

Balance

• Dex should become less important. Ideas:
  • Perception for all non-thrown range weapons
  • Strength for thrown weapons and can be used for brawl (or with trait for a particular

Comments

[foxtown]

"The balance tweaks make a ton of sense. I think those work great, and add a lot of life to the non-fighty stuff as well as making Dex less the uber-stat it is in the base rules."

Cool. That’s the goal.

"I like the idea of Zones. SotC has them as fairly big, though - I'm not sure how big you were thinking about in terms of scale, but they feel big compared to a 1-tick move. On the other hand, you're looking at a zone as, essentially, melee reach for one punch, so maybe that *is* a one-tick scale."

I was still thinking fairly big zones. Maybe a two tick action? I want keep this low since movement is basically free in Basic Scion.

"Isn't Soak already automated? You don't roll to soak. (Or do you mean "don't roll damage"? If that's the case, that makes a lot of sense - and I think it's a good idea - you'd just need to run the math to make sure the soak numbers that are coming up are balanced to how much damage can be kicked out. After all, a bigger hit already gets you more damage.)"

I may be wrong, but I have been rolling for soak, for anyone that isn’t a minion at least. Maybe also not rolling for damage as well would help too. That would iffy though, so I would either want to run the numbers or playtest it a bit before setting it in stone.

"My biggest gripe, honestly, is that the tick system itself feels WAY fiddly for the amount of effect it actually has on combat, at least 95% of the time. I think a lot of the thoughts you'd had make the ticks much more useful and important, though, so maybe it'd work better. If the defense and attack fixes, and the don't-roll-damage fix, and the clearer-movement fix (though with Zones, I'd want at least a sketchy map to show things on, if the zones are that small), sped up combat like I think they might, the ticks would be worth keeping."

Well some of this is my fault for making the battle wheel so big in our sessions. Really we should use tokens like we have for D&D and use a spinner sized wheel. Also I would love if a player took control of the battle wheel. I have enough to run as it is.

The other option for ticks to go to a round system, but that would make the game even more like D&D, and I kind of like the difference. I think the battle wheel is where experienced groups flow better too.

I definitely want to get better at having real maps. I think it would definitely help the cinematics of the game. This will require more set up from me, at least than what I have been doing. I would really love a bunch of maps of train cars…any ideas where I could get things like that?