Hey, Gail! I borrowed one of your lines last night!

[Vanguard01]

Pshaw! I don't need epic social stats to get people to do anything! I'm actually tired of seeing "dominate" or "presence" type characters. Haven't played characters like that for a decade.

Good news is, you don't have to be a social character. The Epic Physicals allow for ridiculous feats of Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina. Scions with Epic Strength can build their strength to the point where they can eventually rip skyscrapers out of the ground and hurl them like a javelin. Epic Dexterity allows a Scion to run with frightening speed and dodge bullets. Epic Stamina allows Scions to take ungodly amounts of damage with little trouble. It especially builds up your Bashing, Lethal, and Aggravated soak values. Three or four dots of Epic Stamina, and guns pretty much stop mattering against you.

Then there's the Epic Mental Attributes of Intelligence, Perception, and Wits. Intelligence? You make Einstein look like a drooling idiot. Wits? Your reflexes are so fast, you always get to move first. Perception? Your Superman. No, really, they actually have such powers as Telescopic Senses and Broad-Spectrum Reception. Nothing escapes your notice.

The Epic Socials are Charisma, Appearance, and Manipulation. Epic Charisma is the Scion's "I'm divine, worship me" vibe. At high enough levels, mortals can't help but bow down to you. Epic Manipulation is pretty much mind control. Epic Charisma makes people want to do your bidding. Epic Manipulation overrides their free will and leaves them no choice but to obey. Epic Appearance is how divinely beautiful you are. Epic Appearance can also be "negative" and make your character supremely hideous. Your pick. High positive Epic Appearance means no one can resist you. High negative Epic Appearance means everyone's afraid of you.

[Gaelforce]

No offense and I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, but 'social' stats like that have always just killed the RP for me. Had it happen in a few LARPs before and it just came across to me as the lazy way to avoid actual roleplaying. I hope your experiences with it are different, but I find too many players avoid roleplaying things when they can just say 'I have epic charisma! He must bow before me!' <shrug>

I'm too much of a Champions/Hero System junkie I guess :)

[Vanguard01]

No offense and I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, but 'social' stats like that have always just killed the RP for me. Had it happen in a few LARPs before and it just came across to me as the lazy way to avoid actual roleplaying. I hope your experiences with it are different, but I find too many players avoid roleplaying things when they can just say 'I have epic charisma! He must bow before me!' <shrug>

I'm too much of a Champions/Hero System junkie I guess :)

Well, in Scion, you DO have to roll dice to make your Social stats work. Now, the Attributes have a mundane rating and and Epic rating separately. Each dot of Epic you buy for an Attribute gives you a certain number of automatic successes on every roll involving that Attribute. Only creatures of Legend (Scions, Gods, Titanspawn, Lesser Immortals, etc.) get Epic Attributes, so mortals quickly become powerless to resist these effects. They simply have no ability to roll enough successes to resist the effect.

But, in Scion, mortals are kinda supposed to be pawns in the grand battle anyway. Other creatures of Legend stand a better chance of resisting. It's also a common house rule to say that creatures of Legend can spend a Willpower point to shake off a Social attack. The Social attacker can do it again and again until you're out of Willpower, but it buys you time to try to come up with something else.

In Scion, your power level is decided by your Legend rating. Heroic Scions start out at Legend 2. At Legend 5, they become Demigods. At Legend 9, they've reached Godhood. It tops out at Legend 12, which is the level of Zeus, Athena, Thor, all the Overworld big timers. One's Legend rating often effects one's ability to resist as well. Many powers in the books say something to the effect of "Beings with an equal or higher Legend rating can resist this, while beings with lower Legend cannot." Or "Beings with equal or higher Legend have a much easier time resisting this effect than beings with lower Legend."

Stuff like that. It actually is fairly well balanced. And roleplaying is not ignored. For example, in our first Scion game, we ran through the Aesir Ragnarok story. At the endgame, at the battle of Ragnarok, Odin was trying to pull a fast one to avoid his Fated end. He used a spell to swap bodies with one of his own Scions, intending to let Fenris eat her while in his body. Our Band found out what he was doing and we ran to stop him. I gave everyone one chance to convince Odin not to go through with this. Everyone pleaded their case and rolled their Charisma+Empathy or Manipulation+Empathy.

Now, I judged the effectiveness of their efforts based both on the substance of their pleas and the successes their rolls garnered. Everyone rolled very good rolls AND made a pretty good, eloquent, and persuasive plea to Odin. Even our combat player, who normally sucks at Social play came up with some fairly impressive things to say. Ergo, I ruled that Odin was swayed by their words. He released his daughter back to her own body, picked up Gungnir, hopped onto Sleipnir, and galloped fearlessly right at Fenris while yelling "For Asgard!" Our players convinced him to embrace his Fate and go down gloriously and it was a combination of super-cool powers and effective roleplay that did the job.

[Wulfmir]

@Vanguard01

Yeah, I know, what I mean is I'm tired of the focus on powers or "knacks". After years of playing of pretty much a gamut of games and characters I've come full circle and reverted back to D&D basic human fighter more focused on playing with the personality of the character than anything else.

@Gaelforce

Do I understand what you're saying. That is just roll playing rather than role playing. If someone played at my table and basically just did "I have epic charisma" without making an attempt to describe how "epically charismatic" you are, well we'll fix you. I LARPed as well.


Btw, enjoy playing.

[Gaelforce]

Do I understand what you're saying. That is just roll playing rather than role playing. If someone played at my table and basically just did "I have epic charisma" without making an attempt to describe how "epically charismatic" you are, well we'll fix you. I LARPed as well.

Alas, it was not my LARP. Try to get away with dice rolling instead of roleplaying in my game and you'll get an in-character response that you probably aren't expecting ;)

In the LARP case, I was recently at Intercon and had one person play a card that says I got drunk 'because he's a fun guy to drink with', then pulled another one that says 'and you have to tell me one of your secrets.' There was no attempt on his part to roleplay getting my character drunk or to try to talk the secrets out of the character, he just whipped out some cards and that was it (as it was, I had a blast RPing drunk and he didn't get the secret he was after).

It's all great if the GM rides herd on the players and uses the stats to support the RP, but in my (far too) many years of gaming, I just have found that the idea of a social stat that can override RP just doesn't work for me.

[Vanguard01]

Alas, it was not my LARP. Try to get away with dice rolling instead of roleplaying in my game and you'll get an in-character response that you probably aren't expecting ;)

In the LARP case, I was recently at Intercon and had one person play a card that says I got drunk 'because he's a fun guy to drink with', then pulled another one that says 'and you have to tell me one of your secrets.' There was no attempt on his part to roleplay getting my character drunk or to try to talk the secrets out of the character, he just whipped out some cards and that was it (as it was, I had a blast RPing drunk and he didn't get the secret he was after).

It's all great if the GM rides herd on the players and uses the stats to support the RP, but in my (far too) many years of gaming, I just have found that the idea of a social stat that can override RP just doesn't work for me.

Oh, it's definitely a danger, no doubt about it. But with a good Storyteller and a good group of players who are willing to do what's right for the story, it's less of an issue. I like to play very "fast and loose" with the rules. I use them in the way I deem best for the story. The Social stats just mean I have to be ready for my players to use them in ways I'm not expecting.

Social stats, especially Epic Charisma, can be used very positively as well. Making people want to listen to you can be a real morale booster. A few sessions back, our Band was sailing across the North Atlantic back from an excursion in Europe. A tidal wave came out of nowhere and hit Belfast, Ireland, carrying aquatic Titanspawn into the city. After our Band made landfall and helped a local Scion Band repel the attackers, we then set about doing what we could for the citizens of Belfast.

At one point, our Scion of Athena used his Epic Charisma to give the good people of Belfast a heartwarming "Don't give up, you will overcome this" speech. Once again, his words, combined with the added edge of his dice roll, really inspired the people and they were cheering and set about trying to rebuild their city with renewed determination.

The Social stats are only cheap if the ST let's them be used cheaply. I understand your experiences haven't been as good. I'm just giving examples that of how they can be used to enrich a story, rather than cheapen it.

[Melbourne Mew Mew]

That is freaking awesome. :)

I miss playing pen and paper role-playing games. Some comics creators have a game going in Portland, I think, but I don't get up there that often.


Cool story!

Wow, Gail, I knew you played MMORPGs, but I never knew you were a fellow pen-and-paper gamer. What games do you play?

I'd really like to play in a superhero game, but have never really gotten to except for one-offs at cons. Actually, there was one at a con recently, and one of the characters was based on Black Canary, but... I'll just say that the setting was heavily influenced by Frank Miller's work, and you can probably figure out the rest.

The freeform game from last year was a lot of fun, with new superheroes trying to make a good impression on three very different judges (played by the GMs): Stan Lee, Frank Miller, and Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon).