Scion: Hero

[Asmor]

Well, here's something that will be of interest to those curious about how combat goes.

At it's heart, it's really somewhat simple. You roll your attack against a difficulty based on your opponent's defense. If you succeed, you roll damage resisted by their soak.

The problem is, each of those things I just mentioned (attack, defense, damage and soak) all have formulas which aren't easy to remember (or find, for that matter... stupid book... and even when you do find them, it's never explicit. You often have to infer, say, exactly which skill (brawl or melee for example) to use depending on the situation), and there's tons and tons of potential situational modifiers... For example, almost every action one could take provides a temporary penalty to their DVs until their next action.

Anyways, this PDF should prove enlightening. The first page is just a simple and quick rundown of combat meant more as a reminder for those who are okay with the system... The second page is a very in-depth look at the rules and exactly how to determine all these numbers and what to do with them. It's actually kind of daunting to look at-- I had to reduce the font size to 9 just to get it all to fit on one page! It's worth mentioning that I don't make any mention of those situational modifiers I talked about... I figured there's enough complication in there already.

EDIT: Uploaded new version of PDF to fix a couple typos

 

[Crothian]

It is a good concept fora game but suffers from WW's terrible organization and also what do the player characters do? It has a wide variety of powers and abilities which is cool but combat can rule the day. It is a very easy game to min max. They need more readily stated monsters.

 

[Khairn]

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.

From what I have read, Scion is a limited game made up of 3 books ... Hero, Demi-God and God. The first book introduces the concepts and characters, but doesn't provide extensive details about the Titans, their plans ... their Spawn ... or how the battle in the otherworld is progressing and how the children of the gods will fit into the war. These additional themes will be explored in Demi-God and God.

Being a mythology nut I really like the game and the concepts. Unlike many other WW games, there is no meta-plot, and the setting is left wide open for the GM's to develop. The Hero's book has more than enough antagonists for me to map out a series of story archs. I wish it had more on the Titans, but I'm very happy with the goodies they've given.

I've even been humming and hawing about maybe running a pbp game. I really like it.

 

[Yair]

I really like the concept (played it several times in D&D), and the idea of the ticks for combat (there is a thread in House Rules where I participated in an attempt to switch it to D&D). I don't really like White Wolf's writing (I'm a freak) or system, though, and the comments here about the organization kinda drive me away even more...

 

[Khairn]

I really like the concept (played it several times in D&D), and the idea of the ticks for combat (there is a thread in House Rules where I participated in an attempt to switch it to D&D). I don't really like White Wolf's writing (I'm a freak) or system, though, and the comments here about the organization kinda drive me away even more...

I can see where only having a 2 page index can be a problem. Still, I do like the fact that they fit everything needed to play at this power level into 1 book.

 

[Odhanan]

The indexes of all the current White Wolf RPGs suck balls. There needs to be WAY more entries in them, not only (extremely) broad categories like "combat".

 

[EditorBFG]

Played Scion last night. Flavor's pretty neat, but the best part if the Initiative thing. It is really, really good. I wish there were a way to adapt it to d20 without invalidating a million feats and rules, because it is brilliant.

 

[Yair]

Played Scion last night. Flavor's pretty neat, but the best part if the Initiative thing. It is really, really good. I wish there were a way to adapt it to d20 without invalidating a million feats and rules, because it is brilliant.

An attempt was made here.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

My work on that project has continued sporatically. You can find the newest updates in the thread here http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=191740. You can ignore the races at the beginning they need some cleaning up. What you're looking for is at the end.

 

[Asmor]

Funny, my first thought when I saw the tick system is "Wow, I should start a thread in House Rules for this!"

Ultimately I decided it would be too much work and invalidate too much established stuff and in the end I'd never get the chance to use it anyways. :/ I'm glad to see someone's working on it, though!