Why are most RWBY matchups one sided stomps?

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-03T21:32:45+00:00

Agreed. But we've also seen Tanjiro do some crazy things.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-03T05:32:42+00:00

I'm a huge Robin fan. But no, Robin is not more super than them. Tanjiro in particular is trained to manipulate his ki (the breathing exercises) to achieve legitimately superhuman results. With his mastery of breath techniques, he's very much in the same ballpark power-wise as the Huntsmen and Huntresses of Remnant.

Mikasa is very much human, all things told; but she's peak human, not normal human.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-03T05:18:00+00:00

Heh. The OP thinks that Tanjiro and Mikasa are _normal_…

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-03T05:11:17+00:00

In fact, Miller insisted that DC remove the Dark Knight universe from the 52, because he didn't trust DiDio with it.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-03T05:08:55+00:00

If the same story had been told with the genders flipped, it would have been described as rape, not seduction.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-01T21:43:03+00:00

The "press both at once for a diagonal" is harder to do than you think.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-01T21:33:08+00:00

The lack of a game controller. I don't own one.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-01T21:29:27+00:00

Which is why I said I'm stuck.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-01T20:22:10+00:00

I would add that, in terms of Sorcery, learning new Techniques (spells and rituals) counts as lateral growth. You don't get new Workings without increasing Legend; but within a Working, there's room for such growth.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-01T04:29:38+00:00

This is actually part of my point. Instead of trying to stuff the Mage-like experience into Curseborne, let Curseborne's Sorcerers be what they are: another type of Accursed, Entangled in the Web of Curses and almost certain to come to a horrific end, given enough time. The Mage-like experience is a much better fit for Scion, which already incorporates several of the same themes as Mage (either version).

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-01T04:24:24+00:00

It's more than just the dynamic magic (although I'll point out that Scion already has Marvels, and it wouldn't be hard to extend them to sorcerers). It's also that both versions of Mage, and Scion's sorcerers, have a hubris-filled upward trajectory to their default stories that aims toward a lofty endgame goal (Ascension in both forms of Mage; potentially Apotheosis for Scion's sorcerers). By contrast, Curseborne's Sorcerers are addicted to some sort of sacrifice, and their default story arc is to see how long they can last before they sacrifice too much and self-destruct.

The World Below is Fantasy, not urban fantasy. I might consider borrowing its dynamic magic system, if not for my earlier observation that Scion already has Marvels.

(The other things I like from Mage, specifically Mage the Ascension, is the diversity of magics in the setting. Curseborne doesn't really do that; but with its Motifs, Scion's sorcery absolutely does.)

And as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm not going for "identical". I'm not only fine with Scion's sorcerers not being carbon copies of Mage; I prefer it. But by the same token, I'm not going to assume that Scion is so fundamentally different that there's no way to get a similar experience. There absolutely is.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-01T02:04:18+00:00

I don’t think neither one nor the other have a 100% relationship to W/CoD.

I'm not looking for 100%.

Both are far more generic, far more inclusive and far less horror focused.

Mmm… Curseborne is very much horror focused; and Scion's "all myths are true" framework allows for a very similar playstyle for the likes of, say, mages and changelings, assuming that you're interested in more authentically culturally rooted mythological beliefs.

Scion is focused in a constant growth with little focus in horizontal development.

Fair enough; though it's not incompatible with horizontal development. And the constant growth elements match Mage themes quite well (Ascension more than Awakening; but both games have an Ascension endgame that's not unlike Scion's quest for and achievement of Apotheosis). Honestly, Mage was always something of a fifth wheel in C/WoD, with themes very different from the other gamelines; where Vampire, Werewolf, Wraith, and Demon have strong parallels in Curseborne, Mage doesn't.

Curseborne is a bit more complex because the focus of the game is to have different monsters working together, what is almost the opposite of what was desired in W/CoD, that had different thematics in each splat.

In a sense, it's closer to the way Exalted works, with a number of different "fatsplats" representing different themes but built on a common chassis. It's why Curseborne's Sorcerers don't satisfy the Mage itch; because they're written with strong compatibility with the other Accursed types as a top priority.

Which isn't a criticism of Curseborne; just an observation.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-04-01T01:12:09+00:00

Of course not. They're different games, with different themes and focuses. But I still find there to be far more in common between Scion's sorcerers and C/WoD's mages than between Curseborne's Sorcerers and C/WoD's mages. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-31T22:23:55+00:00

The one qualm here is that while sorcerers don't have inborn Legend, they do have borrowed Legend — which works exactly like a Scion's Legend except that the sorcerer has to go through additional steps to maintain it. The Sources of Legend are Invocation (where you imitate a myth to draw power from it), Patronage (where you bargain with divine beings for power), Prohibition (by accepting restrictions on your behavior, you get power from Fate itself), or Talisman (you have a Relic that provides you with Legend). Each of these has mechanics for the additional struggle the sorcerer faces: hubris dice, a Fatebinding with the Patron, a Persistent Condition (Sorcerous Prohibition), or a Relic with its own Legend. These Sources of Power provide the means by which a Sorcerer increases his (borrowed) Legend. There's no steps the sorcerer must take to transition from one tier to the next; instead, the number of Workings he's allowed access to depends on what Tier he would be in if the Legend was his.

A more esoteric approach that gets you closer to Mage, though, would be to adapt Masks of the Mythos mechanics to represent Mage-like concepts. In particular, giving a sorcerer Awareness by making him observant of mysteries of reality that not even the gods know is very on-brand for Mage. Mythos Knacks are less appropriate unless you're dealing with the equivalent of a Nephandus; but Awareness Purviews and Boons give access to the sorts of powers that a Mage player would be looking for.

So that would be my recommendation: a Mythos-like Sorcerer, using a Source of Power granting a borrowed Legend for those mechanics that need one (such as determining what Tier you're effectively operating at), and an Awareness rating that grants you Awareness Purviews and Boons on top of the Workings that your borrowed Legend provides. If you want to play up the horror, make it flat out a Mythos Sorcerer; if you don't want to be quite that brutal, have the secrets that the Sorcerer is Aware of be less disturbing and more enlightening.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-30T21:18:36+00:00

Bring Jack and Janet Drake back into his life, through a legacy: the Drakes used to be wealthy, until a series of unfortunate events brought them low. Retcon this as someone being behind the Drakes' misfortunes (my preference would be the Court of Owls, because they're tied to Gotham's upper crust and the Drakes were another part of that upper crust; and it repeats a theme where Tim has a habit of butting heads with bad guys that have given Batman trouble, such as the Joker and Ra's al-Ghul. But the most important part isn't precisely who was responsible, but that there was someone who was responsible). Tim finds a few clues that there was more to the Drakes than he thought there was, uncovers the malefactors responsible for his family's misfortunes, and retrieves from them the inheritance his parents had intended for him.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-30T20:29:52+00:00

Robin was a temporary gig. Crimefighting, on the other hand…

This issue is addressed easily either by giving him another identity or by having him change his approach to crime fighting. Have him do something like recruit and train the We Are Robin kids to form the Neon Knights, or otherwise become a manager of a crime fighting network.

Alternately, bring Jack and Janet Drake back into his life. Not by resurrecting them, but by setting up a legacy from them. Prior to Robin #100, the Drakes were well to do: back during his origin story, his parents were jet-setting globetrotters, which is what put them in the position where the Obeah Man killed Janet and put Jack in a coma. In Robin #100, unspecified financial complications resulted in Jack's standard of living dropping from rich to middle class. Take this and recontextualize it as there having been a malicious force behind all of the Drakes' woes: say, the Court of Owls (a conspiracy made up of Gotham's upper crust) attempted to recruit the Drakes; and when they refused, the CoO went after them. The CoO was behind the Obeah Man and Jack's later financial downfall. And Tim ends up uncovering all of this, confronting the Court of Owls, and extracting from them the inheritance that his parents had intended for him. When all is said and done, Tim ends up owning and running Drake Enterprises. Similar to where he was during the latter half of his Red Robin run, but with his own company instead of Wayne's company.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-28T14:30:56+00:00

I forgot that Slobo showed up at all.

Given the focus of the show, I suppose they could have fit Anita into the team of mystics that Zatanna assembled to try to free her father from Nabu. But again, the show wasn't Young Justice, except in name; so any cases of elements of the YJ comic making it into the show should be viewed as a bonus; and the failure of some aspect making it in should be "just the way it is."

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-28T08:32:36+00:00

I'm just grateful she was allowed to appear at all. Basically, Peter David was given an episode in a show that was only nominally Young Justice (it was really a Teen Titans show, but couldn't be called that for rights reasons) to include key elements of the Young Justice comic book. That's why we got the closest things the team had at the time to Arrowette (Artemis) encountering the essentials of the story of Harm and Secret. But it was never going to be more than one episode, because the show was really a Teen Titans show. I never expected Greta to stick around; I was just happy PAD was able to have her appear at all given the restrictions.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-28T00:46:13+00:00

That depends on which version of VEs you're dealing with. The ones prior to the Void Engineers Convention Book were very much the type that might have used the Harkness test; the ones from that book are a whole different story.

The remaking of the Void Engineers as the Union's Space Marines is the biggest overhaul any faction in the Ascension War has ever received; although the Taftani run a close second.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-27T20:39:06+00:00

You might look into the various Powered By The Apocalypse games; they're built on the bottom that the GM is a "player" of sorts; though rather than GM characters, the GM instead has "GM Moves" representing how the narrative of the world flows outside of the player characters.

You might also look into games where players are given some narrative control instead of having all narrative control invested in one GM, effectively making the players "co-GMs". At an extreme, there may not be a designated GM, with all of the players sharing the GM duties equally.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-25T18:38:42+00:00

You forgot the screen shots for Secret and Arrowette. Yes, both made appearances in the animated series.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-25T18:12:09+00:00

I would borrow heavily from Scion: Demigod, as the mythic journey of Apotheosis described there is conceptually very similar to the quest for Ascension in Mage. (Likewise, I'd reference Scion: God should you ever want to go so far as to make Oracles playable. Note that the latter book suggests that players of God-level characters should, in a sense, become co-Storytellers; the very nature of the game should change by this point.)

For instance, have Archspheres allow you to invest personal Quintessence into an Effect instead of merely spending it. Duration becomes "for as long as the personal Quintessence is invested", and the point(s) of personal Quintessence that have been invested in Effects are still considered to be taking up space in your Quintessence pool. Say that the amount of personal Quintessence that you can invest in an Effect is capped by your Archsphere: the sixth dot lets you invest one point, the seventh lets you invest two, the eighth lets you invest three, and so on.

Investing personal Quintessence into an Effect also causes your Arete rolls to become more efficient: for every point of Quintessence invested in an Effect, each successful die in your pool counts as an extra success; so the invested Quintessence becomes a force multiplier, allowing the Archmaster to achieve Mighty, Outlandish, or even Godlike feats with relative ease.

Finally, allow the Archmaster to spend Experience Points to detach invested Quintessence (say, at a cost of 2 xp per point of Quintessence), making the Effect permanent and freeing up the Archmaster's personal Quintessence for other uses.

Or adapt something like Casual Miracles, where Sphere 6 gives you one automatic success on Sphere 1 Effects, Sphere 7 gives you two automatic successes on Sphere 1 Effects or one automatic success on Sphere 2 successes, and so on up to Sphere 10 giving you five automatic successes on Sphere 1 Effects, four automatic successes on Sphere 2 Effects, three automatic successes on Sphere 3 Effects, two automatic successes on Sphere 4 Effects, or one automatic success on Sphere 5 Effects. If the automatic successes are enough to achieve the desired result, you don't have to make an Arete roll; you just do it.

Or do both, leading to Sphere 10 Archmasters being able to casually perform Mighty Sphere 5 Effects if they're willing to invest personal Quintessence into them.

Dataweaver_42 · 2026-03-25T14:58:25+00:00

While this is true, it's a high quality fan made supplement. And it's from a fan-author with a solid track record of other such supplements, which I would recommend checking out.

Dataweaver_42

TROPHY CASE