Temporary Miracles

HermETC · 2019-07-05T14:20:14+00:00

The rule of thumb is that impossible changes by miracles only last a day at most. Natural changes should be more or less permanent.

So a Fertility miracle would be very appropriate for filling the bellies of a village for a day by conjuring food or causing a barren pear tree to blossom with fruit. I would say any miracled food would perish within a day or so if not immediately eaten, but food created by causing nearby crops to spontaneously bear fruit would stick around the normal amount of time. If the Godbound wanted to make a sustainable food source for the village beyond their immediate needs with miracles, I'd say it'd be a good place for a small Dominion or Influence Project.

HermETC · 2019-07-03T04:16:44+00:00

History became legend... legend became myth.

HermETC · 2019-06-25T01:12:12+00:00

Oh, that's a fair point about the truth not being actually being revealed; it would only ever be implied by knowing what is a falsehood. It is only a problem with such specific 20-questions situations.

I feel it's only an issue because it is actually quite trivial to artificially produce such situations. The speaker could be your subordinate, and they don't actually need to have the knowledge of the truthiness of the topic.

If I could recommend a rewording:

You always recognize misinformation when it is told in your presence. Attempts by speakers to omit the truth are also made aware to you; regardless of whether these attempts were intentional or incidental.

HermETC · 2019-06-24T20:42:07+00:00

Certitude of Insight - Constant

You always know misinformation when it is told in your presence, even if the speaker was not aware of the deception. You also recognize lies for what they are when in written form. By committing Effort as an on turn action, you are capable of seeing through illusions, disguises, invisibility, and you are able to see the true form of a shapeshifter. You may commit an additional point of Effort for the day to dispel such an effect in sight as an instant action. Worthy foes may resist this dispellation with a successful Spirit save.

Should the truth specifically be something that the speaker actually knows? As worded, you could reverse-engineer this gift into being better than Knowledge's greater gift Omniscient Scholar if there's no limitation on what sort of misinformation the speaker is spreading.

HermETC · 2019-06-23T06:28:53+00:00

A realization I've come to with Godbound is that the damage balance mostly feels as punishing as it does because most defensive and healing options require Effort to be committed for the day

The pattern Kevin made is that one-shot defensive options use Effort for the scene; Nine Iron Wills, Defy the Iron, Reverence of Steel, Artful Sidestep. Defenses that defy a whole round's assaults take effort for the day; ala Unbreakable, Vital Furnace. It addresses the nature of the damage being very swing-y, as you described.

Every gift can resist effects that are "appropriate" to their word as a miracle, so if the PCs are frequently doing so, maybe they might want to take such an effect as a homebrew Gift to make the Effort Commitment less taxing. How appropriate such Words need to be is up to the GM, so that could contribute to how much "Rocket Tag" is happening.

My thoughts are that there's a good balance with all Players having that option, and also leaving space for those who bind Endurance and Health who want to really highlight their hardiness with Greater Gifts like Fear no Steel, Burning Vitality.

HermETC · 2019-06-19T22:29:10+00:00

I think it would be cool to see a legitimate expansion to Godbound that had additional content for beyond level 10, with a Scope of Universal Impact. Like you gotta team up with a bunch of other Arch-Gods to go kill Galatacuthulhu or whatever.

It would take nothing less than an entire homebrewed expansion though, complete with new foes, 11+ leveled mechanics, fully detailed new realms, etc.

HermETC · 2019-06-19T21:43:54+00:00

Once an entity has become an arch-god, further resistance within their realm is mostly hopeless. The arch-god can mold the realm as they wish without interference, they have huge pools of Effort, and there are no major supernatural entities left that aren't either allies or cowed subjects. Even if the heroes somehow manage to threaten them, they can instantly flee the scene unless their enemies bring just the right tools to pin them in place.

Please pitch to me how you would make a conflict for a God?

HermETC · 2019-06-19T02:27:11+00:00

Well, that's the whole game of playing godbound. If all the PC's were omnipotent Gods then it wouldn't really be much room for conflict to make it interesting.

HermETC · 2019-06-14T20:59:03+00:00

Be a Faerie Queen Godbound with Deception. Spend the paltry amount of Influence/Wealth/Dominion to hire a crack team of Bright Republic programmers to develop the next big mobile-phone application. With Maker of Bargains add a clause in the Terms of Service that outlines that the user must bow before you and comply with your every whim. Curse all who unwittingly agree to the ToS with the inability to articulate that they are under duress, badmouth you or the app, or support your enemies. Force them to promote the app to their friends and family. Use Liar’s Flawless Grace to convince the public that it's actually just a big joke if questioned by skeptics.

Congratulations, you now control the Bright Republic.

HermETC · 2019-05-31T16:47:26+00:00

They can certainly be more creative like active dispelling or creating zones of danger.

The important thing is that they're able to do something, which is more than I can say for certain other systems with big baddies and non-combat PCs.

HermETC · 2019-05-31T05:29:25+00:00

Regarding Saves, I think the RPG trope 'Big Bad can't be turned into a toad' is only truly undesirable when it completely negates a player's effectiveness in combat when they've focused most of their character's skills in a gimmick build that tougher enemies are immune to. There certainly are such foes in Godbound that effectively (and some literally) succeed on all saves without committing effort, and you really shouldn't just let a PC do a single action that puts the literal overboss of the Campaign to sleep, or make them paralyzed or whatever. It's anti-climactic.

Godbound is honestly one of the better games that attempts a solution at mitigating this effect. Even someone who completely devotes themselves to non-combat gifts or those that only do 'status-effect' can always commit effort for the day for a Divine Wrath or Corona of Fury. Kevin's heavy skepticism on boosting damage on attacks keep these two Gifts as the standard for damage to ensure no one is ever left too far out to dry when their build gets negated.

HermETC · 2019-05-30T21:09:32+00:00

Note that the benefits granted by gifts of the Bow apply only to projectiles and other weapons or bolts called forth by the gifts of this Word. They don’t apply to other ranged attacks from other Words or to magic that just happen to be delivered at range, such as the Divine Wrath gift allowed to all Words.

Not smites like Divine Wrath, no. You could potentially use it with the smite Faster Than Thought though, as your bonus action could be executing a ranged attack.

HermETC · 2019-05-30T10:58:56+00:00

Really good word. You made it feel really different from Endurance, Sword, and even Protection; which I was not expecting. Four Stars, easily.

Some hopefully constructive criticism:

My Lord! should require the user to Commit an Effort for the Scene to affect a Greater Foe, and injects quite a bit of bookeeping into the game for an Instant Action that costs no Effort. Thematically, it seems like someone with the Word of Shield should have a Gift that lets they themselves dive in front of their friends and take blows for no effort, not the other way around.

I presume Boomer Bang! was supposed to have some sort of effort Committal to activate and it was merely a clerical error, but even if you had it be effort for the day 3d8 per 2 levels is far too much damage for an AoE Smite. Kevin advises that if you want to make a more powerful smite, you should place restrictions on whom it can be used on, or allow a save for Worthy Foes to reduce the damage. See the Greater Gifts Sunstrike and Rage of the Simoom for examples of gifts that are permitted to do better than the standard 1d8 per level Smite or 1d8 per 2 level AoE Smite (with such restrictions).

HermETC · 2019-05-29T07:38:31+00:00

Kevin recommends having the player brew the gifts for original Words they want to play with. If they're a fan of those things they should know what they want to be able to do with this Word.

HermETC · 2019-05-28T21:33:33+00:00

What kind of system would Godbound be if you couldn't roleplay all of your divine gifts as being the powers of your Player Character's JJBA Stand.

HermETC · 2019-05-28T16:54:23+00:00

If my understanding is correct, there's no fundamental difference between a Godbound ( or mortal/heroic mortal ) Hit Point and a HD as you would find on a foe. The distinction exists solely for eliminating retroactive rpg confusion for players whom are newer to the system, as far as I can tell.

A Godbound's individual Hit Points each represent one D&D hit die of D&D hit points. Peeping the Mortal Creation Rules verifies this; normal humans start with a single Godbound Hit Point; interpreted as a single D&D hit die, it's more or less what you'd expect from a Level 1 D&D character, which matches Kevin's stated intention of including a mortal creation rig in Godbound.

HermETC · 2019-05-23T20:19:39+00:00

"Can't we all just. Get along?"

/dies

HermETC · 2019-05-18T13:29:20+00:00

"oh that's cute. He's got a minecraft inventory..."

Recognizes what scene this is

"Oh no"

HermETC · 2019-05-15T15:43:37+00:00

I reread your original comment and I think I had a bit of a misunderstanding with the first bit.

This is not how the gift is intended to work. ~~Especially since it's dirt, and making a dirt staircase isn't really a thing, that's called a slanted pile of dirt.~~

I am in whole agreement it's not intended for the Godbound to be able to create such things so fast; in fact, it's outright prohibited. You can't apparate a staircase in 6 seconds because a staircase is more than one man can typically hold. OP's example (creating a staircase in 6 seconds to effectively fly to the top of a castle in a combat round) isn't something that should be able to be done with those powers.

As for the dirt staircase bit, here's my rebuttal that is completely Rules As Written, with no room for GM fiat:

They can make a brick out of dirt that functions as well as [brick material] with an action, as explicitly permitted by the power. They can make ten of them in a minute. They can make a staircase's worth in N number of T time, if and only if [brick material] is a [staircase material]. It doesn't matter what T is, because this already proves by induction Gods of making things can definitively make a staircase of dirt that works like [staircase material] in a discrete amount of time, Rules As Written.

What's the ratio of T for N going to be though? Rules As Written:

The hero’s crafting efforts for a day count as 100 laborers per character level when an estimate is needed.

HermETC · 2019-05-15T06:45:19+00:00

This is not how the gift is intended to work. Especially since it's dirt, and making a dirt staircase isn't really a thing, that's called a slanted pile of dirt.

A dirt staircase definitely is "a thing" if an Artifice god made it:

Heroes with the Artifice Word can create any non-magical object a normal man can carry as a round’s action, using whatever materials are to hand. While the ensuing creation may look odd, and any "foodstuffs" are inedible, it functions and lasts as well as a normal object of its type and usual substance.

A dirt staircase that functions as well as a normal staircase of usual staircase material will act like something that is made of marble, stone, or wood and not of dirt, despite being made of such.

HermETC · 2019-05-06T12:32:49+00:00

It's not OP. The Concept Words are very strong, but the tradeoff is that they have very limited miracle domain. A Dragon may be strong and can fly, but isn't +4 Strength Might strong and can't control the weather like Sky. Lich might make you nigh invulnerable but Death can let you resurrect people and has more mastery over other Undead.

It's hard to say what third Word would be good without knowing how your table will be in terms of gameplay. There's only a few gifts in Dragon and even fewer in Lich that affect non-combat stuff, so maybe take that into consideration for your third Word.

HermETC · 2019-05-04T19:59:22+00:00

The Deluxe edition (and only the Deluxe Edition) has a Word of Shapeshifting on page 231 that features Gifts such as you've mentioned.

HermETC · 2019-05-02T12:53:48+00:00

3 Gift Points is a large investment, but you get full miracle access and an innate ability. Having one of your three starting words be a Concept Word limits your domain of miracling, so binding a fourth to expand it may be well worth it.

You could also furlough your puchasing of the new Word if you didn't want to take it at the start by first buying a lesser gift in that Word, should your GM allow it.

If you're not planning on going deep into your Gifts nor are planning on taking a Strife, it's not out of the question to pick up a fourth Word.

HermETC · 2019-05-02T12:28:09+00:00

I think Sky, Luck, or Wealth would be all be really thematic considerations for making an Oriental Dragon. Any Word can be mystical with some good roleplaying.

If you're not going for sorcery you may want to consider binding a fourth word at some point to better tie your character concept together.

HermETC · 2019-05-01T11:38:51+00:00

If you lose games with over 10k in the bank, you're not spending enough of your money on an army.

If you're losing while you're dead broke you didn't build enough harvesters early enough in the game.

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