Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [attunement/angels] New Servitor Attunement for angels of Flowers

Azel · 12-08-2011, 01:04 AM

Well, with Cor & Eth Song of Harmony especially, I don't know if you can. Cor stops combat outright, only allowing verbal abuse, and Eth invokes calm, rational discussion. Both of these function as a blast effect, hitting multiple targets, and last minutes (even on demons, IIRC, gotta check my book later). The only real difference you get here is that the targets turn off (not lose, just turn off) their buffs and are forced to hug. Sure it may be read as some sort of temporary Eth Attraction effect or something, but what does it do and why would it matter to Novalis' word?

Now turning off someone's buffs is a great combat ability, but more prone to encouraging combat tactics. (And making them lose their buffs outright is even stronger combat fodder.) And that's counter-productive to Novalis' word. We can't go any further down that design path w/o a plus to combat and minus to Flowers' word.

Now if we travel travel down the alternate design path focusing on the hugging part you come to a similar issue. Eth Attraction already exists, and it already lasts a good, long while, far longer than this would last. The big advantage here is more than one target at the same time. However, couldn't that just be a Variant song effect? Or just use the song twice? This bleeds into redundancy and cost issues again for the attunement.

I honestly am at a loss how I could pursue either song benefit design goal without missing the mark on theme or reaching redundancy. So at that point cost design goals become moot because I can't find a way to make the benefit design worth its existence. I'm sorry I can't provide the solution you seem to want for you here -- but the positive take away could be that you saved your players 10 CP and discovered a nifty song trick (or variant). :)

12-08-2011, 01:04 AM	#7
Azel Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: South of the Town across from the City by the Bay	Re: [attunement/angels] New Servitor Attunement for angels of Flowers Well, with Cor & Eth Song of Harmony especially, I don't know if you can. Cor stops combat outright, only allowing verbal abuse, and Eth invokes calm, rational discussion. Both of these function as a blast effect, hitting multiple targets, and last minutes (even on demons, IIRC, gotta check my book later). The only real difference you get here is that the targets turn off (not lose, just turn off) their buffs and are forced to hug. Sure it may be read as some sort of temporary Eth Attraction effect or something, but what does it do and why would it matter to Novalis' word? Now turning off someone's buffs is a great combat ability, but more prone to encouraging combat tactics. (And making them lose their buffs outright is even stronger combat fodder.) And that's counter-productive to Novalis' word. We can't go any further down that design path w/o a plus to combat and minus to Flowers' word. Now if we travel travel down the alternate design path focusing on the hugging part you come to a similar issue. Eth Attraction already exists, and it already lasts a good, long while, far longer than this would last. The big advantage here is more than one target at the same time. However, couldn't that just be a Variant song effect? Or just use the song twice? This bleeds into redundancy and cost issues again for the attunement. I honestly am at a loss how I could pursue either song benefit design goal without missing the mark on theme or reaching redundancy. So at that point cost design goals become moot because I can't find a way to make the benefit design worth its existence. I'm sorry I can't provide the solution you seem to want for you here -- but the positive take away could be that you saved your players 10 CP and discovered a nifty song trick (or variant). :)