Talk:Nero

Thoughts on the Distinctions:

Consort: a bit of a 'Mother-may-I' distinction, as it relies on other Features/Leads pursuing your Lead before it has any effect. If no-one pursues you, it will do nothing.

Cultist and Touched by the Gods: These seem to be very similar, with Cultist being almost a tweaked version of Touched... But you're unlikely to see them both in the same PC, so that's not a great problem. Could push the game in an interesting direction, too.

Paterfamilias: Again, a 'Mother-may-I' trait, as it relies on other Leads/Features being your subservient relatives. Could probably replace it with Location: Family Home and use the paterfamilias bits as colour.

Legion: Hmmm... how is giving someone else a suicidal order a cost for the Lead? Maybe it should be 'when you Choose to follow a suicidal order'? -JM

The intent is that everyone knows it's a suicidal order, it will change the flavour of the relationship, and the commander will have a fun situation to deal with when the Lead given the order returns and is rather annoyed. But yes, it may not work as written. What would be a good trigger for an uber-commander?

Good in Bed: I'm unsure about this distinction, as it's really just a mix of Manipulative and Shameless Flirt, just with more limited application.

Neil 08:34, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Priest and Good in Bed suffer with a d12 effect that doesn't work: when it gets around to rolling Stress pools, it's passed the point where you can give a die to your opponent. The cost for this realy needs to be either Spend a Plot point or Add a die to Trouble.

James Mullen 20:27, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

You're right. Trouble is, there are few interesting benefits to choose from. Time to think again!

Neil 21:06, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Just flipping through Smallville, there's a Soldier Distinction that has "Choose to follow and order when you know it would benefit you to do otherwise" as one of its costs; would that make a good model for Legion? Or perhaps something like:

• d12: Increase your Exhausted or Injured pool when you Choose to sacrifice the men under your command in a needless slaughter.

Consort probably does have to go, as there are several existing Distinctions that already capture the essence of what I was going for, like Attractive, but I'd like to save Pater Familias for the cool name if nothing else! Maybe shift the emphasis to how the character behaves, e.g. taking charge over slaves and servants, defending the reputation (and continued existence!) of their household, etc.

As regards benefits, I agreee, there aren't that many to choose from and it rapdily becomes difficult to come up with any new triggers! The only true distinction between Distinctions is the flavour text that determines when you get to roll them or that describes Choose and Reveal effects, as well as the odd descriptor on what form Gain, Give and Add take.

Personally, for the Give drawback, I quite like Reveal as the paired benefit, as it makes you add a narrative component rather than being a wholly mechanistic trigger, but you can add a narrative requirement to almost anything (going by some random examples in Smallville, e.g. the d12 triggers for Agile and Big Hearted). You can even go completely off the reservation and have something unique that isn't explicity covered in the rulebook, or modify the rules to produce a unique twist on an existing benefit, e.g. reversing the target of Decrease or Increase so that they become drawbacks instead of benefits.

James Mullen 07:26, 22 September 2011 (UTC)