Does the DresdenVerse default to Ultimate Good or Ultimate Evil?

[Sanctaphrax]

Meh, whether or not you give gods ACaEBG is not that important right now. I have decent reasons for wanting to do so, but that can wait for another thread.

What's important is that ACaEBG is just too strong in a number of different scenarios.

This should be fixed.

Which can be done easily enough, either by changing ACaEBG so that it's not usable with the things that break it or by creating countermeasures.

Giving Mab and Titania one another's Catch is just as bad as giving them both uncountered ACeEBG. Any fight between them will end in one turn, in favour of whoever got initiative.

Now, you could just say that the game isn't supposed to be interesting or fun at such a high power level. But I don't know why you'd want to do that. The game should be fun in as wide a variety of circumstances as possible.

Not all Knights should have Sacred Guardian, but if we take an imaginary player with no mechanical knowledge and have him look for powers and stunts to customize his Knight with, he's likely to take Sacred Guardian. It's totally thematic.

[Mr. Death]

Maybe just have Sacred Guardian confined to Temple Dogs, since it's not listed among the regular powers in Your Story, and the justification for the power is that it's a result of the dog's Foo Dog parentage.

Unless a Temple Dog somehow became a Knight of the Cross. Which is just awesome enough for me to allow.

[Sanctaphrax]

Limiting a broken power to a certain character concept is never, ever, a good idea.

[Mr. Death]

So the problem is that Power A combines badly with Power B. Power B is only listed in one place, with one creature, as one of its unique powers, and not with the other canon mix-and-match powers, implying that it is, in fact, a power only available to that type of creature.

And the solution is to say that Power A should be changed?

Not to harp on about it, but it seems like the problem here is directly caused by boiling Sacred Guardian down to its bare mechanics and ignoring the in-game justifications for it.

[Becq]

It seems to me that ACAEBG is only extraordinarly powerful if you regularly fight opponents with Physical Immunity and an unknowable/impossible Catch.  Short of that, how would a monster-hunter with modest Lore (enough to recognize what he's fighting) who regularly carries around an assortment of weapons (silver, holy, iron, etc) perform any less well?  In fact, such a character with an underperforming stunt that grants +1 stress to his chosen attack style will outperform a character with ACAEBG against most creatures (except for the rare cases noted above).

Add to this the fact that the only RAW characters that can access this power are Knights of the Sword and Champion of God who have the power with significant limiting factors (Divine Purpose).  If any other custom template is allowed the power without similar restrictions, what results is the fault of the table that accepted it, not the fault of the power.

[Sanctaphrax]

Sacred Guardian is pretty much always broken, in my opinion. The Sword isn't necessary.

ACaEBG is extraordinarily powerful if you regularly fight opponents with Toughness above Inhuman and non-easy Catches.

And Mr. Death, Becq, you really need to let go of this narrative power balance idea. It will seriously cripple your understanding of this game.

PS: The rules don't say that ACaEBG is limited to Knights. RAW, anyone can use it.
PPS: Divine Purpose isn't a limiting factor.

[Mr. Death]

ACaEBG is extraordinarily powerful if you regularly fight opponents with Toughness above Inhuman and non-easy Catches.

It's supposed to be powerful. As written, the power is supposed to even the odds between a Knight and -anything- with a toughness power.

And Mr. Death, Becq, you really need to let go of this narrative power balance idea. It will seriously cripple your understanding of this game.

I think I understand the game as written pretty well. Narrative is as important to the game as mechanics.

PS: The rules don't say that ACaEBG is limited to Knights. RAW, anyone can use it.

The only place the power shows up on the Swords of the Cross. So you have to have one of those Swords to use it--implying you're a Knight, or at least close enough to one.

PPS: Divine Purpose isn't a limiting factor.

It certainly was when Harry tried to use it against Lea.

[UmbraLux]

And Mr. Death, Becq, you really need to let go of this narrative power balance idea. It will seriously cripple your understanding of this game.

Can we skip the "one true way-isms"?  Seriously, there are probably more ways to interpret and play than there are groups.

[Becq]

And Mr. Death, Becq, you really need to let go of this narrative power balance idea. It will seriously cripple your understanding of this game.

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're saying here in the context of my recent comment on this thread...?

PS: The rules don't say that ACaEBG is limited to Knights. RAW, anyone can use it.
PPS: Divine Purpose isn't a limiting factor.

Not really.  Per RAW, it isn't a power.  It's a feature of a sample weapon, and that sample weapon is packaged with Divine Purpose.  When I've seen refresh breakdowns of the Sword of the Cross before, I think I've seen ACAEBG priced at -3, but Divine Purpose is generally not accounted for at all.  Given the significant limitations it imposes, I would argue that you are really paying -3 for "All Creatures Are Equal Before God's Divine Purpose", and a customized version of the power with less restricts would be priced higher.

But set that aside, for now, and assume that ACAEBG can be used as a drop-in power at -3 refresh.  How many creatures can you find in YS such that a character with an ACAEBG IoP (-1 refresh) will perform sigificantly differently against them than a character without the ACAEBG but who carries an assortment of special weapons for every occasion.

For example:
The foe is a Giant Scarecrow, with a net of -8 refresh worth of toughness powers.  An iron sword outperforms an ACAEBG sword because its wielder has two extra Fate to spend during the fight.

In effect, ACAEBG sums up to granting the ability to declare -- at the cost of a Fate point -- that you have a weapon handy that satisfies a particular Catch.  Which is overpowered as a basic declarations, but as a declaration backed by -3 refresh (or more, depending on how you price it) worth of powers whos single purpose is making that declaration, is it really that bad?

[Sanctaphrax]

There's no wrong way to play.

But there are many, many, wrong ways to design rules.

This is one of them. I've seen rules written from the perspective Mr. Death and Becq are proposing, and they're pretty much always bad. Adopting the opposite view will more-or-less instantly make you a better writer.

If a power breaks when used outside of its planned context, put that context in the Power's musts. Otherwise you create a balance landmine.

Incidentally...I really dislike it when people say that "it's the table's fault" if some issue with the rules arises. Basically, that's the same as saying that a group deserves to have their game damaged because of their lack of skill. Plus it's a step away from the Rule 0 fallacy, so that's not great either.

Most balance problems don't arise because people munchkin out intentionally. Most of them come from people who don't know how to avoid the flaws in their games.

PS: Divine Purpose should be handled through compels, as I've said before. It's unbalanced to provide a rebate for it and making it work without compels screws over whoever takes it. Really, this kind of stuff is what aspects are for. People should be free to add whatever weird narrative limits they want without hurting their characters. And if that doesn't convince you, reread the description of Divine Purpose and pay special attention to the second paragraph's first sentence.
PPS: YS specifically says that you don't need the Knight template to use a Sword. High Concept or template, it says. An appropriate HC is justification enough.
PPPS: I generally rate the badness of a rules problem by the amount of work that avoiding it requires. This is a fairly minor problem since you can just restrict the availability of ACaEBG. But the fact that you have to do so means that it is a problem.

[Silverblaze]

Maybe just have Sacred Guardian confined to Temple Dogs, since it's not listed among the regular powers in Your Story, and the justification for the power is that it's a result of the dog's Foo Dog parentage.

Unless a Temple Dog somehow became a Knight of the Cross. Which is just awesome enough for me to allow.

Funny story in our game.  I'll Pm you the details if you like.

[Richard_Chilton]

A quick:
If people want look at a discussion on the OT (does Uriel's boss run things) there's a thread raging in the spoiler section (where you find spoilers for everything up to and including Ghost Story).  Starting around http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,31930.msg1386131.html#msg1386131 it has discussed the role of Dragons and compared various gods.

Richard

[McConaughey1984]

In the Books I would say that the answer is somewhat up for debate but for whatever reason the White God seems to have the Largest metaphysical/supernatural stones and no single other source we have yet met can go one on one. In game terms though we do have the  Supernatural Heavyweights listed on Our World page 28 and the White God is at the top of that list, and his/its form of sponsored magic is the most powerful. So it seems to me that the game would usually default to Ultimate Good as it was put at the beginning of the post. I also feel that this system is incredibly versatile and if in a particular group they want it to not be so and have powers equal to or greater the game would be able to accommodate that easily. But that is just my two cents.

[Silverblaze]

Bold parts are responses.

Meh, whether or not you give gods ACaEBG is not that important right now. I have decent reasons for wanting to do so, but that can wait for another thread.

What's important is that ACaEBG is just too strong in a number of different scenarios.

Not on a mortal knight.

This should be fixed.

Which can be done easily enough, either by changing ACaEBG so that it's not usable with the things that break it or by creating countermeasures.

Mortal knights only...?

Giving Mab and Titania one another's Catch is just as bad as giving them both uncountered ACeEBG. Any fight between them will end in one turn, in favour of whoever got initiative.

They already do... it's called trappings of summer and winter

Now, you could just say that the game isn't supposed to be interesting or fun at such a high power level. But I don't know why you'd want to do that. The game should be fun in as wide a variety of circumstances as possible.

Not all Knights should have Sacred Guardian, but if we take an imaginary player with no mechanical knowledge and have him look for powers and stunts to customize his Knight with, he's likely to take Sacred Guardian. It's totally thematic.

A) Only if they are part temple dog.
B) only if you let the player see Our World and give that player the idea they can take powers a dog has

It's supposed to be powerful. As written, the power is supposed to even the odds between a Knight and -anything- with a toughness power.
I think I understand the game as written pretty well. Narrative is as important to the game as mechanics.
The only place the power shows up on the Swords of the Cross. So you have to have one of those Swords to use it--implying you're a Knight, or at least close enough to one.It certainly was when Harry tried to use it against Lea.

Yeah pretty much this.

[Silverblaze]

There's no wrong way to play.

But there are many, many, wrong ways to design rules.

This is one of them. I've seen rules written from the perspective Mr. Death and Becq are proposing, and they're pretty much always bad. Adopting the opposite view will more-or-less instantly make you a better writer.

I'm sorry; that comes off as unbelievably arrogant.  I've helped design currently published MMO's (as beta tester and employee both) and the powers within and aided in at leat one homebrew system that was published with limited release.  Yes, you need to ignore narrative in many situtations, but you see this as far too black and white.  Ignoring the narrative is just as bad as using it too much. Of taht i can assure  you.  In fact, taking a nice median route will always make you a better writer/designer.  I understand game balance just fine.  If anything I am too strict with it, to avoid OP situations

If a power breaks when used outside of its planned context, put that context in the Power's musts. Otherwise you create a balance landmine. 

Agreed.  Both sacred guardian and ACAEBG needed to say they have certain requirements.  Hopefully errata will exist in the new supplement to be published.

Incidentally...I really dislike it when people say that "it's the table's fault" if some issue with the rules arises. Basically, that's the same as saying that a group deserves to have their game damaged because of their lack of skill. Plus it's a step away from the Rule 0 fallacy, so that's not great either.

Most balance problems don't arise because people munchkin out intentionally. Most of them come from people who don't know how to avoid the flaws in their games.

Have you played "One World By Night" - an organization of LARP players almost world wide for White Wolf publishing?  (Sorry, that is mostly a jest, but...) Most of the games I've played in over many states in the US - I found more purposeful munchkin players there than anywhere.  It is why my notions of game balance came from.  I saw what could be done with seemingly innocent powers. The combinations people came up with were actually staggering.

PS: Divine Purpose should be handled through compels, as I've said before. It's unbalanced to provide a rebate for it and making it work without compels screws over whoever takes it. Really, this kind of stuff is what aspects are for. People should be free to add whatever weird narrative limits they want without hurting their characters. And if that doesn't convince you, reread the description of Divine Purpose and pay special attention to the second paragraph's first sentence.
PPS: YS specifically says that you don't need the Knight template to use a Sword. High Concept or template, it says. An appropriate HC is justification enough.
PPPS: I generally rate the badness of a rules problem by the amount of work that avoiding it requires. This is a fairly minor problem since you can just restrict the availability of ACaEBG. But the fact that you have to do so means that it is a problem.

PS: I agree...mostly. Some compels added would be nice.  It also could very well be the built in way to destroy the weapon (you know all IoP have those, that is the Sword's)  which could mean ACAEBG must come with a way for it to disappear.

PPPS: The simplest solution has already been mentioned really.  Also, it was likely a mistake/oversight from a creation standpoint on behalf od Evil Hat.  There is also a chance, that they assumed people would jump to the conclusion only certain beings should have the power listed.  Example: Super Potent Emotion, Sacred Guardian, The Bark, Myrk, ACAEBG.