Godbound

I thought this was a Pathfinder class?

No, it's an alternate rule set based on PF. It's literally an Exalted port into PF setting. the maker s so full of himself he shills it everywhere.

>No, what you're talking about here isn't 'making sense'. It's being so obsessed with the 'simulationist' aspect of things that autism creeps in.
Wanting the average bandit chief to not be like a hero from the Greek mythology isn't being 'obsessed' by any sane standards. It's more like wanting to stick to some minimum level of sensibility. Like, complaining about the stts of individual weapons being unrealistic or hit points not being a good representation of the way combat and injuries work would be desire for simulationism. Wanting the game to work in a way that supports its themes and underlying narrative, which includes the Godbound being really really badass, almost overwhelmingly powerful compared to the vast, vast majority o humanity, has nothing whatsoever to do with simulationism.

You have to be really badass and hardcore to be a successful bandit chief in a world where there are demigods running around.

A handful of demigods who have only recently appeared. Obviously there is scary shit in the world aside from the Godbound, but the thing about bandits is that they usually don't go around looking for the baddest dudes to rob. They avoid serious triuble when they can and take on the easiest targets they can find. Sure, an experienced bandit would be pretty tough, but a hardened veteran has 2 HD, while a member of some true elite troop might have 3. A regular bandit chief sure as hell shouldn't have more than that. Even a minor hero should be some kind of a local legend, while a major hero should be known trhoughout the nation if not further away. These guys can exist, but they should be extraordinary aming bandits.

Bandit chiefs, military bases, and noble households probably should not have literal archmages at their beck and call either.

They realized that they could gain levels if they went out and did shit

Yeah, this is also true. I get the desire to have opponenst who can actually challenge players, but Godbound's setting kind of overdoes it. I think it would be not only acceptable but preferable for the players to start off steamrolling mortal opposition, attract the attention of some angel or formerly-mortal archmage or Uncreated monstrosity and suddenly face enemies that are actually threatening. Let them first get a feel for how powerful they are and how big a deal they are in the setting, then challenge them.

>Godbound's setting kind of overdoes it

It is not even a setting conceit in Arcem. At no point does Godbound's setting chapter even remotely propose that bandit chiefs and martially-inclined nobles are army-slaying faux-demigods themselves, with archmages in their employ.

Note that the bandit chief and his retinue are described in the context of dungeon building. They are in no way an average random encounter.

>bandits decide to plunder a ruin
>their leader is an army slaying hero and his lieutenant is an archmage

Yeah, no.

>based on PF
>port into PF setting

I find it really easy to rationalise. Remember all those pesky player characters who used to get to those really high levels and sometimes could threaten or kill gods themselves?
Yeah, there you go.

"Frontline-combat-oriented character who invests nearly all of their starting resources into such methods of warfare" is a common character build, but I think I have pieced together a starting build that does so with far more effectiveness and safety than most characters can manage.

Sorcery Word: Effort of the Word (lesser), Wizard's Wrath (lesser)
Sky Word: Voice of the Winds (greater)
Sword Word: The Path Through War (greater)

2 Effort goes into Wizard's Wrath and The Path Through War at all times. As an action, the character can use Voice of the Winds to deal their Fray die against all enemies within 100 feet even if they are worthy enemies, and they can still use their Fray die as usual on top of that.

This is better than attacking with weapons because it never requires a roll to hit, and because it allows the character to be impervious to all forms of weapon and unarmed attacks. (Kevin Crawford has confirmed that Voice of the Winds is indeed compatible with The Path Through War on RPG.net.)

Against low magic, the character has 1 leftover Effort with which to negate low magic without an action.

The character also has some minor utility in the form of the hyper-long-distance eavesdropping and telecommunications of Voice of the Winds.

Why does Voice of the Winds get to be compatible with The Path Through War? It really seems to me that it should be inapplicable, so as to prevent this turtling-and-spamming tactic which works even against worthy foes. If an enemy cannot invoke miracles (i.e. a large amount of foes in the bestiary), they are just plain out of luck against this character, even if they are worthy.

>Is this not still a case of "if you are melee, then take a gift for mobility or go home"? Bow-users do not even need to bother with mobility for the most part... and if they do, then they are untouchable.

This isn't actually true, though. You double move into combat. Your opponent can also double move, but they can't then shoot; if you follow up you end up in a chase. If they don't. they only move once, and you thwack them next turn.

Missile troops certainly get all the initiative and a GB with Bow and Alacrity will mess up anyone without similar competing mobility Gifts... but that's really as it should be.

>You double move into combat.

This also prevents you from attacking during your first turn.

Meanwhile, a ranged character can take a shot and then move *away*.

Might has a greater Gift: Leap the Moon, which lets you jump to any point within sight, like Alacrity's Flickering Advance, and lets you attack flying enemies that are trying to stay out of reach, also makes you immune to falling damage. But it limits you to 10MPH max, which is usually only important out of combat.

However: if your foe has Alacrity's Swifter than the Sun, then you can't reach them unless you also have it.

>their leader is an army slaying hero and his lieutenant is an archmage

It's just quick stats to represent them as a threat to a GB party. 4-6 GB will tear through a Major Hero and a Skilled Mage like fucking paper, and their Mobs are scarcely more threatening (just more time-consuming to kill without the right Gifts).

While we're here, can you stop pretending that "Minor or Major Hero" means that exactly half the Bandit Chiefs in the world are Major Heroes? That's an absurd reading and makes you look like an autistic faggot.

Also, this level 1 character stands a good chance of single-handedly defeating any of the following preset dungeon encounter groups:

Bandit Chief: Minor or Major Hero with a Skilled Mage lieutenant, a Large Mob of rabble and a Small Mob of veteran bandits
Military Base: Minor or Major Hero with Vast Mob of soldiers, possibly other Hero lieutenants or Skilled Mage support
Noble's Household: Minor or Major Hero with a Skilled Mage advisor, a Small Mob of guards, and possibly one or more other Heroes in their pay

All they would have to do is focus on the mages, and the rest will crumble to their AoE Voice of the Winds applications. Other combat-dedicated Godbound would not stand much of a chance against these preset dungeon encounter groups, at least not without committing Effort for an entire day.

>This also prevents you from attacking during your first turn.
>Meanwhile, a ranged character can take a shot and then move *away*.

Not quite. Assuming you get initiative on your enemy, you double move to close; they move once and shoot. Free shot for them. Now you're 30ft closer.

Once you're close up, if they move away and shoot, you can move to close and attack. You only lose the turns you spend closing. Kiting only works if you have a higher movement rate than them (because Sapphire Wings or Flickering Advance).

It's a mildly clumsy approach and gives archers the initiative, but given a GB of the Sword can just tank it anyway, it's not that big a deal. An Archer with Alacrity? Now that SHOULD be a big deal.

This creates the absurd expectation that it takes a pantheon of four to six literal demigods to assuredly take down a bandit chief and their underlings. In what setting is this the firepower necessary to safely deal with brigands?

>However: if your foe has Alacrity's Swifter than the Sun, then you can't reach them unless you also have it.

Not sure about that one - the Gift is poorly worded. There's a strong insinuation it is specifically referring to chase situations. I'd rule you have to be double-moving for it to count, although I realise others would disagree.

>Assuming you get initiative on your enemy, you double move to close; they move once and shoot. Free shot for them.

This is still not getting to attack your enemy on your first turn, and this is assuming that the distance is only 60 feet. If the distance is greater than that and the Sword-user does not have a mobility gift, the Sword-user is at a significant disadvantage.

>Once you're close up, if they move away and shoot, you can move to close and attack.
The Bow-user can also stand their ground and fire, because there is no penalty whatsoever to firing point-blank.

>but given a GB of the Sword can just tank it anyway, it's not that big a deal.
Committing Effort just to shrug off an attack is not a negligible expenditure, especially at lower levels.

>This creates the absurd expectation that it takes a pantheon of four to six literal demigods to assuredly take down a bandit chief and their underlings.

Only if you're a batshit sperg. Nobles are ALSO defined as Minor or Major heroes with Skilled Mage support.

But even with that, they're presented solely in terms of the level of challenge they are intended to present to a party of GB. Trying to infer facts about the setting from that is the height of absurdity.

So it's like Oblivion at max level with the superbandits then?

To be fair to Godbound's setting, you are playing after an age where the armies of human mortals went and defeated Heaven.

If you consider that a bandit chief is probably a (mercenary?) captain from armies that went against angels, the power of creation, and _won_ and then they started fighting each other for who knows how long, yeah, being a major hero could be explained; as well as the 'dungeons' actually being military installations from that age, not some fucking hole in the ground that a bunch of goblins dug.

Well, not quite. Minor Heroes are barely a challenge anyway, and the point is they're balanced against a party of GB, not a single GB.

>This is still not getting to attack your enemy on your first turn, and this is assuming that the distance is only 60 feet. If the distance is greater than that and the Sword-user does not have a mobility gift, the Sword-user is at a significant disadvantage.

Sword doesn't give you that capability. If you want that capability, get it elsewhere.

I'm not pretending missile weapons aren't really quite solid and dangerous opposition. Facing one GB of Sword with no backup Words(maybe it's Sword/Fertillity/Wealth, the Stabby Ho), the best option would be to split the archers into multiple groups, forcing the foot-slogger to run between the groups getting pin-cushioned.

The setting is a thousand years after those events IIRC.

According to page 70 of the Godbound PDF, it has been a thousand years since the shattering of Heaven. It is far from a recent event.

Dungeon-delving bandit chiefs, martially-inclined nobles, and military officers being army-slaying superheroes undermines the importance of magnitude of the PC Godbound themselves.

>If you want that capability, get it elsewhere.

Such as ignoring attacks altogether and aiming for a Voice of the Winds build?

>Such as ignoring attacks altogether and aiming for a Voice of the Winds build?

Or use one of the 8 million or so Gifts in other Words that extend your attacks to 200ft range. Or a Sun/Darkness teleport. Or... well, you get the point.

>Dungeon-delving bandit chiefs, martially-inclined nobles, and military officers being army-slaying superheroes undermines the importance of magnitude of the PC Godbound themselves.

Literally only if YOU choose to
a) Make them Major rather than Minor heroes
b) Give them army-slaughtering Gifts
c) Give their lieutenants army-slaughtering Gifts and intentionally select combative Lesser Paths rather than Hedge Magic or some shit

I mean, you're sitting there saying "This system allows me to kick myself in the balls! I blame this system for my sore nutsack!"

>then why do conventional armies even exist at all?
Fortification exists, sorta.
But really, its like in Nanatsu no Taizai, where fortifications is actually pointless.

>Or use one of the 8 million or so Gifts in other Words that extend your attacks to 200ft range.

Which Sword does not have.

Essentially, what I am saying is that for any character who wants to focus on Sword, there is an unwritten expectation that they should invest in some form of mobility gift as well or else they will effectively lose attacks at the start of some combat, because there is no "charge" action.

Bow does not need such a mobility investment, although of course, actually making the investment helps them as well.

It would have been much fairer to Sword if "charge" was an action.

>Essentially, what I am saying is that for any character who wants to focus on Sword

Every single GB has 3 Words. The game is rather blatantly written on that expectation.

You realize you can give Sword that kind of gift, right? Custom gifts are explicitly called out, the gifts in the book are just examples.

>a) Make them Major rather than Minor heroes

Bandit chiefs, martially inclined nobles, and military officers being listed as minor heroes *or* major heroes directly implies that a non-negligible portion of them are major heroes.

>b) Give them army-slaughtering Gifts
>c) Give their lieutenants army-slaughtering Gifts and intentionally select combative Lesser Paths rather than Hedge Magic or some shit
This is deliberately picking out middlingly-optimized options for them, and if that is being done, it would only be fair for the hypothetical PC Godbound to be middlingly optimized as well. In that case, the two mediocre optimizations would cancel each other out.

Those Words do *not* come with free gift selections.

Why does a Sword Godbound effectively find themselves taxed with "take a mobility/ranged gift or go home, unless you want to commit Effort for the day"? Could this not have been made less mandatory a tax simply by including a "charge" action?

The issue is that the game then goes on to contradict itself by charging an extra 1 gift point for out-of-Word gifts. Thus, if you create a Sword lesser gift for swift movement but it happens to be close to one of the many movement-related Alacrity gifts, then whoops, you must pay 2 points rather than just 1.

I dunno, I think it would be out-of-metaphor for Sword.

I think what the user is seeing as a weakness in Sword is sort of the point of the Gift. Giving it a ranged attack wouldn't make sense. I would have to be given some serious explanation to pass a ranged-attack Sword miracle, for example.

It sounds like whoever wrote the RPG got carried away with what they wrote before without thinking through the implications. They have an idea for what a Major Hero or Skilled Mage should be, but also an idea that low-level PCs should contest bandit camps and noble households and the rules 'slots' they've put these things in don't match up with the fluff they've written.

That arrangement for bandit chiefs, military bases and so on sounds appropriate for a wuxia setting, but this game (which I do not know anything about, I'm purely going by the text you've transposed) seems at a higher power level than that. I'm assuming your conclusions on the rules are accurate, because obviously you autistically post things like this all the time and usually the rules conclusions you make are solid enough in a vacuum.

Swings the sword so hard, a pressure wave of air can cut out to 200ft.

LOOK HOW EASY THAT WAS.

Fucking autists.

Making every bandit chief an optimized hero seems like it implies a weird meta perspective for in-game characters. Optimization is usually a design problem, not something characters in the setting are aware of.

It's fine to middlingly-optimize a bandit chief and it doesn't imply anything about the PCs. It could easily be the case that 99% of bandit chiefs are minor heroes, the actual numbers aren't indicated at all.

Again I'm and again, this is typically the problem with your stuff. In a vacuum you might be right but you have no consideration for an actual played game, which isn't to excuse rules fuckups. Not that I've looked at this one at all - I am only using the text you've provided.

>a) Make them Major rather than Minor heroes
>Bandit chiefs, martially inclined nobles, and military officers being listed as minor heroes *or* major heroes directly implies that a non-negligible portion of them are major heroes.

No. It doesn't. It implies that it could be either and it's up to the GM which is appropriate to the situation (which includes the party facing them). I'm starting to agree with the user who suggested your simulationism is reaching autistic levels.

>>b) Give them army-slaughtering Gifts
>This is deliberately picking out middlingly-optimized options for them, and if that is being done, it would only be fair for the hypothetical PC Godbound to be middlingly optimized as well. In that case, the two mediocre optimizations would cancel each other out.

Odd use of "optimization" here. You don't actually have to give them a Greater Gift; after all, it's called out in the text that these aren't actually Gifts at all. Any Endurance or similar GB will just bounce CtCR without much trouble, so they're not even meaningfully "optimised" against a party of GB with that Gift; they're just "optimised" for this inane white-room thought exercise you're engaging in.

>
>The issue is that the game then goes on to contradict itself by charging an extra 1 gift point for out-of-Word gifts. Thus, if you create a Sword lesser gift for swift movement but it happens to be close to one of the many movement-related Alacrity gifts, then whoops, you must pay 2 points rather than just 1.

You're reading that wrong. Out-of-word Gifts are +1 point if they're taken as-is. Want Sapphire Wings for your Fire/Might/Endurance dragon? 2 points. Come up with a Fire version of Sapphire Wings, and it's 1 point.

You can probably conclude that the only bandit chiefs worth giving stats are the few that would threaten the demigods.

I appreciate where you're coming from, but Sword specifically calls out that it doesn't work at range. It's the "killing up close" word - Sword is just its name.

I'd actually probably allow a Might effect like that, though. Because a) rule of cool and b) nothing specifically stating otherwise.

On another topic, why does Kevin Crawford expect Godbound to be sitting around all day and waiting for their powers to recharge? All throughout the Godbound book, it is implied that Godbound are supposed to commit Effort for the day on a regular basis (e.g. to activate miracles or auto-save), and the author even assumes this is what will be happening judging from their posts in RPG.net.

Does this not mean that most Godbound will find themselves operating on 15-minute workdays in yet another obnoxious case of Vancian adventuring?

I would be fine with it if Godbound, at some point, said something like, "Giving a major hero nothing but greater gifts implies that they are one of the strongest and rarest mortals in a realm," in addition to "You should make a mortal a major hero only if they are one of the mightiest heroes of a nation."

The book does say the latter, but then it goes back on that with a plain suggestion of "Bandit Chief: Minor or Major Hero with a Skilled Mage lieutenant," which implies that the GM could just casually make a bandit chief a major hero, one with three greater gifts, at that.

And even then, if the GM makes the bandit chief a minor hero with but a single lesser gift, they are *still* traveling around with a literal archmage of a lieutenant for some inexplicable reason.

>You're reading that wrong. Out-of-word Gifts are +1 point if they're taken as-is. Want Sapphire Wings for your Fire/Might/Endurance dragon? 2 points. Come up with a Fire version of Sapphire Wings, and it's 1 point.

Do you have a page source to support this claim?

That isn't going back on it though, because you can read those two statements together and they're not in conflict.
>"You should make a mortal a major hero only if they are one of the mightiest heroes of a nation."
>"Bandit Chief: Minor or Major Hero with a Skilled Mage lieutenant,"
Those aren't in conflict. You're being triggered by some plain encounter design text, which admittedly seems somewhat opposed to the fluff elsewhere, but which doesn't actually contradict it. If a bandit chief is one of the mightiest heroes of a nation (perhaps in a situation like the outlaws of Liangshan Marsh) then he or she can be a Major Hero.

>I would be fine with it if Godbound, at some point, said something like, "Giving a major hero nothing but greater gifts implies that they are one of the strongest and rarest mortals in a realm," in addition to "You should make a mortal a major hero only if they are one of the mightiest heroes of a nation."
>The book does say the latter, but then it goes back on that with a plain suggestion of "Bandit Chief: Minor or Major Hero with a Skilled Mage lieutenant," which implies that the GM could just casually make a bandit chief a major hero, one with three greater gifts, at that.

Which means you should combine those two sentences together and think "Is this Bandit Chief one of the mightiest heroes of the nation?"

And since Robin Hood is a good example of a Bandit Chief, I would suggest that sometimes they might be.

Yet again, this is not your run-of-the-mill bandit, this is a boss-at-the-end-of-the-dungeon bandit, you autist (you).

>boss-at-the-end-of-the-dungeon bandit

That's still a fucking retarded amount of bandits in the world who can stand up to a party of demigods.

It's the fucking JRPG thing where your power level got multiplied by a lot, but all your opposition did too, so there's no net difference.

Page 12 says: "You may only learn gifts from Words you have bound, with one exception; you can spend 2 points to learn a lesser gift from another Word if you can explain how your own powers are creating that effect. Someone with Alacrity might buy the Sword gift Thirsting Razor, for example, and explain it as their own incredible speed leveling ultra-accurate blows. It's up to the GM to decide if a given gift's explanation fits well enough to allow its purchase."

Page 29 states: "The lesser and greater gifts provided under each Word are not meant to be exhaustive, but only an example of the sorts of powers that the Word might grant."

Page 28 tells us: "Start with the existing gifts as cues and examples. Indeed, you might just lift them entirely if the Word you’re creating is a blend of existing portfolios. A Word of the Moon, for example, might have several Night gifts on its list, along with new gifts that emphasize madness, wolves, silver, and the night sky."

Why is there a doubled cost for out-of-Word lesser gifts if new gifts can be created for a Word anyway, and when cherry-picked Words are valid? Why does the Godbound in page 12 have to bother with a double-price Thirsting Razor when they could create an Alacrity lesser gift that just so happened to be eerily similar to Thirsting Razor, or a custom Word that included Alacrity gifts and Thirsting Razor?

What I am saying is that the book does an awful job of explaining this, and it still does not account for the Skilled Mage (literal archmage with three gifts, Effort 6, and two actions each round) who is always there.

It is hard to tell if a given NPC "should" be one of the "mightiest heroes of a nation" if the power levels of NPCs are completely arbitrary and designed solely to challenge a pantheon of literal demigods.

>Do you have a page source to support this claim?

The bit you've been quoting is from Page 12:
>You may only learn gifts from Words you have bound, with one exception; you can spend 2 points to learn a lesser gift from another Word if you can explain how your own powers are creating that effect.

But that specifically calls out binding Gifts from other Words. If you create a new Gift using other Gifts as a template, as explained on page 28, you have to explain how the miraculous nature of the Word in question produces that effect. If you can do that, you can have it as a standard Gift of that Word, which means no surcharge.

Now, that's harder to do with some Words than others. Beasts is easy, you just grow some massive fuck-off wings. Fire's tougher, because it doesn't call out anything that gives you flight, so you'd have to talk your GM into it.

But if you just take Sapphire Wings (cos I've got wings, I'm a dragon innit) that's 2 points. And I don't have a problem with that.

>It is hard to tell if a given NPC "should" be one of the "mightiest heroes of a nation" if the power levels of NPCs are completely arbitrary and designed solely to challenge a pantheon of literal demigods.
Yeah, it sounds like there's a disconnect there with how the fluff is written and the rules are presented. But if you're GMing you just have to call that shit yourself, like you do in most games.

>What I am saying is that the book does an awful job of explaining this, and it still does not account for the Skilled Mage (literal archmage with three gifts, Effort 6, and two actions each round) who is always there.

The Skilled Mage is only "always there" if you're literally the worst GM on the face of the planet.

The book does a perfectly good job of explaining this stuff if you're actually able to take two statements and combine them to reach a conclusion. Same goes for the custom Gift stuff.

The section quoted is actually from the rules description of the Mortal/Mighty Hero in the bestiary section.

There's no real disconnect; as the setting is described, there are heroes everywhere, Minor and Major. They just collapse against GB-level opposition. By the rules as presented, most of them probably can't even hurt a lot of the divine-level enemies in the game.

>you have to explain how the miraculous nature of the Word in question produces that effect. If you can do that, you can have it as a standard Gift of that Word, which means no surcharge.

But this makes no sense at all, because page 12 already has you "explain how your own powers are creating that effect" to purchase an out-of-Word gift with the doubled cost.

If you can "explain how your own powers are creating that effect" to make a new gift for your favorite Word and then purchase that at no extra cost, then what is the point of the out-of-Word surcharge?

Bear in mind that even a "minor hero" is entitled to a single gift, which can be something like this:

>Fear No Steel, On Turn
>Commit Effort. Your determination or supernatural hardiness allows you to shrug off the lesser harms of the world. You take 1 fewer point of damage from all incoming sources of damage, whether physical or magical. Optionally, Commit Effort for the day to become immune for a scene to attacks from lesser foes without magical weapons.

Which makes one wonder why there are conventional armies with mundane weaponry, given that even "minor heroes" can render themselves immune to nonmagical weapons.

Since the very opening post of this thread, I have been less concerned about pitting the minor/major hero directly against a Godbound, and comparing the minor/major hero's impact on great battles and the a Godbound's impact on great battles. This is because world-shaping potential is very important in the game, and if commonplace mortal heroes can redefine war just as well as Godbound can, then that would diminish the importance of the Godbound.

The whole bandit thing can easily be interpreted as :

>If there is a ruin interesting enough for the GB PCs to explore it, it could serve as a base of operations for a group of bandits led by a minor or even major hero.

That's pretty far from :

>Half the bandit chiefs in the realm are major heroes.

The entire point of page 116's encounter groups is to give you premade groups that could feasibly give some problems to a Godbound pantheon for when you want such a group. Not every ruin of interest will have them, and it is an incredibly dense reading to assume that every instance of "Bandit Chief" in the world is the second coming of An Lushan.

Here's what the section says about ruin challenges:

"The difficulty of a Boss should be keyed to what is logical for the ruin, rather than to the pantheon’s overall power level. A group of veteran Godbound should not be stumbling over powerful parasite gods in every crumbling villa and mournful tower just because they require such a foe to give them a good fight. Conversely, a group of novice heroes who strut into a shard of fallen Heaven shouldn’t be protected from encountering the kind of terrible entities that lair in such places just because they can’t reasonably expect to defeat them. If you build a consistent world with logical challenges where they ought to be, your players will be able to make rational decisions about the kind of perils they want to face."

>Which makes one wonder why there are conventional armies with mundane weaponry, given that even "minor heroes" can render themselves immune to nonmagical weapons.
Like the toad style master from Shaw Brothers' Five Deadly Venoms? You can still subdue or trick this guy, presumably. I don't think one invulnerable guy (among how many 1000?) throws thing off that crazily, even in numbers at the bottom of the totem pole.

>If you can "explain how your own powers are creating that effect" to make a new gift for your favorite Word and then purchase that at no extra cost, then what is the point of the out-of-Word surcharge?

I think it's for situations where the new gift strains the theme of the word you're using to justify it. It's a universal truth of RPGs that if you can bullshit your GM into agreeing with you then you can do anything, but I'd love to see the explanation that lets you take a Sword power with Health rather than Alacrity.

Especially since every spellcaster in the opposing team will focus him as soon as his invulnerability to regular weapons is revealed.

Page 12 already says:
>you can spend 2 points to learn a lesser gift from another Word if you can explain how your own powers are creating that effect

In other words, you must justify it with a flavor rationale *and* must pay the surcharge anyway.

Why does a character suddenly get to skip the surcharge just by designing the desired gift as a "brand new gift"?

Spellcasters are supposed to be rare in the setting... or are they? The sample encounter group for the "bandit chief" and the "noble's household" both include a "skilled mage."

According to page 154, "A skilled mage represents a duke’s sorcerous vizier or one of the most powerful wizards of a city."

I am not entirely sure why such potent archmages are accompanying bandit chiefs into dungeons, but whatever the case, it makes it difficult to tell just how rare these spellcasters are "supposed" to be.

I don't really see why a bandit chief can't have a wizard as powerful as a duke's wizard at his command.

>The sample encounter group for the "bandit chief" and the "noble's household" both include a "skilled mage."
These are not sample encounter groups, they do not represent every bandit chief nor noble in the realm. They are examples given to populate a place of interest to the PCs.
99% of bandit chiefs or nobles aren't even minor heroes. But it could be interesting to encounter one that is when exploring a ruin.

Dukes are, like, the strongest nobility.

Why is he still a bandit if he can hire a duke's best wizard?

He's not hiring the duke's best wizard, he has an equivalently powerful wizard. I mean, bandit chiefs don't have to be like the low level fodder you fight in D&D, right? In a lot of wuxia stuff a bandit chief is a dangerous enemy on par with the protagonists, who are incredibly skilled martial artists with few peers in the nation.

>In other words, you must justify it with a flavor rationale *and* must pay the surcharge anyway.

Ah, right, I see what you mean. That is a bit muddled.

I was reading that as you being able to take gifts from other Words just as a result of general Godbound-liness. After all, if you take three minor Gifts from the same Word then the game effectively lets you retroactively reclaim the surcharge and just have that Word.

In my opinion, this is a problem in and of itself.

If the game wants to cast the PCs as almighty demigods, then why is the game also supercharging people like bandit chiefs into wuxia superheroes?

Does it not undermine the importance of Godbound to have these wuxia superheroes rampaging through the setting?

It is not as though Godbound have a shortage of challenges in the bestiary; why do mortals have to be *this* powerful in relatively large numbers?

This is like starting off the characters in a D&D campaign as high-level heroes who are supposed to be important in the world, but then casting bandit chiefs as mid-level "heroes" in their own right.

I think that's something you'd have to take up with the author of the game. It doesn't seem objectively wrong or right to me - it's just a setting decision.

>if I interpret things to be as retarded as possible, they'll be retarded!
Alternatively, use that pile of gray mash sitting on top of your neck and decide "maybe this random fort won't have an army-slaying pseudogod here," and use a lesser hero instead.

Also, their "gifts" aren't actually divine miracles RAW, so they won't count as magical attacks, won't get around Undying, et c.

Try reading again, it's not about GB vs. major heroes, it's about major heroes vs. world.

OK, that's an easy one:

Most major heroes don't have 3 greater gifts (seriously, what the fuck man?), and these gifts generally just make them soldier +3 rather than an army-slaughterer.

A slightly less retarded setup would be
>Steel Without End
>Walk Between the Rain
>Swifter than the Sun

Which still means they have base AC 3 and deal 1d10+1+mod damage with 4 attacks a turn, but that's not the sort of thing that destroys an entire army.

Alternatively, major heroes probably aren't all concentrated in one area or colluding against the world, and so would likely fight each other.

>Does this not mean that most Godbound will find themselves operating on 15-minute workdays in yet another obnoxious case of Vancian adventuring?

Sure, although only in forum-based theorycrafting and not in any actual campaign I've ever heard of.

I do find resource replenishment based on in-game time to be an occasionally annoying relic that tabletop gaming is sort of stuck with, but I also find it much less annoying when every member of the party uses the same timespan for their refresh. Put a Wizard and a Warlock in a 5e game and have a campaign with a lot of overland travel (long rests between each encounter) or a site-based adventure with continuous threat (no short rests between each encounter) and the Warlock's player will start to get irritated with the pace.

It puzzles me why the Godbound book does not simply instruct the GM to choose X gift points, or to choose Y lesser gifts. These configurations are used elsewhere in the Godbound book (e.g. parasite gods have "three or four lesser gifts from the Word"), so I have no idea why the author could not do the same for mortal heroes.

I have, in fact, played in and run campaigns wherein 15-minute workdays had occurred. (This was before I had moved on to RPGs with less time-recharge-based resource systems.)

Not every adventure can conveniently be on a strict time table for the PCs.

Furthermore, it is *important* to theorycraft, because the mechanics should hold up as well as possible in an environment wherein the players are earnestly trying to do their best to be as efficient as effective as possible under them. If it turns out that these demigods should be operating on 15-minute workdays, then that sets a rather anticlimactic paradigm.

According to Kevin Crawford on RPG.net:

>GM's judgment as to what's plausibly reskinnable and what requires the surcharge.

This, of course, seems terribly vague. I have no idea where the threshold between "That is reskinnable, so you can take it for free" and "That is not reskinnable, so you must take the surcharge" lies.

The example in page 12 involves a Godbound using their Alacrity Word to replicate the effects of Thirsting Razor, flavoring it as impossibly fast attacks. That would seem like a natural reskinning to me, and yet it takes the surcharge.

>it is *important* to theorycraft
I'm with Mike Mearls on this one. It can be fun to theorycraft, and if you're not in a game at the moment then it's the only thing that you can do, but theorycrafting is only ever loosely related to actual play. I don't think it's that important to imagine what the rules look like in the absence of subjectivity, because players will never encounter them in that format.

>I have no idea where the threshold between "That is reskinnable, so you can take it for free" and "That is not reskinnable, so you must take the surcharge" lies.
Ask your GM. Of course, we're theorycrafting, so you can't, but that's the real answer.

I can give you case-by-case answers as if I were your GM, but I assume that isn't interesting to you. Problem is, that leaves the conversation at a stop. Yep. The rule's ambiguous. If you wanted to interpret it in a way that you didn't like, or your theoretical GM has different taste to you, then you're stuck with the rule somewhere that you don't like. I agree. Same point applies to the argument that Major mortal heroes could be too powerful if built and placed in the setting in a certain way. I agree. What more can be said?

Get into a game and ask your GM.
Run a game, be the GM, and use the rules the way you want to.

Are you new to OSR or something? Rules are not meant to be perfect nor carved in stone, they are to be changed and/or made up by the GM during play.

If the time between refills is too long for your group, that's an easy fix. If the world has too many powerful beings, that's an easy fix too.

There's a reason the whole book is filled design notes: it's so that the GM can understand why the rules are here, and fix them as he wishes.

You're talking to a RAWtist 4rry.

Well thats your problem to figure out then.

You meme-loving autist retard, who fucking cares when it's the fucking GM who chooses who the fuck you're fighting in the first god damn place. It's not like he spins the god damn wheel and says "GEE THE SOURCEBOOK IMPLIES IN PARAGRAPH 20 ON PAGE 221 THAT APPROXIMATELY 33% OF ALL BANDITS ARE ACTUALLY DANTE FROM THE DEVIL MAY CRY SERIES™ AND THEREFORE I SHOULD ROLL 1d6 TO FIGURE OUT IF THIS BANDIT THESE LITERAL DEMIGODS ARE FIGHTING IS A LESSER DEMIGOD"

Also, you fucking Touhou loving degenerate furfag, there's usually only one of these major fucking heroes per fucking encounter, so if you and your friends fucking nuke him with your god damn Smites that you most likely have, he's fucking dead. He also can't do any fucking miracles and only has three god damn gifts, so he's inflexible as fuck.

God dammit, I hate you.

>Are you new to OSR or something?
There's no way this is an OSR game.

I'd also like to point out that OP's faggot ass wandered into a Godbound thread and said "HEY LET ME SHOW YOU MY MAGICAL CROSS-DRESSING KITSUNE CATBOY GODBOUND'S BACKSTORY" like he thought that was fucking normal and anyone wanted to hear about his ERP shit.

Keep your drama to yourself m8.

I'm just tired of the guy acting like he's the best game designer on this miserable board when in reality he's a know-nothing pedant.

I think your projection and irrational hatred isn't particularly relevant or worth posting.

is this game good tho

I assume you are joking, but in case you are not, the first sentence of the rule chapter is literally:

>Godbound is a traditional old-school game in many respects. Those readers who've been gaming for years are very likely to recognize almost all of the mechanical concepts that follow in this section, and it shouldn't take you long at all to get up to speed.

And a bit further down:

>As an OSR-style game, Godbound is implicitly compatible with a huge range of other fantasy RPGs.

Fuck off, OP.

I'm not joking. That a game says it is OSR does not make it OSR.

>Everyone who disagrees with me is that guy I hate!

No, you're just consumed with paranoia and madness, user.

That fanart...
Threatening Roar?

That a game is Basic D&D with bits added on to it does make it OSR, though.