Saturday, November 17, 2012

Dave's Player Pavilion: Specialization v. Generalization

The idea of specializing your Character against generalizing is a difficult choice. Being a God means focusing yourself into a few specific areas, making generalization difficult. Although, we can see generalization as possible with Gods such as Lugh (Although it is likely he just has Ultimate Craft and Ultimate Art) and likely some other Gods who do not imminently jump into my mind currently.

The argument for creating a specialized character is obvious; you can be better than most other beings of your Legend or lower at two, or maybe three, specific things. Specializing in an Epic Attribute involves buying many Knacks from it's trees, and taking Relics to enhance the Attribute or augment the Knacks it has. Specializing in a Purview will involve buying as many Boons as you can from it, and, again, taking Relics to augment the Boons, buff rolls for the Purview, or reduce the legend cost of things.


Now, the two Pantheons that reward you the most for specialization are the Dodecatheon with Arete, and the Anunna with Me. Apollo will always be the greatest shot of all the Gods, except tying with his sister. No matter who else comes to the table, Uller, Houyi, or any of the other archers, will be as good as them at it (with exception to the Irish, who have their Geasa, although those come with a host of other massive problems and I am ignoring for this explanation due to them having the potential to also make you suck ass). Nergal will always be the best Death God in the Underworlds, with acception to his wife, who is on equal footing with him. Nergal and Ereshkigal will have the more powerful undead servants than Hades, more control over ghosts than Manannan, and so on. (Again, the Irish have Purview Geasa, but they work drastically differently than Me, and can screw you over).

If you are playing a Scion of one of these two Pantheons, I would advise you to specialize  since you really will be the best of the best at it. Trying to be a Greek who has eight favored things by the end is cool, but you are missing out on just being the best at three or four of those. You can see this through the associated powers of the Greeks, since they all have lower numbers, except for Ares/Mars, but that's due to some nasty cross cultural fatebindings. With the Anunna, it is the same. All of their Gods and Goddesses (except for Ishtar) have an equal or grater number of Purviews than Epic Attributes.

Instead, if you want to stay rather generalized, things will likely become a balancing act with experience at some point. You will need to keep in mind that you will not be as good as the focused characters in the areas that they have focused in, but you can blow them out of the water in most other areas where you are just mediocre in, due to the specialized characters being just awful in areas that they have been avoiding to help them focus.

A good plan of action to help you save experience is to keep everything you do to the minimal. Maybe take one Purview and one Epic Attribute that you want to have maxed out each Legend, while keeping the others at Legend -2 or -3. Also, being a generalist, you need not have the same focus on Relics that your focused companions will need. Allowing you to spend those Bonus Points on things like Boons and Dots of Epic Attributes. Or maybe on some other Birthright.

Asides from the Norse, who, with their Pantheon Specific Purview, help Characters who want to be generalized in the Physical areas, there are not many Pantheons that help reward those who are generalists. Meaning that a generalist can come from the ranks of any of the other Pantheons and their player not feel cheated when compared to, for example, another Fire God of their Pantheon.

In Atlanta, we have people who have gone both ways. Eoin and Boris are the best examples of people who have focused themselves. Although, Boris is starting to spread out now with the introduction of Epic Purviews since he is now actually a capable Death and Justice God. Garreth, Alan and Amira are all good generalists, keeping themselves balanced and relatively powerful in all areas of themselves, and even being very powerful in one or two select areas (Alan and Fertility).

At the end of the day, no one is a better all around character than anyone else just because they decided to focus or not to focus. It's just an expression of their Legend. Do what you want, be awesome.

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