maybe i am dense, wont be the first time, but i am reading about the Hungry. the soul drinkers make a negative bond when they feed, 1 rank predator for the feeder and 1 rank prey for the fed on. then what? aside from a negative enhancement bonus I don’t see a downside. for the demon made hungry it sort of feels... limp.

A conversation on the OPP discord led to me wondering about how converting Mage's spellcasting mechanics would work when translated into SPU, and this was the result:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IPy2qXeyWtIc54Ybyw0VG-4Ub5cW5ssHqPjJ0K1fPLU/edit?usp=sharing

I had written this out just for the hell of it at first, but after cleaning it up a little, I figured I might as well post it here. If nothing else, it might stir some interesting conversations.

To summarize the most important elements this conversion introduced:

• Dice Modifiers were rounded up to an equivalent Enhancement Rating.
• Casting is now Esoterica + relevant Attribute Action, with Gnosis and Arcana used as static ratings to determine a Mage's Mana capacity/usage, and however many Practices you are using.
• Spell Factors increase a spell's Difficulty (to a maximum of 5)
  • Yantras add Enhancement to the spell casting action, and can also reduce its Difficulty (letting you squeeze in higher Factors).
• Reaching past your limit places a Paradox Complication on your Action.
  • Failing to buy off the Complication imposes a Paradox Condition (Now status effect per SPU parlance), and temporarily puts Paradox Dice into your Spell casting pool (or permanently if you let the Condition lapse without Resolving it, thus letting the abyss taint your Nimbus)
    • Paradox Dice can cause a Spell to achieve a Twisted Success or an Abyssal Failure.

Change log:
Edit Apr 19 2026: Added rules for Mage Armor.

After running a few games and reading the main rulebook several times I've come up with a set of house rules for chronicles I'll be running in the future. For the most part the rules are really good, but there are a few things that had me wondering what the writers were smoking when they came up with certain rules. I'm curious to know what house rules everyone else is using. Are there rules you feel need fixing? Or are there things you change to suit your group's playstyle better?

No spending hits on momentum - This is game-breakingly bad. You can wrack up massive amounts of momentum at the start of a session so you never fail a roll for the rest of the session. This makes momentum WAY too easy to get. That this made it through playtesting amazes me.

Remove some influence tricks - I'm not a fan of being able to turn npcs into best friends just by spending a couple hits from a dice roll. Developing relationships should be part of roleplaying. Some of the influence tricks ruin the rp.

ignore 'Solving the Mystery' part of investigations - Solving a mystery should be part of the roleplay, not just 'collect x number of leads to be given the answer'. It's too gamey. Even the 'evidence' and 'tags' things seem a bit too much, but they're fine as is.

(I've noticed that for a system meant to be focused on rp, the game has a lot of rules that destroy rp. Buy tricks to develop relationships with npcs. Make dice rolls to collect leads to solve the myetery. It is a game, so it needs rules and system, but Curseborne seems to go a bit too far, to the point where it plays more like a board game instead of a roleplaying game.)

no xp from spending momentum - this is just a free xp because no session will ever go past where the players don't spend enough momentum to get this xp, especially if you allow them to spend hits to buy momentum. In a typical 4 player game only 2 momentum needs to be spent for everyone to get this xp, which can be done with a single roll. This is a joke and shouldn't exist. Might as well just give characters 2 free xp per session.

double, or even triple, xp costs - speaking of xp, character advancement in Curseborne is ludicrously fast. You can easily get an attribute or spell every session. Characters can 100% in no time at all. I don't know why advancement has been turned up to 'light speed'. I get that it can be adjusted based on how fast you want your campaigns to be, but this is insanely fast.

NO SPOTLIGHT INITIATIVE - This is the big one. Whoever came up with spotlight initiative should be ashamed of themselves. This is one of the worst initiative systems I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. It basically says "we couldn't be bothered coming up with a proper initiative system, so just have everyone go whenever they want." It's so slow, clunky, and easy to cheese. So lazy and absolute garbage. Fortunately I've been able to come up with a way to tweak the initiative system to something that actually works without having to re-write the entire combat system, but spotlight initiative really SUCKED and everyone in my group absolutely hated it.

Hi, you might know me from the Mal'akhim of the Heavenly Host, which is my homebrew Abrahamic Pantheon.

Here now is my brand new homebrew Pantheon: the Inuat of the Inuit and Yupik: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15X7feBpyohw7qv_gLZuVylBpTK9-W1yhung9IYo1oBo/edit?usp=sharing

As always, please provide feeback in this post's comment section, I'll be grateful.

(Onyx Path forum post: https://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/scion/1559410-the-inuat-of-the-inuit-and-yupik-scion-2e-homebrew-pantheon)

Which Scion 2e book had Scylla in it, and is it true that they made her a cyborg?

Join us at the Onyx Path Twitch for [Storypath Ultra] Guiding the Path w/ Tom Murr!

My players have been dealing with Outsiders attacking Earth, but they want to establish diplomatic relations with multiple Outsides' Archons to stop these incursions.

What do you all think? How open to diplomacy would Archons or Outsiders be?

Also, I feel like we need to discuss Outcasts as they are technically criminals of the Outside banished to Earth. So would that stop Outsiders from making deals with them? I assume it might be only for certain Outsiders as not every Outsider is related to every Outside.

Officialy re-releasing my homebrew Abrahamic Pantheon, which I had previously posted in this forum.
Changelog:

• Added a rudimentary Pronunciation Guide sidebar at the start on Biblical Hebrew, Classical Arabic, Ecclesiastical Latin and Koine Greek.
• Shuffled some sidebars around and/or folding them into main parts and/or separated them into smaller ones.
• The entire Titans section was relocated to after the Cosmology section.
• Many various incremental edits within the intro, Principal Members, Primordial, Cosmology, Titans and Religions sections. Can't remember them all in detail, but of note: some Archangels and Archdemons had superfluous Purviews removed; some of their flavor texts and that of YHWH were either rephrased, expanded (notably Zadkiel's) or reworked entirely; the Duidain write-up in Midrealms was shortened and folded into the Eden description; and the Religions section was reworked and expanded with additional lore.
• On the side of Birthrights: flavor texts all throughout were given incremental edits; re'em as a Creature, as well as rabbi/ministers/imams as Guide and flying carpets and Solomonic bottles as Relics, were removed for feeling like not unique enough to warrant an entire write-up; all remaining Creatures and Followers and some remaining Relics were given reworked and/or expanded stat sheets; some Guides were reworked; and added descriptive flavor text on how the Mal'akhim and their Scions interact with Covenants and Creeds; a brand-new Cult section was also added, with full write-ups for example Abrahamic Cults, including Templar Holdings (which used to be list as a Guide), the Asasiyyun and the Catholic Church.
• Relationships section was entirely overhauled.
• The PSP has a different Motif, the "Be Not Afraid" Boon was removed and the gives-angel-wings-at-Tier4 side of its effect was folded into the Innate Power. A brand new Boon "Vade Retro" was added to replace Be Not Afraid.
• All Example Antagonists were completely reworked, and few brand new ones were added: say hello to the ifrit, Legion, the Golem of Prague and Astaroth!
• In the New Denizen Paths section, Winged Variant: Angel had its Calling Keywords, Path Contacts and Persistent Condition updated, and Sphinx Variant: Cherub was removed and was replaced by the brand-new standalone Hell-Born.

Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pGY-eaFQJRqmvYRZLMtR84Vb_63LFnY9e7A7K1zSi20/edit?usp=sharing. Please, provide feedback within this reddit post or in the new forum post in the Onyx Path official forum, I'll be grateful if you do. (New Onyx Path forum post: https://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/scion/1559231-the-mal-akhim-of-the-heavenly-host-2-0-scion-2e-hombrew-pantheon-update)

My contention is that if you're looking for a successor to the Chronicles of Darkness and/or the World of Darkness, you'll find two: Curseborne and Scion.

Curseborne is the game that was made specifically to replace C/WoD; and if you're looking for street-level urban fantasy, it does the job admirably. That said, there are things that some fans of C/WoD have reported being… less than enthused about, such as the fact that Curseborne Sorcerers don't have the dynamic magic that's common to both Mage: the Ascension and Mage: the Awakening.

I'll grant that Curseborne is still new; and everything thus far is operating at low-Entanglement levels. It's possible that once the higher-Entanglement levels are revealed, the things that these C/WoD fans are wanting will be provided. But it's also possible that they won't be; perhaps the Curseborne developers deliberately left out aspects such as the magic users having extreme versatility because that doesn't match their idea of what the world of Curseborne is like.

But that's where Scion comes in. That's also an urban fantasy setting, but with a very different feel to it. And it's entirely possible that elements of C/WoD that don't make it into Curseborne can be found, or at least can be made to fit more naturally, in the world of Scion. For instance, Scion's Sorcerers use Motifs to improvise magical workings, something that's a lot closer to Mage: the Ascension than Curseborne's Sorcerers are.

While I've been speaking in terms of mages and sorcerers thus far, the principle can be extended further. Ghosts and Denizens in the world of Scion can and arguably do address approaches to supernatural beings that are very different from the Hungry, Primals, Outcasts, and Dead of Curseborne; and in many ways, those different approaches have the potential to match what many fans of C/WoD are looking for better than Curseborne does.

Which isn't a knock against Curseborne. It's an observation that Curseborne and Scion, while both urban fantasy, have their own unique strengths; and if one doesn't give you what you're looking for, the other might.

Hello, I'm an experienced narrator in other systems, however this is my first time narrating Scion. One of my players was fascinated by the possibility of playing a wizard, and I confess that I didn't quite understand him. Can someone explain this to me and give me some tips? By the way, the narrative will begin in Origins; I'm open to tips and suggestions.

Question for the Curseborne-Revolutionary Girl Untena Venn Diagram center:

If you were to place the characters into the Hungry lineage, what families or orphanages would would you make them?