The Many Faces of Fate

Question: Why did you change the legend? From what I understand in the original fate system, characters gained power just by people knowing them. The more people the higher the legend, but you changed it so that the pc's have to have religious followings.

I think there may be some confusion here. It sounds like you're asking about Fatebonds and how PCs go up in Legend rating, which are in fact two entirely different things in Scion. Let me explain!

In the original rules, PCs go up in Legend whenever they spend XP on a new dot of Legend; it has nothing to do with who knows about them or anything other than the numbers on the page. We changed that for a few reasons; the most pressing was just that it encouraged horribly unbalanced XP expenditure and made it hard for bands of Scions to be at reasonably similar Legend ratings. It's almost always a better idea to just buy Legend (and thus gain more Legend dots to spend, gain more efficiency to a lot of powers, and get closer to the free bonus-point bonanzas that occur at Demigod and God level), which means that you either end up with a bunch of people who are high in Legend rating but terrible at everything else, or a bunch of people who have specialized into the boons and epic attributes they want to be good at who are unfairly easy to cream by anyone who took the Legend min-maxing route. It's usually much better for a story if everyone is at a similar Legend rating (i.e., not more than one away from each other or so), because otherwise it's hard to antagonize everyone at a meaningfully difficult level and it becomes more and more likely that the band is going to end up splitting because they just aren't moving in the same circles. It's also just not very legendary to buy your Legend - your godly legend is that you're not good at anything but you spent your XP on the biggest power boost? Get out.

So we changed it so that we award Legend based on the things that are actually legendary; when PCs do amazing things, complete difficult quests, make heroic sacrifices, choose to take a stand for their principles, and just generally do things that are legendary and mythic, then they start gaining Legend. Because that's what being a god is all about, not spending your points in the most boring manner possible.

Fatebonds are a different kettle of fish entirely; you're right, those are usually individual people who contribute to a Scion's Legend and stories by becoming part of them. While they don't actually have any direct effect on a Scion's Legend rating, they become actors in the story and may often help urge them on to greatness, whether it's by inspiring them with love, menacing them as a nemesis or acting as staunch, encouraging companions. It's not our aim to force PCs to have religious followings; it's entirely possible to have a great number of Fatebound mortals who don't actually worship you and still affect you with their beliefs about you. A guy who is Fatebound to you doesn't have to worship you as a god to believe that you're incredibly strong and fast, but the force of Fate binding you together will still manifest that as his beliefs about you making you stronger and faster.

We have found, however, that PCs, especially at high Demigod and God, almost can't avoid creating religious followings. Once you're an incomprehensibly beautiful creature whose mere presence prevents anyone from thinking coherently, or a juggernaut of destruction who can tear a mountain off its foundation, or a being who occasionally bursts into flame and sears the landscape around you, it's inevitable that humans will regard you as divine. You are divine, and the usual human reaction to divinity is worship; in all our games, I think we've only ever had one or two people who've had to actively set up religions centering on themselves. Most grow up organically all on their own.

I hope that mostly answered your question - Legend rating comes from you performing legendary and mythic feats, and Fatebonds make you better at the things you're famed for and worse at the ones you're not. They're both tied intrinsically to your Legend, but they don't actually directly affect one another; you could theoretically make it all the way up to Legend 8 without a single Fatebond to your name, or have dozens of them and still be Legend 5.

On the off chance that you're referring to the FATE game system, Scion actually doesn't use that; it's based on the White Wolf Storytelling System, not FATE. It's an understandable place to get confused, however, considering how great a role Fate (as in destiny and legend) plays in Scion.