Mud Whisperer

Question: How come your rules for Shaping and Quicksand either default to or have the option to use Social Attributes? Are you lying to the ground to make it think it's quicksand? That just seems odd.

Well, the first one's easy; Shaping allows a character to roll either Dexterity or Charisma because it allows for the creation of purely functional items and the creation of works of art. If you just want to make a bucket or a sword or open a hole in a wall, or anything else that doesn't require artistic acumen, you'd roll Dexterity to reflect how good you are at actually physically shaping the earth. If, on the other hand, you want to create a gorgeous statue of Aphrodite from a solid block of marble, you'd roll Charisma because that's the stat that determines your artistic success - that is, how much profundity and emotion you can make an audience feel with what you've created. You could, I suppose, swap them out if you wanted to, but it probably wouldn't work very well; a bucket created as a work of art might not work too well when it comes to actually holding water, while a very dextrous person could probably create a technically perfectly executed statue, but not be able to produce something that really moved an audience. If you're good at both, more power to you - make all the beautifully functional buckets you want!

Quicksand, on the other hand, has other things going on, you're right. There are a few issues at play there; one is the question of what exactly "manipulation" means, since Scion at turns uses it to mean "social manipulation, such as lying or convincing" and "manual manipulation, such as being able to do specialized physical tasks". The first is more common and, I think, more appropriate, considering that Manipulation is a social stat in Scion, but it's used for its alternate meaning in more than a few places.

More importantly, however, we try very hard to make sure that purviews aren't one- or two-trick ponies; we want to see a wide range of activation rolls in them rather than having every Earth boon roll Strength or every Sun boon roll Appearance. We make it a point to try to keep them diversified, and we do so because we don't want anyone to feel that they have to be heavily invested in a certain Attribute because it's "The Attribute" for the purview they want to pursue. We want different character concepts to be able to come to a purview and excel from different directions, rather than saying, "Well, if you want to be a fertility goddess, you're going to have to buy Epic Stamina up to the hilt whether your character concept was about being an indestructible juggernaut or not." Some purviews naturally lend themselves to specific attributes more readily - Guardian loves Stamina, for example, while Illusion loves Manipulation - but a wider range of activation rolls means that even if a Scion isn't really heavily invested in the purview's "normal stat", they can still bust off some moments of awesomeness when they're using the boons that are best tailored to them. For example, Eztli can drop badass heals on her band all day with her bananas Heal or Martyrdom rolls thanks to her monstrous Stamina, but Aiona blows her out of the water when curing poisons with Antidote or regrowing limbs with Restore, both of which harness her awesome intellect, and of course, when someone needs bonus health boxes, it's Sowiljr that everyone hopes will Bolster them. They can all be effective Health gods without having to all have the same Epic Attributes, which allows them to approach it from unique character angles (in their cases, Eztli heals by imparting the raw strength of her own body to others, Aiona heals with scientific and medical precision, and Sowiljr just inspires people to keep going no matter how much their bodies might want to quit).

And finally, Quicksand rolls Manipulation because it was the best stat we could think of for it. None of the others fit better - what would you assign to it? You're not touching it, so physicals don't really make sense, and it's no less of a stretch to throw it on Intelligence or any other social or mental stat. We prefer to think of it as the Quicksand-user coaxing the earth to change form for them: where it would normally be in its solid state, the Earth god is convincing it to go liquid for him, which it will happily oblige him in for as wide an area as he is able to use his persuasive powers on.