Avatar Up

Question: How do you keep the challenge level in your game up, when the players obtain the purview avatars?

Well, our game specifically hasn't yet had to cross that bridge; we have no PCs above Legend 10, so nobody has purview Avatars yet and isn't likely to for a while. Luckily, we have plenty of time before end-game cosmic power is in the hands of the players and we can go get coffee while they narrate the scene instead of us.

However, keeping up the challenge level is easy as pie (well, whatever pie Scion is normally comparable to); you just keep doing what you were already doing. Having purview Avatars unfortunately doesn't exempt gods from the cutthroat world of divine politics, from having to deal with alliances between different pantheons and deities and vengeful vendettas from those who have been wronged. Gods that have families, own property or have cults dedicated to them will have to deal with threats to those people and places and figure out how to best set them up to succeed (or fail, I suppose, if they happen to hate them). There are still mysteries and magical items in the universe, some of which are not particularly easy to solve or gain, and those Scions who have reached the pinnacle along with them who are not their bandmates may be forces to be reckoned with as well.

Also, just because people have purview Avatars does not, sadly, mean that there's nothing left for them to fight and they have to retire from combat forever. If that were the case, there'd be no such thing as the war with the Titans, because the gods would already have won it; Titans are such monolithic beings that it requires many gods with Avatars working in concert and getting everything just right to try to take them down, and there are a lot of them out there, ruining everything constantly. Avatars aren't always a good solution to the problems at hand, either - using them in the World invites massive Fatebond attraction, using them in a Titanrealm invites the Scion to be swallowed whole by the place, and using them at all is very exhausting, expensive and not something to be taken lightly. Legend 12 gods don't get to go around constantly busting off their Avatars; they're special-occasion powers only, most of the time, which means that while they certainly add a new level to the game, they don't invalidate everything that came before them.

Keep in mind, also, that it's totally possible that Legend 12 Scions with Avatars now have Scions of their own, allowing them to wield, influence and order them around just as their own parents did to them long ago. That's a mighty chess game all on its own, not to mention the fact that having a purview Avatar doesn't necessarily impress other gods, who not only have Avatars of their own but who also probably have more and certainly have had them for much, much longer. Avatars are a last resort when it comes to bickering, fights or negotiations with other gods, so in that arena you're usually operating the same as you were before you got access to the Avatar.

Purview Avatars are awesome, but they're not the end of the game. The days of being sufficiently challenged by killing trolls in the woods might be over, but believe me, there's still plenty to do.