The Apotheosis Rhumba

Question: Mechanically speaking, how do you like to handle the players' ascension at both Demi-god and God level? Do you strictly follow the by-the-book upgrade, or do you have your own system for these events?

Oops, this question should have been answered along with this one about Demigod upgrades the other day. Sorry!

As I said there, Demigod upgrades generally follow the book; when folks hit Legend 5, they get their bonuses and usually have a high-fiving party and not much different really happens for them, unless they happen to be one of the games where we think doing a time-lapse release of nifty presents will entertain them more and they end up doing that slowly over a period of a few games. Demigodhood, while awesome and very feel-good, isn't too huge a deal in the grand scheme of things; it's kind of like Christmas morning for the PCs and gives them access to way better powers, but it doesn't change the overall scope of their involvement in the divine world much.

But godhood does, so that's a much larger and more involved production. Just arriving at godhood requires a lot more than simply being awesome; you have to be deity material, which means that Legend 8 demigods can't make the jump until they've fulfilled several criteria that we consider essential for godhood. These include:

Reasonable Stats. New gods must have at least five dots with five Epic dots in each physical Attribute to reflect their divine strength, and at least three dots with three Epic dots in each mental and social Attribute to make them well-rounded enough to be effective. The only exception is that every god can choose one "dump stat" - an Attribute they're traditionally terrible at and don't want to have to buy up because they never do anything with it and they're heavily Fatebound against it. Vala, for example, left her Strength at one dot because she has none, and Sowiljr, ever the straight man, let his Manipulation be his ignored stat.

Influential Powers. New gods must have at least three purviews at the maximum level possible for Legend 8; these are their mainstays, the things that support whatever they're god of and the first things mortals probably think of about them. (One of them can be their PSP.) This allows even gods that aren't super firm on what they want to represent yet to have a sphere of influence within the pantheon when they ascend - if Aiona is clearly full of Fire related powers, she should probably go hang out with/oppose/lend her opinion to the other fire-gods of Olympus, and so forth. For example, Yoloxochitl became a goddess with heavy emphasis on Earth, Fertility and Health, while Zwazo Fou Fou elected instead to be concentrated on Moon, Sky and War. One of these maxed purviews will become their first Associated power that they can pass on to children of their own.

Expert Abilities. As with the above requirements, each would-be god or goddess needs six abilities at the maximum level for their Legend 8 status, reflecting the six things they are most associated with and that they do most frequently. This usually isn't an issue for most PCs, since Fatebonds help them along, but it does encourage them to look at which Abilities are the most appropriate for their new god-role. These six abilities will become their Favored ones for purposes of passing down to their children.

Pantheon Virtues. The PCs are about to represent their pantheons as gods, so they need to be invested in their Virtues (or at least some Virtues) to get there. They need one Virtue at five dots and another at at least four to make the ascension to godhood; they don't necessarily have to be their native Virtues if they have some foreign ones, but they have to believe strongly in something, because strong principles and occasional bad mistakes because of them are the hallmarks of godly stories.

Cult Worship. Gods are without exception noticed, told stories about, and responded to by humanity, so Scions who want to assume the mantle of godhood have to make sure this happens for them as well. Every Scion attempting to hit Legend 9 needs two cults dedicated to him or her, which mechanically means two places that have at least ten level-10 Fatebonds to the Scion and in which a specific custom or type of worship in their name has evolved. It doesn't have to be a traditional worship-cult, though most of them are because that's easiest; PCs can also set up cults that dislike them and have practices dedicated to warding them off, or even that view them as a sort of natural force or have completely wrong ideas about what they are and do; the important thing is that they believe in the Scion's divinity (though cults with mistaken ideas about a Scion's associations can be a big pain in the ass with Fatebonds after godhood is achieved). For example, Vala hit god with a cult in Delphi that believed her to be a goddess of prophecy and the new divine patron of the oracle, but also a cult of Inuit in Canada that believed her to be the personification of their harsh natural landscape, and Terminus' cult in Argentina thought he was a god whose job was to deliver the more important gods there to help them while his European cult thought he was a protector god who was going to make sure they always had enough sheep to survive.

Note that cults are hard (read: almost entirely impossible without incredibly severe repercussions) to get rid of once you have them, so while it sometimes seems that just getting any group of people to believe something to get to godhood is a quick shortcut, it can come back and bite the PCs in the ass later.

Pantheon Politics. No Scion gets to be a god in a vacuum, so they need to have knowledge of and connections to the rest of their pantheon before they can really be a part of it. A Scion attempting to become a god has to have met and meaningfully interacted with at least half of his or her pantheon before they make the big jump; dead deities don't count, so if a few gods of their pantheon have gone down, they need to be friends with half of those who are still living (this generally either works for them, because there are fewer people they have to meet, or against them, because people they already met have died and they have to start over). They don't have to be friends - Vala despises Loki, for example, but he's still on her list as someone she's interacted with - but they do have to have encountered each other in more than passing and have worked together (or against each other) in some way in the past.

Paperwork. Not that we're the Celestial Bureaucracy or anything, but we still want to know what's going on with the PCs and their plans, so that's where the god worksheets come in. These are available in the Downloads section of our site, primarily for our players to use for this (though of course any of you are welcome to them if you want them) and are discussed more in-depth in this older post about how they work.

And then, hey! Once they've succeeded at all that, they have only to survive a full four game sessions without losing any of them. That means making sure their cults are safeguarded, their stats aren't yanked by Fatebonds, their fellow gods aren't getting murdered and their Virtues aren't getting reset, and at the end of that time they first awesomely legendary thing they do will probably catapult them into the limelight. Hurrah! Godhood!

Past that point, the mechanical upgrading begins, but I'm afraid I'll have to loft John over to you guys when he wakes up for the particulars. Attributes and Epic Attributes are gained, boons are granted and brand new awesome Birthrights make their appearance, but we don't use the template in the Scion book, preferring instead to have Scions gain new things based on all that work they just did and what their Fatebonds might be helping them out with. So hopefully he'll be up for a more concrete explanation in a few hours, and in the meantime, happy apotheosizing, everybody!