High Expectations, Low Implementation

Question: What do you think about the idea of having more powerful low level/tier boons that are more useful at Demigod and God levels but have a Legend requirement, so Heroes can't start with a level 2 boon that would be considered 'good' or 'useful' in a situation only a deity would find themselves in? Why or why not?

We have exactly one boon in the game, currently, that is low enough level to be bought by a Demigod but only usable by gods, and it's Storm the Gates. Similarly, there's only one knack with a Legend requirement: Hear Prayers. For the most part, I hope we keep it that way.

Generally, having boons you can buy as a Hero but not use until God is poor design. There's no reason for them to be available that low; certainly the Hero's not getting any use out of them, and it's really just an option that isn't available until much later masquerading as an option now. It doesn't really break anything mechanically, but it's counter-intuitive; it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for god-only powers to be available to Heroes and Demigods, and it's not very exciting for a player to read up on the cool new power now available to him at his new Legend rating only to realize he can't really get it for another three. It doesn't ruin anything, but it also doesn't serve a good purpose, and is mostly confusing.

The only reason to do it - and the reason we currently have Storm the Gates sitting there - is because you have a power that needs to be available only to gods but that isn't powerful enough on its own to warrant the spending of a godly amount of XP. Storm the Gates is an important power that Psychopomps should definitely have, but it's not a 32+ XP power, and we couldn't find a good place to fold it into other Psychopomp boons since it's a very distinct idea. We didn't want it out of the game, but couldn't come up with any good solution for it other than demoting it down to its current level 5 status. It's basically a power that should be level 8 but would be too underpowered if it were, but that also shouldn't be available pre-God. And again, it's not breaking anything by being there - but it's an odd man out that doesn't play well with the rest of the system. If we could have come up with a better solution, we would have.

Generally speaking, powers that are used by gods should have a cost that matches their godliness; if this is something so awesome that only gods can do it, it should have an XP and resource cost that reflect that. We don't expect to write any new boons that have Storm the Gates' problem, because those new boons will hopefully be balanced for their level instead of so underpowered that they can't be god powers.

We're cool with Hear Prayers, though, since knacks aren't structured the same way boons are, and we're considering just making it a knack all gods get automatically anyway.

Please note that this is a case where John and I actually disagree - I really, really want to fix Storm the Gates and drag its ass back up to an appropriate level, while John is much less worried about it and is fine leaving it where it is. Our united front has to have dissension in it once in a while!