Badass Baby

Question: What is the age limit you set on your Scions? I know myths have many Scions who start out as teenagers and young children (Heracles being the most notable among them), but how young is too young, in your opinion and position as Storytellers?

It depends a little bit on the style and flavor of the game you're running, but in most cases, we suggest no younger than mid-teenager as the best choice for most players. Younger than that enters the territory of "advanced PCs" that may or may not be easy for some people to play; it can certainly be done, but probably isn't a good choice for everyone.

The major problems with playing child Scions is that they are annoying and inconvenient, so if you'd rather not deal with either of those issues, you probably want to stick with teens on up. Child Scions have the mentality and problems of children; they don't know what's going on, have different priorities from everyone else, and if roleplayed well as actual children usually irritate the stuffing out of their older bandmates. Nobody wants to constantly deal with one bandmate who's still potty-training or doesn't know better than to accept candy from strangers in vans; it'll be funny the first few times, but eventually just becomes a drag on the group. Child Scions often understandably lack maturity, and it can also be a pretty big fun-suck if one character is constantly forcing everyone to deal with their bad decisions, naive mistakes and refusal to share. (Not that these problems don't come up with adult Scions, because they do. But it tends to be more pronounced with children.)

There are also problems with child Scions operating in mortal society, particularly at early Hero levels; children are heavily controlled, protected and watched over, which makes it hard for them to go running around trying to save the world. They have to escape their parents, dodge the police, deal with well-meaning adults trying to rescue them or evil-meaning adults trying to take advantage of them, and probably get the other members of their bands on a watchlist for kidnapping. They can't get jobs or enter adult areas, have trouble getting anyone to take them seriously, and aren't yet powerful enough to just blow through mortal society instead of dealing with its problems. These issues will clear up as the Scion ages and/or grows in Legend, of course, but especially at the beginning it can be very rocky.

If the player interested in playing a child can deal with those issues, however, then as a Storyteller I don't think there's any reason to stop them; just remind them that there will be consequences to that choice and make sure to enforce them. Don't let a six-year-old Scion run around without anyone caring; his parents should be worried, CPS should be on the lookout, he may have trouble sneaking out to help with missions or if he leaves home completely become the subject of a manhunt, at some point on his adventures puberty might hit, and so on and so forth.

As for players, there are plenty of ways to go about playing children that also get around these problems. Giving a child Scion some Epic Intelligence will allow you to play a seven-year-old who can mentally operate right along with the adults (although it may not come with much emotional maturity attached); and the child Scion, or anyone else in the band, can get around many of the mortal-society problems attached with a little Epic Manipulation massaging (for example, when Saki needed to leave the country to go help with Super Secret Amatsukami Missions, Hachiro just impersonated her guardian for the school and got her a leave of absence so they wouldn't have to deal with it). Child Scions with some Illusion or Epic Appearance can make themselves look older if they want to, and so on and so forth. There are plenty of ways to mess around with the concept.

I'd say to just make sure the player's aware that there may be more inconveniences in their life, at least at mortal levels, if they play a young child than if they just went with a teenager or adult, and if they're down with that, let them go for it. We've never had any PCs younger than fourteen years old (Yadi, although in a period setting that's a lot closer to the threshold of adulthood than it would be in a modern one), but we've had Kettila reverting herself to childhood on purpose, Dierdre and Colin remaining at the mental level of children despite their adult bodies, and so on and so forth. There are a lot of ways to explore the idea of relative maturity in the game.

Do make sure, however, that the PC can do basic things by himself, like walking and eating, or he's not going to be realistically playable. I can't imagine too many scenarios in which the other players want to deal with having to transport, feed and otherwise manage a one-year-old, so don't try to spring it on them, even if it seems hilarious. Heracles is cool and all, but your baby Scion is likely to end up left with a nanny somewhere while everyone else goes on adventures.