Question: Have you done any changes to the Avatar Birthright, and if so, what sort of?
Indeed, the Avatar Birthright is quite different for us than it appears in the books. But then, that shouldn't really shock anyone at this point.
Fully explaining Avatars would probably take more of a time commitment than we have right now, but here's a brief rundown of the most salient points for those interested:
1) Obviously, we use a ten-point system instead of a five-point one, so the number of Legend points you can drop per dot of Avatar is substantially more spaced out.
2) A lot of the original version of Avatar depends on the weird idea that Scion: God introduced of gods not having physical forms anymore. We hate that idea and don't use it, so nothing that talks about "building" a body out of ichor is really applicable to the way we use Avatar. Gods have bodies (because they have bodies in mythology, dudes!), and using Avatar merely decreases the Legendary capacity of those bodies for a while.
3) Therefore, Avatars can "die", because that silly rule about gods being able to randomly decide not to have bodies and therefore be invincible is no longer in play. If your Avatar form "dies", you don't die yourself, but you do take some damage and get shunted back into your Sanctum (or regular haunt in the Overworld, if you don't have one) as your normal form.
3) While we understand the reasoning behind the idea that dropping to lower Legend costs less in the books - you're "creating" a less powerful form, so that takes less juice - we also think it's stupid (and again inapplicable, because we don't roll with the bodiless gods). Dropping down to lower Legends costs more Legend in our games, not less, because it's a monumental act of suppressing ever greater amounts of your divine power and hiding it from the eyes of Fate. It's much more expensive to make the long, significant drop to Legend 3 than it is to drop to the much closer Legend 8.
4) Dumping so much power into making yourself less Legendary also means that you have to commit to being a wee Legendary being and can't just bust out your godly glory at a moment's notice. You can't turn off your Avatar at will except by A) allowing yourself to be "killed", or B) returning to your Sanctum, from which you can proceed to go wherever you want in your normal form. If you don't have a Sanctum, get used to suicide.
5) Similarly, you can't change the level of your Avatar once you've committed to it; if you made yourself Legend 4 and suddenly realize you really want to be Legend 6, your poor planning has put you in a pickle. You can kill yourself and then recreate a new Avatar at Legend 6, but the Legend 4 Avatar can't change.
6) Gods who are in Avatar form are treated in every way as if they were really that Legend rating; their Fatebonds are less severe, their powers less cosmic, and so forth. This also means that, if the Avatar is Legend 8 or lower, they can procreate Scions even with other gods, rather than only with mortals.
7) Avatars represent your cosmic ability to control your own power, even to the point of shrinking it almost into nonexistence, and as a result they also reflect that by granting you additional strength of will. Avatars always grant a bonus to Integrity, though how much they give varies depending on how many dots the Avatar is worth.
8) You can still use XP to buy whatever phenomenal divine powers you want while you're in Avatar form; you just still won't be able to use them until you revert to a Legend rating that can handle them.
And, as always, do not confuse the Avatar Birthright with Purview Avatars, Titan Avatars or Hindu Avatars. The English language just has room for that many ways to love on this word within the context of Scion, folks.
We'll be happy to answer questions, but anything that would require a table or heavy math to explain probably won't be gotten to right now. But this (and Sanctum) is something we should add to the voting poll at some point, maybe?
Even without the full math layout I think you have my question covered, thanks a bunch for taking the time. I do believe it's a fine idea to add it to the voting poll, the stuff you guys create are always helpful.
ReplyDeleteGlad to be helpful! :)
Delete#4 is probably a bad idea. There are far too many moments of crowning awesome you can put into your story if a god can power up without being killed and going back to their sanctum. It should be expensive of course, but doable.
DeleteAlso, does this mean Freya didn't actually die? She just got shunted back to her Sanctum after her avatar was eaten?
We'll have to agree to disagree. Gods can find infinite ways of being incredibly awesome without having the ability to leap out of their Avatars all "surprise!". Besides, nothing about being in a lower-Legend Avatar prevents gods from indulging in moments of crowning awesomeness. They'll just probably be doing it differently than if they were in their full forms.
DeleteNo, Freya definitely died. She was not in Avatar form when she rolled in to fight Ryujin; both gods were their full monstrous selves.
Why would Freya be cruising around without an Avatar if it can just let her bounce back to her Sanctum? Odin should jump her shit so hard and fast for being an idiot and risking herself when Ragnarok was pending, and her loyalty should have been fighting her courage every step of the way.
DeleteFor that matter, why would any god without Courage risk themselves permanently with your avatar rules? Every moderately intelligent god in their pantheon should be smacking them on the head for risking the entire titan war on any engagement short of ones that require Avatars or Ultimate Attributes.
Because she was going to fight a Japanese god on his home turf, and she needed her own full powers as a result. She had no way of knowing whether Ryujin was at full power as well, and only moments to respond to her brother's cry for help. She was busting straight out of Folkvangr to rush to Sverrir's aid, not randomly wandering around the world.
DeleteThe tradeoff is always that you're less powerful when you Avatar down; boons and epics are out of your reach and you can't do as much as you could if you were just being yourself. Going in at less than your full strength means that whatever your objective is, you're not as good at achieving it as you would be at full power; you can't take as much punishment, convince others as convincingly or fully comprehend the awesome complex universal workings that you could with your full powers. Sure, you're guaranteed a get out of jail free card if your Avatar dies, because you won't die with it, but what about your divine mission, which might fail because you aren't powerful enough to complete it now? What about your companions, who might die or be seriously injured because you aren't as good at helping them as you could be? What about your own integrity, which might now be compromised because you aren't as good at fending off the mind-altering powers of others as you could have been? Unless you know for a fact that your mission is way below your usual power level, using Avatar to diminish yourself, even if it's only by one or two Legend, is a gamble that increases your chances of failure.
It's not staying in full form that risks the Titan war; it's hiding in a less-effective Avatar form that really ensures that you're sucking at your job. Gods who don't have a really great reason to be in Avatar form are gods who are not being as good at fending off the Titans as they could be, and nobody wants that. Sure, you can gamble that you won't need your purview Avatar or level 10 Epic right now or anything else... but gamble that too often, and Fate will see to it that you gamble it at the wrong moment. It's dangerous to walk around at less than full strength - not to you personally, but to everything and everyone you're trying to help. Divine generals and kings are probably going to kick your ass if you keep using Avatar form instead of giving your all to the war effort. You're choosing to be less useful to them, and they are not going to like that.
In fact, our PCs very seldom use the Birthright as a result. Eztli and Sowiljr only use Avatar to have children, preferring to keep their full riot of physical badassery and social mojo at the ready when they're out and about. Terminus occasionally used his when he thought there was absolutely zero chance of his surviving under normal conditions and he wanted to get something out of briefly doing a recon mission before his Avatar got killed, and his band definitely did not always appreciate him being at half-strength and useless to them in their hour of need. In fact, the last time he showed up in Avatar form when they were about to go into dangerous enemy territory, Sowiljr ordered Eztli to bash him against a wall and kill the Avatar so he could get back down there and be useful.
Courage isn't the only Virtue that doesn't like it; Intellect has positive cats at the idea of making oneself stupider by dropping in Legend (and thus losing higher dots of Epic Int), Expression often has the same problem when your social stats or other signature powers drop or go away, and Conviction almost never thinks being worse at achieving your goals is a good idea. The others vary situationally (Valor can actually appreciate a good use of Avatar if it drops you down to where you can have a good, clean even-footing combat with someone lower-Legend than yourself!), but there are serious ramifications to avataring down, and your Virtues know it.
(Not that it makes much difference here, by the way, but at the time that Freya died Odin was kind of trying to jettison the Vanir anyway, so he didn't shed too many tears while he was gleefully annexing her Underworld.)
DeleteI think you answered your own question. Virtue extremeties. Furthermore, if Ryujin was in his full Dragon God form, why would Freya think she had a chance in Hel against him at Legend 8? Yes, she ended up getting beaten anyway, but she had a much better chance of cowing him as the mighty Freya than as some chumped up version of herself. Plus, it seemed like a much more spontaneous decision on Freya's part to defend the Band instead of attacking Ryujin, so why would she be thinking "oh, I could die against Ryujin and Odin would be so pissed!" She'd be thinking "I'm a Norsewoman, my blood is ice and fire! I will destroy this dragon!" Courage > Loyalty
DeleteEither way poor Freya :(
Oh, Anne responded at the same time!
DeleteHeh, yeah, poor Freya. Her Loyalty was pretty much just screaming A DRAGON IS TRYING TO EAT MY LITTLE BROTHER and it was probably hard to ignore, especially combined with Courage.
DeleteJacob and Anne kicked ass here...nothing more for me to say.
DeleteWhy legend 8? Why not make avatars legend 11 then fight the entire war that way?
DeleteBecause then you'll get curbstomped by Titan Avatars and Typhonian beasts that can't be dealt with without purview Avatars and Ultimate Attributes. They're certainly not going to drop any of their Legend when they fight you, and if you do, you'll lose. It's hard enough to beat them even with every tool in a god's normal toybox; if the pantheons are already struggling to hold them at bay, how much worse do you think that would be if they also shut off their access to their most potent powers?
DeleteThe fact that you've got Avatar unfortunately doesn't make your problems scale down with it. Gods can drop their Legend, but that doesn't mean that their enemies or tasks will obligingly also make themselves less effective to match.
I like the original system. The idea that gods are immortal spirits in mortal shells does radiate mythicaly
ReplyDeleteActually, it doesn't, and that's why we don't like it. The idea of gods as bodiless spirits is exceptionally modern; the gods of mythology have bodies and use them, despite being larger than life, in largely the same way mortals do. You'll find precious little in any ancient religion in the way of stories that ever mention the major gods changing from corporeal to incorporeal or vice versa, or whose religion included the idea of the gods being in some way "bodiless". Gods like Thor, Osiris, Susanoo or Ares are phenomenally powerful gods, but they are not formless spiritual beings. They're anything but.
DeleteThe idea of gods as a more spiritual, intangible form is largely an outgrowth of the monotheistic religions, in which omnipotent, omnipresent gods transcend the idea of bodies entirely. It doesn't apply to ancient polytheistic religions much if at all, however.
I actually really love the more detailed Avatar system. It's basically what I had always thought it was in the books anyhow. I don't see any problems, though I do think the integrity thing is a little unnecessary. I liked the idea of the bodiless Gods, but I do not weep for the scrapping of that idea.
ReplyDelete