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Question: What is the effect of a character having Sojobo (Guide 4 from Demigod) and Star Pupil? Star Pupil halves the cost of a number of physical skills, while Sojobo reduces the cost by 1 XP per dot. Would he reduce and then halve the cost of the result - i.e. buying Brawl to four dots costs 8 xp, reduced to 4 and then halved to two? Please excuse any mispellings as I cannot see what I'm typing in the ask box.

No worries, friend. I always clean up questions before I post them, and I promise you're not even close to the worst spelling I've seen come out of there. (But we understand what you guys are saying most of the time so we still love you.)

So. Okay. XP discounts and how they work. Since there are actually a lot of XP discounts in the game besides just these two, I'm going to extend it to talk about all of them. Those of you who hate XP discounts and never use them are free to leave by the back door or watch and jeer as you wish.

There are several ways of getting discounted Abilities in the game.

First of all, there are the half-price Ability knacks scattered through the Attributes - Natural Juggernaut in Stamina, Natural Leader in Charisma, Eyes in the Back of Your Head in Perception and Fast Learner and Star Pupil in Intelligence. These cut the normal XP cost for a dot in one of the featured Abilities in half (i.e., the eighth dot of an Ability would cost 8 XP instead of 16).

Then there's also Teaching Prodigy, another Intelligence knack that allows Scions to teach others and give them the same half-price cut on anything they already know well enough to educate someone else on.

In the same vein, the Magic spell Blood Mead also allows those who have imbibed of magical wine to purchase the Abilities associated with it for half their normal cost.

Finally, there's the normal discount for an Ability that is Favored for a Scion's parent, which is a flat -1 XP to the normal cost.

(Okay, also the Deva Scions just get a flat cost on all their Abilities because they get to cheat with Samsara, but we're ignoring them today because other XP discounts don't apply to them and they therefore don't factor into the math.)

So already there are a lot of ways to lower your XP costs for Abilities into the basement (which we're cool with, because most Scions' XP is going to go to the much longer trucks toward buying Attributes and purviews, and for all the reasons we've talked about before). There are only three ground rules we use for XP discounts, and they're good ones that everyone should use:

1) Round up.
2) Divide before you subtract.
3) Nothing ever reduces to zero.

Did you see how I bolded them? That's because they're important! Obviously the entire point of XP discounts is to make it easier for Scions to get new Abilities and rock them out all over the landscape, but there's a difference between "easier" and "automatic", and between "learning fast" and "not bothering to learn at all". All Scions are divine and better at learning stuff than mortals, but even the quickest and most naturally gifted among them still need to put in at least a tiny bit of effort.

So let's roll with some examples.

Scion A wants to buy Brawl 5. He has Star Pupil and his buddy the ninja master using Teaching Prodigy to tutor him.
Scion B wants to buy Presence 7. He has Natural Leader and Presence is Favored for him.
Scion C wants to buy Survival 10. She's gone all out and has Natural Juggernaut, a dryad using Teaching Prodigy to help her, a draught of Blood Mead to give her more insight and already has Survival Favored.
Scion D wants to buy Science 2. She has Fast Learner, a draught of Blood Mead and her parent has Science Favored.

Scion A would normally need to pay 10 XP for his fifth dot of Brawl. Star Pupil cuts that number in half, so he only needs to pay 5 XP. Teaching Prodigy cuts it in half again, bringing it down to 2.5 XP. He rounds up and pays 3 XP for his fifth dot of Brawl.

Scion B would normally need to pay 14 XP for his seventh dot of Presence. Natural Leader cuts that number in half, so he only needs to pay 7 XP. Presence being Favored subtracts one, so pays 6 XP for his seventh doth of Presence.

Scion C would normally need to pay 20 XP for her tenth dot of Survival, but she's clearly not having it. Natural Juggernaut cuts it in half, bringing it down to 10 XP. Teaching Prodigy cuts it in half again, bringing it down to 5 XP. Blood Mead cuts it in half again, bringing it down to 2.5 XP. Finally, it's Favored, which subtracts one to bring it down to 1.5 XP. She rounds up and pays 2 XP for her tenth dot of Survival.

Scion D would normally need to pay 4 XP for her second dot of Science. Fast Learner cuts that number in half, so she only needs to pay 2 XP. Blood mead cuts it in half again, bringing it down to 1 XP. Science is Favored and should subtract one, but since that would reduce the cost to zero, it is ignored. She pays 1 XP for her second dot of Science, and probably should have saved the Blood Mead for something else.

Hopefully all of that makes sense. If you're using our Fatebond system, there's also a further level of math involved in that each time an Ability is bought off, you add one to the XP cost of buying it back, which is always added at the end (in the same phase as the subtraction from Favored Abilities). For example, if Scion A up there had had his Brawl bought off twice before, he would need to add two at the end of all that, and his fifth dot of Brawl would cost 5 XP instead of 3.

I know you were asking specifically about Sojobo (Scion: Demigod, page 276 if you want him!), so let me finally bring him back in here. Sojobo's writeup states that he "reduces the experience cost for the following Abilities by one point per dot" - that is, for every dot of the Ability you're buying, subtract one. The math-savvy can quickly pinpoint that, since all Abilities cost two points times the dot, Sojobo is just making them cost one times the dot. The writers could have saved themselves a little ink by just telling you that Sojobo has Teaching Prodigy for the Abilities listed, because that's exactly what it is; he just cuts your cost in half. So, indeed, buying the fourth dot of Brawl under Sojobo's tutelage while you are also a Star Pupil will reduce its cost from 8 XP to 2 - halved and halved again. It will not reduce it to zero, which is what the slightly crazier interpretation - cut it in half, then subtract four! - would suggest. It seems pretty clear to me that that wasn't the intent and, like so many other things in the Scion books, it's just worded funny.

Scions are impressive creatures, but even they still have to spend at least a little effort to learn skills they never possessed before.