Plunging into the Pool

Question: Okay, I read through a good chunk of the blog to make sure I'm not reposting this question. How would you apply your Fatebond chart to Scions created at higher levels (a la the Scion:Companion's Manifestations of Ichor)? Would you have the Fatebindings applied at a higher level to start (4-5 or more), or would you just roll as normal to see where it takes you? (As a random aside, given the propensity for Anne to answer things, have you considered changing the title of the "Ask John Anything" section?)

Fatebonds! We haven't talked about mathy, mathy Fatebonds in a while!

We actually don't have a quick system answer for you on this one; we've only had to do this a few times (usually when someone's Scion dies midstream and they have to roll up a new one), and haven't written out a thorough official set of instructions for how to go about Fating up a new character who is too Legendary to have escaped the eyes of destiny (if the Scion in question is Legend 4 or lower, you can probably totally skip adding new Fatebonds and just let them gain them the normal way when they join play). But we have done it for PCs of Legend six to eight, so we've got some advice for you in lieu of specific guidelines!

First of all, this should always be done by the Storyteller, never the player, even if your player is awesome and means well. If you leave it up to a player to try to determine what Fatebonds he has, he'll naturally give himself all bonuses to things he wants to use and all negatives to things he doesn't care about; we all would, because bonuses are awesome and penalties suck. But the reality is that almost no Scion ever manages to pull that off without a crazy amount of luck and hefty help from the Magic purview, and a Scion who got to a higher Legend rating on his own would almost never have only good stuff and no irritating or disastrous Fatebonds to bother him. You don't want people to feel like it's a better idea to kill themselves and get a new character because they'll get to "reset" all their bad Fatebonds into new ones, and you want the new PC to have solid reasons why Fate enforces certain ideas about him beyond just "well, he wants to be a fire-god so we should give him a bonus to Fire".

Instead, sit down with the player who has created this new, higher-Legend Scion, preferably after she's already figured out what the Scion's all about, and have her tell you about the character's backstory. Who is she? Where did she come from? What is she about? But, most importantly of all, what awesome and Legendary things did she do that made her increase in Legend? How did she become a Demigod (or a God, if you're building all the way up that high)? What did she do that mortals remember her for, and what were her biggest moments of work for the gods and establishment of her own legends? What were her triumphs and tragedies that might live on in modern myth? Let her go nuts; as long as nothing she's choosing is obviously out of line or damaging to the gameworld ("I killed Apollo with my bare hands!" No.), she'll be painting you a great portrait of what kind of Legendary career she's had thus far.

Then, go sit down on your own with those stories and choose the Fatebonds based on them. If one of her big moments was saving a schoolbus full of children by lifting a mountainside off them, maybe she gained a bonus to Earth or Strength; if one of her stories involves her attempting to seduce a famously handsome god but ended up being seduced in turn, maybe she ended up with penalties to Manipulation or Integrity. A Scion who had been played through these stories would have gained her Fatebonds based on what she was doing and spending Legend on, so assign Fatebonds as if she had done that. As the Storyteller, you also get the unenviable (or fun?) duty of assigning at least a couple of what the player would think of as bad Fatebonds, which range from "what the hell, why are they buying me Moon" to "holy shit this negative to Fortitude is literally killing me". Again, draw those negatives from the stories they gave you; if there are no obvious penalties, turn to creative interpretation, which mortals sometimes fall prey to thanks to bad Fatebond rolls (i.e., "He blinded everyone around him with a giant sunflare! He must be a god of Darkness because he blinds people/a god of Fire because he creates so much heat/a god of Appearance because his hotness melted my eyes!").

As for how strong these Fatebonds should be and how many a character should start with, let the rest of the band be your guide. Average out how many Fatebonds they have each, and give the new character that many; if everyone else has about five, the new guy should, too. Average out how strong those Fatebonds are; if it looks like most people have two max-level, three or four mid-level and then a couple of lower-level ones, use that as your template. Also take a look at how many bad Fatebonds everyone else has, and make the new guy's comparable. I would say cheat him a little bit so that he isn't quite as brought down with bad ones as those who have been in play in order to give him room to make his own, but you still need enough that the other people in play don't feel like he's getting special treatment. If you're creating an entire band of higher-Legend PCs from scratch and have no other characters to compare to, consider looking at characters of similar Legend from other games you've run, or else choose a number (we're going with seven Fatebonds, two at max, three at middle and two at low, for everybody!) and run with it. Remember that the higher Legend a Scion gets, the more quickly they'll accumulate Fatebonds, so you'll need quite a few more for a Legend 8 Scion than you would for a Legend 5 one.

That's basically the way we do it, though we'll add a more concrete outline for that faraway day when we get around to our Fatebond slim-down and overhaul. The most important things are making sure that the Fatebonds fit the Scion's actions and that they're basically fair when compared to those their bandmates have; everything else is gravy.

As for the question box, it's true that I do most of the direct post-answering, but John's ghost is usually behind me helping out. This post, for example, was mostly me writing down his answer, because I'm more writey and he's more talky so we tend to divide labor that way a lot. Think of us more as a team rather than either one of us being fully in charge of the blog.

Also, John is a despotic tyrannical ruler and he will never, ever, ever change the name of the site or the wording of the question box.