Power Over Death

Question: I have a question about the Death purview. I've been looking at it for a while, and it strikes me as odd that the boons that use Charisma use it instead of Manipulation, and to a greater extent, that Death has so many Charisma related boons at all. I personally link Charisma to Charm, and Friendly, and "This guy is cool, you will like them". Those are not things I think of when I think of Death Gods. But maybe I'm just looking at it wrong. Either way, don't suppose you could fill me in on it all?

Sure can. Charisma confuses a lot of people this way, so much so that we've talked about it in depth before over here. That post will give you a good breakdown of the differences between Charisma and Manipulation and how they can be used by various kinds of characters.

But to talk specifically about Death, Charisma is the go-to stat for much of it because Death boons are, for the most part, centered around commanding and ruling the dead (and eventually, if you want it, your own Underworld). Charisma isn't just charm and friendliness; it's the force of personality that makes people pay attention to you and respond when you say jump, and a person trying to command others, living or dead, had better have that quality or find that they just don't obey. Just like you need Charisma to tell an animal what to do with Animal Command, you need it to tell a ghost or undead creature what to do; in both cases, you're giving an order and you need Charisma to give you the oomph to make them to obey. They might obey for different cosmetic reasons depending on what kind of Charisma you have - sure, they might do it because they think you're awesome and they like you, but they also might do it because they fear you or your commanding presence is just that overwhelming - but the Charisma is, at its root, what makes them obey.

Manipulation, on the other hand, is a stat for persuasion, convincing and shenanigans, most of which just aren't in a death god's basic repertoire. You're not trying to subtly convince a zombie to get up and work for you when you use Unquiet Corpse; you're having it get the fuck up and follow your orders and you're not required to explain yourself. You're not trying to cajole a ghost into backing off when you use Exorcism; you're backing it off now, immediately, with the force of your decision. You're giving commands that you expect to be obeyed, not manipulating or convincing your targets to do what you want. Death is almost all brute force.

By the way, we recognize that some of this confusion comes from the fact that Overt Order is a Manipulation knack, which makes some people think that giving commands must be something that is done with Manipulation. It's usually not; it's Charisma that's what you use for ordering people about (this is why it's used so much in the War purview, too!), while Manipulation is for convincing them to order themselves about for you. Overt Order is there specifically because Manipulation doesn't do that on its own, just like Benefit of the Doubt over in Charisma is there because Charisma normally can't convince people to believe you if they don't. Like all knacks, it's a specialized expression of your Manipulation, not something that Manipulation does all by itself.

You're right that most of us don't think of death gods as cuddly, because they usually aren't; humanity is generally afraid of death and that usually translates to being afraid of, or at least not wanting to hang out with, those gods who oversee it. There are twenty-seven gods with Death associated with them currently on the site, and of those, only four (Huitzilopochtli, Indra, Osiris and Vayu) have Charisma associated with them. That's not an accident; like all gods, death gods get their stats assigned to them based on what they actually do and represent in mythology, not what stats they roll for their purview. They have various other bonuses, including potent relics, features of their Underworlds and Fatebonds, that ensure that they're good at their jobs even if they don't have an Ultimate Attribute behind them, because that's what they do. Having high Charisma is certainly awesome for those with Death, and Scions should totally get both if they want to, but it's not widespread in mythology so you won't see it in many gods from the default setting.

But, by the same token, you won't see much in the way of death gods with Manipulation, either. There are also only four gods with Death who have Manipulation associated - Manannan mac Lir, the Morrigan, Odin and Veles - and it's pretty obvious that they have it because they're tricksters, shapeshifters or illusionists, not because it's something that is obviously used in their underworld jobs. As a lord over the departed and usually their realm as well, Manipulation isn't the stat you need when you have to issue commands and overpower the wills of others; do you know of any Underworlds which are governed by a death god's elaborate and complex web of manipulations, or that depend on the death god wheedling spirits into doing what he wants?

The important things here are these: not every Death god has the same skillset or efficiency at every Death boon, and that's totally okay, and not every Death-aligned Scion needs to do it the way their ancient parents do. Death gods, like gods of every other purview, have variation between who's better at which boons based on the roll; that's not an accident but rather a way of modeling that some death gods are probably better at commanding ghosts, while others are better at seeing into the mists of the next world and others are masters of simply smiting people with death. If Huitzilopochtli wants to Shambling Horde the shit out of his legions of dead warriors, he can do that with ease; he's a charismatic motherfucker, and they will rise up en masse and follow him anywhere he chooses to lead them. But Hel doesn't have that power and shouldn't, because no dead people are interested in doing what she wants, because they're instead interested in hiding from her and hoping she doesn't want anything. She can still force the dead to do her bidding, but they're not going to run joyously into the breach with her quite as enthusiastically as they would for someone with more Charisma, and that's as it should be.

Most importantly, Scions with Death can have - or not have - Charisma all they want, and interpret that Charisma in whatever way they choose if they do pick it up. You don't have to be a cuddly bunny if you have a lot of Epic Charisma; on the contrary, you can be frightening, intense, overwhelming or hilarious, whatever way that force of expression makes most sense for your character. Just because there aren't a lot of death gods with Charisma doesn't mean you can't become one, and if that's what you want to do, you should become one. You may have a little trouble with confused mortals who aren't inclined to Fatebond you to both, but that's something every Scion faces in some dimension, and if you use both enough, you'll be on a good road to succeeding. The rules for statting gods outside the game are not necessarily the same as the rules for Scions inside the game; both are intended to give the best picture of what they do (Death uses a lot of Charisma because Charisma makes sense for those boons' effects, while not many death gods have Charisma because they're generally not associated with it in their home mythologies), but Scions don't have to conform to those roles unless they want to.

We've actually got good examples of both kinds of Scions with Death in our god-level game right now. Jioni is a charismatic fancypants with a personality that dazzles friend and foe alike, and she's excellent at the Death boons that involve calling the dead up to chat or perform tasks for her. Eztli, on the other hand, is terrible at Charisma and brute-forces her way into controlling the dead via Fatebonds and the non-Charisma powers in the purview. They're both very effective at different aspects of the purview, and the one having more Charisma than the other doesn't make her more or less a capital-letter Death Goddess.