Riding the Wheel

Question: On regards to the Mahaprasthana boon, I've noticed none of the Devas have more than six associated abilities. While I understand the balance concerns, if this aspect of the boon is never used, should it really be a part of the boon? I don't know many legends of instances where the Legend 12 Devas were reincarnated, but at least Parvati and possibly Ganesha when he lost his head seem like good candidates to have used it.

You're right; the Devas, like all of the other divine parents in Scion, are rocking only six associated abilities, despite the fact that the Mahaprasthana boon would have technically allowed them to choose a seventh at some point in their past if they'd wanted to. And yes, one of the reasons for this is just normal, boring old game balance. Of course, you guys know how profoundly not worried about things like slight XP discount imbalances we are in our games, but we still prefer that those things be choices made by the players where applicable, not arbitrarily handed down by us, and therefore we don't want to have some of the Devas wandering around as the only set of gods in the game with seven associated abilities. Not only that, but trying to figure out how to even do it would be weird; I mean, they probably didn't all choose to use that clause, so how do we decide which ones used the boon how in what nebulous history? It looks like a lot of research and guesswork for not much payoff, so we're happily going to ignore it.

However, that doesn't mean that the boon shouldn't be able to do that, and we have plenty of reasons why. Firstly, it's important to make a distinction between what powers gods and Scions can use during the course of a game and what their default setup is for purposes of beginning said game. Gods have all kinds of powers, pantheon-specific and otherwise, that could wildly have changed the course of history if they'd used them in a certain way at a certain time... but since they didn't, we choose to believe they haven't been up to much so that the PCs can come into whatever setting you play the game in and be the important change-makers instead of having all that epicness already taken out of their hands by NPCs before the game even started. Unless your plot has a good reason to want it to happen, there's no point in sitting around what-iffing; the default setting of the game is the myths more or less as they appear in their cultures' legends, so all the other stuff they could have done doesn't really matter. What gods are doing in the background before a game's plot starts is irrelevant; there's no point in wondering what a god theoretically used his Mahaprasthana on any more than trying to figure out how much XP Zeus would have if he were a PC and why he wouldn't have bought six more purviews. They're not PCs and don't need to be treated the same way.

Also, just because you don't have a direct example of a god using that particular facet of a boon doesn't mean it shouldn't exist or that PCs can't do it. Mahaprasthana (and a lot of the rest of Samsara, actually) is a very internal, spiritual kind of a boon, and as a result it's difficult to know when or how any individual might have used it. Just because they didn't use it in a way that resulted in a concrete stat change you could look at doesn't mean it didn't happen, and such shaky objections aren't good enough for us to want to deprive PCs of the rockin' awesome option if they want to go for it. Keep in mind also that the divine parents with stats posted on our page are only a very small sample of the massive numbers of Devas that there actually are, and just because none of them appear to have used the boon that way doesn't mean that nobody else has.

Because of the special mechanics Mahaprasthana uses, as well, there's another alternative option, too: some of the gods simply may not have used it yet. The boon is only usable once, and most Scions will do so relatively early in their careers as they meddle around with what they spend XP on and what they want to grow into as gods, but those concerns don't apply to most of the Devas. They were born gods, they don't spend XP, and without a compelling reason to use the boon (such as deciding to totally reinvent oneself and what one's Scions have access to), they have no reason to rush it. Mahaprasthana doesn't kick in until a Scion or god who possesses it dies, and many of the Devas simply never have. Might as well save that free reincarnation for the moment they need it, right?

By the way, I agree that Parvati (who was Sati but died and was reincarnated) and Ganesha (who was beheaded by his cranky father and then hastily reconstructed from elephant parts when his mother pitched a fit over it) are good examples of Devas who might have used Mahaprasthana, simply because they actually have died and returned in some other form. I'd also add Yama, who has died at least twice, to that august list of Devas who have continuity problems.