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Question: What's the deal with using relics that aren't yours? I think you mentioned somewhere that there's some kind of danger involved - care to elaborate?

Indeed there is! We'll probably try to include something about this in the upcoming relics/crafting/Industry rules, but we're happy to talk about it right now anyway!

Relics are neat things; they're part and parcel of a Scion's Legend, tied to them in almost unseverable bonds as parts of the myths and legends they write about themselves, and they're also artifacts of power in their own right, with their own Fatebonds and Fateful Auras once they become powerful enough. Of all the magical items and substances populating the worlds of Scion, they're the most important for the simple reason that they are part of the most important beings in the universe - the players, and the gods with whom they interact and form relationships.

We all know that relics are, of course, bound magically to their Scions and nearly unbreakable or unlosable short of ridiculous forces or high-level shenanigans from the Magic purview. But they are still items that could theoretically be borrowed, lent, lost or stolen, which means that it's possible for people who don't own them to try to make use of their fabulous powers and bonuses. When that happens, the relic automatically fights back against the unfamiliar power that is trying to make use of it; it may not be a thinking being (unless you're Amatsukami, in which case it's also probably offended and shouting), but it still recognizes its owner and rejects anyone else who can't bamboozle it with the Steal Birthright spell.

Also, before we get into this, we'd just like to make sure everyone is on the same page with us: do you know that rule on page 162 of Scion: Hero, where it says that if you use someone else's relic you get access to all the boons they have in any purview that relic channels? If you don't, that's okay, because you shouldn't. Nobody should. It is a bad, bad rule. It is the dumbest rule to ever have dumbed. Not only does it make relic-stealing way more powerful than anything else anybody could be doing (oh, you mean I can get an entire purview's worth of boons I never paid XP for, for free? SIGN US UP), but it's also stupid because it implies that it's the relic that knows those boons, not the Scion, who apparently doesn't have any control over the purviews he embodies at all. Do not use this rule.

Okay, everyone on the same page? Back to how stealing relics works, then!

Whenever you try to use a relic that doesn't belong to you, you roll a number of dice equal to your Legend (and you can channel, Deed, stunt, or whatever other nonsense you want to try to increase this roll's chance of succeeding). If you roll successes equal to or higher than the relic's rating, then presto, you get to use it this one time! That means you can swing this stolen relic sword once, or add this borrowed relic necklace's Presence bonus to the roll you're making right now, or call upon the powers of this book you found on the ground to use its unique power to read something in the blink of an eye, or whatever else it does. Every single time you want to use the relic, you will need to succeed at this roll, meaning that if you want to continue stabbing people with a relic sword that isn't yours, you'll have to roll against it every time you swing; you may have bent it to your will once, but there's no guarantee that it won't manage to reject your lack of authority over it next time. It is possible to simply carry around a relic without using it, meaning that you don't need to roll for it as long as it stays inert, but they always trigger the roll when their powers might come into play - a suit of relic armor, for example, would need to be rolled against every time someone hit you, but it wouldn't need to be rolled against every five minutes if you were just sitting around in it.

If you fail at the roll, you land in Paintown (population: you). Unsuccessfully trying to wrestle a relic that you don't own into working for you causes an instant backlash from Fate, which knows perfectly well that you and this relic aren't meant to be together, and it deals an amount of unsoakable aggravated damage to you equal to its relic rating, something our PCs usually describe as "motherfucking thing bit me" in very aggrieved tones. This is often accompanied by fairly severe maiming, which the Storyteller decides based on what the relic is and what you were trying to do with it - a relic gun might just blow your hand off, for example, or a relic pair of glasses burn your eyes out. Not only did you take some damage, which sucks, but you also failed to force the relic to behave, meaning that whatever you just tried to do did not work; you didn't get its bonus to your rolls, or you couldn't channel that purview, or you were unable to lift it against your enemies, whatever. You don't necessarily drop it (unless it blows your hand off, in which case you probably do), but it offers you no benefit whatsoever.

So, as you can imagine, it's always a (literal) roll of the dice to try to use someone else's relics; the rewards might be fantastic, but the penalty for failure is uncomfortable at best and disastrous at worst. This sucks for Scions who are trying to accumulate a collection of stolen goods for their own aims, but it also protects them, since far fewer enemies will bother with trying to take their toys if they can't reliably use them. The natural defenses of a relic can also be augmented (we allow Scions to spend Birthright points on making their relics more thief-resistant, which generally means they bite when you touch them even if you aren't using them yet or that they deal more damage when they do, or both), and of course they can also be circumvented by those with high-level Magic or Tsukumo-gami, although doing so is rare. It's also possible to have relics that aren't bound to anyone, which means they fall under two categories - they don't bite, like minor relics created with Trusted Tool, or (more commonly) they bite everybody until someone with Magic comes along and makes sure they get properly homed with an owner.

Of course, that does mean that is pretty likely that you're not going to be able to sneak into Thor's place on a lark, steal Mjolnir and command the skies of Asgard, but if you can't make the Legend roll, you just aren't worthy, my friend. And if you can make that roll - Deeding and channeling and busting off Bona Fortuna and Lucky Star and using your dice from Become the Herald and whatever else insanity you can pull off - well, that one moment of glory when you can use it is going to be epic as all hell, isn't it?