Question: Question about Undeniable Resemblance and Fatebonds, if one Scion willing to spend all the Legend needed to change his/her appearance to a perfect replica of another Scion without being seen by anyone, would any subsequent Fatebonding be attached to the copied Scion?
Man, is this that same person who keeps asking about getting out of Fatebonds by, like, mind-controlling other people or whatnot? You are persistent!
No. That doesn't work.
As we've mentioned in previous posts about trying to Fosse dance your way out of Fatebonds, this kind of thing simply doesn't work because fooling mortals doesn't fool Fate. It is totally possible for a Scion to use Appearance to turn himself into a perfect copy of another person or being, but he is still the one spending the Legend and getting the Fatebonds, which will be based on whatever he was doing or whatever image he was projecting at the time. If Loki goes out and turns himself into an exact copy of Baldur before spending a bunch of Legend, Baldur will be totally unaffected, since he's not the one actually affecting Fate by doing things. He will get no Fatebonds unless he spends some Legend himself. Loki, on the other hand, might be likely to suddenly pick up Fatebonds to Sun or Appearance as well as whatever else he was doing, since the people he's being Fatebound to are probably thoroughly confused into believing his disguise is real.
As always, remember: you can absolutely fool mortals into thinking white is black, and often that will affect what kinds of Fatebonds they generate, but Fate doesn't care what you look like. Fate always knows you're you, because it's freaking Fate and it knows and maps your entire destiny and couldn't care less what face you're wearing when you spend Legend and accrue Fatebonds. There is no kind of undercover shenanigan you can pull that will be able to confuse the all-powerful web of Fate unless you have powers that specifically do that - Magic spells, Shuck Fate in high-level Chaos, or the Nemetondevos PSP of Deuogdonio.
I think this is actually a common confusion, so here's the easy rule of thumb. Fatebonds are what happens when you spend Legend and therefore become part of the web of Fate. What those Fatebonds do depends on the beliefs of the mortals to whom you're Fatebound. Messing with those mortals' minds may change what the Fatebonds do, but you have to mess with Fate to change the fact that the Fatebonds are there in the first place.
Silly question asker, Fate does what it wants with you, unless you specifically spend XP to bypass it (and when you do, it fucks you over harder!)
ReplyDeleteThough this discussion has led me to an interesting question... Let's say, hypothetically, I use some Appearance Knacks and Illusion Boons to make it look like I'm a being made of fire and I'm juggling Buicks.
Do I get Fatebound to Strength and Fire, since as far as anyone can tell, that's what's happening, and that's how they view me in their lens of story?
Or do I get Fatebound to Appearance and Illusion because I'm confounding and tricking these people wholeheartedly, not to mention actually spending the Legend on these powers, which is what Fate cares about more than how the puny mortals think of me?
And if it's the former, then how do the trickster/illusiony people get Fatebound to the trickster/illusion powers?
Both are possible! A little bit of it is based on judgment calls and die rolls by the ST, which varies depending on the person and Fatebond but is usually something like a 65% chance the powers he's actually using, a 30% chance the powers it looks like he's using and a 5% chance Fate gives him something totally random because fuck your problems, it's Fate.
DeleteThe level of Fatebond also makes a difference; higher-level Fatebonds generate more expectations than lower ones, so a level 10 Fatebond that needs to give you a bonus to five things is more likely to grant you both the powers you're actually using AND the ones you look like you're using, whereas a level 5 Fatebond that only gives a bonus to two things is more likely to hit either/or.
And, of course, sometimes trickster powers are obvious for what they are. People suddenly having terrible hallucinations or acting like mindless zombies is usually pretty clear use of Illusion/Manipulation/whatever, even if the source and method isn't as obvious. Pretending personally to do things you can't do, like throw fireballs, is where it can get murky, and even that's not always clear-cut (for example, if onlookers can't see what your target is seeing, it may be clear to them that you're hornswoggling someone0.
Tricksters walk a thorny road; most other people don't have to worry about getting Fatebound to things they don't do as much, but them's the breaks when you make a career out of pretending to do and be things you're not. Sometimes it works out fine, such as when Aurora used Illusion to pretend she was a giant wolf and managed to get out with Fatebonds to Illusion instead of Animal; other times, it bombs, like when Goze impersonated a cardinal of the Church and accidentally got himself Fatebound into a bunch of Justice and Integrity.