Doing It Your Way

Question: Hello, I am new to this site and to the Scion game. But I must say your rules are amazing, and with your help my ST has allowed us to use some of your stuff for my character in our game. But my question is this: if one wants to play a Scion of one god but wants to be different than his divine parent - let's say with different purviews or Epic Attributes - how does one do that in your setting with having to purchase all boons in order? What if they dont want those boons because it doesnt fit them?

Hey, there, glad we're of help to your game! I hope we're enabling extra awesomeness. :)

In our setting, you must buy boons in order; they're all balanced for that and there is no way around it. We don't allow Scions to buy a level 5 boon if they don't already have a level 1, 2, 3 and 4, no exceptions or parole, and we don't allow cheats like getting a relic that just does what a boon normally does, either.

But the good news is that that won't stop your Scion from having totally different powers from her parent, if she really wants to! Any Scion can always have any purview, regardless of whether or not it's associated for their parent; all you need is a relic that channels that purview and a willingness to pay the 1 extra XP per level that a non-associated boon costs. And that's it! You can be a Scion of Apollo who specializes in Moon or a Scion of Thor who rocks Earth all day long, if that's what you want to do.

As far as avoiding boons that don't fit your character concept, we strive to give Scions at least two options at every level of a purview, so that there's a good chance you'll get something you can relate to your character instead of being stuck with only a single option. There are a few exceptions (about one level per purview), but filling in with more options is on our to-do list. If you find that there are two or three options at a particular level of a purview and you don't like any of them - which hopefully shouldn't be happening much, but we don't know what your particular character concept is - that's a moment when you'll have to suck it up and choose one anyway. We usually advise our players to choose a boon that they can make fit their character, even if it wasn't something they'd originally envisioned having, or try to help them come up with cool ways that the new power can help their character grow and evolve.

That rule's not there to be arbitrary and unfair, but rather to emphasize that there are levels of power among legendary creatures, and that a Scion can't skip ahead without mastering them. You can't get a level 3 boon without having a level 1 and 2 - not because we want to be jerks, but because if you haven't mastered the powers of the early levels, how could you be able to wield the energies of the third?

Now, I don't know what your Storyteller does, so I'm not sure how much of this is useful. The original Scion rules allow you to buy any boon at any level without prerequisites, and many games still play that way; we just don't happen to be one, and we feel strongly about doing it our way so that's very unlikely to change. If your game does decide to cherry-pick boons instead of buying them in order, your Storyteller will need to be aware that some of those boons are going to be overpowered since they were designed to be bought after a significant XP investment, and will have to make adjustments accordingly.

As for having purviews or Epics other than your parent's, that's something every Scion can always do without any special hoops to jump through. I know of a few games in which the Storyteller requires a player with a non-associated purview to justify who gave them a relic with that purview or why, but in most cases, the Storyteller will just grant it and only worry about its backstory if it's important to the story. If you've already started your game as a Hero and don't have access to any new relics, you won't be able to get any boons from purviews you don't already have until you're a Demigod, but at Legend 5 you can buy boons even without a relic that channels them, and Epic Attributes never need a relic so you can buy those any time you want.

If you look at our PCs, you'll see that almost all of them have invested in Epics or boons other than their parents'. The character who never branches out into anything else and only buys exactly what their parents do for the entire run is such a rare beast that to date I've actually never seen one.