The Six Million Box Man

Question How do you guys do health? Different from the core books?

Actually, yes, although only slightly. The rule for it is on our House Rules page, but that is kind of a wall of text, so we're happy to break it down here, too.

In the original core books, everyone starts out with seven health boxes, which is the standard human amount of punishment anyone can take. Once you reach four dots of Epic Stamina, you gain more health boxes equal to your Epic Stamina successes - that is, you'll go from the original seven to fourteen as soon as you get that fourth dot. From there on, any time you purchase another dot of Epic Stamina, your health boxes increase accordingly (so you go from fourteen to eighteen when you get your fifth dot, then from eighteen to 23 when you get your sixth, and so on).

We used that rule for our first several games without really thinking about it, but eventually realized that we couldn't think of any good reason that Epic Stamina would only start adding health boxes at the fourth dot instead of all the way through. So we changed that, and now Epic Stamina always adds health boxes equal to its successes for everybody, no matter what Legend level they are. Here's a handy table (for basic Scions, not those cheaters with Jotunblut):

Epic Stamina Dots	Total Health Boxes
0	7
1	8
2	9
3	11
4	14
5	18
6	23
7	29

Cleaner and simpler, and gives PCs more health boxes to struggle through their lives with. What's not to love? We think that the original books probably didn't do it this way simply because Hero and Demigod weren't done at the same time, because there's no reason to put a threshold on Epic Stamina granting health boxes like that unless you really want that to be something only Demigods get. Which I guess you might, but we always feel that Heroes need all the help they can get.

But that's not all! We also double health boxes for all gods as soon as they hit Legend 9. This is partly for coolness factor - you're a god now! Even comparatively squishy gods are still more durable than most lesser beings! - and partly because it gives non-physical gods more of a fighting chance of surviving the kinds of dangerous foes and situations that strike young deities on a regular basis. So, once you're a god, the table instead looks like this (again without Jotunblut cheaters)

Epic Stamina Dots	Total Health Boxes
0	14
1	16
2	18
3	22
4	28
5	36
6	46
7	58
8	72
9	88
10	106

This doesn't make much difference to the people with high Epic Stamina, of course - they were always going to get mad mountains of health boxes, and the exponential curve ensures that they always have more than everyone else - but it can be a major upside for those with a little less. Eztli's 106 health boxes are definitely impressive in the extreme, but it's really Vala, who went from 18 to 36 and now has a vague chance of surviving it if Sverrir accidentally points his Dragon's Breath the wrong way, who's giving thanks for that mechanic the most.

Basically, when powers and the ability to hurt things is so off-the-charts in Scion, we feel that health boxes should follow that model and scale, both at the low end and in the crazy ultimate deity range.