Dream On

Question: I'm working on a PSP that uses Vision Quests as a core mechanic. Since these depend on a lot of fasting and deprivation, how should I factor Epic Stamina (especially the Divine Fortitude line of knacks) into how it works?

That is a great question, and also a hard one to answer.

We feel you, because we ran up against the same thing when working on Samsara, where one of the important parts of Hindu spirituality, fasting until the body is cleansed and the mind cleared, was not interacting very well with Epic Stamina. When you can sit around for literally months before you even start feeling peckish, it's a lot harder to meaningfully fast, and while we could say that this is why gods tend to fast for eleventy zillion years at a time in mythology, that wouldn't be very useful to Scions who don't have that kind of time.

Our solution in the Tapasya boon was to create a separate system that totally bypassed Epic Stamina; instead of trying to figure out a scale of penalties or times that would be able to adjust to all the ridiculous bullshit Scions can do to their Stamina + Fortitude rolls, we decided to levy a straight penalty to the stat, proportionate to the benefit granted elsewhere. That does mean that those who are more stamina-worthy are penalized less by Tapasya than those who are already lightweights, but since that's something a Scion has to specialize into with XP, we figured that fell into the realm of player choices. Another place we've dealt with the idea in a separate system is the Prophecy purview, where Stamina still gets to roll as usual but a separate system determines the penalties and damage inflicted based on the results.

So that's one option; you can invent a system that only the PSP uses, therefore bypassing some of the problems of Epic Stamina. The easiest thing to do, if deprivation effects are an important core mechanic of your purview, is to take a cue from the Raise Your Glass knack and unilaterally declare that Epic Stamina doesn't apply when you're using boons from this PSP. That way, gods will still be technically better at it than humans could be, but not by much, and you can work with a much smaller scale of potential Stamina resistance when designing how difficult various boons should be or how much of a physical toll they take (or require) on the user. If you do want Epic Stamina to be in play, you might try mechanics that work based on dots instead of successes, or do something wacky with how the purview interacts with Epic Stamina (your Epic Stamina dots only count inversely to your dots of the PSP, or something).

Or, you can bite the bullet and just deal with the fact that nobody past Legend 3 ever really gets hungry without dire craziness ensuing. Instead of basing the PSP's powers on how hungry a character gets (since you know the answer is probably not very), base it on time invested, other substances ingested, spiritual toll taken (maybe represented by Willpower?) or whatever else you can think of. Maybe using the PSP makes you hungry even if you normally wouldn't need to eat more than once a year. Get creative.

Our suggestion here is to try several different things until you find one that works; don't feel like you have to commit to a mechanic immediately even if it doesn't feel quite right. Choose a few boons and map out what they would be like under a variety of different kinds of systems. Take your time and don't be afraid to mix and match different methods for different boons in the same purview, if that's what works best.

This post brought to you by Dave, who beat the internet to retrieve it! Thanks, Dave!