Hubris

Question: In a lot of modern fiction, technology is the great equalizer between humanity and the supernatural forces of the world. Where do you stand on technology ever being able to allow humans to fight the gods? Can humans ever develop weapons capable of harming the a god with minimum Epic Stamina? What about maximum? Can future man ever muster an army great enough and well equipped enough to conquer a pantheon of gods? Now please answer again, but include Fatebinding into the equation!

Well, jeez, you don't want much, do you?

We've covered this in depth on a similar question a while ago, which you can check out here, but where we stand is that no, humans can't fight gods. Large numbers of peak-trained and equipped humans getting extraordinarily lucky and succeeding well above average makes it just possible to hurt a single god who is already bad at defending himself. Humanity trying to take on a pantheon is flat-out impossible.

You're right, modern fiction is currently very fond of that idea of technology providing the means for humanity to overcome the supernatural; it's part of a general trend in literature and media in the past century that portrays humanity as the scrappy underdogs who can still manage to win if they just work hard enough, and in a larger sense a cultural expression of the power of capitalism and other merit-based social systems at work in the modern world. Especially in the United States, where we're all told that if we follow the American Dream and just work really hard and have moxy we'll eventually succeed no matter how insanely the odds are stacked against us, it only makes sense for writers and creators to project that idea forward into their art. And when that collides with supernatural fiction, it's natural to say: okay, so if humanity can always win if they just try hard enough, how do they beat supernatural things that are more powerful? The answer takes a variety of forms - super science equipment that can detect or contain ghosts, genetic modifications to make humans faster or stronger to compete with zombies, invention of more efficient stake-o-matics to take the fight to vampires, or whatever - all geared toward suggesting that humanity can level the playing field against the supernatural if they put the force of their collective creativity and determination toward it.

And that's totally awesome, and there are many excellent stories and worlds built around it. But it doesn't work in Scion, and the most major reason is that Scion is not about the supernatural; Scion is about the divine.

Things like werewolves, ghosts, witches and other common supernatural nasties are fundamentally based at the human level. They're more powerful than humans, certainly, thanks to their suite of personalized supernatural abilities, but they're within the same general realm of power. They affect human society, prey on humans who are capable, even pre-technology, of fighting back against them, and in many cases are actually at least partially human themselves. The stories told about these kinds of supernatural things are all concerned with humans and human society, or at the furthest with the environment they inhabit that is near that of humans. These are things that are designed to compete with humans on a similar level, whether by being cast out of a possession by a mortal priest, being hunted down by vampire hunters bearing crosses and holy water or being warded off by travelers who know enough to carry a little bread, a shaker of salt and an iron bar when crossing the fairy moors at night.

Or to reduce it to quick and dirty Scion game terms, they're close in Legend rating. Mortals have no Legend, and creatures like this might have anywhere from 1 to 3 dots, making them definitely more powerful and dangerous but still within the realm where concerted human effort can and does overcome them. Traditionally, in both antiquated and modern literature, they are creatures meant to be capable of meaningfully antagonizing humans and vice versa.

But Scion is concerned with gods, and gods are not supernatural creatures. Gods are gods. They are deities believed to be the fundamental powers of the universe, the shapers and creators, owners and overseers, the foundations of religions and the sources of life. They come from ancient religions where there was absolutely no question whatsoever that humans could "compete" with them, and stories about those stupid enough to try almost invariably end in complete misery or death for the mortal who dared try to compare themselves to the divine. The people who believed in these beings understood that they were hopelessly insignificant next to them, that there was no possibility of ever even thinking about equalling them much less trying to overcome them, and that their world and very lives constantly depended on their goodwill. Gods can instantly deprive the whole planet of sustenance with the powers of Animal and Fertility, or suffocate the entire planet with the powers of Sky, or blanket it in Darkness and Chaos until humanity kills itself in panic, and those things would not be particularly hard for them, especially if several gods decided to do so at once. Ra or Shiva or Tezcatlipoca can literally blink and end the world - and everything humanity has built in it - in a second.

That's the difference here: gods are not and were never thought of as being anywhere near the level of humans. If they were, they wouldn't be gods, just powerful demons/spirits/whatevers that mortals could deal with enterprisingly instead of needing to pray to and appease. If gods are beings that humans have even the vaguest hope of conquering, they aren't gods, ancient religions make no sense, and Scion's entire setting collapses. Gods are by definition the powers of the universe. If you make them something else, you're no longer playing with gods; you're playing a game where demons or aliens or the spirits of ancestors pretend to be gods but can be defeated. Which is not what Scion is about.

This doesn't mean it's impossible to harm gods with mortal means, of course, just extraordinarily unlikely. It's technically possible for a god to have no Epic Stamina at all if that was their dump stat, although we have a hard time conceiving of a deity with only fourteen health boxes who could have survived this long anyway, and they'd be just as easy to hurt - provided you can bring yourself to attack them and actually hit them and they have no powers that could save them, which is a massively unlikely string of events - as any mortal would. Gods who don't have minimum Epic Stamina but who do have fairly low Stamina could also be hurt by mortal weapons even now; if you'd shot Vala with a nuke, she and her five Epic Stamina would have been in deep trouble. Except, of course, for the ten zillion powers from Guardian to Psychopomp to basic Stamina Knacks that she could have used - or that others around her could have used - to escape completely unscathed.

As for maximums, that is impossible. A god who has Ultimate Stamina is the utter expression of durability and physical hardiness. There is nothing in the universe that is less hurtable than that god. You can't scratch him with a nuke. You probably can't scratch him with several nukes. A god with Ultimate Dexterity is so incredibly fast and fluid that it is quite literally abjectly impossible to hit him if he doesn't want to be hit, and you will just end up raining nukes down on random points where he's no longer hanging out. And, of course, you can't even want to shoot the guy with Ultimate Charisma, because he's so fucking incredible you could never, ever, ever in a million years bring yourself to do anything that might hurt him. Gods can and do hurt each other, but that's because they're on equal or semi-equal planes of power, where their unfathomable Strength can be a match for their opponent's immovable Stamina or their incredible powers of resistance can get past the insidiously powerful Manipulation their enemy turns on them. Humans are not on that plane of power. By definition, they can't be.

We could probably go on all day with different ways that gods basically have no concerns whatsoever about humans hurting them, but here's a simple way of looking at it: the game is not a fixed continuum, where the gods are exactly as "powerful" in megatons or miles per hour as they have always been. The gods were beyond fathoming when humanity was in the Bronze Age, and they're beyond fathoming now, and in two thousand years when mortals have built the Death Star, they'll be beyond fathoming then, too. Gods, in order to be gods, must always be unspeakably powerful in relation to humanity; in terms of the great universal cosmic scope of the game, humans can invent whatever they want, but they'll never actually get any closer to the gods. If someone were writing Scion in that time period, they'd change the stats and numbers so that the gods were just as far above mortals as they are now; if mortals have the technology to go at the speed of light, gods have the ability to go faster. Because otherwise, as we said, they're not gods.

I'm glad you mentioned Fatebonds, however, because that is an area where we totally cheat in favor of mortals sometimes! Humans who have been Fatebound into a particular Role for a given Legendary creature have the backing of Fate, which wants them to succeed, and that may occasionally mean that they have much more of a shot at hurting someone than they otherwise should. A mortal who is a Nemesis to a Legend 8 Scion shouldn't normally be able to touch her, but with Fate guiding her hand, we often represent that with penalties to the Scion, who has trouble trying to buck the whims of Fate, or bonuses to the Fatebound mortal who needs them to boost her to supernatural abilities for the brief time it takes to fulfill her destined part in the story. Or both. A Traitor will be way better at hiding her intentions from a Scion's Epic Perception than a normal mortal, because Fate will give her bonuses no other mortal could have; a Lover will be way more alluring to a Scion because Fate wants her to be loved and thus boosts her lovability to greater-than-human heights.

But even these things are not guarantees, just helpful nudging from Fate that might or might not make the difference. And in our Fatebond system they don't apply to gods anyway, since upon reaching Legend 9, gods no longer have individuals Fatebound to them in roles but instead are supported by Fatebound cults with collective beliefs about them. But we do think it's important for Storytellers to play up the importance of Fatebound mortals, and to remember that Fate wants them to succeed and sometimes that should mean that at the critical moment they're better than they have any right to be.