This Post is Full of Question Marks

Question: I got a player who wants to play a Scion with a split personality. How do you handle that?

Well, that's a whole ugly can of worms. We would need a lot more detail than that to give you really specific advice, but we've got a few pointers for you anyway. Also, I don't know what this proposed character's gender might be, but I'm going to pretend she's a lady because that's what I am.

First of all, and most importantly: a Scion with a split personality is a roleplaying decision, not a mechanical one. If a player wants to tackle that as part of her character and explore all the ways that might affect her behavior, adventures and life, that's totally groovy, but it does not bring with it any mechanical benefits. Her alternate personas do not get separate stats or powers, nor should they ever be used as excuses to cheat the system. If there are any places that you can see ahead of time might come up as problems - for example, the Scion trying to get out of the effects of a Justice boon because the "other guy" did it - sit down with her now and make sure she knows what will and won't work. You don't need the extra stress of trying to find polite ways to shut down a player's attempts to game the system while still making the game fun for everyone else at the same time, and they don't want to come in thinking they have a brilliant plan and get shot down with no idea what to do next, either.

This doesn't mean at all that a split-personality Scion can't have different things going on for her two different personas; it just means that you, as the Storyteller, need to know more about this character to begin with than you might for some others. By extension, that means that the player needs to know a lot about this character, which might involve some research on her part. Ask her: why is it she wants to play someone with a split personality? Is it because she wants to explore mental illness in a Scion? Because she has two character ideas and wants to play them both at once, or because she thinks those two personalities would have some good interplay in being contained by the same being? Is it because she wants to explore a mythic duality within herself, like Hindu deities with different manifestations or dual- or triple-gods that display different aspects? Or did she just think it sounded fun?

We don't want to rain on anyone's parade and say that they can't play a split-personality Scion off the cuff just because it's fun, but there's way too much going on with a character like that to try to just wing it. It won't be very good characterization and the player runs the risk of their character becoming flat and incapable of progressing, and it's not fair to the Storyteller who needs a basic handle on things to plan a good story. How exactly does this split personality work? Does this character actually have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and if so, is the player well-versed in how that disorder manifests and affects people and prepared to play it that way? Do you or the player need to do some research before you know how to handle it? Or, if this personality split is from some other source, what is that source, how did it cause this, and what happens as a result? Are there particular triggers that cause her to switch from one personality to the other? You'll need to know those triggers, as the Storyteller, so you know when to remind the player that they've happened or work them into your own plots. Does she switch seemingly at random? If so, as the Storyteller you'll need to be in charge of when that happens, and you might need to come up with a way of randomly determining it. Do these two personalities know about each other? Do they remember what the other one did, or do they have memory blackouts and no idea what they've done when they were in their alternate persona? Are both personalities sometimes active at the same time, or can they only be "awake" if the other one is "asleep", and if they're both up and having conversations with one another, is that going to lead to that player monopolizing too much game time with their internal drama? Is there some magical source or process behind this split, and if so do you need to figure out the details of how that works before you can set ground rules for it?

Another thing to be on the lookout for is to make sure that the handling of the situation doesn't cross a line into being offensive. Your player doesn't necessarily have to take this characterization super seriously or anything if she doesn't want to, but DID is a very real and serious condition that affects a lot of people, and if you play it for comedy or treat it like a minor personality quirk that doesn't really affect the person's life all that much, you run the risk of trivializing the experiences of those who do suffer from similar conditions, which may in turn upset or offend players. If you think that might be an issue, you may want to bring it up to the player ahead of time to make sure it isn't handled insensitively. You guys don't need advanced degrees in psychology to play a character like this, but a little research will go a long way toward making sure you don't stereotype too hard.

If your player isn't interested in approaching this from a psychological point of view and instead would like something more mythological, there are also a lot of really neat mythical precedents for the idea of more than one mind (or soul) occupying the same person or body. I don't know which pantheon your player's thinking of going with, but several of them have the potential to work dual personalities right into their PSPs. Orisha Scions will literally gain a second persona once they get access to Iwa Pele, with the ability to switch between them at will and a discrete set of powers and Fatebonds for each different personality; you have to wait until Demigod level to get it, but it's still a great way to tie a character's stats into the idea of two different personas. On a more abstract level, Bogovi Scions can get a lot of duality symbolism out of the borrowed Virtues and purviews they gain from Dvoeverie, which can change per story and reflect the two sides of the Scion's self (or selves). Anunna Scions might purchase Me for different purviews as a form of one or the other personality asserting themselves, and Deva Scions, who come from a pantheon with a long and glorious tradition of alternative personalities manifesting and splitting off from one another, can play out their separate personalities quite literally with Avatara.

And even normal powers, regular all-purpose purviews and Epic Attributes, can always be roleplayed as belonging to different personalities. The character's stats won't actually change when they switch personalities, but that doesn't mean that the Scion can't consciously roleplay that one personality only knows she had Darkness, Fire and Wits and the other only knows she has Sun, Water and Dexterity. If the player wants to roleplay that she only uses some of her powers in each personality, or that she believes she's bad at some things in each persona that she's really not, the fact that that's not technically mechanically true won't stop her from playing it like an RP pro.

It's tempting to disallow this kind of character, because it's very easy for it to turn into what we in the old, crochety Vampire: the Masquerade universe used to call a "fishmalk": a character who is psychologically abnormal just for the sake of the player getting to do ridiculous things, ignore normal social rules and issues, and never seriously roleplay, rather than a developed and complete character who also happens to have a mental condition. But some players can and do do wonderful things with mental illnesses and psychological conditions, so we suggest talking to the player about it first and feeling it out. If they're really playing a fishmalk, they'll probably either become quickly disenchanted with the idea when you tell them they have to figure out how their DID actually works and that it might sometimes actually inconvenience them, or maybe through working on it with you they'll move from their original flat concept into something more interesting. And if they did have a neat concept in mind from the beginning, you'll get to discover that.

So... good luck, friend.