Mechanical Mysteries

Question: So, Bestial Nature states that it adds Animal only as dice to Mystery, rather than successes as in other purviews. Since this was presumably written before you revamped Mystery's autosuccesses, does this mechanic still work this way, or should that be reworked?

This is a good question, and definitely one we've been debating. Prior to our overhaul of Mystery's mechanics, using the purview had no automatic successes attached, so every power that affected it needed to use dice-based mechanics to avoid being wildly overpowered. Now, however, Mystery rolls do get automatic successes based on the level of Mystery the Scion possesses, so all those older powers that affect them need a fresh look.

On the one hand, it's very easy to want to just add automatic successes to Mystery just like we do to everyone else. Having a separate mechanic in each boon just to handle Mystery is annoying, and it would be a lot more streamlined for both Storyteller and player if a given power's effects were more global and had fewer fiddly exceptions. Since Mystery now does get autos, it shouldn't hurt anything to start letting it be affected by other auto-adding powers, right? It's on the same scale with everything else, at least generally.

However, we're not convinced yet that that's a great idea. Mystery still uses a unique mechanic in our system: where other purviews get their automatic successes from the corresponding Epic Attribute that a given boon uses, Mystery's successes are always based only on the level of Mystery the user possesses. That means that every other boon requires investment in two stats where Mystery requires only one, which in turn means that it's still not running on the same system as everything else. Mystery gets more bang for its buck, XP-wise, than other purviews, which in turn means that adding to its autos is more powerful. Someone with Fire could potentially not have invested in a corresponding Epic Attribute and be pretty terrible at the roll, but someone with Mystery always has the autos automatically, so adding yet more autos on top of that is still a balance concern.

We're thinking at this point that we'll probably have to go through all the boons that can potentially buff Mystery and evaluate whether they should stay at dice or be bumped up to successes on a case-by-case basis. Until we get around to that, the official rules remain dice-only. Personally, I would be inclined to let Bestial Nature, which is a pretty big investment all on its own, go up to successes, but John the Ogre of Balance might come bite my head off if I said so publicly.

The Nature of the Beast

Question: How (for lack of a better word) drastic do the changes form Bestial Nature have to be? Could, for example, the addition of tiny wings to the feet or fins along the forearm count, or must it be a jackal head or fish tail? Also, does the bonus still apply if I shapeshift into another form?

Hmm, semantics! I know you guys get tired of us saying it, but this is another place where different Storytellers will probably rule differently. Animal's always kind of a per-ST-basis purview, and I can't imagine that there's much more consensus over what different features for Bestial Nature can be.

Our guidelines for Bestial Nature (and Animal Feature, for that matter) are that they must always be features that a creature has, and must always be worn approximately the same way that creature wears them. We therefore wouldn't allow tiny wings on the feet; we'd want someone who took wings as a feature to have wings that were proportionately large enough for their body and located in the right general area (arms or back). Fins along the arms would be okay, however, since many kinds of fish do have similar fins. A jackal's head is totally fine, provided it is actually your head and not weirdly growing out of your side or something; giant amalgams like that are part of Bestial Nature's near-permanent transformational powers and are totally groovy. It's worth noting here that we wouldn't allow that for Animal Feature, however, which we would want confined more to small, individual parts - for that we'd say that a jackal head is really several features rolled into one, so we'd instead prefer they took a jackal's ears or jaws or fur or any number of other features rather than trying for a combo package (and hey, if you have a few of those, you've basically got a jackal's head anyway).

Most of the crazier stuff out there - wings on feet, extra limbs, teeth in vaginas and so forth - would fall under the Appearance knack Unusual Alteration, which allows a Scion to do basically whatever she wants with her permanent appearance. Of course, those changes won't have the bonuses of Bestial Nature, but you probably wouldn't want to sink that much permanent Willpower into making yourself look fancy anyway. Better to use BN for the bonuses and UA for everything it doesn't cover.

As for shapeshifting, there are two ways of handling it we'd recommend. The first is that whatever form you shapeshift into, the Bestial Nature features remain; if you're a dude with jaguar claws, you could shapeshift into a woman with jaguar claws or a bird with jaguar claws or a baby seal with jaguar claws, but the claws would always be there. Alternatively, you could shapeshift your BN features away, but while they were gone you would get no benefit from them; if you used your powers of malleable appearance to make your wasp wings go away, you would no longer have that sweet bonus to Sky until you let them back out. We prefer the second solution, since it gives Scions the flexibility to change fully if they want to and allows them to more easily try to disguise or image change as they need to, but there is something to be said for the very mythic idea of a god being so strongly aligned with an animal that it shines through no matter what form he takes, so we could see the first method being used in neat ways as well.

Totally Beast

Question: How does your Bestial Nature Boon work when a character has boons from different Animals? Say Zack has 13 Boons in Animal (Dragonfly) and uses BN to get dragonfly eyes to boost, say, Magic. However, Zack also has 7 Boons of Animal (Cicada). Am I right in assuming that he would still only get his Dragonfly boons, or do his Cicada ones count as well?

You are correct: Zack only gets the bonus for his Animal (Dragonfly) boons, not the (Cicada) ones. Zack is taking on the physical aspects of the dragonfly, so he gains power from doing so; he's not doing anything with cicadas right now, so if he wants cicada powers, he'll need to get Bestial Nature for Animal (Cicada) in order to do so.

The same goes for all Animal boons, and we've talked about it before over here in regards to Animal Feature. As it says right at the top of the Animal page on the website, All powers refer to and affect only that animal unless otherwise specified.