Feats Foretold

Question: Hello, when checking out a Prophecy boon I noticed it was talking about Legendary Deeds being used like a resource. What was that referring to? Currently my Scion group is using your template for our game and my character was given a relic for Prophecy. Just trying to figure out how it works exactly.

It's true! Two Prophecy boons use Legendary Deeds as currency: Become the Herald, which requires the spending of a Legendary Deed when its bonus is activated, and Fate Meditation, which allows prophets to recoup spent Deeds through their divinely inspired perceptions.

Legendary Deeds are a slightly different kind of currency from things like Legend or Willpower, but they - and Virtue channels and health boxes, while we're at it - are still a resource that your Scion has available to him. Run out of health boxes and you die; run out of Legend points and you can't use any powers; run out of Willpower and you go crazy; run out of Virtue channels or Legendary Deeds and you can't be the best you could otherwise be. The more you have of each, the better off you'll usually be. They're all resource pools that can be drawn upon at the moments a Scion needs them most.

Legend and Willpower are the simplest form of resource: spending them powers him so that he can do things, like supernatural gasoline that he needs to make his abilities run. Legendary Deeds, on the other hand, are used to enhance something he's already doing. They're more like a turbo charge that he can use to make his actions even more awesome than they would normally be.

Most APP boons don't use Legendary Deeds as resources, although many PSP boons do, but in Prophecy we have an exception. Fate Meditation's purpose is to allow Scions with the ability to see into the future to decide what tools they will need for said future and redistribute them accordingly; Legendary Deeds are one of those tools, just like Willpower or Virtue channels. Become the Herald, on the other hand, actually requires the spending of a Deed, and by the target of the boon rather than the Scion using it (unless they're the same person, which can happen). This is because whatever action the Scion saw with that boon was a shining moment that Fate highlighted as a destined future and incredible feat; it is by default now a Legendary Deed, even though the Scion hasn't spent it yet.

Because the boon isn't too clear about who exactly the target of Become the Herald is, we'll tell you how we do it. When someone decides to use the boon (our players call this "heralding", as in, "God damn it, Woody, herald someone, you selfish bastard, you can sleep later"), someone in the current scene is chosen at random by the Storyteller to be the recipient. John usually rolls a single die and counts around the room, but any method of randomly choosing someone is fine. The boon never targets the same person it targeted last (so if Aurora uses this boon and Woody gets the Herald, and then uses it again after he uses it, someone else will get it this time) and will never stack on someone who already has unused dice from it, even if those dice came from someone else's use of the boon. It also automatically skips anyone who doesn't have any Legendary Deeds left, unless there is nobody around with Deeds who isn't already disqualified, in which case it's still possible to get it while deed-less (even mortals can theoretically get it, although it's not likely).

Once that person has been chosen, they have the dice bonus of Become the Herald in a "bank" that they can use at any time. They have to spend a Legendary Deed and use all the dice on a single action, but it can be any action they choose (even an action taken against the prophet, and believe me, that has happened). We don't actually have prophetic powers so the person who used the boon doesn't actually know what they saw in their vision of the future until the dice are used, but once they are he's free to say, "Yes, that's what I had a vision of, you doing X! I knew it all along." And it's true, he did. Prophecy just requires us to not know what we know at the table once in a while, to preserve free will for all the players.

Hopefully that all made sense, but if it didn't or you needed to know something else, feel free to let us know!

Meditate Harder!

Question: Fate Meditation. The activation cost is 10 Legend and TWO Willpower, and if you succeed on it you get ONE Willpower back? Why would anyone ever use that as a means of getting Willpower?

Not quite - I think you might have missed how this boon works. You're not regaining one of those resources based on how high you rolled; you're dividing your successes among them any way you choose. You regain a point of Willpower per three successes you decide to spend on it, so unless you don't think you can get more than six successes, the boon can always pay its own Willpower cost itself. If you can't get more than six successes on this roll at Legend 8, Prophecy may not be the career for you.

For example, Vala, at Legend 8, had 8 dots of Intelligence, 7 dots of Epic Intelligence and 8 dots of Occult. Even without any of her many buffs (including Fatebonds, relic bonuses and Animal Aspect), she'd be rolling into Fate Meditation with an average of 30 successes. If all she wanted was to refill her Willpower, that takes her from zero to ten in one shot; if she wanted to, say, regain two Legendary Deeds, she'd still have enough successes left over to pay for the two Willpower she'd used and be back at whatever level she was before she used the boon. This boon is a favorite for our prophetic PCs, and they tend to end up getting more things back than they had planned on, not the reverse.

It's not the most efficient method of regaining Willpower, certainly - things like Refuge in Logic, Believe Your Own Press or just bandmates with cheerful Charisma knacks are simpler solutions. Fate Meditation's main draw is the ability to regain normally unregainable Legendary Deeds and Virtue Channels, but it does just fine for Willpower in a pinch.