Quick Fix

It's time for another big-bang post full of quick answers! For those who want to keep track of the ever-expanding vortex of the Questionado, it's currently at 194. We're down 7! Success!

Question: Do Scions automatically know the language of their pantheon?

No, they do not. They know whatever language they actually know, and won't magically learn their pantheon's native tongue just from being activated as a Scion. If you're thinking of that weird thing that the Percy Jackson books do, we're sorry to disappoint you - nobody ever has a language "hard-coded into their DNA". (But you can get Language Mastery and that's basically about as good!)

Question: Just noticed that on the Annuna you have a profile up for Nanshe (with 6 associated) but she is not listed as a playable god. Is there any particular reason for this or are you just holding off for a major Annuna update?

Sometimes gods get kicked off our rosters for not being high enough Legend, but we keep their pages around in case other people still want to look at them. You'll also find "secret" god-pages for Sif, Geb, Kebauet, Dian Cecht, and a few others.

Question: What gods would you suggest for an expanded British pantheon? At the moment I’m thinking of adding Tommy Atkins, Merlin, Herne the Hunter and Tom Hickathrift (A.K.A. Jack the Giant-Killer) to Britannia, John Bull and Robin Hood. I don’t want it to resemble Arthurian legend too much, as that’s a little too Christianised for my tastes, but I want it to stand out from the Tuatha and the Welsh gods as well.

Sorry, we can't help you with this one. We are passionate haters of the World at War pantheons, including the Allied/British pantheon, and would never make them a "pantheon" of gods of an equal standing with people like Ra or Zeus. At best, we'd consider them former Scions, undercover personas of various established gods, or in a few cases Legendary Mortals. (But we do consider Herne the Hunter to be an alternate persona of Cernunnos, if that helps you with anything.)

Question: First off, I definitely love what you did with the Inue. In terms of Native American pantheons, most of the fan stuff has been to take some of the gods from each pantheon and bring them together as one like the Manitou. What is your opinion on something such as that and do you feel each of the individual pantheons can stand on their own like the Inue?

We're not fans. We think the pantheons of all different areas of the world should have an equal shot at being Scion parents, and that there's no reason to assume that the tons of Native American pantheons wouldn't be just as distinct from one another as all the pantheons of the other continents.

Question: If a paleontologist Scion wanted to, could they make their personal Santum a chain of islands modeled after Las Cinco Muertes from the Jurassic Park franchise?

You can put whatever you want to in your Sanctum - it's your house and you can decorate it as you please! (But that only goes for in your house, so you won't be able to use it to create a free dinosaur army that can leave to lay waste to New York with you.)

Question: Do you think Gods' Honest is broken knack?

No - if we thought that, we wouldn't be letting our Scions use it all the time. I'm not sure why you think it's broken, since you didn't say, but feel free to tell us why in the comments.

Question: What do you do when a PSP boon requires a roll of a Virtue (like how Familial Sacrifice's pool is Conviction) and the Scion doesn't have that virtue? Do you just have them botch the roll, or do you have them use the next most appropriate virtue?

They can't make that roll; they have zero dice. They probably shouldn't have swapped it out, or should try to get it back if it was taken from them. However, they could still use a Virtue Channel or Legendary Deed to get some dice/autos if they still want to use the boon anyway.

Question: When purchasing dots of Epic Stamina, you get health levels. Are these -0, -1, -2 or -4?

Always -0. Dots of Epic Stamina also remove the wound penalty negatives from the health boxes you already have as you get more of them.

Question: When a Scion spends Legend, are Fatebonds only formed with those physically present? EX: if someone catches a film of them and uploads it onto YouTube.

Yes, you will only gain Fatebonds to people who are actually nearby when you spend the Legend. If someone recorded your deed and uploaded it to YouTube, no one who watched it would get Fatebound because you would not be spending any Legend when they saw it.

Question: I was looking through the graveyard, and Jesus Christ, what happened in Langley?

Vote for Strawberry Fields fiction, and find out. ;)

Question: So, weirdest question ever about Michael Chambers. How would any man or woman he sleeps with want to deal with a cold piece of metal on his penis? I can't imagine any woman wanting that inside them.

We... are not sure whether or not you're serious. But in case you are, you may want to do a careful and discreet Google of the term "Prince Albert piercing", and god go with you.

And we'll stick with those ten for today!

Trick or Treat

Question: Why do almost all the trickster gods have Manipulation and Wits?

Because those are the stats used for trickstering, my friend, and they demonstrate them on the daily!

We've had lots of discussions about how not everybody with Manipulation or Wits is a trickster, and that is still true. You can have one or the other - or both - and be a perfectly upright and unimpeachable example of law-abiding citizenship. I gotta tell you, Eztli has ten dots of Epic Wits, but nobody in her band is worried about her pranking them any time soon.

Basically, Manipulation is the measure of your ability to hide what you're doing or convince others of something, which means that anyone who is famously good at lying, disguise, political dealings or playing tricks on others probably has a lot of it. Without Manipulation, Loki wouldn't be able to convince Hod to throw mistletoe at Baldur and Tezcatlipoca wouldn't be able to make Quetzalcoatl think he had suddenly turned into a hideous ogre without noticing; Horus would never have been able to pull off tricking Set into losing all the contests between them, and Stribog would never have been able to fool Chors into thinking he was someone else. That doesn't mean that everybody who ever lies has Ultimate Manipulation - that would be kind of bananas, considering how many gods can't seem to tell the truth even when caught red-handed - but it does mean that gods who are famous for being able to smooth-talk their way out of things or confusticate their fellows into making hilarious mistakes are probably rocking that Ultimate.

Wits, on the other hand, is about reaction time, quick thinking and improvisation; it's the stat you need to pull a solution out of nowhere at the last possible second or to be able to jump at a new idea in time to keep from getting burnt by the old one. Without Wits, Loki wouldn't have been able to avoid punishment on several occasions by jumping in and offering to fix the problems he caused, Quetzalcoatl wouldn't have been able to pull off a desperate improvised gambit to steal from Mictlantecuhtli and Enki wouldn't have been able to quick-think his way around Enlil's rules and save humanity from the great flood. Tricksters tend to have Wits because they need them to survive; their stories usually feature them being able to think on their feet even in the worst situations, often narrowly saving their skins (usually from something they themselves did that is now backfiring on them). They also use the stat to make sure that they're quick enough to seize any opportunity for their own favored brand of mischief.

We don't just hand Manipulation and Wits to everyone who's a trickster, of course - like all other associations, it's based as much as possible on what they do in their stories rather than just saying, "Eh, he's a shenanigans guy, give him both." Some tricksters, including Eshu, Hermes, Horus, Loki, Manannan mac Lir and Odin do have both because they consistently exemplify both qualities; others, including Enki, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca have only one or the other, illustrating that they're very strong in one area but not necessarily the highest level of skilled in the other. And, of course, there are non-trickster gods like Ishtar, Isis or Parvati that have both without really fitting the archetype at all; like all stats, Manipulation and Wits can be used for different kinds of purposes and representations across different gods.

Incidentally, you don't need both as a PC to be an effective trickster, either, if that's what you're aiming for. They're both helpful, but you can also find ways to manage with just one; Manipulation-only tricksters usually have to lay their plans far in advance and watch them trigger like dominos falling, while Wits-only tricksters always fly by the seat of their pants and just have to keep moving so quickly that nobody will have the time or wherewithal to figure out what they're doing. Having neither is pretty challenging, especially since a famous career as a trickster will probably get you Fatebound to one or the other, but you still might be able to pull off your divine pranksterism in other ways. After all, there are gods with neither associated who have definitely pulled some shit in their time, so you can always decide to blaze your own trail the way they did.

Conversation is a Lost Art

Question: What happens when you make a mundane social roll and beat the enemy's resistance roll? How is that different from Benefit of the Doubt and God's Honest?

It's different because it doesn't actually do anything. And it's generally not something a player ever gets to declare, so it's usually not a viable alternative to actually doing things.

Obviously, you can't just wander around saying, "I roll Charisma + Presence against that guy. Now he likes me," because if that were the case, powers like Charmer wouldn't exist and the whole system of social knacks would make no sense (not to mention encouraging poor roleplaying). That's not to say that static social powers don't do anything, but rather that they're much more limited in their effects and controlled by the Storyteller, who determines how they influence NPCs based on what's happening in the story.

Basically, you'll roll your mundane socials when the Storyteller tells you it's appropriate; for example, maybe you give a speech at the mayor's fundraising ball and the Storyteller has you roll Charisma + Presence to see how well the room received it, or maybe you passionately explain your suspicions about who a murderer is to a police inspector and the Storyteller has you roll Manipulation + Presence to see how convincing she finds you. In both cases, the roll is there to determine whether or not your normal social acumen is getting the job done, in the first case whether you're a good public speaker with an arresting presence and the second whether you're any good at trying to make others see your point of view. You'll give your speech, or tell the Storyteller what you're doing, and that's when they'll say, "Cool, roll X," and you'll comply. This is normal, everyday stuff, the things that we all do in our regular lives without noticing it. It only comes up with you're doing something that tries to impact others and the Storyteller deems it's appropriate.

However, that doesn't mean that every time you talk to someone, you'll trigger a social roll. Sometimes one isn't necessary because you're not doing or saying anything that changes the other person's outlook; if the Storyteller doesn't think you said anything that would be meaningful to the NPC in question, or you're generally talking about nothing or without a specific goal, there's no reason to make the roll. If Leona goes to a dinner party and has a polite conversation with her tablemates about current hat fashions, she probably isn't going to actually roll any social stats, because she's not doing or saying anything particularly relevant. If she tries to talk about hat fashions with a milliner she's sitting next to as part of a campaign to get him to like her, then she might get to roll some Charisma + Politics or Empathy or whatever else is appropriate, so the Storyteller can gauge how successful she is at the general art of chattery. If she tries to convince him that he simply must drop everything else he's doing and make her new hat designs, that'll be a Manipulation + Empathy roll to see if he thinks that would be a good idea. If she just talks about how she likes the current trend of fruit on hats, however, no one is going to care enough for rolls to happen.

You may notice that I'm not mentioning anything about the NPC's resistance roll, and that's because, for non-power situations, they don't really have one so the question is moot. Or rather, the Storyteller determines an appropriate resistance based on what's happening - what the subject at hand is, how strongly this person feels about it, whether or not the Scion is pushing them in a direction they're strongly opposed to, how spiritually fortitudinous they normally are and so on. It's more like rolling against a static difficulty, the way you would for most other challenges, than rolling against a Willpower + Integrity + Legend roll. Why? Because you're not using any powers, so they're not resisting any powers, and because as noted at the beginning of this post that would make the whole system not make sense.

You may also notice that in the above example, Leona is not at any point saying, "Okay, I roll my Charisma + Presence to try to get him to like me." Instead, she'll tell the Storyteller what she's doing and what she hopes to achieve, and he'll take it from there. If she's doing fine on her own through roleplaying, no rolls may be needed at all. If the Storyteller isn't quite sure of the NPC's reaction one way or the other, he might ask her to roll to illustrate how well she's doing, particularly if she's light on the roleplay or the scene needs speeding up.

But she'll never walk in and say, "I want to roll my Manipulation + Empathy against him to get him to do this thing." Manipulation + Empathy is not a power she has; it's just a roll that illustrates an attempt to do something, just like she might roll Dexterity + Athletics when completing an obstacle course or Wits + Politics when trying to find her way around an unfamiliar city. Just like it's the ST's job to say, "Okay, roll Strength + Athletics to not get swept away in this flood," it's also his job to say, "Okay, roll Manipulation + Politics to navigate this conversation with the ambassador without putting your foot in your mouth."

Now, if Leona does all this normal conversating and hanging out and whatever rolls the Storyteller calls for just aren't great and the things she wants to happen aren't happening for whatever reason - the guy secretly loathes her because she ran over his dog, he wouldn't mind doing what she wants but isn't willing to fork over the money it would cost, or he just really hates fruit-hats - that's when she has to use a power if she wants to push the issue. That's the moment to use Charmer to force him to like her and want to please her, Rumor Mill to have the whole town buzzing about how fruit is totally in now, or Instant Hypnosis to plant the idea of going home and making an awesome hat covered in grapes. That's the whole point of social powers - they make things happen when normal, mundane conversation or requests don't.

Of course, there are exceptions, as there are to every rule. If you're Legend 8 and have 7 Epic Charisma and are talking to a mortal - or even someone of Legend 2 or 3 - you probably don't have to roll anything against them, and they just do whatever it was you wanted. This is mostly to speed the game up - technically you would roll, but if their difficulty is only going to be 10 and you're rolling in with 22 autos, there's no reason to bog the game down with a bunch of rolls that you're almost guaranteed to automatically succeed at. At other times, there might be behind-the-scenes powers in play that you don't know about that do necessitate resistance rolls on the part of your conversation partner, or that make your rolls fail no matter what you do; you won't know when this is happening, so you have to trust that your Storyteller is doing that because some other magical thing already happened, not just because he's stonewalling you. (One hopes you always trust that your Storyteller is being responsible about rolls, no matter whether they're social, physical or mental.)

It goes without saying that the "difficulty" of convincing someone with just normal conversation goes up as creatures go up in Legend; it's always harder to convince a rakshasa to do something for you than to convince a human, and harder still to convince a young god than it was to convince the rakshasa. This is normal; after all, you also benefit from that, as a Scion who doesn't have to automatically hop to whenever anyone of Epic Manipulation 3 or higher talks even though you might be five Legend higher than they are. Again, there are no powers in play so there are also no resistance rolls in play, and everything depends on the Storyteller's determined difficulties for the scene and the characters in it.

I talked about all of that because I think it was the main point of your question, but I also want to point out that your examples, Benefit of the Doubt and God's Honest, actually don't quite work the same way most social knacks do. Normally, lying to someone is a Manipulation + Empathy roll against their Perception + Empathy to see through it; that'll be what you're doing whenever you lie to someone without using a power to do so. The main benefit of the lying knacks is that they allow you to roll against your target's W+I+L resistance roll instead of their Perception + Empathy, so it's your go-to power if you need to fib to someone who would normally be way too perceptive to fall for your hijinks but is maybe a little less good at resisting magical trickery. If you're lying to some normal schmuck and you have great Manipulation, you may want to stick with your normal roll; if you're lying to someone with buckets of Perception or you're terrible at Manipulation and need a power that lets you use Charisma instead, that's when you want to go for the knacks.

Telling Things What to Do

Question: Speak Hu seems a little one-sided. As PSPs are something that everyone is supposed to have access to (and I suppose technically everyone does when it comes to knacks), shouldn't it be a little more universal? With it being limited to only using the Manipulation/Overt Order tree, it doesn't feel like it's truly something the entire pantheon can utilize. Would it not be more appropriate to allow players to use Charisma/Manipulation + appropriate ability to influence stubborn items?

No, but I think I see where you're coming from. Here's what's up with Speak Hu.

Firstly, we definitely don't want to expand the knack to be just "use your social stats on objects", because that's both way too enormously vague and difficult for Storytellers and way too overpowered. Speak Hu is a boon that already causes some games difficulty with being overpowered in its current form (there's a bunch of discussion of it back here if you missed it!); removing the restriction of actually using powers would make it much too broad and all-encompassing, especially for a level one boon (PSP though it may be). We also really want to preserve the flavor of using your actual powers and commands on objects in the world around you; Speak Hu is about harnessing the Egyptian ability to speak the words of power and creation and command those things that remember them to respond, and we'd like some actual words of power and creation to be happening instead of just, you know, conversations. Also, Speak Hu is already kind of problematically close to getting into Tsukumo-gami's space, and allowing general social stat usage on items would pretty much make all the Japanese Scions give up and go home.

However, there's good news, and that's that Speak Hu is in no way limited to the Overt Order knack tree in Manipulation! I can see where you might have gotten that impression - after all, saying, "Door, open the hell up" with Overt Order is certainly an effective and straightforward way to get things done, plus the boon uses Overt Order as an example - but that's far from the only thing that a Scion with Speak Hu can do. Speak Hu can be applied to any social knack from any of the three social Attributes, and that means it has a great deal of flexibility and breadth for different Scions to use in different ways.

Persuasion, for example, has always been popular in our games; knacks like God's Honest or Benefit of the Doubt have been successfully used to convince a fuse that its lever was actually in the off position, causing it to kill all the lights in the building to correct the "mistake", or to cajole a security lock into believing that the incorrect code just entered was actually the right one. A Scion with lots of Charisma might be able to Filibuster so that objects that would normally leave the area - like a baby carriage hurtling down a hill - instead turn to stay near him and listen, or cause every recording device within his range to suddenly start recording his words with a quick use of Attention Please. A Scion who prefers the manipulative arts might be able to use Not the Face to avoid an inanimate object that was about to roll into her, Total Recall to ensure that a videotape can never have a critical moment recorded over, or Obliteration to make herself completely immune to being recorded by any device. Even the Appearance folks can do neat things with Speak Hu, from using Aura of Dread to plow through a normally movement-penalty-inducing junkyard with nary an issue to instantly blacking out cameras and recorders with Blinding Visage to using Inescapable Vision to cause some seriously hilarious results on any security footage.

Of course, not every knack from any of those Attributes is useful with Speak Hu; not much point in giving a rock bonus Willpower or spreading a rumor to a bicycle stand. But there's a wide variety of options nonetheless, and Scions only have to get creative to try to take advantage of them.

Speak Hu is a Storyteller-intensive boon where a lot depends on their rulings on what does and doesn't happen to an object, so it's also a factor in how well the boon works. If your Storyteller doesn't allow anything but Overt Order, well, yeah, that seriously sucks and wasn't our intention, and the boon probably is deeply limited compared to other PSPs. But it never hurts to try a cool move - especially if it's couched in an awesome stunt and saves the day - so keep trying to be creative, and if the ST isn't having it, maybe sit down with him or her so you can discuss how Speak Hu works and what kinds of things they think you should be doing with it, so you know in no uncertain terms what you can and can't get up to. If you're the Storyteller, it might be useful for you to go through the social knacks and make a list of which ones you think are reasonable powers to use with Speak Hu, which will allow you to be ready for them when they happen in a game and also help encourage or offer suggestions to your players if they're stumped. But also stay on your toes, because no matter how great your list is, a player is probably going to do something you didn't think of at some point; just keep a cool head, decide whether it works and what it does when it happens, and don't panic ahead of time.

So go out there and command creation and have fun, you guys.

Man in the Woods

Today, John goes out into the woods and vlogs alone, like the man of nature he obviously is, to answer a bunch of questions like some kind of crochety forest troll. I hope you're ready for his manly beard and masculine robe and hat combo.

Question: In Follower Upgrade, you mention having a list of adjusted templates for Creatures and Followers. Would you please post it? It doesn't need to be a beautiful PDF, I would gladly take a Google Doc or .txt!

Question: Just how is marriage structured in the Orisha pantheon, and by extension the Yoruba? It seems that everyone is married to everyone else, both male and female, and that the women are pretty much equal to the men unless Shango is wailing on them.

Question: Did you ever see the History Channel's "Clash of the Gods"? And if so, what did you think?

Question: Do all dogs go to heaven? Do animals have souls? And most of all, how do I get spectral wolves to do my bidding?

Question: Have you ever considered scaling the Legend point gains from Raise Your Glass, making it usable more than once per day or in the presence of people who have seen you use it already? I understand why the limits are what they are, but I think the knack would still be balanced (maybe even a little fairer, since one Legend doesn't seem like much of a reward at late Demigod or God) if any of those were removed.

Question: Mictlantecuhtli is presented in the Scion RAW as a completely evil misanthrope, that apparently only exists to torture his own Scions and everyone else for that matter. Since you guys deal with a lot of Aztec politics in games, I just wanted to ask how you characterize him?

Question: Any players thinking of creating a new Orisha PC for your next game?

Question: We know a lot about your god game, but what can you tell us about your other two games? Still hush-hush?

Question: Is stunting pretty much limited by your own imagination (in conjunction with the rules)?

Question: In your game, what did Odin do to make Amaterasu his enemy? Was it because of the Aesir assault on Japan, and what's up with that?

Question: Does your PSP count as a Birthright that takes up one of your five Birthright points?

Question: In a game that's all about smashing monsters, what good way is there to play a character with the Pacifist Nature?

Question: Could a character use high levels of Epic Manipulation to convince mortals that he is really great at a purview and gain Fatebonds from those mortals (assuming he spent Legend around them)? Like, if he tells great tales (lies) of destroying entire cities and civilizations with Fire when he has actually never used the Fire purview? If this does not work, how is it different from mortals misconstruing an event they see a PC perform from one purview to another and Fatebinding based on that?

Question: What kind of asks do you reject or refuse to answer?

That was delightful. I don't have much extra to add except that if you're the question-asker who wanted to know about Epic Manipulation and Fatebonds, there are also a couple of old posts here and here that might also help.

Power Over Death

Question: I have a question about the Death purview. I've been looking at it for a while, and it strikes me as odd that the boons that use Charisma use it instead of Manipulation, and to a greater extent, that Death has so many Charisma related boons at all. I personally link Charisma to Charm, and Friendly, and "This guy is cool, you will like them". Those are not things I think of when I think of Death Gods. But maybe I'm just looking at it wrong. Either way, don't suppose you could fill me in on it all?

Sure can. Charisma confuses a lot of people this way, so much so that we've talked about it in depth before over here. That post will give you a good breakdown of the differences between Charisma and Manipulation and how they can be used by various kinds of characters.

But to talk specifically about Death, Charisma is the go-to stat for much of it because Death boons are, for the most part, centered around commanding and ruling the dead (and eventually, if you want it, your own Underworld). Charisma isn't just charm and friendliness; it's the force of personality that makes people pay attention to you and respond when you say jump, and a person trying to command others, living or dead, had better have that quality or find that they just don't obey. Just like you need Charisma to tell an animal what to do with Animal Command, you need it to tell a ghost or undead creature what to do; in both cases, you're giving an order and you need Charisma to give you the oomph to make them to obey. They might obey for different cosmetic reasons depending on what kind of Charisma you have - sure, they might do it because they think you're awesome and they like you, but they also might do it because they fear you or your commanding presence is just that overwhelming - but the Charisma is, at its root, what makes them obey.

Manipulation, on the other hand, is a stat for persuasion, convincing and shenanigans, most of which just aren't in a death god's basic repertoire. You're not trying to subtly convince a zombie to get up and work for you when you use Unquiet Corpse; you're having it get the fuck up and follow your orders and you're not required to explain yourself. You're not trying to cajole a ghost into backing off when you use Exorcism; you're backing it off now, immediately, with the force of your decision. You're giving commands that you expect to be obeyed, not manipulating or convincing your targets to do what you want. Death is almost all brute force.

By the way, we recognize that some of this confusion comes from the fact that Overt Order is a Manipulation knack, which makes some people think that giving commands must be something that is done with Manipulation. It's usually not; it's Charisma that's what you use for ordering people about (this is why it's used so much in the War purview, too!), while Manipulation is for convincing them to order themselves about for you. Overt Order is there specifically because Manipulation doesn't do that on its own, just like Benefit of the Doubt over in Charisma is there because Charisma normally can't convince people to believe you if they don't. Like all knacks, it's a specialized expression of your Manipulation, not something that Manipulation does all by itself.

You're right that most of us don't think of death gods as cuddly, because they usually aren't; humanity is generally afraid of death and that usually translates to being afraid of, or at least not wanting to hang out with, those gods who oversee it. There are twenty-seven gods with Death associated with them currently on the site, and of those, only four (Huitzilopochtli, Indra, Osiris and Vayu) have Charisma associated with them. That's not an accident; like all gods, death gods get their stats assigned to them based on what they actually do and represent in mythology, not what stats they roll for their purview. They have various other bonuses, including potent relics, features of their Underworlds and Fatebonds, that ensure that they're good at their jobs even if they don't have an Ultimate Attribute behind them, because that's what they do. Having high Charisma is certainly awesome for those with Death, and Scions should totally get both if they want to, but it's not widespread in mythology so you won't see it in many gods from the default setting.

But, by the same token, you won't see much in the way of death gods with Manipulation, either. There are also only four gods with Death who have Manipulation associated - Manannan mac Lir, the Morrigan, Odin and Veles - and it's pretty obvious that they have it because they're tricksters, shapeshifters or illusionists, not because it's something that is obviously used in their underworld jobs. As a lord over the departed and usually their realm as well, Manipulation isn't the stat you need when you have to issue commands and overpower the wills of others; do you know of any Underworlds which are governed by a death god's elaborate and complex web of manipulations, or that depend on the death god wheedling spirits into doing what he wants?

The important things here are these: not every Death god has the same skillset or efficiency at every Death boon, and that's totally okay, and not every Death-aligned Scion needs to do it the way their ancient parents do. Death gods, like gods of every other purview, have variation between who's better at which boons based on the roll; that's not an accident but rather a way of modeling that some death gods are probably better at commanding ghosts, while others are better at seeing into the mists of the next world and others are masters of simply smiting people with death. If Huitzilopochtli wants to Shambling Horde the shit out of his legions of dead warriors, he can do that with ease; he's a charismatic motherfucker, and they will rise up en masse and follow him anywhere he chooses to lead them. But Hel doesn't have that power and shouldn't, because no dead people are interested in doing what she wants, because they're instead interested in hiding from her and hoping she doesn't want anything. She can still force the dead to do her bidding, but they're not going to run joyously into the breach with her quite as enthusiastically as they would for someone with more Charisma, and that's as it should be.

Most importantly, Scions with Death can have - or not have - Charisma all they want, and interpret that Charisma in whatever way they choose if they do pick it up. You don't have to be a cuddly bunny if you have a lot of Epic Charisma; on the contrary, you can be frightening, intense, overwhelming or hilarious, whatever way that force of expression makes most sense for your character. Just because there aren't a lot of death gods with Charisma doesn't mean you can't become one, and if that's what you want to do, you should become one. You may have a little trouble with confused mortals who aren't inclined to Fatebond you to both, but that's something every Scion faces in some dimension, and if you use both enough, you'll be on a good road to succeeding. The rules for statting gods outside the game are not necessarily the same as the rules for Scions inside the game; both are intended to give the best picture of what they do (Death uses a lot of Charisma because Charisma makes sense for those boons' effects, while not many death gods have Charisma because they're generally not associated with it in their home mythologies), but Scions don't have to conform to those roles unless they want to.

We've actually got good examples of both kinds of Scions with Death in our god-level game right now. Jioni is a charismatic fancypants with a personality that dazzles friend and foe alike, and she's excellent at the Death boons that involve calling the dead up to chat or perform tasks for her. Eztli, on the other hand, is terrible at Charisma and brute-forces her way into controlling the dead via Fatebonds and the non-Charisma powers in the purview. They're both very effective at different aspects of the purview, and the one having more Charisma than the other doesn't make her more or less a capital-letter Death Goddess.

The Butterfly Effect

Question: Can the Epic Manipulation knacks which alter memories modify the roles, expectations and rejections of the Fatebound?

Alas, no, they cannot. In a nutshell, Epic Manipulation affects a mortal's thoughts but cannot meddle with his role in the great saga of Fate, which is something only Magic has the power to do.

You can absolutely use Epic Manipulation knacks such as Instant Hypnosis, Implant False Memory, Rumor Mill or Obliteration to meddle around with the memories, thoughts and understanding of any mortal, Fatebound or otherwise. If a mortal believes that you must not have Epic Strength associated with you because he saw you try and fail to lift a heavy object off a friend, you could erase that memory from his mind, or implant a different memory of you succeeding at lifting that item. You could create a rumor that you must be the strongest person in the area that reaches his ears as well as those of everyone else in the area, and you could blank his memory so that he has no recollection of ever seeing you at all, lifting or otherwise. You could hopelessly confuse this mortal into thinking he saw someone completely different, or that what he saw was a hallucination, or rob him completely of his memories of anything happening at all.

But that won't change his Fatebond, neither its expectations nor his Role in regards to you. This mortal may have formed his initial Fatebond thanks to his beliefs about something he saw or experienced, but once formed, it is already in existence; you can't retroactively change it by changing his memory, any more than you could change the nutritional content of a strawberry by having it scientifically reclassified as a kind of fish. You can call it a fish all you want, but it's still going to taste like fruit.

If that mortal is your Martyr and believes you're bad at Strength, he will go on believing that; he may not remember who you are exactly, but he'll remember someone, and he may not know why you're bad at Strength, but he'll believe unshakeably that you are. He may believe you've done other feats of strength, but he'll believe they were one-time deals or that you were secretly aided by some outside force. He may hear that everyone else believes you're the bomb when it comes to pumping iron, and he'll believe he's the only man in the entire world who knows the truth. He will always believe that you're weak, and he will always try to protect you; that's what Fate has written for him. The more you change what he understands about the world, the more new ways Fate will ensure that his Fatebond, which does not change, remains justified.

Essentially, you can fool a mortal's mind, but you can't fool Fate's. The mortal's beliefs and perceptions shaped the Fatebond when it was created, but it's the power of Fate that keeps it in place, and the mortal is no more capable of changing it than you are. Just as you're helpless to avoid the detrimental effects of the Fatebond on your Strength, so he is helpless to escape Fate's decree that he die to save you because of your weakness. That's the story you're both bound up in now, mortal and Scion alike.

Magic, which is specifically the art of attempting to turn and twist Fate to your own ends instead of its own, is the only power that can rewrite a mortal's Fatebonds the way you're trying to do. Your powers of Manipulation can fool, flummox and confuse mortals effortlessly and are excellent tools for making them see what you want them to see - but they're just mortals. It's Fate that's the power that binds you, and Fate cannot be hoodwinked.

The Lady is a Tramp

Question: I'm still not convinced the Morrigan has Manipulation. She disguises herself from mortals, Cu Chuchulainn and the Dagda, but none of them are known for being very perceptive. She could have been using Social Chameleon or Perfect Imposter. Are there more examples of her being manipulative?

Well, if you aren't convinced by our reasoning, we probably can't make you be. The Morrigan has an uncanny ability to disguise herself so that no one ever sees through it, and she does it in several stories, establishing it as a clear pattern of legendary behavior. Sure, the people she does it to aren't renowned for their perceptive powers, but they also aren't renowned for being bad at perception, either, and the Morrigan is consistently awesome at her undercover skillz in either case.

That sounds like plenty of good reasons to us, and we don't have a backup argument prepared in case someone doesn't agree. Not that everyone has to agree with us all the time, of course. You'll just think we're wrong and we'll just think you're wrong and everyone will go on being mildly offended at the internet.

However, I do want to address the second half of your question, because it made both John and me say, "Huhwha?" when we read it. There must be some confusion, because if there's one thing the Morrigan definitely isn't using to disguise herself at every turn, it's Social Chameleon and Perfect Imposter.

Those knacks just don't do that. They allow the Scion or god who uses them to fit into social situations and seem like they belong there, but they don't disguise them or somehow prevent people who know them from recognizing them. They're knacks that allow you to know approximately what to say, how to act and what kind of accent to put on to avoid anyone realizing that you're a wedding crasher or stranger in a strange land, but that's all. They make you good at blending into the crowd in terms of general mannerisms and common knowledge.

But they do not disguise you. Someone who knows you is still going to know you; your face did not disappear or change, and the fact that you intuitively know which fork to use and understand the local popular view of the people in charge is not somehow obscuring it. There are many, many powers in the game that make it impossible for people you know to figure out who you are - Manipulation and Illusion have most of them, as well as scattered powers throughout Appearance, Darkness, Magic and so forth - but these Wits knacks are not any of them. That doesn't even make sense; how does being epically quick on the uptake make you suddenly look like somebody else? That's not a power that would even fit into the skillset here. And if it did, holy hell, that would be insanely overpowered - all I have to do is take these knacks and I can basically be just as good at disguising myself as someone who dumped a bunch of XP into Manipulation or Illusion?

To use Sowiljr as an example because he commonly uses these knacks, he could absolutely pop up Perfect Imposter, stride into a hall full of Vanir gods and mingle like there's no tomorrow. He would know exactly what to say, how to respond and what to avoid so that none of the Vanir (assuming they didn't beat his roll) realized he wasn't one of them. He'd blend seamlessly into the crowd, and if some of them thought it was a little odd that he didn't look quite right, well, they'd brush it off. However, if his occasional nemesis Sverrir happened to be there, he would still instantly recognize Sowiljr and know who he was, because he's met him before, knows what he looks like and is fully aware that he isn't Vanir. The fact that Sowiljr knows when to raise his ale and how to gossip about the forest-god politics of the day is not going to somehow stop Sverrir from recognizing a dude he has spoken to and interacted with before. Sowiljr is still there in all his glory, regardless of his current ability to act like he was raised from birth in the forests of Vanaheim, and Sverrir knows what he looks and sounds like. At best, Sverrir might be mildly confused about when Geoff got so good at Vanir society, or think that maybe he was infiltrating Vanir society all along, but he won't not know that it's Sowiljr.

It's the same story for the Morrigan. She could use Perfect Imposter to hang out with a bunch of random human peasants, and they wouldn't know she wasn't a human peasant, too. But she could not use those knacks to prevent Cu Chulainn or the Dagda from recognizing her, because she's still the Morrigan, no matter how peasanty she's acting. She looks, sounds and smells like herself unless she does something to alter that. She has to actually use the powers in the game that disguise you - the chief among which is Manipulation - in order to not be recognized by people who know her.

As we said back in the dawn of time when we first talked about it, we know that Manipulation seems like it's a weird choice for the Morrigan, who has all the subtlety of a maddened steer in a Swarovski outlet. But she's definitely doing something that can fool even fellow gods into believing she's not what she appears to be, and Manipulation seems by far the most likely candidate to us. When the Morrigan decides to play pretend, the only way you're going to see through it is if she decides to reveal herself in order to taunt and/or stab you.

Je ne sais quoi

Question: Could you possibly give a deeper explanation of Charisma and Manipulation? I have a character who is a bit nerdy but still open, friendly and likeable. Can I give him a high level 5 Charisma score? And does Manipulation always have to be malignant? It seems like that in the books.

"Open, friendly and likeable" sounds like a dude with Charisma to me!

Charisma is easiest to conceive of as the star football player sort of quality; everyone loves you, nobody hates you, you effortlessly dominate social situations and so on, and for some people that makes it difficult to conceive of an introverted or bookwormish person with Charisma. But Charisma doesn't mean you can't be a nerdy scientist; it just means you're a nerdy scientist with great force of personality, or a nerdy scientist who's beloved by all the other nerdy scientists. Pretty much any character concept can use and benefit from Charisma.

You should also bear in mind that Charisma comes in different forms; it doesn't always have to mean being beloved and romantically pursued by everyone around you. A commander whose soldiers snap to attention the second he walks in the room is also displaying Charisma; a hulking bodyguard whose mere presence inspires awe and fear is also displaying Charisma; a ridiculous class clown who always inspires his classmates to laugh is showing Charisma, too. Charisma doesn't necessarily mean fluffy love, but rather that your personality is so strong that it affects others around you. The opinions of people with Charisma matter; when they enter a room, other people notice them and care what they say or do. That might be because they automatically like them or because they recognize greatness when they see it or even because they fear them, but it always happens regardless. People with Charisma Matter with a capital M.

So when you're getting people to do things with your Charisma, they're doing it mostly because they're kind of overwhelmed by you. They do it because they're magnetically attracted to you, or because they're terrified of what might happen if they don't; they do it because they're falling in love or they just want to see you happy or they trust implicitly that someone as awesome as yourself must know best. People respond to Charisma by wanting to please the person who has it, which is considerably helpful to the Scion on the go.

Manipulation, on the other hand, is a more subtle quality and something that, I think, is a lot harder for many people to play in a character. The classic image is of someone who spins a web of lies, deceit and smokescreens to fool others into doing what they want, turning friend against friend and using various fall guys to prevent the trail from leading back to himself. And while you certainly can play Manipulation that way and be exceptionally good at it, you don't have to. Just like Charisma, it has different expressions.

People with Manipulation aren't necessarily deceitful, but they are persuasive. Whatever they're talking about, they sound legit. They make great liars, but they also make great debaters when trying to convince someone of the truth; they hide things well, but that doesn't necessarily mean they hide them in order to hurt someone else. A skilled diplomat helping prevent war in the Middle East is using Manipulation; so is a teacher attempting to open the minds of her students to new possibilities or a spy infiltrating to foil a dangerous terrorist plot. People with Manipulation are good at convincing others to believe them, at recognizing shenanigans when they see them and at doing things that go unseen or unremarked. Where others do what a guy with Charisma says because they want to please him, they do what the guy with Manipulation says because he has convinced them to genuinely believe that it's a good idea.

Now, you're right; the Scion books generally tend to paint Manipulation as a sort of "evil" stat, possessed by the Lokis of the world and generally used to get away with being the biggest bastard around. Some of this is because the word "manipulation" itself has a lot of negative connotations in English; it almost always implies "against my will" or "for selfish gain" when it's used, and further tends to often imply that the person manipulating others was cowardly for not using a different method to get their job done. If someone says they were manipulated, most English-speakers instinctively know that that was a Bad Thing and that whomever did it is a Bad Person. And then there's also the fact that Manipulation makes it so very easy to be a bad person; it's the perfect stat for putting up fronts, covering your tracks and getting away with murder, so it's not too surprising that many players tend to think of Manipulation as the Bad Guy Stat.

But, while most sneaky bad guys do have Manipulation, all Manipulation users are not sneaky bad guys. Manipulation, in and of itself, is no more an evil stat than Charisma; both of them can be used to great effect for either good or evil, depending on what a Scion chooses to do with them. The Scion with Manipulation could puppeteer some poor schmuck into killing his brother and taking the fall for him, but he could also use his subtle influence to steer those whose tempers won't let them take good advice into doing what's best; the Scion with Charisma could be an easygoing friend who returns in kind all the love and respect he's given, or he could be a tyrannical bastard who takes shameless advantage of the fact that others will literally give him the shirt off their backs. It's the personality of the character and player that determine the behavior of a Scion; and while it's true that you will often see people tending toward trickster or betrayer archetypes buying up all their Manipulation, you should never assume that having a high Manipulation score automatically means that that character is in fact a traitor.

A useful comparison we often use for our players is that of a king and his trusted vizier. The king is the guy with Charisma; he's the figurehead, the center of attention, beloved by his people and constantly in the public eye. The vizier is the guy with Manipulation; he takes care of the politicking, keeps an eye on the social interactions and suggests the wisest courses of action to manage both. Both of them are extremely effective at affecting others, but they do it in very different ways; the king is the center of attention, while the vizier is the one who moves levers behind the scenes.

And not every king is either a benevolent ruler or an evil tyrant, and not every vizier is either an altruistic kingdom-builder or Jafar. Either stat can be used either way; it's all about what kind of social interactions and power you want your character to have. If you have Charisma, people will do what you want because they want to make you happy, whatever it takes; if you have Manipulation, they'll do it because they legitimately believe they want or need to.

Three Times a Lady

Why did you give the Morrigan Manipulation? She has almost no myths about being sneaky, and is about as subtle as a rock even when she uses animal forms to harass people. She has more than a dozen myths about being blunt and having a forceful personality and making people love her (she only failed once). That definitely sounds way more like Charisma than Manipulation.

Ah, navigating the choppy waters of social Epic Attributes.

I'd have to disagree strongly with giving the Morrigan Charisma; she's pretty much entirely the opposite of Charisma. While she does indeed have a forceful personality - she knows what she wants, is not afraid to tell you about it and will probably fucking shiv you if you don't give it to her - she does not ever use that personality in any way, which is really the key for Charisma in our opinions. She's definitely not well-liked or -respected, even by her own pantheon, who avoid her whenever possible (which is understandable; she's a crazy lady who foretells doom and wades in blood, that sort of thing). She's also definitely no leader; she doesn't inspire followers or even intimidate them into doing anything and tends to lone-wolf it up whenever she's hitting the battlefield. I'd say that "making people love her" is misleading as well - she certainly makes people have sex with her, usually by threatening them or promising them rewards, but they're not doing it out of love. Sexytimes with the Morrigan, in myth, has everything to do with lust, power and not wanting to get wrecked later, but it does not have anything to do with love.

So we put Charisma on the "do not ever ever give this to this person" list for the Morrigan pretty early on. Charisma doesn't always have to be fluffy bunnies of love and friendship; it can refer just as much to hardassed respect, inspirational leading or a certain je ne sais quoi of always being the focus of attention, but just being a thoroughly unpleasant person isn't enough to qualify for it.

Manipulation, on the other hand, is a more complicated issue with her. You're 100% correct that the Morrigan is not subtle when she talks to people; she pronounces prophecies, threatens, or states what she wants, but she never tries to maneuver the conversation around with tricksy politics or anything. For us, the Morrigan gets Manipulation because she's the most badass undercover agent in the history of the Tuatha. You mentioned above her shapeshifting craziness, which usually involves her throwing herself at somebody, and you're right, being charged by a cow is not subtle, either.

But the key here is that nobody ever has any idea it's the Morrigan doing that. With the exception of the wolf/heifer situation, wherein she specifically tells Cu Chulainn ahead of time that it's her, nobody is ever aware that the Morrigan is fucking with them until she says the ancient Irish equivalent of "Gotcha, bitch". Take Cu Chulainn healing her, for example; without her specifically telling him ahead of time that it's her, he has no idea that the old woman he heals of her wounds (wounds he personally inflicted, yet) is actually the goddess until she tells him (which is further illustrated by his hilarious ancient Irish utterance of "Goddamn it, I would never have healed your obnoxious ass if I'd known it was you"). Cu Chulainn can't see through the crone disguise to avoid letting the Morrigan break his geas and effectively kill him; the Dagda has to ask who she is when he meets her as the Washer at the Ford. Shit gets even more crazy if you ascribe to the scholarly theories that think various other figures in the Irish sagas, such as Macha or the Nemain, are actually the Morrigan in disguise as well.

It's definitely a little weird-looking for someone as blunt and willing to stab in faces to be associated with Epic Manipulation, but that's where we ended up after examining her stories. The Morrigan does not have a subtle personality, but the fact remains that in Irish myth, if she wants you to be tricked, you are abjectly tricked. She may not feel the need to use Manipulation very often (why manipulate when you can just murder, am I right?), but when she does, she's always impressively effective.

I would note that, depending on your view of the Morrigan and what she does, you could rule that she has either Illusion or Magic to cover all the crazy shapeshifting shenanigans. We didn't end up going either route; Magic seemed ill-fitting since all her Fate-style connotations seem to be bound up in Prophecy (more likely that she just has Beast Shape), and Illusion, while a possibility, seemed again like she probably just had a few boons from it rather than the avatar of the entire purview.