Like Every Goddamn Question, Our Inbox Is So Full You Guys

It's time for another big fat post full of quickly-answered questions! Just know we love each and every one of you, question-askers, honest, and you can always ask for clarification in the comments if you didn't get what you were looking for.

Question: is there any mythological basis for Thor's greatest fear being a warm bed? (Just something I read in a novel).

Not that we know of, but we would hazard a guess that your book might be referring to the idea that Norse warriors aspired to die gloriously in battle, and would therefore be very unhappy with the idea of dying in bed.

Question: Sorry if this has already been covered, but doesn't Aengus have Artistry associated with him?

Nope, sure doesn't. While Aengus is theorized to be possibly associated with music and the arts, we don't have any real evidence of this and no stories of him being particularly artistic, so we did not give him the Avatar of Artistry. However, if your game likes a more artsy interpretation of Aengus, you can always assume he has some Artistry boons at his disposal.

Question: Months ago I asked why Cernunnos was so powerful because he had nine purviews. Rather than allude to his purviews this time, I'm just asking, why is he so powerful in general? Like, I know that he's the Horned God of Wicca, and I know he's a heavily occultic fertility deity, but based on his description in the Nemetondevos description, he seems like he should have intelligence and/or maybe wits as Associated as his attributes.

Cernunnos is undeniably the most recognizable (and therefore Legendary) of the Gaulish gods whose legends survive into the modern day, but unfortunately we don't really know all that much about him, nor do we have anything but piecemeal information about his associations and exploits. Cernunnos on our site is presented as an Odin-like patriarch because that's how he's written in the Scion Storyteller Screen, but honestly most of that is conjecture. You might want to check out this post about the problems of reconstructing Gaulish mythology.

Question: I want a sentient, witty, wise-cracking animal sidekick. Which would be better: creating a Follower or using Create Nemean/Typhonian? Thanks guys, love you guys and all your work!

Nemean and Typhonian creatures are generally not very bright or socially graceful, so you would probably want something smarter than that if you wanted a wise-cracking sidekick who you could actually have conversations with and hurl witty insults at enemies alongside. Birthright Creatures give you more opportunity to tailor your animal's stats to what you want it to do, and you can also use Epic Enhancement on them if you want to bolster any of their stats, so that's probably more what you're looking for.

Question: Was Anshar really evil? He kinda looks like a really senile sky god to me.

Anshar's clearly a Titan, so that really depends on whether or not you think all Titans are evil (we don't think so, although they are all pretty dangerous even if they aren't actively malicious). Like other ancient sky-father Titans, you could certainly play him as simply distant from and uninvolved in his pantheon.

Question: Are Dwarves and Svartalfar the same creature? Norse mythology is confusing.

No, but they do both live in Svartalfheim and some named svartalfar are occasionally also referred to or alluded to as dwarves, so the confusion is understandable. The Norse word for dwarves is dvergr, and is used to refer to creepy little short creatures that are crafty, morally questionable, and really awesome at making magical items like Mjolnir and Brisingamen. Svartalfar means "black elves" and is confusing because it's equated to both dverger and dokkalfar ("dark elves") in various places, which are fairly clearly attested as two different races, with the dark elves described as dwelling underground and being black of skin, and different in appearance from their light elf cousins.

Basically, some scholars think the svartalfar must be the same as the dvergr since they seem to live in the same or similar places and share some traits, but others point out that there are different terms and associations at work and that there's no reason to make that leap. So really, Storyteller's call on that one. We play them as different.

Question: Would it be possible for Artistry Gods to design relics that could enable Gods and Scions to better navigate the Titan Realms? Like relic goggles to give people temporary Epic Perception rankings to see around Keku? Or some kind of Fire-resistant suits to allow survival in Muspelheim?

Yep, sure is! Hephaestus actually made some flame-retardant armor for one of our groups to go to Muspelheim at one point. Artistry can make all kinds of neat stuff, although it's probably difficult and time-consuming to do so.

Question: When you have the Animal purview, you choose an animal to specialize in. We, in my game have been in minor fights about how specific you have to be. For example, the guy with Animal (Jackal) complaining over how he has less utility as the guy with Animal (Dog). Should one be penalized for being more general, or should I allow the more specialized guy to go outside the limits of his animal from time to time?

You might find this post helpful when trying to determine how specific an animal should be! Animals that are less commonly available do often have less utility than your Animal (Housefly) or Animal (Cow) people who can be fairly assured of their animals being around a lot, but Scions can always go seek out their animals at zoos, parks or in natural areas where they might occur, and of course at later levels they can summon or even create them at will. We do occasionally allow Scions with animals that are kind of close to try to use their boons on something that isn't technically their creature, but always at a disadvantage; for example, if your guy with Animal (Jackal) wanted to use his boons on a coyote, we would have him only understand some of what it was saying since the message would be garbled, or increase the difficulty of using other powers on it significantly to illustrate that he was trying to affect something that he isn't really aligned with.

Question: I know shape-shifting Appearance knacks makes this somewhat of a mote point, but for those Scion who don't invest in them, I was wondering what rolls would you make for disguise. And when say disguise, I'm taking about everything from putting on a wig and Groucho Marx glasses to applying Hollywood SFX prosthetics to change your race or sex.

It would depend on exactly what you were doing, but most of the time we would have you roll something along the lines of Appearance + Stealth or Manipulation + Stealth to actually sell the disguise itself, and probably a side order of Manipulation + Empathy and/or Wits + Empathy to not look suspicious while doing it. Tailor to individual Storyteller tastes.

Question: Can a scion with Animal Communication use social knacks on animals he can communicate with, or does he have to use Animal Obediance?

He has to use Animal Obedience, or else just be able to convince it to do what he wants through good old-fashioned charm. His refined powers of pulling a fast one on humanoids are lost on their animal brains.

Question: Have you ever considered a more free-form system for boons (e.g. Mage spheres or Dark Ages fae magic)? If you have, what worked? If you haven't, what would you imagine succeeding?

Nope, sorry. Spheres work pretty well in Mage, but we have no desire whatsoever to import them into Scion. You might want to check out the official forums, though, since we know there are a few games out there that do that sort of thing.

Question: What does the Darkness Virtue which Reverses Virtue due to the Inue? Nothing? Fire becoming Water? etc.

It reverses exactly; someone affected by Heart of Darkness with the Fire Virtue would abruptly have Anti-Fire. They would hate Fire in all its forms, attempt to stamp it out and campaign against its use and existence, and generally do everything that they could to destroy it with exactly as much fervor as they would normally want to protect and encourage it.

Question: What do you think the Godrealm and Underworld of the Orisha are?

You're looking for this post!

Question: How are Fatebonds handled with the Doppleganger boon from the Illusion tree? For example, say someone created a doppleganger of a fellow Scion and had the doppleganger interact with mortals--utilizing the boons it would have such as subtle knife and stolen face--would it be possible to incur a Fatebond in that way to the person being 'doppleganged'?

Question: Hello, John and Anne! Hope you guys are well. My group uses your resources and revisions on Scion (love 'em!) and I just recently started looking at the blog. You've answered a lot of questions that I've been curious about, and many that haven't even occurred to me. Now, I was wondering if you could answer another question, or if perhaps it's already been addressed. How exactly does a Fatebond work if you've stolen someone's face and then committed the acts that would Fatebond?

Fate is not fooled by your piddly doppelgaenger, nor your attempts to pretend you're someone else. It knows that the person being impersonated is not the one spending Legend, and therefore will not attach any Fatebonds to her; it also knows that you are the one spending Legend, so you're going to get the Fatebonds from doing so no matter what you look like. And before you ask, the same goes for any other way of impersonating someone or meddling with the free will of other people.

As always, jump into the comments if you're so moved.

Wielding the Wyrd

Question: Why do Magic and Prophecy boons penalize the user so harshly? I understand the flavor of "dont mess with fate"! But it seems unfair that other Purviews get to do incredibly awesome things and Fate users get punished in the form of fatigue or magic shenanigans (auto-botching rolls, etc.) for no reason.

Ouch, man. Years of giant paragraphs explaining our thought processes and justifications, and y'all still think we do things for no reason? We barely do anything for no reason anymore. We have to write a grant application to one another just to go to a movie.

It sounds like you may not be quite aware of the difference between Magic and Prophecy and other purviews. While they are similar in that they follow the same kinds of structures, they are completely different beasts, and not just for flavor reasons. Fate is the highest authority and most powerful force in Scion's universe; it is the be-all and end-all, the force that affects gods as strongly as mortals, that cannot be truly escaped except for a few shining moments by only the most arcanely poweful. Fate is literally the most important and dangerous thing that exists in the game of Scion, and in some way it controls, informs or influences pretty much everything that any Scion or god or Titan ever does. Some of that is mechanized in the game's systems for Fatebonds, associated powers and Virtues; and even beyond those, its influence is felt unconsciously in the stories that Storytellers and players alike tell, because it's one of those fundamental story ideas that many people, at least in western cultures, automatically weave into their tales even when they don't mean to.

What all of this means is that Fate is serious fucking business, no two ways about it, and that therefore the powers that involve messing directly with its inner workings are way more hazardous and significant than other purviews in many ways. Other purviews can't compete; Fire or Thunder or Death are dangerous and scary primordial forces, but Fate still controls all of them and how they manifest in various myths and legends, dictating how they play their parts. Tapping into the power of the sun is one thing, but tapping into the power that decides how the entire game universe runs is a different thing altogether.

Simply put, Magic and Prophecy have major drawbacks because they are more powerful than other purviews. They need those negatives just to balance them out and prevent them from being so overpowered that they just win the game automatically. Other purviews have powers that attack enemies, transport allies, knit flesh back together, all of which are awesome and powerful; but Magic and Prophecy have the power to make or break all those other purviews. Magic users can dictate whose rolls succeed and whose botch abominably, allow them to get insane results on their own powers or avoid the effects of others', completely rewrite the inner drives and passions of others and ignore their own, and even literally pretend things didn't happen when they don't like them. Prophecy users can provide insane bonuses to anything and everything they and their allies want to do, ignore fated events they don't like by totally avoiding them, create and enforce certain roles in the story on their bandmates, and literally take the power of the Storyteller to write the tale that all the players are currently starring in away and make it their own.

That's not just flavor. These two purviews directly and concretely affect everything in the story and give Scions who use them incredible power to steer the story, not only for themselves but for everyone else around them. The War purview may allow you to smite others with mighty attacks, but Magic decides whether or not those attacks actually strike their targets; the Justice purview may allow you to lay evildoers low with a look and deny enemies of your pantheon their powers and freedom, but Prophecy decides whether or not you have the energy to do so and even believe it's the right thing to do anymore.

So the penalties in Magic and Prophecy are there to make sure that those purviews aren't so ridiculously powerful that they trump what everyone else who doesn't have them is doing. Magic needs a backlash from Fate every once in a while to prevent those who use it from just straight-up ensuring that they and their bandmates just succeed on every roll forever and never have to pay attention to things like Virtues; Prophecy needs fatigue penalties to make sure that its users don't literally hijack the entire story from the Storyteller forever and automatically win. Essentially, those things are there to let Scions know that they can use those powers as much as they want, but eventually they will hit the point of no return. They still have a choice, but that choice has consequences.

Honestly, we prefer that in most cases. We do have some powers in both purviews that are simply restricted by preventing them from being used more than a certain number of times per game session or story, but while that definitely prevents them from being used so much that they break the game, it also takes the option to use them in a moment of great crisis or need away from the Scions. So for other powers, we still give people the option to keep abusing Fate. There's just a price, which is something that powers that affect destiny itself can never escape. There's always a price, and it is very possible to get so far into debt that you never return.

So basically, other purviews get to do things without as many penalties because they're A) not screwing around with Fate, and B) therefore way less powerful and less in need of checks and balances to rein them in. We're not penalizing the Magic and Prophecy people for their purviews so much as making sure they don't run roughshod over everybody else at the table, including the Storyteller.

Breath of Heaven

Okay, guys, you know what day it is? It's purview day! Hooray!

This one's going to be a little more complicated and a little less clean than the last one, so please be patient as we make our first public plunge into the wonderful world of elemental purviews. Today, we're going to release the new Sky purview, but we have a few caveats for you guys to be aware of first.

First of all, this is the long-awaited moment when we split Sky and Thunder off into two distinct purviews! Sky, which we're releasing today, is the purview of air, wind, breath and clouds, while the forthcoming Thunder will be about lightning, thunder, rain and storms. We're still brushing up some of the final touches on the Thunder purview, and it's not quite ready for you guys, so it'll probably still be a week or two; we could have held onto it until we were ready to release both at once, but we didn't want to go so long without putting out something new for everyone to play with. For those who are planning to be Thunder users instead of Sky, we're leaving the old Sky purview with its lightning boons up under the Thunder button for now. When new Thunder is released, it'll be replaced, but it gives you a stop-gap for now. (We promise, we'll get that one out as quickly as possible, because we know what a pain it is to have one and not the other.)

If your game would like to covert from the old hybrid Sky to the new Sky and Thunder, here's how we're handling the split for our characters: each player who has old Sky can choose whether they want to convert their boons to Sky or Thunder, and then get whichever boons they want that are the same level as the old ones they had (so if they had a level 1, 2 and 3 Sky boon in the old purview, they can choose a 1, 2 and 3 in Sky or a 1, 2 and 3 in Thunder). If they decide that they want both purviews, it might be easier to just give them an equivalent amount of XP to their old Sky boons, and tell them they can only spend it on Sky or Thunder boons. Either way, we want Scions who have the old Sky purview to get the opportunity to keep the kinds of powers they love using, but without giving them a bunch of extra powers for free that other people in the group don't get.

For Storytellers, if your Scions have positive or negative Fatebonds associated with old Sky, you'll need to convert those, too. If you happen to know what they got that Fatebond for - that is, they gained a Fatebond to it because people saw them lightning bolting a bunch of people, or they were given a penalty because they tried and failed to fly away from danger - then you can assign it appropriately to whichever purview governs the event that the Fatebond is referencing. If you aren't sure or there are too many Fatebonds involved, we suggest splitting them evenly - so if someone has four positive Fatebonds to Sky and there's a mix of reasons, just give them two Fatebonds to each of Sky and Thunder and call it a day.

Since the purviews are splitting, this is now the moment that various gods' associations change, as well! They have been changed on their individual pages and the quick-reference, but here's the quick list (including gods from the downloadable pantheons):

Gods with Sky: Amm, Enlil, Horus, Itzamna, Ix Chel, Izanagi, Marduk, Nezha, Njord, Nuwa, Pauahtun, Quetzalcoatl, Stribog, Svarozhich, Tane, Vayu, Zeus
Gods with Thunder: Baal, Chaac, Dushara, Hubal, Illapa, Indra, Ishtar, Marduk, Ninurta, Oya, Qos, Raiden, Rongo, Perun, Set, Shango, Shiva, Susanoo, Taranis, Thor, Tishtrya, Tlaloc, Tulungersak, Zeus

You'll notice that a couple of gods are on both lists, but most of them aren't. If a Scion's parent no longer has the purview they invested in associated, the Scion gets to keep the associated XP discount anyway, since we don't want to punish anyone because of our fiddling.

The second major issue is that you'll see a couple of boons (both very high-level) that are "under construction" still at the moment, which is because they affect other purviews that we haven't finished rewriting yet. We apologize for the fact that they're hard to use until then, but we'll update them as soon as possible. Both have an alternate boon at the same level, so you won't be prevented from getting a useful power as you go along, and of course Storytellers are always free to give you whatever mechanics they deem appropriate for the under-construction boons if they want to let you use them before we finish them.

Finally, as we've mentioned before, in our odyssey through all these purviews we are not only updating purviews but also discovering that there are a lot of general game mechanics that need brushing up. Today, we're hitting the first of these, which is movement speed. Instead of the old system with Move and Dash and that random +6 in the middle there, here's what we're doing instead: you have one top speed, which is equal to double your (Dexterity dots + Epic Dexterity successes) in yards per second. You can go slower than that speed at will, but it's your top speed at a flat-out sprint. If you want your DV while runnning, you can go no faster than half that speed. Contests of speed such as races are not comparisons of this calculation, but rather contests where the runners roll off their Dexterity + Athletics.

So, to use an example, Eztli's base speed is 112 yards per second (or about 230 mph/369 kph) at a dead run (10 Dex + 46 Dex successes, doubled). If she wants her DV, she can only run up to 56 yards per second (115 mph/184 kph). If she wants to race against Goze, they'll both roll their Dexterity + Athletics, and even though she has more Dexterity, he'll probably give her a run for her money against his buckets of Arete: Athletics.

And that helps simplify speed calculations and more easily apply speed-boosting powers, so hopefully everyone feels as good about it as we do. And lastly, you'll notice that there are now technically two boons in the game called Rainbow Bridge, which is silly. We recognize that, and will be changing the name of the Psychopomp power when we get there.

Enjoy new Sky, and as always, feel free to ask questions, call for clarification or bring up any issues you have in the comments below!

Crusading for Equality

Question: Small mechanics issue: due to the large number of existing boons for some purviews (Animal, for example) and small number for others (Stars, for example), there's an uneven tradeoff for those boons whose effectiveness depends on the number of boons in that purview known (Web of Stars, for example). Is there any kind of quick workaround someone could use (like using the greater of Epic Strength or number of Stars boons, for example)?

I'm not going to go super in-depth with this one, simply because we're in the middle of rewriting purviews right now so a lot of numbers and mechanics are in the middle of changing right now anyway, and any advice I give you would end up being old news pretty quickly. But for those who are still using purviews that haven't been overhauled with, there are a few things to touch on.

First of all, you're right, there's inequality between how many boons are in each purview; but that doesn't actually cause any mechanical problems in most cases. The powers that use or roll a total number of boons almost never oppose one another; that is, it doesn't matter that you have fewer Stars boons than Animal boons, because you're never going to roll Animal vs. Stars so the issue actually doesn't exist. There's no conflict because those powers' boon totals don't interact, and are present only as measurements for the boons themselves. There are a few rare cases where that cross-purview conflict does come into play, and there you're totally justified in worrying about possible imbalance; for example, there are a few times boons require people to roll their Darkness vs. someone else's Sun or vice versa, and since there is one more Sun boon than there are Darkness boons, the Sun people are technically at a small advantage. It's a very tiny imbalance so we aren't too worried about it, and I'm sure we'll be addressing it when we get to rewriting the celestial purviews, but if you're concerned you could always give the Darkness guy an additional die to make it fair if you're dealing with a situation where two people with maxed purviews are rolling off against one another.

The only place there actually is an issue is with rolling against Titanrealms; those do have a standard difficulty, which means that purviews with fewer boons are at a disadvantage when trying to overcome the primordial realms that oppose them. We actually recently noticed that come up when Eztli had to roll her Stars boons against a Titanrealm, and we realized that even though she has every Stars boon in existence, she still had far less chance to beat the realm than users of other, more populated purviews. That is totally a problem, and we are aware of it and working on it. Honest. Our in-the-meantime solution, for those of you with god-level Scions, is to lower the difficulty for particularly slim purviews like Illusion or Stars in those situations.

However, within boons that don't target one another - like your Web of Stars example - there is no imbalance or "uneven tradeoff", because there's no comparison happening. Each of those boons is designed to use the total of boons in its home purview, not a mythical "number of boons" standard that doesn't actually exist. We knew how many boons were in the purview when we wrote the boons, and designed them accordingly. We intended for Web of Stars to last for only a few days at a time; if there had been twice as many boons in the purview when we wrote it, we would have had it last for 1/2 Stars boons in days.

We definitely do not suggest replacing those numbers with any kind of mechanic that involves an Epic Attribute instead of boons. The total number of boons mechanic is used to represent power over your purview and investment in its sorceries, and Epic Attributes are in no way a substitute for that (not to mention allowing a lot more powergaming for those who just stack the Epic instead of bothering with their actual godly powers). We do like Epics involved in boons in certain places, which is why so many have rolls, but if we used the number of boons mechanics, it was because we wanted that aspect of the boon to hinge on your control over the purview. Your Web of Stars sticks around because you're great at Stars and stars answer your call, not because you're strong. That makes way less sense and is way less mythically awesome.

However, all these purviews are in the middle of getting rewritten, y'all, so don't have too big a meltdown over any specifics right now. There's a good chance it'll just end up changing in the near future anyway!

That Darn Barn

Question: We are starting up a new game and I found your site. I like a lot of your redone boons. But I have not seen anything in your page that addresses the big issue we have with Scion, that being that once you get to demigod level any character that does not have a lot of Epic Dex can never hit anything in combat. Do your rule changes have anything dealing with that?

Indeed, we do not. However, we have no problem with that, and we'll not only tell you why, we'll also tell you how your characters can still be major and important combat forces without Epic Dexterity!

First of all, it's entirely on purpose that you need Epic Dexterity to hit things. Dexterity is the stat that measures your aim, speed and flexibility; it's the stat that allows you to be able to actually hit what you swing at, as well as avoid other peoples' swings hitting you. When you become higher Legend - and your enemies are higher Legend, too! - you will find that if you don't keep up with Epic Dexterity, you will start not being able to hit all your foes' DVs. And that's on purpose, and that's how it should be; you decided, after all, not to buy the stat that is for hitting things. So you can't hit things. Your aim sucks.

But that doesn't mean that you can't do any damage in combat! It just means you won't be able to do it with the normal punch-kick-swords variety of attacks. There are plenty of options for alternative styles of combat in Scion, and it's not just the guys who frontload their physical Epic Attributes who can fight.

To begin with, if you want to stick with just physically hurting your enemies, you can decide to be a grappler instead of a brawler or a melee fighter. Grappling - that is, wrestling or otherwise physically getting into a clinch with an opponent instead of striking them - can use Strength + Brawl to hit instead of Dexterity, allowing you to ignore that pesky Dex stat completely. It does have its limitations; enemies that are too large for you to wrestle will not be attackable in this way, and when you are in a grapple, your DV is lowered to half if you're winning or zero if you're not, making you more vulnerable to additional bad guys who may want to take a piece out of you. But it's still an option for the physical fighter who doesn't want to be all that light on her feet.

There are also a ton of powers that can allow you to lower the DV of your opponents, making it much easier to hit them even if your aim isn't great. Stuff like Blitzkrieg, Tidal Interference or Trimarkisia can lower your enemy's dodging ability through the floor, so that even if you can't normally hit the broad side of a barn you might still be able to take a piece out of them. Even without powers, your band can also perform Coordinated Assaults, which allow you to strike against an enemy at a lowered DV as long as everyone attacks at the same time.

Outside of purely physical fighting, there are also tons of ways to use boons to fight enemies. Various purviews give you excellent tools for melting the faces off your opponents - for example, at Demigod level you get access to things like Shadow Boxer in Darkness, Dragon's Breath in Fire, Levin Fury in Sky or Burn in Sun. Those are just the direct damage ones, but there are also a ton of powers that give you various other combat bonuses, from making Coordinated Assaults better to giving you a dice bonus to a specific ability or attribute to increasing your damage and so on and so forth.

While we don't change the rules to make low-Dex melee fighters inexplicably succeed at hitting enemies, you might be interested in another house rule we use, affectionately termed "purview lasers" by most of our players. The basic rule is that Scions can directly attack Titanspawn or Titans (only - not other Scions, gods or mortals) with the purviews that directly oppose them, by channeling their connection to that purview and releasing it against the Titanic creature. To do so, they spend two points of Legend and roll their total number of boons in that purview, and the unlucky Titanspawn target suffers their successes in aggravated damage. This allows anyone, fighter, healer, mage or any other type of character, to contribute in combat when they're fighting something that is opposed to their mythical powers. Even if you're the weakest most delicate flower petal of a character, you can beat up a Death-aligned creature with your Health boons once in a while.

Keep in mind, also, that not every creature you fight is going to have a maxed-out DV. Some creatures - like giants, for example - are naturally slow and ponderous, and typically have low DVs and high soaks. In many combats where more than one enemy is facing you, there may be one that is the "boss" with majorly hard to hit DV, but several minions that are easier to mop up that those of you who don't have great Dexterity, meaning you can still take some people down while letting those who are better statted take on the big ugly.

We don't see any real reason to create some kind of extra system for hitting monsters; Epic Dexterity is the stat you buy for hitting people, and if you want to hit people, you should buy it. That's kind of a no-brainer. But there are plenty of ways to be effective and useful in combat (we didn't even touch on using social powers and curse-style boons to screw with enemies!) without being able to hit the broad side of a barn, so don't feel like every character is forced to buy Dexterity until the cows come home. If you want to be accurate, speedy and capable of delivering a wickedly perfect strike to an opponent's face, buy Dexterity; if you want to do other things instead, let Dex fall by the wayside and invest in other methods of fighting off the bad guys or contributing to overall group success.

Secret Secret Project?

Question: 1. Love that the purviews are getting re-examined. 2. Do you think that the categories that you gave the purviews (Fate, Elemental, Humanity, Physical, Celestial) could themselves becomes game mechanics in some way, or would be good mechanics if they are able to be implemented? 3. Like how the progress bar for the projects now has a numeric indicator as well. You do great work guys, keep it up!

Thank you, anonymous encourager!

You know, we did not particularly have a master mechanics plan involving using those categories for purviews; we mostly put them in similar categories to give ourselves some organization as we worked on them. Some categories - elemental purviews, for example - will probably have similar idea and kinds of powers, so we wanted to work on those ones at the same time, while others - let's say the Humanity purviews - may use similar mechanics because they tackle similar subjects even if their boons are wildly different. We weren't trying to put hint at any secret overarching purview grouping plan in this case (if we were, we probably would have grouped things more evenly!), just trying to put things in order.

That doesn't rule out the possibility that we might go crazy and do something like that in the future anyway, but for now we don't have plans to do so.

Legend Burning Diet

Question: How do you guys deal with Legend in-game? I mean, can the characters tell their Legend rating or measure how much Legend points they're spending when activating a boon, for example?

We prefer to keep the bare bones of the system under wraps in the actual roleplaying world of the game; seldom will anyone refer to their Legend pool, and when they do they don't talk about it in the same terms that players do out of character.

Legend is basically the measure of how legendary and amazing you are; it's not a "thing" that Scions have and are aware of, but rather the mechanical illustration of the fact that they are destined for and capable of great things beyond normal human abilities. No one ever measures their Legend rating or compares it to someone else's, except to acknowledge that someone else is clearly more or less powerful than they are; no one thinks, "Gee, I have one point of Legend left," when Legend points aren't really a thing they have or would be able to measure if they did. Legend points don't really exist; they're just there to tell the player, out of character, what they can and can't do. In character, your Scions know that they can do amazing things but that sometimes, when they've given their all, they're just too exhausted to keep going.

There are a few powers in the game that directly interact with Legend rating or pools, and those likewise don't treat them like game stats but rather as the ephemeral legendary energy that they really are. People with The Unlidded Eye, for example, can see that others are more or less powerful than themselves, or realize that they are way out of their league or totally outclassing their opponents, but they don't get a number or think, "Ah, my Legend rating is higher than theirs." People with powers that directly deal with Legend points, such as users of Itztli or the Legendary Surge boon, likewise aren't measuring "points"; they're proceeding on the knowledge that blood grants them power, and feeling themselves become more powerful as they use their PSP, or they're hurling some of their own power to an ally who really needs it, leaving themselves feeling weak and drained. In fact, it helps a lot if you think of Legend as simple "divine power" within the context of the gameworld; some people have more of it, and it can run out if you do too much crazy stuff in a row, but no one is trying to measure it in "points" or anything. (Well, except maybe some crazy crafter-Scions who might be trying to rig up Legend geiger counters or something. Shine on, you crazy diamonds.)

Or, to use a real-life example, it's metabolic energy, measured in calories, that sustains us as humans and lets us do things. But when we're running low on energy, we don't say, "Gee, I'm down to only 320 kcal, better go refill my kcal pool." We say, "Hey, I'm hungry," and act accordingly on that. We know the resources exist, in terms of things we need to do to get energy and what the effects are when we run out (exhaustion, headaches, eventually starvation), but we don't directly measure or interact with them on a daily basis.

So, Legend is like that. PCs don't say, "I'm out of Legend," they say, "I'm really tired," or "Guys, I don't think I'm up to it," or "I'm trying, I just don't have the energy!" In very rare cases in our games, an NPC has mentioned "Legend" as a term in reference to divine energy, but it's usually Odin, and nobody has any idea what he's ever talking about.

Ten Questions with Excited Waving Arms

On today's blog, project updates, future possibilities, a call to action for you guys, and a whole bunch of questions!

Question: How do you handle "secrets" in myth? Things that supposedly certain gods do not know (and would have extreme reactions if they found out) yet are an established part of the myths about them?

Question: How do you explain the story of King Midas? I mean, the guy's an ordinary mortal who gets the power to turn anything he touches into gold. What Scion powers can give such a power to a mortal?

Question: Can you kill a death god? Should you be able to kill a death god? Does killing a death god really accomplish anything?

Question: What do you think would happen if a Scion, who has not yet received a Visitation, were to simply stumble across a Birthright relic that doesn't belong to an active Scion? Could that result in a kind of "triggered activation" of the Scion's divine blood? Or would nothing happen since it isn't a true Visitation?

Question: How do you determine the damage from some of the more extreme attacks that Scion's power allows? If my Strength monster picks up the Empire State Building and hurls it at a Titan Avatar, or some other powerful foe, how do I determine how badly such an impact hurt the target? If I used Create Earth to conjure up a mess of diamonds, then threw the diamonds into a tornado conjured by Tornado Tamer and hurled the whole thing at a bad guy? How would I determine THAT damage?

Question: How far is too far for you guys at GothamByNight when it comes to PC morality? When do you take one of your Players to the side and ask them if their PC could still be considered "a good guy/aligned with the Gods" and not some Chaotic Evil Titan in waiting that is deserving of a Dark Virtue or two? For example, do you think that a God-level PC Band's active attempts to wipeout humanity or kill off their parents for their own ambitions justify them gaining Dark Virtues?

Question: Do you guys have anyway of setting apart gods and goddesses of hunting mechanically? I'm working on some homebrew and I feel like these hunt gods need some association to really drive the point home, but I don't know what. I almost find myself wanting to make a Hunt Purview, but that's a heck of a lot of work. But what else to use? Is War fitting? An attribute that most fits their hunting style? I'm really at a loss here.

Question: You said in an earlier vlog that the difference between Followers/Creatures and Guides were that Creatures and Followers were below you and Guides were beings above you. Now what if I have a character who's got contact to the Valkyries as a Guide from Hero - would it be possible at Demigod that they turned into more like an equal ally type of thing? That instead of them just giving you good advice, they help you out physically when you really need it.

Question: Nut is a Titan, Shu is a Titan, and Geb is probably going to be a Titan as well - but the most ancient of them, Ra, is not?

Question: So! If everyone on Earth, for whatever reason, suddenly got a point of Legend, and the Gods were then able to get up to their old tricks without having to worry about Fatebinding, would they? If they could without having to worry about Fatebinding, would the Gods return to Earth? Related question, is there anything you can think of from any mythology that would be capable of giving everyone on Earth a legend point? Some Uber Relic or ritual that, if done, would give everyone that kind of power?

To our sixth questioner, we now realize that while we talked about PC morality in answer to your question, we didn't really address Dark Virtues. Our rule of thumb is that Dark Virtues are something PCs gain by contact with Titans or otherwise through magical events, so for the most part we would not give them any Dark Virtues automatically just because they're being jerks. It is entirely possible for Scions (and gods, too!) to be sometimes or even often malicious without actually having Malice, just as it's possible to be interested in knowledge and learning without having Intellect or to bravely run into battle without having Courage. However, Scions who are consistently evil or often do things that are in line with the goals of the Titans are likely to attract their attention, in which case it is entirely possible they might end up corrupted by a Titan Virtue later on.

If you want to email us boons, do it here! Go nuts!

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!

Man vs. Food

Question: How would eating contests work in Scion?

Hmm, depends on the kind of eating contest! Are we talking who can eat the most? Who can eat a specific portion the fastest? Who can eat the craziest thing without losing their lunch? Two people enter, no one leaves until one person has burst their intestines?

As far as who can eat the most, we would probably start with some good old Stamina + Fortitude rolls, to represent how much food you can pack into yourself and how quickly your digestive system can handle it. We might allow a few other rolls for specific stunts - maybe a Strength + Fortitude roll to force food into yourself even when you can't take any more, for example - but Stamina's going to be your main go-to stat. Once you've reached the point of eating more food than your body can physically contain, which is up to the Storyteller to decide on, failing those Stamina rolls will result in vomiting, but succeeding might mean that you start taking lethal damage from rupturing your own organs. Appearance knacks like Undeniable Resemblance or Unusual Alteration can also be used to change the size of your organs, allowing you to do weird, grotesque things like growing extra stomachs or just extending the one you have to that it goes all the way down into your feet or something. As the saying goes, you could literally store your food in hollow legs.

As for eating fastest, that's probably a simple enough opposed Dexterity + Athletics roll, to jump around and move food into yourself as quickly as possible, but it'll probably never occur without the Stamina rolls soon following. If you need to eat something that is particularly tough or difficult to break (rock candy? bones? foods designed for stone giants?), you might need some Strength + Athletics rolls as well to be able to tear, crush or break it with your supernaturally strong and hard muscles and teeth. And then there's the gross-out kind of eating contest, where everyone has to eat something horrifying like cockroaches or blood stew or super lemon intestine hot sauce. Those are the moments that the Scions with Selective Palate were born for, because everything tastes like a strawberry daquieri to them, but for those who can't fool their taste buds into thinking they're not eating an alien fetus with tabasco, Stamina + Fortitude, or perhaps Stamina + Awareness, would be our choices to make sure that you don't have an embarrassing incident with not being able to keep your food down.

Every Storyteller will probably want to play it by ear, or if they know an eating contest's coming in the story, plan ahead with the general rolls you'll need. But then, have fun; mythological eating contests (and drinking contests!) are all about kicking back, heroically letting loose and then epically regretting it in the morning.

Fumbling Toward Heaven

Question: You previously said that apotheosis requires quite a lot of Epic Attributes. How do you attain apotheosis if you have several negative Fatebonds to those Attributes which keep buying them off? Just stockpile XP and buy them all at once?

Man, when we get questions like these, I realize that it has actually been years since we had a character achieve apotheosis. Then I feel like a dinosaur.

We do indeed require certain minimum numbers of dots in Epic Attributes before Scions can achieve apotheosis and becomes gods, in addition to needing several abilities and purviews at maximum level (the exact specifics are in this very old but still accurate post). But Fatebonds seldom leave your stats alone just to be polite or make life easy, so what's a beleaguered Scion to do?

When you're in the home stretch to head toward godhood, it's relatively easy to max out stats like abilities so that Fatebonds can't buy them off, but Attributes are another story; they aren't truly "maxed" in that sense unless you have all possible dots and Epic Attribute dots as well as all knacks, and most people aren't going to make it to that marathon of a goal. Since maxing them out usually isn't practical, that means that you have to instead embark on the wonderful world of playing catch-the-Fatebond.

Fatebonds can be stopped from buying a stat off if, when they are about to do so, you buy a dot (or boon or knack) of that stat instead. When you do that, they are immediately prevented from buying it off, and move all XP they had banked toward doing so on to the next thing they were trying to buy off instead. That doesn't mean they'll never buy off your "protected" stat again, just that it's now at the end of the list and they'll have to cycle through everything else they want to take away from you before they get back to it again. If your Fatebonds happen to also be buying off something you don't really care about - a purview you decided wasn't worth saving because it wasn't one of your main concepts anyway, or an ability you don't use much - then you're pretty much golden if you just save enough XP to keep shifting the focus away from the Attribute you want to save and over to that unnecessary stat instead.

It's hard to explain how Fatebonds work in words here, but think of it like a list of things the Fatebonds are buying off. They always follow it in order, so if you move them off their current choice, they'll go to the next one and then all the way through the list before coming back to the one you kicked them off of.

If the Attribute you need to save is the only thing your Fatebonds are buying off (for those about to hit apotheosis, this is almost never true unless the Fatebonds have already bought everything else they hate down to 0), however, or they're buying off several things at once that you need to save, your problems are more complicated. In that case, you need to save enough XP to be able to move the Fatebonds down their list more than once, potentially buying several things to make sure you move the Fatebond buying machine down the line to the next thing that's "safe" for them to buy off. If nothing is safe to buy off, then you need to refer to this rule that isn't on our Fatebond page (damn, guys, I know, but we keep putting fixing the Fatebond stuff on our work poll and you guys keep not voting for it!): if you prevent your Fatebonds from buying something off twice in the same round of buying, they instantly lose all XP they had banked toward it and have to start over from scratch, thus giving you some breathing room.

That's hard to visualize, so let me give you an example. John needs to keep his Fatebonds from buying off any more Strength or Perception if he wants to hit apotheosis, and has negatives to only those two things. When his Fatebonds try to buy off Strength, he buys a knack to stop them, which makes them move all their XP over to trying to buy off Perception instead. So he buys a Perception knack, which makes them move the XP back to Strength again, since it's the only other thing on the list. Then he buys another Strength knack, and all the banked XP the Fatebonds had to ruin his day is trashed and they start over from zero, and he is safe from their depredations for at least a little while.

Now, obviously this involves managing your XP very closely, and it also involves working with your Storyteller to figure out what you may need to do in the near future. While we never tell players all the details of their Fatebonds unless they have used the appropriate Magic/Perception powers to find out on their own in character, we do give them forecasts of what the next Fatebond buy-offs will be and about when they will occur, so that they can plan accordingly. At the end of game, when we're all doing the "okay, you get this new boon, you lose this dot of an ability" Fatebond circus, we are also always up to tell a player who asks that their Fatebonds will be buying off Sky in about two weeks, and after that will start working on Wits, and are also happy to tell them where their XP will move if they protect a stat and about how long they have to save before things come back around again.

But, you say, okay, so there are all these ways to save my stats with XP, but what if a situation arises in which it's mathematically impossible?! And while that isn't always very likely, it is possible and it is something that Scions may need to face once in a while. Sometimes, you can't save everything. You can almost always save one stat, or maybe even two or three, if you dedicate your XP to them only, but you probably can't save any more than that. Sometimes your Fatebonds to something are so brutal (because large numbers of people think you shouldn't have it) that it's much more difficult to save than any other stat, and the math race is too difficult to keep up with. Sometimes there are other stats that aren't negative but that you need to buy anyway before apotheosis, and so you have no choice but to split your XP. Sometimes you have to let one stat be bought off so you can save another, and then come back later and rebuy the one you lost. Sometimes you just mishandle it, maybe because you don't have much ability to understand Fatebonds as a character, and then have to suffer the uncomfortable consequences.

But this is all on purpose. The entire point of Fatebonds is that, based on your previous exploits and actions in the World, you have influenced mortals who begin to shape your destiny to fit those actions. If your Fatebonds have come down on something so hardcore that you literally cannot overcome them, that's the game mechanically showing you that it is straight-up no longer your Fate to be or do that thing, most likely because you're consistently bad at or opposed to it. We give out enough XP for Scions to overcome some of their negative Fatebonds, but not enough for them to always be able to beat all of them, and that's on purpose, too, especially right before apotheosis; you're about to become a god, which means that now is the time that you may have to make some choices about letting go of things you will no longer embody as a deity and building up others that you have so far neglected. We want Scions to be able to sometimes overcome what Fate wants them to do if they try hard enough, but we do not want them to be able to do so always, because otherwise there is no point to the Fate system being there in the first place.

And, as always, Fate is directly in the hands of the Scion. If they want to change it, they can go out, do that thing, blow a bunch of their Legend and try to rewrite their own stories. But they need to do that actively, as part of their budding myths and actions as a hero who is about to become a god; they can't just do it passively behind the scenes with their XP, because this isn't just about their capacity to choose things for themselves but also about the influence of Fate on their development and eventual role in the universe.

For some Scions, the road to godhood is relatively easy. They might have gotten lucky on their Fatebonds and only have one or two to fight in order to make it to apotheosis, or they might have been able to say, "You know what, I can let that purview go without losing too much sleep," so they can just let it drain away while they focus on more important things. For others, things are harder, when they have negatives to a larger spread of stats, or they want to save some stats they don't strictly need for godhood but are personally invested in. It is never mechanically impossible to become a god, but it can vary in difficulty depending on what state your Fatebonds are in and how much you do to try to work with or against them, and it may take some characters a little bit longer than others. When our god-level bands achieved apotheosis, I believe there were about three months (so 15 game sessions or so) between the first Scions to become gods (Sowiljr and Vala, respectively) and the last (Zwazo and Yoloxochitl).

Actually, the one way you can't go about this in our games is to stockpile XP and buy everything at once. For one thing, the would-be god needs to hold his stats for a few game sessions after achieving them, in essence to prove he's god material - he has to not only make sure Fatebonds don't get the better of him, but also make sure his mortal cults stay safe, his Virtues don't get screwed up and he doesn't lose his contacts in the pantheon, all things he will need to be doing when he graduates to the big leagues anyway. And for the other, it's a house rule for us that no Scion can save up more XP than it would cost to buy the most expensive thing available to him, so for most Legend 8 apotheosis hopefuls, 35 is the most XP they can have sitting around not doing anything at a time. We do that partly because we want people to actually, you know, do the Fate system that helps illustrate their relationship with their destiny and believers instead of just relying on math to let them ignore it, and also because a character who spends no XP for twenty games in a row because he wants to buy five dots and five Epics of something all at once is both super boring for both the player and the rest of the game, and probably not very effective compared to his companions since he hasn't gotten better at anything in forever and isn't keeping up.

By the way, for those who are looking at this and going, "But that sucks, I'm just going to lose all these negatively-bound stats at godhood anyway because I can't fight them forever!", there we have your back. Once you hit apotheosis, those minimum Epics you needed to get to godhood become "locked", and are the new minimum that Fatebonds can never buy down past. So you could have fifty negative Fatebonds to Perception, but they can never buy it below the three Epics you came into godhood with. That way all that work you did to be able to have basic skills for your new career as a god isn't lost, and you always have at least a small base to work from if you want to try to make a Fatebond-fighting sprint for glory with that stat later on.

Of course, for those who don't use our Fatebond system, or don't use our apotheosis rules, or don't use either, this is just a really long post that you don't care about. But, as Geoff would say, maybe you'll have better luck next time.

Shut Up and Drive

Question: Do you guys have any special rules for vehicles, or do you basically go by the RAW?

We do have special rules. Like you guys wouldn't have suspected that.

To begin with, where the original books always use a Dexterity + Control roll for driving a vehicle, we always use a Wits + Control roll instead. There are a lot of reasons for this; one is the ever-looming fact that Dexterity, which gives you both attack capability and DV, is already doing plenty in the system and doesn't need to be even more a stat that nobody can live without, but the other is that we think Wits just plan makes more sense. Driving is not usually a very athletic or motion-filled event. You move, of course, but it's all very small repetitive movements, confined to a small space (at least when talking about the majority of vehicles a Scion will be driving). Even little old ladies can physically move fast enough to drive reasonably, so we don't see any reason more Dexterity will make you better at this. However, what really does matter in driving is reaction time - being able to see obstacles or signals in time, being able to avoid dangers or decide in a split second whether or not you can jump something, and so on and so forth. Driving - at least, driving where your stats matter - always happens at high speed, which means that if you don't have the Wits to make decisions in the blink of an eye, you may crash and kill everyone. It's also nice to have two different stats covering different ways of moving quickly; Dexterity is for those who want to move quickly on their own (via speed knacks or things like Marathon Sprinter), while Wits is for those who want to move quickly by using a vehicle instead.

So we never roll Dexterity + Control for anything anymore, really. Maybe in an occasional situational way, like if a giant was trying to delicately drive a tiny car using only his thumbs or something, but not for normal driving situations. This goes for planes, trains, automobiles, boats, chariots, tanks or anything else that normally falls under the umbrella of Control. Incidentally, we also have players use Wits for Control rolls involving live mounts (horses, donkeys, cavalry bears), but usually also pair it with a Charisma + Animal Ken roll to see whether the animal will put up with any of their shit.

As for the stats on vehicles in the books, we ignore them and you should, too. Like the stats for everything in the original books, they're arbitrary, don't always balance well against the capabilities of Scions or antagonists' stats that are provided with them, often contradict comparable stats given in different books because they were written by different authors, and are a big old ugly mess. Instead, we recommend statting a vehicle based on what you believe it should be able to do and survive, with perhaps a tiny touch of cheatery toward the durable to make it more possible for Scions to use it in epic chase scenes or whatever else they have in mind. A normal automobile should require mortals an extended period of time with weapons to demolish, but should be easier to break for a Scion and still easier for a rampaging monster, so give it soak that can withstand mortal averages but not necessarily divine ones. Average speeds for various kinds of vehicles can be easily found with a quick internet search, and if your vehicle is magical in some way - it's a chariot drawn by magic horses, let's say - you can adjust up from there, again taking into account what you think Scions should be able to do with and to it. Feel free to be creative, and don't think you can only use the stats the book normally does. Is it old and out of power steering fluid? Slap a -2 penalty on that thing! Is it a state-of-the-art prototype that's very fast but still untested? Up its speed but give it a 1 in 10 chance of exploding if the Scions go above a certain RPM! Do whatever makes sense and is neat for the vehicle's scene and purpose in the story.

If trying to do that on the fly makes you uncomfortable - and it would for me, so I'm with you - do up some basic vehicle stats ahead of time, whether based on those in the book or tweaked to what you think is more reasonable. Have basic capabilities written down for a normal car, sailboat and helicopter, so you can reference those quickly if your Scions go bananas and start commiting grand theft auto in the middle of their mission. You can also use them as quick bases for other kinds of vehicles - for example, if they're making their getaway in a school bus, use your car stats but give them a maneuverability penalty to their Wits + Control roll and a soak bonus from all the extra steel and seats.

Other than that, I don't think we do anything particularly special. Vehicles straight up trying to outrun each other is still an opposed Wits + Control roll from each driver, although some vehicles may be different enough in base speed that even a Scion's madcap driving skills can't win the day (for example, a moped is not going to outrun a jet, even if the moped's drive is way better at the roll). And, of course, we have a tree of custom driving-based knacks in Wits, which can help a Scion push his ride to the limits of its mortal maker's dreams and beyond.

A Time and Place for Everything

Question: Social/mental characters can do awesome things in the middle of a combat, but I don't get to attack people during social/mental scenes. Social/mental characters can get boons that use social/mental attributes to blow people up in combat, but there are no boons that let me use physical attributes in social/mental scenes. What's up?

I think you may be a little confused about the difference between what you can do and what you should do, and the difference between restrictions the system places on you and restrictions your own roleplaying places on you.

Actually, you totally do get to attack people during non-combat scenes. That is a power that you, as a combat-heavy character, always have. At any moment, if you decide to, you could start throwing mountain-crumbling punches, busting bananas-ass aggravated damage, leaping over people at the diplomacy table and generally wrecking the place up, possibly before anyone else even has a prayer of reacting to stop you if you have a good Join Battle roll. At any time, you literally have the power to damage or even kill someone, and that is an incredible and dangerous power. That's why social gods, for all their bluster and swagger, are still afraid of unpredictable combat gods, and make it a point to keep them happy, confined, and away from them whenever possible.

Does that mean you should attack people during non-combat scenes? No, probably not most of the time, but that's a choice that you are making as a character. You're saying, "Hey, I don't know how to manage this social scene, I'd better let Johnny Isisbaby take the lead so I don't get confused," or "These people know something or can do something I can't beat out of them, so punching them would be counterproductive," or "I really like these people so I don't want to kill them, so we'll have to find another way to get them to do what we want," or a thousand other reasons you might have to not start suddenly roundhousing people in the face in the middle of a bar. That's what's generally referred to in human society as the "social contract", a concept that means that most people mutually agree to certain basic rules (like "don't stab others without provocation") in order for society to function, even though they technically could do whatever they want at any moment.

The social contract is in effect for gods as well as mortals, although it may take different forms and be broken or circumvented more liberally than in human societies, and that's what you're feeling is restrictive. You have all these amazing physical powers to damage, destroy, maim or maul, but you know that people will be upset if you do, or you might get punished, or you might feel bad about it later. That's just the weight of social responsibility on your shoulders, and it's something every Scion, no matter what their build, has to deal with on a regular basis. There will always be times you could do things, or even want to do things, and still don't because it's a bad idea or you know it won't be worth it in the long run. That's life.

The point here is that you have every bit as much ability to interfere in the social characters' spotlight scenes as they do to interfere in yours. You may decide not to, but that's your decision, not one the system forces on you. If you need to get someone to agree to something instead of stealing from them or physically beating it out of them, then you're making a reasonable decision not to use your powers right now. Nobody stood over you with a bat and made you do that.

In fact, for the most part, physical characters tend to always have more "power" in a scene than social ones, no matter what's going on. It's true that there are various powers in the game that allow social- and mental-heavy characters to participate in and contribute to combat, but when they're not specifically built to do that, they're always going to be worse at it than the guy who is combat-maxed, and they'll always be bleeding themselves of resources that they then don't have available to help them later in their social scenes. They can help out and have something to do during a fight, but they usually can't win it alone and are in much greater danger of dying, and in some cases there's literally nothing they can do at all. On the other hand, while the physical character with few to no social or mental stats can't do very much to participate in a chess game or tea with the queen, she always has the option to just haul off and make it a physical scene by starting some shit. Social characters can try to convert a fight to a social situation through use of powers, but they have shaky odds of doing so, have to spend resources, may not roll high enough or may have the attempt ruined by someone else's interference. All the physical character has to do is walk up to somebody and throw a punch, and presto, instant combat.

Honestly, as the combat character, you're not the most powerless person in your band. A lot of the time, you're so powerful that you literally have to restrain yourself in order to not get everyone in horrible trouble. You are a nuclear warhead they carry around with them, and while they hope they can point you in the right direction at the right time, they all know you could just detonate without warning and screw them over. It's easy to start feeling marginalized about how the social characters have all these skills that you don't, but the flip side of that is that you could literally kill them. You don't, because you have shit to do and you need them. But you could. And they know that, too. (And if they don't, reminding them is delicious.)

We often talk about the difference between "physical", "social" and "mental" characters, and it's true that you can invest so heavily in one of those archetypes that you have few to no powers in the others, especially early on. But the game intentionally balances those three so that they are all powerful, in equally game-changing and world-affecting ways but with a totally different kind of power. The physical characters wield the powers of destruction, speed and direct action, making them physically capable of performing incredible feats and actually being the movers who shift the world. The mental characters are the keepers of the potent powers of knowledge, making them the ones who decide who knows the truth and who continues to believe a lie, giving them the ability to see and learn things no one else possibly could and then dispense that knowledge (or not) where they think it will be best used, radically altering the ideas and plans of others. And the social characters can't do either of those things, but they are the masters of interpersonal communication and interplay, allowing them to defend themselves from the depredations of the other two archetypes and magically seek help from others to do what they can't.

Almost all Scions eventually become hybrids; seldom does anyone become a god without being good at at least a few auxiliary skills outside their archetypal area. But they can and do sometimes start out as only one thing, which they'll be for a long time as they grow into their divine heritage and explore what they really want to be as a deity, and there's nothing wrong with that. Just remember that they are all powerful, but have different kinds of power; and that sometimes some of them will be more suited to a given task than others, but that that does not make those others less important or worthwhile. You're going to encounter social situations, as a combat character, that you can't navigate and that you need other people to take care of for you, but that's no different from the fact that the mental characters would have no prayer of surviving combat if you weren't there, or the fact that the social characters can run the most incredible political takeover gambit of all time and still fail if the mental characters withhold a single, crucial piece of information from them.

So don't get down that you don't always have something with a PUNCH ME sign on it to do in every scene, and don't start feeling like the social characters matter more to the story than you do. It's their job to dominate scenes and try to make everything about them, but in the overall gameworld, you're every bit as powerful and important as they are. They have power over the secrets of the universe or the hearts of mankind, but you have power over life and death, and that's something everyone can respect.

Two For One Deal

Question: Hello, I have a combat-oriented question. Could you please explain how the multiple action rule works? I understand that if I take a diceless action, such as let's say Winds Freedom, and want to punch someone while flying, thats -2 dice. However, if I want to do two diced actions, such as Storm Augmentation and then punching someone, its -4 dice and I use the lower of the two dice pools to roll for both. So I would roll the lower Storm Augmentation roll for both and use that for a punching roll? Why would my punching get worse?

Okay, this is definitely a great question, because it falls into the dreaded realm of Rules We Changed So Long Ago We Totally Forgot About Them and Didn't Put Them on the Site. You've just perfectly described how multiple actions work in the original Scion system, but we don't do it that way anymore. For one thing, we don't have the differing -2 and -4 dice penalties, because it's overly fiddly and past a few Legend becomes almost completely negligible and pointless; and for another, we no longer use the "lowest of the two dice pools" rule. The original writers were looking to suggest that if you're trying to do two things at once, whichever one you're worse at is going to take more of your attention and therefore make you worse at the one you're normally good at, but in practice that comes out not making very much sense. If I have 20 dice and 28 autos to one roll, and two dice with two autos to the other, it's ridiculous that I suddenly become 93% worse at the first thing that I am actually awesome at, not to mention arbitrary.

So here's the way we handle multiple actions in our games:

If you take two actions, any of them that roll a dice pool suffer a -4 dice penalty from splitting your attention, regardless of whether one is diceless or not. Both roll their own dice pools seperately. Therefore, if you activate Wind's Freedom and attack someone at the same time, your attack suffers -4 dice. If you activate Storm Augmentation and attack someone at the same time, Storm Augmentation rolls its normal Appearance + Presence roll with -4 dice, and your attack rolls as normal with -4 dice. If you activate Wind's Freedom and Lightning Flyer at the same time, the two diceless actions simply happen on the same tick.

And that's pretty much it - very simple. Always the same negative, always applied to all rolls, always use normal dice pools for each action. There are powers in the game that screw around with this, like Blitzkrieg or Multitasking, but they're the exceptions to the rule. We also occasionally allow a player to roll only once if she happens to be doing the same action twice at the same time on the same target, usually to save time at the table (especially if one or both dice pools are very large and take a while to roll), but that's up to what's going on in the scene and how important the Storyteller judges the need for separate results to be.

Honestly, we're pretty sure that lower dice pool rule is something that was written at Hero-level but that wasn't designed for higher-level play, when the difference between a good roll and a bad roll becomes staggeringly vast. It works okay when you're not going to have much more than a five-dice difference; not so much when you might have a fifty-dice difference. It's also obviously designed to try to speed up combat by having players only roll once instead of twice, which is a nice idea, but we generally found that our players spent as much time trying to figure out what dice pool they were rolling and whether or not that was mathematically the best idea as they would have just rolling both anyway.

I just updated the House Rules page so there will be less confusion in the future. Thanks for pointing this one out!

What's in a Name?

Question: How does a god gain an Epithet in other cultures? Also, what does it really do? I mean, they get a name for that culture, but how does it affect the god?

Your capitalization of the word Epithet makes me think that you might be playing in a game that has specific rules about those attached to the Fatebond system. I know those games exist, but we aren't one of them, so unfortunately we can't help with those mechanics much. Refer to your Storyteller, if that's the case!

However, if you're just asking about divine epithets in a general sense, like Sowiljr being called Tlazohtlaloni in Mexico or Jioni being called Apostolia in Delphi, then we can talk about that a little bit. Epithets of this kind do not actually "affect" a god, at least not mechanically, but are important tools for Storytelling and character development, as well as being neat things that players get to come up with for themselves.

Gaining an epithet only requires one thing: the Scion has to become known to that culture as a deity or sacred figure in some way. That culture, once they've realized that the Scion is important and has some kind of important function, then naturally gives her a name in their own language, which is usually descriptive of what she does and how they view her. When Eztli's bloody Icelandic rites were established, the people began calling her Ristablodr (Blood Eagle) to link her to them, and when Folkwardr became famous in the Germanic forests for his exploits as a frightening forest-lurking monster, the people began calling him Ungeheuerlichgurtelschildkröte (Terrible Turtle Monster) as his proper name there. This is something that usually happens organically as a result of what the PCs have been doing in various areas, what kinds of effects they've had on the local people and how those local people can fit them into their pre-existing beliefs. It's also possible to get epithets that don't apply to one of Scion's religions, as one PC did when she accidentally became declared an angel in the Greek Orthodox Church, or when the three male PCs from the Better Next Time game became the Three Satans of a new church dedicated to opposing them.

These epithets are a lot of fun for players, who we encourage to explore what they might be when they're getting close to hitting godhood; taking a minute to look back over their Demigod careers and see where they've already made some new history and religion is a good time, and they get to have some input into how they hope they'll be seen by cultures outside of their own. They can also give the Storyteller some good idea sparks when it comes to plots that might affect the PC in those cultures, which is especially helpful when you have PCs from different pantheons and need to have a way to make a story set in one culture still relevant and interesting to PCs who aren't native to the area.

However, mechanically, epithets don't do anything. They're names and representations of your young god's religious importance in various places, but they don't actually affect her stats or abilities any. Remember that mortal worship does not directly affect any gods in Scion except for the Teotl, so having more people believe in you, regardless of what culture they're from, doesn't actually do anything to your character.

But, being believed in by various cultures is often a by-product of having a worshiping cult there, which can affect a young god by way of Fatebonds, so in that way how they think of you and what their image of you might be is enormously important! It's because of Sowiljr's Aztec cult that worships him as Tlazohtlaloni, for example, that he has Water Fatebound to himself as their god of ponds, and that Fatebond shapes him over the course of time.

Really, it's just one of the cool ways you get to explore being a god and what that means to various people you've interacted with and affected. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes they're really weird and buy you a bunch of Control (Landscaping Truck), but it's something that illustrates what you're already doing in the game, not the other way around.

Born Again Belief

Question: How do you make a new Virtue from an IC perspective? Let's use a hypothetical "Liberty". What does a character have to do to make that a real Virtue he can buy and pass down to his own children?

This answer probably isn't going to be a lot of help to you, but: you don't, and nothing. It is not possible to create a new Virtue within the game.

Virtues are a basic core stat, intended in their spectrum to describe most of the major personality themes that occur across divine heroes and deities in various world mythologies. You don't create a new one as a character within the game any more than you would create a new Attribute. It's hard enough to even change your Virtues in the game - it requires a Magic god screwing with your personality before you're at god-level or the intereference of rare star-rated Relics, and even then is pretty damned uncommon - let alone try to somehow create a new one and replace your own with it and make it something attached to a bloodline which is totally unprecedented. In other words, this is bonkers and we would never allow it.

If you feel that something is really important enough to be a Virtue, we would always say that it should be a core Virtue within the game, attached to the pantheons that should espouse it and available to any Scion at character creation. If you think Liberty needs to be a Virtue that some pantheons support, it needs to be added to the base system right alongside Courage and Harmony and all the others. It should never be something only you or a few people you designate can get, because Virtues are supposed to be fundamentally possible for all.

There's no such thing as a Virtue that only one person, or even only one group of people, has; Virtues are universal and should be things that apply to more than one culture, not personalized super-stats. If you want to set up a particular thing that your people believe in that isn't a game-wide Virtue, Conviction's always a good place to start, as the Virtue that enforces your most important core beliefs; teach your followers and children that that idea is important and Conviction will always be there to make sure they care about it. It might also be a cultural or familial ideal that isn't Virtue-enforced but is still important to you and your children, like the Greek emphasis on beautiful physical form or the Arab respect for all religious figures, even if they don't worship them themselves.

But, alas, we would never allow in-game creation of a Virtue. If that's something your Storyteller is willing to let you go for, you'll have to work out the details with him or her.

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.

Dream On

Question: I'm working on a PSP that uses Vision Quests as a core mechanic. Since these depend on a lot of fasting and deprivation, how should I factor Epic Stamina (especially the Divine Fortitude line of knacks) into how it works?

That is a great question, and also a hard one to answer.

We feel you, because we ran up against the same thing when working on Samsara, where one of the important parts of Hindu spirituality, fasting until the body is cleansed and the mind cleared, was not interacting very well with Epic Stamina. When you can sit around for literally months before you even start feeling peckish, it's a lot harder to meaningfully fast, and while we could say that this is why gods tend to fast for eleventy zillion years at a time in mythology, that wouldn't be very useful to Scions who don't have that kind of time.

Our solution in the Tapasya boon was to create a separate system that totally bypassed Epic Stamina; instead of trying to figure out a scale of penalties or times that would be able to adjust to all the ridiculous bullshit Scions can do to their Stamina + Fortitude rolls, we decided to levy a straight penalty to the stat, proportionate to the benefit granted elsewhere. That does mean that those who are more stamina-worthy are penalized less by Tapasya than those who are already lightweights, but since that's something a Scion has to specialize into with XP, we figured that fell into the realm of player choices. Another place we've dealt with the idea in a separate system is the Prophecy purview, where Stamina still gets to roll as usual but a separate system determines the penalties and damage inflicted based on the results.

So that's one option; you can invent a system that only the PSP uses, therefore bypassing some of the problems of Epic Stamina. The easiest thing to do, if deprivation effects are an important core mechanic of your purview, is to take a cue from the Raise Your Glass knack and unilaterally declare that Epic Stamina doesn't apply when you're using boons from this PSP. That way, gods will still be technically better at it than humans could be, but not by much, and you can work with a much smaller scale of potential Stamina resistance when designing how difficult various boons should be or how much of a physical toll they take (or require) on the user. If you do want Epic Stamina to be in play, you might try mechanics that work based on dots instead of successes, or do something wacky with how the purview interacts with Epic Stamina (your Epic Stamina dots only count inversely to your dots of the PSP, or something).

Or, you can bite the bullet and just deal with the fact that nobody past Legend 3 ever really gets hungry without dire craziness ensuing. Instead of basing the PSP's powers on how hungry a character gets (since you know the answer is probably not very), base it on time invested, other substances ingested, spiritual toll taken (maybe represented by Willpower?) or whatever else you can think of. Maybe using the PSP makes you hungry even if you normally wouldn't need to eat more than once a year. Get creative.

Our suggestion here is to try several different things until you find one that works; don't feel like you have to commit to a mechanic immediately even if it doesn't feel quite right. Choose a few boons and map out what they would be like under a variety of different kinds of systems. Take your time and don't be afraid to mix and match different methods for different boons in the same purview, if that's what works best.

This post brought to you by Dave, who beat the internet to retrieve it! Thanks, Dave!

Branching Out

Question: Hello, I was just curious, and the "Doing It Your Way" post had partially what I think is an answer. Based on what you said about Demigod and buying new boons, the Scion core rulebook states that Demigods can only use purviews associated with their divine parent without a relic. But in your rules, would you allow a demigod to purchase, let's say for instance, Sky 1 if he/she just wants to spend Legend to never take damage from a fall?

Yes. We kicked that rule out of play long, long ago. Demigods can use any purview without a relic, whether associated with their parent or not; they can only purchase up to a level lower than those who have a relic, and can only use their Epic Attributes up to a level lower than their maximum. That means that a demigod who wants to buy Sky boons at Legend 6 can only buy up to level four Sky, and can only use the successes of four dots of Epic Attributes in its activation rolls, but he can do it.

We don't think the original rule is necessarily the worst thing ever; it was obviously trying to illustrate that children of the gods more easily wield purviews their parents are associated with, the same way that the XP discount does, but in practice we found it a little too restricting. It's fine for Heroes to start with limited purview options, when they're barely more than humans and just feeling out their beginning set of powers, but at the Demigod level we want them to be able to branch out and make new divine identities for themselves apart from their parents. Restricting them to relics only for non-associated purviews all the way through Demigodhood is a little too much of a stricture, in our opinion, so we leave the unassociated penalties in place but allow access to any purview the Scion might want to invest in.

Pew Pew

When looking at Asha, with puriew-lasers in mind, it seems that Animal does not counter anything. Is this intentional? and if not, what could it counter?

If you're using the table in the Ashavan boon as your template for purview attacks against Titans - which is a good idea, and I recommend it! - you will indeed notice that Animal is not represented there. Neither are Earth, Fertility, Fire, Sky or Water, as a matter of fact. However, if you scroll up just slightly to the Amesha Spenta boon, you'll find all six missing purviews as large as life, along with their opposing elements.

Asha uses those six purviews to represent the elements of the Amesha Spentas that serve Ahura Mazda, important powers in Persian mythology, so they have their own boon and slightly different interaction with the purview than everything else. However, you can still use their table along with the larger Ashavan one to get a good starting selection of what purviews might oppose what Titanrealms.