Moments of Perfection

Question: Does Principals of Motion allow a Greek scion to add Brawl and Arete (Brawl) and Academics and Arete (Academics) to his normal attack rolls? That could be a lot of dice... Does Fight with your Head last the whole scene?

Yes, actually it does! Provided he pays the Legend cost Principles of Motion spells out for his level of Academics, a Scion may add his Arete: Academics, even if he also already has Arete: Brawl (or any of the other skills affected by Principles of Motion or Applied Academics. If he doesn't pay the Legend cost, he'll have only his normal Arete dice for Brawl.

Arete represents the fact that a Greek Scion is awesomely skilled at certain things; if he's awesomely skilled at Academics, awesome, he has Arete dice and is beyond even most gods' abilities to master the subject. Principles of Motion and Applied Academics are knacks that specifically allow Scions to focus their academic prowess into concrete real-world applications, so it only makes sense that a Greek Scion with boatloads of Arete should be able to focus that as well. That does mean that double-dipping may occur if the Scion has Arete for both Academics and the other ability he's rolling, but that's okay; that's representing that he's A) superlatively awesome at brawling, B) superlatively awesome at the theories and ideas of brawling thanks to his book-learning, and C) possesses the kind of specialized genius needed to apply the one to the other. It is a lot of dice - the maximum, at Legend 12, would be +92 dice if he has all the Arete he can get in both skills - but that's what he built himself to do along with heavy XP investment, and those are the shining moments when he should be excelling at his perfected skills. He can go wild.

As for Fight With Your Head: yes, it lasts for the scene. Once you have used it to effectively lower your opponent's DV, it will remain lowered until he dies, you die, the scene ends, or you use FWYH again on a different stat, at which point his DV is restored to normal. I do see that it doesn't say that, though, so we'll make a point to update the knack to avoid confusion. Thanks for pointing it out!

This post totally feels like it's about Sophia, even though it's not.

Look, Now Look Again

Question: This is a two-part relic. What do you think? Doppleganger Stone: A stone necklace with ancient writing on it. A Scion who possess it can do two things: suppress their Legend by spending 5x the player's Legend score in Legend and choosing which level the player wishes descend to. The player loses access to all powers above that level. Part two: the player can generate a Legend 1 copy of themselves by splitting off a piece of themselves (hair, blood, etc.) and merging it with the stone, and spending Legend points equal to five times the number of days they wish the copy to exist. This item is only usable by Scions that are legend 8 and below (Scions who still have enough humanity to generate a double). The Scion also places a part of their psyche into the stone as well, causing minuses to Integrity and Fortitude rolls.

Wow. This is ambitious, to say the least. Let's dive into it.

First of all, we have no idea if this relic is overpowered - or, well, okay, it is overpowered no matter what, but we don't know by how much because you didn't include a relic rating. Something like this is going to be way above the usual five dots Scions start with, and possibly out of reach of most Demigods, too. There is a whole lot going on there and we aren't sure exactly who you were designing this for or why.

To start with, the first power on this relic, that of lowering your Legend rating, is already a Birthright available to all Scions at god-level; it's called Avatar and allows them to become anywhere from two to ten dots of Legend, depending on how many dots of the Birthright they invested in, and is the form in which most gods probably visit the World. There's nothing the first power on your relic is doing that Avatar doesn't already do cheaper and better; details on the Birthright are available in Scion: God on page 37, or you can also check out this old post on our house rules for it.

The only possible reason we could see for wanting this Birthright instead of an Avatar is to have access to the ability to shed Legend before you're a god, and frankly we don't think that's a good reason. When you're not yet a god yourself, trying to divest yourself of your divinity doesn't really make sense. It looks like it might have been conceived as a tool to cheat the system and avoid Fatebonds entirely once you're Legend 6+ and in danger of being caught up in the coils of destiny, but not only is that not a good reason, it's going to leave you behind your fellows in points if it works and in reality probably won't most of the time anyway, usually just getting you immediately Fatebound as soon as you use it when you're blowing 30-40 Legend in one shot.

You didn't mention whether this regression to a lower Legend rating is permanent or not in your writeup. We are assuming it's not, because if it were permanent that would be bananas and we would never allow it in a game. Things that permanently drop your Legend rating - other than renouncing your Scionhood and retiring from Legend - are not a good idea to introduce into the game, because as soon as someone can do that from an outside agency instead of their own powers as with the Avatar Birthright, it becomes possible for it to be weaponized, which is just not a great idea for the game. Not only does it make no mythic sense - gods are not exactly wandering around turning into humans, with the exception of course of the Deva avatars and things of that nature - but it's one of those things that would be incredibly crippling and unfair if someone else did it to your character. If Hephaestus can make a relic that allows the user to drop in Legend, I don't see why he couldn't make one that allows the user to drop someone else's Legend - and that would be the worst if someone did it to your PCs, you know? Besides, Legend is a representation of your fame and awesomeness and divine mark on the universe, so it's not a stat that's as easy to drop as an Attribute; dropping in Legend involves the world forgetting who you are and your great deeds and creations being lost or destroyed, and a single relic isn't going to do that.

So: for a lot of reasons, this doesn't work for us, even though we can see you were making an effort to balance it by giving it a humungoid Legend cost. Its premise is just not good idea bears.

The second part has a better idea at its base, but it would definitely need tweaking. At the moment, it's too vague for us to really tell exactly what it can do; when you say the Scion "places a part of their psyche" into the stone, do you mean that just owning this relic gives that Scion penalties to Integrity and Fortitude? That's not a bad idea, since penalties that make sense for the relic's powers are sometimes a good way to balance it out. Do you mean that using the stone's power to create a doppelganger inflicts these penalties, and if so, how much are they and how long do they last? As long as the copy? Longer? Shorter? Permanently, so that the relic gets more and more injurious the more you use it? These things all affect whether or not the thing has a hope of being balanced, and some are distinctly better ideas than others. Also, do you mean that by placing the Scion's psyche into these doppelgangers, they think in tandem with him or he sees through their senses? If they're separate creatures, useful for running errands and acting as spies, that's a pretty neat idea, but if he's able to see through their eyes and act through them as if they were himself, this is way hella broken ohno overpowered. In that case, it's just Psychopomp's Co-Location, but non-gods can use it, it doesn't cost permanent Willpower and you can use it unlimitedly to have as many copies as you're willing to pay for. The high Legend cost doesn't remotely begin to cope with how overpowered that is.

We'd say that if you removed anything about you acting through the copies and just allowed them to be separate creatures that take orders from you, this is pretty neat. They're great as spies, errand-runners or scouts, and the fact that they're identical to you begs for identity confusion and shenanigans. You'll need to codify exactly how identical they really are - for example, are they identical in a lab test? Do they have the same personalities? How high does someone with Epic Perception need to roll to tell them apart? And so on and so forth.

Also, we'd point out that if you're using our rules, this already exists as an Illusion boon that is also called Doppelganger, easily accessible at Legend 4 and above. If that's a possibility in your game, you might as well just get that and spend your relic points elsewhere on something that's more unique and attuned to your character.

If you're out there in the woods of the internet, question-asker, please feel free to come clarify what you're looking for or explain things that might have been left out!

I Cast a Spell on You

Question: If they have the XP points, can a character with Magic make a spell up on the fly and then pay for it at the end of the session?

Hmm, this is one where we may not be a lot of help to you, so we apologize in advance. While the Scion books encourage players to invent new spells for the Magic purview, we actually don't allow that; Magic-users are limited to the spells on our website (although we do our best to listen to player ideas for new powers and add them to the game if they're good ones).

We do that for a few reasons, but the major one is simply that writing spells is really, really hard. Seriously. A given spell has to be a power level commensurate with all other boons at that level, has to make mythic and story sense as something that someone in the Magic purview (which revolves around manipulating Fate in various ways) would have, and needs to avoid duplicating other powers in the game, of which there are oodles. It takes us a good long while to write new boons that we think are balanced, useful and appropriate for the game, and while our players are smart and creative people, most of the time we don't really want to deal with them continually presenting us with new powers that we have to try to vet, edit and/or reject. The intent of the RAW is noble - to provide the purview room to grow, since theoretically the ways one could monkey about with Fate are endless - but putting it on the shoulders of a player, who is naturally biased toward his character, seldom yields good results.

We also tend to feel that if a given spell is awesome and resonant enough to be allowed for one PC, it should be available to all who use the Magic purview, so we'd rather just work on writing new boons to add to the pile that they have to choose from instead of working the proces sin reverse. There's also the issue of Magic being the only purview that allows a player to write her own new powers, and that's pretty shitty for all those non-Magic users in the band who are sitting around wondering why they don't get to invent new superpowers whenever they don't have the right option on their toolbelt.

So, the short answer: no, because in our games you can never make up a spell on your own so the question is moot.

When it comes to whether or not you can buy powers with XP in the middle of the game, however, that we do have guidelines for. We allow Scions to purchase any power they wish in the middle of play as long as they are Legend 5 or higher; Heroes don't yet have the more-divine-than-human flexibility that Demigods do, so they have to develop more slowly, but everyone of higher Legend can grab Halo of Fire in the middle of a combat and bust off surprise moves to their heart's content. However, we would never allow a Scion to pay XP at the end of the game; if you can't afford it right now when you want to buy it, you can't get it, period. If you would have to wait until the end of the game to have enough XP to purchase it, you'll also have to wait until then to officially buy it, and it will be the next game before you can use it in play.

This is a house rule, though - Storytellers always run how and when characters can spend XP differently, so that'll be up to the sole discretion of whomever's helming your table. Some allow you to spend XP whenever you have it, however you want, while others require it to be spent only at the end of a game, only at the beginning of a game, or even only at pre-designated points in the story or when major events happen. Check in with your Storyteller if you're not sure of the rules there, and if you are the Storyteller, roll with whatever you think will make the most sense for your game.

The Virtuoso

Question: Could you explain Virtues? What do they do, and most importantly when you have to roll for Extremity?

We knew this question was coming because of comments on other posts, but damn, it is a big and meaty one. This is maybe something that should actually get a page in our House Rules section someday, the same as Natures, but for now we'll do a quick and moderately thorough run through it.

Virtues are the manifestation of the most strongly-held and important values of your pantheon (and, by extension, the ancient culture that worshiped them). When you become a Scion, you gain these Virtues as soon as your divine blood awakens in your veins, connecting you to the morals of your pantheon as well as their powers; if you come from a pantheon that cherishes courageous charging into the breach and refusal to back down in the face of overwhelming power, you'll have some Courage, or if you come from a pantheon that believes that the rule of law and government is all that keeps the world from plunging into chaotic despair, you'll have some Order. Some Scions have slightly different Virtues from their pantheon, but the more different their values, the more difficult it is to access that pantheon's secret powers (so their PSP costs more XP to buy).

There are twelve core Virtues: Conviction, Courage, Duty, Endurance, Expression, Harmony, Intellect, Loyalty, Order, Piety, Valor and Vengeance. Each Virtue a Scion (or god) possesses shapes what they do, how they react to events and what their divine personality will eventually become. It would take longer than we have today to talk about all the minutiae of what they do, but here's a quick bulleted list of what it means to have one of these Virtues and what happens when you try to act against them.

• Conviction. A pantheon with Conviction stands behind their beliefs, no matter what the cost or how compelling the argument against them. A Scion with Conviction knows certain truths about the world and himself and will always support them, regardless of the cost to himself. Conviction is the Virtue you see most often in action for people who believe zealously in a religion, support a political cause or are dedicated to a certain ideal above all others. To illustrate this mechanically, we ask Scions with Conviction to keep a list of the things that are their beliefs that Conviction applies to, which range anywhere from selfish (Shadan, who has "always get something out of every situation" as one of his convictions) to the antagonistic (Eztli, who has "Norsemen are evil and should be destroyed" as one of her convictions) to the noble and lofty (Faruza, who has "truth may never be hidden" as one of her convictions). Characters who attempt any action (or inaction - standing by can be just as bad, depending on the belief in question) against one of their Convictions must roll that Virtue; if they get too many successes or can't afford the Willpower to fight it, they enter Virtue Extremity and become insane zealots, mortified by their failure to uphold their beliefs and determined to do so at all costs. Note for STs: Some players aren't sure what their character's convictions are, especially at the beginning of the game, or try to game the system by having very few or very narrow ones. In those cases, keep your own list of their beliefs, based on what they do in roleplaying and what they claim happened in their backstories, and make them roll according to that. If they complain, help explain to them what Conviction is about again.
• Courage. A pantheon with Courage is utterly fearless and prizes individual bravery above all things, rewarding moxy and severely punishing or abhorring anything they perceive as cowardice. A Scion with Courage never shies away from danger, avoids problems or lets someone else take point in order to stay safer herself. Courage is the Virtue you most often see in action for berserker soldiers, protesters who refuse to move when they are punished for their actions or scientists throwing themselves into toxic environments to finish their experiments. Courage is pretty easy to run from a Storyteller's standpoint; if there are dangerous monsters, the lady with Courage needs to fight them, and if a player ever says "Let's not do that because it's dangerous/there's a safer way/I'm afraid X might happen", remind them that they're directly acting against their Courage to not dive in headfirst. Characters who attempt to avoid taking courageous actions or who display cowardice in any way may hit Virtue Extremity and become ravening, insane berserkers, hurling themselves at everything and anything in their paths, determined to make up for their failure by destroying any potential challenge near them. Note for STs: Courage is very straightforward; it doesn't care whether something is a good idea, only if it's a dangerous one. Players are prone to arguing that they shouldn't have to do things that might get them killed, but that's a good time to remind them that that's the exact opposite of Courage. If you're worrying about getting killed, you're doing Courage wrong.
• Duty. A pantheon with Duty is utterly dedicated to the idea that each individual has personal responsibilities that they must fulfill, no matter what the odds arrayed against them, for the greater good. A Scion with Duty has a job to do and does it until the bitter end, always follows through on things that are required of her and never tries to pass her duties off to someone else or do only the bare minimum to get by. Duty is the Virtue you most often see in action when a captain goes down with the ship, a bodyguard takes a bullet or a spy who knows she's about to be discovered manages to get a last desperate message home to her superiors. Characters with Duty can't disobey orders, be lazy or slapdash in their responsibilities, put their own desires before their duties or make decisions to follow a course other than the one they know they're supposed to be working toward. If they do any of those things and enter Virtue Extremity, they become self-destructive psychopaths who pursue completing their duties so stringently and exclusively that they can and will immolate themselves in the process, and if they succeed will turn to doing the same thing with their next responsibility. Note for STs: While we don't do a full list for Duty the way we do for Conviction and Vengeance, you'll still need to know what a character considers her duty to know when you should make her roll. Some are easy - instructions from divine parents or the Scion's pantheon, for example, or things that she's told to do by commanders or employers - but others may be more freeform, such as Eztli's belief that it is her Duty to defend her husband because her society would require it of her. If you're having trouble knowing what a character considers her Duty, a list can't hurt.
• Endurance. A pantheon with Endurance believes that stoicism, steadfastness and unmoving dedication are among the most important ideas in the universe. A Scion with Endurance eschews meaningless pleasures, refuses to rest and weathers even the most difficult situations with the stony indifference of a mountainside. Endurance is the Virtue you most often see in action for holy men who fast and meditate for decades at a time, exhausted travelers who forge on on their hands and knees if they have to until they reach their destination, or torture victims who remain tight-lipped and uncommunicative no matter what horrors are visited on them. From a mechanical perspective, we often make players roll against their Endurance if they're trying to rest (including sleeping to heal wounds), wait around or become idle for any reason at any time, or refuse to do something because they think it might take too long or be too difficult. Characters who attempt to rest or ease their ways too much may hit Virtue Extremity and become psychotically obsessed with their own ability to endure, dedicating themselves to finding the most painful and difficult ways to accomplish the task at hand and then performing them until they drop. Note for STs: Endurance is a big pain in the ass, especially for Heroes who sometimes really need to spend a night at a hotel to recover for the next day, but that's what the player's signing up for. Remind them that this isn't just weird insomnia; it's their need to be doing something, to be productive and active, like a genius scientist who only sleeps two hours a day to have more time to work on experiments or a supplier who knows he's ahead of schedule but still won't take a break in the name of getting those shipments there even one hour earlier.
• Expression. A pantheon with Expression values the creation, expression and presentation of the individual self, whether it's through passionate discussion or moving artwork. A Scion with Expression never holds back her true thoughts, appreciates the expressions of others no matter what they might contain and fights against censorship wherever she encounters it. Expression is the Virtue you most often see in action for street artists who make their mark in spite of the possible consequences, curators who collect and display art in all its forms or dissidents who stand up and speak out no matter how dangerous or inconvenient doing so might be. Scions have to roll their Expression any time they want to stifle someone else's form of expression, let someone else tell a story or explain something instead of themselves, destroy or damage any kind of artwork or fail to find a way around someone trying to silence them. If they do and hit Virtue Extremity, they become slaves to their insane need to create, finding ways to build and express as loudly and shockingly as possible, forcing everyone to pay attention to what they're doing and be shocked and affected by what they see. Note for STs: Expression's easy to forget about, but characters that have it need to be front and center, always expressing themselves, and they can never accept censorship or quiet retiring avoidance without upsetting their Virtue. Also keep in mind that any Scions doing large-scale property damage may have problems if any art, architecture or promising artists or speakers are damaged or in danger.
• Harmony. A pantheon with Harmony believes in the incredible importance of the balance of the universe, where everything must complement, oppose and support the rest of its environment or risk disastrous consequences. A Scion with Harmony preserves balance, fosters equality and never allows anything that threatens this delicate balancing act or might irrevocably change the natural order. Harmony is the Virtue you most often see in action for environmental conservationists, human rights activists and negotiating moderators who try to find a solution that helps both parties in need and society as a whole. We require Scions to roll their Harmony whenever anything seriously threatens or damages the natural balance, which includes when they don't work to prevent or alleviate environmental hazards such as pollution, extinction or deforestation, when they allow serious imbalances of human society such as slavery or cannibalism, or when they allow the divine to intrude too much into the world of the mortal or vice versa, most obviously by failing to remove Titanspawn who are loose in the World. If they hit Virtue Extremity, they become fanatically dedicated psychopaths who will do anything - including murdering, taking hostages or giving up their own lives - to make sure that whatever dangers to cosmic harmony are present are worked against and defeated. Note for STs: Worldly environmental concerns are easy, but the balance between mortal and divine is also a major issue for Scions. It's not good for the World to have divine or Titanic things in it too much, so Scions with Harmony need to prevent that from happening, and conversely mortals were never meant for the worlds of the divine and need to be kept away from them. When someone has the brilliant idea of just moving their entire mortal worshiper population to their Sanctum, it's always the person with Harmony who flips their shit and shuts that retirement plan down.
• Intellect. A pantheon with Intellect prizes intelligence, deep thinking, teaching and enlightenment, as well as making sure that all people have access to these things. A Scion with Intellect needs to learn and then share what she learns with others, and can't abide the destruction of knowledge or the willful continuance of ignorance. Intellect is the Virtue you most often see in action when teachers provide knowledge to others, preservationists prevent the loss of ancient knowledge and artifacts or enthusiastic students travel to faraway locations to find those elusive secrets. People with Intellect will run into problems if they fail to correct misinformation or stupidity in others around them, if they withhold information or enlightenment for any reason, if they allow knowledge to be destroyed or obscured or if they pass up opportunities to learn. If they do Virtue Extremity over one of those things, they become incapable of doing anything but analyzing and sorting through information and knowledge, unable to make any decisions or come up with any coherent ideas from the overload of internal thought. Note for STs: Intellect Extremity is the only one that is not active and does not involve a Scion doing something - rather, it prevents them from doing anything. If the asymmetry bothers you, consider instead having Extremity do something similar to the other Virtues, causing Scions to go batshit and start pursuing knowledge, forcing others to learn and trailing destruction as they do so.
• Loyalty. A pantheon with Loyalty believes in the importance of comradeship and brotherhood as some of the highest and most admirable ideals in the universe. A Scion with Loyalty always has his friends' backs, never leaves a man behind and will go to the ends of the earth to help someone she respects. Loyalty is the Virtue you most often see in action when someone lets himself be used as the fall guy to keep a friend out of trouble, leaves home and family to help a friend in need or shields a comrade with her own body. Having Loyalty means never letting a comrade be hurt on your watch, always coming to their aid no matter how bad the situation or how much it's their fault, and never turning your back on them if they need something, even if it's painful for you personally. If a Scion with Loyalty goes into Virtue Extremity, he immediately becomes slavishly and uncontestedly loyal to his comrades, doing anything and everything they tell him to without complaint, incapable of refusing or arguing so long as he can do what is asked of him. Note for STs: This is one of the Virtues that players most often try to fudge, usually with some variation on "I don't like that guy, so I don't have to apply my Loyalty to him." You can have them keep a list of people Loyalty applies to if you want to, but the easy rule of thumb is that Loyalty should be active for A) anyone in their pantheon, B) any family member, and C) their bandmates, as well as anyone else they choose. Unless they have a good reason not to include that person - i.e., they have Vengeance or Conviction against a specific person - those categories should usually activate Loyalty. Loyalty doesn't care if the person is being a little shit right now or even actively campaigning against you; their bad behavior doesn't ever excuse you trying to turn on them or ignore them when they're in need.
• Order. A pantheon with Order upholds law, reason and the rule of authority over society, believing that there is a divine order to the universe that must be followed to avoid the destructive influence of Chaos. A Scion with Order follows laws, upholds authority, prevents crime and respects the chain of command, believing that the system is ultimately good and works to better the world. Order is the Virtue you most often see in action when vigilantes go out of their way to bring criminals to justice, the innocently accused go to trial knowing that they will be acquitted or those who know they have done wrong willingly accept the punishment bestowed on them. When Scions have Order, they find it difficult to disobey instructions from authority figures, break any laws (including stealing things, killing people, jaywalking or freeing slaves in societies where they're legal) or refuse to support a society's customs and laws, whether or not they agree with them. If they do go into Virtue Extremity, they will seek out, turn in and punish lawbreakers (including themselves) at any cost, becoming unstoppable vigilantes with zero tolerance. Note for STs: Order doesn't distinguish between the severity of a crime; all crimes are equally bad and unacceptable, so Scions are going to need to roll against their Order to allow littering or noise pollution as well as murder or assault. Order also applies to the actual law in the place that you happen to be, so the fact that something that isn't illegal at home doesn't mean that your Order can ignore it if it's illegal where it's happening right now. Scions get a pass if they don't realize something is illegal when it happens, but they'll still have to roll if they later discover it was illegal and fail to bring the perpetrator to justice, or wilfully avoid learning local laws for the express purpose of not knowing the rules. Also keep in mind that Order cares about the letter of the law, not the spirit; if you let someone off because you think they have extenuating circumstances or were screwed by an unfair law, you'll still need to roll your Order.
• Piety. A pantheon with Piety believes in their own importance as paramount - they are the most powerful, worthy and pivotal beings in the universe and they expect the respect due to them as a result. A Scion with Piety believes utterly in her pantheon and obeys its dictates and those of its individual gods without question, as well as spreading the respect and worship of them as far as he can. Piety is the Virtue you most often see in action when missionaries go into dangerous territory to preach their religion to new peoples, heroes commit atrocities they would normally abhor in order to make sure their pantheon is victorious or true believers allow themselves to be destroyed rather than recanting their beliefs. If a Scion doesn't do what he knows his pantheon wants, fails to tell others who don't know about them about all their glorious awesomeness, allows others to be misinformed or disrespectful of the gods of his pantheon or gives any other pantheon or religion more props, he's likely to trigger a Piety roll on himself. And if that Piety roll causes him to go into Virtue Extremity, he becomes so dedicated to his pantheon that he refuses to use his obviously superior talents for anyone else, leaving mortals, unbelievers and members of other pantheons to fend for themselves, even if they die. Note for STs: Piety is a directed Virtue, which means that it applies to a specific group of people, in this case your pantheon. If a Scion gains Piety during play from some source other than their pantheon - the Bogovi are critical offenders here - then that Piety is likely to be pointed toward the source they got it from, not their pantheon. Having Piety for a pantheon other than your own often leads to complicated and messy situations, but it can happen. For those having trouble differentiating Piety from Loyalty, think of Loyalty as supporting individuals to whom you are loyal, while Piety is supporting a group and religion to which you are faithful; they can overlap but don't always have to.
• Valor. A pantheon with Valor believes in fair play, even odds, protection of the weak and the glory that can only come from surmounting a true and equal challenge. A Scion with Valor never allows the weak to be overpowered by the strong, fights only under fair and equal circumstances and refuses to compromise her honor even when overwhelming odds are stacked against her. Valor is the Virtue you most often see in action when a fighter challenges an opponent to single combat, a policeman draws a criminal's fire to redirect him away from innocents or a referee enforces a handicap on an opponent with an unfair advantage. Valor rolls are triggered whenever a Scion cheats in a fight or backstabs someone from concealment, tries to walk away from a glorious combat, allows the abuse of the weak at the hands of the strong or kicks someone when they're down. If she goes into Virtue Extremity, she is so overcome by her dishonorable actions that she determines to wipe them away by fighting the first opponent of equal or greater strength she sees, and either defeating them in honorable combat or dying in the attempt. Note for STs: Valor not only governs the actions of the Scions that have it, it also causes them to try to force others in their band to follow its dictates. This means that a lot of strategies - killing an unconscious or paralyzed opponent, sneak attacking or attacking with greater numbers - will offend a Valorous Scion's sensibilities and consequently not work most of the time since they'll need to either sabotage them or risk going crazy. It doesn't matter how pragmatic or effective a strategy is; if it's not honorable straight-up combat, Valor's not okay with it. In mechanical terms, a higher-Legend person fighting a lower-Legend one is not a fair match even if it's single combat, nor are equal-Legend opponents evenly matched if one is a combat powerhouse and the other fragile, ill-equipped or already heavily injured. Several lower-Legend opponents on a single higher-Legend one can be a fair fight; use your judgment about what constitutes a fair matchup.
• Vengeance. A pantheon with Vengeance is dedicated to avenging any slight or injury done to them, exacting furious and instant justice against those who anger them. A Scion with Vengeance never forgets and never forgives, never lets a wrong against him go unredressed and refuses to lay a feud to rest until the bitter end. Vengeance is the Virtue you most often see in action when a dictator throws caution to the winds to keep attacking a hated enemy he's losing against, a scorned lover absconds with all his paramours worldly goods or a victim of assault hunts down his attacker and sells him out to a mob boss. Like people with Conviction, we require people with Vengeance to keep a list of those they most despise, and they can't pass up an opportunity to strike against them in some way whenever they have the chance, never showing mercy and always making sure they pay many times over for whatever they once did to anger them. If they fail to do this and go into Virtue Extremity, they immediately stop doing anything but trying to absolutely ruin the people they've sworn vengeance against, going to any lengths and refusing to focus on anything else to make sure that person gets what's coming to them. Note for STs: Like Conviction, Vengeance is a Virtue players try to cheat by putting as few people or groups of people on their list as possible, so make sure to call them out and make them include people who have committed serious sins against them (assaulted them, stolen their relics, utterly humiliated them in front of gods and so on), although they can occasionally let lesser sins slide by, particularly if they do something at the time to make sure their displeasure is known. Anyone a Scion channels their Vengeance against (whether in an attack, damage, attempt to use a power on, whatever) is automatically added to the Vengeance list. Also note that groups of people - for example, "fire giants" or "police officers" - are also fair game for Vengeance, and Scions should have some of these involved after a while, too. The best rule of thumb is that if an individual person is important, they can go on the Vengeance list singly; if they're not or they only represent some larger power, the group they belong to should go on the list instead.

That was the short version, you guys.

Hopefully that gives a pretty good, if not totally complete, vision of how Virtues work and what they do within a game. The flip side of Virtues is of course Virtue channeling - using your limited number of times per story you can call on the power of your Virtue to bolster a roll you make to perform an action. In those cases, you have to be able to justify to the Storyteller why you're using that Virtue right now; for example, if you're trying to build a robot and need to add to your roll, you might channel Expression because you're creating something new and amazing, Endurance because you're continuing to labor over a long and exhausting project or Duty if it's something you know your people need, but Harmony probably wouldn't be a good fit if the machine doesn't have anything in particular to do with aiding the natural balance of the universe. If you can overcome a Virtue for a scene - either by not rolling any successes on it or by paying Willpower to steel yourself against it temporarily - you can do things you normally wouldn't be able to, but you also still can't channel it against things that are inappropriate for it.

Virtues and their Extremities are a brilliant addition to the original Scion line because they are constantly evident in the stories of the gods and heroes of Legend; they charge into battle with roaring Courage, demand fair fights with honorable Valor, enforce divine justice with uncompromising Order or absolutely wreck their opponents' lives with destructive Vengeance. Scions are those same heroes and will become those same gods, and they have within them the potential to occasionally resist those values when they must, follow them when they can and go berserk about them if they're pushed too far. It's an awesome system and definitely one of our favorite things Scion does to tie modern heroes to the ancient epics.

I'm tired of typing now, but if you have questions about Virtues, hit us in the comments. Because whether or not a Virtue is rolled against for Extremity or appropriate for a channel is up to the final decision of the Storyteller, there will be variation in how different Virtues appear across different games, but we're happy to talk about generalizations anyway.

Who's the Fool?

Question: What did y'all think of the Scion April Fools Supplement? Anything salvageable?

Question: So have you guys seen the new Scion Extras (tedious sub-titlename here) expansion, and what are your thoughts on it?

Question: I realise that I have been April Fooled by Onyx Path Publishing with their new Scion 'expansion' - I'll blame not seeing it till the 5th, but did anyone else see this?

Question: I don't know if you guys have been asked this and just not got around to answering it, but have you guys checked out Scion: Extras yet, and if so, which, if any, of the gods in it should be playable?

Jeez, you guys - yes, we saw it. :)

We were actually all on our toes back when Onyx Path announced a Scion bonus product, ready to bring you our pithy pronouncements and thoughtful reviews, but as soon as we saw that it came out on the first, we realized our error. Nothing in-depth to talk about here; it's an April Fool's joke release, which pretty much says it all. It's utterly silly, so we don't have anything wise to say about it, and we figure you can enjoy the silliness without any help from us.

Also, it's quite clear that the supplement is absolutely making fun at those of us who take The All-Holy Mythological Accuracy seriously in our games, and we definitely fall under that umbrella. There are many different kinds of Scion players out there, and the supplement takes shots at all of them - those who are more concerned with tiny nitty gritty combat details than with everything else in the game, those who turn purple whenever someone puts an accent mark on a god's name wrong, those who don't understand why this game doesn't include rules for playing a space cowboy bride of Cthulhu, and everybody in between. They're teasing us - all of us, you, me, the whole kit and kaboodle - so shoot, what do you say about that?

To the fourth questioner, we've already statted Xochiquetzal as playable for our games, and we're considering Tenjin for when we do our Amatsukami rewrite, while Cocamama is currently set up by us as a Titan Avatar in the Apu supplement. The rest of the provided gods we probably wouldn't consider Legend 12.

For the first questioner up there - no, not really. The supplement's obviously not intended to be serious (and you can see the writer talking about how she presented it as deadpan to play up the humor over here!) and, unsurprisingly, that means most of it is pretty much bogus for our usual hack-it-up, make-it-accurate purposes. Shit is insane - nobody's associations make sense, Scions are obviously statted for shits and giggles (and by the way, anybody recognize that suspiciously familiar game designer?), and the whole thing hangs on the ridiculous premise that Scions of gods who aren't Legend 12 or of front-and-center importance are some kind of second-string beings who are vaguely effective at best and sad jokes at worst. Even the title's a joke, referring to that concept of Extras in Scion: Hero that we hated and jettisoned back in the dark ages.

These are all things that we would abhor in a regular supplement, but since this ain't one, just enjoy the satire and move on. We ought to have known, really - we all know Scion's second edition is in the works and that it's never been one of their top sellers, so it wouldn't make sense to put out a serious supplement for the old, ending game line at this juncture. But you know us Scion fans - we're all so starved for content that we tend to get excited whenever a dev puts a whisker out of his or her cave.

And hey, of course, if you love the offbeat humor and it's the sort of flavor and style you already enjoy in your Scion games, you can use whatever, whomever and whichever out of the Extras that you want to! Go nuts. Ain't nobody the boss of your games, and especially if you're looking for something a little more goofy, over-the-top or all-inclusive, there's no reason not to. Sing "Scion Style" to your heart's content.

To be honest, John and I disagree about the supplement to a certain extent. I think it was probably meant to be all in good fun; it looks like it was intended for a quick laugh, that its pokes at the Scion community were meant to be gentle teasing and that the writer, who was briefly active on the forums after it came out, had no intention but to bring us some wacky joy. In light of all that, I'm in favor of letting it float on by as the piece of whimsy it is and not worry about it further. John, on the other hand, was a little more upset; he pointed out that, when you have a loyal community of players who wait literally years between releases and have kept the game alive for a long time on the strength of their love for it, telling them they're getting new content and then giving them an April Fool's release instead is a bit like promising a hungry child some food and then handing him a wax apple. There's no denying that we were disappointed, and the needling of the fans on top of that, lighthearted though it might have been intended to be, seemed more like taunting to him as a result. His exact phrasing was something along the lines of "like jocks making fun of D&D players in the cafeteria", by which I think he meant that the teasing tone didn't come through and it instead came off feeling like mean-spirited mockery of players who feel strongly about elements in their games.

But, whatever your feelings on it, it's out there and you can love it or leave it however you want to! As of this writing, it's still free on DTRPG, although I believe I saw someone mention that it might not be forever so you should grab it while it's hot.

All we ask is that you guys not come to us yelling about how it's canon that Xochiquetzal has Fire and is married to Mictlantecuhtli. Because we will laugh at you.

No, We Can't All Just Get Along

Question: In your game, what transpired to make the Trimurti, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca the enemies of Odin?

Two separate events, actually.

Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca join the rest of their pantheon in hating most of Odin's guts. While the two pantheons were supposedly allies, working together and sealed as neighbors by the marriage of their children Geoff and Sangria, Odin was behind the scenes attempting to annex as much of Mexico as he could get away with, partly out of his usual Odin-esque desire for conquest and expansion and partly because he was hoping that entangling his Fate with that of the Aztlanti might help him get out of Ragnarok. The Mexican gods, embroiled as they were in fighting several Titans at the time, didn't notice what he was doing until serious damage had been done, and things eventually came to a cataclysmic and destructive head when they confronted each other. I won't say exactly what happened because it's going to be the subject of some of the upcoming stories about Geoff's band, but the rift between the two pantheons was massive and the vast majority of the Aztlanti now view Odin as a traitor to their alliance.

As for the Trimurti, in their case they were the aggressors. After having serious problems on the home front with a certain one of their members deciding to go batshit and try to uncreate a lot of stuff, they shanghaied Aurora's band into helping them defeat him and clean up the mess. Unfortunately, they didn't ask first, and being that they tend to have a somewhat lofty opinion of themselves, they really didn't feel like they needed to. When Aurora expressed some concern that their divine parents were likely to kick their asses for haring off on a trans-continental Indian adventure instead of doing what they'd been told to do, the Trimurti rolled up into Asgard and Odin's feasting hall while he was having dinner, dropped off the kids and declared in front of most of the Aesir that nobody was to punish them or they would have to answer to them. Then they went home, blissfully uncaring of the epic insult they had just delivered to the king of the Aesir, and the band had to deal with the unpleasant fallout.

While the shenanigans with the Trimurti are not ready to make it to fiction for a while yet, you can see some of the ramp-up of the problems between the Aesir and Aztlanti in some of the stories. In Foundations, the first evidence of problems in Mexico appears and the first accusations of Norse involvement are leveled; in Drums of War the Norse confirm what they're up to but have not yet erupted into actual conflict; in Bone, Muscle, Heart and Sinew Sangria and her fellow Aztlanti Scions begin dealing with the problem and attempting to safeguard their people, and in What Dreams May Come Woody's band sees the Aesir contingent hard at work in Mexico and is warned about the fighting that has begun to break out.

Raising the Ceiling

Question: I know this is probably a stupid question, but I just want to be sure: are Epic Attributes always active, in that you can lift much, run fast, and see far without having to spend Legend? I'm not talking about knacks, but the basic Epic Attributes themselves and the bonuses they give.

It's not a stupid question! Scion treats attributes, powers and skills differently than many other games, and it never hurts to check and make sure.

Epic Attributes are always active. They are a "magical power", but only in the sense that they transcend what a normal human could do; in all other ways, they're merely the extension of the normal attributes that everyone in the universe has access to. Epic Strength is an extension of normal Strength, illustrating that where a mortal creature can only be up to so strong, a divine one can zoom past that barrier and leave it cringing in the dust. Someone with high Epic Perception isn't using a power in the sense of boons and knacks, but is rather simply that much hellaciously better at Perception than most other people. High Epic Dexterity means you're very, very dextrous, and without the use of knacks, that's all it means.

Of course, that's a lot! Anything that depends on your Attributes also depends on your Epic Attributes, which means that they have plenty of delicious, juicy passive effects for you to enjoy. Having Epic Strength means you can always lift heavier objects than those with only normal Strength as well as making you better at grappling, while Epic Dexterity makes you better at dodging and faster at running, and Epic Stamina makes you more resistant to disease, more durable against impacts and capable of taking more punishment. Epic Charisma makes you more central, noticeable and interesting than someone with only normal Charisma, while Epic Manipulation makes you automatically a better liar and Epic Appearance makes you able to keep rerolling your Presence rolls thanks to your overwhelming visual effect. Epic Perception allows you to see and hear farther and have a better chance of detecting liars and illusions, Epic Intelligence allows you to learn things incredibly quickly and solve puzzles that a mortal brain would just shut down after viewing, and Epic Wits lets you respond to sudden combat or messy political shifts with alacrity.

Not all of these things have codified results - Charisma, in particular, relies more on the Storyteller making sure to roleplay NPCs' reactions to you appropriately - but they're all on all the time, and all always potent and advantageous to the Scion who possesses them. You don't need to spend any Legend or Willpower to be great at your Epic Wits, because being incredibly divinely witty is your default baseline. Just as you don't have to spend anything to use normal Attributes or Abilities, you don't have to spend for Epics.

Of course, knacks, the powers that act as focused expressions of your Epic Attributes, do often have costs associated or are only active for short periods of time, but they all explain exactly what they do. They're special powers that you learn in order to show off your badass Epic Attributes, but the Epics themselves are always there even if you never use a knack in your life.

If it helps, think of them as Divine Attributes instead of using the word "epic"; you're divine, so you have access to Attributes of the gods. They work just like the Attributes of mortality, except that they're stronger, bigger, more awesome and inspiring, just like the gods themselves.