Question: I was pondering the issue as to Scions of all ages starting with the same pool of points, which, to me, didn't make much sense. I don't know if you have your own fix for this, but as while I do homebrew Scion quite a bit, this still irks me. A 16-year-old girl can manage to have as many years of training as an old man? Doesn't make sense to me. How would you go about addressing this? I'm worried about keeping it balanced while making it feel more realistic. Well, as realistic as Scion gets.
Actually, no homebrew needed! Dots of abilities can mean a lot of different things, and there's no need for a system to work with them. A sixteen-year-old girl could indeed have as many dots of an ability as a forty-year-old man, and that's not only okay, it makes perfect sense.
One of the easiest ways to address this is just to talk to your players at character creation and ask them to have a backstory reason for their dots. If someone has five dots of Marksmanship, he should probably have some idea where that came from - is he Buffalo Bill? A special forces cop? Son of a family that has owned and sold rifles for generations? Whatever it is, as long as he knows what the dots of that ability mean, he's golden. It's perfectly legitimate for a seventy-year-old ex-soldier who was a sniper to have five dots of Marksmanship, and also perfectly legitimate for a fourteen-year-old Olympic archery champion to have five dots of Marksmanship. It's totally reasonable for a sixty-five-year-old professor to have five dots of Academics, and also totally reasonable for a teenage chess prodigy to have five dots of Academics. Age doesn't necessarily have to mean anything when it comes to ability dots; all that matters is that the player knows where those dots came from and what they represent.
Keep in mind, also, that these are Scions, and that means they don't play by the same rules as humanity normally does. They're naturally inclined to be better, faster, stronger and more skilled; a Scion who is a scientist is most likely automatically more brilliant than a normal human of the same age and training, because Scions are just inherently better thanks to being the children of gods, even before they've been tapped by their parents. Scions are likely to be child prodigies, unusual geniuses, genetically-blessed badasses and easily dominating their chosen professions and fields, even if they haven't yet had their divine blood awakened. And that's all Scions, not just the ones that are old enough to drink.
If you're still feeling worried about comparative ability totals, it's also totally reasonable to assume that some of that badass ability prowess for a starting Scion happens when he receives his Visitation. Scions gain a bunch of stuff at their Visitation that they didn't already have, including boons, Virtues and Epic Attributes, so if you'd like to say that some of their ability dots happened at that time instead of in their mortal life before, that's a workable flavor reason for an eleven-year-old Scion to turn up with five dots of Brawl. If you go with that idea, you can just say that the awakening of his divine blood caused some of his skills to shoot up and become awesome due to the godliness he was invested with, just as his Strength might have shot up thanks to gaining an Epic. It doesn't require any extra system and should be an easy answer for anyone who wants to ask about it.
But honestly, we wouldn't even bother with that too often. Scion's character creation is very freeform, with no restrictions on who you were, what you did, what kinds of resources you had or anything else before you became a god's child. That's a really great thing, because it gives players huge amounts of creativity in creating their characters' backgrounds, and there's no reason to rein that in. Scions are the children of the gods, and across mythology, children like that are awesome and badass at their areas of influence from early childhood, from Hercules brawling snakes to death in his crib to Adonis being so beautiful at birth that goddesses started fighting over him long before he was old enough to talk to Jesus schooling all the temple elders at religious theory while he was still a gangly kid. You don't need to stop them from being child prodigies or naturals who can do things others might have to spend decades mastering; Scions are supposed to be special snowflakes with starring roles in their own lives. Being awesome at stuff, regardless of age, is just part of that.
If a player says, "I want my Scion to have five dots of Occult at character creation," the answer from the Storyteller should never be, "You can't have that because your Scion's only fifteen." Rather, it should be some variation on, "Okay, how did your fifteen-year-old Scion get so amazing at Occult?", and then both you and the player will have the opportunity to come up with an awesome reason for his magical brains.
Also, I have met plenty of old people who have done very little of worth in their life, and have less skills and knowledge than some ambitious twenty year olds. Nobody likes to admit it, but we're not all created equal or spend our time equally.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, I tend to favor older Scions as PC's. All my recent PC's have been at least late twenties, up to mid 30's. It never bugs me having the same number of Abilities as a teenage character. I generally pick a few things my older Scions have 5's in and just assume they spent a long time becoming absolutely AWESOME at those things. Once a mortal hits 5 in something, they don't just say "well, did that!" and move on to the next Ability, they keep practicing and honing and using that Ability.
ReplyDeleteA real-live person with 5 in an Ability probably just keeps DOING that Ability. They might not ever branch out very much. It doesn't even mean they "wasted" their life, they just kept practicing what they were already good at.