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!