Third Time's the Charm

Question: Maybe I'm just dense, but I just can't understand how Axiom works. Does reality just warp to make whatever the Scion states true? Could you give a more concrete example of its use and effects, maybe from your games?

Axiom is definitely a weird one. It has the same problem that the Prophecy purview does: because it deals with things that are going to happen and haven't yet, it has to use strange backwards mechanics to illustrate foreknowledge, which can make what it actually does look confusing.

Actually, Axiom doesn't do anything. You don't use to to warp reality or force things to happen, but rather to notice patterns that already exist, leveraging your awesome intellect to understand cause and effect in a way normal people can't. What's actually happening is that the pattern you notice with Axiom has been there all along, but you never noticed - and neither did anyone else - until you managed to successfully use the knack.

Obviously, this would be less confusing if the Storyteller simply had a list of cosmic patterns that you could find out about with Axiom, but just like Prophecy, that wouldn't actually work. It's possible for almost limitless things and occurrences to be covered by Axiom, and so, since the Storyteller doesn't actually know the future and can't predict what you're going to use it on or what things are going to repeat in the game, she has to wait for the pattern to be confirmed and then retroactively claim that it's been there all along. Scions with Axiom see part of Fate's grand design, specifically the bits where certain events always repeat themselves or certain ideas are always reinforced, and the Storyteller shores those up as soon as the Scion notices them.

It's very similar to the common syndrome of frequency illusion, which is what it's called when you learn or hear about something you've never heard about before, and then suddenly see it everywhere; for example, you might learn that there's a band from the 80's called the Charging Rhinos, and then suddenly you seem to see mentions of them or hear their music everywhere you go. The Charging Rhinos didn't just come into being because you know about them; they were there all along, but you never noticed because you didn't recognize them. Axiom is like that.

It's a very neat knack, but we've found that in practice it's difficult for players to really get it working, and as a result it doesn't see a lot of play. We'd like to rework it some time in the future to make it more user-friendly.

Big Daddy

Question: Why does Tyr have Epic Intelligence associated?

Hmm, good question. Back in the dawn of time, in the first few rounds of our pantheon edits, we gutted most of Tyr's associations (which were dumb - seriously, Epic Wits? what?) and replaced them with ones that made at least a little more sense. We actually went through a few rounds of Tyr associations, because he's a very fishy one to try to pin down, even for the Aesir who are always a little bit sketchy.

Tyr's association with Epic Intelligence comes from his reconstructed role as the proto-Germanic father god, a role that many scholars believe he may have occupied before Odin became the preeminent leader of the pantheon. In that role, he was considered a wise and venerable war god, both qualities that he later lost dominion over when Odin took over as the major patron of both. In the purely Norse canon, he is still associated with war and courage, but is no longer the wise father figure, and in fact is subordinate to and considered son of Odin.

We kept the Epic Intelligence association as a nod to Tyr's Tiwaz persona; whether or not Tyr was ever actually in charge of the Aesir at some point depends on your Storyteller's choices about background and mythology, but the concept is certainly out there in Germanic myth. We thought it was worthwhile to represent, and at any rate no thinner than some of the other Norse deities' cobbled-together-from-Edda-asides associations.

But if you're really not into it, it's probably the least strong of his associations, and of course different games may choose to ignore the Germanic connection completely.

Expand Your Mind

Question: How do you roleplay someone with high levels of Epic Intelligence and Epic Wits, when they are so far beyond your ability to comprehend or predict?

Normally we grouse a bunch when people ask questions we've covered before, but in this case we have to give you a pass. Not only is our search function on the blog not great - for some reason it only searches some of the posts sometimes, and we haven't been able to figure out why - but this question was previously discussed in one of our video blogs, making it more difficult to search for.

So check out our very first vlog ever, from back when we were terrible at videos but still very enthusiastic! There's also some good discussion of playing mental attributes in the comments of that post, as well.

Movement of the Mind

Question: Have you considered adding a telekinesis-based Knack/Boon?

Not really, because the idea's already covered. But let's go through it!

To start with, telekinesis, as in moving stuff around with the powers of your pulsating magical brains, is one of those modern science fiction concepts (like time travel) that doesn't actually appear in most ancient myths; it was really firmed up as a concept in the late nineteenth century, long after most of Scion's pantheons were far and away no longer active, and as a result it doesn't appear in any of the heroic legends of yore. Gods don't tend to point at stuff and make it fly around for them; they go pick it the hell up and do stuff with it, because why wouldn't they? They're gods. They don't have the normal human problems of not having enough arms or strength to do things, or of being too slow or clumsy to manage a bunch of items at once. The majority of them don't even need telekinesis for anything, which probably explains why it didn't occur to ancient people to ascribe it to them.

But Scions do like doing new stuff, so luckily there are also several powers already in the game that can be used to perform telekinesis-like feats if they so wish. The Intelligence knack Remote Control and its prerequisite Wireless Interface are probably the closest things in the game to straight telekinesis, and allow Scions to interface with and operate machines and mechanical devices from a distance without touching them. Wind Grapple from Sky can lift and move around anything you want from a distance, which is pretty much exactly telekinesis, and covers everything that isn't usable with the mechanical knacks. Amatsukami Scions can effectively duplicate telekinesis by calling upon the spirits of objects to animate themselves with Tsukumo-gami as well, a purview that hasn't been rewritten by us yet but that is likely to retain some form of that power in the final draft. The Shen's Taiyi purview also has straight telekinesis with the Qi Hand boon, but as we've noted before, we're pretty sure we're going to be punting that entire purview into space when it comes time to give the Bureaucracy due attention.

We're not really worried about adding any more than that; that's way plenty options for those who want to roll with the idea, and we don't see any reason to invent more without a good mythological precedent. In a recent game, Sowiljr simultaneously told Eztli to stop touching things and to transcribe something for him, and she shrugged and used Wind Grapple to write without touching anything. Can't get much more telekinetic than that!

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.

Brains Over Brawn

Question: FWYH says it can "can find the chinks in her opponent's armor at a glance". Since it affects only rolls made against you, it cannot reduce Dodge, Parry, or Soak. Is this intentional?

You know what, I can definitely see where the wording might be misleading there. Thanks for noticing - we'll add to it to make it clearer!

Fight With Your Head can be used to either reduce successes from an Epic Attribute, or to affect a derived value from an Epic Attribute, including DV and soak. Targeting an Attribute that contributes to a derived value does not lower it, however; if you target an opponent's Dexterity, it will lower his ability to hit you but not his DV. If you want to lower his DV, you have to target it specifically and deal with him still hitting you as dextrously as ever.

So if you are fighting a monstrous snake with high Dexterity and Stamina, you have several options:

1) Lower the snake's Dexterity. It will have a harder time hitting you, but you will get no bonus to attacking it.
2) Lower the snake's DV. You will have an easier time hitting it, but it has no penalties to hitting you.
3) Lower the snake's soak. Both you and the snake will be hitting as normal, but you will deal more damage than you otherwise would.
4) Lower the snake's Stamina. It will continue hitting you normally and have no penalties to its soak, but you will be able to punch through it more easily with powers that roll Stamina + Fortitude for resist (like Infect, for example).

Obviously, you have other options - you can drop any Epic Attribute's successes, so you can also use FWYH to make the snake worse at charming your pants off, slower on the uptake when it comes to realizing what's happening or too imperceptive to see you creeping up for a sneak attack - but those are the most common options in the thick of combat. Since you can only have one of these active at a time, it's all about your assessment of your enemy and what you think will be the most effective strategy against it.

Which is how the super-smart roll when it comes to beating the brains out of their enemies. They use science.

Impatient Inventors

Question: Can you guys explain the Intelligence knack Concept to Execution? What are the actual mechanics for item creation with this knack? How does it interact with the Industry purview? Is it just intended to be an easy item-creation alternative for gods who don't want to fully devote themselves to Industry?

Not only can we, we already did! That old post discusses the difference between Industry and Concept to Execution, and also gives you a general outline of how you'd use either to make things.

Since we're working on revamping Industry right now, you can expect that you'll see more elaboration and new material on this kind of stuff fairly soon in the future. Crafters, we're on it!

This also seems like a good moment to remind everyone that there's a search box in the righthand column. We don't mind pointing you to a post on the subject if you ask something that's been asked before, but you can also run a search over there if you'd rather check the backlog before having to wait around a week or two for us to answer you. :)

Parallel Dreams

Question: Dreamcraft. So a high Epic Wits character with no Epic Intelligence can maintain no distinct illusions? Did you mean to say Epic Wits?

Nope, we said Epic Intelligence and we meant it! Intelligence is the stat used to represent concentration and the ability to think about more than one thing at once, which is why the Multi-Tasking knack is under Epic Intelligence. A Scion who doesn't have the brainpower to concentrate on multiple things at once simply doesn't have the wherewithal to run several realistic illusions at once; he'll need to simplify down to a number he can handle simultaneously without getting confused.

However, using Dreamcraft always allows you to have one illusion up by virtue of your powers of chicanery, even if you have no Epic Intelligence. We can see where the boon as written right now might seem to be suggesting otherwise, so we've edited it to make it more clear. Thanks for bringing it to our attention!

Cacophonic Conversation

Question: Multitasking can be used for social actions? So I can actually open my mouth and 11 things can come out simultaneously with no alternation to my vocal cords?

No, smartass. Multi-Tasking allows you to take multiple mental actions (including the use of social powers) at once, but talking is not an action in Scion. It has no tick value and takes exactly as much time as your Storyteller decides it does. Using a boon or a knack is an action; making an attack is an action; making a roll to do something, such as unlocking a door, is an action. Talking is not.

Multi-Tasking pretty clearly allows you to multi-task the powers you already have; it does not give you magical new polyphonic powers. You could take multiple actions while you're talking - that is, you could be saying something and using God's Honest to make your listeners believe it and using Instant Seminar to teach them something with it and Perfect Actor to make them feel your emotions while you do it, all at the same time. If you stunted, you could also perhaps say two things as part of a single action - James might point at one enemy and say, "Stop that snickering, and you, sit down!" to another and use both Freeze Out on the first guy and Overt Order on the second guy at the same time. But you could not speak seven different sentences to seven different people at the same time with your normal, unaugmented mouth, because this power is about multi-tasking, not extra voices.

If you want to talk to a bunch of different people at the same time about different things, the easiest way to accomplish that is to just use Multi-Tasking with Telepathy, beaming seven different thoughts into seven different peoples' heads simultaneously. If you want to get freaky, you could also give yourself extra mouths, tongues, vocal cords or whatever other equipment was necessary with Unusual Alteration, though doing so is going to look mighty weird and you may still have problems with talking over yourself unless you use other sound-cheating powers like Subvocalization or Divine Threnody. Some of our players have resorted to sign language to have two simultaneous conversations at once (bonus: if you both have Cipher, it's impossible for anyone who doesn't to follow what you're saying). If your Storyteller is amenable to a Music or Sound purview, I know of a few out there that have boons that let you polyphonically make several noises or hold several conversations at once.

But just Multi-Tasking will not let you do that, because it is only the ability to use powers you already have all at once, not adding a power you don't normally have.

With Mind Bullets!

Question: Why is Telepathy an Intelligence knack? Seems to me that projecting thoughts with your powerful brain is not really from mythology, and has its roots in modern ESP claims and mentalism. I get that it can be cool and thematic to "speak without speaking," but that seems less like a "my brain is huge" situation than "I have a potent and imposing divine presence" (which would say to me: possibly a Charisma knack, or maybe just a regular feature of being a god). The same goes for Grant Visions, etc.

Whether or not Telepathy fits mythically depends entirely on which direction you approach it from, I think, and part of the problem is its name; "telepathy" is very specifically a modern word invented to describe the idea of paranormal activity in modern terms, which of course makes most of us think of science fiction or crazy pseudo-psychiatrists in the nineteenth century. "Telepathy" makes us think of the kids from Akira, the Jedi mentalists of Star Wars, Professor X from X-Men or the bald children from The Matrix. And under those terms, it's easy to see why it doesn't feel like it belongs in the same category as the myths of the ancient and all-powerful gods. Compared to driving the sun around in a chariot, that kid from Heroes is very small, very modern, very science-fictiony potatoes.

But telepathy does happen in ancient myth; it just isn't called that, and doesn't always occur in the same way that modern science fiction uses it. Gods frequently communicate divinely with their worshipers (or with other gods, who also sometimes call on each other) without actually doing so physically, most often in order to respond to prayer; of course, the mortals are praying to talk to the god, but the god certainly isn't praying back. Sometimes a god just shows up in person to talk directly to a worshiper (praying to Devas, in particular, seems to be like just going out and putting out the welcome mat to invite them over for coffee), but just as often they merely answer through unexplained eldritch means, as disembodied or internal voices, or simply as "and then God X answered him the following". If you add in the concept of granting visions, you'll see the idea abound - sometimes it's to designated oracles, which would be more accurately covered by Prophecy, but often it's in a distinctly non-oracular setting, from Arjuna being granted a vision of Vishnu's full glory by his earthly avatar Krishna to the knights of the round table receiving visions of the Holy Grail.

Not that visions and communication from gods or other beings always need to be mind-to-mind, since like most things in Scion there are multiple ways to do what you want. But it's definitely a legitimate idea for a divine power; it's merely one that's also been approached in the modern day by the scientific and speculative fiction communities.

Which brings us back around to Intelligence! While it's true that the knack's placement under Intelligence by the original authors was probably mostly due to Telepathy's modern connotations of being a psychic power motivated by the power of the mind, we've kept it there because as far as we can tell there really isn't anywhere better for it to go. It's not really about the god's force of presence; Telepathy can be used even if the god is successfully hiding from the person he's talking to, and it's definitely something that has to do first and foremost with communication, not with just being impressive at people (Charisma people usually tend to just have in-person conversations; Telepathy would be gilding their lily a bit). Hear Prayers comes from Perception, but Telepathy clearly isn't about perceiving things but rather acting upon them. It's not really Manipulation, it doesn't have anything to do with Wits, the physical Attributes are right out, and there really aren't any purviews it could fall under except possibly for Magic, but trying to parlay it into some kind of Fate-related thing is a bit of a stretch.

So it has remained in Intelligence largely because, while it isn't a perfect fit, it is still the best place we thought it made sense. And while we don't want to accidentally invoke more visions of people with hypnotism wheels and bent spoons or anything, it's not actually entirely invalid to think of Telepathy as a mental power, even in mythic terms. The idea of The Power of the Mind is certainly a modern one when applied to mortals, but the idea that a god's mind is so powerful that it can simply overwhelm and communicate with those of others without the barriers of bodies interfering isn't all that dissonant. You probably could move it to Charisma if you really wanted to, but we think the fit is worse.

I have to wonder if we would get this question quite so much if the power were called something less evocative of science fiction, like "Communion". We have occasionally considered changing its name, but we've always decided not to bother; it's a little annoying sometimes, but the word "telepathy" tells players immediately, simply and perfectly exactly what the power does, so we figure if it ain't really broke, we probably shouldn't worry too much about fixing it.

Speaking in Tongues

Question: Do Epic Intelligence successes add to the number of languages a character is capable of knowing? Otherwise gods such as Thoth are limited to only knowing 20 languages at most, which seems a bit off.

Well, no, Thoth knows all languages that have ever existed, because he has both Language Mastery and Instant Translation. Our default assumption is that any god with an Ultimate also has all knacks in that Ultimate, and at any rate Thoth sort of invented writing and language as a concept. Asking how many languages Thoth would know if he weren't Thoth seems sort of fruitless.

But Thoth aside, things are pretty simple for the average Scion, too. We treat languages like we treat other things that don't really need codification at character creation; if you say you know them, you do. If your Scion is a French national who works in Australia, it makes sense for her to know both English and French, so she does. If she's a linguistics scholar specializing in Romance languages, she might speak Spanish, French and Italian, and as long as her stats don't say she's dumb as a rock, that's fine by us. Just as we let all characters decide where they came from, what their financial situation is and what kind of training they've had in the past, so we let them decide what languages they speak, as long as they're being reasonable and realistic about it.

When it comes to learning new languages on the fly over the course of play, we don't sweat that too much, either. If the character has a little Epic Intelligence and spends some in-character time studying that language, we allow that he's learned it as long as he makes a demonstrable investment of time and effort (studying for several hours of in-game time despite other things happening, buying a dot of Academics, etc). He could do the same thing by being immersed in a culture that speaks the language for a long time as long as he's reasonably trying to communicate with them (though that happens less often, since Scions tend to move around a lot). Once they've maxed out their Academics, gods can probably learn any language they spend sufficient time studying in a single game session, provided, of course, that they have some Epic Intelligence. As a Storyteller, don't worry about the details too much; if it makes sense, give it to him, and if it doesn't or the player's obviously trying to grasp for a convenience and not a real character detail, don't.

Of course, if Scions are really serious about learning a lot of languages and having that be part of their divine image, they should probably just pick up Language Mastery. And you're right that those who don't will have a limited number of languages they can learn, bounded by the amount of time they're willing to spend on studying instead of doing other epic deeds; Legend 12 gods, even if very intelligent, might end up only speaking ten or fewer languages. But that's not really a flaw; if gods were easily learning all languages on the fly, there'd be no point to Language Mastery and Instant Translation existing, after all. Those who don't pick them up are naturally familiar with fewer languages, because they've chosen to manifest their supernatural intelligence in different areas (i.e., whatever other knacks they got instead).

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Question: I understand the Knack “Concept to Execution“ in Scion Raw, as it was about the only ability with which you could build things. But why take an Industry purview if you can just Concept to Execution anything for 5 Legend without any roll? The problem just come up with a player of mine who is aiming to become a smith goddess and I was hoping you could clarify on that knack. Thanks a lot. Love your work.

This is an area where you'll have to pardon our dust a bit; the Industry purview (and the crafting system in general) has been under construction (heh) for a little while now, and as a result we've left Concept to Execution intentionally vague until we figure out workable parameters for it. Our building/smithing/tinkering characters have been very patient about this - sorry, guys.

First of all, a vague skeleton of how crafting works in our games, which a few people have asked about and a more in-depth post I believe John is working on: there are two phases to crafting, planning and executing.

Planning involves creating blueprints, schematics, or just mental images of exactly how this thing will be put together and work; it's usually an Intelligence + Science roll depending on what's being done, and the difficulty needed to succeed is set by the Storyteller depending on the complexity, magical attributes and size of the project. This is often an extended roll (to give you some frame of reference, Sophia has frequently created objects that required a total roll of anywhere from 100 to 400 depending on what she was trying to do), and each time you make the roll you spend a certain number of hours working on it and a certain amount of Legend to represent your super-magical awesome brainpowers at work. (If you're building normal, mundane things like chairs, the Legend cost is usually waived, because if mortals can figure it out without a lot of trouble, your ichor's not going to bother getting involved.)

Once you have the plan firmly set (and most crafters without Perfect Memory generally write that shit down and store it, because they do not want to go through the planning phase again later if they want to make this thing again), you arrive at the actual execution phase, which uses basically the same mechanics; it's usually an extended roll of Dexterity + Craft with a Legend cost and a difficulty set by the Storyteller based on what you're trying to do, and requires you to have the right materials and tools to succeed. You may also have to take breaks depending on your Stamina, as every roll represents a certain number of hours spent on the project.

But hey, at the end of all this, you're a lot of Legend poorer and a lot of time later, but you probably now have a sweet badass relic to play with! So, with all that in mind, on to the differences between Industry and Concept to Execution, and how they are both great but in different ways.

Concept to Execution exists primarily because not every character that wants to be able to build things is necessarily a character who wants to have Industry, and the idea of inventing and creating things isn't limited only to those gods that specialize in it across mythology. Sure, the Hephaestuses and Kothars of the world are going to town on their Industry boons, masters of every way that making things happens, but there are also people like Sobek out there, who isn't what you'd call super crafty and isn't generally a creator god but who still managed to invent, design and build the first fishing net in order to get things done. While normally we prefer to keep powers of a particular kind together as a purview, in the case of building things it's very clear that not only Industry gods are able to do so, and furthermore that it's a power that could reasonably be considered to fall under Attributes sometimes as well as a purview. So Industry exists for the serious crafting god, and Concept to Execution exists for the dabbler. They're better together as they help each other significantly, but you can roll with only one or the other and have a reasonable amount of success.

The thing about the Industry purview is that it does things that Concept to Execution simply can't; Concept to Execution allows its user to create things, but it's extremely limited when compared to what Industry can do around that idea. Someone with Concept to Execution can design and build a relic, provided the right materials; it might take forever or it might be relatively quick depending on their rolls, but in the end they'll be all set with it. But someone trying to make the same relic with Industry will not only be automatically faster and more dextrous doing so thanks to Fundamentals, they'll also be able to do so by spending fewer resources, requiring smaller amounts of rare materials, always having the right tools on hand even if they're in a cave in the middle of nowhere, and they usually end up with items that are not only better-designed and harder to break, but they may have been able to make themselves multiple copies of the same thing. Given the same amount of time to build the same item, a Scion with comparable stats and Industry will always succeed faster, more cheaply and more thoroughly than a Scion with only Concept to Execution. And that's as it should be, we think, because while we do think inventing and building things shouldn't be limited only to crafter gods, we don't think that non-crafter gods should be able to beat the serious smiths and builders at their own game.

Concept to Execution does have a small additional benefit; prior to The Self-Made Machine at level four in Industry, the Industry purview can only build normal, non-magical items (albeit totally awesome and complicated ones, depending on what the Scion using it wants); it does not come with the built-in ability to create relics. Concept to Execution, however, can create relics from the get-go, and allows for much more flexibility in designing them than you would get trying to make relics with only the limited magical effects that Industry includes.

So there you have it: Concept to Execution and Industry work from similar ideas, but neither one really replaces the other. Scions who only want to build relics in their spare time and don't want crafting to be the major focus of their character can pick up Concept to Execution. Scions who want to build things efficiently and usefully all the time can pick up Industry, and Scions who want to be true masters of crafting are best advised to pick up both, enabling them to do anything their ambitious little hearts desire.

Knowing and Doing

Question: Wouldn't Craft make more sense than Command in Know-It-All? Knowing how things were built would definitely help you craft something; there's nothing wrong with having Craft in two knacks since they do not stack; intelligent characters would have more support for certain common archetypes; many types of craft are more about knowledge than talent.

You raise good points, but no, we're pretty solid on Command and Craft where they are, the first in Know-It-All and the second in Jack of All Trades. The important distinction for us is that Know-It-All is only about things you know, while Jack of All Trades is only about things you do. Jack of All Trades involves being so quick on the uptake that you can fake your way through active abilities on the fly without having to know anything about them or have any experience beforehand; in that regard, it's actually the opposite of Know-It-All. Knowing things about what you're doing isn't what Jack of All Trades is for at all - you're doing everything by the seat of your pants, on instinct, rather than having any idea why at the outset. But it is what Know-It-all is for - Know-It-All can't actually do much of anything, but the Scion with it is so intelligent and so well-read that they know a lot of things that they can call up on the spur of the moment. This is why active abilities like Brawl, Craft or Stealth need Jack of All Trades, while passive knowledges like Academics, Occult or Science need Know-It-all.

Craft is almost always a very active ability; it's your skill in actually making or building things, and it's a must for Jack of All Trades (in itself it covers a lot of trades!). Crafting is literally working with your hands to make something.

On the other hand, Craft is not really a knowledge; the knowledge of how to do things with Craft is covered by things like Academics or Science, which Know-It-all excels at. Craft doesn't fit into Know-It-All any more than Brawl does; sure, knowing the principles of motions and human anatomical constraints would help you brawl, but that doesn't mean someone grabbing a dot of Brawl on the fly is learning force physics and anatomy at the same time, because those fall under Academics and Science. It's important to remember that while many crafts in the real world do require knowledge, they are not themselves necessarily knowledges; learning a whole lot about glassblowing technique will certainly help you if you want to be a good glassblower, but it doesn't matter for anything if you don't have a steady enough hand or the artistic talent to do it well. Knowledge is represented in Scion as Academics/Science/Occult and other related fields; it's distinct from the abilities that actually involve doing things.

On the other other hand, Command doesn't really fit into Jack of All Trades because it's not an active ability but more a knowledge of how to get people to respond and obey. Since it's an Attribute (Charisma) that actually puts the punch behind your commands, not an ability like Brawl, it falls more into the knowledge category than the action one.

Those who want to be a brainy crafter archetype are probably better served by picking up actual dots of Craft, and possibly Smith Among Gods, than they would be by fudging Craft into a knack where it doesn't belong. (Or even just getting Jack of All Trades, which only requires a single point of Epic Wits to get access to, after all.)

If we did allow Craft to be on Know-It-All, it would only be to know how to build a table - you still wouldn't actually be able to create the plans for the table or build the table, because Know-It-All is for knowledge, not doing;. You'd still need dots of Craft or Jack of All Trades to actually cause a table to come into being. So it wouldn't be a lot of help for the way you seem to be wanting to use it.

Honestly, I'm surprised that Craft was the focus of this question, considering that the two knacks have other abilities that seem to blur the lines to me more. Craft is definitely not one of the more ambiguous ones.

Willing and Able

Question: Why are Fast Learner and Star Pupil so powerful? Raising a single skill to 12 costs 156 XP or 78 XP with the appropriate knack. Even if you charge 30XP for Epic Intelligence 1, and two Knacks, that is still 48 XP saved. Each skill after that is a solid 78 XP savings. Several of your active characters have flushed away 400+ XP!

No such thing, my friend; there is no flushing here. Our players will all be happy to tell you that nobody is ever wasting XP around here.

This question comes up every now and then (if you like, check out previous discussions on PCs with different amounts of XP and Fate spending XP), and it always bemuses me a bit, because it comes from the mindset where XP is king and it doesn't matter what you buy as long as you have gotten the most possible dots on your sheet for the amount of XP you have. But that just isn't so; having the most XP to spend somewhere on your sheet isn't king. Having the most XP to spend on the things you want to get is, and there's a very important distinction between the two.

Just like every other knack in the game, Fast Learner and Star Pupil (and their identical brethren Natural Juggernaut, Natural Leader and Eyes in the Back of Your Head) represent a specific kind of specialization; the character with Fast Learner and Star Pupil is good at learning new things. Scion represents learning new skills with XP, which is a measure of how much your character can learn over time, so skills that have to do with learning certain subjects quickly affect the XP ratio. A character being better at learning new skills than others is just as valid a choice as a character being able to see radio waves when others can't or speak mind-to-mind when others can't; like everything else you spend XP on in a game, you're simply making a choice about what you want. Those who want more dots in abilities buy Fast Learner; those who would rather have the nifty power of speaking all tongues get Language Mastery, and those who want to be able to think their way through magical smokescreens get Blockade of Reason. Fast Learner isn't inherently more powerful than other Intelligence knacks because it affects XP; it's just different, and just like character A might be different from character B because one is great at soaking hits and the other great at marching on until the bitter end, the only difference between the character with Fast Learner and his buddy is that one of them is better at learning abilities and the other is better at learning languages.

The point of the game isn't to have the most XP spent on your character; it's for your character to be the most awesome and effective at the things you want to do. If you want to be an awesome generalist who is an expert in every ability, that's awesome! Pick up all the XP-saver knacks! But if you want to focus on being an impregnable resistance fortress, or being able to take all the physical punishment the world can dish out, or being able to spy on Overworlds unfathomable distances away, that's awesome, too! Get those knacks instead.

It's a bit of a mental prison, I think, the idea that XP is always the most important thing in the game and no matter what you do, you're getting the best result if you technically have more XP than the next guy. It just doesn't work that way; having more abilities than the next guy will sometimes give you an edge over him, and sometimes work against you because he was able to get other powers you didn't. Like all other choices when it comes to building your PC, it'll be awesome in one area but mean you didn't get something in another area. The idea that not focusing on abilities is somehow a "waste" is ridiculous; it's only a waste if your character really wants to focus on abilities and for some reason doesn't.

Every Scion is different, and there's no perfect character build that is better than all others. If your XP is spent on something you want and you get to be awesome with it, there's never any waste involved, no matter what your friend across the table spent his on.

The Mental Murder Machine

Question: Why is Multitasking so far down a tree of Intelligence knacks? Its effect is nice enough that I can understand it not being an entry level knack, but fourth tier seems kinda far for what is essentially a buffed human talent. Likewise, why is it at the end of a defensive set of knacks? Wouldn't the Perfect Memory -> Compartmentalization tree be a more fitting place for it?

Holy cow. Multitasking is a fourth-tier knack because it is insanely powerful. Like, just completely fucking nuts. Putting it any lower would be like giving babies nukes.

The thing about Multitasking is that it allows you to perform any kind of simultaneous non-physical actions. If all you're using it for is to play chess and solve physics equations at the same time, then yes, it's basically just a very badass version of something a human could theoretically do on a smaller scale. But it gets scarily good when you remember that boons and knacks are also non-physical actions.

Let me give you some examples. Sowiljr has seven Epic Intelligence and Multitasking (this is true, he does). When a small army of bandits charges over the hill at him, normally he would only be able to use his Compelling Presence knack to freeze a maximum of 22 of them, equal to his Epic Appearance successes. But since he has Multitasking, he can use Compelling Presence seven times at once if he wants to spend all his Legend on it, allowing him to freeze a whopping 81 people in the blink of an eye. He has completely ended the battle before anyone could so much as breathe on him.

Or, take Aiona. She has seven Epic Intelligence and Multitasking also (in fact, I believe she's going up to eight Epics this week). If the same army charges her, she can use any combination of Inferno, Dragon's Breath and Control Fire seven times on them; if she chooses to use Baelfyr on those boons, she has the potential to be dealing literally hundreds of aggravated damage against everyone in the area every single turn. She is an engine of instant death, all thanks to Multitasking.

Or, to use a lower-Legend blast from the past, consider Auggie. He has only four Epic Intelligence, so he can't do the giant godly things the two examples above are doing, but when he sees an enemy coming he can still turn on his Body Armor AND blow Fight with Your Head to drop their soak AND light up his spear with Blazing Weapon AND punch up his own defenses with Warrior Ideal, and still be able to take physical actions at the same time. The other guy has barely had time to do two of those things, and only if he wasn't planning on actually hitting Auggie this turn.

If you don't have a lot of Epic Intelligence, you're right, Multitasking is a pretty lackluster knack for you; you can only do two or three non-physical things at once, which is pretty close to what you could do before anyway. Even primarily physical characters can get some use out of it, however - it may not allow you to make any more physical attacks than you normally could, but it will allow you to throw up Body Armor and Mortal Stroke on your weapon without stopping you from still punching a guy in the face twice on the same turn.

So Multitasking will probably never be coming down to a lower level of knackhood; it's just too powerful. It's not game-breaking, but in the right hands, under the right circumstances, it can be devastatingly effective.

As for its position in the tree, it was a sticky one to place; nothing else really does the same kind of thing, so there was no tree that really stood out as being more appropriate than the others. We ended up putting it at the end of the resistance tree on the theory that the resistance knacks are all about disciplining your mind to avoid being affected by outside meddling, and that such mastery over doing various things at once was an extension of that discipline. I don't think it'd necessarily be worse off after Compartmentalization (other than players whining because Compartmentalization is kind of a specialty knack that not everyone cares about having), but it probably wouldn't be a lot better, either.