Trick or Treat

Question: Why do almost all the trickster gods have Manipulation and Wits?

Because those are the stats used for trickstering, my friend, and they demonstrate them on the daily!

We've had lots of discussions about how not everybody with Manipulation or Wits is a trickster, and that is still true. You can have one or the other - or both - and be a perfectly upright and unimpeachable example of law-abiding citizenship. I gotta tell you, Eztli has ten dots of Epic Wits, but nobody in her band is worried about her pranking them any time soon.

Basically, Manipulation is the measure of your ability to hide what you're doing or convince others of something, which means that anyone who is famously good at lying, disguise, political dealings or playing tricks on others probably has a lot of it. Without Manipulation, Loki wouldn't be able to convince Hod to throw mistletoe at Baldur and Tezcatlipoca wouldn't be able to make Quetzalcoatl think he had suddenly turned into a hideous ogre without noticing; Horus would never have been able to pull off tricking Set into losing all the contests between them, and Stribog would never have been able to fool Chors into thinking he was someone else. That doesn't mean that everybody who ever lies has Ultimate Manipulation - that would be kind of bananas, considering how many gods can't seem to tell the truth even when caught red-handed - but it does mean that gods who are famous for being able to smooth-talk their way out of things or confusticate their fellows into making hilarious mistakes are probably rocking that Ultimate.

Wits, on the other hand, is about reaction time, quick thinking and improvisation; it's the stat you need to pull a solution out of nowhere at the last possible second or to be able to jump at a new idea in time to keep from getting burnt by the old one. Without Wits, Loki wouldn't have been able to avoid punishment on several occasions by jumping in and offering to fix the problems he caused, Quetzalcoatl wouldn't have been able to pull off a desperate improvised gambit to steal from Mictlantecuhtli and Enki wouldn't have been able to quick-think his way around Enlil's rules and save humanity from the great flood. Tricksters tend to have Wits because they need them to survive; their stories usually feature them being able to think on their feet even in the worst situations, often narrowly saving their skins (usually from something they themselves did that is now backfiring on them). They also use the stat to make sure that they're quick enough to seize any opportunity for their own favored brand of mischief.

We don't just hand Manipulation and Wits to everyone who's a trickster, of course - like all other associations, it's based as much as possible on what they do in their stories rather than just saying, "Eh, he's a shenanigans guy, give him both." Some tricksters, including Eshu, Hermes, Horus, Loki, Manannan mac Lir and Odin do have both because they consistently exemplify both qualities; others, including Enki, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca have only one or the other, illustrating that they're very strong in one area but not necessarily the highest level of skilled in the other. And, of course, there are non-trickster gods like Ishtar, Isis or Parvati that have both without really fitting the archetype at all; like all stats, Manipulation and Wits can be used for different kinds of purposes and representations across different gods.

Incidentally, you don't need both as a PC to be an effective trickster, either, if that's what you're aiming for. They're both helpful, but you can also find ways to manage with just one; Manipulation-only tricksters usually have to lay their plans far in advance and watch them trigger like dominos falling, while Wits-only tricksters always fly by the seat of their pants and just have to keep moving so quickly that nobody will have the time or wherewithal to figure out what they're doing. Having neither is pretty challenging, especially since a famous career as a trickster will probably get you Fatebound to one or the other, but you still might be able to pull off your divine pranksterism in other ways. After all, there are gods with neither associated who have definitely pulled some shit in their time, so you can always decide to blaze your own trail the way they did.

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.

Fastest Gun in the West

Question: I've been focusing a lot on Wits for a character I'm playing. While it fits the concept and was very cool at Hero, now that we're late-Demigods I'm a little bummed out. What's the point of maxing it if, no matter how high you roll, you only get to go 5 ticks before someone who has abysmal Wits? And on top of that, your roll gets trumped by a single tier-1 Knack... I feel cheated! It's like having a knack that autohits you, no matter how high your DV gets thanks to your Epic Dex.

Well, the most important question here is: what is your concept?

There's a weird perception (especially for those playing closer to Scion vanilla, I think, which had admittedly fewer knacks and interesting powers for Wits) that Wits is the Join Battle stat, and that that's the only reason anyone would ever buy it. This leads on to the conclusion that if Wits is only good for going first in combat, it's totally unfair if people who don't invest in Wits get to go first in combat and trump it. That makes it pointless to have all these dots of Wits!

But that's in a world where Wits only does one thing, and this is definitely not that world. Join Battle rolls are a great place to have a lot of Wits, but they're far from the only thing Wits does; what else are you using it for? If you're keeping your Wits maxed, surely you use it for other things besides just Join Battle rolls. What Wits knacks do you have from your Epics and how do you use them? What boons do you have that use Wits and how are you using them? Why did you decide to invest in Wits in the first place, and what can you focus on to work with that? Sure, some of this is up to your Storyteller to help with - if he never has anyone roll Wits for anything, I'm sure that would be frustrating - but there's plenty to do with the stat even if you're confined to powers that use it.

Just like every other Epic Attribute, Wits has knacks that represent different specializations of your divinely quick thinking, and that means that specializing into different trees will get you different results. Those who primarily want to use their Wits to go first, go fast and go before anyone else knows what's happening should specialize into Opening Gambit and Between the Ticks, because those are the knacks that represent a Scion whose Wits are finely-honed combat responses. You clearly took other Wits knacks instead of those, so you have other Wits advantages instead - I don't know what they are, but other options in the field of Wits include being able to shield your comrades from harm, being a badass at driving and operating machines, being able to improvise any weapon on the spur of the moment or being able to socially skewer someone with your rapier wit. Of course the guy with Opening Gambit will go before you in combat - he specifically statted himself to do that, whereas you statted yourself to do something else. He's not cheating you any more than someone who uses Language Mastery to learn ninety languages is "cheating" someone who has lots of Epic Intelligence but decided to put his points elsewhere and is now disillusioned that they don't know as many different tongues. Just having the dots of an Epic Attribute is very powerful, and puts you a cut above those who don't have it by default; but not everyone with lots of Wits is created equal, and your choices about where you put your XP naturally grant you different advantages.

Opening Gambit's not the only way Scions who aren't as high in Wits as you can go first, either. Those with high Intelligence and Tactical Planning will be just as ready for battle as you are if they know it's coming, while Scions with high Epic Perception can take immediate actions with Environmental Awareness and Scions who are strongly aligned with the Prophecy or War purviews will reap the benefits of Extended Awareness or Blessing of Insight. Like most things in Scion, there are many paths to get from point A to point B, and simply buying up one Epic Attribute does not guarantee you an instant win all the time.

We actually illustrated this in a game the other night - Eztli got it into her head to relieve Folkwardr of his spine, and although she has an insanely high amount of Epic Wits, he still beat her on the Join Battle roll thanks to being a god of both Prophecy and War. And that makes perfect sense; Eztli has lightning-quick reflexes, but Folkwardr's a soldier who's been in battle for literally centuries and who can see the future, so it's no stretch at all to believe that he could see her about to take a shot at him before anyone else in the scene even knew she was there. He had time to hide behind Sowiljr and start shouting for help, and thanks to his timely warning everyone was able to interfere and prevent tragedy from striking.

It's also very important to note that having Opening Gambit trump your Join Battle roll is not at all like having a knack that auto-hits you through your DV. For one thing, you are not taking damage from losing Join Battle; you still have all your other powers, soaks, DV and abilities at your disposal for when you get attacked, and nothing is injuring, incapacitating or instantly taking you out of the game. You're just waiting a few more ticks. For another thing, your Join Battle is still useful because it's putting you ahead of everyone and everything in the combat that doesn't have Opening Gambit, which is likely to be several people.

The bottom line here is that, just like all the other Epic Attributes, Wits gives you access to a bunch of powers and specializations that those without Wits don't get. It's not just a Join Battle machine; if all you want it for is to go first in combat, then you should get Opening Gambit and go about your day, but if you actually want to take advantage of having high Wits, there's a whole world of other stuff it can do that you should explore. Having seen the colossal, insane things that characters with high Wits are capable of in our games, I can tell you that those who don't have Wits are generally pretty jealous of those who do, and not just because they have to wait an extra five seconds to go in combat.

Other small notes: Opening Gambit is a level 2 knack for us, not level 1, and we allow those with very high Join Battle rolls to take non-combat actions before tick 0 depending on their roll. But your frustrations sound like you may be playing in a game that doesn't apply those rules, so I'm not sure how helpful that is for 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!

And That is Why Lugh Does Not Have Ultimate Wits

Question: Jack of all Trades and Know it All both say "If she already possesses dots in that ability, this Knack does nothing." Why don't you just use the higher of the two instead? I know lots of useless trivia in real life I can apply to subjects I already know something about. Your version creates an incentive for characters to intentionally leave some abilities at 0.

We've thought about doing that in the past, but we've always decided not to, for two simple reasons: the first is that we're not worried about the phantom "incentivization" to leave Abilities at zero because as far as we can tell it doesn't cause any problems, and changing to a higher-of-the-two model runs counter to what the knacks are meant to represent.

The point of Jack of All Trades and Know-It-All is to allow those who don't have any expertise in those areas to fake it thanks to their incredible brainpower. Those with Know-It-All are so smart and so well-read in various other disciplines that they can piece together enough reasonable guesses or related theories to operate as if they did for a little while; those with Jack of All Trades are so quick on the uptake that they can pull the right lever on instinct in the heat of the moment, even if they couldn't later tell you why they did it that way or what the theory behind it was. You didn't mention Don't Read the Manual, but the principle's the same there, too; that Scion is so exceptionally good at driving, traveling and operating transportation that she can for a little while apply her knowledge of other driving stuff to have the correct reflexes to keep herself in one piece in this nuclear submarine she just stole.

The point is not, however, just "become better at abilities". It's the opposite of that, in fact; it's acknowledging that the Scion doesn't actually know anything about those abilities and has to wing it when crunch time comes around. I think there may be some confusion here over what even having dots of abilities means, because your example doesn't make any sense; if you know anything about a subject, no matter how trivial, fringe or theoretical, you probably actually have a dot in it in real life. If you actually had no dots in that thing, you would have exactly no knowledge of it whatsoever - not theories you heard from somewhere else, not trivia on the subject, not memories from high school, but nothing. There are in fact, few abilities that humans in real life actually have zero dots in; anyone who's been through high school or even primary school probably has at least one dot in most of the knowledge abilities (Academics, Investigation, Medicine, Occult, Politics and so on), while anyone who isn't completely physically bedridden has at least one dot of Athletics and anyone who ever got into wrestling matches with siblings, even if they lost, has a dot of Brawl. If you can successfully light and maintain a campfire with dry sticks and a lighter, you have a dot of Survival; if you can steal cookies when your mom's asleep, you have a dot of Larceny, and so on.

This actually poses a few problems when creating characters, because of course in a point-system like Scion's, players inevitably leave some skills they should probably have a dot in at zero in order to maximize others they think they'll use more (this is actually a problem in pretty much every RPG, not just Scion; there's no rule that forces people to stat their characters realistically). We encourage players to think about what they want their characters to not only be good at but also be able to do at all in any way, because when they don't, they end up with characters who can't read, fall down trying to walk from one place to another or constantly fart in the middle of trying to impress people. Which is all pretty hilarious when it happens, but not exactly convenient. Our Hero characters usually start with at least one dot in most abilities they don't want to be completely incapable of; it's when they get to high Demigod and God that you start seeing a lot of abilities at zero, and that's not because the players neglected to buy any but rather because Fatebonds have decided they're bad at those things and permanently taken them away from them. You can see that in action by just looking at our character sheets; Hero-level Scions average about four to five abilities at zero dots, while gods average nine to ten.

Which leads to why we've never had a problem with players feeling like it was smarter to take no dots in abilities - because it almost never is. Having no dots in an ability means you're completely clownshoes at it, which is funny once in a while but more often annoying or even dangerous or lethal. Having Jack of All Trades or Know It All can help, but it's only a bandaid fix - what about that day you can't pay for one of those knacks, which is all too possible, especially at Hero levels or in the middle of heated battles? You're up the creek with no paddle, and the creek is full of hungry Titanspawn piranha. You can definitely skate by on the ability to fake it for a while, but the day will come when you can't fake it, and that moment will suck big time.

Another reason that buying abilities is important is that they are part of what you will be and define as a god; just as you have purviews and Epic Attributes associated with you, so do you also have the most iconic and awesome of your Abilities as part of your divine legend. That requires you to actually have those abilities, however, not just be good at half-assing your way through them when the need arises; if you don't actually have any dots of Politics, you will never be a god of Politics, even if you shenanigans your way through half the courts of the Overworlds. Your Scions won't get it associated (and neither will you), and it's unlikely that any stories will ever be told about your awesome political prowess; mortals will say that you were so quick on your feet or smart that you managed to fool everyone, but they won't respect you for the political powerhouse you're pretending to be. And they shouldn't, because you aren't a political powerhouse. You just play one on TV.

Our Fatebond system actually takes care of that problem in the game itself, more often than not; the more you do something, the more likely it is that you'll be Fatebound to it, at which point mortals will simply buy you the dots of Politics on the strength of their beliefs and then you really will be a politician among gods. As I said before, by the time they're high-level Demigods or gods, most Scions have abilities at zero because Fatebonds have bought them off, and abilities maximized because Fatebonds have latched onto them; they've written their own Fates with what they do well and what they fail at most often, and have the bonuses and dots (or lack thereof) to show for it. Those using different Fatebond systems may have different dynamics there, but the core idea, that you need to actually be good at something to be famous for it, is pretty universal. Ra is not famous for driving the solar barque through the sky every day and night because he fakes it with Don't Read the Manual; that motherfucker has maximum dots of Control (Barque), because he's literally god of driving the sun-barque around.

There's also the small mechanical matter of not wanting to make knacks useless. If Know-It-All and Jack of All Trades (and to a lesser extent Don't Read the Manual, although since it's technically infinite this would be a problem less often) allowed you to use the higher of the two, they would make themselves useless any time you actually became good at an ability, and we're not fans of knacks that render themselves pointless, even if only in part. That incentivizes leaving the abilities low just as much as the current system, since you still have no dice advantage to gain by buying them up. You could solve this by allowing the knack's phantom dots to stack with the normal dots... but nobody should ever be able to have more of an ability than someone who actually maxed it out, so that solution is no solution at all. Jimmy Legend Seven shouldn't be able to add his six Intelligence dots from Know-It-All on top of his six normal Occult dice and have more Occult than Odin. That's redonkulous.

So, no matter how you slice it, we're happy with either the buying-dots or the using-knacks approaches to abilities, and we don't see any reason to change the way the knacks work to save some poor powergamer from him- or herself. The knacks are meant to represent your ability to fake your way through abilities you don't really have with success for short periods of time; they're not meant to represent you having more knowledge all of a sudden, and they shouldn't supersede knowledge you actually have. It can be frustrating to think that you have five dots in this ability and would be getting seven dice to roll instead if you could use Jack of All Trades for it, but you're trading those two dice for dependability and legendary awesomeness, both awesome things to have in their own right. We encourage Scions to purchase dots of abilities that reflect what they do and want to be, and if they drag their feet, Fatebonds will often make that choice for them. And if they choose to always use knacks in lieu of buying dots, that's okay with us, too, because it illustrates the intent of the knacks perfectly; they're awesome at winging it on the strength of their legendary brains and reflexes, but sometimes they won't be able to rely on that and will fail, which is exactly what they're signing up for.

Buying dots of abilities grants you the ability to never have to spend Legend on them and to be able to build them as part of your identity as a fledgling god. Using knacks instead allows you to potentially get higher rolls than you might otherwise, but denies you the ability to make those abilities part of your Legend and forces you to risk sometimes being unable to take advantage of them if you don't have the Legend. Either one is a valid approach, and we see no reason that the knacks need to be changed as a result.

As with many things in Scion, just having a few more dice on a roll actually doesn't really mean that it's a better option. Just that it's one of many ways of accomplishing something, and that the player will have the opportunity to choose between them.

The Lady is a Tramp

Question: I'm still not convinced the Morrigan has Manipulation. She disguises herself from mortals, Cu Chuchulainn and the Dagda, but none of them are known for being very perceptive. She could have been using Social Chameleon or Perfect Imposter. Are there more examples of her being manipulative?

Well, if you aren't convinced by our reasoning, we probably can't make you be. The Morrigan has an uncanny ability to disguise herself so that no one ever sees through it, and she does it in several stories, establishing it as a clear pattern of legendary behavior. Sure, the people she does it to aren't renowned for their perceptive powers, but they also aren't renowned for being bad at perception, either, and the Morrigan is consistently awesome at her undercover skillz in either case.

That sounds like plenty of good reasons to us, and we don't have a backup argument prepared in case someone doesn't agree. Not that everyone has to agree with us all the time, of course. You'll just think we're wrong and we'll just think you're wrong and everyone will go on being mildly offended at the internet.

However, I do want to address the second half of your question, because it made both John and me say, "Huhwha?" when we read it. There must be some confusion, because if there's one thing the Morrigan definitely isn't using to disguise herself at every turn, it's Social Chameleon and Perfect Imposter.

Those knacks just don't do that. They allow the Scion or god who uses them to fit into social situations and seem like they belong there, but they don't disguise them or somehow prevent people who know them from recognizing them. They're knacks that allow you to know approximately what to say, how to act and what kind of accent to put on to avoid anyone realizing that you're a wedding crasher or stranger in a strange land, but that's all. They make you good at blending into the crowd in terms of general mannerisms and common knowledge.

But they do not disguise you. Someone who knows you is still going to know you; your face did not disappear or change, and the fact that you intuitively know which fork to use and understand the local popular view of the people in charge is not somehow obscuring it. There are many, many powers in the game that make it impossible for people you know to figure out who you are - Manipulation and Illusion have most of them, as well as scattered powers throughout Appearance, Darkness, Magic and so forth - but these Wits knacks are not any of them. That doesn't even make sense; how does being epically quick on the uptake make you suddenly look like somebody else? That's not a power that would even fit into the skillset here. And if it did, holy hell, that would be insanely overpowered - all I have to do is take these knacks and I can basically be just as good at disguising myself as someone who dumped a bunch of XP into Manipulation or Illusion?

To use Sowiljr as an example because he commonly uses these knacks, he could absolutely pop up Perfect Imposter, stride into a hall full of Vanir gods and mingle like there's no tomorrow. He would know exactly what to say, how to respond and what to avoid so that none of the Vanir (assuming they didn't beat his roll) realized he wasn't one of them. He'd blend seamlessly into the crowd, and if some of them thought it was a little odd that he didn't look quite right, well, they'd brush it off. However, if his occasional nemesis Sverrir happened to be there, he would still instantly recognize Sowiljr and know who he was, because he's met him before, knows what he looks like and is fully aware that he isn't Vanir. The fact that Sowiljr knows when to raise his ale and how to gossip about the forest-god politics of the day is not going to somehow stop Sverrir from recognizing a dude he has spoken to and interacted with before. Sowiljr is still there in all his glory, regardless of his current ability to act like he was raised from birth in the forests of Vanaheim, and Sverrir knows what he looks and sounds like. At best, Sverrir might be mildly confused about when Geoff got so good at Vanir society, or think that maybe he was infiltrating Vanir society all along, but he won't not know that it's Sowiljr.

It's the same story for the Morrigan. She could use Perfect Imposter to hang out with a bunch of random human peasants, and they wouldn't know she wasn't a human peasant, too. But she could not use those knacks to prevent Cu Chulainn or the Dagda from recognizing her, because she's still the Morrigan, no matter how peasanty she's acting. She looks, sounds and smells like herself unless she does something to alter that. She has to actually use the powers in the game that disguise you - the chief among which is Manipulation - in order to not be recognized by people who know her.

As we said back in the dawn of time when we first talked about it, we know that Manipulation seems like it's a weird choice for the Morrigan, who has all the subtlety of a maddened steer in a Swarovski outlet. But she's definitely doing something that can fool even fellow gods into believing she's not what she appears to be, and Manipulation seems by far the most likely candidate to us. When the Morrigan decides to play pretend, the only way you're going to see through it is if she decides to reveal herself in order to taunt and/or stab you.

Et tu, Brute?

Question: Can Instant Investigator be used in scientific pursuits, such as quickly analyzing an archaeological site?

Alas, no. Instant Investigator is specifically designed to discover details pertinent to foul play, shenanigans and criminal activity; unless your archaeological site happens to be the forum in which Caesar was murdered, Instant Investigator will not help you learn any more details about it than you could through other methods. And even then, the knack probably isn't going to help you much; the difficulty is equal to the number of days that have passed since the event in question, so unless you can get 751,000 or so on your Wits + Investigation rolls, you're not going to be able to quickly reconstruct the exact scene of Caesar's death any more accurately than anything else that happened centuries ago.

For most situations, eyeballing a scene to try to get an idea of what happened there recently is a good old garden-variety Wits + Investigation roll; it's not as detailed as Instant Investigator unless you really knock the roll out of the park, but it gets you as much immediate, quick-on-the-uptake information on any given situation as your Wits allows. Most scientific investigations will probably be Perception or Intelligence + Investigation rolls instead, sacrificing the quick overview in favor of spending some time to get more in-depth details.

The Man Who Does It All

Question: I noticed Lugh lost Dexterity and Wits. As the god of skill this seems a strange choice since more skills require Dexterity than Strength. Wits also seems strange since it includes knacks like Jack of All Trades, Talent Mirror, and Don't Read The Manual which would be of great help to Lugh which makes more sense than claiming he has all skills maxed. Even the myth of his contest with Ogma is better explained with a use of Talent Mirror.

This question brings to light a common misconception in Scion: that if a god doesn't have an Attribute or Purview associated, they must not have any of it. I'm not sure where this idea comes from - after all, how many Scions buy only a couple of things to maximum and have absolutely nothing in any other areas? - but it's definitely not a viewpoint we share. Just because a god doesn't have Epic Wits associated with him doesn't mean he can't have, say, six dots of it. In fact, most gods probably do have at least a few dots in most Epic Attributes, and probably a smattering of boons across other purviews. There's just no reason they wouldn't, and it would certainly help explain weird cases in which gods do things that normally fall outside their purviews - say, when a war god heals his lame horse or a fertility god manages to blunder into the underworld.

So, in the case of Lugh, I'm sure he does have very serviceable Dexterity and Wits - but he's not a god of either, so he doesn't end up with them associated. As god of skills, it seems more likely to me that he just has those skills than that he's faking them with Epic Wits knacks; he doesn't need Jack of All Trades because he is actually a jack of all trades, all by himself. That's his thing. Lugh probably has ten dots in pretty much every ability, because that's what he's all about. And while it'd be difficult to have every Art/Control/Craft/Science imaginable maxed out, it only takes one dot of Epic Wits for Lugh to pick up Don't Read the Manual and Jack of All Trades. That's not enough of a reason for him to have Epic Wits associated; he doesn't have any myths in which he behaves particularly wittily or thinks on his feet more than anybody else. I'm sure he probably has five to seven dots of Epic Wits, but there's no reason for him to have it associated.

The myth of his contest with Ogma certainly could be a use of Talent Mirror, but it could also just be a straight-up normal contest; both have Strength and Thrown associated by our reckoning, so they're actually perfectly evenly matched without any need for Lugh to borrow Ogma's expertise. Lugh's already good at throwing things, as evidenced by the story of him spearing Balor's eye right out the back of his head; Lugh's big draw is that he has all the skills the other Tuatha have, not that he can kind of fake those skills for a scene.

Dexterity's basically the same story; while I'm sure he has a respectable number of dots of Epic Dexterity, enough to hit bad guys and successfully perform craft and skill abilities, he doesn't actually come off as a god of Dexterity. He's not particularly faster than anyone else, or more lithe, or renowned for deft hands, or anything like that. We didn't see any reason for him to have Epic Dexterity associated except for the same vague reasoning of "well, he's good at skill", but again that's more likely to be illustrated by him just having tons of dots in Abilities, not Epic Attributes. A goddess who weaves the fabric of the universe with her fingers has Epic Dexterity associated; a god who is so swift he can run across the world in the blink of an eye has Epic Dexterity associated. Lugh doesn't have any comparable Dexterity imagery or stories, so we dropped it like it was hot. Strength, on the other hand, not only plays into his contest with Ogma but also makes a strong showing when he hits Balor's eye so hard that it shoots out the back of his head. So Strength is in, Dexterity and Wits, neither of which have any real basis with Lugh other than vague association with skills, are out.

And at any rate, many of the skills Lugh boasts of having wouldn't have anything to do with Dexterity or Wits anyway. Being a physician, sorcerer, historian or poet, for example, all things he includes in his list of talents, are not exactly heavy Dexterity things; he's not talking about all manual labor tasks, he's talking about whole spheres of expertise, and those are best expressed as Abilities.

We spent a lot of time during our discussions over Lugh just wishing we could give him a zillion Abilities associated instead of just six. Or Arete. But alas, he is not Greek and has to remain fair in comparison to other deities when it comes to lending XP to his Scions, so we chose the six Abilities that seemed most strongly present in his stories and acknowledge that, should Lugh appear in person in a game, he is a goddamn dynamo of Ability dots far beyond just those six.