Cult Birthright

Here's a link to a new Birthright proposed by Gnomish_American at the Scion forums. I think this birthright has a lot of potential, and I wish I'd remembered it when advancing our Scion PCs to Godhood.

It's intended to be a Gods-only birthright, like Avatar and Sanctum. It refreshes the legend pools of the character, based on the worship services of their mortal followers. As such, Gnomish_American's version had it granting Legend points at certain times of day and certain days of the week. I play kinda fast and loose with time (at least when not running Continuum), so that wouldn't work for me.

Instead, I'd have each dot of Cult:

• restore one point of temporary Legend at the start of each session.
• restore one point of temporary Legend any time the GM advanced time by 1 or more days. (If months or years pass, we're probably starting a new story, so everyone's whole pool refreshes regardless of cult level.)
  
• restore 5 points of temporary Legend once per story, to represent major holy days. The PC can invoke this at any time, but they don't get the restored points till the scene ends. That way, you can use it to "freshen-up" before going and doing something important, but you can't strain believability by timing religious festivals to occur in the middle of your battles.

While I didn't think to offer this birthright as an option while "leveling up" the PCs, I may just grant them all 2 dots for free. There was a point in the story where they saved a lost island and converted the natives to polytheism. This would be a fun way to reward those efforts.

Legend, Willpower, Avatar, and Titan

Trying to post something at the Scion Forum today, I nearly ran afoul of trying to distinguish temporary Legend points from permanent Legend rating.

• A character, with a Legend rating of X, has X-squared temporary Legend points.
• Many powers grant Legend, and others charge Legend. In most cases this means points, but there are a few things that temporarily boost Legend rating instead.
• However, it's terribly easy to accidentally not specify "points" or "rating" and those vague moments can get a little painful or confusing sometimes.

A similar problem sometimes occurs with Willpower.

• There are things (mostly powers) that trigger based on permanent Willpower rating.
• Other things (powers again, but also non-power mechanics) care about temporary Willpower points.
• Distinguishing between the two can sometimes be tricky.

Then there's the word Avatar, which can mean:

1. The top Boon of a Purview - the ultimate level of a field of godly power. (Note: sometimes players and forumites refer to the Ultimate epics as Avatars, but technically this is incorrect)
   
2. A character currently using such a Boon.
3. A birthright that allows a god to manifest with lower Legend (rating) for fewer Legend (points).
4. The sentient embodiment of one of the Titans, who can have 2 out of 3 of the above.
5. The words standard english-language meaning gets used occassionally, which in Scion would be roughly the earthly manifestation of a god, regardless of whether or not they used the birthright to manifest it, and regardless of whether they have and ultimate boons (in other words, it's still their avatar regardless of whether they have Avatar or any Avatars).
6. The physical body manifested from ichor by a god to be their earthly manifestation.
   

And, of course, the word Titan has similar issues. It can be:

• The world-sized embodiment of a primal concept. (Also sometimes known as a Greater Titan)
• Any of the many simultaneous Avatars (primarily 4th meaning, but also potentially the 1st, 2nd and 5th) of a Greater Titan.
• It's mythology-specific meaning, the primal beings from which the greco-roman gods were birthed. These would be just the Greco-Roman Avatars of the Greater Titans: Cronus, Ouranos, Gaia, etc. This is rarely used by the books, but it's hard to avoid when discussing the myths and characters that inspired the game.
  

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Wouldn't all of the above be easier if they'd just used a thesaurus?

• Legend Rating could have determined "Myth Points".
• Willpower Rating could have associated temporary "Ego Points".
• "Primals", of which greco "Titans" are but a subgroup, could have "Avatars" (4th meaning only). Gods would instead have "Manifestations", with the option of purchasing the "Mortal Coil" (or perhaps even "Humility"?) birthright.
• The apex of Powers could be "Ultimate Boons" to compliment the games existing Ultimate Epics, though perhaps "Ultimates" and "Pinnacles" would preserve a distinction between them.

I think choosing to use multiple different terms would strengthen the game and remove much of the ambiguity and confusion of the rules. I fail to see what possible advantage all these duplicate terms and alternate meanings have. Does anyone have insight into why such decisions were not made?

Leveling Legend

One houserule I use in my Scion campaign is that no one is allowed to spend XP on Legend. All characters started as a group, at Legend 2, and advance as a group whenever their actions (and the resulting public awareness) justify it.

I didn't have this rule until about the 12th session in. All the PCs had chosen independently to start at Legend 2, playing characters who did not yet have much popularity or reputation. A few sessions in, one player advanced to Legend 3. The next session, another PC followed, and the third did the session after that. But it was noticable to me the differences in power-level in that time. Two characters have the same social knack, one where whom you could affect with it was based on Legend rating. Suddenly one PC got much more potent than the other, despite the now-suddenly-weaker individual having about 6 more dice in the relevant Attribute + Ability pool. Nothing relevant had changed, except for Legend. This rung a warning bell for me - it was clear that issues like that were going to crop up anytime the PCs Legend Ratings were spread apart. Further, those issues would get more severe at the higher levels - as is evidenced by the growth pattern of Epic Attributes (which give autosuccesses equal to 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16, 22, 29, 37, 46, 56 as the level goes up).