Shoptalk: All That Is Within My Purview

In the RAW (Rules As Written) system for Scion, a peculiar situation arises where Death Gods are required to be Charismatic if they want to be good at their jobs. Health Gods are useless unless they themselves are hardy like an ox. In short, the rolls for Boons are often tied to seemingly random or ill-suited Attributes. This isn't always something that can be fixed by changing the roll. Sometimes there is no Attribute that really fits. Take Rainbow Bridge for example. What's the Attribute most related to teleportation? Does it help to be smart? How? What about flexible or fast-footed? How does that help you warp space and travel without moving?

Originally, I simply tried being flexible with the rolls required by various Boons. If a player could come up with a good argument to use a different Attribute, I'd allow them to change the roll. This worked fine in most cases, but it still raised the issue of the Boons where there is no clear-cut Attribute that lends itself really well. Many Boons, in fact, can be seen as simply raw manifestations of the Purview's power. Why should one Earth God be better at making earthquakes than another, when both of them are equally powerful (Legend) and equally invested in the Earth Purview (number and rank of Boons)? That just didn't sit well with me.

What the Atlanta players are testing out now is a system called Epic Purviews. What happens is that each Purview you know has a Rank which is equal to the number of different ranks you know Boons for. If you know a rank 1, rank 3 and rank 8 Boon in Health, then your Health Rank is 3. You also have a Purview Rating which is equal to the number of Boons you know, regardless of their rank. Your Purview Rating replaces Attributes for Boon Activation rolls and is sometimes used in calculations. Your Purview Rank provides automatic successes as if it were an Epic Attribute, keeping Purviews from falling behind at higher Legend.

Example: Sak Balam has a total of 12 Animal Boons, with at least one in every Rank from 1 to 8. This means that his Animal Rank is 8 and his Animal Rating is 12. When he activates a Boon like Animal Aspect he rolls Rating + Animal Ken, for a total of 22 dice, 10 from his Animal Ken and 12 from his Animal Rating. His Rank of 8 grants him 29 automatic successes on that roll, just as if it was an Epic Attribute.

The benefit of this system is that in order to be good at your Purviews, all you need to invest in is your Purviews. You don't need to invest in Epic Attributes that may be tangental or even directly opposed to your concept just to be good at the powers that form the very basis of your intended divine function. It also deals with what I perceive to be an issue in the RAW system where someone who picks up a single Boon in a Purview can actually be better at using that Boon than someone who has every single Boon in that Purview under their belt.

Example: Boris is a God of Darkness, but he picked up Fury of War to help out in combat and represent his dragonic rages. Because of his heavy focus on Stamina (8/8) he has 16 dice and 29 automatic successes for the activation roll. The psychotic parrot-Goddess Colibri has every War Boon she can get her hands on, but Stamina isn't her strong point. She only has Stamina 6/6, giving her a mere 14 dice and 16 automatic successes for Fury of War. She is totally outclassed at her own speciality by Boris, who is only dabbling in War, because he is sturdier than she is.

I am not alright with the situation described above. Epic Purviews solves that. The downside is that it makes it very hard to 'dabble' in Purviews. Your pools are limited by your investment in the Purview, so cherry-picking Boons from this Purview and that isn't going to be as beneficial. It also makes people who invest heavily in Epic Attributes and go for low ratings in many Purviews instead of high ratings in just a few less effective than they would be under RAW. Again, I actually see this as a positive effect, even if it does 'punish' some types of characters.

If you are making the choice to dabble in a Purview, picking up only one or two Boons, you don't deserve to be as effective as those Boons as someone who has spent the XP and time to specialize. The same applies if you want to generalize and scatter yourself between a wide number of Purviews. You're trading power for utility.

The only reason I kept the ability to cherry-pick Boons and skip ranks as you're learning is.. well, actually my phrasing is misleading. I love that feature of Scion and wouldn't ever get rid of it. While I don't think dabbling should be disproportionately rewarded as it is under the current system, I do think it should be possible. There are far too many stories of Gods doing things that fall outside their normal Purviews for me to require someone to buy everything in a Purview just to get the one, single power there that happens to fit them perfectly. Someone who only wants the reproductive Boons in Health won't be as good at using them as a full-fledged Health God would, but he can still do that without burning XP to pick up a lot of extra powers that he'll never use.

Last note: an Epic Purview system actually makes Purviews a better return on your XP. If your Epic Attributes determine how good you are at your Purviews, then you need to burn XP on those Epics even if you aren't necessarily interested in them. Under an Epic Purview system, the only thing you need to spend XP on to be good at Death is Death. You don't also have to invest in Epic Charisma, even if you don't mind getting Epic Charisma, requiring to use your Death Boons effectively is still diverting your XP in a direction you may not want it going.

For further details and examples, feel free to visit the Lost Atlanta Wiki's page on Epic Purviews.