Scion, avoiding the horror

[Anonymouswizard]

In a couple of weeks I'll be getting a copy of Scion, with intent to run a campaign in it (starting at hero and progressing to demigod if I can get a group to stick to it). However, I have heard that the system is incredibly unbalanced, and upon reading a copy of hero I have to agree with the reports. I'm wondering if anybody has any suggestions on how to deal with these problems, which as far as I've seen seem to be by agreement concentrated in the Epic Attributes having a quadratic increase in power with level, whereas everything else is either linear or (in the case of purviews) based around adding capabilities.

My current idea is to replace epic attributes entirely with knacks, so instead of buying a point of Epic Strength you might buy crushing grip, or take Never Say Die instead of Epic Charisma. The other option I see is to make Epic Attributes simply grant a single bonus success per point, but then I'd have to increase their cost above 5*current rating XP.

Any other ideas for balancing the system? Is it better to start all the players off at Legend 2/3, or to let them buy bonus legend with Freebie Points? Should Legend be an entirely GM-granted stat?

[hiryuu]

Scion is unbalanced not because the epic attributes turn quadratic. It's unbalanced because some of the attributes objectively mean more than others.

Example. Untouchable Opponent and Epic Dexterity.

The other thing that I've seen people get wrong: you are supposed to get known. The world presented is a snapshot of the world right before the PCs step in. You are supposed to start getting local recognition and national fame and world fame and fly your dragon around using your super strength and a jetpack. It is supposed to be crazy and over the top and you are supposed to start punching Mount Rushmore because it woke up and now it's pissed and the videos are supposed to show up on youtube.

If by the time you reach God you're not putting a good spiral on that galaxy, the Titans are going to intercept and throw it back.

[Anonymouswizard]

Scion is unbalanced not because the epic attributes turn quadratic. It's unbalanced because some of the attributes objectively mean more than others.

Example. Untouchable Opponent and Epic Dexterity.

The Dexterity thing is, as I understand, a major flaw of the Storyteller system, and I'm not certain how to deal with it. I think I can balance the other epic attributes fairly well, as long as my players actually try things that would require mental/social attributes.

So are you saying the large gulfs of difference between Epic Attribute 7 and Epic Attribute 8 are an intentional design choice? What is the reasoning behind it.

The other thing that I've seen people get wrong: you are supposed to get known. The world presented is a snapshot of the world right before the PCs step in. You are supposed to start getting local recognition and national fame and world fame and fly your dragon around using your super strength and a jetpack. It is supposed to be crazy and over the top and you are supposed to start punching Mount Rushmore because it woke up and now it's pissed and the videos are supposed to show up on youtube.

Um... the power stat is called Legend, how can it increase if people don't know about you? How legendary can you be if nobody knows who you are? The game strikes me as being more superhero than having any sort of masquerade, although I know it's more of a 'modern mythology' thing with a healthy dose of fantasy.

If by the time you reach God you're not putting a good spiral on that galaxy, the Titans are going to intercept and throw it back.

Don't be silly, I meant for him to do that, I'm just distracting him while my mate preps the antimatter galaxy gun.

[hiryuu]

You're -supposed- to be able to blow away people slightly weaker than you like toddlers in a sandblaster. The problem is that they made it so that the list of people weaker than you consists of anyone who didn't take Epic Dex.

Almost none of the other stats matter.

That's what "unbalanced" means - it doesn't mean "my bonuses are huge and awesome for no reason," it means "one of these things is objectively better to take than these other things." Epic Dex is objectively better than anything else.

[Anonymouswizard]

You're -supposed- to be able to blow away people slightly weaker than you like toddlers in a sandblaster. The problem is that they made it so that the list of people weaker than you consists of anyone who didn't take Epic Dex.

Almost none of the other stats matter.

Okay, makes sense, but it doesn't make it balanced.

That's what "unbalanced" means - it doesn't mean "my bonuses are huge and awesome for no reason," it means "one of these things is objectively better to take than these other things." Epic Dex is objectively better than anything else.

Imagine I have Dexterity 2 Epic Dexterity 1, and I want to get better at dexterity. I have two options:
1) buy Dex 3, which costs 8XP and gives an extra die to all dex rolls.
2) buy EDex 2, which costs 5XP and gives an automatic success to most dex rolls I care about. Plus I get a free knack (which is 3XP?)

The problem is, not only is option 2 cheaper, nine times out if ten it is objectively better. And option two just keeps getting better, with the only limit in EDex being that it can't exceed my Dex. I don't call having a superior option balanced. They are thematic though.

[JeenLeen]

One thing I could see is to give all your PCs a static level of Epic Dexterity, and increase it for all of them at the same time. Or, since that gets troublesome xp-wise (either free xp, or forcing them to spend xp), you could start everyone with Epic Dex 1, and then at a certain point, tell them they can buy Epic Dex 2. Most will. It could be similar to saying "you can now go up in Legend"; most would want to.

[Tome]

My approach would be to allow other attributes to be used for some of the things Dex does. Not as a mandatory thing, but as 'choose whichever you like'.

Let Strength be used to hit with unarmed attacks and sufficiently weighty melee weapons. Similarly, let them apply Perception to hit with ranged weapons.

Allow Wits to sub in for Dex when calculating DV.

Possibly give Epic Stamina some bonus health levels.

Maybe allow Perception to apply to damage with guns, though requiring a Knack or making it only half your Epic Per might be be an option if you see that as going too far.

Dex remains the all-in-one combat ability, but you can now do at least part of it's work with other Attributes if you want.

[Anonymouswizard]

My approach would be to allow other attributes to be used for some of the things Dex does. Not as a mandatory thing, but as 'choose whichever you like'.

Let Strength be used to hit with unarmed attacks and sufficiently weighty melee weapons. Similarly, let them apply Perception to hit with ranged weapons.

Allow Wits to sub in for Dex when calculating DV.

Possibly give Epic Stamina some bonus health levels.

Maybe allow Perception to apply to damage with guns, though requiring a Knack or making it only half your Epic Per might be be an option if you see that as going too far.

Dex remains the all-in-one combat ability, but you can now do at least part of it's work with other Attributes if you want.

Interesting, my ideas so far:

1) Epic Attributes are know linear instead of quadratic, mainly because I'll find it easier to come up with difficulty 10ish challenges (reassembling Tower Bridge in a night) than difficulty 20+ challenges.
2) defence is based on Perception instead of Dexterity.
3) Epic Stamina gives an additional -0 health level per rank in addition to the soak bonuses. Let the tanks tank. This replaces the reduction of wound modifiers.
5) Legend 3 removes the first -1 wound penalty, Legend 4 the second -1, Legend 5 the first -2, Legend 6 the second -2, and Legend 7 the -5, to represent Scions becoming immune to pain as they increase in legend (and replace flesh with ichor).
6) new/changed knacks to mix up what stats you use for what:
-Untouchable Opponent allows you to use Dexterity for defence instead of Perception.
-Canny Defence allows you to use your Wits for defence instead of Perception.
-Eagle Eye allows you to use Perception for firearms and archery attacks instead of Dexterity.
-Mighty Blow let's you use Strength for Brawling and some Melee weapons instead of Dexterity.
7) XP replaced with Bonus Points, as the scale of growth makes sense for scion. Will have to think about the prices of Boons.

Dex can be the all-in-one combat ability, but it costs. Scions are also slightly tougher, but can't just ignore pain using Epic Stamina. Regeneration powers start to look better when you can survive a couple of hits.

[Friv]

Interesting, my ideas so far:

1) Epic Attributes are know linear instead of quadratic, mainly because I'll find it easier to come up with difficulty 10ish challenges (reassembling Tower Bridge in a night) than difficulty 20+ challenges.
2) defence is based on Perception instead of Dexterity.
3) Epic Stamina gives an additional -0 health level per rank in addition to the soak bonuses. Let the tanks tank. This replaces the reduction of wound modifiers.
5) Legend 3 removes the first -1 wound penalty, Legend 4 the second -1, Legend 5 the first -2, Legend 6 the second -2, and Legend 7 the -5, to represent Scions becoming immune to pain as they increase in legend (and replace flesh with ichor).
6) new/changed knacks to mix up what stats you use for what:
-Untouchable Opponent allows you to use Dexterity for defence instead of Perception.
-Canny Defence allows you to use your Wits for defence instead of Perception.
-Eagle Eye allows you to use Perception for firearms and archery attacks instead of Dexterity.
-Mighty Blow let's you use Strength for Brawling and some Melee weapons instead of Dexterity.
7) XP replaced with Bonus Points, as the scale of growth makes sense for scion. Will have to think about the prices of Boons.

Dex can be the all-in-one combat ability, but it costs. Scions are also slightly tougher, but can't just ignore pain using Epic Stamina. Regeneration powers start to look better when you can survive a couple of hits.

Not a bad start. Here are a few other Scion problems:

Spoiler: General Problems

Show

* Soak is twice as powerful as damage, but damage comes from twice as many sources. The short result of this is that it's the root of the Strength < Dexterity problem, and it also makes armor, especially relic armor, absurdly powerful, because dots of relic armor are twice as strong as dots of relic weapon. This could be fixed by boosting Strength and weapon damage, and not allowing extra successes on attacks to add to damage.
* Example weapons and armor are very unbalanced, and buying weapons or armor according to the RAW can result is some relics being wildly stronger than others - for example, a 1-dot relic Katana has the same stats as a 2-dot relic Xiphos or a 4-dot relic Hasta. Level 1 riot gear could have the same stats as Level 4 lamellar, and is also bulletproof. And so on.
* Speed is not a great idea, mainly once it drops below 4. At that point, the power increase starts advancing ridiculously. Speed 3 is bad, Speed 2 is game-breakingly bad, and Speed 1 is game-shatteringly bad. (Unless everyone and everything has Speed 1, but in that case you're just houseruling Speed out of existence). Generally, houseruling a Speed 4 minimum for most actions is a good idea.
* Guns are junk because they don't get Epic Attribute damage. The solution is to either give them an Epic Attribute for damage (probably Perception), or else allow a Knack to do the same.
* The differences in cost between Legend Points for character generation and Experience points can result in characters with literally hundreds of XP worth of advantages over each other. This problem is magnified by some gods only having four purviews, while others have fourteen. This problem could be solved with a new experience or character creation system, or both.
* If two characters have different Legend levels, the higher-Legend character is wildly stronger. This becomes infinitely worse at the Legend 4-5 gap. You should probably not allow Legend to be bought with BP or XP, and give it out after major story events. (The worst example I ever saw was a discussion of a game when someone started the game at Legend 4, and someone else started at Legend 2. The Legend 4 character then pushed to Legend 5 with his first 32 XP, which the other character used to get to Legend 3 and be part-way to legend 4; immediately on hitting Legend 5, he boosted to Legend 7 with his demigod BP and was infinitely stronger than the legend 3 character.)
* Followers and Creature are both totally useless past about Legend 3, because Guides and Relics scale based on your abilities and Followers and Creatures are flat low-Legend beings who are totally outclassed by any sort of opposition, be it physical, social or mental, and who stay dead if killed. There is no fix for this.
* Mind control Knacks are either totally useless (because it might be possible to spend 1 Willpower to ignore them completely) or completely game-winning (because the rules of several of them suggest otherwise, and Epic Attributes make it impossible to beat them in roll-offs.) House-rule - use Wits + Something instead of Willpower, probably.

Spoiler: Specific Boon Problems

Show

Legend 3:

* Aegis (Guardian 2) can easily provide Hardness 9+, making targets nigh-invulnerable for a day unless they're up against people who can insta-kill everyone else.
* Cheval 2 is an untraceable instant murder action against anyone of lower Legend than you, and will become the same against equal-Legend characters as your Legend goes up.
* Itzli and Jotunblut are terrible. Just, really, really awful. Forever.

Legend 4:
* Animal Aspect (Animal 3) lets you add an average of nine dice to all rolls involving an Attribute of your choice for several actions. Using it for combat (or for certain other boons) shatters the game pretty effectively.
* Paralyzing Confusion (Chaos 3) is a one-hit kill against equal or lesser-Legend characters, unless they have really exceptional Willpower + Integrity (and I mean Willpower 8-10, Integrity 4-5 and also Legend 4).
* Ward (Guardian 3) utterly locks down all equal- and lower-Legend characters with no possible way to evade or deal with it.
* Sekem Barrier (Heku 3) instantly removes all lower-Legend people or monsters from the field whenever you use it, for one Legend, with no way to counteract its effects.
* Phase Cloak (Moon 3) makes it impossible for anyone to spot you, due to them losing 8 successes before your opposed Stealth roll comes into play. Assuming they are hyper-Perception focused, they need to get 16 additional dice above Epic Attributes, Perception 5, and Awareness 5 to have an even chance of finding you.
* Heavenly Flare (Sun 3) is a one-hit kill against every enemy on the field if they don't have a better Stamina + Fortitude than your tricked-out Appearance+Presence, which you can chain indefinitely. Just make sure your allies know when to close their eyes. (Particularly absurd combined with Animal Aspect or Arete - or both.)
* The Helpful Spirit (Tsukumo-Gami 3) lets you get a +9 dice bonus to all actions involving a type of tool for several days, which makes you functionally unbeatable against enemies who don't have an equivalent source of dice (of which there are very few; see Animal Aspect, above, which this stacks with for extra stupid).
* Cheval 3 is basically Cheval 2 but so, so much more deadly, and almost any equal-Legend character is vulnerable.
* Demand A Labor (Magic 3) is an unstoppable one-hit slavery effect if you have any Epic Manipulation which allows you to totally lock down an enemy's Willpower pool.
* Itzli and Jotunblut continue to be terrible. This isn't going to change any time soon.

[Anonymouswizard]

Not a bad start. Here are a few other Scion problems:

Responses in the spoilers.

Spoiler: General Prblems

Show

* Soak is twice as powerful as damage, but damage comes from twice as many sources. The short result of this is that it's the root of the Strength < Dexterity problem, and it also makes armor, especially relic armor, absurdly powerful, because dots of relic armor are twice as strong as dots of relic weapon. This could be fixed by boosting Strength and weapon damage, and not allowing extra successes on attacks to add to damage.

I'll probably keep damage as-is, minus the bonus successes from attack rolls. I have some players who aren't great at arithmetic, so it'll keep combat flowing.

* Example weapons and armor are very unbalanced, and buying weapons or armor according to the RAW can result is some relics being wildly stronger than others - for example, a 1-dot relic Katana has the same stats as a 2-dot relic Xiphos or a 4-dot relic Hasta. Level 1 riot gear could have the same stats as Level 4 lamellar, and is also bulletproof. And so on.

This sounds like a problem, but I think it'll have to be one solved when I help players create their relics.

* Speed is not a great idea, mainly once it drops below 4. At that point, the power increase starts advancing ridiculously. Speed 3 is bad, Speed 2 is game-breakingly bad, and Speed 1 is game-shatteringly bad. (Unless everyone and everything has Speed 1, but in that case you're just houseruling Speed out of existence). Generally, houseruling a Speed 4 minimum for most actions is a good idea.

Good to know, I may stop relics having a reduction in speed, and instead make a knack to reduce the speed of all attack actions by 1, to a minimum of 4.

* Guns are junk because they don't get Epic Attribute damage. The solution is to either give them an Epic Attribute for damage (probably Perception), or else allow a Knack to do the same.

I don't like how many modern systems focus on guns, but if a player decides to do so then I can just let them take an incredible aim knack to even the odds.

* The differences in cost between Legend Points for character generation and Experience points can result in characters with literally hundreds of XP worth of advantages over each other. This problem is magnified by some gods only having four purviews, while others have fourteen. This problem could be solved with a new experience or character creation system, or both.

I'm not sure how I'll solve this, but I plan to have all boons cost the same, with your parent mastering it giving you the choice of using it without a relic at an additional cost of 1 Willpower.

* If two characters have different Legend levels, the higher-Legend character is wildly stronger. This becomes infinitely worse at the Legend 4-5 gap. You should probably not allow Legend to be bought with BP or XP, and give it out after major story events. (The worst example I ever saw was a discussion of a game when someone started the game at Legend 4, and someone else started at Legend 2. The Legend 4 character then pushed to Legend 5 with his first 32 XP, which the other character used to get to Legend 3 and be part-way to legend 4; immediately on hitting Legend 5, he boosted to Legend 7 with his demigod BP and was infinitely stronger than the legend 3 character.)

I plan to have all the PCs start at Legend 2/3, and then Legend shall be earnt by the group, not Bought by the Scion.

* Followers and Creature are both totally useless past about Legend 3, because Guides and Relics scale based on your abilities and Followers and Creatures are flat low-Legend beings who are totally outclassed by any sort of opposition, be it physical, social or mental, and who stay dead if killed. There is no fix for this.

I'll let followers who are dead be replaced between stories, and creatures grow stronger with Legend (and have a Legend equal to yours). Maybe the number of followers you have doubles with every X Legend, or they gain an additional point of legend and a couple of bonus attribute and ability points?

* Mind control Knacks are either totally useless (because it might be possible to spend 1 Willpower to ignore them completely) or completely game-winning (because the rules of several of them suggest otherwise, and Epic Attributes make it impossible to beat them in roll-offs.) House-rule - use Wits + Something instead of Willpower, probably.

I'll look into this, can't come up with something until I have the book.

Spoiler: Specific Boon Problems

Show

Legend 3:
* Aegis (Guardian 2) can easily provide Hardness 9+, making targets nigh-invulnerable for a day unless they're up against people who can insta-kill everyone else.

Eek, throw an 'less than or equal to Legend' qualifier?

* Cheval 2 is an untraceable instant murder action against anyone of lower Legend than you, and will become the same against equal-Legend characters as your Legend goes up.

I'll have to look up the Boon, but my first thought is to add a prerequisite, such as 'mush have X object identifiable as the Target's in your possession'. Otherwise, it can be turned into a debuff or the like.

* Itzli and Jotunblut are terrible. Just, really, really awful. Forever.

Which Pantheon is Itzli from? It sounds like the Azttec one, so maybe replace it with a Purview that gives extra power to other Boons in exchange for Blood Sacrifice? What is the theme behind Jotunblut?

Legend 4:
* Animal Aspect (Animal 3) lets you add an average of nine dice to all rolls involving an Attribute of your choice for several actions. Using it for combat (or for certain other boons) shatters the game pretty effectively.

that's getting house ruled to oblivion.

* Paralyzing Confusion (Chaos 3) is a one-hit kill against equal or lesser-Legend characters, unless they have really exceptional Willpower + Integrity (and I mean Willpower 8-10, Integrity 4-5 and also Legend 4).

Sounds like it could be fixed by making the save easier, problematic, but comparatively simple.

* Ward (Guardian 3) utterly locks down all equal- and lower-Legend characters with no possible way to evade or deal with it

So they forgot the save with the suck? We just need to add a way to avoid or deal with it.

* Sekem Barrier (Heku 3) instantly removes all lower-Legend people or monsters from the field whenever you use it, for one Legend, with no way to counteract its effects.

Sounds like it needs a heafty cost or a way to avoid it. Shouldn't be the hardest.

* Phase Cloak (Moon 3) makes it impossible for anyone to spot you, due to them losing 8 successes before your opposed Stealth roll comes into play. Assuming they are hyper-Perception focused, they need to get 16 additional dice above Epic Attributes, Perception 5, and Awareness 5 to have an even chance of finding you.

Sounds like a problem of power, will try to tone it down.

* Heavenly Flare (Sun 3) is a one-hit kill against every enemy on the field if they don't have a better Stamina + Fortitude than your tricked-out Appearance+Presence, which you can chain indefinitely. Just make sure your allies know when to close their eyes. (Particularly absurd combined with Animal Aspect or Arete - or both.)

I'll look at it and try to reduce it's power, thank you for pointing it out.

* The Helpful Spirit (Tsukumo-Gami 3) lets you get a +9 dice bonus to all actions involving a type of tool for several days, which makes you functionally unbeatable against enemies who don't have an equivalent source of dice (of which there are very few; see Animal Aspect, above, which this stacks with for extra stupid).

Step 1) remove cheese stacking. Step 2) reduce potency and duration.

* Cheval 3 is basically Cheval 2 but so, so much more deadly, and almost any equal-Legend character is vulnerable.

I've changed my mind, I want the stupid zombie voodoo back. Los are so getting the Banhammer (whereas I think I can save our Egyptian friends).

* Demand A Labor (Magic 3) is an unstoppable one-hit slavery effect if you have any Epic Manipulation which allows you to totally lock down an enemy's Willpower pool.

Magic is going to require a close eye anyway.

* Itzli and Jotunblut continue to be terrible. This isn't going to change any time soon.

So sad, because the Asier will be popular.

[Friv]

To be fair to Cheval for a moment - the Level 2 and 3 powers let you force people to take certain actions, as long as you have some hair/blood, or something that they created, or a picture of them. If they're lower Legend than you, they can't resist, and there's no clause to prevent people from jumping off buildings or otherwise suiciding. Those are pretty easy clauses to fix, and frankly should be fixed, because thematically that's not what Loa do to the people they ride. Letting people get a resistance roll with a bonus if you force them to do something that acts against their Virtues, and making the bonus extremely huge against clearly suicidal actions, is probably enough to fix it.

To expand on the Itzli and Jotunblut problem (and it really is a shame, because those are two of the coolest pantheons):

Jotunblut, theoretically, exists to pump up your mortal followers and make them more useful, as well as binding their loyalty to you. The problem is that the first dot lets you make a totally mundane animal into a loyal totally mundane animal with +1 Strength, which is basically a parlor trick, and the second dot does that to totally mundane humans. Because you need to spend a health level per person you do this to, because you need to renew it monthly, and because totally mundane humans are (a) extremely easy to make loyal with social actions and (b) totally useless in a fight, giving them extremely small Strength and Stamina boosts doesn't change that, the power has essentially no area in which it's useful. As your Legend goes up, it just gets worse and worse - I can at least imagine situations in which I might use Jotunblut 1 or 2, but Jotunblut 6 is just giving more Strength and Stamina, plus a couple of high-end Virtues to turn my followers into deranged berserkers without making them able to actually hit anything, or hurt anything that's anywhere near my level. It's the Legend problem writ large.

Itzli, theoretically, exists to let the Aztlanti have way more Legend to burn on things than anyone else. The first dot lets you spend 1 health level, once a day, to recover 1 point of Legend. I have this suspicion that it was written before you could recover Legend with stunts. The second level lets you spend a Willpower and then let an enemy hit you in combat to recover up to (your Legend rating) Legend, which is a really good way to get killed and again, provides such a tiny reward that until you're a Demigod just stunting is better. Itzli 3 lets you sacrifice more than 1 health level per day to recover Legend, which is even more terrible but I guess could be useful in a really, really desperate situation.

Unlike Jotunblut, Itzli actually starts coming into its own at the Demigod level, letting you sacrifice other people for Legend, deal aggravated damage and recover Legend, and give yourself a temporary boost to your Permanent Legend by killing someone. And at the God level it lets you trade Willpower for Legend, share Legend with other people, and massively increase your Legend pool.

Probably, if I were the one writing Itzli, I would have the first dot trade 1 Health Level for three Legend, and the second dot give you an expanded Legend pool, and the third dot let you sacrifice other people.

[Anonymouswizard]

Okay, managed to nick a copy until I'm able to order mine at the end of the week, so I can have a proper go at this stuff.

To be fair to Cheval for a moment - the Level 2 and 3 powers let you force people to take certain actions, as long as you have some hair/blood, or something that they created, or a picture of them. If they're lower Legend than you, they can't resist, and there's no clause to prevent people from jumping off buildings or otherwise suiciding. Those are pretty easy clauses to fix, and frankly should be fixed, because thematically that's not what Loa do to the people they ride. Letting people get a resistance roll with a bonus if you force them to do something that acts against their Virtues, and making the bonus extremely huge against clearly suicidal actions, is probably enough to fix it.

Looking at it, if I remove the 'must have at least your legend to resist' clause, and let them add the rating of any Virtues violated. I'd just have it fail with outright suicidal actions, it's powerful enough as-is.

Speaking of such stuff, I'll likely require Heku 2 and 3 have the Scion beat the target's Wits+Fortitude on a Appearance+Command roll. And change all 'willpower' saves to an appropriate attribute.

To expand on the Itzli and Jotunblut problem (and it really is a shame, because those are two of the coolest pantheons):

Jotunblut, theoretically, exists to pump up your mortal followers and make them more useful, as well as binding their loyalty to you. The problem is that the first dot lets you make a totally mundane animal into a loyal totally mundane animal with +1 Strength, which is basically a parlor trick, and the second dot does that to totally mundane humans. Because you need to spend a health level per person you do this to, because you need to renew it monthly, and because totally mundane humans are (a) extremely easy to make loyal with social actions and (b) totally useless in a fight, giving them extremely small Strength and Stamina boosts doesn't change that, the power has essentially no area in which it's useful. As your Legend goes up, it just gets worse and worse - I can at least imagine situations in which I might use Jotunblut 1 or 2, but Jotunblut 6 is just giving more Strength and Stamina, plus a couple of high-end Virtues to turn my followers into deranged berserkers without making them able to actually hit anything, or hurt anything that's anywhere near my level. It's the Legend problem writ large.

Change number 1: we make it a bonding ceremony that lasts as long as the follower remains loyal to your character, but if they defect they only have 1 month to find a new liege before becoming feral.
Change Number 2: let's make those Epic Attributes. Suddenly, that dog who got +1 Strength gets +1 Epic Strength and a Knack of your choosing (which can be changed by another blood bonding ceremony), which is a greater leap in power. Jotunnlut 6 is giving the follower 6 Epic Attribute points in physical attributes (the Asier aren't giant's they may well have learnt to boost Dexterity as well) including 6 knack, which while less than a PC, lets them destroy full mortals.

This should allow a character to get use out of Jotunblut, but I'd like to hear what others think of the changes.

Itzli, theoretically, exists to let the Aztlanti have way more Legend to burn on things than anyone else. The first dot lets you spend 1 health level, once a day, to recover 1 point of Legend. I have this suspicion that it was written before you could recover Legend with stunts. The second level lets you spend a Willpower and then let an enemy hit you in combat to recover up to (your Legend rating) Legend, which is a really good way to get killed and again, provides such a tiny reward that until you're a Demigod just stunting is better. Itzli 3 lets you sacrifice more than 1 health level per day to recover Legend, which is even more terrible but I guess could be useful in a really, really desperate situation.

Unlike Jotunblut, Itzli actually starts coming into its own at the Demigod level, letting you sacrifice other people for Legend, deal aggravated damage and recover Legend, and give yourself a temporary boost to your Permanent Legend by killing someone. And at the God level it lets you trade Willpower for Legend, share Legend with other people, and massively increase your Legend pool.

Probably, if I were the one writing Itzli, I would have the first dot trade 1 Health Level for three Legend, and the second dot give you an expanded Legend pool, and the third dot let you sacrifice other people.

The problem with 1 Health Level for 3 Legend is that Self Healing lets you heal 1 Health Level for 1 Legend, making it a free two Legend, which I don't think is a good thing for a one dot Boon. As an idea for a new version:

Itzil 1: when activating another boon, you may cut yourself and offer your blood as sacrifice. Using this Boon inflicts damage on the user but reduces the cost of the activating boon by 1 Legend in exchange for a level of Bashing Damage, 2 Legend in exchange for a level of Lethal Damage, or 4 legend in exchange for a level of Aggravated Damage. This gift can only be used once a turn.

Itzil 2: at this level the Scion becomes able to derive power from ritually shedding their blood. Once per day, the Scion may inflict a point of lethal damage on themselves in exchange for three points of Legend.

Itzil 3: I think here would be a good time to bring in sacrificing other beings, so how about: the Scion learns to derive power from the life energy of lesser creatures. But inflicting a level of Aggravated Damage to a non-human and non-legendary creature the Scion can reap 1 point of Legend. (The exchange rate is intentionally very bad here)

Itzil 4+ would then let you sacrifice other people and draw power from bloodletting, and so on. The size of Legend Pools grows so quickly (another thing I'll probably be house ruling, any ideas on a decent formula) that increasing it is probably useless past Hero level, and Itzli itself starts to look like a bad idea.

[Friv]

The problem with 1 Health Level for 3 Legend is that Self Healing lets you heal 1 Health Level for 1 Legend, making it a free two Legend, which I don't think is a good thing for a one dot Boon.

As a general rule, I would say either:

(a) Health levels sacrificed to Itzli can't be healed with magic, or
(b) If you heal a health level sacrificed to Itlzi with magic, you lose the Legend that you gained from it as the sacrifice is undone. If this reduces your Legend below 0, you lose Willpower equal to the difference, and if that hits 0 you lose virtue channels. If your Legend, Willpower, and Virtue Channels are all 0, you lose your own health levels.

Probably (b), because it both allows for emergency taking your Legend back, and allows for defeating a powerful Atzlanti character by healing their sacrificial victims, which is kind of cool thematically.

[Anonymouswizard]

As a general rule, I would say either:

(a) Health levels sacrificed to Itzli can't be healed with magic, or
(b) If you heal a health level sacrificed to Itlzi with magic, you lose the Legend that you gained from it as the sacrifice is undone. If this reduces your Legend below 0, you lose Willpower equal to the difference, and if that hits 0 you lose virtue channels. If your Legend, Willpower, and Virtue Channels are all 0, you lose your own health levels.

Probably (b), because it both allows for emergency taking your Legend back, and allows for defeating a powerful Atzlanti character by healing their sacrificial victims, which is kind of cool thematically.

Definitely a good idea, I'll probably include it. I might make the extra Legend points from Itzil 2 equal to the scion's Legend Rating, so at Legend 3 it's 3 points, Legend 4 is 4 points etc, due to the sacrifice being 1/day.

EDIT: will be taking the fixes to homebrew, which is where they should be.