Rogue Scion PSP idea

In a PBP game I'm playing in, my character is a rogue (he renounced Odin mid visitation) Scion and I've sort of had the idea of a custom PSP and thought I'd bounce it off of the community here prior to pitching it to my ST.

Of course, he (James McMurray) frequents these forums and might weigh in as well.

The general idea is sort of an inversion of the idea of relics mimicking boons. In this case, each rank give access to the advantage of a relic of that rank.

Thus the first rank could be used to give access to one purview. The second rank might allow the user to fly as if he had Wind's Freedom, offset the cost of a boon/knack or even provide access to a 2 dot birthright (which would be brought in via plot).

To keep this from being imbalanced, it will need some restrictions.

1) Unlike other flexible purviews (such as Arete) that allow boons to be purchased multiple times, each rank of this purview can be purchased once. Thus if the first rank has been used to provide access to the Fire purview, the first rank cannot be purchased again to gain access to the Frost Purview.

2) Relics might normally be able to mimic any appropriate boon of an equal rank, but this purview is incapable of mimicking boons from other PSPs. Such a thing runs counter to the idea of an independant Scion.

3) If the player elects to take a physical relic instead of just the advantage of one, it must be feasible within the context of the plot. One can't just find a portion Prometheus's liver made into a coat  laying on the side of the road. If he already has a unique item, this Purview can essentially make it into a relic of the appropriate rank.

At first glance I don't like it. It seems like a way to grab the god with the most purviews (Odin), drop Jotunblut (a generally maligned PSP), get a bonus dot of Legend, and make up for the drawback of not having birthrights by replicating them with the new PSP.

Unless I'm misreading, each dot is considered its own relic rating? So someone with 2 dots in this would have an equivalent to a 1-dot artifact from the first one, plus the equivilent of a 2-dot artifact from the second one? That's definitely too much, as it means a Scion could eventually wind up with the equivalent of 10 relics ranging from 1 to 10 dots (or 1 to 5 if they're capped).

As a PSP for a pantheon it's got promise, and I could definitely see it fitting a modern pantheon based around technology, transgenics, or the like. It'd need to be scaled back some.

What about making each dot worth one dot of relic / birthright, per the companion, and then allow the expenditure of XP to realign the character's past purchases? If they got rid of dots that granted access to other purviews they'd lose those purviews as if they'd lost a relic.

I initially was thinking along those lines, but I realized that a five dot birthright is meant to be equivalent to a single five dot boon. Thus a Purview that grants access to one birthright per dot comes in a bit short since it amounts to one very expensive boon.

Also, with the other aspect f the rogue Scion of Odin bit, I was planning on having the character be rather boon light anyway. The purview access was more of an example anyway. I also wasn't sure whether or not anything would count as favored since Hank (the character for those outside the game) has disassociated himself from Odin in the eyes of Fate.

I really can't picture Hank with many boons anyway. Though It appears on closer inspection that Odin still favors six epics. I ultimately picked Odin because he seemed like the ultimate bastard of a divine parent. If I'd wanted the mechanical advantage, I'd have been much better off with Heracles since his associated's fit the character much more specifically than Odin's do.

I wasn't even thinking about duplicating boons, but just the generic things that relics can do (lower speed, better armor, etc.). With the ability to duplicate boons from other purviews it's definitely too powerful, as each rank bought allows the user to cherry pick a boon from another purview without the need for a relic to access it.

Even for a character that has a full-fledged relationship with their parent that's a potential savings of 10 dots of birthrights, enhanced protection from theft, and (with the house rule we're using) only one purview that would have to be bought from the ground up rather than ten.

Which isn't to say that I don't like the idea. I think a versatile PSP like this would be a good addition, it's just too powerful as written.

Fair enough. What if I dropped the ability to mimic boons?

That would go a good way towards making it balanced against other PSPs, though I'm still not keen on it as a custom PSP for a character who has benefitted from giving up birthrights, since it skirts around the biggest mechanical disadvantage to disavowing a parent.

I thought the disadvantages we were working with were as follows
1) No associated powers (with possible exception to this purview)
2) No free birthright dots
3) Zero parental support

Would these balance out the ability to purchase birthright benefits with XP?

My gut is still saying that it's too good for the circumstances and that custom PSPs are the stuff of Gods. But I can sometimes get an idea in my head and have a hard time shaking it.

Anyone else got any thoughts?

PSPs are part of your Pantheon. As far as I know, you can't reject that without god level power. And you would have to be adopted into another pantheon to get a new PSP.

So Odin could whip out a rank 10 spell to 'banish' you from the Aesir, but you still wouldn't get a new PSP automatically.

The part about not having (or having your associated) purviews was very moot in my game, as everyone has 3 self-associated puviews and then their PSP (that way you don't have Son of Geb and Sof of Odin on the same team) and was more fair.

Really, I would let him get some extra points in attributes instead of birthrights (as no one is giving him any 'gifts') and then he has to go steal any birth-rights after an epic intro story that you write out for him to play through.

Actually, the game has already begun. Stealing birthrights would be a major issue with the character since I'm going for the straight-up good guy here.

And for the record, I'm totally cool with him not receiving birthright dots. He got his one free legend for renouncing Odin. As far as I'm concerned, the character concept is worth trading the 15 total birthright dots (5 for each upgrade).

In this case, the Scion renounced Odin and threw a ridiculously powerful sword away in his background story.

Also, I'm not really going for a self made purview so much as trying to emphasize the character's overall independence from any pantheon. I sort of see him as being the source of his own power or Fate gifting him with birthrights as he develops his Legend.

I figured this PSP could be a means of explaining how he would come across such power without giving him an unfair edge next to the other players.

Just have him steal from badguys! ;)

Sparketh:

Also, I'm not really going for a self made purview so much as trying to emphasize the character's overall independence from any pantheon. I sort of see him as being the source of his own power or Fate gifting him with birthrights as he develops his Legend.

that to me sounds a perfect example of why he wouldn't have a PSP. He relies on his own power, so he doesn't have any of the benefits of pantheon affiliation. On a practical level, that's an excellent case where the character should focus on epic attributes and self-empowering boons. Hell, mechanics wise, the best fighter in all of Scion at starter level, takes no PSPs
I'm not going to post him here, but if you're interested pm me for more details...

In my own game, in all honestly, I would not allow it because I don't allow tinkering with the metaphysics of PSPs. He could cheerfully not use his own PSP, and may find relics as it went on, but I would not allow this.

That said, it is awful flexible. I would not worry about, say, you using it in a game, but some players, even those who are not bad per se but tend to powergame, I would be hesitant on.

I agree with High Quabalist here, this is the perfect reason for focusing solely on Epic Attributes. And if James is a nice ST, he can let you pick up a few relics from defeated enemies. There also is the fact that other Gods among the Aesir that dislike Odin, such as Loki or Delling or Elli, could give your character relics, say when he reaches demi-god.