Crushing Grip
The Scion is a fearsome wrestler and grappler not to be trifled with. When he’s locked in a clinch and has taken control of it, the character can not only inflict the normal amount of damage (see p. 202), but that damage is now lethal as well. A character can still choose to hold an opponent without inflicting damage, or he can choose to break the hold. He can even soften his touch and inflict bashing damage instead. The damage the character can inflict when his temper gets riled, though, is tremendous and often quite messy.
Divine Wrath
Prerequisite Knack: Crushing Grip (Scion: Hero, p. 126) A Scion with the demigod range of Epic Strength already needs no weapons to inflict serious damage in combat, but a Scion with this Knack is even more fearsome. The prerequisite Knack enables him to inflit lethal damage during a clinch that he controls, and this Knack builds on that to awful effect. If the Scion spends a point of Legend during a clinch, he can make a single attack inflict aggravated damage instead of lethal. What’s more, his normal unarmed combat attacks now inflict lethal damage instead of bashing damage. Keep in mind that that lethal damage is now the standard damage he inflicts unarmed, regardless of whether he spends the point of Legend to make a single clinch’s damage aggravated. The Scion can pull his punches and inflict only bashing damage if he wants to, but doing so incurs the “Flat of the Blade” rule from page 199 of Scion: Hero.
Untouchable Opponent
The Scion might as well be a ghost for all her enemies can lay a hand or a weapon on her. The Scion doubles the benefit that her Epic Dexterity dots add to her Dodge DV. She also ignores an amount of DV penalties due to unstable terrain equal to her Epic Dexterity dots. Only the normal Epic Dexterity bonus applies to the character’s Parry DV, though, and this Knack’s bonus to Dodge DV doesn’t apply if the character is merely hiding behind cover or tucked in behind a scutum like a lowly turtle. Only if the character is physically dodging the attacks that are coming her way does this Knack help her out. Activating this Knack costs one point of Legend. Its effects last for one scene.
Perfect Partner
The character with this Knack is extremely good at modifying her movements—be they gross or subtle— to coordinate perfectly with other people. This Knack comes in handy in the ballroom, the bedroom, even the thick of battle. The first two applications might not come up as often in play, but they shouldn’t be discounted out of hand. The dance performance of two characters with this Knack would put the best work of Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers to shame. The sexual prowess of a character with this Knack would be legendary all on its own. The third application of this Knack makes coordinating assaults (see Scion: Hero, p. 190) that much easier. Using it, a character can attach herself to any coordinated assault she sees fit, without the player of the person coordinating the assault having to include the character in the dice roll to do so. If the character with this Knack wants to coordinate her attack with only one other person, neither of them even has to make a roll to do so. As long as they act at the same time and attack the same target, they are coordinated by default.
Body Armor
The Scion’s body is so tough that, even unarmed, he can parry close-combat attacks that would infl ict lethal damage. If a berserker hopped up on Jotunblut or a thrall full of eitr tries to split the Scion’s skull with a fi re ax, the Scion can take the blow on his forearm and knock it aside without serious injury. (That assumes the character’s Parry DV is suffi cient to cancel out the attack roll’s successes, of course.) While that benefi t remains in effect all the time, the Scion can also engage a temporary one that offers even more protection. With the expenditure of a Legend point, a measure of the Scion’s ichor wells up from within and coats the Scion’s body. This coating hardens into a gleaming, metallic armor that’s no thicker than a hair’s breadth. This armor has a bashing and lethal soak equal to the character’s Legend, and it infl icts a mobility penalty of only -1. The ichor coating is thin enough to fi t comfortably beneath one’s clothing, so it adds its protective value to that of any other armor the character might already be wearing. Natural armor from this Knack lasts for only one scene and disintegrates at the scene’s end.
Impenetrable
Prerequisite Knack: Body Armor (Scion: Demigod, pp. 57-58) When a character achieves this Knack, it upgrades the thin metallic armor that activating its prerequisite provides. When the character spends his Legend point to activate his armor, it retains its bashing and lethal soak equal to his Legend and adds an aggravated soak equal to half his Legend. What’s more, it ignores (i.e., trumps) the Piercing quality of any weapons and physical attacks that have it. Finally, he can extend this armor sheathe around any article of clothing he’s wearing, though not any handheld or bulky worn item he might be using. A zoot suit, including the hat, would be fine; an astronaut’s EVA suit would be a bit much.
Overt Order
Sometimes, the direct method is more effective than the cleverest of intricate schemes. With this Knack, a Scion barks out a command that the target must obey. Doing so costs one Willpower, and the command must be one the Scion can give and the victim can perform in a single action. “Freeze!” is acceptable, as is, “Don’t shoot!” or, “Shoot him!” Ordering someone to go home and shoot his wife won’t work because doing so would take longer than a single action. A victim of this Knack can interpret the command loosely to make it not directly suicidal, but not if all he’s trying to do is keep out of trouble. For example, if a victim draws a gun and the Scion commands him to shoot himself, the victim can shoot himself in the hand or the foot rather than blowing his own brains out. Same thing goes if a Scion uses this Knack at a seedy pool hall to command a smarmy drug dealer to pick a fight with a burly ex-con at the next table. The dealer might reasonably believe that the ex-con could kill him, but he still can’t weasel out of the command. He doesn’t have to walk up and take a swing at the guy, but he still has to do something, such as singing out a racial slur or throwing a beer bottle at the guy’s girlfriend. The dealer can cheese it immediately, but he’s still got to pick the fight first.
Spatial Attunement
The Scion is so aware of his surroundings that his other senses (primarily those of hearing and smell) compensate for his eyes in identifying nearby objects outside his line of sight. The Scion could recognize the person sneaking up on him by that person’s telltale scent and mark exactly how far away that person is by the sound of his passing. With one quick glance around the room, the Scion could mark in his mind exactly where every wall and piece of furniture is within. Having done so, he could then navigate the room with his eyes closed, even slipping through a milling crowd of people without bumping into anyone or anything. To a certain extent, the character can perceive what’s going on around him in a 360-degree arc. Also, he suffers no penalties for fighting blind as long as he can hear or smell his opponents.
Instant Assessment
With a quick glance, and the expenditure of one Legend point, the Scion can size up a foe with whom he intends to join battle. This assessment comes across in terms of how the foe’s combat abilities compare to the Scion’s own. He gets a sense of whether the foe has more or fewer dots of Physical Attributes (Epic and otherwise) than he does. The same goes for their relative number of dots in Brawl, Marksmanship, Melee and Thrown, as well as their relative Join Battle dice pools and their soak totals. Also, if some power or special quality renders the foe especially vulnerable or completely invulnerable to something to which the Scion has ready access, the Scion gets a sense of that as well. What the Scion decides to do with this information is up to him. This information occurs refl exively to the Scion who uses the Knack, and he may assess as many foes automatically as he spends points of Legend.
