Stamina Knacks

Body Armor:
Cost: 1 Legend Point
The Scion’s body is so tough that, even unarmed, he can parry close-combat attacks that would inflict lethal damage. If a berserker hopped up on Jotunblut or a thrall full of eitr tries to split the Scion’s skull with a fire axe, the Scion can take the blow on his forearm and knock it aside without serious injury. (That assumes the character’s Parry DV is sufficient to cancel out the attack roll’s successes, of course.)
While that benefit 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 inflicts a mobility penalty of only -1. The ichor coating is thin enough to fit 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: Body Armor
Cost: None
When a character achieves the 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.

Invulnerable Nail:
Prerequisite: Body Armor
Cost: 2 Legend Points per attack
By concentrating all of his phenomenal stamina on a single point of his body, the Scion can make a tiny area nigh-invulnerable. For a second, the Scion’s ichor seeps into that small point no larger than a fingernail, and that part of the Scion’s body becomes tremendously difficult to damage. The area affected gains a Hardness rating equal to the Scion’s Epic Stamina. Any attack with fewer damage dice than the Hardness rating simply bounces off with no effect, while an attack with more damage dice loses a number of dice equal to the Hardness rating before the Scion attempts to soak it (as a special extension of Hardness, which normally only applies to inanimate objects).
The real trick lies in positioning this tiny, invulnerable spot to absorb an attack. Normally, a Scion uses his Parry DV to deflect attacks in this fashion. Since the Scion has the Body Armor Knack as a prerequisite, he can already Parry melee attacks. Instead, Invulnerable Nail provides the Scion with a defense against an attack that he can see coming but can’t parry, such as when he’s held in place by a titanspawn’s tentacle and needs to make his forehead momentarily impenetrable to the oncoming needle-tipped appendage that will try to suck out his brain. In such a case, the Scion keeps his full unarmed Parry DV because he can try to deflect the attack at the last moment by anticipating where it will strike and fortifying that part of his body. Similarly, a clever scion might feign suicide by attacking himself with a mundane weapon and deflecting it at the last minute through the use of this Knack. It’s considered a reflexive action.

Raging Bull:
Cost: 3 Legend Points per scene
Like the eponymous boxer who just becomes more dangerous after taking a few punches, the Scion turns into a devastating fighting machine once she’s wounded. Her body releases adrenalin and more exotic substances, firing her up her greater heights of fury. With this Knack active, the Scion gains bonuses from her wounds instead of penalties. Thus, if she’s filled in the first four boxes of her health levels, the Scion gains a +2 bonus on all of her appropriate rolls instead of taking the normal -2 penalty. Even if her Epic Stamina would obviate the penalty in whole or in part, she still gains the full bonus. Scions whose Epic Stamina grants them additional health levels count those boxes as having a -4 penalty (and thus a +4 bonus for purposes of this Knack.)
Furthermore, every time a Scion using Raging Bull suffers an injury (be it a single level of bashing or ten levels of aggravated damage), the player may spend a Legend Point to restore one expended Willpower Point.

Under Pressure:
Cost: None
Although the Water Purview can provide protection against the deep pressure of the ocean, and the Earth purview can likewise defend against the crushing weight of being buried, some Scions just don’t have the luxury of branching out into multiple Purviews like that – or, worse still, find themselves in the awkward position of being stuck in a Titan’s gullet, a hyberbaric chamber or an otherworldly place of super-thick atmosphere. Fortunately, a Scion with this Knack need not fear the punishment of changes in pressure or atmosphere. While the Scion must still breathe, she doesn’t have to worry about the bends, explosive decompression of the crushing force of a deep undersea trench. Her body naturally and instinctively adjusts to account for all changes in pressure.
Under Pressure can’t protect a Scion against bruising and crushing damage: If she’s stuck in the aforementioned Titanic gullet, she’ll have to use other abilities to deal with the digestive action and the acid. She won’t however, have to worry about suddenly being crushed when submerged deep in that same pool of stomach acid.

Damage Conversion:
Cost: 1 Legend Point
The Scion can spend a single Legend Point to convert all lethal damage from a single attack into bashing damage, though an overload of bashing damage still upgrades existing bashing damage to lethal. This Knack cannot convert aggravated damage into anything less grave. The character cannot convert old lethal damage into bashing damage. This Knack only works on incoming damage from a single attack.

Divine Damage Conversion:
Prerequisite: Damage Conversion
Cost: 5 Legend Points
Like its prerequisite Knack, a character can spend Legend Points against a single incoming attack and reduce the severity of that attack. If he spends 5 Legend Points, he can reduce all the aggravated damage from a single attack to lethal damage, which he has a better chance of soaking.

Holy Fortitude:
Cost: None
The character is the epitome of the holy ascetic. The periods for which she is able to go without food, water, and sleep all double. The amount of time she is able to work at a strenuous task without stopping also doubles.

Divine Fortitude:
Prerequisite: Holy Fortitude
Cost: None
This Knack doubles the amount of time a Scion can work at a strenuous task once more after the prerequisite Knack doubles the base amount of time (itself modified by the Scion’s Epic Stamina). Divine Fortitude also completely obviates a Scion’s need for food or sleep or water. The Scion’s player chooses which necessity the Knack takes away when he first chooses the Knack. When he does so, the character may still indulge in the activity, but he never suffers deprivation effects if he chooses not to.
A Scion character may take this Knack three separate times after he takes the prerequisite, each time obviating one of the three listed necessities. Taking the Knack multiple times does not, however, double the amount of time he can work at a strenuous task each time. That period doubles only once, the first time he takes the Knack.

Tireless Worker:
Prerequisite: Divine Fortitude
Cost: None
Epic Stamina boosts the amount of time a character can work at a fatiguing task, and this Knack’s prerequisite doubles that time. This Knack extends that boost into infinity. No matter how long or how hard he works, the character never breaks a sweat and never slows down. If he still has to sleep, he can work until he’s sleepy and wake up feeling perfectly refreshed. If he still has to eat or sleep, he can pause for a meal and get right back to work without the first bit of loginess creeping in. (People who are like this endlessly irritate people who aren’t.)

Inner Furnace:
Cost: None
The character rarely lacks for sustenance. As long as he can find some sort of organic substance (from rotting quail eggs to a piece of notebook paper on which someone blew her nose), the Scion can eat it and survive. And as long as he finds a source of water (no matter how stagnant or polluted it might be), he can drink it and survive. Any pestilence or poison lurking in what he consumes burns in the fires of his superior constitution, without even requiring a Fortitude roll. The same goes for drugs or poisons he ingests on purpose, or for any Mickey Finn a ne’er-do-well might try to slip him. He’s still just as susceptible to airborne toxins and any drug injected into his bloodstream, but any drug that has to go through his stomach first stops there.
This Knack does nothing to suppress the gag reflex or make an unappetizing meal taste better.

Devourer:
Prerequisite: Inner Furnace
Cost: None
The Scion will never lack for sustenance again. Any liquid that can exist at as a liquid at room temperature can sustain him as water sustains a mortal – even such distasteful liquids as gasoline, blood, pine-scented disinfectant or diet coal. The same goes for food. Whereas Inner Furnace requires that the Scion at least consume organic matter in order to fuel the inferno at his core, this Knack loosens even that restriction. The Scion could fill his belly with sand, polystyrene, harmonicas or suture needles and not feel so much of a pang of indigestion. This Knack confers no special ability to chew up or tear off pieces of inorganic material, but anything small enough to swallow disappears down his gullet with no harmful effects and fuels him just as efficiently as normal food.

Internal Refinery:
Prerequisite: Devourer
Cost: 5 Legend Points per dose
A character with Inner Furnace can eat any organic substance and drink water from any source and be efficiently nourished. A character with Devourer can safely eat literally anything she can force down her gullet. With both Knacks, no poison or toxin in what she eats or drinks has any effect on her. Internal Refinery expands that latter protection to not only poisons or toxins she eats, but all poisons and toxins she’s exposed to, as well as any diseases that mortal flesh might suffer.
In addition, a character with this Knack can refine any poison, toxin or disease to which she is exposed into a single dose of an antidote for that substance or cure to that affliction. If the character spits this antidote or cure and administers it to an afflicted patient, it completely erases one dose or one exposure to the hazardous substance in the patient’s system. The character must administer this treatment within one scene of the patient’s exposure, and within one action of when she (the character with this Knack) refines the substance into a dose of its cure. The cure doesn’t heal damage from the exposure, but it purges it completely.
Refining the deleterious material costs 5 Legend Points per dose.

Self-Healing:
Cost: 1 Legend Point per box healed
The Scion’s player spends a Legend Point to repair a single level of damage. That damage can be bashing or lethal, and the healing takes place in an instant without leaving a scar. (Aggravated damage is beyond the power of this Knack to heal.) Scions who are interested in building their reputation and spreading their legends quickly find this Knack to be one of the more effective tools of doing so, as bruises, lacerations and bullet holes vanish before astonished onlookers’ eyes.

Regeneration:
Prerequisite: Self-Healing
Cost: 1 Legend Point per health box
Regeneration repairs the severe damage that’s too serious for its prerequisite Knack to heal. For a Legend Point, the Scion can automatically heal a single level of aggravated damage. With this Knack, he can also perform such miraculous feats as regenerating a destroyed limb, extremity or eye. Doing so costs one Legend Point per body part so restored.

Solipsistic Well-Being:
Cost: 1 Legend Point and 1 Willpower Point per attack
The philosophy of solipsism holds that only the self exists. Accordingly, if a solipsist isn’t aware of something, that something doesn’t exist. With this Knack, a Scion applies this odd philosophy to damage that surprises her. For a single attack that the Scion doesn’t see, hear or otherwise perceive coming, the Scion can spend a Legend Point and a Willpower Point to completely ignore it as if it never happened (thereby suffering no damage from it). Of course the attack does actually happen – any ammo used is spent, onlookers might be covered with the Scion’s blood, the would-be assassin might be standing right there holding a dripping knife – but such concerns are immaterial to the Scion victim.
The Scion can use this Knack only once per scene.

Skin-Shedding:
Cost: 1 Legend Point and 1 Willpower Point
Not only is this Knack a live-saving power but it can also be an effective (if surreal) means of escape. If an enemy’s attack against the Scion may spend a Legend Point and a Willpower Point to reflexively negate all damage from the attack. The attack still inflicts its knockback, though, seemingly knocking the Scion completely out of his skin. The empty husk collapses at the attacker’s feet, disintegrating over three ticks. The Scion who was apparently knocked out of his skin lands perfectly unharmed however far away the knockback threw him, retaining all of his clothing and possessions and radiating a golden sheen until the shed skin disintegrates.
The Scion can use this Knack only once per scene.

Extended Youth:
Cost: None
As the physical age at which the character takes on this Knack, her body no longer physically or visibly ages. Her hair doesn’t turn grey or thin out, her skin doesn’t wrinkle, she doesn’t get liver spots, nothing sags due to gravity. Until the character becomes a God, she looks like she looked at that mortal age.

Raise Your Glass:
Cost: None
A Scion with this Knack isn’t just a power drinker, he takes power from drink. Once per scene, the Scion can restore a spend Legend Point by downing a single serving of alcohol: a shot of hard liquor, a bottle or can of beer, a large glass of wine or a flagon of mead, for instance. To gain the Legend, the Scion must down the drink quickly and with at least a bit of flair. Nursing a beer for an hour isn’t worth Legend, though downing a pint of ale in one long pull and slamming the tankard down on the bar might be. Effectively, the character must turn drinking into a stunt performed for no purpose except to impress onlookers.
This Knack does not protect the Scion from the normal effects of consuming alcohol, including any drugs or poisons the beverage might contain. In fact, activating this Knack bars a Scion from using his Epic Stamina to resist intoxication. Only normal Stamina applies. Also, characters cannot double-dip for Legend by taking a drink as part of a stunt performed for some other purpose (such as draining a mug of beer then throwing the mug at an enemy’s head as a distraction before an attack).

Whale’s Breath:
Cost: 1 Legend Point
This Knack magnifies the time a Scion can hold her breath. After inhaling deeply and expending a Legend Point, the Scion can triple the duration she can hold her breath after calculating extended duration due to Epic Stamina. In addition, she becomes immune to pressure changes that come from diving to extreme depths underwater. This Knack doesn’t affect swimming speeds, visibility or other aspects of moving underwater.
As a useful side effect, a Scion using this Knack has such great breath control that she can speak when underwater (or otherwise holding her breath) by releasing only a minimal amount of air. The character can easily manage short sentences and brief conversations. Extended speech, such as giving an academic lecture while underwater, is either too difficult or at least would drastically reduce the time the Scion can hold her breath (at the discretion of the Storyteller). This Knack also makes combat underwater much easier, since being struck or injured cannot cause the Scion to lose her breath unless someone makes a deliberate effort to squeeze the air from her lungs.