[Design Musings] Scion

So I know the initial stance from GGG was no Scion in the works for POE2, and I get that it would be a tricky thing to balance all of the current (and future) classes/ascendencies and add another three to six ascednecies, however I thought up a work around that I think is much more in line with what they portray the Scion as in POE. So hear me out...or don't, your choice.

[Character Design]
The idea here is to give the players a "sandbox" character that can really shake things up in new and interesting ways. Starting with the character design, and sticking with the two characters per attribute identity, you have a female scion on slot 1 and a male scion on slot 2. This is the origin point of the sandbox and gives players a sort of self-insert hero that still interacts with the story in unique ways like the other twelve.

[Story Integration]
For story my thought is that the two Scions are twins, the children of the Scion from the first game. They have embarked on this journey to track the corruption after their parents were murdered, all evidence pointing toward the Countess. You first encounter them at a set story point and they are both hanging from a precipice, but you can only save one of them during your first play. Whichever one you save is the first Scion slot that you unlock. Then when you play as that Scion the story becomes about them tracking the corruption and looking for their twin after they got separated. Encounter the twin at the same story point, cheery family reunion in a grim dark world, and you now have both Scions unlocked at which point they will no longer appear at that precipice point on subsequent plays. I would go so far as to say that the story would alter yet again for the Scions once both are unlocked and change to them hunting the corruption in the field while their twin assists in researching the spread of the corruption. You could even have the twin that wasn't caught by Geonor sass you for being sloppy when you reach Clearfell.

[Class Design]
The class design for Scion doesn't have to be mind-blowingly unique for it to do some really fun things. Since all classes spider out from the center point of the passive tree anyway you already have an ideal setup for the Scion since they have the freedom to choose any starting point or even multiple starting points and get some really unique synergies going on.

So what about the Scion Ascedencies? Easy, give the Scion access to any of the 36 ascendencies from the other classes. The point of the Scion is that they are a Prodigy, limitless in potential and talent. With this you don't have to spend time tweaking any more ascendencies than were already going to be in the game.

[Summary]
So these are just initial musings but I think that it's something that deserves some serious thought and discussion after POE2 goes 1.0.

[Edit 6/4/2026] Since Jonathan has said that the next major update will be 1.0 and the release schedule is 3-4 months it's unlikely that all of the classes will be available at that time. To that end, and for any GGG staff that happen across this while scrolling, it would be completely understandable if the discussion around Scion was delayed until all of the other classes were in the game and felt stable and good. No sense in adding a spanner in the works before the foundations are solid.