Workflows - No users seem to have permissions

I'm a site admin, farm admin, every admin type that should give me permissions to have full reign over the site I'm working on. However, it seems that I'm unable to edit workflows in anything but Designer, and in Designer, I'm unable to publish these workflows particularly when I have checked to have the workflow start on item creation. I've even put myself in the lists manually that I'm creating workflows for as having full access. I've heard from some sources that you need to be a site collection owner to do this, while from other sources, it just says that you need to have edit permissions on the list you are creating the workflow for. I've tried logging in as the system user, but I still don't have workflow permissions. I've also heard from sources that this holds true particularly for the System user. I can make myself the site collection administrator, no problem. I want to make sure beforehand though that this is something I need to do or if I'm missing something else. I've tried logging in as the secondary site collection admin with no success, so I'm at a complete loss right now. I'd really like to create automatic workflows.