Cult and Divine Magic
- Thread starter valind
- Start date
It would be cool if they didn't and a way for the cults to keep the flock in order.
Keep your nose clean initiate else its excommunication and you kiss good bye to the Rune casting% as well
It would mean you wouldn't need to flood the world with millions of Runes to get a world with magic on par with Glorantha 3rd age as well.
Paul
Keep your nose clean initiate else its excommunication and you kiss good bye to the Rune casting% as well
It would mean you wouldn't need to flood the world with millions of Runes to get a world with magic on par with Glorantha 3rd age as well.
Paul
Erm.. assumed he was talking about Rune Magic.
Really Divine magic is weaker than Rune Magic,
It weakens your punching/resisting magic by tying up magic points.
It reduces the number of mps for casting Rune magic.
As the rules stand Sky bolt knocks the socks of any of the Divine damaging spells.
Other than divine intervention, youl'd be better off getting a few runes integrated and getting training fom a indepedant magicain for a couple of powerful Rune Spells than joining a cult, where you tie up time and money in devotion to your god.
(House Rule 32: Allow Divine magic to be purchase with POW or HP on a one for one basis - treat as RQ3 in all other respects, with no cap on MPs)
(House Rule 33: Cults provide initiates with pseudo runes and fixed Rune casting skill in all cult runes:
10% to laymembers
30% to Initates
50% to Acolytes
Cult povides what runes it can for integration in their priests and Lords, % begins at 50% for cult runes only)
Paul
I am a little confused about Divine magic. My question concerns dedicated power. Does your power actually go down or do you have the same power but subtract dedicated power when figuring skills and such?
If you subtract it and your power goes up, then cast Divine magic, can your power go over your species maximum?
If it doesn't, what does the adjusted power effect? Just skills? Or everything that is figured from power?
If you keep your current power and subtract dedicated power and use that adjusted amount for everything, then the more divine magic you have the less range you will have for every spell you cast (Powx5). Of course your range will go up as you cast spells. But that really doesn't sound very good.
At first glance I thought it would work this way:
You learn a Divine spell and you sacrifice power for it, this becomes your dedicated power. After you cast the spell you don't actually get power back, you just free up dedicated power.
So let’s say a Rune Priest has a Shield 4 and True Sword x2 (is it really 3 points now!?), he has dedicated 10 points of power. If he casts a True Sword he still has 10 dedicated power, but only 7 points of spells, so he can go back to the temple and learns another True Sword or he could learn Extension 3 instead to bring him back up to 10.
Reading it again I guess it doesn't work that way, but that is probably the way I will run it.
If you subtract it and your power goes up, then cast Divine magic, can your power go over your species maximum?
If it doesn't, what does the adjusted power effect? Just skills? Or everything that is figured from power?
If you keep your current power and subtract dedicated power and use that adjusted amount for everything, then the more divine magic you have the less range you will have for every spell you cast (Powx5). Of course your range will go up as you cast spells. But that really doesn't sound very good.
At first glance I thought it would work this way:
You learn a Divine spell and you sacrifice power for it, this becomes your dedicated power. After you cast the spell you don't actually get power back, you just free up dedicated power.
So let’s say a Rune Priest has a Shield 4 and True Sword x2 (is it really 3 points now!?), he has dedicated 10 points of power. If he casts a True Sword he still has 10 dedicated power, but only 7 points of spells, so he can go back to the temple and learns another True Sword or he could learn Extension 3 instead to bring him back up to 10.
Reading it again I guess it doesn't work that way, but that is probably the way I will run it.
The way it reads in the Comapnion (just checked it again last night) is that you "use" your POW to gain Divine Magic, so your effective POW goes down.
When you cast or release the Divine Spell, the POW used in the spell comes back and adds to your real POW.
So, yes, it could increase your POW past 21, say, if you had POW gain rolls in the meantime. It also means that people with a lot of Divine Magic can release their spells, 1 combat action/round per spell, and massively increase POW.
Clearly, that's not the way it's meant to work, no matter what the rules say.
I would play that it frees up Dedicated POW to be used again, rather than increasing your actual POW. This has several benefits:
1. It's not silly!
2. It doesn't allow priests to massively increase their POW in combat.
3. It allows priests to build up a large store of Divine Magic.
4. It makes Divine Magic useful again.
Now, the fact that Divine Magic is gained in chunks was a little odd for me. If I get Shield 4 then I can't top it up with another Shield2 until I cast the Shield 4. That seemed odd. But, there is a workaround - when you go to the temple, you release the Shield 4 and sacrifice for Shield 6, using 4 points of your Dedicated POW and 2 points of POW. You still gain Shield 6 at the same cost and have got around the silly rule. It almost makes it pointless having that rule in the first place.
Of course, it can only be done at a largish temple, whereas getting Shield 2 can be done at a small temple, so it does restrict where you can gain larger chunks of spells.
I don't have Companion with me, but there is a Divine Spell which allows you to bless a Holy Place (Sanctify/Consecrate? I can't remember the name of the spell). All well and good. It is progressive and you can cast it at high Magnitudes, to make a spot holier. Fine. In fact, you can gain spells of equal magnitude to the spell as if you were in a temple, so if I cast Consecrate/Sancity/whatever-it's-called 10 then people can gain up to 10 magnitude spells in the place - great. But, the spell is a normal divine spell (I think) and you get the points back when you cast it, so what's to stop you doing this again and again and again? I would make it one-use so that you lose the POW when you cast it.
Otherwise, I cast Consecrate 10, get the Dedicated POW back, get Consecrate 10 back, go somewhere else and cast it again. You see what I mean?
Hopefully, I've misread or misremembered the spell and it is one-use.
Apart from that, the Divine Magic rules aren't bad at all. Truesword is a Magnitude 3 spell, which makes it expensive. Resurrect is Magnitude 5, which is probably better than a 3 point spell. I like the idea that Regrow Limb allows you to reattach a limb if you have the limb and that it takes a set time, which is quick, to regrow a limb. Of course, a DEX30 healer regrows a limb faster than a DEX 5 healer, which is a bit odd, not bad but odd.
Getting the POW back when you cast the spell means that Divine Magic is more flexible than it used to be - you can get spells depending on the forthcoming mission. So, a Chalana Arroy priestess going after broos can put her spells into Cure Disease spells, then when she comes back and goes against ogres, she can get Heal Body spells instead. That is an improvement.
There are three sample cults in the Companion, none of which have divine magic listed in the cult. That is odd indeed. I know the spells have the type of cult that has them (Reflection - Trickster, Absorption - Night, Earth and so on) but I would have thought it would have been better to list sample divine spells for each of the sample cults.
When you cast or release the Divine Spell, the POW used in the spell comes back and adds to your real POW.
So, yes, it could increase your POW past 21, say, if you had POW gain rolls in the meantime. It also means that people with a lot of Divine Magic can release their spells, 1 combat action/round per spell, and massively increase POW.
Clearly, that's not the way it's meant to work, no matter what the rules say.
I would play that it frees up Dedicated POW to be used again, rather than increasing your actual POW. This has several benefits:
1. It's not silly!
2. It doesn't allow priests to massively increase their POW in combat.
3. It allows priests to build up a large store of Divine Magic.
4. It makes Divine Magic useful again.
Now, the fact that Divine Magic is gained in chunks was a little odd for me. If I get Shield 4 then I can't top it up with another Shield2 until I cast the Shield 4. That seemed odd. But, there is a workaround - when you go to the temple, you release the Shield 4 and sacrifice for Shield 6, using 4 points of your Dedicated POW and 2 points of POW. You still gain Shield 6 at the same cost and have got around the silly rule. It almost makes it pointless having that rule in the first place.
Of course, it can only be done at a largish temple, whereas getting Shield 2 can be done at a small temple, so it does restrict where you can gain larger chunks of spells.
I don't have Companion with me, but there is a Divine Spell which allows you to bless a Holy Place (Sanctify/Consecrate? I can't remember the name of the spell). All well and good. It is progressive and you can cast it at high Magnitudes, to make a spot holier. Fine. In fact, you can gain spells of equal magnitude to the spell as if you were in a temple, so if I cast Consecrate/Sancity/whatever-it's-called 10 then people can gain up to 10 magnitude spells in the place - great. But, the spell is a normal divine spell (I think) and you get the points back when you cast it, so what's to stop you doing this again and again and again? I would make it one-use so that you lose the POW when you cast it.
Otherwise, I cast Consecrate 10, get the Dedicated POW back, get Consecrate 10 back, go somewhere else and cast it again. You see what I mean?
Hopefully, I've misread or misremembered the spell and it is one-use.
Apart from that, the Divine Magic rules aren't bad at all. Truesword is a Magnitude 3 spell, which makes it expensive. Resurrect is Magnitude 5, which is probably better than a 3 point spell. I like the idea that Regrow Limb allows you to reattach a limb if you have the limb and that it takes a set time, which is quick, to regrow a limb. Of course, a DEX30 healer regrows a limb faster than a DEX 5 healer, which is a bit odd, not bad but odd.
Getting the POW back when you cast the spell means that Divine Magic is more flexible than it used to be - you can get spells depending on the forthcoming mission. So, a Chalana Arroy priestess going after broos can put her spells into Cure Disease spells, then when she comes back and goes against ogres, she can get Heal Body spells instead. That is an improvement.
There are three sample cults in the Companion, none of which have divine magic listed in the cult. That is odd indeed. I know the spells have the type of cult that has them (Reflection - Trickster, Absorption - Night, Earth and so on) but I would have thought it would have been better to list sample divine spells for each of the sample cults.
Just a thought for a flexible alternative.
Dedicate X POW to your god, then be able to cast any spell that god provides from that pool. As you cast the pool empties - needing to be refreshed at a temple.
The idea needs a bit of work of course as it does distinguish between Priest and initiates.
Paul
Dedicate X POW to your god, then be able to cast any spell that god provides from that pool. As you cast the pool empties - needing to be refreshed at a temple.
The idea needs a bit of work of course as it does distinguish between Priest and initiates.
Paul
