Dedicating POW to a God

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

So, I was rereading how a character can dedicate POW to a God etc. and get some benefits from that.

What I have not found is anything that talks about what the God gets out of it? Sure, they get 'dedicated followers' so somehow that should make them more powerful etc.

I have a scenario I am working on where characters encounter a minor diety in one adventure and then later encounter that same deity but now she is much more powerful - due to more dedicated followers. BUT, what I was wondering is how much more powerful could/should she be?

I am not looking for a table or anything like that - but something that helps me decide if one deity has 10,000 dedicated followers and another has 100,000 followers, how much more powerful is the the second over the first (don't say 10 times, I am looking for in-game effects that I can use. )

THANKS!

 

[soltakss]

We played that the Deity gets 1 POW for every 1,000 worshippers.

 

[Herne'sSon]

Interesting question. In the decades I’ve been playing RQ-derived games I’ve never thought about defining stats for deities.

I guess what I’d do is allow them access to cult magic-like abilities. If you need to define it, I guess you could allow them to use the abilities a number of times based on how much POW you think they’ve absorbed.

Is there anything maybe in Vikings of Legend about avatars of gods? Odin spent so much time wandering around Midgard in the guise of a human, maybe they included guidelines for something like that.

 

[soltakss]

There was a fanzine, decades ago and I can't remember the name, that described Avatars of Deities.

Each Temple could produce its own Avatar and the Avatar's Characteristics were based on the number of worshippers at the Temple, but I can't remember if it was one Characteristic Point per worshipper. Divine Magic was also bought at one point per worshipper, so you could by Characteristic points or Divine Magic points.

They could cast any cult Spirit Magic spell without spending Magic points, essentially as a Free Action, with variable spells being cast at their INT, so Humakt with INT 18 could cast Parry 18 or Bladesharp 18. They could also cast Divine Magic using Magic points, so they had a Magic Pool in the same way that RQM has a Rune Pool or Legend has Dedicated POW.

As each temple had its own Avatar, you could have the situation where two sets of people go to war, each with an Avatar of the same Deity fighting each other, so two Greek Kingdoms could go to war, led by Avatars of Ares. It also allows you to do the Battle Scenes from the Iliad, where the likes of Ares, Athena and Artemis fought in the wars.

For Legend, I would do the same, have a number of Characteristics based on the number of worshippers at a temple. Then I would allow them to be spent on other things:

• One point per Characteristic Point
• One Point per point of Divine Magic
• One Point per point of Dedicated POW
• One point for each Effect put into a magical weapon wielded by the Avatar
• 10 Points per Legendary ability (Cult-focused)

There might be more things you could spend points on, but I can't think of them now.

 

[Herne'sSon]

This is pretty interesting. I don't think it'll work for the game I'm planning (where I'm working on the idea that the world's gods choose heroes rather than interfering directly). But I can see it being very useful for a game with a little more direct divine intervention.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Interesting question. In the decades I’ve been playing RQ-derived games I’ve never thought about defining stats for deities.

I guess what I’d do is allow them access to cult magic-like abilities. If you need to define it, I guess you could allow them to use the abilities a number of times based on how much POW you think they’ve absorbed.

Is there anything maybe in Vikings of Legend about avatars of gods? Odin spent so much time wandering around Midgard in the guise of a human, maybe they included guidelines for something like that.

I wasn't thinking about statting gods or avatars. I was just working on how the relative powers of a god, or how much they were willing to do, would vary depending on the POW being dedicated. This isn't D&D where Gods get levels and spells - I figure the gods operate on an entirely different level than mortals.

Thanks

 

[Herne'sSon]

Interesting take on godhood, I think.

In the past, I'd always gone from the mythic aspect down to the worldly aspect. EG: Zeus is the king of the gods, so clearly he has the most worshippers and the biggest temples.

But it could be interesting to create a system for worship, so gods who get more POW sacrificed to them can become more powerful. It could make for some interesting dynamics in the campaign, when PCs have a mechanical incentive to go around converting others.

Does sort of remind me of the Dunsany story about Chubu and Sheemish, and how they'd been forgotten by the world, and when they god mad at each other and had a big fight, the power they could muster up was just enough to knock over a small effigy of the other.

 

[Bifford]

Have any of you seen the TV series, Magicians? This thread is exactly like that.

I think this calls for a book guys. Maybe "Gods in their many guises" with the options on how to play them all laid out.

 

[Condottiere]

I tend to think the relative power of a deity is dependent in general on the total amount of worshippers, then operationally on the number of worshippers on that particular plane of existence, and locally, how money gets contributed weekly on the collection plate.

 

[soltakss]

I think the relative power of a deity isn't something that can be measured like that.

A deity worshipped across a whole continent might not be more powerful than a deity worshipped in one place.

One thing that I liked was the tendency of the ancient Mesopotamians to capture the idols of their defeated enemies and take them back to their home temples, where they were installed as slaves to their own deities. Doing so gave their own deities more power. That kind of thing could work when determining the relative power of deities - The one with the most victories over other cults is the strongest.

Alternatively, having a deity worshipped over a large area means that a cultists can worship the deity at a temple almost anywhere. That makes the cult more useful and likely to be worshipped. for me, a deity spends a lot of energy keeping temples going, so the extra Mana obtained through worship is balanced by the extra Mana needed to maintain the Temples.

 

[BlackMagick]

Don't forget to take into account the deities sphere of influence. Some gods would naturally be more powerful than others, simply because the thing they control/represent is incredibly important.

E.g.; The Earth Goddess would be more powerful than the War God, simply because she is in command of the Earth itself.

How does that sound?

 

[Condottiere]

Matriarchal.

 

[Prime_Evil]

There was a fanzine, decades ago and I can't remember the name, that described Avatars of Deities.

Each Temple could produce its own Avatar and the Avatar's Characteristics were based on the number of worshippers at the Temple, but I can't remember if it was one Characteristic Point per worshipper. Divine Magic was also bought at one point per worshipper, so you could by Characteristic points or Divine Magic points.

They could cast any cult Spirit Magic spell without spending Magic points, essentially as a Free Action, with variable spells being cast at their INT, so Humakt with INT 18 could cast Parry 18 or Bladesharp 18. They could also cast Divine Magic using Magic points, so they had a Magic Pool in the same way that RQM has a Rune Pool or Legend has Dedicated POW.

As each temple had its own Avatar, you could have the situation where two sets of people go to war, each with an Avatar of the same Deity fighting each other, so two Greek Kingdoms could go to war, led by Avatars of Ares. It also allows you to do the Battle Scenes from the Iliad, where the likes of Ares, Athena and Artemis fought in the wars.

For Legend, I would do the same, have a number of Characteristics based on the number of worshippers at a temple. Then I would allow them to be spent on other things:

• One point per Characteristic Point
• One Point per point of Divine Magic
• One Point per point of Dedicated POW
• One point for each Effect put into a magical weapon wielded by the Avatar
• 10 Points per Legendary ability (Cult-focused)

There might be more things you could spend points on, but I can't think of them now.

 

[pawsplay]

Does anyone know how The Primal Order touches on this?