Divine Magic Houserules

[gamesmeister]

Keeping with the idea of a pool to store POW, you could fill the pool by sacrificing POW, with the following limitations:

1) Cultists can only sacrifice POW into their pool on cult Holy days, and only if they are worshipping at a temple ceremony.
2) To sacrifice POW into your pool requires a successful cult Theology roll
3) Worshippers can sacrifice a maximum of 1 POW on standard cult Holy Days
4) Worshippers can sacrifice up to 2 POW per cult High Holy Day

This approach gives no direct advantage to priests per se, but that said most priests will have a very high Theology skill and will therefore rarely fail the roll.

There are several natural brakes on this approach to prevent huge POW pools. The first is obviously the time factor - a maximum of 6 points per game year. The second is the Theology skill roll required - even with 60% to 70% skill a worshipper is likely to fail once or twice per year, reducing the pool to 3-4 points per year. Thirdly, the character won't always be able to worship in the correct surroundings (and note that this gives an added incentive for characters to rush back in time for temple services). Finally, the character is sacrificing POW, which is always tough to regain, particularly if you're also spending IRs trying to get that all important Theology skill up (combat skills notwithstanding).

Thoughts?

 

[Itto]

Here is my take on Divine Magic.

Divine Magic can be accessed by Cult members in two ways. The first is as RAW. The second is through the creation of a Divine Pool. Anyone of Initiate membership or higher of a cult may undergo a ritual of dedication to create a Divine Pool. The ritual varies from cult to cult (a blood orgy for Zorak Zoran, a wind swept mountainous ritual for Orlanth to peaceful contemplation within the grounds of a house of healing for Chalana Arroy) . Sometimes a character may spontaneously create one (“You killed my wife and family, by Orlanths might I shall pursue you through hell itself!” etc)

Ritual of Dedication
Hero Points: 5
Lore(Cult)

After the successful creation of a Divine Pool, it may be filled in one of three ways.
Each characteristic point scarified, will increase the pool by 1.
Each Hero Point spent will increase the pool by 1.
For each 2 IPs spent along with a successful Lore(Cult) roll

The actual Divine Spells can be decided at the point of casting, with the usual limits based on the characters level within the cult.

To refill the Divine Pool on each cult holy day the cult member rolls a Lore (Cult), for each 10% he succeeds by 1 point is put back into the Pool. There are situational modifiers to the skill.

+20 Holy Site
+20 High Holy Day
+10 Holy Relic

-80 not able to worship
-40 not at a temple or consecrated place.
-20 for each sin (what ever this may mean)

So a character may have a large Divine Pool but if they have cast lots of spells they may take some considerable time to fully refill it again. I like the thought of characters that have gone through a tough battle taking some time to fully recover their magical powers. Also works for plots "We know that the Thanatar Lord must have used up a great deal of his magical strength to get through the defences and kill the King, we must strike now before he has time to recover"

Also players will feel the need to conserve their Divine Magics to, rather than tanking up all the time.

 

[RosenMcStern]

Itto,

First of all remember that simply (re)learning a rune spell, via Dedicated POW, takes up time. There is no need to use the Pool to force PCs to go attend a ritual to regain magic. It is already in the RAW. So I see no need to use HPs to recharge the pool, only to expand it.

Second, the ritual rules are nevertheless a very good point. I have already submitted a paper for S&P that will probably be published next month, which includes all that has been discussed here about the Pool (I called it Vessel), plus more. There will be two different kinds of rituals to perform, one for expanding the pool and one to "brew" runes from it. I think you will like it.

 

[Puck]

There will be two different kinds of rituals to perform, one for expanding the pool and one to "brew" runes from it. I think you will like it.

Sounds promising....I am looking forward to your write-up. This thread had had a number of good ideas but I cannot seem to make a solid choice between them. The inclusion of a "brewing" of runes idea will hopefully help out with the rune magic for theist problems too.

 

[Itto]

Itto,

First of all remember that simply (re)learning a rune spell, via Dedicated POW, takes up time. There is no need to use the Pool to force PCs to go attend a ritual to regain magic. It is already in the RAW. So I see no need to use HPs to recharge the pool, only to expand it.

I'm not overly into having character spending days and days to relearn a Divine spell, it slows up the epicness (is that a word?) of a game if a Hero has to take 4 days out to relearn a Shield 4. So I guess thats where I'm coming from. Just an hour per point to learn in the RAW way, rather than the pool way.

Also for refilling the pool, I guess i was not being clear but a character uses HPs, IPs etc to expand the Max size of the pool. After casting spells the amount of points go down but not the size. So the rituals on holy days are for just filling it back up.

I've not had a chance to put this into practice as I've been playing Lankhmar. I shall look forward to your article, which will be intime for me starting Blood of Orlanth

 

[Deleriad]

Deleriad said

Ways to use Grace:
dedicate to cult (rune) magic. E.g. you can use it to "store" Bladesharp 2. You still use MPs as normal. Casting cult magic then is a matter of making your specific theology skill (a skill name that I dislike btw) and spending MPs as normal.

Does "store" mean they only only recieve the bladesharp 2 for one casting like a divine magic spell?

or

Does it mean they now know the spell permanently like rune magic and just cast it at their theology skill? I would imagine the later as it would seem to solve a bit of the rune magic for cults problem.

I use the latter for exactly the reason you give.

 

[Voriof]

I'll repeat my POV here, although it has been clarified on the other thread.

The best way to handle Divine Magic beyond Dedicated POW is to create a pool of "room for Divine Magic" that can be used to store spells.

There is no reason to consider this pool as an alternative to Dedicated POW. One could store a spell in his Dedicated POW or in his Pool.

I would suggest that the pool can be used only to store spells from your main deity, and that you must use Dedicated POW for spells from associated deities.

I had proposed something like this in the original ms but it was dropped. I found that divine casters were very limited and thought that might make a good solution to the problem.

I am not in favour of using Lore(Theology) to determine the size of the pool, because this would create a sort of Divine Sorcery. A cultist should be able to be an average caster and still have a wide array of spells. Think of a priest who knows the principles very very well but does not obey them: is he worth of knowing more magic than a peasant that knows little but obeys all the religious precepts? (all references to RW Catholic priests are merely a coincidence )

I agree. A pity we don't have a separate 'piety' ability as we do in HQ. I'd rather not base any sort of pool based on mere theological knowlege.

I am more in favour of using a model more similar to Sandy's Sorcery and Presence to determine the pool size, with vows/geas that contribute to the pool size. Breaching the vows would cause the pool to shrink.

This would work very well, particularly if quests or services might add to the pool as well.

Finally I am in favour of using Hero Points to create or extend the pool, as they can be considered a measure of how well you made your character adhere to his values and principles, including cult principles.

I am in favor of many of the things in the Divine and Spirit magic being HP rather than POW enabled as POW is now so difficult to come by (or at least it was).

Jeff

 

[TRose]

For my part , as I mention before, I'm in favor of using Hero points to buy divine spells. For one thing a GM can award hero points to players if they truly follow the tenets of their cults even if it is not in their best interest. For example you could give a hero point to a Humakti who refuse to ambush his opponents and insist on a straight up honorable fight .
I would also like to ask for those who want to use hero points to buy a divine spell pool. How many hero points do you think a divine spell point should go for? I'm thinking 2 hero points for one divine spell point for now but its not written in stone.

 

[RosenMcStern]

I would also like to ask for those who want to use hero points to buy a divine spell pool. How many hero points do you think a divine spell point should go for? I'm thinking 2 hero points for one divine spell point for now but its not written in stone.

Why two points per point of spell? Is there any need to complicate things? HPs are valuable, and having to sacrifice them is penalizking enough without the need to introduce an exchange rate.

 

[Rurik]

It is worth mentioning that Divine Spellcasters are the ones who can actually afford POW gain rolls. If a GM is even slightly generous with Improvement Rolls, 4 Improvement Rolls is enough to increase their Theology and POW per session.

Many posters have found 3 Improvement Rolls to be a bit too few for most characters, and award four (or more) at least some of the time.

A Sorcerer has so many skills to improve that one POW gain roll is going to set them back considerably in their casting development.

Even characters who specialize in Runecasting will need to develop a few different runecasting skills to be effective.