Badly-behaved clerics keep Power Investiture and spells?

[Michael Thayne]

Something surprising I'd never noticed before. While the section under the cleric template under "Holy Abilities" says, "your gifts depend on obeying those principles. If you lapse, your Holy abilities stop working. To recover them, you must donate $1,000 or more of treasure, accept a perilous quest, or offer other significant penance." However, as best I can tell nothing similar is ever said about Power Investiture or spells. Does this mean a cleric without holy abilities could disregard, perhaps even buy off, his or her "required" disadvantage and suffer no negative consequences? And if this happened, what on earth would people in the setting make of it?

[Blind Mapmaker]

I'd say you're right in DFRPG RAW. Of course in GURPS Power Investiture has a built-in pact. But since this is the DFRPG forum, feel free to try some shenanigans. Just don't be surprised when your GM will smack the cleric with some extra penance for trying to lawyer up in the eyes of their deity.

Buying off your required disadvantage pretty much goes against the core of the genre and means you're not really playing Dungeon Fantasy anymore (akin to changing out of your deity's alignment in That-Other-Game-TM).

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

I'd say you're right in DFRPG RAW. Of course in GURPS Power Investiture has a built-in pact. But since this is the DFRPG forum, feel free to try some shenanigans. Just don't be surprised when your GM will smack the cleric with some extra penance for trying to lawyer up in the eyes of their deity.

Buying off your required disadvantage pretty much goes against the core of the genre and means you're not really playing Dungeon Fantasy anymore (akin to changing out of your deity's alignment in That-Other-Game-TM).

Technically, what B77 says is "To gain, keep, or improve Power Investiture, you nearly always have to take and adhere to one or more of the traits listed under Self-Imposed Mental Disadvantages (p. 121)" (emphasis mine). And it's not clear what behavior restrictions Druids are supposed to have to deal with in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

[Michael Thayne]

Also B242 says, of casters with Power Investiture, "his god may alter the outcome of his magic – or suspend his magical powers – for reasons he is unlikely to comprehend".

[sir_pudding]

Unless they Excommunicate you...

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Unless they Excommunicate you...

Huh this is an interesting point, albeit one that potentially opens a whole can of worms. The only concrete example we have of picking up Excommunicated in play is via selling your soul to The Devil, mentioned in "I Smell A Rat". It's unclear what, short of that, is likely to cause Excommunicated to happen. It's also somewhat unclear to what extent the described consequences of selling your soul would apply to anyone who's Excommunicated, and to what extent they apply only to someone who's sold their soul.

[tbone]

I agree, it's arguably odd that clerics' PI and spells aren't explicitly in danger of being revoked by divine whim.

Whatever the original GURPS workings are, I suppose a DFRPG GM could easily take the limitations of holy abilities and apply them to PI & spells too, explaining it to players as "that's why PI is 5 points cheaper than Magery."

I know, that's not RAW; I assume GURPS' lower cost for PI actually reflects clerics' constrained spell list, and maybe the general lesser utility of sensing "holy stuff" vs sensing magic. Then again, though, clerics don't have to learn spell prerequisites, and in DFRPG, are the sole masters of healing spells. So maybe one can argue that PI should have a cost on par with Magery, and then ret-con its cheaper cost with "because the gods can revoke it".

This also comes to mind, though: While it makes sense that gods could revoke PI & spells as easily as they revoke holy abilities, I'd have the gods shut off everything only in the case of the most heinous transgressions. Losing all clerical magic at once is going be really un-fun for the player. The gods might sensibly leave the cleric with some magic as a reminder of how awesome it is to have that magic, as a threat of "I can take that away too...", and as an aid to staying alive long enough to make penance.

In short: For huge transgressions, sure, I can see the gods reducing the cleric to a mere mortal. For lesser transgressions, it's fine to have the gods act swiftly, but with sensibly lesser punishments: maybe take away just a couple of holy abilities and a level of PI, to be regained through a modest penance. (Repeated infractions will merit less lenience...)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Huh this is an interesting point, albeit one that potentially opens a whole can of worms. The only concrete example we have of picking up Excommunicated in play is via selling your soul to The Devil, mentioned in "I Smell A Rat".

You can also just start with it, if you are a wizard.

It's unclear what, short of that, is likely to cause Excommunicated to happen.

Presumably "the temple has petitioned the gods to declare you an outcast" like it says. Likely the gods can also just arbitrarily remove their grace, based on their own judgment without requiring a petition first (unless you worship a divine bureaucracy, I guess).

It's also somewhat unclear to what extent the described consequences of selling your soul would apply to anyone who's Excommunicated, and to what extent they apply only to someone who's sold their soul.

All the consequences on Adventurers p. 66 should apply, just like any other disadvantage gained in play. Most relevant here is the last one, "You cannot be a cleric".

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

You can also just start with it, if you are a wizard. Presumably "the temple has petitioned the gods to declare you an outcast" like it says. Likely the gods can also just arbitrarily remove their grace, based on their own judgment without requiring a petition first (unless you worship a divine bureaucracy, I guess).
All the consequences on Adventurers p. 66 should apply, just like any other disadvantage gained in play. Most relevant here is the last one, "You cannot be a cleric".

If you are going to rules-lawyer it, it's not clear that a cleric who stops being a cleric necessarily loses access to spells. Kromm has actually suggested that a good cleric with Social Stigma (Excommunicated) might represent someone who worships a "good-but-disparaged deity", though admittedly that's not the scenario being envisioned here, and he was talking about GURPS DF, not DFRPG.

[Dalin]

Excommunicated is one of those traits that will always require a bit of campaign-specific adjudication. In one of our Nordlond campaigns, I played a missile wizard who was excommunicated. The character is especially fond of lightning spells, so we figured that he probably stepped on Thor's toes. (Comparing his own prowess to that of the god, perhaps...) Interestingly, I've been playing it a bit harsher than the disad is written. I assumed that I wouldn't be able to get healing from temples in town, either. Indeed, I steer clear of the temple when the rest of the party goes there so that my reputation wouldn't rub off on them.

In most campaigns, if a cleric got themselves to a point where they were excommunicated, I would strip them of their spells. But I can't really imagine that happening without plenty of communication between the player and the GM ahead of time.