Power Investiture

[DrTemp]

Who of you has ever used Power Investiture in one of your games? How did you use it, what additional limits did you impose? Which spells or colleges were available, and how many spells for each god's priests? How do you handle the issue of Sanctity and Critical Failures?

[Orion Deckrect]

I use priests with Power Investiture in my games. There's a lot of true religions, and each one have a special area of influence. It is not a Pantheon, but different ways to see the wold, life and how live the life.
You may be more precise and create a lot of differences between religions. On my campaing i've create a basic rules system and then, the differences among each religion.
Power Investiture have, in mt games, only 4 levels, going from 0 to 3. It is not a third edition rule, as it begins at level 1 on the official rules, but i like the changes.
Then, each religion have a status list, for the ecclesiastic levels and ranks, with a brief description of the obligations and prerrogatives.
Also, theres the spheres of influences, and each religion have its spell colleges. All religions may use the basic religions' spells and the spells of its colleges. As a general rule, when a spell of the college have a prerequisite from a forbiden college, the requisite is simply ignored. But as i work on each religion separately, i create a new spell tree for each religion, but is a hard work.
Dont forget about duty and patron. Try to define what a priest gets from religion and what he have, to define this point values.
For the end, i also defined what skills are basic and necessary for each priest know.

[DrTemp]

Thanks, Orion.

Well, the game I have in mind (my old campaign is still running, but will come to an end in a few months, I think) would feature a fantasy world with ancient Egyptean, Greek, Roman and Norse Gods, each with some kind of priesthood. Sanctity will essentially follow the rules proposed in Fantasy, but only decades of worship (or lack thereof) in a given area can change it. Most areas will be Low Sanctity to most gods, and the whole world will be Low Mana with no exceptions. In addition, a third system of magic, which will be advantage-based, will exist, but be much rarer. Spells like Flight, Flying Carpet, Hawk Flight, Teleport and the entire Gate and Tech colleges will be unavailable to anyone.

My current idea is to have core set of about a dozen spells which are available to any priest of any god: Bless, Curse, Dispel Magic, Remove Curse, Delay, Charge Powerstone, Pentagram (in a variant version involving the specific god's seal), Seek Magic and Missile Shield. (Plus possibly one or two others that I am currently not aware of yet). Each Pantheon will, of course, have priests with various specialties according to the historic mythological description of the god. The latter would be done develop-in-play way - if a player comes up with a given god, I can design that god's spell list, but I won't make up spell lists for all the available gods. They are just too many.

I am not quite sure which self-imposed mental disadvantages to require, except the most obvious ones, such as Chastity for priestesses of Vesta, and usually some kind of Sense of Duty.

My other concern is whether it would make sense to give a fixed number of available spells to each god's priests, rather than simply doing this by gut feeling... and there are probably tons of other issues that I am not aware of yet. So any experiences would be quite interesting to read.

[DrTemp]

No one has an idea on how many spells Power Investiture should normally grant? :-(

[Kromm]

I generally go through the book and say, "Does this spell suit the god or not?" Anything that fits goes on the list. I don't actually care whether the scope is the same from one god to the next. If it's more than 10-15 spells, it's "close enough" . . . even if that might mean 20 spells on one list and 80 on another. Of course, the main value of PI in my campaigns is as Talent for a divine power, which often coexists with spells. The abilities of the power are great gifts and miracles, while the spells are rote prayers and blessings with effects outlined in scripture.

[David Johnston]

Originally Posted by DrTemp

No one has an idea on how many spells Power Investiture should normally grant? :-(

All the ones that come close to fitting. Power Investiture costs almost as much as Magic Aptitude and comes with a built-in Pact. It's only advantages are being unaffected by Mana and the lack of need for pre-requisites. Nor is having a limited spell list much of a disadvantage when you can go straight to a powerful spell and crank it to be a one trick pony.

[JoelSammallahti]

You might scale the number of spells available to the practicioner's Theology or Religious Ritual skill, for example one spell per point in the skill.

[LoneWolf23k]

Generally, divine magic tends to focus on the deity's portfolio, so you wouldn't get fire spells for an ocean god, for exemple.

But you don't necessarily have to follow the prerequisites list, so it even out.

[DrTemp]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I generally go through the book and say, "Does this spell suit the god or not?" Anything that fits goes on the list. I don't actually care whether the scope is the same from one god to the next. If it's more than 10-15 spells, it's "close enough" . . . even if that might mean 20 spells on one list and 80 on another.

So there are essentially more powerful cults and less powerful ones?

Of course, the main value of PI in my campaigns is as Talent for a divine power, which often coexists with spells. The abilities of the power are great gifts and miracles, while the spells are rote prayers and blessings with effects outlined in scripture.

Interesting. So the players have the choice to build a divinely-inspired advantage or take a spell? How do players combine these? Do they at all? After all, the spells are much more point-efficient...

Originally Posted by David Johnston

All the ones that come close to fitting. Power Investiture costs almost as much as Magic Aptitude and comes with a built-in Pact. It's only advantages are being unaffected by Mana and the lack of need for pre-requisites. Nor is having a limited spell list much of a disadvantage when you can go straight to a powerful spell and crank it to be a one trick pony.

Hm, that's true. As long as a minimum number of spells is available, it's probably not all that important... Kromm suggests "15+ spells", which looks like a rather low estimate. Any other opinions or experiences?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by DrTemp

So there are essentially more powerful cults and less powerful ones?

But of course. I've yet to read of a polytheistic faith without a pecking order -- in the heavens or in the priesthood.

Originally Posted by DrTemp

So the players have the choice to build a divinely-inspired advantage or take a spell? How do players combine these? Do they at all? After all, the spells are much more point-efficient...

Who said anything about "build"? No, I build all abilities of powers in my campaign. Players can buy them . . . or not. Custom-building isn't an option. And I disagree that spells are more point-efficient. Between casting times and FP costs, the expense to get most useful spells to the level where they approach advantages is rather steep. Cast in point: IQ 14, PI 3 cleric wants to get Sleep to work in one second and for 1 FP. That's level 25, for 36 points. Or he could get Affliction 1 (Costs Fatigue, 1 FP, -5%; Malediction 1, +100%; Sleep, +150%) [35] for much the same effect. Sure, the Affliction is at a lower effective level (IQ + Talent, or 17), but then again, it isn't at -1 per spell "on."

Originally Posted by DrTemp

Kromm suggests "15+ spells", which looks like a rather low estimate. Any other opinions or experiences?

Checking my notes, I see that I really went with something closer to 20+.