Opinions wanted on religious "magic" system

[Canology]

I'm trying to nail down exactly how I want religious magic to work in one of my game worlds. The idea is for there to be fairly low key, but in some cases observable results to prayer. I considered using Powers: Divine Favor, but that just doesn't seem like a good fit. In this setting each of the 15 "shards" that make up the world are governed by a (very) loose sort of pantheon. Each of the members of the pantheon is responsible for a sort of disparate portfolio. For instance, the god Namkalame -Takoyay is in charge of Rivers; Intuition; Perception; Health; Food; Drink, and there is a -2 to any rolls to contact him (he is not the prime deity and isn't as strong/available.

So, here is how it works; as with Visualization you must spend a minute concentrating (while ritually praying) on what you want the god to accomplish for you. Obviously it would have to be something that fit in their portfolio. So then, you (or maybe the GM) roll your Religious Ritual skill (I allow a default of IQ-6 for this setting). You receive a bonus equal to your margin of success+1. I was thinking on a crit that the assistance was obviously divine in origin. For instance, a prayer for a swift voyage upriver that rolled a crit might result in a small wave pushing the craft on it's way. Otherwise the prayer would just give a bonus (if successful) to the captain's Boating roll.

Power Investiture is required to have your prayers affect others and would be needed for any sort of priest.

One problem I can see would be players saying stuff like "I spend the next hour making 60 prayers to all the deities for help with everything!". Because of that I am thinking maybe a cumulative penalty for multiple prayers to the same deity.

Help me spot some other flaws, or offer any opinions/suggestions.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Canology

I'm trying to nail down exactly how I want religious magic to work in one of my game worlds. The idea is for there to be fairly low key, but in some cases observable results to prayer. I considered using Powers: Divine Favor, but that just doesn't seem like a good fit. In this setting each of the 15 "shards" that make up the world are governed by a (very) loose sort of pantheon. Each of the members of the pantheon is responsible for a sort of disparate portfolio. For instance, the god Namkalame -Takoyay is in charge of Rivers; Intuition; Perception; Health; Food; Drink, and there is a -2 to any rolls to contact him (he is not the prime deity and isn't as strong/available.

So, here is how it works; as with Visualization you must spend a minute concentrating (while ritually praying) on what you want the god to accomplish for you. Obviously it would have to be something that fit in their portfolio. So then, you (or maybe the GM) roll your Religious Ritual skill (I allow a default of IQ-6 for this setting). You receive a bonus equal to your margin of success+1. I was thinking on a crit that the assistance was obviously divine in origin. For instance, a prayer for a swift voyage upriver that rolled a crit might result in a small wave pushing the craft on it's way. Otherwise the prayer would just give a bonus (if successful) to the captain's Boating roll.

Power Investiture is required to have your prayers affect others and would be needed for any sort of priest.

One problem I can see would be players saying stuff like "I spend the next hour making 60 prayers to all the deities for help with everything!". Because of that I am thinking maybe a cumulative penalty for multiple prayers to the same deity.

Help me spot some other flaws, or offer any opinions/suggestions.

One thing to remember: just because they belong to the same pantheon doesn't mean they cooperate. There can be rivalries where two or more deities actually oppose each other.

If the answer to "What Deities Get From Their Followers?" is Everything (ie The deity's power is directly related to worship or belief in it. Worship or belief may even be vital to its continued existence.) This kind of deity can even be shaped by how it is viewed by its worshipers or believers slowly changing with the culture. The gods of Terry Pratchett's Discworld operate under this mechanic. DC's Uncle Sam also operates this way even being broken into two parts (Billy Yank and Jonny Reb) during the American Civil War.) then rivalries will be a given.

Also this means that deities will have to pick and choose which priest to answer based on how much his goals match those of the deity in question and what the deity will get out of it.

[The Colonel]

You could allow only one prayer request to be in progress at a time - that would prevent the "all the prayers for everything" problem. Or at least only allow a connection to one deity at a time.

[Culture20]

If you’re following a Greek Pantheon style of religion... Once a prayer is successfully answered, you might have that diety’s attention for any and all further prayers for a random time period. If you pray to a rival diety, the first one might interfere and/or stop the initial assistance. Even praying to friendly dieities might spark some minor jealousy. Then also consider annoyance if you pray to the same diety repeatedly. That would keep PCs from just praying for everything constantly.

[AlexanderHowl]

One alternative is a religious based Path/Book magic where every diety within a pantheon possesses a specific Path/Book. Worshippers would learn allied Paths/Books as Hard Skills, neutral Paths/Books as Very Hard Skills, and could not learn opposing Paths/Books. For example, if you had 12 dieties, you could have three allied, six neutral, and three opposing.

[dataweaver]

Or use Realm Magic, so that you don't have to perform a minutes- or hours-long ritual every time you pray.

[Canology]

One of the things I wanted to avoid was having specific spells or magical skills that have to be learned in oder to pray for something.

I originally was going to use Path/Book Magic but some of the dieties have such limited portfolios that I was having trouble coming up with suitable spells. Also, it doesn't *feel* right to require everyone in the game world to be a trained magic user.

Perhaps by calling them dieties is misleading, a better descriptor would be angels. So you have an angel who is Lord of the Lake and responsible for Calming. Another is in charge of Evaluating Situations; Lightning and Ambitions. They aren't very anthropomorphic and any relationships they have are beyond human understanding.

Maybe I should just say that most people say prayers and make the proper ceremonies, but unless you have an advantage like Blessed, or Visualization it just doesn't have an (in game) affect.

But that cuts back on some of the flavor I'm envisioning... :/

[A Ladder]

You could do answering prayers with miracles based on their level of Religious Rank (how Pulling Rank works in Action 1: Heroes p. 24-25). So the higher level of Rank the character has the greater chance of success they have at receiving assistance.

I would then take a look at your pantheon and see what type of help the different gods give. So your Lightning and Ambition god could give aid in the form of Base Access, Cash, Facilities, Fire Support, Warrant and other abilities like inspiration for crowds, maybe the Terror advantage or other some such. Just make the aid show up in a much quicker time (such as minutes to even seconds) and show up in a sort of mystical way (so Fire Support is lightning bolts from the heavens and a Warrant is mind controlling the local constabulary to listen to you instead of their superior officers).
Take a look at this preview for "Supernatural Aid" for some inspiration.

Kromm states that his Pulling Rank matched Patron for cost but with finer granularity, so it seems appropriate to me. Link Here.
This way you can cost your Rank levels based on how much each god would cost as a Patron. (I would however add an enhancement of +100% for access to Supernatural Aid).
Or you could just use the PC's level of Power Investiture as their level of Rank, YMMV.

[Canology]

Originally Posted by A Ladder

You could do answering prayers with miracles based on their level of Religious Rank (how Pulling Rank works in Action 1: Heroes p. 24-25). So the higher level of Rank the character has the greater chance of success they have at receiving assistance.

Hmmm, that is actually a great idea!

Thanks!

[Jack Sawyer]

Back when I was younger and going through an obsession with learning about 'real life' psychic phenomena (hah!) one thing that was always 'defined' with things like psychokinesis is that it could be macroscopic or microscopic. 'Micro' PK was (IIRC) defined as effectively probability manipulation (altering coin tosses, say.) If you want a 'subtle' kind of magic (sort of like Tolkein I guess?) you might borrow that sort of approach (except that the 'macro-PK' like effects are also probabitliy manipulation.)

You could assume that followers and deities exist in a symbiotic relationship where the deities are empowered by those beliefs and facilitate the direction of that 'power' (think of them as a storage and transmission medium for 'religious power') The deity would be effectively tapping on large scale 'belief' and using it to apply 'probability manipulation' PK on whatever scale is needed.

The limiting factors about such a system, I think, is that it's highly structural and there would be 'rules' (there might be limits to how much 'religious power' can be applied for various reasons. Like you might pray over days/weeks for rain to appear, or for hours a flood to spare a village, but you can't do it in a matter of seconds because the forces/power being directed would be 'too much' and 'break the rules'.

Or maybe too much use of power runs to the risk of disbelief (disbelief or doubt would 'weaken' the faith of the followers and thus weaken the god, and undermine whatever effect they are going for.)