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Old 01-06-2023, 03:54 AM   #21
Nils_Lindeberg
 
Join Date: Jul 2018
Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

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Originally Posted by phiwum View Post
...
And given that's how I like the world to be (that faith requires, you know, faith), it's hard to give priests any benefits other than the social kind.
How you like the world to be aside, it is of course your personal taste so no complaints from me. But that said, historically, most religions have been much more quid pro quo. What you as a follower of a religion thought or did not think, did not matter much, it was more about what you did. What sacraments did you observe, what sacrifices did you perform, and so on. Faith is a rather new notion in Christianity. In medieval times Letters of Indulgence, getting absolution from the church in exchange for gifts, or Crusades and such were common practices. No one really cared what you actually believed in. Faith was separate from what you actually did for your religion or your god.

And with a mindset like that, in a fantasy world with magic, supernatural beings, wishes, and supernatural experiences in abundance, I am not sure a religion would flourish if it is vague and can't do much. It needs something more than the promise of an afterlife, impressive temples, and a honey-tongued clergy to compete. Not much will be needed, but something tangible and supernatural that other "miracle" workers can't provide.
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Old 01-06-2023, 06:06 AM   #22
David Bofinger
 
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

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Originally Posted by Nils_Lindeberg View Post
[...] in a fantasy world with magic, supernatural beings, wishes, and supernatural experiences in abundance, I am not sure a religion would flourish if it is vague and can't do much. It needs something more than the promise of an afterlife, impressive temples, and a honey-tongued clergy to compete. Not much will be needed, but something tangible and supernatural that other "miracle" workers can't provide.
(I deleted some qualifications from Nil's thoughts which may matter.)

It's not obvious to me that Cidri is very different to our world in this respect. We have great metal birds which fly through the air, we can talk to people on the other side of the world, etc. Yet many religions get along fine without much in the way of miracles.
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Old 01-06-2023, 06:29 AM   #23
hcobb
 
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Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

TFT wizards are squishy and lazy. Doing a few parlor tricks to get the unwashed masses to provide the wizards with services is well worth two memory points.

See Discord game-2 for an example of using mundane social aspects of clerics to enhance the effectiveness of a wizard.
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Last edited by hcobb; 01-06-2023 at 07:52 AM.
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Old 01-06-2023, 10:30 AM   #24
timm meyers
 
Join Date: May 2020
Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

(in reply to the discussion between phiwum and Nils)

The ultimate questions of where did this all come from and what happens when we die is the primary drive. Atheist or Deist or Philosopher all seek the same answer and their conclusion will greatly affect how they live life.

There has never been a need for "miracles" to create "faith". Do such things help? obviously yes. Those who live with no mindful questions about life usually need a miracle or life threatning experience to "open their eyes" so to speak. Remember there are no atheists in a fox hole....

I agree that our modern "miracle" world is easily equal to a Cidri full of science=magic. The creator(s) of the world are still to be highly sought after and the truth obeyed when found.
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Old 01-06-2023, 06:52 PM   #25
hcobb
 
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Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

Why should Priest have any particular bonus over any other form of Streetwise?
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Old 01-07-2023, 01:02 AM   #26
Steve Plambeck
 
Join Date: Jun 2019
Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
Why should Priest have any particular bonus over any other form of Streetwise?
Probably none... unless your campaign world has actual living and active gods in it, in which case duly consecrated Priests to their respective deities have whatever particular bonuses those gods have decided to grant them.

The RAW say Cidri has no real gods, but we don't all play in Cidri. My old group's World had a pantheon of nine Greater Gods and hundreds of Lesser Gods. Only a couple of the latter made brief cameo appearances in play, although I had a campaign in progress when our group ended that was planned to end with a cameo by our equivalent of Thor coming to take away that nice magic hammer the party was going to find and think they could keep :)

Some of our PCs' cultures believed or recognized all the gods, some only a few, and one culture only recognized one. The tensions between characters of differing religions factored into many of our adventures and at times much of the role playing.

Gods are the uber-NPCs. It's entirely up to GMs whether or not to have any, how to build them, and how to use them. It's a lot of extra work, but another fun aspect of the game for those who are so inclined.
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Old 01-08-2023, 10:21 AM   #27
hcobb
 
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Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

Arresta, Human wizard, age 20
ST 9, DX 11, IQ 12, MA 10
Talents: Literacy, Priest
Spells include: 3-Hex Fire, 3-Hex Shadow, Aid, Blur, Drain Strength, Fireball, Illusion, Mage Sight, Staff
Language: Common
Weapon: Staff willow maul (1d+1, 1d occult)

Note that she requires ST 9 so that she isn't weak for Drain Strength from the gathered faithful after recharging a point into a powerstone for the church. (5 fatigue down leaves her at adjST 4)
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Old 01-08-2023, 05:27 PM   #28
Steve Plambeck
 
Join Date: Jun 2019
Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

My answers to the OP may be a little complicated.

How often do you see Priest being taken by players in your games?
Speaking entirely from the perspective of my original, retired group, only occasionally among PCs, but rather more often among NPCs, particulary those priests of a certain religion that was on a jihad to exterminate all the world's wizards.

Does religion play a large enough role in your game world to make Priest worthwhile?
Absolutely. But only under certain religions, of which we had many. For example bonuses available to a Cleric or Priest of one of our world's Lesser Gods added a lot of color to a character, but had almost no combat value. At the other end of the spectrum each Chief High Priest of one of our nine Greater Gods could call on some seriousy kick-ass powers, from earthquakes and hurricanes to summoning Angels/Demons for free. Those latter guys were off-camera NPCs of course. Whereas a PC might be a Cleric of the Wine God (one of our Lesser Gods) -- he could remove your hangover, and that's sometimes pretty dang useful after a night at the pub.

Do you buff up Priest by giving it more influence over TFT's mechanics?
Where to begin? We added more talents, each of which was a prerequisite of the next. These were Cleric, Priest, and High Priest. There was also a Chief High Priest (like the Pope) to each religion's clergy, but that was a rank/job title rather than a talent. To be elected Chief High Priest one was supposed to have the High Priest and Theologian talents.

Importantly there was one more talent, Piety. Anyone with Piety might pray for some divine help (a one-time one point bonus if they were lucky). You didn't have to be a Cleric or Priest to take Piety -- and by the same token you didn't really have to take Piety to join a priesthood, you could always just lie your way into an order to get an easy job.

There was a table of "free" spells, unique to each god, available to the faithful and clergy of each god. There were five tiers to each of these tables. Spells from the bottom tier were available to devout lay persons (those with the Piety talent), from the 2nd tier to Clerics, 3rd to Priests, 4th to High Priests, and those from the 5th tier were only revealed to the Chief High Priest. The spells weren't really free -- when they succeeded the Mana cost was paid for by the virtually unlimited reserves of the god or goddess themself. More on this in a moment.

Mechanics were simple. Make you're DX roll. This was to prove you made the invocation or sign of the spell correcty, or in the case of Missile spells that you aimed it correctly. 3d6 for Tier One spells, 4d6 for Tier Two, etc. That would be 7d6 for the top tier. You could subtract 1d6 difficulty from the roll for a Cleric, 2d6 for a Priest, and 3d6 for High Priest. If the roll was going to be on less than 2d6, you were granted automatic success.

If a free, divine spell succeeded, those fickle gods might not like you dipping into their Mana -- you faced the possibility of Divine Retribution. This kept people from tapping into free magic very often. The figure that used the god's Mana had to immediately make a 3d6 saving roll against our psuedo-attribute called Karma (KA). KA was set at 10 for everyone, and couldn't be increased with XP, but there was a table of positive and negative KA adjustments depending on various circumstances. The GM could overrule these adjustments for in-story reasons. If you'd called down a rainstorm to put out a fire in that god's temple, the GM would surely grant you a high adjKA bonus. If you'd called down a rainstorm to put out a fire in your god's enemy's temple because you'd been bribed to do so, the GM would surely grant you a large adjKA penalty.

If you missed your KA roll, the penalty was a Divine Curse on all your future die rolls, from 2 to 6 points depending on the tier of the spell you'd used. Without going into more detail, getting a Divine Curse removed was not an easy thing. If you had to finish an adventure with every roll of the dice adjusted 2, 3, or more points against you, you'd be in deep trouble.

Do you require Priest for wizards?
No. Secular and divine magic were totally separate things. One of our religions entirely forbade the use of secular magic, so their priests could never be wizards. One of my more fun characters though was a wizard who belonged to that religion and, living within its theocracy, had to keep his "hobby" a secret, even from his wife.
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Last edited by Steve Plambeck; 01-08-2023 at 05:34 PM.
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Old 01-08-2023, 11:18 PM   #29
Axly Suregrip
 
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Durham, NC
Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

How often do you see Priest being taken by players in your games?

Now, not at all. Back long before Legacy I used to have Priest and UC1 be requirements for Warrior Monks. Only WMs had access to most peculiar weapon talents. In RAW, peculiar weapons were not balanced, so this was a fair trade off. Had several players being "priests" for this reason.


Does religion play a large enough role in your game world to make Priest worthwhile?

No. I keep religions generic. "Dwarf's religion", etc. There are some NPC religious sects with beliefs that affect the social structure and laws, but still, I make it unspecified as to exactly what core religion it may be.


Do you buff up Priest by giving it more influence over TFT's mechanics?

Mostly no. Currently I just give them a social advantage in some situations (if anyone were to take it) and knowledge of undead similar to Naturalists.


Do you require Priest for wizards?

No.
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Old 01-09-2023, 12:42 PM   #30
phiwum
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston area
Default Re: Talent/Spell of the Week: Priest

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Originally Posted by Nils_Lindeberg View Post
How you like the world to be aside, it is of course your personal taste so no complaints from me. But that said, historically, most religions have been much more quid pro quo. What you as a follower of a religion thought or did not think, did not matter much, it was more about what you did. What sacraments did you observe, what sacrifices did you perform, and so on. Faith is a rather new notion in Christianity. In medieval times Letters of Indulgence, getting absolution from the church in exchange for gifts, or Crusades and such were common practices. No one really cared what you actually believed in. Faith was separate from what you actually did for your religion or your god.

And with a mindset like that, in a fantasy world with magic, supernatural beings, wishes, and supernatural experiences in abundance, I am not sure a religion would flourish if it is vague and can't do much. It needs something more than the promise of an afterlife, impressive temples, and a honey-tongued clergy to compete. Not much will be needed, but something tangible and supernatural that other "miracle" workers can't provide.
I have two major religions in play, the Christian faith, which is growing, and a pagan religion which is in conflict with the Christians. The Christians offer only the usual eternal life and easy-peasy forgiveness on Saturday for all the misdeeds of Friday. Oh, and a cracker. The pagans, on the other hand, use magic to persuade followers of the reality and importance of their deities. Some of the pagan priests are willing to deceive, while others are true believers who attribute their magical talents to the gods. (Shostak played one of the latter.)

Truth be told, the cynicism in the pagan clergy is mirrored in the Christian clergy, because of course it should be. The Christians just don't use magic in the same way -- at least, not widely.

Actual direct intervention by Gods has not happened and I don't anticipate using it. I'm not big on miracles and I'm even less thrilled with confirming that this faith or that (or even all of them) are based in truth. I'll let the players decide which ones have actual gods and which don't. (Of course, I might use apparent miracles now and then, but always with room for mundane explanations.)
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