Super Easy Divine Magic Rules

[Shoug]

QUOTE=MikMod;2271258]Oooo. I wonder if other devout people might be able to 'sense' the presence of divine blessings, like 'detect holy power'? So that you might be especially aware when you are in the presence of one who has walked far with their god. Could be quite an effect when meeting new people (and trying to influence them).[/QUOTE]

Oh, it could be that only two kinds of people can detect a divine wish inside a person: An authentically devout worshipper (one who is genuinely invested in their faith), and a wizard with Priest using Detect Magic. This is a very cool idea. I would definitely give an additional +1 to reaction rolls with people who can sense your wish.

I like the way you think.

[zot]

Originally Posted by Tywyll

If your view of Divine Magic is that it should be subtle and more reflecting on a god blessing their chosen with luck and non-obvious protections, this is for you.

Any character with the Priest Talent (or perhaps a True Faith Talent of similar cost) can buy Lesser Wishes for 400 xp.

Any character with Theologian Talent can buy Lesser Wishes for 300 xp.

Boom. Characters now have a divine ability to manipulate reality without being limited to spells or spell effects. It works with existing mechanics. And allows for a thematic battle of wills between religious champions as they throw and cancel each other's wishes.

Obviously Wish cost can be tampered with to taste. The downside is that your experience is going into a resource you use up to do your things.

Nice idea! I like it!

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by JLV

It's been brought to my attention that Shoug was the person who originally came up with this idea. So, my sincere apologies to Shoug for mis-crediting the concept!

Must be a case of parallel evolution then because I came up with this on my own.

[MikMod]

Originally Posted by Tywyll

Must be a case of parallel evolution then because I came up with this on my own.

Yeah, Shoug posted this idea - first time I had seen it - on the Clerics Made Simple thread (you posted to that conversation straight after him). Then 8 days later this thread opened. Maybe he reminded you of it?

Whatever, it is just about the best extension idea for TFT that's been put out there for a long while imho. I love it because it's so simple - the spirit of TFT!

:)

[MikMod]

Originally Posted by Shoug

Oh, it could be that only two kinds of people can detect a divine wish inside a person: An authentically devout worshipper (one who is genuinely invested in their faith), and a wizard with Priest using Detect Magic. This is a very cool idea. I would definitely give an additional +1 to reaction rolls with people who can sense your wish.

Yeah, maybe carrying a blessing gives you a roll to detect others in the same state :) This would actually be really helpful in terms of giving the party some kind of warning they're dealing with a 'blessed' individual, particularly if they are strongly blessed!

I like the way you think.

Aw shucks! I'm just riffing on your melody :)

[Tywyll]

Response Part 1

Originally Posted by MikMod

Ah Runequest! What a brilliant game - and I totally agree, at least in our old edition, the best divine magic system ever. I think this is one reason why I love the xp for wishes idea - it mirrors the RQ attribute point for Runespell sacrifice.

But I don't remember RQ having a cash for spells mechanic? I remember you having to give up a part of your hard won character - and that was for one set spell, not a very flexible wish.

It’s not so much cash for spells, but in the newest edition, you only get your Rune Points (i.e. Divine Magic) back on holy day ceremonies (depending on how you read the rules, this is either one specific day a week or possibly only once a season). The amount you get back is random and based on a number of factors (worshipping on a high holy day gets you all of them back unless you fail your worship roll, and that’s still 2d6 points). Where the money comes in is that you can buy totems or icons of your god(s) and put them in the temple. When you worship, each icon give you a +1 RP back. So a rich character would be encouraged to spend money on decorating the temple in their god’s honor and as a means of proving their faithfulness.

So not a one to one, but money is definitely involved in the new system. Otherwise, without really developing your worship skill, you risk running around with only a portion of your rune points/divine magic each season.
As to the flexible versus inflexible… that’s the only issue I have with this mechanic. Spells in RQ were, if you were high enough in the cult, reusable.
In this system they are always expended. I’m wondering if maybe at Theologian Talent you could start getting reusable wishes…but they only recharge if you are at a church, or maybe on a holy day. That would need some serious playtesting to see if it were super broken. Alternatively, you could always port over the RQ divine magic treating each point as a wish point?

Truesword-1 point spell, cast on a sword, for 15 minutes it does +1d6 damage (I hesitate at double because jacking your armor was much easier in RQ then TFT).

Shield-1+ Points. Each point grants the target +1 armor and makes spells that target them suffer a -1 to the casting roll (which can be negated by spending additional Fat)

Heal Wound-1 Point spell, when cast you spend any amount of fatigue and heal a target of that amount of damage.

Each one of these is a ‘wish’, but once used you could regain it at a temple by spending 1 day in prayer per point.

Oh, another change in the newest edition of RQ, rune points are in a rune pool. If you sacrifice 3 POW, you now have a rune pool of 3 (and in fact all starting characters are considered initiates with a rune pool of 3). These rune points are spent as you need them, not on specific spells. All gods have a list of common spells, and then a group of special spells. Each pow you sacrifice gets your 1 special spell in your spell list, but the first pow you sacrifice also gets you all the common spells. So divine casters are much more flexible in the new edition, but more limited in regaining their power. Also rune pools are capped at your Charisma stat. Though you can be an initiate of multiple allied cults and gain more than one rune pool

Plus the cults were so woven into every aspect of the world that they were central and not just 'bolted on'. I guess that's my worry with any kind of pay-$10-and get-a-bit-of-a-wish mechanic, it is sooooo easy to abuse. (I should make it clear that in my campaign you cannot swap xp for wishes as per RAW).

That’s a GM world building issue. I run a homebrew setting based on a world I created…oh shit…27 years ago. My cults are hardly bolted on and inform most aspects of character’s lives. Any abuse of that mechanic is purely in the hands of the GM to sort out.

Well it wasn't supposed to be minutiae - just one simple example of how the requirements of your cult (and I did detail those in another post) would impact on your game choices and how following your god could conflict with the wishes of the party, or even what might be (selfishly) considered 'best' for your character. That's not minutiae, that was my main point. Without that kind of demand from your god, without some set of moral values - right and wrong - which might contradict your calculated 'best choice', there is no 'cost' to being religious - its just a bonus where you get wishes for cash or doing what you were going to do anyway.

I meant minutiae in the sense that we were discussing an example created whole cloth to serve your point, rather than debating the system itself.
That said, I don’t disagree with you. Religion’s should have issues that crop up in the character’s roleplay. And in those cases, yes, I’m all for giving bonus xp towards a wish or taking some away depending on player choice(if I used this system). But equally, offerings are a major element of old world religion and paganism. I would want that to have an impact as well. I mean if you don’t like the idea of carrots, you could use sticks instead and punish characters who don’t tithe or make offerings. But I think the players would engage with the system more as a reward. It also allows a valve to remove cash.

Me too! I just thought the wishes mechanic was great! Wishes are not very well defined, nor are they totally reliable since they depend on (in this case) a deity to 'perform' the miracle for you. So there is plenty of room for GM moderation and some alignment of wish and god - so, for instance, if you worship a healing god it is unlikely your 'paid for' wish that your arch nemesis Kylen contract a rather horrible skin disease is going to be fulfilled.

LOL…yes, definitely.

For me, I can take the xp for wishes idea, plus some cult/religion descriptions and I can start playing - that is all the mechanic I feel I and my players need. We already have guidance in terms of Lesser Wishes and their contrast with Greater Wishes to have a feel for how powerful they should be. And the players and I will have a clear idea what their religion expects and therefore how and when they are likely to earn the special xp - but it will be given by the GM like other experience.

I am also really interested in hearing how others might implement the idea, but this is House Rules, so really it is up to me! (and you :)

As am I!

For instance, it was great for you to mention holy days, because that isn't something I had particularly thought about. Though my fix will be to hand the job to the first 'worshipper' of a religion to flesh that out! :D

I’ll admit, if I hadn’t been playing OSR games for such a long time now, and then run a short campaign in the new RQ, holy days wouldn’t have really been on my radar. But since time keeping is so key in OSR style games and I like the idea of holy days as a thing in the game, it’s definitely on my mind for now.

[Tywyll]

Response Part 2

I'm sure we all have our own flavour of TFT. Mine does not involve the regular summoning of dragons. Actually, even considering a story like Lord Of The Rings - what magic was there:

• Fireworks
• A light on the end of a staff
• A wizardly duel which looked mostly like magic fist?
• A sword that lights up when orcs are nearby

• I think it was fairly implied that it did more than that. I would say it was a ‘bane’ weapon…the Orc Cleaver lends a lot more weight than ‘the Orc Announcer’
  
  Oh, wait, you are talking about Sting…in that case you are forgetting that it could inflict a mortal wound on a demon-spider queen…so yeah, it does more than ‘light up’
  
  But that’s two swords, Gandalfs and Frodo’s that were definitely magical.
  
  

  A nice mail shirt (not even sure that was magic)

  Way to burry the lead! That stopped almost all the damage of a troll 10 times the size of the person wearing it. Mithril itself is definitely in the ‘impossible’ category, whether it was ‘magical’ or not. I’m willing to say it was magical just due to the wonder and amazement of all those who encountered it.
  

  A ring that makes you invisible but also draws all the forces of Hell down on you!

  It does far more than that for anyone willing to use its powers fully. No one in the books who had it did. Though it also extended lifespan and physically warped the bearer.
  
  

  Some bread that lasts longer than normal

Only not quite-
We also have
*Magical Cloaks of camouflage
*Vial of holy light
*Legolas’ magical bow
*a wizard taking on a demon lord in single combat
*a Resurrection
*Magical Healing
*Morgul Blades that work their way into the victim after wounding them
*Undead Spectre Lords
*An entire race being created by a wizard
*Barrow Blades that were just the daggers of the Numenoreans but still potent enough to harm the most powerful undead of this age (and kill the king of the trolls).
*A wizard ‘turning’ the undead with magic
*Mental Domination
*Dispel Magic (of said Domination)
*The Palentir
*Fellbeasts
*Talking Spiders
*A ghost army
*Elven Rings of power
*An elven sorceress queen who ‘tore down Gol-dulgor’ (sp?) during a siege.
*I’m sure I’m forgetting other stuff.

There is A LOT of magic in LOTR. People just forget because it’s subtle and not often made into the MacGuffin of the plots like ‘rare’ magic settings often do. There is no ‘holy sword’ that will fix the world/kingdom/etc. Instead you just have a ton of magic in the world and the people’s lives. In a lot of ways, Middle Earth is pretty close to old school D&D despite arguments to the contrary (magic is commonish but not something that the characters bang on and on about).

Seriously - even LOTR didn't have a great deal of magic - certainly compared to all the running around, horse-riding, fighting, more running, swords, poisoning, fighting again. Most of the magic was magical beasts and creatures - the wraiths, the Nazgul's steeds, the Orc and Uruk Hai, Ents, Giant Spiders/Eagles and what-have-you.

Yeah, hard disagree. Also, most of those magical creatures you mentioned were created by wizards!

RAW is one thing - our campaigns are another. I mean, we are hanging out in the House Rules section after all! :)

Oh, absolutely. But we have to start at RAW for our discussions to then branch away. Otherwise we might as well talk about d6 Star Wars or something in the middle of this! :D

But seriously, even though this is Houserules, I have to assume that the people I’m talking to use the RAW more or less, unless they say otherwise because what basis do we have otherwise for discussion? I mean, I assume you play with 3 stats and Wizards are a thing in your game, and talents exist, etc, etc until notified otherwise. Any points I try to make will be aimed at the core rules (or if they aren’t, I’ll flag them that way).

Maybe, though you made the opposite argument earlier! :P

I did? Where?

In any case its not religion that needs to be logical, for me, its the mechanics of the game world that I am implementing which need to have an internal logic and be as free of exploits as possible - otherwise both the players and the NPCs will have reamed those exploits for everything they are worth - and that might distort the shape of the world in ways which I don't want it to.

Everything I’ve recommended is perfectly internally logical. Charging a devout worshipper $5000 for a single use bonus isn’t particularly exploitable (and that’s assuming you allow the entire cost of a wish to be paid for through sacrifice and not deed). That’s a huge chunk of change for most pcs. While the rich and the powerful might be more profligate in their spending, and theoretically have tons of wishes, they also probably blow through them quite casually as well (oh I really want to convince this noble to make an alliance with me so I’ll guarantee a positive reaction roll, oh no, I fell of my horse and broke my leg…please god nope, etc). If it IS abusable (and I’d want to understand what that meant exactly), whatever the PCs are doing, their foes can also do. Player blows a wish against the BBEG? That’s okay, he’s got a few himself…

Yes, of course we will have different ways of implementing it - I just didn't feel for my campaign that allowing 6 wishes and a sweeping blow in one turn is something I would want to see happen. If the NPCs can do it then so can the players. Do you really want your carefully crafted and top NPCs in the world to be so vulnerable? One capricious player could destroy a whole lot of careful planning and work in a matter of a few seconds.

I try to be of the ‘referree’ school when I run a game. Here are the things in the world, the systems you use, and I just arbitrate your actions. I’m not 100% pure, of course, and will nudge things if some awesome idea comes up, but in general, if my players do something that subverts my expectations, I try to let that stand. I’ve had ‘bosses’ killed by crits or giant planned encounters ended in a single round. I might feel some dissatisfaction, but the players LOVE it. Conversely, I’ve sent parties running home with their tails between their legs when they woke up a Death Knight at level 3-4, even losing several favoured henchmen at the time. So its swings and roundabouts.

As for villains being taken out this way, if I was totally dead set against one being taken down like that, I would stock them with wishes as well so they couldn’t be easily wiped out in a single round.

To me, asking for a couple of weapons to be broken is fair enough for one wish. I think you are mapping that onto: "what would it take to break three weapons? Well that's three rolls of 18, so that's three wishes". I'm working from: "does it sound reasonable that a lesser demon would break three weapons for a wish. It doesn't sound too powerful, I mean, break a jug/break a weapon, whats the difference right? Yeah I will allow it. (with a save for magic ones)"

Yeah, that’s fair. I would probably consider that as well. Though it opens up the door to asking ‘how many can you get for a single wish’? question.

I showed you how I would implement this - but its not right or wrong, its just my way of doing it - so yeah absolutely do it differently if it suits your world, your characters and your players. Some people will have super powers in their fantasy games - I will not. That's the GMs decision - they craft the world. The players then decide if they want to play in it! :)

Truth. I like characters to reach super-heroic levels eventually. Not in every game, but most.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by Shoug

uwu. Thank you, I was quite happy to see my name pop up in this thread. Life is about the small stuff.

Neat. Great minds thing alike I guess. I never saw your recommendation for this.

I really like the idea that the GM is tracking all of the wish XP, but it would not go over well with my players if they didn't get to lay their hands on the yoke of fate at any point. I would simply track the wish XP in secret, and have my players indicate an amount of regular XP with which they'd be willing to part for a lesser wish. Then, when the total of their wish XP and "spare" regular XP meets the cost of a lesser wish, I would tell them (the next time they pray), "You're prayer suddenly escalates into glossolalia and overwhelming religious ecstasy. When it is done, you have suffered two fatigue and can feel the warm glow of a lesser wish embedded in your spirit." This flavor would obviously be different for a blood god or some other strange god, but the idea is the same. During a moment of spiritual exploration and meditation, your god reached out and blessed you for your service. Simple as that.

Nice!

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by MikMod

Oooo. I wonder if other devout people might be able to 'sense' the presence of divine blessings, like 'detect holy power'? So that you might be especially aware when you are in the presence of one who has walked far with their god. Could be quite an effect when meeting new people (and trying to influence them).

That's a really cool idea.

Also, would allow a difference between demon wishes and divine wishes. maybe demon wishes (depending on how you define demons) feel different. If they are antagonistic beings, i.e. that 'demon' is literal, perhaps people with demonic wishes feel 'dirty' to those with divine wishes.

[Tywyll]

Originally Posted by MikMod

Yeah, Shoug posted this idea - first time I had seen it - on the Clerics Made Simple thread (you posted to that conversation straight after him). Then 8 days later this thread opened. Maybe he reminded you of it?

Whatever, it is just about the best extension idea for TFT that's been put out there for a long while imho. I love it because it's so simple - the spirit of TFT!

:)

Had to go look that up.

Eh...there are similarities, but nothing in his was specifically tying it to Priest and Theologian, which was the big point of my idea (making those talents meaningful and giving simple divine magic).

You were the one that suggested XP for faithful deeds, which had nothing to do with my original idea (though is a good addition I might add).

My post that came after was in response to a much earlier post I was reading at the time, so it just got put at the bottom of the thread.