Divine Favor: Saints

[mhd]

Saints in applied Catholic theology are pretty popular, mostly because they seem less removed than the big guy, easier to reach. In the end, the act of divine will has to come from the head honcho, but St. Arnold has a more direct line.

To me, this seems like a bonus to the petition roll, which would mean a higher Divine Favor. But it would only apply to stuff that your saint is a patron of (and if he's *your* patron, that just means a higher DF, period.).

Which sounds like buying one or two levels of Divine Favor with a limitation. Does that seem ok, and if yes, what's the rough guideline? For a lot of occupational saints, one could argue for a pretty wide spread (patron saint of soldiers when you're a soldier), for some less so (patron of basket weavers doesn't matter a lot for your typical adventuring needs). I'd go with a -50% for the more convenient ones, with a limit of 2 points of Divine Favor bought that way.

As a final note: I'm not applying this to Catholic saints, but to the "Ascendants" of the Iron Kingdoms setting, who are close enough (not that many, so most of them provide a wider spread than Catholic patron saints).

(Although there's one heretical sect who says that they're actually gods themselves, so the power would come from them directly, which would even give the possibility of some kind of Power Investiture to ease reaction rolls. Not that I want to throw my hat into that theological ring…)

[whswhs]

I can think of a couple of other ways to approach it:

*The saint is a Contact who can provide small favors (which don't have to be defined by a skill, and don't have to involve information; those are simply the usual modes).

*Powers gained from the saint take the Spirit modifier, or a variant on it.

Bill Stoddard

[Anders]

Each saint has a prayer, and learning the prayer involves forging a personal connection to the saint.

[mhd]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Each saint has a prayer, and learning the prayer involves forging a personal connection to the saint.

St Augustines Most Excellent Ocular Restoration?

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by mhd

St Augustines Most Excellent Ocular Restoration?

Assuming I'm not messing up my saints, St. Christopher's Benediction of the Traveller (grants Luck while on the road)?

[mhd]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Assuming I'm not messing up my saints, St. Christopher's Benediction of the Traveller (grants Luck while on the road)?

I always assumed that this is one of the sources for the Traveler's Blessing prayer (which provides Serendipity, btw). And if I'm not messing up my theology, his saintly status is a bit disputed (as is his mere existance), so while he's still listed, his feast isn't official anymore.

I do have to say that I'm not the biggest fan of attributing or creating Learned Prayers for saints/ascendants/scions/wifes/ancestors/archangels… It makes the prayers sound too Vancian, and actually is *more* formal than direct appeals to your main god. Also, it either woulrd require a large library of prayers or would narrow down the spectrum of a saint's responsibility a bit too much.

Hmm, some dim memory returns… Didn't the Darklands computer game way back when have Saints as "cleric spell" replacements? Now where are those floppy disks again…

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by mhd

Hmm, some dim memory returns… Didn't the Darklands computer game way back when have Saints as "cleric spell" replacements? Now where are those floppy disks again…

Yes it did.

As for the OP, as far far I know, medieval Catholic saints had confusing and non-neat portfolios, much like pagan gods. You couldn't just have a saint of smiths. He'd be the saint of smiths and cats and chese-eaters and left-handed Venetians.

-50% on Divine Favour might also be a bit too much, given GURPS' tradtional reluctante when it comes to large Limitations. And IIRC the pricing structure of the Divine Favor advantage makes it non-trivial but doable to apply such a Limitation. I think style-wise GURPS would "prefer" a simpler solution like 5 CPs for a +1 Saint-based bonus or 15 CP for a +2 bonus (for a saint that's reasonably interesting to adventurers, but no more and no less than "reasonable").

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by mhd

I always assumed that this is one of the sources for the Traveler's Blessing prayer (which provides Serendipity, btw). And if I'm not messing up my theology, his saintly status is a bit disputed (as is his mere existance), so while he's still listed, his feast isn't official anymore.

His Feast is still official, just not on the international calendar. It is up to each diocies on wither or not to celibate his feast or not.

[munin]

For a saint who wants to take some additional limited levels of Divine Favor, this sounds like Aspected, -20% -- "Your ability works only when pursuing a specific class of related tasks or activities ... The GM ... can make the categories as broad or as narrow as he wishes." (p. P110). Ideally you should use the build notes under The Divine Favor Advantage (box, p. 4) to rebuild the trait with this new limitation included and calculate the new level costs from that, but halving the point break of the modifier should be close enough (the Divine Favor advantage is basically Patron with +90% of modifiers) -- or you can just treat the point costs of Divine Favor as normalized and apply modifiers regularly.

However, if you are taking a saint as your Patron, then things gets tricky. The costs of Divine Favor levels are based on an underlying 30-point Patron (a "true god") and the value of miracles available at each reaction level is based on the points invested in the Divine Favor advantage. If you invest fewer points in the advantage because your Patron is less capable, then your miracles should be correspondingly less powerful at each reaction level.

For example, say you decide that your Patron "saint" is comparable to "...a limited manifestation of a major god...", thus changing the base value of Patron from 30 points to 20 points. This would reduce the cost of each level of Divine Favor by one-third, but would also reduce the potential value of miracles available at each reaction level. A Neutral reaction from a true god might get you a miracle worth up to 25 points, but someone who can only call on a Patron saint might only get a miracle worth up to 15 points.

Unfortunately, that does require figuring out the new level costs for Divine Favor and then going through the prayers and figuring out their new required reaction levels and learned prayer prerequisites.