Quote:
Originally Posted by Skarg
I always liked that TFT had no official system-level (or even Cidri setting-level) religious / divine powers, and left it up to GMs whether to have any, and what kinds.
This leaves room for all sorts of possibilities, including:
* GMs who don't want to have any magic super-powers.
* GMs who want players to have to discover in play (or at least, by committing to playing a religiously-invested PC) what supernatural effects a religion has, if any, and how they work.
* GMs who want to invent entirely different types of religious powers from whatever a system might publish as an official template for religious powers.
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Providing a system doesn't eliminate room for possibilities, it just adds another one. GMs are free to disallow anything in the game they want to. Many D&D DMs, for instance, don't allow psionics. So the "don't want it" option is already in TFT and would still be, even if a priest system were to exist.
I agree with JLV about the points. There aren't all that many points for talents and imagine spending points to get IQ 14 just because your character wants Theologian, only to discover late in the game that it was all for nothing. That would snuff your candle of fun. On the other hand, if it's a high trust table and the GM has promised the player that something good will come of this, then the "if any" part doesn't apply because the player knows their points aren't spent for nothing.
GMs can always house rule a priest system, even if a priest system already exists, so having one doesn't eliminate any options. There are plenty of house ruled alternate magic systems for D&D.
It's easy to just throw a subsystem together but creating one that's rich and balanced takes a lot of work. Once a GM does something like that, they should publish it so other GMs can use it. Which is why I made my priest system available. Which hopefully is rich and balanced, our first play test is on Tuesday, by the way :).
But rather than a GM-published homebrew priest system, wouldn't it be nice something that took all that work was already included in the game? Not every GM who wants a priest subsystem has the game design ability, experience, or time to make one that works, feels good, and has a lot of flavor. The ITL talents essentially just delegate all that work to the customers.
We do know the game works without a priest system (we played for around 5 years without one) but that doesn't mean it's better off that way. And it also doesn't mean that people don't want or won't like one. I say make it part of the game and let GMs decide to disallow it like psionics if they want to.
I should also say that although my priest system has healing in it, it takes time (with one exception) and it's based on the Physicker rules, so I don't think it will turn TFT into D&D or WoW.