[JLV]

I've been struggling with this for quite a few years now.

First, let me say that I wholeheartedly agree that the Priest/Theologian talents in the TFT RAW are a waste of time as far as the game (and the gamers I've had) go -- not one has ever chosen to "waste" the slots to learn these talents; practically anything else was deemed more critical.

Second, as written, the talents offer no real incentive to be used. Who cares if you can win a theological debate when the entire content of the book basically fails to mention religion as a factor in anything? Now if the world the game was set in placed a high value on religion and religious personnel, it would be a completely different situation; or if the GM makes such a world, it would.

It seems to me that in order to make priests/theologians useful, there has to be some sort of incentive to use them. That incentive could be purely political (and thus, a by-product of the GM's world setting) which is what the RAW seem to be pointing at right now. Or, the incentive could be based on some sort of tangible benefit (which is what most players seem to expect, whether because of D&D or because that's what most fantasy fiction suggests).

A tangible benefit would be precisely the kind of thing that ecz is outlining above. But how does it really WORK? (This is where I've been struggling.)

It's easy enough to do what ecz has done (and quite thoroughly done, I might add), but my problem becomes that it's just a "class" of wizardry at that point, with some strong limitations on what it can and cannot do.

I wanted theological "magic" to be different from wizardry, both in nature and in execution. To that end I experimented with what the priest's source of power would be (and in passing, I'll note that Rick Smith apparently went down a slightly similar path, since he mentioned something called "PIETY" as an additional attribute in one of his comments elsewhere).

In my case, I wanted to NOT create additional attributes (that's been a line I've tried to adhere to throughout my TFT experience); but still wanted to create a method whereby priests could gain "magical" (actually divine) powers. To that end, I allowed them to use magic like a Wizard did, but they had to regain the fatigue they expended by prayer and meditation, rather than "rest." That's somewhat satisfying, but it still places them at a distinct disadvantage with regard to the other players since if they use any of their spells, they can't recover until they can find a place to pray and meditate for quite some time. Which DOESN'T count as rest, which they ALSO need! Clerics need to be a viable alternative to the other two types of characters (Wizards and Fighters), not a poor second choice.

Another problem is what spells should they be allowed to use? Certain spells would seem contra-indicated for "good" guys, while the opposite set of spells would be contra-indicated for "bad" guys. How do you delineate those differences? Clearly healing spells would be a good set for clerics of any kind to use, as should things like CURSE (or BLESS -- which really strikes me as a pair of spells that could be unified into one "BLESS/CURSE"). But many of the "clerical" spells from D&D have no analogue in TFT. Things like purify food, water, or air, blight same, improving morale, etc., simply don't exist in TFT.

So what's the solution? I'm not happy with ANYTHING I've tried yet; but I think there are some principles I'd like to see used in this area. They are:

1) Clerical "magic" should be different from Wizardry, and vice versa.

2) Clerics should derive their power via their God/Gods, rather than have it automatically present as Wizards do. This might require things such as taking time out daily to pray or meditate, or perhaps make sacrifices to their God/Gods, or it might require them to physically visit a site of worship (church, shrine, circle of standing stones, holy tree, whatever), or some combination of the them, but regardless, it should be based on something other than just sitting around. The question becomes; what is the mechanism, and how is it tracked? Ideally, to match well with TFT, it should be tied into one of the attributes, but how do you do that?

Just spitballing here, but perhaps their magical capability (that is, how much "ST" they can expend on spells) should be tied to their IQ instead of ST. Of course that would also work for Wizards, in my opinion -- call it Mana for Wizards, and Favor for Priests, and simply have them recharge differently. Wizards have to totally relax to allow the Mana to regenerate, while Priests have to meditate to gain back Favor; both of which render the individual utterly vulnerable, meaning the fighters have to protect them while this goes on -- NO one gets any "Rest" in the definition of the rules during this process... This would also have the advantage of no longer requiring magic using characters to bulk up on ST in order to be useful -- their IQs not only indicate their general level of competence in terms of what spells they can know, but also indicates their overall "power" in terms of casting them. Which eliminates the Conan the Wizard conundrum (but I digress).

3) Clerical magic should be flexible enough to be used by both "good" and "bad" clerics for their desired purposes. So spells for the clerical crowd should (in my opinion) generally be "dual aspect" spells; such as BLESS/CURSE, PURIFY/BLIGHT FOOD, PURIFY/BLIGHT WATER, HEAL/INJURE, LIGHT/DARKNESS, and so on.

It also seems to me that clerics should find it hard to take direct action against others (bear with me a moment) based solely on "God-given" spells or abilities. It seems to me that even an evil God would want people around to worship it, and if everyone gets sacrificed to the evil God, that sort of defeats the purpose of it all (Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones excepted of course).

Now that's not to say that evil Gods don't enjoy death and destruction, but perhaps they can't give any kind of power (with the possible exception of something like HEAL/INJURE -- which clearly means you can use it to inflict damage as well as take it away, though you probably have to be touching the target to do either) that leads to direct death other than through some kind of sacrificial ritual or something. Priests should clearly, like other non-Wizards, be allowed to learn Wizardly spells like MAGIC FIST or whatever, if they so desire, and I suspect that an evil God would want them to do exactly that. But I think that clerical spells should be more or less indirect in their battlefield applications, if at all possible. For example, what happens if you cast PURIFY WATER on a slime? Or a person, for that matter? We're made up of around 60% water, and it's not "pure" in that sense; so if a cleric "purified" (or "blighted") the water in a human victim, what would the result be?

Turning back to "sacrifices," what would their effects be? Clearly, for an evil cleric, there ought to be some advantage to sacrificing a person; and pagan Gods seem to always be demanding a bull or a deer or something as a sacrifice, but for a good cleric, that would be anathema. Still, good clerics sacrifice all the time -- on a personal level -- by forswearing wealth or property, by fasting, by enduring extremes of cold and heat, flagellation, tending to the sick or performing some other kind of service, etc. How would all of that work in order to help the cleric gain power? Especially if the good cleric is an itinerant monk or priest (the kind of character that engages in adventure, most likely) and therefore not able to establish a medical clinic or something? What about going on pilgrimage? Does that do anything?

Sorry I don't have any really useful personal experiences to offer here -- at best, my experiences would be a catalogue of failure to make this work. But, I'm sure hoping other people have some thoughts on all of this!