[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Power Investiture

[johndallman]

Power Investiture [10/L] is a supernatural mental advantage. You have been given access to magical power by some supernatural force. This is usually a deity, whom you serve as a priest or some other kind of religious professional. This advantage first appeared in GURPS Religion for 3e.

Power Investiture (“PI”) measures the amount of magical power you have been delegated. It is separate from the social advantages of Clerical Investment (“CI”) and Religious Rank (“RR”). Some religions might only provide PI to those with CI and a minimum RR; others may have crazed visionaries who annoy the church but have more supernatural power than its leader. In the same way, some religions might restrict PI (and possibly CI and RR) to particular groups: men, women, the elderly, specific species, nobility, commoners, etc. PI normally has a Pact limitation, which is already included in its price. This requires you to have and maintain at least one self-imposed mental disadvantage, such as a Code of Honor, Disciplines of Faith, Fanaticism, Intolerance, etc., depending on the tenets of the religion. Having any level of PI will let you avoid the ‑4 penalty to Exorcism skill for a lack of holy support.

The amount of PI you can take depends on your religion. In general, large and powerful religions allow higher levels of PI. You may be able to increase your PI as you gain experience, but this depends on the religion, and possibly on your individual relationship with your deity. If you lose a requirement for having PI in your religion, you may loose part or all of your levels of PI. Again, this depends on the religion.

PI is normally specific to a single religion. If you are a priest of multiple deities, who all permit this, you’ll usually have separate PI levels for each of them. If you don’t, there’s some interesting syncretism going on. A more expensive PI for an entire pantheon could make sense, but is very setting-dependent.

If you have PI, it works like Magery: you learn spells as individual IQ/H or IQ/VH skills, and PI adds to your IQ when calculating your skill level with each spell. Like Magery, PI acts as a skill-boosting Talent for abilities with the same power source. The requirements for casting rituals, the fatigue costs, and most other aspects of the spells-as-skills magic system work just as for secular magicians. Important differences:

• Spells cast via PI do not have prerequisites. The list of spells you can learn, and the level of PI required for each, depends on your religion. This may be as simple as a short list of spell colleges that you can use, or there may be precise lists of spells for Good, Evil, etc. religions, or individual churches.
• It is possible to have both Magery and PI, if a religion permits that to its members, but your spell lists for the two forms of magic are entirely separate. Clerical spells cannot serve as prerequisites for wizardly spells. Magery does not boost clerical spells, and PI does not boost wizardly ones.
• Spells cast via PI are not affected by mana levels. Instead, “sanctity levels” apply. These are usually specific to a religion – a temple of an opposed religion may be zero sanctity for you, and at least normal sanctity for its priests – as per pp. 68-69 of Thaumatology. Very high sanctity is rare: in the presence of your deity, or at a place where they performed some great deed, are canonical examples.
• PI can take modifiers for rare sanctity: the canonical example is priests of a god of a specific city, described in DF7, who suffer low sanctity whenever they’re far from their city.
• Energy Reserve advantages are specific to a particular kind of spellcasting.
• Clerics can do ceremonial spellcasting, but the details are different, as per pp. 67-68 of Thaumatology.
• PI sometimes helps with resisting Magery-based magic, typically when it’s doing things that gods regard as their own prerogative.

Power Investiture does not feature in Banestorm’s Yrth: priests who cast spells there were usually born with Magery and “holy magic” is usually Powers-based. DF, on the other hand uses this advantage extensively, incorporates the ability to notice cursed object/areas into it, and adds varieties for druids and shamans. Nightreign uses PI for the magic of Native American shamans, and Magic discusses holy magic. The Least of Spells can be respun as religious magic, and Divine Favor introduces a form of PI exclusively for improving divine reaction rolls. Thaumatology distinguishes carefully between Magery with a Pact limitation and Power Investiture, adds some modifiers for PI (to be used cautiously), offers an alternative PI as modified Magery, deals with consecrating places to increase their sanctity, and suggests threshold-based casting for clerics.

I’ve played one character with Power Investiture, who was an Atlantean priest of Apollo. It was pretty straightforward: keeping the image of Apollo in mind was a good guide to how to behave, and the spell list I had fitted that well. Magic operated in the familiar way. Much more recently, I’ve been in a DF party with a henchman cleric, and he’s operated smoothly and effectively.

What have you done with this advantage in your games?

[Fred Brackin]

Brother Hugh was a a Cleric of Ra who had Power Investiture (He also ahd ra as his personal Patron).

I releid on soem very old advice that a clerical spell list should be 3 Colleges or about 40 spells and gave him msot of the "Light" part of Light and Darkness, haaling spells that were "core" and Plant spells that dealt with growth and fertility. I finished off with some "generic" Cleric spells and it probably did come to about 40.

I believe that after a coiple of years of steady campaigning he had PI 7 and an enormous ER.

[maximara]

Power Investiture: Magery (Functions as a Different Talent ±0%; Sanctity Replaces Mana: ±0%; No Zero-Level Requirement +10%; Inspired Learning +20%; No Spell Prerequisites +30%; Pact -10%; No Magic Item Sensitivity -20%; Limited spell list -30%)

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by maximara

Power Investiture: Magery (Functions as a Different Talent ±0%; Sanctity Replaces Mana: ±0%; No Zero-Level Requirement +10%; Inspired Learning +20%; No Spell Prerequisites +30%; Pact -10%; No Magic Item Sensitivity -20%; Limited spell list -30%)

The bolded is explicitly not a part of it in DF/RPG.

Or rather I should say, since they are now sensing Divine power, Power Investiture casters can sense Divine magical items.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by johndallman

What have you done with this advantage in your games?

This is one of those few times where my answer is simply "I haven't". I never found a good list or set up for the trait before largely retiring Magic (the book) so I never had much use for a variant of Magery. And I tend to dislike how religion plays out in roleplaying and fiction, so I've also had little to no use for divine-flavored variants of traits.

I still like the concept despite all that. Once I've found a way to do magic-as-skills well and gotten over my silly thoughts on religion, I would definitely use PI.

[David Johnston2]

Power Investiture could be used to represent more equal bargains with demons, spirits, the kind of thing that warlocks do in the latest edition of D&D.

[ericthered]

I haven't, though in one case I thought I had when I used Elemental Influence from DF 9: summoners for a character. At one point it became important to see if it was based off of magery or power investiture: in other words, if it was arcane or divine. Its arcane, but it could have fooled me. I thought I was using power investiture...

I don't particularly like using the spell system for divine power. I prefer powers or divine favor. When I run that DF game I'm getting ready for it will probably turn up.

Power Investiture still serves an important purpose though, as being the most common variant magic system, and opening the door for using "psi" as magic and establishing that the prereq trees are not part of the core balance for standard magic.