Priests as Naturalists of the supernatural

[hcobb]

Given that every religion covers the spiritual, shouldn't they train their priests with tactics and procedures for dealing with the spirits?

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Given that every religion covers the spiritual, shouldn't they train their priests with tactics and procedures for dealing with the spirits?

I concur. However, it would seem that it would depend upon the experience level of the priest. A beginning priest would be aware of such procedures and tactics and only be able to initiate some of them. However, he should know when he needs to call in a priest that is more experienced with more powerful spirits. He may be able to neutralize a low level spirit or ghost but he would need a more experienced Priest(s) to deal with more powerful spirits and/or demons.

Priests should be able to gain experience dealing with the lower level spirits perhaps, to the point of being able to deal with spirits of ever-increasing power.

At least, that's my take on it without reading any of the ITL info.

[TippetsTX]

I'm on the fence about adopting all of the (now canon) content from The Book of Unlife. I have some very specific ideas about the nature of spirits on Cidri and it doesn't align with Howard's presentation. To be clear, I think the book is full of some really great ideas, but they're just different from how I have imagined 'unlife' in TFT.

I agree that it would make sense to have the PRIEST talent provide some general understanding of spirit entities, but depending on the religion, they may have very different understandings or beliefs about the phenomenon.

[Axly Suregrip]

Henry,
I think you nailed it.

Just like a Naturalist knows how to deal with a Red Slime and able to make a IQ save to guess how to handle some new kinds of slimes/creatures; A Priest should have that knowledge about spirits. Now this does not give the priest any supernatural powers, just knowledge (just like the naturalist).

And the Theologian should be the equivalent as the Expert Naturalist.

This should apply to all immaterial spirits (ghosts, wights, wraiths, etc).

[TippetsTX]

I think a priest can't help but see the supernatural thru the lense of their particular system-of-belief. Various dogma on the nature of the 'soul' or versions of the afterlife will color their understanding and approaches in dealing with spritual threats which may or may not reflect what the GM has in mind for what's really going on with etheric entities.

What if we had a faith-agnostic talent instead? Something like SPIRITUALIST?

[Axly Suregrip]

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

What if we had a faith-agnostic talent instead? Something like SPIRITUALIST?

Isn't "PRIEST" talent already faith-agnostic? It covers all faiths, real and fantasy. If you want something void of faith, then I guess that would work. Easy enough just to use PRIEST.

[hcobb]

Ghost haunted atheist spiritualist: "You're just a figment of my imagination".
But I guess that's fairly close to Christian Scientist.

The only "supernatural" power I'd give priests is a bonus on saving throws against say ghostly fright. Though I suspect a lot of them would learn the Detect Unlife spell.

[Bill_in_IN]

Originally Posted by Axly Suregrip

Isn't "PRIEST" talent already faith-agnostic? It covers all faiths, real and fantasy. If you want something void of faith, then I guess that would work. Easy enough just to use PRIEST.

It sounds like a logical use of Priest and Theologian talents to me. They already exist and new talents need not be created.

Also, I non-faith based character could still get Priest and Theologian talents and act upon the knowledge in them. They could be a person that lost their faith in their religion but still have the knowledge of such things. They could still have the Naturalist type of knowledge with respect to spirits without being in full religious belief of a specific religious sect.

[Rolando]

I agree with @TippetsTX, but also think it have a place in most campaigns.

A naturalist doesn't necessarily know all environments the same, I as a GM would add some penalties to a naturalist from the mountains to rolls related to a desert environment.

In the same way I would add some penalties to a priest from your average occidental monotheist religion when dealing with oriental ghosts or Mesoamerican ones. As spirits have many traits in common knowing a lot about some may help with the others.

Cidri is big enough to have godly influence in some parts and not in others I think.

[hcobb]

My visualization is that the ghosts are the same everywhere, but the local ghosts and priests have different understandings of the condition.


Compare to low IQ vampires in TFT vs holy symbols.