Topic: Switching Deities and PP Dev

[providence13]

(There might be a discussion about this buried deep in the forums, but I couldn't find it.)

For RMSS/FRP, PP Dev lets you access more power to cast spells.

IMHO, Channelers are granted access to Spell Lists by their specific Power, Deity, etc. Players have to spend DP to learn the Lists, devote  themselves, but the Deity has final say.

The very nature of Channeling is that the Deity transfers some their own personal power to the caster. PP Dev represents the ability to hold more of that power or use it more efficiently.

Channelers could fall from grace, lose their faith and not be granted access to spells. What happens to their PP Dev skill?

Proselytizing Base List in Channeling Companion allows religious conversion. Technically it only gives a bonus to Public Speaking and "preaching their religion" but changing from one faith to another is implied. There are other ways to turn to the Dark side or Light side. You can fall from grace or be redeemed.
 
 If you do convert a Channeler, do they start over at 1st lvl?
 A Deity might just allow them to keep their PP Dev skill (they have trained themselves as a vessel) but must learn new Base Lists and their old Base Lists are gone. This assumes a Priest/Cleric with a themed religion and not just "I'm playing a generic Cleric".

Has anyone had experience with this?
How did you handle it?

[On a smaller scale;
I did have a Cleric NPC proselytize to a Mage PC before a healing. The Mage had corruption points from being a generally good guy who performed questionable acts and wanted the corruption removed. Our Mage wasn't inherently evil, but didn't like this hanging over his head.
Gave the Mage an RR which he failed. I told him he wasn't converted, but he might be willing to at least hear more of the Cleric's point of view. It would require many more such talks to worry about it. I never make decisions for the players.
The players did learn that almost all "healing magic" comes with a price. Sometimes you have to make a donation and listen to the sermon.]

[markc]

 First the standard answer that you GM and game world may differ. Which does not help you but says I do not know of an official answer and in other games I have seen it played in different ways.


 In RMSS I would allow them to keep their PPD and also allow them to cast any spells below 5th rank on the old Deities base lists. This can be abused by players IMHO and the GM should keep an eye on what is going on. IE is it a story thing or a Monty Hall/Power Gamer type thing.


 As to the Mage on the smaller scale, there was a great article on the GuildCompanion.com that delt with other professions worshiping Gods and the benefits of doing so. IMHO was and is a great idea that can/should be incorporated into most story driven and real life type games.
 It is also IMHO what would happen in my game when someone went for healing from a Channeler at a place of worship or from a worshiper who was doing the healing...if.
a) the person who required healing/service was somewhat open to it or open to it.
b) the person doing the healing was good at explaining the Deity and their beliefs.
c) it might also depend on the Deity or Deities outlook, as to if the worshiper try's to convert them.
d) the conversation might be part of the spell requirements (any spell) for casting on non-worshipers
e) Thinking


MDC 

[JimiSue]

Many years ago in 1st edition D&D I had a cleric who started out evil, got to 5th or 6th level worshipping a Bad God. The players got a bit fed up with this and jumped her with a cursed item, a helm of opposite alignment, which meant I had to start playing her as good. But, good clerics don't worship the god of death, so I had to change.

I can see the argument that when you start with a new god, you might logically have to start over from 1st. I personally don't think you need to be that drastic.

For example, it's easy for us (brought up in a mostly single deity world) to forget that things are not so cut and dried when there's a pantheon of gods. Even a high ranking priest of one god might give offerings to other gods in the pantheon when he had to do things in their sphere of influence, and this was even more the case with a common man. So from that point of view it isn't really starting over -0 you will have always believed in God number 2, just you'd have chanelled your devotion elsewhere (and been rewarded for that).

However, from God 2's point of view, he has just acquired a new worshipper already well practised in being a devoted following, who is already good at praying, and who already knows how to use magic responsibility. Mr God 2 doesn't want to cripple this valuable new follower by hamstringing his ability, so it's better from his point of view to get the character to perform a quest or task to prove himself, and then let him continue from the same (or similar) level.

God 1 on the other hand, isn't so happy. Character can expect some degree of antipathy from the priesthood, and lack of success in the area of that god's influence (so a former worshipper of a goddess of fertility might still be able to chat up the ladies, but is going to have some embarassing moments in the bedroom).

I absolutely love having non-religious characters worshipping gods. Religion was a very important part of the medieval world, and I think that tends to be forgotten in many games. One of my favourite characters is a con-artisty type rogue who grew up on a diet of sacharine romantic fiction, and followed that through (since she had a high Presence and Appearance to better support the conning) by being a quite devout worshipper of the goddess of love and beauty. She converted quite a lot of people in her career and even though she wasn't a spell caster, was offered a position in the clergy when she retired from adventuring, so there was nice closure there from the GM as well. Worshipping a god gives an extra dimension to a character, and after 32 (?) years of play, I need all the extra dimensions I can find

[jdale]

If you assume that your channeling PP reflect your ability to channel and store power, and not a measure of how blessed you are by your deity, then it's reasonable that you wouldn't lose any PP when you convert.

And if that is the case, a converted priest is a really great gain for a deity. The deity doesn't need to do all the work of training this guy, he already has demonstrated ability and someone else has done the work of training him.

Spell lists are a bit more problematic. If the lists are consistent with the new deity, no problem, just keep them. It's possible the converted priest even has learned techniques not normally used by the new deity's followers, so if those techniques are consistent with the new deity they could end up gaining new spells for their followers to use.

If there are lists that are not consistent, I think it makes the most sense for them to be lost. The generous approach would be to replace them with a different list. (Perhaps the deity is willing to make an extra effort to earn and keep the new convert.) An intermediate approach would be to allow the converted priest to lose those lists but quickly convert the ranks. E.g. they get two-for-one when learning new lists until all those lost ranks are used up. Or they need training to learn the new lists but don't need to level or spend DP, just one week training per rank (or whatever time base you want).

Simply losing the lists and losing the spent DP seems like a pretty harsh way to treat a character who probably is making an interesting roleplaying decision.

[providence13]

Thanks for all the well thought out ideas, everyone.
I'll try to work on this some more.

[markc]

  Just a thought depending on the Deity system in the game could not a ruler of the Gods or a Divine faction say ok I want X number of your followers to convert to me as a punishment for you doing or failing to do Y?
 The above in also a story idea and sort of out of the players control but again it involves that stick area of spell lists.


 Another thought I had was to let them keep any list that is not directly opposite of the new gods ideas and require x2 the PP cost or some other multiple of PP to get the spell to be cast.


MDC

[providence13]

OK, I found a precedent..

Priest Base\Ceremonies\18. Anathematize: "Apostate is branded with church's displeasure, band from all ceremonies and loses all Channeling PP. Spell can be cast again to reverse effects"; paraphrased. Assumes the one casting the spell is working the will of their Power. Some games may allow this conflict.

This gets me thinking about inner politics of a religion. If you're serving the Power but not the church (the term apostate may not apply in this case), you'd want to avoid the church before someone cast this spell on you. If you allow such duality in your games; it could easily be a test, IMHO.

markc:
I've been working on scenarios that involve a Power taking over another's portfolio, so a conversion could be possible. A god of death could assume the disease god's followers, for example. I was thinking of making the old Base Lists restricted and allow them to take the new Base as normal. This way they don't actually lose anything.
I think the alignment and basic tenets would have to be similar.

I also have a few scattered worshipers of a "dead" Power. Everyone thinks his sect was destroyed with him but his Priests still can cast 1-5th lvl spells. This is my limit for the weaker Vows of Service. 

[markc]

Providence 13,
 You can also have the case where the Power likes the priest but the church does not and the church cast the spell and it does brand the priest but the Power likes the priest so he still can cast all of his spells. ie the Holy Outsider barred from the church but loved by the Deity.  (Or maybe I have read too many stories or seen too much Anime)
MDC

[providence13]

I was thinking the same thing.
It just depends on how much you want politics to play a role in the game.

[JimiSue]

It is a great philosophical debate as to where gods in these pantheons get their powers and how they pass them on to th eir followers - and I would encourage anyone who has not yet done so to read Terry Pratchett's book Small Gods for some enlightening insights into this.

if you're going to look into divine politics you first need to decide what it is that makes a god. Are they (as Mr Pratchett asserts) a product of how devout their worshippers are (in the book he has a tyrannical church state where actually, no one worships the god any more even though they claim to, and the god is almost cast back into the ranks of spirits), or if the deity is a particular species which naturally commands all that power regardless of the strength of their worship, or indeed if the gods that deal with the world are just licensed to operate the actual power belonging to a (sometimes unseen) chief god.

In a world where the gods play an active interest in the affairs of their worshippers, I think it is unlikely that a priesthood would deviate very far from the wishes of their deity - it would be very offputting for a schism-forming evangelist to be interrupted mid-sermon by the deity appearing and saying "Actually, you're wrong. That's not what I want at all." Very career-limiting for the evangelist for sure.

In my D&D game world I have a theocracy (run by the god of wine, women and song, amongst other things) which was set up with the best intentions of becoming a hedonistic paradise on earth, but over the centuries has become increasingly corrupt. To the point where I'm considering having a world event that schisms this deity's power in two directions, but so far there has been an uneasy balance between the center of the old faith and the centre of the new. The deity himself still accepts these old school followers because yes, they do still worship him, so he is tolerant.

But in my game there is a force more powerful than the gods. The goddess of pain, torment, strife and disharmony has recently had a drop in her power because of an upsurge in interest in the magical community for cold-specialist magic, and that, combined with other prayers for the lessening of effect of the brutally cold arctic winds, caused that over-power to decide a new deity (of cold and darkness) was required. This new deity was discovered when the goddess of torment noticed the sudden loss of devotional power and went to punish those lacking in faith - only to find a being of comparable stature to herself.

Divine poolitics can be super fun. Especially when the player characters are caught in the middle

[jdale]

OK, I found a precedent..

Priest Base\Ceremonies\18. Anathematize: "Apostate is branded with church's displeasure, band from all ceremonies and loses all Channeling PP. Spell can be cast again to reverse effects"; paraphrased. Assumes the one casting the spell is working the will of their Power. Some games may allow this conflict.

This gets me thinking about inner politics of a religion. If you're serving the Power but not the church (the term apostate may not apply in this case), you'd want to avoid the church before someone cast this spell on you. If you allow such duality in your games; it could easily be a test, IMHO.

I would say you keep your knowledge and capacity to hold and channel power, even if you don't have a source to get it from.

It makes sense to me that a faith/deity should be able to say "you no longer speak for me. I forbid you from using power that comes with my authority." (Whether this decision has to come from the deity or from the priests depends how your religions work.) But I would not expect this to prevent the person from changing religions. The question is only whether the new faith is willing to accept them. That should depend on the relationship between the faiths and the reason they got the boot from the first one.

One classic storyline is booting the corrupt priest, who then turns to a dark and evil god that promises to let him seek revenge. But that's not the only possible scenario.

[intothatdarkness]

Some of this can also track back to your world's creation myths or similar situations. In my campaign, at least one of the Elf gods is sworn accept those who truly reject the teachings of one of her rivals. That would allow a cleric of one Elven race to "switch sides" (as it were), going from Darkness to Light and still getting PPs.

The majority of the gods in my world are actually beings from other planes (it has to do with the rupturing of magic that took place...creating the three Realms in addition to letting these 'outsiders' in), so some of them are quite willing to accept those who reject their rivals. Others are not. I also have a set of "closed" lists associated with each deity, so a character who changes would lose those lists, but may retain access to some of the other Channeling lists (mostly basic Open stuff). That traces back to the origins of magic in my world (a single goddess and the demi-human deities). Of course, there are also cases where rejecting a god results in the loss of all casting ability (Dwarves in my world, although there are one or two other vengeful gods who do this).

[arakish]

I like what everyone has posted.

The way I handled this the one time it happened was allow the PC to just switch.  His new deity gave him a quest to prove his new allegiance.  His old deity simply got the "church" to send hunter/assassins after him.  Eventually, he was able to lead a quest which finally destroyed that deity's "church".  Of course, that deity could simply resurrect a new "church" later...

rmfr