So I'm running a game with a mythic underworld, and lost souls of people who have died in unfortunate ways are a fairly common encounter type in the dungeon. Got me to thinking about how before going into the dungeon, adventurers might be wise to make their peace with whatever gods they worship, so that they hopefully end up in a quality afterlife rather than a crap one.
Makes sense as a cleric spell, or even better as a use for Theology (which is currently a meh proficiency that never gets picked). A character can tend to the souls of four characters who share his faith per rank of Theology, in about an hour a day of prayer, confession, ritual, guilt-tripping, and suchlike. The beneficiaries of this effect gain a +2 "state of soul" bonus to Tampering with Mortality rolls if they die while under the spiritual guidance of a theologian. Hireling and henchmen under the influence of a theologian may gain +1 morale because they know they're in good with the big man in the sky, but are also prone to bouts of moral behavior. Multiple theologians do not stack. Theologians are hireable as Healers in terms of availability and wages, but they may not want to follow you into the wilderness, so "organic" theologians are still convenient.
ReplyDeleteThat's a cool idea - a situational bonus in the ... "secondary ring" of game rolls.
I wonder where else one could find a niche to fill. There's precedent, anyway - Military Strategy is pretty much "Knowledge (Military Strategy)" but with the added bonus of a +1 to init per rank in mass combat, which, as things go, is a really really good bonus when it's needed. Magical Engineering is the same.
And as such, Theology is (with this) Knowledge (Theology), with a bonus given to Tampering w/ Mortality.
Knowledge (Collegiate Wizardry)? Naturalism? What else?
Yeah, my point of comparison for giving this bonus to Theology was Healing, which is a fantastic general proficiency, and adds the bonus to Death and Dismemberment rolls (among other benefits). On the one hand, a profusion of small bonuses to weird rolls from general proficiencies is annoying to keep track of, but on the other hand it would help bring some of them up to par compared to Healing, Leadership, and Military Strategy. Magical Engineering is a class proficiency, but I could certainly see Collegiate Wizardry providing some sort of magic research related bonus, or a reroll for availability when buying and selling magic items (you know the wizards at the college, after all), or something like that. Naturalism does get the poison-gathering ability, which could be extended to healing herbs as well.
ReplyDeleteCollegiate Wizardry could copy the...market thing for Venturers, blanking on the name.
ReplyDeleteMarket Class higher for buying/selling magic items and spells.
Actually, that'd be a simple/clean way to abstract any sort of "guild membership" - crafters, artists, performers.
I'd never really internalized Naturalism as an enabler for the herb/poison gathering I guess. Probably because it didn't necessarily have a reference to "roll to find"; tied into the foraging rules, perhaps.
I'm actually not a huge fan of the Venturer ability; it is very very strong, especially applied to a class II or III market. Just haven't gotten around to building a version that is less... scale-variant.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think that was in the Secrets chapter rather than in the proficiency description.