Mysterious Miracles

Jeff asked a question about cleric spells on G+, the normal Vancian system being too much like "a snap-your-fingers-and-God-comes-running affair."

I agree wholeheartedly, and if you've been following my blog you probably know I have my players draw dominoes to see if petitions for aid are answered.   I've spent a lot of brain cycles on this, trying to make it simple enough for even new players.  And just when I think I have the system as simple as it is going to get, I find I'm not really satisfied with it.

Sure, the ways of the gods, or your ancestors, or your totem, are mysterious.  They know more than you and are wiser.  How can you know whether a petition will be answered or not?  But as a mechanic it really sucks when in the heat of need, your petitions go unanswered again and again and again.  I've seen more players disappointed than helped by this system.  And I'm pretty sure my players have little interest in playing the class because of it.  So what to do?

A New Approach
I want to keep the mystery in divine aid, but not in whether prayers will be heard or not.  So maybe I can shift the mystery to how prayers are answered.  What if I made a more general spur-type chart of aid granted?  Clerics will get a certain # of petitions answered a day, but how they are answered is up to the divine power (or in this case our interpretation of the chart).

This will require more work, but could be potentially cool.  I'd want the aid to come in a form that fits the power where possible; Zeus tends to send lighting & thunder, the wolf totem- a wolf.  But I'd also like to have a bit of choice for the petitioner so that the miracles will fit them, maybe they like little animals coming to their aid, maybe they are more of the persuasion of melting enemy faces off.  Either way, pc clerics would begin to resemble distinct saints as they grew in power.

I need to think more about how I'd construct this "Aid Granted" chart, maybe for any dangerous situation it would have general entries of the type: "smite enemies," "escape granted," "unharmable," "hidden," etc.  I guess it takes away some of the strategy if miracles just become get-out-of--jail-free cards.  Then the player's choice becomes: when do I ask for help because I can only ask a few times.

Another possibility that could work in tandem with the mysterious miracles above are random boons clerics would get at the beginning of each game session (this idea comes from Jeff's question).  This would make for miraculous powers that are more useful and tool-like for players-- "I've been granted the ability to walk on water, lets go to the sunken dungeon!"  But I would want a big list, at least 100, so that it would always be fresh and interesting.  Probably should have room for the flavor of their divine power too.  Hmm, I wonder if I could just use my Spell-Like Effects spur for these boons.

Cleric Petitions Again

Here's a pro-tip for you rules system designers, try explaining your rule to a drunk.  Last Friday, one of my players decided he wanted to try a cleric to mix up the fighter brigade.  He'd been imbibing before I even arrived.  And I had to explain my cleric petition rules about five times.  Now, I'm not saying all rules should be so simple that buzzed folks understand them, but the multiple attempts at explaining how my petition rules work certainly forced me to think of them holistically and from every angle.   I've never really been satisfied with them anyway.  The difficulty is that I've wanted to incorporate diminishing returns for asking for miracles over and over and for asking for miracles of more and more power.  I've found it hard to be simple and work with both axes.  Here's another attempt:

I'll give a cleric 3 glass beads and this little chart. They can put their bead anywhere they want but only three times. Any miracles of an order below their level will work 70% of the time.  I think I'll give them 3 more beads at 4th and then again at 8th level. I also give permanent miraculous powers to these holy people at those levels (think halos, healing touch that works 100% but limited times per day etc.)  This is weaker than a traditional cleric, but maybe not too much.  An 8th level cleric in S&W Core has 10 spells, and my cleric will only have 9 and then no guarantee they will work.  But then, my clerics could choose to use 4 6th level spells at 70% where the S&W cleric can't even cast that level spell at all.  So I guess what I'm trying to do is inject power and uncertainty; if the entities you're petitioning listen, a cleric in my world can do powerful things, but you can never be so prideful to expect things to happen for you.

Petitions & Diminishing Returns II

Okay, here's my next draft of how to handle these in my campaign.  Keep in mind this isn't just about praying to gods, you could use this system for any kind of magic/technology you wanted to have less likely to work the more you used it.  Here are two charts:

Multiple Petitions
First, you get a certain number of possible petitions every other level.

The brighter colors in the chart are newly possible petitions, the duller colors are those carried over as a character gains levels. So, a 4th level character has 2 possible petitions at the 70% level. They gain another at 5th level.

No petition ever has more than 70% chance of succeeding.  You can see a 1st level petitioner has 1 of each type of chance. So a request to Heal Light Wounds would have a 70% chance of being answered and, regardless of it being answered, a 2nd attempt to Heal Light Wounds would have a 30% chance of being answered.  A third request would be at 15% and then the petitioner would be done.

Well, except I liked Forrest's suggestion that they be able to get into some trouble by asking for too much.  So I added the last dire petition, the "crying from the depths" for aid.  I'll make a table with possible consequences, like being covered with boils, becoming mute, or being unable to ask for aid for a set number of sessions.

More Powerful Miracles
Simple enough?  The system becomes a little more complicated by the fact that you can "stretch" for aid that is really above your ability to ask for.  At any level a petitioner can ask for aid up to two orders of miracle (think spell level) higher than his or her ability.

So, if our example 1st level petitioner above asks to Hold an enemy, a 2nd order miracle, it will use up the normal 70% chance and require the 30% chance to shift one columns to the right, to the more powerful 2nd order.  If that petitioner wants to Heal Light Wounds after that, regardless of whether the Hold was successful or not, they only have a 15% chance petition left now.  And they just can't ask for anything more powerful than a first order miracle.

One of my players has been confused about what she could or couldn't do, but I'm hoping this will make it clearer.  Two possible additions of complexity:

Orisons
From the start I was allowing the petitioners to ask for 3 small things a day.  Basically this was limited to a +/- 1 to one individual-- a save, a to hit roll.  Even those these are tiny, it keeps the clerics thinking of ways they can engage spiritually rather than just whacking stuff.  And they've done this too.

Saint-like Abilities
I just thought of this the other day.  I'm thinking that at 4th and 8th level, petitioners will be granted a permanent ability of their choosing.  I'm hoping these saint-like powers will make the petitioners more interesting.  I asked one player yesterday what he would choose and he said he wouldn't mind having a permanent, glowing halo of light above his head.  Cool by me.

And that's it for my Petitioner powers.

I've also been intending to come up with a negotiated system of creeds and vows with these players so that they have some roleplaying constraints they have to abide by in order for their petitions to be heard.  Maybe if this clarification of petitions is clear, I'll move on to the vows and creeds next.

Update: I just commented in regards to a table the other day about how I thought it made more sense to have levels ascend on a chart and then I made this one.  I guess when making a text chart in a word processor it makes sense that you start from the top and go down, but when I read a visual chart my eye assumes the lower left corner to be 0,0.  Anyway, when fiddling with that I thought my players will really want to see the diminishing returns, well, diminish as you read down the chart too.  So here is another draft I'll try on my players today:

Update 2: I never know whether to make a whole new post or just update the relevant one. This is minor so I'll put it here, a grayscale version of the Player chart for those of you without a color printer (like me):

The Story of Cleric Spells

Back when I was trying to figure out how I would handle cleric spells in my campaign I made a chart of how first level cleric spells changed through the editions to help myself see what was going on. Delta has been posting some interesting stuff about how spells have changed through the editions so I dug out my chart, prettied it up, and offer it to you.


I ignored the druid spells that got pulled in during 2e, not because I don't approve of them functioning as generic priest spells, but to keep things clearer; druid had always been a separate archetype and so I keep those spells separate. There are probably errors.

The main thing I notice is the accretion over time of more spells. That makes sense. Wizard spells are more dramatic in that regard, going from 8 1st level spells to 45 by 2e.