A question of Faith

[rafial]

This is a followup from my game report in Actual Play.  One of the players in the demo used the Priest, and in play we found that it was almost impossible for the priest to get a successful result on any of his prayers.  4 successes on 5 dice is hard to hit, even open ended. 5+ is right out.

Now, I've come to realize that one of the key elements to successful BW play is learning to scrounge for pool dice any way you can.  I'm wondering if more experienced players can suggest how faithful characters typically boost their dice pools for praying.  Is Artha your only hope?  Can prayers be done "carefully?"  Are there any typically used FoRKs (and is that legal?).

Suggestions welcomed.

[taepoong]

Imagine Moses praying for the miracle of the Red Sea. It wasn't just him praying for deliverance. He lead thousands in his supplication.

That's one way to get bonus dice. Have people pray with you and give you helping dice. I believe it's 1 die for every 20 pts of Will from those without the Faith trait, and 1 die for each person with the Faith Trait.

I played a one-nighter that included a priest AND a paladin. They were pulling off game-effecting prayers left and right.

Also, somewhere, I may have read that the Bless prayer can be reduced to Ob 3.

Get creative! Perhaps by allowing a Priest to buy a holy relic from the resource list, he can roll an extra "equipment" die.

And now, there are new Meditation rules available on the news section of the BW.org site. You can use your meditation to focus and reduce the next Ob by 1.

This next suggestion came from my own experiences playing a priest. I convinced the GM to allow me to use "passages from my holy texts" as proscribed prayers. I actually wrote down some ancient sounding prayers and read them whenever I prayed for that prayer's particular effect. This defined the effect for posterity (no more variable results) and reduced my Ob.

Finally, on BW.org I posted an idea that deserves some exploration. The Sacred Vows article describes how a priest can make sacrifices in order to gain benefits. Check it out and let me know what you think.