Heroes of Leyreth Power 19

[Adam Graham]

Hi all,

Posted by: EricBorzello

I like the tapping faith to get bonuses to various rolls mechanic you're proposing. However, having to tap faith before rolling seems strange thematically since it's basically saying that God can't help you out of unexpected difficulties, but sinning can. I don't really have a fix, it just seemed funny to me that faith worked that way.

Huh, hadn't noticed that, I was just attempting to make sinning look appealing, ah-la temptation, by allowing for it to be done after the dice roll.  Maybe I'll end up allowing both to be made after, I need to see how it tests out first though.

Also, I think that being able to help other characters' rolls with faith could be pretty awesome. It makes some common real life Christian prayer activities (praying for the healing of others, praying for the wisdom of our political leaders, etc) have an actual mechanical effect in this game (pluses to healing or leadership rolls). Helping others with faith like this could get out of hand if you have a LOT of people praying for a roll, but then again if you tap a couple million points of faith for one roll you probably deserve to succeed

Well at the moment they can't help their friends rolls only penalize others but I do like the idea and will probably allow them to affect others rolls positively and negatively to represent what you are referring to.  As far as it getting out of hand with multiple people it won't as for if more than one person applies their faith to another only the one who applied the most faith is figured in, otherwise it would surely get out of hand.
As for increasing beyond line of sight I don't think I'm really interested in that as the bonuses for tapping faith only apply to a single roll that is being made at that moment, not to a roll that will be soon to happen.  Though there is really no extensive problems with this it is not what I am looking to do.


Posted by: Adam Cerling

I was recently impressed by the observation (I think it was author Phillip Yancey's) that virtue can't so much be measured by how well one conforms to the Law, but instead by how conscious we are of how we fall short.
So maybe a character only grows in Faith not by doing good acts, but by (his player) recognizing how he could do better, morally speaking. Then he tries to live up to his own new standard. Anytime he disregards these Good things he has realized? That's an Evil act.
In effect, the players are in control of how moral their characters become, and how that morality looks. One character might become very virtuous in mercy and compassion; another character might grow virtuous in self-discipline and holiness. A bit of GM or group-consensus oversight can make sure that no player constructs a totally off-kilter morality.

I really like this concept but I don't think it is something I want to use for this system.  It would totally rock in a heavy role play RPG as one could almost build their entire system around this.  If you do use this in something I would very much like to see it.

Posted by: Seth M. Bashwinger

Hmm, I do have a suggestion possibly though again if it does not fit your concept thats all good.
I would say that if a player hits negative faith he could gain a vice based on the type of action he takes using that last bit of faith. This vice then could even when the player hits positive faith be tapped into by the gm to make the player fall into temptation and have to tap faith sinfully. In this way the more a character falls from grace the more he is dragged down by his own personal demons.
This can put more of a fear into the player that the more he pushes those boundaries stopping himself at say one negative away from losing his character because the gm always has the option of being able to push him over that edge.

Quite frankly I think this combined with what Adam said above would combine quite nicely.  After I get the basics of faith tested and ironed out I think I will look at this vice concept in a few different ways.  It would be especially useful for those trying to redeem themselves as you mention.

Thanx for the comments all,
Adam