Blog Bandwagon - Faith without gods
I have been a fan of the Eberron D&D game setting ever since my middle school self played a1-shot at my local game store as part of its debut. Now that I’m moving away from D&D 5e and towards leaner OSR/NSR systems, I have to think about how to incorporate what makes Eberron unique into my current system (a mix between Cairn and Mausritter, close to Block, Dodge, Parry). In response to Prismatic Wasteland’s Emergency Bandwagon: Conclave Edition, I’ll tackle how faith could work in my game.
In Eberron, the deities don’t grant divine spellcasters their power, instead they manifest effects through sheer faith. This means that even forgotten religions can impact the world if their followers believe enough. I also want to incorporate commoditizing this faith in-line with the mass market magic available (wide but not deep magic). Much like items of artifice, talismans of faith can be produced and sold across the land (there apparently isn’t a Martin Luther equivalent to protest the sale of faith in My Eberron). A key separation between the arcane baubles the artificers make and these relics is, even if you don’t create the relic, you still have to have true faith to tap into its power.
Faith based effects
So how does this faith manifest in the game world? In my setting, raw arcane power (such as from scrolls and spellbooks) is volatile and justly (or unjustly) banned for public use. Items of artifice, created by the Dragonmarked Houses, refine and control that power into a narrow focus that manages that risk. But both of these are formulaic and predictable; say these words, do this gesture and a fireball appears.
Faith isn’t formulaic, however, and each manifestation is unique to the small groups that worship together. This is represented by the game mechanics. I like Mausritter’s magic system, where you choose the number of dice to roll, the result generally deciding how strong of an effect there is. For each 4+ you lose a “charge” and for each 6+, you have a miscast. In my game, items of artifice roll d4s, arcane items, like scrolls, rolls d8s, and divine magic uses the default d6 for its effects. So you burn out at a reasonable rate but still have a small chance to miscast.
With these rules, you can see why the Dragonmarked Houses were able to make their case to the King to ban arcane items. The chance of a miscast is just too high to be used outside of very controlled laboratory settings. But they knew they couldn’t do anything to regulate the faithful. If the priest of the Silver Flame has enough faith then they can will a searing light through a pack of fiends, whether the King likes it or not.
Defining faiths
Within Eberron, there are a multitude of faiths, many with diametrically opposed counterparts. But some of the faiths are off on their own. The Blood of Vol, for example, eschews any concept of deity and encourages the faithful to harness the inherent divinity within their own blood. So how would you define this? Assign each faith a handful of domains! The domains each act as a “spell list”, with no overlap between them. You don’t get a bucket of holy powers to pick from, you have to specialize.
The breadth of faiths in Eberron (nine if you only count titles from the 5e sourcebook) means that you probably don’t assign domains to individual gods but to subgroups of the pantheons. The Sovereigns would have the “vanilla” domains (and probably quite a few) while the Dark Six would have the more esoteric and evil domains. But then the druidic faith in natural primal forces is assigned a completely separate set of domains. While I think there is some room for domain overlap across faiths, there should still be a key defining domain that only that faith does.
The fun part with domains comes with assigning a new domain to an established faith to represent a heresy, particularly as a randomly generated relic. The god of the forge is rumored to have a dark anger, represented by their hammer. It doesn’t matter if this is an actual aspect of the god or not, as long as the heretic believes it to be true, then that domain becomes part of the faith (for them at least).
Items of faith (relics)
These relics have been infused with the faith of a practitioner. They are constructed like any other magic item but do not require an artisan level of skill, instead needing devotion to create it. The end result may be a simple woven square of twigs because that was what the hermit had available, but it’s simplicity is not indicative of the power held within. Think of the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; what was it made of and what power did it hold? Each relic would have a single (or MAYBE two) effects from the respective domain that could be channeled by the faithful.
I have broken the faithful into three broad groups: laypeople, clergy, and paragons.
- The laypeople are the common folk who believe enough to be considered faithful. They couldn’t make a relic but could use a minor one if they believed enough. They have no restrictions, however, on which domains they can channel, as long as they have faith in it. These would be analogous to being able to call on multiple gods, depending on your situation. A farmer could pray to the Sovereigns for a good harvest but also ask the Dark Six for vengeance against the raiders that killed their son.
- The mid group would be dedicated priests and other clergy. They can conjure effects without the use of a relic, their faith is that strong. (this is similar to taking a level of cleric in a game that uses classes). They would probably be restricted from using relics with opposing domains (independent of whether the faiths are opposed as well).
- The paragons are beacons of the faith. They can create new relics and probably have access to unique effects (defining the faith). With that power comes the most restrictions; they can only use domains of their faith, opposed and “neutral” are off-limits. Like the clergy, they too could channel their faith to create effects without a relic. This would be the group to also create new divine spells through research, inspiration, etc.
Translating all of this into the game world, I imagine a wide spread of low level relics, perhaps created by the local clergy. These relics would provide an everyday benefit to the faithful such as purifying food and water, speak with animals, and protection from evil. Relics that have more application in a dungeon would likely be created for a champion of the faith (long lost to history) for their specific quest into a dungeon and now resides in a reliquary, gathering dust.
Last Thoughts
As I slowly hack my own game into existence, I want to ensure that each piece is unique and provides different advantages and disadvantages that would entice players to engage with that system. These are some initial thoughts on how to ensure divine magic is uniquely separate from arcane magic in this world. The divine favor and disfavor tables from Dododecahedron are awesome ideas that I just don’t see working at my table (I, as the GM, would be the only one that remembered they existed). I’m happy for any feedback, so hit me up at tonightssession@gmail.com