In the past, I've written about why parties should have their own character sheet. The party sheet can track reputation, how noisy they are in the dungeon (i.e. how fast they advance the Underclock), shared resources, hirelings, et cetera.
I've been sort of pondering how to include party advancement, or party level-ups, into the party sheet system, but I never had a solid concept until I re-read these posts by Bret Devereaux on ancient polytheism and I think it clicked into place.
- The characters level up by going into dungeons and getting treasure.
- The party levels up by gaining the support of the gods.
Ancient polytheism wasn't about morals, it was about pleasing the gods so that they'll do things for you. (Or at least, so that they'll refrain from doing bad things to you.) You sacrifice to Poseidon not because you love Poseidon and align with his morals, but because you are bargaining with him. "If I give you this bull, you won't sink my ship on the way to Athens, right?"
It's results-based.
And it's also subtle. If you have clear sailing on the way to Athens, is that because Poseidon approves of your trip, or is it just good luck?
This creates a third way that a character can be good at something.
- You improve your skill. +1 lockpicking.
- You get better lockpicks. +1 lockpicking.
- The god of locks is pleased with the party. -1 to lockpicking DC.
You'll notice that these three options vary in liquidity. If you improve your lockpicking skill, you can't share that with anyone else. But if you have magic lockpicks, those can be given to someone else. And if the god of locks is pleased with the party, then everyone benefits.
They're also different in terms of continuity. Skills die with their owner, while magic items can be passed to the next character. And a god's favor is functionally a permanent bonus to the whole party in perpetuity, which allows for a kind of permanent, party-wide progression.
There's also a sort of mythic resonance to it. By the time party reaches high level and saves the world, they'll probably have many sorts of divine favor. In many myths, the heroes are only able to do great things because they have the favor of the gods.
 |
| The October Horse? By © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain |
The Divine Patronage System
Throughout the city of Lon Barago, and in the dungeon beneath it, there are various churches, shrines, and altars. Here are some of the gods you might find:
- Ashurbandus - God of War and Wine - Initiative Rolls
- Parshekkis - God of Hugeness - Breaking Doors, Bending Bars, etc.
- Trasmiel - Goddess of Locks, Knots, & Hair - Locks
- Asmot - Goddess of Death and Disease - Death Saves
- Phosmora - Goddess of Gold & the Underworld - The Underclock
- Ephora - Goddess of the Hearth - Spirit
And of course, there are also altars set up to the king of Lon Barago. You can make sacrifices at these altars, too.
- Calderion - King of Lon Barago - Negotiating with the Authorities
Make a significant sacrifice and you get a small boon. The sacrifice can be something like offering a magic sword to the church as a gift, or making a donation of at least (3d6 *100) silver. (You can make the roll after the players donate the silver.)
Do a great service for the deity and get a major boon. This is probably a bespoke quest, based on the dungeon at hand.
If you ever do something awful, these bonuses can invert into similar penalties. Examples of awful actions: desecration of a shrine, stealing a god's property, blasphemy, atheism.
Boons of Ashurbandus, God of War
(Note: I use flat group initiative. Everyone rolls Wisdom against DC 15. The average stat is +4, so this is roughly a coin flip. Everyone who wins initiative acts first. Then all the monsters act. Then the sides just alternate from there.)
Minor - DC for Initiative checks is now 14.
Major - DC for Initiative checks is now 13.
Most other gods have similar boons to this.
Boons of Phosmora, Goddess of the Underworld
(Note: normally the Underclock starts at 20 and counts down.)
Minor - The first time you enter the dungeon, the first Underclock starts at 25. Afterwards, the Underclock starts at 20, as usual.
Major - As above, except the first Underclock starts at 30.
Boons of Ephora, Goddess of the Hearth
Minor - +1 Spirit.
Major - +2 Spirit.
Since Spirit is basically a HP pool that the whole party shares, this is essentially more HP for the whole party.
Boons of Calderion, King of Phosmora
Minor - It is now easier to negotiate with guards and other royal personages (including the king). Reduce these checks down to DC 13.
Major - DC 11.
You might point out that this is just normal gift-giving. Of course the king will look more favorably on people who give him gifts. There's nothing divine about someone treating you better after you've been showering them with gifts and praise.
My response would be: yes, exactly. This is how it works for all of the gods, not just the king. The only difference is that the king is still alive. Both gods and kings can ruin your life with a wave of their hand. There's less functional difference there than you might think.
Discussion
You can just write the new DCs on the same whiteboard that you use to list the Underclock. That way the players have clear and visible proof that they are (1) advancing in a cool diagetic way, and (2) legitimately favored by the gods.
It's also worth mentioning that this is pretty easy to implement in my games because pretty much everything uses fixed DCs. If a lock can be picked at all, the DC is 15. If you have wildly variable door locks in your game, you can't just write the singular DC on the whiteboard because you don't have a singular DC for all locks. (I also think that lowering fixed DCs in the easiest way to implement divine favor. The other way would be to tell everyone that they get +1 to pick locks on this character and all future characters, which seems like one more fiddly stupid +1 that I would hate to track if I was a player.)
This also is a good mechanism for getting players to care about the different gods of your setting. And if you're anything of a history nerd, this might soothe the part of your brain that chafes at all the incorrect polytheism that you see in D&D all the time.
Like, even the evil gods (Like Asmot, goddess of death and disease) should be respected and honored. Ares and Hades are evil gods (sort of--they were definitely unpleasant gods) but were still worshipped by the Greeks.
Another thing I like about this system is that keeps the effects of divine favor relatively subtle. Is the party having better luck picking locks because they've gotten better or because Trasmiel is smiling on them? Or is it self-fulfilling, where the sacrifice to Trasmiel gives them the confidence to pick locks better?
I assume that this works diagetically. If you made a big sacrifice to Ares and then go on to kick ass on the battlefield, you would probably assume that he is smiling on you. So both the characters and the players share an understanding.
Lastly, I haven't spent too much time talking about the game design side of this, but please note that this system is both (1) permanent, and (2) party-wide, including new characters.
Getting +1 Initiative is not a huge bonus, but if the whole party gets it forever, it's huge.
Because future characters get it, too, it helps support troupe play. Players are also incentivized to switch characters, since some of their "level ups" are now shared across all characters. It also means that dying is a little less painful, since not all of their character advancement is lost--you get to keep your divine favor when you roll a new character.
One more thing: the gods are local. So when you leave Lon Barago and cross the mountains and do some other megadungeon there, you need to start over with new gods, and rebuild divine favor there. (You don't have to do it this way, but it's how I plan to implement it.) This is basically a dungeon-specific form of leveling up. This topic probably deserves its own blog post, but this can be desirable if you want (a) players to feel like they are mastering a specific location, not just their own character build, and (b) you want to allow a small power reset, if you have powerful character leave one area and go into another.
(Digression: I've often wondered if WoW would be better served by something like this. Instead of having constantly higher and higher levels, followed by level squish, just have a character level and then a zone level. Like, you're a badass in Outlands but you need to learn how to fight Shadowlands enemies separately.)
One last note: I've limited myself to a pretty modest implementation here. +1 Initiative is not going to break your game. But you could easily expand this to bigger aspects of progression. What if you could get up to +4 to hit by making sacrifices to the God of War? You could balance it out a little by reducing the amount of to-hit bonus you get from your class, sure, but the net effect is that the focus of the game becomes making big sacrifices to gods. Since these bonuses are party-wide, it's sort of like everyone leveling up together.
One more knob to turn, when designing a game.
No comments:
Post a Comment