Stick a FoRK in me... I have a Faith!

[TickTockMan]

Fellow Burners of Wheels:

Do you think that Faith can/should have FoRK bonuses? Instances might include canon law, or ancient languages? Perhaps different gods respond better to their "native" (read:ancient) languages. Perhaps an understanding of religious canon would facilitate a better response from the god(s). Perhaps the nature of Faith has so much more to do with Intent and Belief than execution that a FoRK is inappropriate. How do you handle this, and has it ever come up?

On a similar line of thinking, do you think bonuses should be allowed for "careful" and "diligent" supplication, or again is it more matter of Belief rather than execution?

I am curious what you think.

[luke]

The mechanics for this in the Revision involve certain Ritual skills being used as Linked Tests for Faith, not FoRKs.

Of course, you don't have the rules for Linked Tests yet, so...

-L

[TickTockMan]

What about praying carefully or diligently? Are these options part of the ritual rules in the revised edition?

[luke]

What about praying carefully or diligently? Are these options part of the ritual rules in the revised edition?

When does one not pray carefully and diligently. I usually only allow such modifiers to skill tests, not special, open-ended magic attribute tests.

-L

[TickTockMan]

Well, it is true, The Gift is a trait but magic is a skill, after all. I only thought there may be a difference between a hastily uttered prayer in an emergency and ceremonial and ritualistic prayer, the proverbial "sacrificing of the lamb" if you will.

But the driving force of Faith is Need, so I guess there is not much difference between "Need over time" (like praying for a drought to end) and Need in a hurry (like praying lightning strikes dead your foe).

[jc_madden]

In my opinion one would not be praying carefully and diligently when one is face to face with certain doom and is concocting a hastily worded prayer to save themselves. Even if there's a prayer they know that would help them they might want to rush it along. Is that allowable in your game? Maybe not, I'd have no problem with it. Conversely if someone wanted to take their time and pray right then I'd also allow a bonus for praying carefully and diligently. If you assume that prayers are ALWAYS done in such a way then the mechanics should reflect that. As it is Faith test are a lot harder than magic tests because they don't get the bonus of Will+Sorcery (which sounds a lot like the formal description of the alluded to "linked tests") so I'd surmise that for certain prayers and rituals that rely on reciting an ancient text rather than a simple test of faith add the dice together. So a B3 Ancient language skill + B4 Faith to conjure up Nyarlotep would be B7 open ended dice versus whatever arbitrary Ob (very high for the example but you get the point). So these are really case by case things. Sounds like the revision handles things like that nicely.