Tuesday, April 23, 2013

What happens when your DF Cleric is Excommunicated

Okay, so their are Clerics and Evil Cleric templates, and Holy and Unholy Warrior templates.

What happens if you want to switch?

Or, well, let's just say your god wants you to switch and encourages you along by damning you to hell and excommunicating you.

What then?

Luckily we already know how to make the Evil versions from DF 3 (Evil Clerics are on p. 23, Unholy Warriors on p. 27). But both are written from the perspective of a starting PC. The lenses can be tacked on later, but the base templates are where you start.

We just need to figure out what to change on the character sheet.

- you're now Excommunicated. Good job. Get rid of that holy disadvantage you took - Honesty, Sense of Duty (Coreligionists), or Vow.

- you'd need to swap out the relevant Holy Advantages for Unholy ones. The Evil Cleric and Unholy Warrior have suggestions.

- Do you get to change disadvantages to more evil ones? I'd say change as few as possible if it's an unwilling conversion, as many as you want if you snap and go all Erac's Cousin.

- Skills? Can you swap them out? This one is a real game-world decision. Can you (new or old) god swoop in and change what you know ("My knowledge of healing herbs is gone . . . but I know how to use them to kill!")? If so, you'd have to swap out the "good" stuff for the "bad" stuff. If not, well, you get to keep your helpful skills and you need to seek out a source of evil to learn the bad stuff. Either is made of pure awesome.

- Spells? This is what sparked this whole post in the first place. Good and Evil get different spell lists. You'd either get to:

a) re-pick all of your spells.
b) re-pick the ones that don't match your new list.

Either is plausible. I'd say a), if only because it's vastly easier to do.

One further idea is to simply grab up all the points you put into spells and holy powers, and redistribute them amongst your new powers. You have 23 points in spells and 35 points in holy powers? Pick 58 points in new spells and powers. Or your GM picks some or all, depending on the circumstances.

That's my back-of-the-envelope sketch of what you'd need to change. If I missed anything that needs addressing, let me know.

So if your GM doesn't seem to be generously handing out Holy items, or that black-bladed howling sword seems pretty nice, actually, maybe you just might make the switch . . .

3 comments:

  1. I'd consider it a two separate steps/lenses. The first removes you from the grace of your deity, and amounts to lost ads/disads in a bunch of stuff. I'd probably restrict it to stuff that was requirements of service and powered by divine magic - you don't unlearn anything by default.

    The second devotes you to a new one, and is free points in a lot of stuff, a few required disads, and a bunch of stuff you need to negotiate for. (If you're gonna cut a deal with the Dark Powers, it seems like you should role play it for the awesomeness.)

    The advantage of doing it this way is it makes it easier to have folks who are X-com-unicated holy folks who didn't turn evil (probably NPCs, but is an interesting PC arc if you go that way) or to tempt non-clerics with Dark Power (admittedly, this might be easily done by adding an evil cleric or unholy warrior lens).

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    Replies
    1. I can't believe I forgot the even meaner munchkin trap of tempting a power munchkin with "good" power and then enforcing the disads. "Sorry Bob, you're charitable now. Give it away..."

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    2. Those are pretty good ideas.

      I like the idea of playing it out - I hadn't considered how this would occur, just the mechanical process of change.

      I personally think evil powers really should dangle this stuff out before you - "take as much as you like, do what you will, it'll be fine, you can use it to do good, make yourself powerful, whatever . . . " It probably should be tempting and easy to get. The consequences, well, there are always consequences, but this is with an eye to DF. It should just mean you can't go pay for some healing at the temple now that you worship the demon of darkness, your old friend the Holy Warrior suddenly wants to hit you with his sword, etc. - but otherwise you can still go adventuring.

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