the divine VPP

[Mr. R]

I am hoping to convert the Al-Qadim game setting to Hero. I do not agree with the cleric, here is the spells I get today setup. I want to make divine magic more mysterious. Not all preists have it, and even non-preist may get some (the gods do work in mysterious ways). I was thinking to use a VPP to model the effects, with a No Concsious Control (divine will) disad. Has anyone done this? How did it work? What should I look out for?

 

Any advice appreciated.

 

Thank you

[Markdoc]

If you want the VPP to represent "divine intervention" you COULD use no concious control, but there's a major problem.

 

That is, that the pool is either going to have to be humungous, or the effects will be relatively small (since the powers are going to be variable, I assume we are talking about a cosmic pool here). If you want divine intervention to be subtle, OK. But if you want priests to be able to generate flame strikes or something similar, forget it. You won't get enough power to toast a kobold out of a normal VPP.

 

There's two possible solutions.

 

The first is to assume that the gods are actively involved. Give THEM the VPP. Then it can be as big as you like. Get priests or other favoured characters to buy favours or contacts, so that when they really need help they can call on the deity. That way you can get mega effects, but you will never be sure if the deity will help or how: it might be meddling in a war on the other side of the continent and simply doesn't have time to deal with a few of his followers getting minced up in an abandoned castle which they should have been smart enough to avoid. You might like to let the amount the roll is made by indicate the amount of power the deity is willing to expend (say, 10 active points per point the roll is made by, with penalties and bonuses contingent on the situation). This will encourage players who want to be priests to buy their contacts up to insane levels

 

The second is to let the priest buy their powers (whether through a VPP or not) normally and make them run off an END reserve with no concious control. That way the priests can choose their spells, but it's the deity who chooses if they work or not. The mechanism is a little different, but the effect is the same. And it gets around the problem to having to buy the expensive cosmic advantage.

 

cheers, Mark

[GamePhil]

I tend to agree with MarkDoc that you might look at taking the character's god or gods as Contacts and Favors, or even taking intermediaries as Followers, and have them do the work.

 

However, I don't believe you have to take Cosmic on the pool for your effect. It appears that if you have Limitations that dictate when the Pool changes, you don't need the roll or the full phase: for example, the Mimic Pool on p210 isn't a Cosmic Pool. So I don't think you should need the Advantage for this.

 

Instead of No Conscious Control, take "Character Has No Choice Regarding When Or How Powers Change", a -1 Limitation, if the priest has control over when to throw the Power. The deity grants an ability, perhaps the character even knows what it is, but the character has to figure out when to apply it. Either that or the character just uses the Pool and it does something: I personally prefer the former, it gives a ready made plot hook and small puzzle for the player, but the latter approach could be fun.