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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 1942952" data-attributes="member: 3649">I'd go with scrapping the spell system, definately.  Make all Christian magic into Feats with prerequsites (perhaps a Faith mechanic) of some kind. That gives a priest perhaps one or two spell-like abilities, such as True Sight, or Laying On Hands, etc.  Make a lot of it tied in with objects and places. Holy wells. Stones. Bones of saints.  Ascetics sometimes demonstrate some special abilities like flight, bilocation (being in two places at once), foresight (almost always they're mad at that point, though; foreknowledge is usually a big no-no), immunity to arrows, and other powers. They might have one, maybe at most two powers like this.  They might demonstrate Prophecy, though sometimes the telling of prophecy is more like pronouncing a Doom upon someone, like when Saint Columba says 'And Aid, thus irregularly ordained, shall return as a dog to his vomit, and be again a bloody murderer, until at length, pierced in the neck with a spear, he shall fall from a tree into the water and be drowned.'   It's also said of Columba  The venerable man, when singing in the church with the brethren, raised his voice so wonderfully that it was sometimes heard four furlongs off, that is five hundred paces, and sometimes eight furlongs, that is one thousand paces. But what is stranger still: to those who were with him in the church, his voice did not seem louder than that of others; and yet at the same time persons more than a mile away heard it so distinctly that they could mark each syllable of the verses he was singing, for his voice sounded the same whether far or near. It is however admitted, that this wonderful character in the voice of the blessed man was but rarely observable, and even then it could never happen without the aid of the Holy Ghost. Or, Padre Pio from the 20th century:  While praying before a cross, he received the stigmata on 20 September 1918, the first priest ever to be so blessed. As word spread, especially after American soldiers brought home stories of Padre Pio following WWII, the priest himself became a point of pilgrimage for both the pious and the curious. He would hear confessions by the hour, reportedly able to read the consciences of those who held back. Reportedly able to bilocate, levitate, and heal by touch. Or the strange things that happened to Agnes of Montepulciano...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Her birth was announced by flying lights surrounding her family's house. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">As a child, while walking through a field, she was attacked by a large murder of crows; she announced that they were devils, trying to keep her away from the land; years later, it was the site of her convent. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She was known to levitate up to two feet in the air while praying. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She received Communion from an angel, and had visions of the Virgin Mary. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She held the infant Jesus in one of these visions; when she woke from her trance she found she was holding the small gold crucifix the Christ child had worn. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">On the day she was chosen abbess as a teenager, small white crosses showered softly onto her and the congregation. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">She could feed the convent with a handful of bread, once she'd prayed over it. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Where she knelt to pray, violets, lilies and roses would suddenly bloom. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">While being treated for her terminal illness, she brought a drowned child back from the dead. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">At the site of her treatment, a spring welled up that did not help her health, but healed many other people.</li> </ul>Then... then you get someone like <a href="http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc80.htm" target="_blank">Christina Mirabilis</a>.... Born to a peasant family, orphaned as a child, and raised by two older sisters. At age 21, she experienced a severe seizure of what may have been epilepsy. It was so severe as to be cateleptic, and she was thought to have died. During her funeral Mass, she suddenly recovered, and levitated to the roof of the church. Ordered down by the priest, she landed on the altar and stated that she had been to hell, purgatory, and heaven, and had been returned to earth with a ministry to pray for souls in purgatory.  Her life from that point became a series of strange incidents cataloged by a Thomas de Cantimpré, Dominican professor of theology at Louvain who was a contemporary recorded his information by interviewin witnesses, and by Cardinal Jacques de Vitny who knew her personally. She exhibited both unusual traits and abilities. For example, she could not stand the odor of other people because she could smell the sin in them, and would climb trees or buildings, hide in ovens or cupboards, or simply levitate to avoid contact. She lived in a way that was considered poverty even in the 13th century, sleeping on rocks, wearing rags, begging, and eating what came to hand. She would roll in fire or handle it without harm, stand in freezing water in the winter for hours, spend long periods in tombs, or allow herself to be dragged under water by a mill wheel, though she never sustained injury. Given to ecstasies during which she led the souls of the recently dead to purgatory, and those in purgatory to paradise. </blockquote>

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