How to empower Deities? Worship points?

[devilish]

Hi all,

Running a campaign where the cleric has been cut off
from his god(s) because of planar-distance. He's gone
to preaching in the streets and may make a good show of it.

Curious -- does anyone have a system for generating
how much power/ability/etc. a deity may get from worshippers -
either in the worshipper's raw numbers or how many prayers
are said, etc. F'rinstance, if he can get 200 people to worship
his god, (v. 2000 or 200,000 eventually) what kind of *power*
would that give his god -- lesser deity? demi-god? Enough for
the Greater Gods of the plane he's in to notice? I know this
is bordering on "Well, whatever you want to do, D" but I was
hoping for a point system/rationale for it.

I think Immortals Handbook is planning on having Worship Points,
but when is it going to be released?
I also thought way back in the 1st Ed Immortals book, there was
something like "200 worshippers - 5 power points" or something like that.

Any help would be **greatly apprec** !!!

Thanks,
-D

 

[fusangite]

Are you sure you want to go with the idea of a deity's power coming from worshippers? It's not a very common idea either in fiction or in history and it creates a lot of nasty implications. By extension, wouldn't all rulers of kingdoms end up with demigod status?

 

[DanMcS]

Curious -- does anyone have a system for generating
how much power/ability/etc. a deity may get from worshippers -
either in the worshipper's raw numbers or how many prayers
are said, etc. F'rinstance, if he can get 200 people to worship
his god, (v. 2000 or 200,000 eventually) what kind of *power*
would that give his god -- lesser deity? demi-god? Enough for
the Greater Gods of the plane he's in to notice? I know this
is bordering on "Well, whatever you want to do, D" but I was
hoping for a point system/rationale for it.

The SRD has selections from Deities and Demigods, which may be vaguely what you're looking for. It is mainly an order-of-magnitude system; demigods have "a few hundred to a few thousand" worshippers, lesser gods have "a few thousand to tens of thousands of worshipers", and so on. That may not be specific enough for you, though.

 

[devilish]

Are you sure you want to go with the idea of a deity's power coming from worshippers? It's not a very common idea either in fiction or in history and it creates a lot of nasty implications. By extension, wouldn't all rulers of kingdoms end up with demigod status?

Well, IMO, I think it's the aspect of worshipping -- a nation generally
doesn't offer sacrifices, go to church/synagogue/mosque, say prayers
at night to/for their leaders -- when they do, *then*
you have a demi-god potential. Isn't the Githyanki Lich Queen a deity from being worshipped by her followers?

 

[JoeGKushner]

The old Primal Order has exactly what you're looking for. It's a capsystem that covered many game systems, the 1st edition even covered AD&D and Palladium. Had several sourcebooks and was a very good expalantion of what made the gods gods instead of just powerful monsters.

 

[devilish]

The old Primal Order has exactly what you're looking for. It's a capsystem that covered many game systems, the 1st edition even covered AD&D and Palladium. Had several sourcebooks and was a very good expalantion of what made the gods gods instead of just powerful monsters.

*Sigh* This is _exactly_ what I need but can't find it.
Not on eBay, not on SVGames or any other PDF-purchase
system. Wouldn't happen to be on any websites out there, eh?

Rats!

 

[Macbeth]

I use deities fueled by worshhipers in my campaign, and the thing to think about regarding th issues of kings and such, is that you have knowledge of a kig, but belief in a diety. It's not a leap of faith for an average villager to believe the king exists, but a diety is purely a matter of belief.

 

[Kyrail]

I'm pretty sure FR uses the power from the worshippers since one of the minor gods died of "neglect".

 

[Steverooo]

In RuneQuest, "worship" was a voluntary act, which temporarily reduced the worshipper's (or worshippers') Will POWer by one... This POW went directly to the deity, who could use it as they willed... Worship takes an hour or so, and is equivalent to a church service, or quiet meditation, or whatever...

Now, build a "cost" for your deity to do things, and assume each convert yields 1D3 POW/week... If a first level spell costs 1 POW, then that's all the deity can give the Cleric, if he is the only worshipper. Further, since this isn't the deity's plane, the cost is increased by 1 POW per plane (or level of plane) between the deity and the Cleric (which explains why deities don't interfere on other planes as often).

So, if "X" is worshipped by 201 people on that plane, he could ordinarily grant 201D3 first level spells, or half as many second level, etc., but if he is on the Prime Material Plane, and his Cleric is on the 666th layer of the Abyss, the "cost" of granting him any spells would be too high (unless he uses some POW from his PMP worshippers, limiting his power, here).

Sound usable?

 

[fusangite]

Well, IMO, I think it's the aspect of worshipping -- a nation generally
doesn't offer sacrifices, go to church/synagogue/mosque, say prayers
at night to/for their leaders -- when they do, *then*
you have a demi-god potential. Isn't the Githyanki Lich Queen a deity from being worshipped by her followers?

Actually, in history it is pretty common for polytheistic societies to do exactly what you describe. Throughout the Roman Empire, deification of and sacrifice to emperors was common until the advent of Christianity. Similarly, Egyptian monarchs, especially in the Ptolemy period were regularly deified. Look, also, at Japan up to 1945. The reason people didn't sacrifice to Jewish, Christian or Muslim rulers was because these systems were monotheistic. In any polytheistic system, ruler cults are a logical consequence of the system. So, given that D&D worlds are almost all polytheistic, I recommend against this worship points system.

Gods' existence is much more normally contingent upon the thing/principle to which they are attached. The god of Mount Fuji is contingent on the mountain; if you hurt it, you hurt the god. So, I could accept a god of obedience dying from lack of observance/worship but not the god of the sea.