Religion in Call of Cthulhu: Boon or Bane?

[Sepulchrave II]

I had an Anglican clergyman named Victor in a 1920s British Cthulhu campaign.

His prayers and Thompson smg proved equally ineffective against a lloigor.

 

[Virgo]

I had an Anglican clergyman named Victor in a 1920s British Cthulhu campaign.

His prayers and Thompson smg proved equally ineffective against a lloigor.

Well, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!

 

[Nytmare]

I know that I will at least not let mundane religion be any protection from the mythos when I run more of Call of Cthulhu Sverige.

Yeah, I always prefer modern religions to just ever so gently brush up against an understanding of what the mythos is. I've always kinda liked the idea that the stories we tell ourselves were kinda put there to protect our feeble little monkey brains from attempting to tackle the big picture.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It has been so long since I last played CoC, that I do not remember if there were ever any priest PCs, but I like the was some other games handle Faith, like in the World of Darkness, where it is your faith and belief that makes a vampire vulnerable to a holy symbol, and not the symbol itself. A person without faith will not hold the evil at bay just by waving a cross around. Though in WoD, I think the faith and belief the vampire had in his mortal days may also influence what effect a holy symbol had on them. I don't remember the details on that now. So for CoC, I could see a strong faith keeping lesser evils at bay, but stronger ones would just look at your priest and laugh. Or take the faith and holy symbols in D&D. Those are powered by the deities that actually exist, and for them to be powered that way in CoC, you would have to decide if the human gods are real or not.

 

[GreyLord]

NOT CoC, but D&D. It's amazing what a High Level Cleric can do with a Party to ruin Cthulhu's day!

In that instance, their faith (and whoever their deity is showing their power through them) can absolutely be a Bastion (along with a Good weapon from a Fighter and a few arcane spells from a Wizard) against the lunacy inducing visions of insanity that the Cthulhu verse brings...if you can get your hands on the stats of course (and there's more you can do in destroying good or evil from those same types of sources, but bringing that up to specifically, even though it's D&D may be too controversial to really go into detail here).