Gods and Religions, Part 4: Reward and Punishment

This week in our ongoing discussion of Gods & Religions, we take a look at mechanical incentives for roleplaying characters of faith and devotion.  Ultimately, a character's relationship with their god is a matter of roleplaying.  But GMs are always on the lookout for ways to encourage more roleplaying and reward good examples of it.  If you want gods and religions to take an important role in your campaign, and you want to actively encourage your player characters' participation in that system, we've got some ideas for you.  Specifically, we have three complementary systems that encourage GMs to hand out mechanical rewards or punishments to characters roleplaying their way through a world of fickle and demanding gods.

First, there are minor ongoing benefits for characters who maintain the day-to-day trappings of their religion, including performing sacrifices, praying, and adhering to dietary restrictions.  Then there are greater one-time rewards for characters who perform exemplary services in the name of their deity.  And on the other end of the spectrum, there are punishments for those who transgress against the ethos of their deity.  Examples and suggestions are provided, but the rules are not hard and fast; a GM should feel free to adopt and adapt them as they see fit for their own campaign.

Faith Rituals
   Every god or religion asks something of its worshipers, something that affects their daily lives and marks them as a follower of that god.  They might make regular offerings, pray daily, wear certain clothing, or refrain from eating certain foods.  In return for maintaining faith rituals in this way, loyal worshipers are granted minor boons.
   The particular details of what a worshiper is expected to do and what boon they might gain depends on the god or religion in question and is at the discretion of the GM.  Examples are given below.  As a general rule, maintaining faith rituals should be a roleplaying choice that does not adversely affect the playability of the game; a GM should not demand followers perform onerous tasks that slow down the game overmuch or impose penalties that affect the efficacy of a character unless this is core to the concept of the deity.  Boons for maintaining faith rituals should be minor ongoing effects such as a +1 to a particular skill, and should be no more powerful than the boon granted by a trait.
   If a character fails to maintain their faith rituals, they lose the benefits of the granted boon until they have flawlessly upheld the rituals for a week straight.

Salaries and Feudal Holdings for the Kingdom Building Rules

Election season got you down?  Has the endless parade of politicians and talking heads left you longing for the days when fiefs were held in vassalage directly from the king in exchange for the promise of military service?  Well if you are running a campaign that uses the Kingdom Building rules, you might appreciate the following set of optional rules!

If you are familiar with the Kingdom Building rules (and if you aren't, none of this is going to make much sense), you know that they are a set of rules designed to let your adventuring party control and grow their own realm.  Each member of the party can take a leadership position ranging from Ruler to High Priest to Spymaster, with plenty more positions open for NPCs.  They manage the creation and expansion of settlements, issue edicts, develop the land, and collect taxes.  It's basically a whole other game - I recommend setting up a facebook group where your players can discuss affairs of state so that it doesn't take up too much of your tabletop time.

My adventuring group in the ongoing but long-stalled Graverobbers campaign is about to begin ruling over their newly forged barony, but as I was going over the Kingdom Building rules I realized that there wasn't a lot of incentive for some of the characters.  If you know history, you know that people like to use positions of power to increase their personal wealth.  This was a major aspect of feudal society, but it is sadly lacking in the Kingdom Building rules.  So I whipped up the following optional rules that will allow characters to draw a salary from the kingdom's treasury, or even control their own fiefdom and manage a small settlement.

The following material given in gold text is available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is ©2016 Jonah Bomgaars.

Fixing the Weapons Table, Part 6: Medieval Gunpowder Weapons

Depictions of gunpowder weapons in fantasy RPGs are plagued by a number of issues, not the least of which is a general overestimation of their power and efficacy.  This is because people think, "Guns and gunners replaced swords and knights, therefore guns must be more powerful."  This is a reasonable line of thinking, but it is not correct.  The reasons why guns became the dominant weapon on the battlefield are many - too many to go into here, in fact - but for our purposes, it is important simply to recognize that guns did not become dominant because they did more damage than the other weapons of the period.  Even today, in this wonderful technological world we live in, I would rather be shot in the chest than be struck with a battle axe.

Knights actually co-existed with guns for centuries, and for the most part they could get by with only a few dents in their armour to show for it.  Even in the 17th century, many soldiers wore steel armour which protected them from bullets.

Royal Armouries - Leeds

Although later guns were getting better at penetrating armour, the decline of armour in warfare had less to do with the power of guns and more to do with the weight and expense of the armour itself.  It is only in recent decades that sending soldiers into battle in suits of armour has come back into fashion.

That said, you may be starting to guess that I have some issues with the way Pathfinder deals with gunpowder weapons.

Actually, not as many as you might think from the above paragraphs.  For the most part, the damage these weapons deal seems reasonable on the whole, with a few exceptions.  A lot of the weapons have x4 crits, which seems fine for modelling gunpowder weapons - if they hit you right, they can hit you hard.  Sure there are a lot of things I could nitpick (in what world does a musket do more damage than a rifle?), but I'd rather just scrap the whole thing and start over.  So let's kick off Part 6 of Fixing the Weapons Table.

House Rules Compendium

One of my favourite things about reading other people's D&D experiences on the internet is hearing all of their house rules.  No two D&D games are alike, and house rules are one of the ways GMs can customize their game to fit their own needs and play styles.  I myself have picked up a number of house rules from the GMs I have played under, from the tales people tell on the web, and from my own imagination.  For your convenience (and mine), I will be compiling all of my house rules right here on this page.

I hope you find it interesting, and just maybe you'll steal one or two for your own home game.  I'll keep this updated with new house rules as they spring into existence.