Divine Methods and Powers by Angela Black

A welcome to Games From Folktales’s first guest author, Angela Black.

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In the default conception of Mythic Europe, miracles of Faith are rare. Whether this is for game balance or simply due to our modern sensibilities, it doesn’t exactly fit the medieval mindset on divine intervention. Miracles – while still wondrous – were relatively common to thirteenth century people. Stories about God’s power manifest in the world were abundant and contemporary, rather than being told only of times long past. According to literature of the period, prayers were regularly answered, relics had the power to heal, and many prominent churchmen were attributed miraculous powers during their lives. For example, Anthony of Padua was credited with miraculous immunity to poison as well as delivering sermons in Latin that listeners heard in their native languages; Dominic de Guzman was said to have confronted and prevailed over many demons that had physically manifested as well as changing the weather to avert a storm; and Francis of Assisi was said to have miraculously healed people and even raised the dead! And all these people lived during the default campaign era!

The question arises, then, of how to model this in your Ars Magica campaign. The Realms of Power: Divine supplement already lays out a system for giving religious characters the ability to call upon the power of God, but these Holy Methods and Powers are difficult to learn and difficult to use to any notable effect. So one easy way to make Mythic Europe a little more miraculous is to make these Holy Methods and Powers easier to obtain and use.

According to Realms of Power: Divine p. 47, characters with True Faith can learn the Holy Methods and Powers associated with a given religious tradition, with the proviso that a Storyteller might allow characters without True Faith to be initiated into these powers. This roughly tracks the way many hedge magic traditions work, with Gifted characters able to automatically learn the powers of the tradition and non-Gifted characters requiring initiation into them. But True Faith is rare, and in any case it is difficult to create truly impressive miracles, since the skills associated with the Holy Methods and Powers are not accelerated Abilities. Can they be made more common and more useful?

The first thing that can be done is to eliminate the Confidence and Fatigue investments required of the Invocation and Purity Methods, respectively (see Realms of Power: Divine, pp 46-7). This will allow characters with access to Holy Methods and Powers to use them more frequently, making such miraculous abilities more like Hermetic magic in that respect, playing a larger role in the game.

Another way is to make the Holy Methods and Powers themselves more easily available. This is perhaps the least disruptive way of making these miraculous capabilities more common. If all the Holy Methods and Powers were Minor Virtues, it would be more feasible to give NPCs without True Faith a number of them. This would make the Holy Methods and Powers less rare but still relatively difficult to make impressive use of.

Taking a different tack, a possible “fix” is to keep the Holy Methods and Powers rare, but to make the Abilities for each Method and Power accelerated Abilities. This approach will create powerful clerics in high-fantasy style, regularly capable of throwing out miracles that are on par with Hermetic spells. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it would make churchmen formidable antagonists for magi!

If that seems too much, it wouldn’t do too much violence to the setting to grant a bonus to characters with True Faith. Characters with True Faith could be granted a bonus of 5 or even 10 times their True Faith score to effect rolls for Holy Methods and Powers. This creates a kind of two-tiered system with religious characters – initiates without True Faith can reliably produce only minor effects, but characters who do have True Faith are powerful indeed.

Finally, for a truly revolutionary approach, consider making it possible to initiate True Faith! This approach requires a bit of a reconceptualization of True Faith. Rather than denoting some ineffable quality, some holiness innate to the character, it would be something like an enhanced ordination, a special status extended to some religious officers. Since characters with True Faith automatically have access to the various Holy Methods and Powers without need for further initiation, this would serve to make True Faith and those holy Abilities both more common.

In my home campaign, in order to make miraculous abilities more common and more powerful, I allow for the initiation of True Faith and I grant a sizeable bonus per point of True Faith to the roll to generate miraculous effects. Many if not most clerics have some small ability to generate miraculous effects, and those who have undergone the more advanced initiation that grants True Faith can often stand toe-to-toe with Hermetic wizards! It moves my game a bit closer to high fantasy than perhaps the designers intended, but I think it reflects the immanence of God and His divine power in the imaginations of the denizens of the thirteenth century.