Piety

Piety
Piety measures a PCs standing with his or her diety. The PCs Piety score is determined by rolling 3d6 and will increase or decrease during the course of play. Piety may affect certain actions (bonuses and penalties) for those who claim faith and Piety may be affected by certain actions.

Piety is accrued during the course of play by undertaking (and, usually, completing) "holy acts." Holy acts mean different things to different gods and must be adjudicated by the DM within the bounds of the character and the deity in question.

Piety also has little to do with Ritual (Priest) skill; impious (corrupt) Priests can and do exist. Examples of pious acts include extended prayer and meditation, and service to the church, particularly a temple quest or crusade.

Faithful PCs may call for Divine Intervention. To do so, the PC must expend Piety points, the greater the need, the more Piety which must be expended.

Piety is lost when a PCs sins against his or her deity, keeping in mind, again, that the sins of one god may not be the sins of another.

It is, of course, easier to lose Piety than to gain Piety.

Priests and Paladins must pay attention to their piety or suffer penalties to their miraculous abilities. Sinful acts reduce piety points, faithful acts can increase piety points. As a rule, if a Priest or Paladin’s piety score is lower than their level, they suffer penalties in making their petitions to their deity.

Piety Points can be used similarly to Luck Points, but they work in this manner. The PC declares he or she wants to call for Divine Intervention ( a thief might be in a jam and say, "Holas whispers a desperate prayer to the gods of fate!"). Begin with the PCs Piety score, apply any negative modifiers the DM determines might be appropriate (Holas may have recently mocked the gods of fate, so the DM may apply a -2 modifier, and may be in a jam in another god's temple, so may apply another -1 modifier).


Piety is probably not strictly necessary, and if I ever get a chance to playtest this, may not work out in practice, but it intrigues me - especially for clerics and paladins and other holy characters. To use your piety to call on your god, and then not have enough piety afterward to, well, call on your god seems counter-intuitive, perhaps, but I think of it as "I just did THAT for you, prove that you are worthy of my attention again" or some such...