SHRINES: Clerical power on a budget

Mea Culpa Shrine from Blasphemous

In response to my Twitter post on Castle Xyntillan, The Byzantine chimed in to comment and through the magic power of the internet, I was lead to their very nice post on shrines. This is used in their Xyntillan campaign and I think I will add it as well.

• Beautific Sun (Rakehell setting)
• Brass Sun (Rakehell setting)
• Selenite Host (Rakehell setting)
• Wheel of Fortune

The basic idea is that a person or party makes a sacrifice (5/10/15 gp) at a shrine and the party (or at least all the believers of that deity) gain a first level spell (and more) (in D&D terms; in GLOG terms its 1 spell die). Now the only person who can cast that spell is someone who worships the deity, but they can bestow it to anyone in the party. Should the party want more than one, well they will have to split along religious lines.

Or you could organize your deities along oppositional lines and you can only blessings from several shrines as long as none of the deities are not in opposition to each other.

But this shrine idea got me to revisit the concept of slot-based encumbrance as "BURDEN" which could also measure the weight of sin. So what about piety? The most slots of BURDEN you devote to a god, the more rewards you receive from them.

You could carry multiple gods around, resulting in a wider range of spells, but all lower levels. Or you could become a devotee to one god and gain deeper more powerful access to spells.

Maybe druids would be those who devote slots to a particular element and gain spells and powers based on a shared keyword like "fire" or "water".

PSYCHOLOGICAL WEIGHT IN SLOT-BASED ENCUMBRANCE: The burden of magic & sin

WHAT IS BURDEN?

Ultra Violet Grasslands (now ENnie nominated!) by Luka Rejac is a wonderful book that distracts you so much with beautiful evokative art that you might miss some of the awesome rules tucked away in there. One of my favorites is below: SPELLS ARE INVENTORY TOO

A character in UVG can carry about 10 significant items. So spells can take up slots just like any other item, tool, or weapon. Spells carry a psychic weight which encumbers the character. And this makes sense in my experience. One can be so occupied with a problem that it literally weighs you down. But riffing on that, why stop at magic? 

Magic items could also take up extra encumbrance due to the psychological weight of carrying them despite their size- like Frodo and the Ring at the end of LotR. Elric's Stormbringer might be another. A good candidate might be the Deck of Many Things- just a deck of cards, but the weight of its potential fate-changing power is great.

More mundane items could do the same thing. For instance, if your PC is carrying the decapitated head of a ruler. A head might take up 1 slot, but the psychological weight could make it greater. Extending this further, what about sins or breaking of oaths? 

Every time the PC sins or goes against some aspect of their background, oath, or pledge- they have slots taken up. It's an additional tangible way the player can understand and experience their choice without resorting to taking negatives on to-hit and skill rolls.

This I think is quite interesting.

EDIT: Also would be good for "obligations" the PCs might pick up. Non-trivial things they know they should do but aren't getting around to doing. This might be particularly useful in a hex crawl.

EDIT2: Could also be used for curses like lycanthropy or ghoulification. Each aspect of the curse would be listed as its own set of 1-3 slots. Again representing the burden of the knowlege the PC carries about thier inner desires.

SO HOW DO YOU GET RID OF BURDEN?
Well, if you can't get rid of it you can make it smaller via compartmentalization. Options include:

• Complete your obligation (removal)
• Seek holy intervention to pardon your guilt (removal)
• Undertake a quest (removal)
• Wear an object or talisman or keepsake (compress from X slots to 1 slot) but NPCs know your sin
• Give in to the desire or curse (compresses from X slots to 1 slot) but DM controls your actions

SUMMARY- I think I really like this idea. It is a way to add player choice in how PCs manifest and deal with psychological guilt/curses/desires/transgressions/sin etc. It promotes its exploration without putting it at the center of the game. And it has a real meaningful (but not intrusive) game impact.

A LOAD OF ENCUMBRANCE RULES

Goblin Punch using Triple X Depletion rules. Anti-Hammerspace rules from Matt Rundle has good appeal due to simplicity as does using STR/CON as the number of "slots". Currently, I use LotFP's 5 slots equals 1 encumbrance point method.