Miracles & Attunement

Miracles & Attunement

Miracles are similar to Cleric’s spells and this system replaces it completely, while giving non-cleric characters a chance of having their prayers answered. To work a miracle, the caster must roll a D% under his Attunement score.

                                                                              Dark Souls 3 Cleric. Gotta love the turtle thing on his back 

Attunement

All characters that follow a faith (including non-clerics) have a base value for their Attunement, which represents their bond with their divinity/entity/ideal of worship.

.Non-cleric characters have an Attunement score of 1+CHA modifier

.Cleric Characters have an attunement of 15+CHA modifier and increase their Attunement score by 3 per level starting at level 2.

Offerings

Here comes the great deal. Attunement is usually a pretty low score, but, through offerings, you may raise temporarily this score until you cast (or botch) a Miracle. Usually each faith has a set of possible offerings with variable Attunement bonuses depending on the customs of that faith. Offerings are cumulative.

Example: Offerings to the Scarlet God

The Scarlet God lives underground and feeds from all blood that is spilled in naked soil, so let’s feed him. Also, he is petty and wants to be the only god in the world, so let’s kill heretics and burn their churches.

Note: I use a non- inflating hp system where 20 hp is a lot, so consider this when making offering tables.

.Self-mutilation: spend 1hp per attunement point

.Animal Sacrifice (medium sized, like a goat): 5 attunement

.Human Sacrifice (Must be willing): 20 Attunement

.Bury a deceased member of the faith: 10 attunement

.Destroy a heretic: 5 attunement

.Destroy a heretic temple or site: 20 attunement

Casting Miracles

A character may spend his whole Turn (like 6-10 seconds) to ask for a Miracle. The character must then roll a D% equal to or under his Attunement score plus his offering bonuses. If it succeeds, the Miracle will take effect.

.All bonuses from Offerings are reset if the Miracle works OR if it fails by rolling equal to or over 95

.A D% roll equal to or over 95 is ALWAYS a failure and possibly a Bane (if the gm states so).

.A failed roll that is under 95 do not cause offering bonuses to reset

Miracles

The exact type of Miracles that may be cast depends on the faith, but usually there are 4-8 effects that may be expected for each specific deity to bestow.

Example: Miracles of the Scarlet God

The Scarlet God is a being of Blood, Fire and Earth that lives in the Underground. He is also seen as a god of Justice and Law. Let’s work with that.

.Grant Blood - Heals 1d8 per cleric level at touch range. Bane: the cleric takes all the damage he intended to heal

.Bestow Fire - Causes a fire to start at touch. This fire is magical and spreads quickly, dealing 1d6 damage per round to anyone in contact with it. If a weapon is bestowed fire, it deals 1d6 damage per attack. This miracle lasts for a number of rounds equal to the cleric’s level. Bane: the cleric catches fire

.Divination - Be it with fire or stone, Divination allows 3 YES or NO questions to the Scarlet God. This roll must be made in secret by the GM, the character will almost always believe his answers are true (in case of success or bane). Bane: all answers are lies

.Imperative Word - Utters a powerful word of command. If the command given is directly harmful or dangerous, the target may roll a saving throw to avoid doing it. Bane: Caster is catatonic and may take no actions for 1d6 hours

Final Observations

If you wish to use a regular list of spells, feel free to do so, but consider that 1^st circle spells and 9^th circle spells will be cast with the same difficulty with this system unchanged. You may want to consider restricting access to higher level spells by character level or maybe by enforcing penalties to the D% rolls with higher level magics.

The preferable type of magic would be level-scaling effects, instead of the traditional Vancian spell levels. Wonder & Wickedness by Lost Pages (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145647/Wonder--Wickedness) is my favorite example.

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I still need to test and tweak with the system, it’s definitely not perfect right now.

I will make other (more complete) Offerings and Miracles tables for other Gods some other day