Changes in taxation and liturgies have two effects:
An explicit one: Every change of ±1 gp/family/month gives a ±1 modifier to the morale ROLL next month.
An implicit one: changes in revenue and expenses affect income, which affects personal authority, which affects base morale, changes in which are immediately applied to current morale.
Example: My doman has an income of 6 gp/family/month, but it is in trouble from low morale. I immediately reduce the taxes to zero (-2 gp/f/mo), and increase liturgies (+4gp/f/mo) enough to bring my effective income for one month to zero. Next month, I will not only get +6 on the Morale Roll but, much more importantly, since my income for this month is now zero, my personal authority skyrockets to +4, which also affects current Morale… even before the Morale Roll is made.
Is this really how the system is meant to be used? Seems pretty easy to game.
Or is there some provision somewhere that says that Personal Authority is calculated using something like a “standard income” which isn’t exactly the current one?
I would recommend always calculating personal authority based on the default domain income rather than factoring in taxes, liturgies, etc. The RAW is simpler (and easier to spreadsheet out), but I think the gameplay incentives are better aligned when
You will note this lnis what happens naturally (with the exception of mega Class Is) following RAW as the levels rise — gradually your domain income is more and more composed of tribute, rather than personal domain income, so high or low liturgy spending doesn’t shift the total personal authority. In the meanwhile, doing as you suggest above actually has the consequence in the long term of degrading your normal domain morale if you ever go back (because when your morale shoots up to +4 to reflect base morale +4, it can’t go any higher due to random fluctuation, so any boosts are lost while poor rolls can still drop it down, and then if you go back your base and current morale will drop four points).