Just read the divine power questions and I’m not sure why a cleric would bother.
If 50 congregants generate 10gp worth of power a week that gives you 40 or 50gp worth in a month, but the cost to maintain a congregation is 1gp per congregant per month so at best you end up with a wash. Then when you consider that divine power only accumulates while the cleric is actively researching it turns into a loss if you have to continue to maintain the congregation while not researching. On top of all that there is the high cost of recruiting a congregation in the first place. Is this correct? or have I missed something?
Also on the Domain Worship chart morale of -4 appears twice once at 0 divine power per 10 families and once at 9. Whats up with that?
Although congregants CAN be henchmen and hirelings that you have to pay to maintain, doing charitable acts earns you congretants too. The examples given are: casting spells for the peasants, etc. These peasants can become congretants: as stated in the rules per 1.000 gp of charitable acts you gain 1d10+CHA-bonus congretant. These are drawn from the populace and you do not have to pay for them (because they are NOT henchmen, hirelings, etc.)
As for the chart, i guess this is an error and this line should be eleminated.
The fourth paragraph on page 124 states that you pay per congregant.
The fourth paragraph on page 124 states that you pay per congregant.<<
Huh. I stand corrected…So rereading the section, it seems that the maintainance of congrgants from peasant families evens out with their “maintainance cost”. For this you will receive dinine power.
Gaining congregants from peasant families in the first place, however, is expense. I think this is intentional. If I have understood ACKS principles correctly, there is the underlying assumption that PCs should have a reason to spent their hard earned coin and I think that this would then fit these assumptions. Any deeper insights on this topic (alex?) ?
“If 50 congregants generate 10gp worth of power a week that gives you 40 or 50gp worth in a month, but the cost to maintain a congregation is 1gp per congregant per month so at best you end up with a wash. Then when you consider that divine power only accumulates while the cleric is actively researching it turns into a loss if you have to continue to maintain the congregation while not researching. On top of all that there is the high cost of recruiting a congregation in the first place. Is this correct? or have I missed something?”
I’m afraid I went all “ivory tower” in designing this rule and so I’d better explain this a bit!
- By default, ritual spells and magic items require monster parts, which aren’t necessarily easy to find. Divine power is a “universal” spell component. That makes 1gp of divine power worth considerably more than 1gp of any given component.
EXAMPLE: Assume the party must confront a powerful dragon, and needs a Potion of Dragon Control to do it. The Judge rules that a Potion of Dragon Control require the scales of a powerful dragon as its component. The alchemist is frustrated; if the party could kill a red dragon and get its scales, they wouldn’t need the damn potion. The trusty Cleric taps into the divine power of his congregation to solve this dilemma. - Building a divine congregation isn’t expected to be a separate expense that the cleric undertakes. It tends to occur naturally, during down time. For example, a Fighter in the party got hurt and requires 2 weeks of bed rest in town. The Cleric and his 2 Henchmen have time to kill; so the Cleric announces that he’ll heal the peasants each day and the Henchmen will go door to door as missionaries. He begins to accumulate congregants. In actual play, over 2 years of playtesting with different groups, we’ve found that ACKS adventures almost always end up staggered with roughly 2-3 weeks of in-game downtime between each adventure, to allow for bedrest, identifying magic items, hiring henchmen, and so on.
- Maintaining a divine congregation isn’t as expensive as it looks. Because if you don’t do it, the only result is that you lose 1d10 congregants per 1,000. Mathematically you’re losing perhaps 1% of the congregation per month. This rule is not intended to force poor Clerics to constantly spend their cash. It really only becomes relevant at large scale, at which time the Cleric can afford it. It also helps explain, in-game, why NPC temples run poor-houses, give alms, and otherwise “give back” to the community. As with mage’s dungeons, we gave a lot of thought to having game mechanics that explain the tropes of fantasy worlds.
- Once your campaign hits its stride, divine power will get used a lot more than you think it will, because savvy players will be engaged in continuous magical research. At about 6th-7th level, your adventurers might have several 5th level Cleric henchman that are capable of making scrolls and potions. During the downtime between adventures (2-3 weeks on average), the Cleric can do magical research and use his henchmen as assistants. Consider 1 Cleric with 1 henchmen with a sample of a potion of healing. They can create 2 potions of healing per week each for 3 weeks, yielding 12 potions. If they need “troll blood” for your potions, that becomes a high burden of monster parts. If they can use divine power, it’s much easier.
- While I can see why my writing suggests an alternative interpretation, peasant families commanded to worship are NOT congregants. The chart on p.125 simply indicates the direct divine power you extract from the peasants. You do NOT have to pay separately for their divine power. This is, of course, tremendously useful and a major reason why Clerics try to create theocratic domains and/or influence domain rulers.
I see, using divine power in place of exotic components makes sense.
Would I be correct in assuming that you could use the charitable castings to offset the cost of maintaining the congregation?
What about the Domain Morale chart though?
The Domain Morale chart is just an error. Disregard the bottom row. 1st edition woes and all that.
You could absolutely use charitable castings to offset the cost of maintaining the congregation.
I had a question to append to this thread…
In the example on proselytizing and expanding a congregation, it notes that the 4th level cleric can cast 2 1st level spells (each worth 25gp) and 1 2nd level spell (worth 150gp). The text states to use the Spell Availability by market. That chart values 1st level divine spells at 10gp each and 2nd level divine spells at 50gp.
Is the example in error?
Thanks,
-Michael
I’m guessing its intentional. At -3 they are barely doing what you tell them to. Certainly not faithful worship. -4 the entire domain has risen up to behead your ass.
I just ran into this as well. I’m assuming the Spell Availability by Market table is correct, but I’d love to know for sure!