“I don’t see any problems with that.”
Wanderer walks away.
(He doesn’t really have a reason to interfere so…)
“Alright.” Zelsh replied as he followed Wanderer.
Arius sees Wanderer walk away, and turns his head back to the guard.
“Would you mind if we (i.e., Arius, maybe Zelsh, and possibly Lionel if he followed us) are to aid you in the apprehension of these ne’er-do-wells?” Arius asks with a gentle tone.
“While I do not doubt that the Watch can catch 'em all, I have slight concerns about the person we believe to be their leader.”
“What kind of concerns?”
Wanderer will pause.
“Well, they are a leader, are they not? I’d imagine that anyone in those position would be stronger than the rest of the average members.”
“With that in mind, I hope I (at the very least) would be able to be of help; whether it be in aiding Watch guards with capturing other cult members, or with capturing the person we believe to be their leader.”
((Half-praying for Diplomacy check. Half-not because -1 modifier.))
Zelsh stopped too.
“I believe that they have been empowered with magical abilities.”
2 Likes
“Does the Watch have casters themselves to help handle this?”
Wanderer is attacking from an angle he knows they are weak on.
2 Likes
The book seems to be assuming that You, The Reader are personally considering training to seek divine empowerment (either as a cleric, inquisitor, or paladin), so some of the second-person pronouns might be a bit disconcerting given that you are not, in fact, doing that. According to the author, it’s a good idea to make sure you’re suited to divine empowerment before you seek out training, because if it turns out that you’re a bad fit, you might have wasted years of your life, depending on your church’s structures for lay-initiates and the skills you learned during your training. (The gods can empower people without training, but usually prefer not to, as those people tend to be less competent.) Generally speaking, you need to share at least some of the god’s areas of concern, and you need to not be doing anything the god is strongly opposed to; the book goes into quite a bit of detail about how to determine whether you are sufficiently aligned with a god, taking care to emphasize that not being sufficiently close to a god’s area of concerns is not intrinsically a failing, and it is better to be honest with yourself if you aren’t that into it.
Besides sharing the god’s areas of concern, those empowered by the gods must also have an alignment within one “step” of the god’s. For example, the Neutral God goddess Shelyn could have Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Good, or True Neutral clerics, but could not have a Lawful Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, or Evil cleric. For paladins, the requirements are even more stringent — they must be Lawful Good, and they Fall if they knowingly and willingly commit even a single Evil act after being chosen as a paladin, or if they break their sworn oaths. (This is followed by an extended digression wherein the author attempts to convince their audience that the vast majority of people, even very ethical ones, do occasionally do Evil things, such that most people should not become paladins.) (And a second digression wherein the author argues that paladins should never break their oaths, even if this seems to have short-term beneficial consequences, because every broken oath makes it harder for people in the future to rely on the idea that a paladin’s word is trustworthy.) If you aren’t sure what your alignment is, there’s a second-circle Pharasmin spell that can determine the alignments even of very weak individuals. (Extended digression about how, if you learn that you are Evil, it is in your self-interest to change that fact before you die.)
Gods can revoke their followers’ powers for egregious misconduct (digression into a couple of case studies), but generally prefer when possible to avoid choosing people whose powers they will need to revoke. This was easier before prophecy broke, but in the half-century since […apparently this book is several decades old, as prophecy has been broken for nearly a full century] it’s been much harder for them to reliably predict the future conduct of mortals.
In addition to shared concerns, the gods will also want to make sure you’re, like, generally competent. Of course, all forms of competence are at least somewhat important for all those empowered by the gods, but for clerics and inquisitors, it’s particularly important to be perceptive, with a good intuition about others, and possessed of good judgment (as this controls the strength of your spellcasting), while for paladins it’s important to have strong force of personality and be good at talking to others, and ideally to be martially skilled (though some paladins instead take on roles that benefit from it being known that there are some things you simply Will Not Do).
Even very weak clerics are spellcasters. They prepare spells each day, most commonly at dawn; they can choose to prepare different spells each day, and aren’t generally limited by needing to know specific spells (although they might not be able to prepare sufficiently obscure spells, if they’ve never heard that those spells exist). Novice clerics can (among other things) create water, heal injuries, and bless everyone within ten paces around with strength and resolve; experienced clerics who have grown in strength and power can cure diseases; powerful clerics can raise the dead; extremely powerful clerics can channel the power of their deity to directly work miracles.
Apart from spellcasting, they also have various other powers. First, the vast majority of clerics (though not literally all of them) can channel. Good clerics, and clerics of Good gods, can use that energy to heal everyone within six paces around them; Evil clerics, and clerics of Evil gods, can use that energy to harm everyone within six paces around them; Neutral clerics of Neutral gods can choose, but in the author’s opinion, healing channels are more useful and make it less likely that you’ll be mistaken for a cultist of an Evil god. (Digression where the author argues against some other author who had apparently argued in favor of it being legal to be a cleric of a Lawful Evil god.)
Depending on which aspects of their deity they most resonate with, clerics also get access to specific “domains”, which allow them to (a) prepare extra spells (sometimes including spells that clerics cannot normally prepare) and (b) get access to various abilities “too diverse to here catalogue.” (Digression for the author to summarize the ongoing debate about what factors determine which domains a cleric has access to, with perspectives including “it happens ~automatically based on which domains are closest to your soul” (the author’s perspective), “it’s determined by your god” (not the author’s perspective but they seem to respect it), and “it’s determined by your conscious or subconscious choice” (the author does not seem to agree with this hypothesis at all).)
In the author’s opinion, the powers of clerics are the most versatile, for which reason clerics can occupy a wide variety of roles within society — many Pharasmin clerics, for example, work as midwifes, rarely preach, and never use their powers in a single fight. With that being said, the author thinks that you should make certain you’re interested in working for decades in some sort of appropriate role, whether as a preacher, an adventurer, a person working a regular job that’s tied closely to the teachings of your deity, et cetera.
The book goes into similar levels of detail about the powers of inquisitors (tasked with rooting out corruption and false beliefs from their deity’s church, and hunting down enemies of their deity’s faith and teachings, granted various powers alongside their spellcasting to help them root out the truth) and of paladins (tasked with combatting Evil, given various powers to help them do this (primarily though not exclusively in combat)). (The author goes into an extended digression about the “lamentable misconception perpetuated by the ignorant” that paladins exclusively combat Evil through literal combat, rather than through persuading people to knock it off.) However, fortunately for Canary, the extended discussion of clerics comes before the extended discussion of inquisitors and paladins, so if she wants to she can just skip the inquisitors and paladins sections.
3 Likes
(sorry for accidental wallpost, feel free to skip it 
)
3 Likes
(yeah I’m good)
(…I’m kidding it’s great thank yous)
1 Like
“We hire casters when we have to. But most casters still go down to a few good blows with a sword!” He flexes his muscles.
(Sure, roll Diplomacy, with a +2 bonus from Wanderer Aiding you)
1 Like
1
((…the world is telling me to STFU, it seems.))
3 Likes
(…can Wanderer do a check?)
(I enjoyed reading it.)
1 Like