Reworking the True Faith Powers

[Save_vs_DM]

After some extensive playing and GMing I've come to the conclusion that the True Faith powers have a few balance issues when compared to other powers available to players. I have some ideas myself, but I really want to get some more feedback here and try to discuss the problems as I see them and see if I can get some feedback. My sample size is pretty small and I'd appreciate a few more eyes on the issue.

First of all, a short analysis of the powers after running for 3 Believers/Champions of God and playing a CoG myself.

Bless This House
Quite frankly I think this power is nothing more than a speed bump along the way to the interesting powers. I appreciate the fact that Thresholds are powerful things, but quite frankly I can count the number of times this power has been used on one hand. The biggest problem I've run into over multiple groups is that PCs, by nature, often bring the fight to their enemies. You will rarely be on the defensive, and even when you are on the defensive the chances of having an existing threshold to work with is very low.

Basically this power puts most of the onus of usefulness on the GM. At some point you're going to have to send enemies at your players when they're at home to even make this power useful. Which I think isn't very fun and severely limiting.

Guide My Hand
This power is great and functions just as intended. Needing a Fate Point to use it hurts, but the ability is more than useful. Of all the powers, this one gets the most use.

Righteousness
The real gem of the powers, provided the player has the sense to use it early in the adventure. Again it takes a fate point to activate, but the benefits are great. Desperate Hour tends to lose usefulness the higher the refresh climbs, but those are the breaks.

Holy Touch
This is another power that's highly situational and relies on the GM to really make it useful. It's great if you happen to be a Fists guy, but otherwise the only real use comes when you want to talk someone down instead of fighting them. But even then it really only seems to work on Vampires and little else. It just really seems overpriced.


Solutions
Now that I've highlighted my problems, I have a few solutions I want to discuss.

Bless This House
Honestly, I think this should be a -0 refresh power in most games. I think the number of times it's going to come into play approach the "once in a blue moon or when the GM is feeling generous" situations. It's a great flavor power, but that's really all it is - flavor. In ever game I've played in this has been the power that's received the most complaints.

Holy Touch
Honestly, I think allowing this power to extend to weapons you wield would make it a lot more useful. I'm not sure if that would make it too powerful, though.

Finally, I have two new powers I'd like some feedback on.

Armor of Faith [-1]
Description: Your faith is a tangible and potent shield against the attacks of the supernatural, enabling you to blunt or even negate the attacks of your foes.
Musts: You must have taken Righteousness (below) in order to take this ability.
Skills Affected: Conviction.
Effects:
Armor of Faith. Your faith is a tangible force that protects you from harm. You can use Conviction to defend against physical attacks (page 200) and to perform Blocks (page 210) in physical combat.

Saintly Bearing [-2]
Description: Your faith is so strong that you can work minor miracles in the name of your Deity.
Musts: You must have taken Righteousness (below) in order to take this ability.
Skills Affected: Conviction.
Effects:
Blessing of Faith. Your are imbued with the power of faith and can be used to hearten your companions. You can use Conviction to perform maneuvers that grant minor blessings (as temporary aspects) upon your allies. All aspects granted with this power must be tied to your faith and may never be invoked to aid actions that are anathema to your faith.
Faith Healing. Your very touch can ease the wounds of your companions. You may use your Conviction skill to declare justification for your own or another character’s recovery from moderate or severe consequences of any type, even without access to proper facilities, given time to pray and (for another character) lay hands upon the character in question. In addition, you may spend a Fate Point to allow another character to heal from a Consequence as though it were one level lower in severity. So, the subject would recover from moderate consequences as though they were mild, etc. Consequences reduced below mild are always removed by the beginning of a subsequent scene.

[sinker]

Your solution to Bless this house seems fine to me as a houserule. Some people will get their refresh's worth with the original cost, but I can see that it could be less than useful for others. I have no idea what kind of an impact changing holy touch like that will have.

Armor of Faith [-1]
Description: Your faith is a tangible and potent shield against the attacks of the supernatural, enabling you to blunt or even negate the attacks of your foes.
Musts: You must have taken Righteousness (below) in order to take this ability.
Skills Affected: Conviction.
Effects:
Armor of Faith. Your faith is a tangible force that protects you from harm. You can use Conviction to defend against physical attacks (page 200) and to perform Blocks (page 210) in physical combat.

This is a bit weird to me. It doesn't seem quite powerful enough to be called a power but it's definitely more powerful than your everyday stunt. I don't really see any problems with it though.

Blessing of Faith. Your are imbued with the power of faith and can be used to hearten your companions. You can use Conviction to perform maneuvers that grant minor blessings (as temporary aspects) upon your allies. All aspects granted with this power must be tied to your faith and may never be invoked to aid actions that are anathema to your faith.

This needs some refinement. You don't discuss the time this may take, duration of aspects, or potential number of blessings. As such I could see this being easily abused. "We have a few hours till the fight? Ok, I can mumble a few words in a few seconds, I'll just bless the whole party a couple hundred times..."  Not what I figure the most common use of it will be, but when you're vague like this it leaves the door open.

Faith Healing. Your very touch can ease the wounds of your companions. You may use your Conviction skill to declare justification for your own or another character’s recovery from moderate or severe consequences of any type, even without access to proper facilities, given time to pray and (for another character) lay hands upon the character in question. In addition, you may spend a Fate Point to allow another character to heal from a Consequence as though it were one level lower in severity. So, the subject would recover from moderate consequences as though they were mild, etc. Consequences reduced below mild are always removed by the beginning of a subsequent scene.

I'm split on this. It's pretty much paying refresh to be able to grant another person temporary inhuman recovery at a reduced fate point cost (normally it'd be 2 fate points). There's a part of me that wants to dislike that, but I can't really see any actual problems with it.

[Haru]

There are 2 components to the faith powers I see as pretty important:
1) most of them require a fate point to activate
2) they are mostly there to even out the battlefield, not grant you tremendous power.

With that in mind, I did a power similar to your

Armor of Faith [-1]

The Lord is my shepherd [-1]
Description: As a fighter for the good cause, you are protected by your faith when facing dangers greater than yourself.
Musts: Holy Touch
I shall not waver: You may spend a fate point to grant you armor:2 for a scene. This armor can only reduce damage from supernatural sources (eliminating claws and strength powers for the most part, you know: the nasty stuff).
He restores my soul: If you need to take a mental consequence, you may take 1 more shift off the attack than the consequence is usually worth (for example a mild consequence would be worth 3 shifts).

This means, that if you have activated the armor and are attacked by a mortal goon, the armor does not apply. If you are attacked by a vampire with claws, the armor cancels out the claws. If you are attacked by a vampire with claws and inhuman strength, the armor would cancel one of them out and the attack would be weapon:2 instead of weapon:4. It is the counterpart to "all creatures are equal", instead of stripping away toughness, it strips away the effects of +stress powers.

Saintly Bearing [-2]

This I don't really like. The first part kind of mixes sorcery with faith powers, which does not really fit. And you can do all kinds of conviction maneuvers without this power, they will just not be "water to wine" maneuvers. The second one is the use of guide my hand to replace a scholarship first aid roll with conviction. Which can also be used for the "water to wine" effects above, if you like.

Holy Touch

Do not underestimate Holy Touch. It does not only have an aggressive component, but in the example for it in the book, there is a very powerful defensive way to use it. I would let someone do what you want with an upgrade power.

Holy Reach [-1]
Description: A fighter for everything that is good, it is not only your touch that is lethal to the creatures of the night, but by extension things you touch, especially your weapons.
Musts: Holy Touch
Holy weapon: When attacking with a non-ranged weapon, all benefits from holy touch may apply through that weapon.

Bless This House

Yes, this is probably the weakest of the pack and very situational. But you don't have to be subject to the GM's generosity. If you are creative, you can probably find a way to employ this.

As a whole, I think the faith powers are pretty good the way they are. Here and there they can use a little bit of polishing, but I like the general feel, and I think it is important to preserve that if you add or change powers.

[Sanctaphrax]

I agree completely with your assessment of Faith Powers. Righteousness is awesome, Guide My Hand is awesome, Bless This House is useless, and Holy Touch is situational.

I like your proposed change to Holy Touch.

I'd suggest removing Bless This House entirely. It works well as an Aspect.

Not a fan of Armour Of Faith. It's too stunt-like, and I don't think it really fits with my image of True Faith.

Saintly Bearing is not bad, but it runs into the problem of how to handle healing in DFRPG. I've wrestled with this before, and I couldn't get it quite right.

If you want to talk about healing in general and how healing powers should work, I'm all ears.

[Mr. Death]

Wasn't there another thread about this a couple months ago?

[Sanctaphrax]

There have been a few.

[sinker]

Saintly Bearing is not bad, but it runs into the problem of how to handle healing in DFRPG. I've wrestled with this before, and I couldn't get it quite right.

If you want to talk about healing in general and how healing powers should work, I'm all ears.

I'm actually digging this way. It's essentially gaining a discount on the temporary powers rules. Inhuman Recovery serves a couple of purposes outside of conflict. It allows the character to ignore the requirement of justification for healing consequences and it allows the character to heal consequences as if they were one step lower (also allow the character to ignore lack of sleep, but meh). Normally if one wanted supernatural healing one could spend 2 fate points to temporarily buy Recovery. This allows someone to buy it for 1 fate point.

[Lamech]

I personally would make a true faith power that's something like

Holy Symbol: A symbol of your faith is a powerful weapon against the forces of darkness. When presented against such a creature you can roll your conviction vs discipline as a block against such creatures. This prevents them from coming near to you or attacking you or anyone near you. In addition as a conviction maneuver at plus 2 you can pray, and create a scene aspect representing the power of your faith against such creates, such as GLOWING PENTACLE.
Potent Faith: The light of your faith burns even stronger allowing you to make a mental attack at conviction against all creatures of darkness in your zone. They may again defend with discipline.
Searing Faith: Your potent faith now has weapon 2 when attacking. 

This is based off incite emotion (thank Save vs GM for that idea). Although to fit the flavor of Dresden holding up the glowing pentacle 1) no ranged version 2) Its not directed at specific creatures. Instead of a holy laser, its more of a holy grenade.

[Save_vs_DM]

This is a bit weird to me. It doesn't seem quite powerful enough to be called a power but it's definitely more powerful than your everyday stunt. I don't really see any problems with it though.

I agree that it's probably just better to use Blessed Words and be done for it, but I thought that also allowing it as a physical defense was just good enough to push it toward a power.

This needs some refinement. You don't discuss the time this may take, duration of aspects, or potential number of blessings. As such I could see this being easily abused. "We have a few hours till the fight? Ok, I can mumble a few words in a few seconds, I'll just bless the whole party a couple hundred times..."  Not what I figure the most common use of it will be, but when you're vague like this it leaves the door open.

Okay, all very, very good points. It does need more refinement to avoid massive abuse. And once you have to start defining a power too much it might be a sign that it's not a well written or useful power.

I'm split on this. It's pretty much paying refresh to be able to grant another person temporary inhuman recovery at a reduced fate point cost (normally it'd be 2 fate points). There's a part of me that wants to dislike that, but I can't really see any actual problems with it.

I agree that it's pretty good and to be honest I'm not sure if it's balanced or even supported in the game setting. I might have even been overracting to perceived balanced issues here.

There are 2 components to the faith powers I see as pretty important:
1) most of them require a fate point to activate
2) they are mostly there to even out the battlefield, not grant you tremendous power.

Both of those are really excellent points. I may have lost sight of those goals when I designed the new powers. Thank you for bringing them to my attention.

With that in mind, I did a power similar to your
The Lord is my shepherd [-1]
Description: As a fighter for the good cause, you are protected by your faith when facing dangers greater than yourself.
Musts: Holy Touch
I shall not waver: You may spend a fate point to grant you armor:2 for a scene. This armor can only reduce damage from supernatural sources (eliminating claws and strength powers for the most part, you know: the nasty stuff).
He restores my soul: If you need to take a mental consequence, you may take 1 more shift off the attack than the consequence is usually worth (for example a mild consequence would be worth 3 shifts).

This is pretty good, and honestly I feel like "I Shall Not Waver" should have been part of something like Bless This House.

This I don't really like. The first part kind of mixes sorcery with faith powers, which does not really fit. And you can do all kinds of conviction maneuvers without this power, they will just not be "water to wine" maneuvers. The second one is the use of guide my hand to replace a scholarship first aid roll with conviction. Which can also be used for the "water to wine" effects above, if you like.

Do not underestimate Holy Touch. It does not only have an aggressive component, but in the example for it in the book, there is a very powerful defensive way to use it. I would let someone do what you want with an upgrade power.

It's not that I'm underestimating Holy Touch (I mean it can be massively useful), it's more that it's really only effective against certain opponents at certain times. To me it feels like it's useful about as often (or perhaps more so) than something like Aquatic, which begins relying on GM intervention to make it actually useful.

As a whole, I think the faith powers are pretty good the way they are. Here and there they can use a little bit of polishing, but I like the general feel, and I think it is important to preserve that if you add or change powers.

I really do love the general feel of the powers, or I wouldn't play characters based around them. The problem, in my opinion, is that they're not quite good enough to justify the cost. At least some of them.

I agree completely with your assessment of Faith Powers. Righteousness is awesome, Guide My Hand is awesome, Bless This House is useless, and Holy Touch is situational.

I like your proposed change to Holy Touch.

I'd suggest removing Bless This House entirely. It works well as an Aspect.

Not a fan of Armour Of Faith. It's too stunt-like, and I don't think it really fits with my image of True Faith.

Saintly Bearing is not bad, but it runs into the problem of how to handle healing in DFRPG. I've wrestled with this before, and I couldn't get it quite right.

If you want to talk about healing in general and how healing powers should work, I'm all ears.

I really don't want to completely remove Bless This House, as honestly I absolutely love the flavor and mechanics of it. All I want to do is make it just good enough to where a player doesn't feel punished for taking a power 90% of the time. I've honestly actually seen Aquatic get more use than Bless This House.

I think I honestly should cut Armor of Faith out and probably remove Saintly Bearing as well. As has been pointed out, I think they might be getting too far away from the core of the True Faith powers.

As for healing in the Dresden Files, I've never found it to be all that badly modeled. I like that it takes a while to recover, but in practice I've run into a few hitches. Namely in parties with mixed healing powers the recovery times begin to seriously punish some players more than others. If you're playing a true mortal in a party with a character that has Supernatural Recovery, chances are you might be spending entire sessions in the hospital while everyone else is out having fun. Which you can alleviate by spacing your adventures farther apart, but if that's the case then aren't you devaluing the Recovery powers?

Wasn't there another thread about this a couple months ago?

There have been a few.

Yes, I realize there have been multiple threads on this issue. I myself started another one of them. Rather then practicing thread necromancy on month's old threads I decided to start a new one. Mostly because I felt like this thread had a slightly different purpose.

And I did start a thread specifically about Bless This House earlier. I've felt that this power needs work for over a year now and tried to get help the first time. And a lot of people jumped in with some really helpful advice and I did what I could to follow their advice before changing the power. Quite frankly I've found that despite their suggestions the power still doesn't feel like something that's fun and useful.

I've come here asking for help because in our groups, with our play styles, these powers aren't pulling the weight that they should. I, as GM, have tried to make them useful as much as possible (and Holy Touch actually has pulled enough weight to make it mostly useful) but I found that I was changing my stories and ideas to make powers useful, not because they were the best for the story. And that's something that I'd like to avoid, so I came asking for help and answers in making these powers work best for us.

I'm actually digging this way. It's essentially gaining a discount on the temporary powers rules. Inhuman Recovery serves a couple of purposes outside of conflict. It allows the character to ignore the requirement of justification for healing consequences and it allows the character to heal consequences as if they were one step lower (also allow the character to ignore lack of sleep, but meh). Normally if one wanted supernatural healing one could spend 2 fate points to temporarily buy Recovery. This allows someone to buy it for 1 fate point.

Well, it's one fate point on a one for one use basis. And it specifically doesn't work for the person who actually has the powers. It's strictly for use on other people. All the same, I'm still not sure it really fits the theme.

I personally would make a true faith power that's something like

Holy Symbol: A symbol of your faith is a powerful weapon against the forces of darkness. When presented against such a creature you can roll your conviction vs discipline as a block against such creatures. This prevents them from coming near to you or attacking you or anyone near you. In addition as a conviction maneuver at plus 2 you can pray, and create a scene aspect representing the power of your faith against such creates, such as GLOWING PENTACLE.
Potent Faith: The light of your faith burns even stronger allowing you to make a mental attack at conviction against all creatures of darkness in your zone. They may again defend with discipline.
Searing Faith: Your potent faith now has weapon 2 when attacking. 

This is based off incite emotion (thank Save vs GM for that idea). Although to fit the flavor of Dresden holding up the glowing pentacle 1) no ranged version 2) Its not directed at specific creatures. Instead of a holy laser, its more of a holy grenade.

That's an interesting take on the power, but the way the rules and books are written I'm kind of thinking that some monsters might just have this as a catch instead of it being a power.

I still need to do more thinking, but wanted to address the answers so far. I'll try to post more of my thoughts below.

[Save_vs_DM]

First of all, I think I'm probably going to remove Saintly Bearing and Armor of Faith as new powers. While they might work all right, I think I'd rather focus on making sure that the two powers I have problems with are modified first. Once I have the four default powers working like I want them to, I might then consider making new powers.

First of all, I think Bless This House is in need of the most help. It just hasn't been useful in our games and I'd like to beef it up a little bit. I'm considering adding the following effect to the power:
Bless This Soul. You can focus your faith inward, warding yourself from the attacks of the unholy. For a fate point, you can grant yourself Armor:2 against the attacks of any creature offensive to your faith. This protection lasts for a scene.

I think that this is in keeping with the flavor of the True Faith powers and it's more or less the same effect you'd get from a threshold. The only difference is that by spending a fate point you can protect just yourself in an area without any threshold at all. Comments or thoughts?

Secondly, I have minor problems with Holy Touch. I've come to grips with the limited nature of the power, but I strongly dislike that it only extends to fists attacks. It limits the concepts you can play, especially if you're in a group that is playing cannon and isn't willing to hand out any of the Swords of the Cross. I'm thinking about adding the follow effect to the power.
Imbue Weapon. If you act in keeping with your calling, keeping a pure heart and selfless purpose, your touch can imbue and item with holy power. For a fate point, you may transfer the effects of Holy Touch to a single weapon you are currently wielding. If the weapon already deals stress on a hit, increase its weapon rating by 1 when dealing damage to creatures that would be offensive to your faith. If you are already wielding a holy weapon this effect provides no benefit, as you cannot make an item even holier.

I realize that the above should very likely be an extra to the power, but I'm honestly not too bothered by that. I think the only time the above effect is going to be used is by weapon users who don't already have an item of power that does the same thing. I think that charging an actual point of fresh is much too punishing, especially considering that for that same refresh you could take an item of power that provides the above benefit and a few others beside.

Do these strike people as a bit better? Or are they still too good?

[Silverblaze]

One question (posed as a series):

Does the armor: 2 from bless this soul stack?

(Does it stack with mundane armor?  Does it stack with other supernatural armor?  Does it simply add one if armor already exists?  Does it do nothing at all if the armor rating of the PC is already better than : 2?)

[Sanctaphrax]

I really don't want to completely remove Bless This House, as honestly I absolutely love the flavor and mechanics of it. All I want to do is make it just good enough to where a player doesn't feel punished for taking a power 90% of the time.

Fair enough.

Might I suggest changing the Threshold rules, then? As written, you can add to your home's threshold for free. So Bless This House has little point unless you're visiting other people.

If you don't want to do that, at least remove the Conviction-based limit on Bless This House.

As for healing in the Dresden Files, I've never found it to be all that badly modeled.

I really like the way that healing is modelled in this game.

But the canonical rules contain very little support for magical abilities that let you heal others. Which means that if you want such abilities, you need to make things up for yourself. And unfortunately, that's pretty hard.

Bless This Soul. You can focus your faith inward, warding yourself from the attacks of the unholy. For a fate point, you can grant yourself Armor:2 against the attacks of any creature offensive to your faith. This protection lasts for a scene.

I like this.

I worry, though, that the "offensive to your faith" clause might reward people for having incredibly intolerant faiths.

I don't think making the armour universal would break anything.

Also, it would be cool to make it possible to use this on other people. Protecting others is very in theme.

As for stacking, I suggest having it stack at half effect. Or maybe just raise it to armour 3 and have it not stack.

Imbue Weapon. If you act in keeping with your calling, keeping a pure heart and selfless purpose, your touch can imbue and item with holy power. For a fate point, you may transfer the effects of Holy Touch to a single weapon you are currently wielding. If the weapon already deals stress on a hit, increase its weapon rating by 1 when dealing damage to creatures that would be offensive to your faith. If you are already wielding a holy weapon this effect provides no benefit, as you cannot make an item even holier.

I like this less.

First of all, it costs a Fate Point. I don't think it should. +1 stress and satisfying Catches will break nothing.

Secondly, it should not be useless with a sacred weapon. True Faith should synergize with sacred weaponry, not work against it.

PS: What do you think of Holy Touch requiring Righteousness?

[Save_vs_DM]

One question (posed as a series):

Does the armor: 2 from bless this soul stack?

(Does it stack with mundane armor?  Does it stack with other supernatural armor?  Does it simply add one if armor already exists?  Does it do nothing at all if the armor rating of the PC is already better than : 2?)

I'm torn on this. Part of me wants to say yes, but supposedly these powers are already balanced, so I don't want it to be too good. Maybe it could add +1 to armor if you're already wearing something?

Might I suggest changing the Threshold rules, then? As written, you can add to your home's threshold for free. So Bless This House has little point unless you're visiting other people.

If you don't want to do that, at least remove the Conviction-based limit on Bless This House
I worry, though, that the "offensive to your faith" clause might reward people for having incredibly intolerant faiths.

I don't think making the armour universal would break anything.

Also, it would be cool to make it possible to use this on other people. Protecting others is very in theme.

As for stacking, I suggest having it stack at half effect. Or maybe just raise it to armour 3 and have it not stack.

I like this less.

First of all, it costs a Fate Point. I don't think it should. +1 stress and satisfying Catches will break nothing.

Secondly, it should not be useless with a sacred weapon. True Faith should synergize with sacred weaponry, not work against it.

PS: What do you think of Holy Touch requiring Righteousness?

Trying to hit things in order.

Honestly, I don't want to monkey with too many rules. The Threshold rules seem pretty good most of the time to me. Modifying one power seems easier to me.

As for stacking, see above. I'm thinking that if you're already wearing armor it increases it by one additional point. And instead of going "offensive to faith" I might instead limit to creatures that would be affected by a threshold. That's my intent with the power, basically giving a person a threshold.

As for charging a fate point for the Imbue Weapon, again I don't want to go too far in the other direction. Though it's nice to hear that I'm not going too wild. As for stacking with a holy item, I guess I could ditch that part easily enough.

As for Holy Touch requiring Righteousness, I think it fits. Which is also why I think the power should be a bit better.

[Sanctaphrax]

As for stacking, see above. I'm thinking that if you're already wearing armor it increases it by one additional point.

This sounds like a good idea to me.

And instead of going "offensive to faith" I might instead limit to creatures that would be affected by a threshold. That's my intent with the power, basically giving a person a threshold.

I don't think that's a good plan.

You see, there are no actual rules for what Thresholds affect.

And the effect is not so powerful that it needs a restriction.

As for charging a fate point for the Imbue Weapon, again I don't want to go too far in the other direction. Though it's nice to hear that I'm not going too wild.

Please, don't worry about that.

As you've written it, this Power still sucks for anyone who uses a weapon. Making it better for them will almost certainly not be a problem.

If you feel a restriction is necessary for flavour reasons, I suggest requiring characters to consecrate their weapons with a lengthy prayer. It's thematically appropriate and not terribly onerous.

As for stacking with a holy item, I guess I could ditch that part easily enough.

You should.

As written, wielding a holy sword deprives a holy warrior of one of his Powers. That's just backwards.

[Save_vs_DM]

All right, here are the power additions as they stand now.

Bless This House
Effects:
Bless This Soul. You can focus your faith inward, warding yourself from the attacks of the unholy. For a fate point, you can grant yourself Armor:2 against the physical attacks for a single scene. If you already posses armor from another source, you may instead increase the value of that armor by one. You may not use Bless This Soul and Bless This House at the same time.

Holy Touch
Effects:
Imbue Weapon. If you act in keeping with your calling, keeping a pure heart and selfless purpose, your touch can imbue a weapon with holy power. This process entails a short ritual appropriate to your faith and imbues a single weapon of your choice with the effects of your Holy Touch. If the weapon already deals stress on a hit, increase its weapon rating by 1 when dealing damage to creatures that would be offensive to your faith. You may only imbue a single weapon at a time with your Holy Touch and its effects stack with the powers of existing Items of Power (such as the Swords of the Cross).