Custom True Faith powers for review

[JayTee]

I like that quite a bit, although I'd make it a suppression effect rather than a block for magic/incite effects due to my bias against "all or nothing" powers, maybe reduce the numbers a bit to make it more balanced if that becomes the case.

Not sure I like the idea of "infinite" Conviction, though. Seems like it could be cheesed.

[Taran]

I like that quite a bit, although I'd make it a suppression effect rather than a block for magic/incite effects due to my bias against "all or nothing" powers,

I don't know what you mean by all or nothing.  A block would just replace your dodge.  So it would reduce how many shifts you get hit with.  I guess if they don't beat the block it's a "nothing" effect.  On the other hand, if you boost the threshold/suppression too much, most spells won't be worth casting.

Displacement is a power that already does this but it does it to ALL physical attacks.  It give a block of 3 + 2 for every level of Speed you have.  I think it's a -1 power.  This particular version doesn't work against all types of attacks, although, it would help against mental attacks.

Edit:  That said, I'm not a big fan of displacement, so it's o.k if you don't like it.  A permanent, always on, block without requiring an action seems a bit much.  A bonus to dodge the effects might be better.

Not sure I like the idea of "infinite" Conviction, though. Seems like it could be cheesed.

'
I'm not sure how it can be cheesed.  It is only considered infinite for the purpose of using Righteousness.  All that means is you always get the +1 when you pray.  I suppose, if you give yourself a REALLY low conviction and then take Righteousness, it might be a bit cheesy since you'd still get +1 to every skill when using potent prayer...but...then you've kind of screwed yourself with every other trapping of Righteousness. (like final hour.)

IMO, most people who have this are going to have maxed conviction anyways, so all it does is give you a +1 on skills that are the same level as your conviction.

[Sanctaphrax]

This thread has grown quite a bit, and I don't have the energy to critique everything.

JayTee, which Powers are you actually planning to use? I'm just gonna look at those ones.

[JayTee]

Going to try to hybridize the various versions in to one. There Lot of really cool ideas that I don't want to see go to waste.

Gift of Grace -2
Description: You are guided and protected by your faith.
Musts: Guide my Hand, Righteousness
Skills affected: varies
Effect: When facing a supernatural force who's rolls are being benefitted by a power, your faith will level the playing field. This power may be taken multiple times, with each repurchase increasing the benefits by 1 step.
Hope Rises: Supernatural creatures do not benefit from inhuman Strength or Speed when targeting or dodging you. Spells and supernatural attacks (such as incite effect) Have their power reduced by 2 shifts.
More Potent Prayer:Your conviction is considered your highest skill for the purposes of modifying skills when using potent prayer. When repurchasing this power, increase the bonus given by Righteousness by +1.
Smite: You gain +1 to Conviction when using the Final Hour trapping of Righteousness.

It's basically Taran's Gift of Grace, but modified modified so that the interactions with magic/incite effect are suppressions rather than blocks. I also effectively compressed it in to one a repurchasable power.

Also, I thought I would copy over Belial's Weight of Belief and Haru's Providence, as i'd love to see them added. 

Weight of Belief -1
Description: The force of your convictions shake the world.
Musts: The character must have taken Guide My Hand.
Skills affected: Conviction
Effect: As long as you can justify it through belief, you may employ Conviction to do Declarations as if it were a Knowledge and Perception skill. This doesn't so much reflect actual knowledge or perception as your belief that things will go as they should, and the favorable outcomes Providence arranges.

Providence -1
Description:
Your choices and beliefs have a profound impact, granting you favor above and beyond simple chance.
Musts: The character must have taken Guide my Hand and Holy Touch
Skills affected: Conviction
Effects:
Faith moves Mountains: Your faith is strong. When taking this power, you either get 2 free uses of "Faith Manages" or you may increase your Conviction by 1 when rolling for "Faith Manages". You may take this power multiple times, but the bonus to your Conviction may not exceed your original rating.

[Taran]

Gift of Grace -2
Description: You are guided and protected by your faith.
Musts: Guide my Hand, Righteousness
Skills affected: varies
Effect: When facing a supernatural force who's rolls are being benefitted by a power, your faith will level the playing field. This power may be taken multiple times, with each repurchase increasing the benefits by 1 step.
Hope Rises: Supernatural creatures do not benefit from inhuman Strength or Speed when targeting or dodging you. Spells and supernatural attacks (such as incite effect) Have their power reduced by 2 shifts.
More Potent Prayer:Your conviction is considered your highest skill for the purposes of modifying skills when using potent prayer. When repurchasing this power, increase the bonus given by Righteousness by +1.
Smite: You gain +1 to Conviction when using the Final Hour trapping of Righteousness.

It's basically Taran's Gift of Grace, but modified modified so that the interactions with magic/incite effect are suppressions rather than blocks. I also effectively compressed it in to one a repurchasable power.

I wouldn't lumped it all together.  It seems more confusing to me.  I did it the other way to make it simpler.  You buy the level you want and you know exactly what it does.  What does "1 step" really mean?  It can be confusing.

When I buy a Strength power, I choose which level I want and pay the refresh.

Suppression vs Block
Assuming you have all the upgrades and Bless this house, you'd have a 9 shift effect.

Suppression:
If you get hit with an accuracy 15, Power 10 attack (which is possible at -17 refresh), You still have to dodge the 15 accuracy.  When you get hit, though, the spell will only be weapon 1, since the power is reduced by 9 shifts.  So you'd get hit for 1 (weapon) stress + 15 minus your normal dodge in stress.

The problem with Incite effects is they don't have "power" to reduce.  They are strictly accuracy.  So what would you do?

Block
If you get hit by the same spell, your minimum dodge would be 9.  You'd still get hit by a weapon 10 hit + 6 (for the difference) for a total of 16 stress.

By using a Block, it affects Incite and spells the same way, making it less confusing.

More Potent Prayer:Your conviction is considered your highest skill for the purposes of modifying skills when using potent prayer. When repurchasing this power, increase the bonus given by Righteousness by +1.

You've made this ability completely useless for you.
If your skill pyramid is:

+6 Conviction; Athletics
+1-5  Other skills

Potent prayer would compliment every skill except athletics(which it already does without the power).  By stating that conviction acts as your highest skill, it still won't compliment athletics because it will still be the same as athletics. That was the point of saying it's infinite.  So that it will compliment every skill in your skill tree.  Your version still doesn't fix the "cheesiness" of people who leave their conviction at Fair hoping to still have it compliment everything.

If you don't want it to be infinite, then you should state that your skill is considered Legendary or Epic for the purposes of modifying.  There's already a stunt that lets discipline be considered Fantastic for the purposes of modifying.  And strength Powers say that Might ALWAYS provides a bonus, regardless of skill comparison.  This is what I was trying to get at.

Providence -1
Description:
Your choices and beliefs have a profound impact, granting you favor above and beyond simple chance.
Musts: The character must have taken Guide my Hand and Holy Touch
Skills affected: Conviction
Effects:
Faith moves Mountains: Your faith is strong. When taking this power, you either get 2 free uses of "Faith Manages" or you may increase your Conviction by 1 when rolling for "Faith Manages". You may take this power multiple times, but the bonus to your Conviction may not exceed your original rating.

It doesn't say how often 2 uses is.  Is it 2/session?

There are a lot of Faith Powers that need FP to activate.  Why don't you have this power give you 2 free activations of ANY faith power/session?  That way you can use it for potent prayer, or bypassing toughness etc...

It's a 1 refresh power that lets you save 2 fp's every session.  Sessions are pretty long, so I don't see this as over-powered.  Spending FP's on everything seems to be the biggest complaint with Faith Powers so this kind of 'fixes' it a bit.

[Sanctaphrax]

Gift of Grace -2
Description: You are guided and protected by your faith.
Musts: Guide my Hand, Righteousness
Skills affected: varies
Effect: When facing a supernatural force who's rolls are being benefitted by a power, your faith will level the playing field. This power may be taken multiple times, with each repurchase increasing the benefits by 1 step.
Hope Rises: Supernatural creatures do not benefit from inhuman Strength or Speed when targeting or dodging you. Spells and supernatural attacks (such as incite effect) Have their power reduced by 2 shifts.
More Potent Prayer:Your conviction is considered your highest skill for the purposes of modifying skills when using potent prayer. When repurchasing this power, increase the bonus given by Righteousness by +1.
Smite: You gain +1 to Conviction when using the Final Hour trapping of Righteousness.

More Potent Prayer's repurchase effect is too good. It's basically +1 to every non-Conviction skill most of the time.

And its first purchase effect is just weird. It's only really handy if your Conviction is unimpressive.

If you fold More Potent Prayer into Smite so this Power gives +1 to Conviction for Righteousness in general, I'll allow it. Even if the wording's a bit iffy.

Weight of Belief -1
Description: The force of your convictions shake the world.
Musts: The character must have taken Guide My Hand.
Skills affected: Conviction
Effect: As long as you can justify it through belief, you may employ Conviction to do Declarations as if it were a Knowledge and Perception skill. This doesn't so much reflect actual knowledge or perception as your belief that things will go as they should, and the favorable outcomes Providence arranges.

Approved.

Providence -1
Description:
Your choices and beliefs have a profound impact, granting you favor above and beyond simple chance.
Musts: The character must have taken Guide my Hand and Holy Touch
Skills affected: Conviction
Effects:
Faith moves Mountains: Your faith is strong. When taking this power, you either get 2 free uses of "Faith Manages" or you may increase your Conviction by 1 when rolling for "Faith Manages". You may take this power multiple times, but the bonus to your Conviction may not exceed your original rating.

Approved. Though if I was writing the Power I'd make each effect come from a separate Power for clarity's sake.

The uses are per session.

Using the free uses on other Faith Powers might or might not be too strong. Honestly not sure. We could give it a try.

[JayTee]

Rewrote Gift of Grace in accordance with Sanctaphrax's directions and went back to blocks thanks to Taran's infinite clarity. I had forgotten that defense rolls could work with blocks, and I am therefore an idiot.

Gift of Grace -2
Description: You are guided and protected by your faith.
Musts: Guide my Hand, Righteousness
Skills affected: varies
Effect: When facing a supernatural force who's rolls are being benefitted by a power, your faith will level the playing field. This power may be taken multiple times.
Hope Rises: Creatures do not benefit from Inhuman Strength or Speed when acting or reacting against you, and higher powers are reduced by 1. Spells and supernatural attacks (such as incite effect) face a 3-shift block, Increase the level of Speed/Strength powers affected by 1 and the strength of the block by 2 with each repurchase.
More Potent Prayer: When using Righteousness, your Conviction is considered to be at +1, and increases by a further +1 with each repurchase.

(I assume this is what you meant by folding them together)

Re: Weight of Belief - Awesome!

Re: Providence - Rewrote it so that the powers are separate. Also made it so that the free fate point applies to holy powers in general to try it out. If you feel it's too strong, we can move it back.

Providence -1
Description: Your choices and beliefs have a profound impact, granting you favor above and beyond simple chance.
Musts: The character must have taken Guide my Hand and Holy Touch
Skills affected: Conviction
Effects:
This power has two effects, and one may be chosen with each purchase (and subsequent repurchases thereafter)
Strength of Spirit: Your faith is strong. When taking this power, you get 2 free uses of your Faith powers that require a Fate Point per session.
Faith moves Mountains: Your Faith empowers you. When taking this power, you may increase your Conviction by 1 when rolling for "Faith Manages".

[Sanctaphrax]

That's not what I meant by separating the effects. That's still one Power. But that's not really important right now.

And yes, that is what I meant about the Righteousness bonus.

Two clarifications regarding Hope Rises: does it lessen levels of Speed/Strength higher than it can negate, and how high does the block go when you repurchase it? It starts at 3 shifts, then it goes to...3 shifts?

Anyway, I'm fine with either reducing the weapon rating of magical attacks or giving an automatic block. The block as it stands looks rather weak, though.

[JayTee]

Made a few typos/omissions by mistake. GoG is supposed to reduce the effectiveness of higher level Speed/Strength by 1, +1 for each repurchase. The block is supposed to start at 3, then to 5, then 7 with each repurchase. It's meant to be implied that it can get higher still if the game you find yourself in gets the refresh level up that much. Fixed those, though the wording might be a little clunky.

[Taran]

Why don't you make it like a building block power?

Here's my Attempt.  The numbers would have to be played with.

Gift of Grace [-See Below]
Description: You are guided and protected by your faith.
Musts: Guide my Hand, Righteousness
Skills affected: varies
Effect: When facing a supernatural force who's rolls are being benefitted by a power, you become the equalizer:

[-2]Inhuman Grace: 
The great Equalizer: Supernatural creatures do not benefit from inhuman Strength or Speed when targeting or dodging you.  If they have Supernatural or Mythic Speed/Str, these powers are down-graded by 1.
Spells and supernatural attacks(such as incite effect) face a 3-shift block.  If you have Bless This house, increase the block by +2.
More Potent Prayer:Your conviction is considered infinite for the purposes of modifying skills when using potent prayer.
Smite: You gain +1 to Conviction when using the Final Hour trapping of Righteousness.

[-4]Supernatural Grace: 
The great Equalizer: Supernatural creatures do not benefit from Supernatural Strength and Speed when targeting or dodging you.  If they have Mythic Speed/Str, these powers are down-graded by 2.
Spells and supernatural attacks face a 5-shift block.  If you have Bless This house, increase the block by +2.
More Potent Prayer:Your conviction is considered infinite for the purposes of modifying skills when using potent prayer.  Your prayers give an additional +1 (for a total of +2).
Smite: You gain +2 to Conviction when using the Final Hour trapping of Righteousness.

[-6]Mythic Grace: 
The great Equalizer: Supernatural creatures may not use Strength and speed powers against you.  Spells and supernatural attacks face a 7-shift block.  If you have Bless This house, increase the block by +2.
More Potent Prayer:Your conviction is considered infinite for the purposes of modifying skills when using potent prayer.  Your prayers give an additional +2 (for a total of +3).
Smite: You gain +3 to Conviction when using the Final Hour trapping of Righteousness.

**Certain attack would get past this.  Throwing a car at the person would still hurt like hell.  They wouldn't get the +6 weapon damage for, say, Mythic STR, but they'd still get the weapon damage of the thrown car.  Or could be pinned under said car with the appropriate maneuver since the power doesn't reduce lifting capacity.  It would reduce the bonus to grappling or, possibly, negate the bonus for modifying skills when using Might against said PC.

@sacta. Reposted the original power for your convenience.

Making it a straight bonus for righteousness makes sense. 

I still think it's smoother as separate powers.  Choose your level and it's all spelled out.

[Sanctaphrax]

Separate Powers would probably be clearer, but whatever. We have something usable.

Could you finalize your character now, JayTee?

[JayTee]

Done and done, I also modified the languages of GoG so that it was less clunky. Hope that helps.

[solbergb]

I tend to lean toward the earlier idea that you just skin SU powers with faith-based flavor.

For toughness powers, the catch is that it doesn't work against mortals using mundane effects, because free will. (a wizard zapping you with a spell doesn't satisfy the catch.  A wizard who sets the building you are in on fire won't satisfy the catch in the direct attack, but invoking the mundane "on fire" aspect of the building would.  A demon punching you doesn't satisfy the catch, a wizard punching you would, unless he's magically enhancing his punch somehow).

The character I had in mind was based on the prophet who wrestled an angel and won.  He'd be the emissary of  Uzziel ("Strength of God") and in addition to the usual righteous/holy touch stuff to satisfy catch of the faith-based baddies he had SU strength and SU toughness.  I used human form +1 bonus to simulate that he could only manifest this strength against supernatural opponents, or barriers (blocks/maneuvers) keeping him from such opponents.  There was some aspect support to keep the powers in line with the vision.  The toughness soaked supernatural strength and/or claws type abilities pretty well, in addition to various magical attacks, his holy powers and SU strength meant he could hurt nearly anything even if he didn't satisfy the catch, obviating the need for a power like those of the Sword.

You could do a fair bit of this with just plain stunts too..."+2 to athletics to dodge attacks from non-mortal, non-mundane sources".   Likewise "+1 to guns when shooting opponents with unnatural defenses (like toughness, inhuman speed, magical blocks)" covers quite a bit.

What I like about this approach is it's all about your choices, not the choices of the other guy.  I don't have to know if my enemy has SU speed to know what my bonuses are, I just know that I get to use my SU strength on that enemy in this scene.

Likewise you can skin a lot of offensive powers as faith based.  My white court virgin evangelist had the usual white court incite fear abilities/feed fear which he never used, but when he had his Holy Book (+1 artifact) handy, he could wave it and preach and do weaponized (weapon 4, range) fear effects on supernatural enemies.  (the holy book could also stop bullets heh...but only if it was in his shirt pocket.  He did Guide My Hand by flipping through it and reading the verse, then deciding what to do...or preaching from it if substituting a skill)

If I'm going to generate a new faith based power, it needs to do something fairly unique.  I'm a fan of Guide My Hand, for example, because it helps with fate point economy (the fate points you save showing up as needed are used for the conviction-based power at need), letting you spend fate points on cooler effects than just being where needed.     

Something along the lines of just happening to have the right resource to beat a catch "I was inspired to get a butane lighter at Walmart today" seems to fit the faith powers better than just brute force defeating all catches the way the Swords do (those are major artifacts - that ability should be uncommon).