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.
