Talk:Implications of Magic

Prayer
Radiant Emerald prays on a near-constant basis, and as she is also our Zenith and the character who has the greatest interest in the workings of Yu-Shan, the praying niche is fairly well covered. However, it always helps to have others, and she'll probably try to convince you to make regular prayers with her regardless of whether or not you have the Performance rating to actually achieve anything with it. - Vic

What I'm getting at is that there is no "praying niche" - everyone prays all the time; or they suffer endless bad luck, disease, poor harvests, robbery, infertility and so on. Leaving the praying to the priest is not how it's done in Creation; while it's the priest's job to appease the gods, it's everyone's responsibility. Priests and shamans are tasked with the important rituals that keep society rolling along, while individuals pray for themselves, their families etc.

Anyway the point of this page is nothing to do with who prays; it's that minor miracles are common, accessible to anyone with a good Charisma + Performance, and accepted as part of the natural order of things - except by the Immaculate Order, which tries to restrict divine intervention to official prayers only. We should have our characters pray as enthusiastically as they make any other difficulty 5+ roll, and keep in mind that Resources allows marked reduction in difficulty.

Lesser versions of the effects on the article are probably fairly common; I'll be adding them as I find evidence for them. Lesser gods might readily give temporary divine specialities coupled with a compulsion to use them in the god's service. Or make the supplicant's actions count as supernatural/unnatural - whether in an attempt to treat disease, or exercise mental influence. Gifts of knowledge are common from activist gods. Direct intervention is not unheard-of, especially outside the Immaculate Order's sway. Many gods wander in physical form; even 'ineffective' prayer rolls can gain their attention, if not their favour.

It's true that particular characters get to make more effective prayers; Priests have not only the -1 difficulty but also receive a budget for sacrifices. Emerald may have a vested interest in Yu-Shan, but many of the gods addressed on a daily basis have local concerns like a particular field, infection, hamlet, business or whatever.

Celestial gods are the gods of abstract concepts and universals - they are invoked in war, commerce, healing and the like. Terrestrial gods are gods of particular regions and phenomena, and are therefore constantly relevant to inhabitants of their sphere of influence.

While we're on the subject of priests, most of Shen's 20 Followers are priests, as is Shen. I haven't worked out a pantheon for them, as most of it will probably only be relevant to their particular monastery. And, um, kicking ass. --McLeith 01:22, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

My point wasn't that you shouldn't pray, merely that it's not particularly necessary to make your character a specialized priest, since there's already one (probably two once Shen starts getting XP) in the party. Resources sacrifices are great, as are prayers which aren't going to actually work but will provide essence to the God in question. But generally you won't roll for a prayer unless it has a purpose, and making prayer rolls which count is probably more Emerald's domain. No sense in bogging down the game with endless prayer rolls to the god of the two metres of road between your house and the next house, just mention it as part of a stunt or whatever. Emerald will be following this principle a lot - she has been taught to pray for literally everything she does, but I won't be making prayer rolls for that unless I expect it to influence the story.

Also, check the Blessings in the last Chapter of Roll of Glorious Divinity --VictorW 01:34, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

Dreamscape
This is a particularly important charm in so far as its effect on the setting goes. It only costs 1 mote!! I think it is safe to assume that in Exalted, dreams are not the result of the subconscious mind, but rather the result of godly interference. The broad majority of dreams would be caused by random lesser gods (or some such) who just happen to be passing by and have a motivation of "spread happy dreams". More sophisticated dreams would be caused by the act of accidental prayer - if you fall asleep thinking in depth about how you are going to fight an awesome battle tomorrow, then chances are your dedication to his concept might lead some minor war god to go "hmm this guy deserves a dream about FIGHTIN ROUND THE WORLD". If you have a random nightmare, it is probably the result of some minor godly annoyance or trivial spiritual prankster. If you have recurring nightmares, it is because some god somewhere is PISSED at you and doesn't want you recovering willpower. In this case, you have two choices: Go and repent your ass off, or find a bigger god and get them to agree to send you happy prayers until the smaller god gets bored and gives up DDoSing your mind.

I would imagine the god of refreshing dreams is a very powerful god, since anyone who REALLY needs a good night's sleep is going to give some serious lip service to the dude. Not to mention the god of erotic dreams and hell, even for screwing with political rivals nothing does the trick quite like the God of Horrific Nightmares. Dreamscape is one of the cheapest and most commonly available ways a God can choose to bless or curse you, and I would imagine it is a SERIOUS economic good amongst the divinities. --VictorW 03:27, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

Reversio notes
Reverted to prior version because additions to the simple prayers section were not given in the source material as examples of simple prayers (ie, prayers requiring no degrees) - in fact they were very powerful! So were some of my pre-existing entries under simple prayers; these should be removed too.

The original intent of the page was to provide examples of what inhabitants of Creation might consider pretty normal. It could certainly be expanded to include the heights to which divine influence can reach, but that deserves a separate section with that specific intent. --McLeith 04:26, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

Many of the examples you've given are examples in which the God in question is breaking all kinds of heavenly mandates to develop worshippers via active intervention. Also, Exalted (excluding DBs) get special priveleges because they're Exalted, and so can expect reasonably sophisticated effects to trigger from simple prayers.

Anyway, I'll add a section!

--VictorW 04:51, October 30, 2009 (UTC)

Where can I find the section on divine sanctions?

As with all things sublime and excellent, it can be found in Compass of Celestial Directions: Yu Shan. The particular section starts on page 69. When developing worshippers through active intervention, you are generally going to be violating quite a few. As with all heavenly proceedings, corruption and laziness is incredibly important, and is pretty much the main reason any number of high ranking gods flout heaven's laws on a regular basis. Particular crimes you are likely to be committing: Violating the Heavenly Ruling Mandate (Severity 3; must be brought by a Celestial Exalt), Causing a Serious Disturbance (Severity 3), Violating the Heavenly Rights of some deity or another since there's probably already someone whose job you just stole (Severity 2-4) and in particular, Unlawfully ruling a nation or maintaining an army or fleet in Creation (Severity 5). Obviously most of these are heavily subjective and because of the massive backlog each Celestial Censor faces nobody is likely to press charges unless they hate you and have a large body of evidence against you. But I think it is good to assume that unless a deity is above Essence 6 and either seriously committed to flouting Heaven's laws (as with Siakal) or just really likes you they'll think twice about breaking proper protocol, even if only out of concern for appearances. --VictorW 20:08, October 30, 2009 (UTC)