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Originally Posted by frogspawner
Hmmm... Status(Temple of Babisiya) versus Allegiance(Babisiya). A fine distinction - but interesting. The former convinces other members of the hierarchy to let you learn Sorcery spells from their grimoires, the latter lets you learn Magic spells from the goddess herself, perhaps?
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The distinction you make is quite correct, IMHO - Status measures a *social* construct, Allegiance measures a moral or supernatural one. But actually, how (and indeed if) to use Allegiance is what I'm brainstorming - and frankly having trouble with - at the moment. I'm very wary making the Divine Powers of a deity contingent upon a priest's Allegiance score - particularly as Allegiance as it stands is basically an optional rule. Currently I'm sticking with the BRP rules as written, and if I do utilise Allegiance it'll be for those additional PP / skill points / etc that the optional rules describe. What I *don't* want right now is to put an optional rule in such a central place.
Having said that, the scope for using Allegiance in this way is quite promising. For starters, you could say that only characters with 20+ allegiance to a deity can get divine powers from that deity - effectively defining an entry level for a priest, and stopping anyone else from rocking up to a Temple, paying their dues, and getting heaps of divine benefits. But it's this very bluntness and absolute-ness that makes me nervous of using Allegiance too widely.
I think it'd also be profitable to see Allegiance in terms of a skill - or indeed a Passion - and perhaps use it to augment other skills at appropriate junctures. "May Thor protect me!" kind of thing.
Then - and this is where I blow away the BRP rules completely and am floating free in "making it all up as I go along" territory - you could actually draw an analogy between Allegiance and the various Runic Affinities which the current HeroQuest and some of its previous, BRP-derived predecessors used. So, for example, Allegiance (Babisiya) actually measures a character's tie to the supernatural forces (Glorantha would call it a "Rune") of Darkness; naturally Babisiya the Goddess approves of this Allegiance, but also, when the Allegiance gets powerful enough (say, "Apotheosis" level in BRP - what's that, 100 points?), characters could start deriving / embodying / incarnating their own supernatural powers. And so you get a path appearing towards Herodom / Demigodhood / whatever.
Just brainstorming again, but hopefully you can see what I'm stabbing around trying to describe!
Cheers,
Sarah