Is tithing bad?

[Sahleb]

RE the title: Yes, tithing is bad. It takes away stuff, and doesn't give anything back. Do you know how angry people get with governments when they pay taxes, and don't feel the government is spending it properly? It definitely makes the top five list of most common real-life reasons for revolution, when combined with periods of scarcity.

Why would anyone want to subject their players to that? I really don't get it.

It'd be something else if they got something out of it, but if the various religions are basically just protection rackets that go 'pay us money or we'll attack you!', then of course no-one thinks its a good idea.

Besides, even historically, the tithe only really applied cleanly to peasants who earned stuff at harvest and slaughter. In the towns, everyone lied about how much coin they had on hand, so most places, townships as a whole had the responsibility of paying a set amount of money, not a percentage, once or twice a year.

In short, if you're trying to make a percentage thing, that didn't even work out in real life.

By the same token, Loot isn't always money, so figuring out how much of your stuff a 5% value represents is annoying. Very few people like the aspects of d&d that resemble doing your taxes in real life, so any sort of houserule that makes them do that is going to annoy them.

Also, tithes were enforceable because the government had a big sodding army. Adventurers are notoriously good at killing stuff, and notoriously without respect for the sanctity of life.

These facts combined will lead to a fairly predictable scenario.