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Thread: Is tithing bad?

  1. - Top - End - #61
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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vogie View Post
    Hardly. You think the only good advice is that the church can only self-defend or only attack the game-defined evil? You're thinking of "Lets make it exactly the same as it's always been".

    Let's step outside that box, methinks.

    A wonderful example would be from Fullmetal Alchemist, Father Cornello in the town of Liore/Reole (or, you know, the actual Spanish inquisition, or Salem Witch 'trials'). Your merry band of self-righteous murderhobos just wander in, thinking it's great that the people are happy and beer is cheap, so most of them pay the tithe for free things. The antitheists don't, and they happily let it go.

    Nightfall occurs, everyone's resting and hark! the antitheists are kidnapped! They're to be hanged/defenestrated/decapitated/burned like the steak for their crime of not tithing (or some other crime of your choice)

    Maybe the rest of the party wakes at the sound of the mob and have to save their own. Maybe the antitheists have to figure it out on their own. Maybe they are alone and perish... but it was only a nightmare (or a warning!).

    This is a wonderful pile of levers and opportunity for a story teller.
    Not tithing is not the same as being antitheistic.
    Nor is not tithing heretical. (Also ixnay on the real world religions-ay.)

    Simply put: such a violent reaction to the refusal to participate is strange, to say the least, and lacking versimilitude. They are passers-by, it is unreasonable to expect them to participate in the local tax. It's not like you have the tax man coming into the in and taxing the PCs that are just going through the town. There are and have been mentioned the town entry taxes that saw to travellers doing that. Spellcasting prices acting as the cleric-y equivalent of that make sense, with locals that tithe paying much less for spells.

    And Mr Cornetto wasn't what one's call a good or faithful priest. He was a con artist and simoniac. In dnd land he'd be an urpriest or a non divine caster (factotum or chameleon or UMD rogue/expert too) that runs the parish like a protection racket. "You pay or... something might happen; something bad"
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    Quote Originally Posted by daremetoidareyo View Post
    I am of the opinion that tithing is bad. It is no fun. Heck, it is anti-fun.

    "Great! we get all of this treasure, except that we don't."
    That's patently ridiculous. Who doesn't like tax season?

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    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.
    Last edited by Sahleb; 2016-03-31 at 03:16 PM.

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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    It depends on the setting and the assumptions. If, like most people around here, you assume inactive gods, church organizations based on modern religion, gods requiring a constant income of souls to survive, slavish adherence to the idea of WBL, modern regulated free market economics, free access to spellcasting, and other stuff... Then you get pages of arguments.

    For my setting I threw out those assumptions and started from scratch.
    1) Gods. The gods are modeled on the ancient Greek myths. Powerful, independent, egotistical, active. They don't care about most mortals. Heroes, temples, cities, and respect are what they care about. They screw with and intercede for heroes that they like. Temples are focal points for worship so the gods don't have to bother trying to deal with boring mortal trivia. If a god sponsors a city then everyone in there pays tribute to the god. It's a prestige thing, godly bragging rights. If people disrespect a god bad things happen. Mortals are bugs, gods have insecticide.
    2) Temples. One logical result of of 1 is that the gods don't care about organized religion. The mortals can organize or not, as long as the temple is well kept and the sacrifices and respect keep up the god is happy. So I can have temples that run like businesses, others are cults, and some can be a single rich priest. Whatever I, as DM, need can happen.
    3) Heroes. Gods have distinct personalities and care about heroes. Heroes are cool, funny, barganing chips, bragging rights, and a lot like cats chasing a laser pointer. Sometimes the hero gets a treat, sometimes they get saved from harm, sometimes they get the squirt bottle. Some gods want sacrifices of gold,, others want blood, or good deeds, or magic items, or zombies. Mechanically the character can dedicate themselves to a god. Please the god and get rewarded, annoy and get punished. As DM I keep track of piety points, they represent divine good will and can be used for positive benefits in game. If they go negative the god starts sending bad mojo down. It's possible for a character to rack up positive or negative piety with a god they don't follow but that's difficult to do outside of desecrating temples and usually doesn't have much effect.

    So tithing? Well some gods like sacrifices of money. Some temples run like businesses, others may run like charities. Sometimes a priest has something you want and needs some money. It depends on the characters and the circumstances.

    When I sat down to make my setting I chose what to have that would fit the setting, be easy to DM, be interesting for the game and story, and wouldn't force players to do things that they didn't want to. I also ditched the WBL idea and the default magic item pricing in favor of consistency and verisimilitude.

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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vogie View Post
    Hardly. You think the only good advice is that the church can only self-defend or only attack the game-defined evil? You're thinking of "Lets make it exactly the same as it's always been".

    Let's step outside that box, methinks.

    A wonderful example would be from Fullmetal Alchemist, Father Cornello in the town of Liore/Reole (or, you know, the actual Spanish inquisition, or Salem Witch 'trials'). Your merry band of self-righteous murderhobos just wander in, thinking it's great that the people are happy and beer is cheap, so most of them pay the tithe for free things. The antitheists don't, and they happily let it go.

    Nightfall occurs, everyone's resting and hark! the antitheists are kidnapped! They're to be hanged/defenestrated/decapitated/burned like the steak for their crime of not tithing (or some other crime of your choice)

    Maybe the rest of the party wakes at the sound of the mob and have to save their own. Maybe the antitheists have to figure it out on their own. Maybe they are alone and perish... but it was only a nightmare (or a warning!).

    This is a wonderful pile of levers and opportunity for a story teller.
    Do you want murderhobos? Because that's how you get murderhobos.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sahleb View Post
    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.
    You know what happens when the legal churches get murderhobo'd? The same thing that happens to everything else.
    Last edited by Coidzor; 2016-03-31 at 03:43 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    <Long post full of well though out stuff>
    That's fair. If you want to use tithes, this is a good way to do it. Slapping tithes onto a non-interventionist, multipantheon 'standard' d&d game is still not a good idea, though.

    It sounds like OP is modelling this after the big monotheistic historical religions. Those relied heavily on having a monopoly on your afterlife - if you don't pay up, you're literally tortured for eternity. Mostly.

    Of course, in D&D, no religion has that monopoly, so an entirely appropriate response to 'Come join my religion and pay us for your SalvationTM!' is 'Blow me.'

    Worst case scenario, your soul will just sort of wink out of existence after you die. No biggie.
    Last edited by Sahleb; 2016-03-31 at 04:39 PM.

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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Why would you tithe when you are in the buisness of saving the world (or just generally doing good deeds)?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    It depends on the setting and the assumptions. If, like most people around here, you assume inactive gods, church organizations based on modern religion, gods requiring a constant income of souls to survive, slavish adherence to the idea of WBL, modern regulated free market economics, free access to spellcasting, and other stuff... Then you get pages of arguments.
    Some of these are the base assumptions of the default setting. If you want to talk about different settings you have to outline the differences.

    The default is that the gods are -moderately- active in an indirect fashion. They -rarely- visit individuals amongst the faithful and sometimes send heralds to high clergy. They make their will known but try to avoid directly acting in the world because doing so leaves them vulnerable to attack by opposed gods and gods doing direct battle with one another woud ruin the wold they -all- need to generate mortal souls to fuel the great wheel.

    Church organizations vary drastically from one god to the next and even within sects of individual gods if their following is large enough. You get everything from authoritarian, dogma focused types like the followers of St Cuthbert to hippy, nature-loving, live and let live types like ehlonna's faithful to blood-thirsty reavers with nothing but the belief they're doing their god's will as they slaughter like the cults of erythnull. To presume that all churches behave similarly in any regard other than trying to spread their faith as best they're able is to err.

    The default setting doesn't require gods to have worshippers to live but they do require them to fuel their divine power (divine rank is determined by following by default) and to further their cause in the cosmos. Forgotten realms -does- require their gods to be worshipped to avoid going dormant or dying. Dragonlance gods divinity is completely unrelated to their following.

    WBL is part of the game's balancing mechanics. Those mechanics aren't exactly smoothly operable and bug free but they do exist and, if you're not a primary spellcaster, the lack of appropriate wealth becomes more and more of a burden as your level increases unless the DM ignores CR altogether (something often advised, unfortunately) and carefully cherry-picks foes for his PC's to face. On the other hand, drowning in gear, monty-haul style, has the reverse effect of putting characters way ahead of where their level suggests their power should be. I can't tell you how many threads I've seen that amount to "Player is way too weak/strong compared to spellcaster ally/enemies presented," and it turns out the problem is the DM having discarded WBL without examining its purpose first.

    Market forces don't care about laws. You can legislate methods of -trying- to control such forces and nudge them in a direction you want them to go but it's like trying to bottle a hurricane. Scarcity, supply, and demand will -always- interact in the ways they always have. In a pseudo-medieval setting, where the power of the various governments only extends as far as their agents can reach, the market forces are so overwhelmingly powerful that the best you can really hope for is to tax large-scale trade and that the black-market won't grow too powerful or restless to keep in the background.

    Spellcasting and magic item trade are presumed to be freely available because they're covered in the abstraction of economy that is presented by settlement size and GP limits rather than a detailed economy system. Maybe you're just going to honest merchants, maybe you're going to the black-market, maybe you're going to magic-mart; your one stop magic shopping center. It doesn't really matter because if the players want a thing, they'll find a way to get the thing and nothing short of DM fiat and/or an utter failure to understand economics will stop them; maybe not even the latter of those.

    Again, a DM is free to change any of these things but it'd be awfully helpful if they -say so- when asking for help in regards to such matters.
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    On the OP's topic:

    It's important to remember that there -is- a differene between tithing and taxation, even if the historic difference was largely academic rather than factual.

    A tax is drawn by the government to fund the government. It is not, even in theory, voluntary. If you are a citizen of the state, you owe the state some form of support that it -must- have in order to serve its supposed purpose of protecting the populace from outside aggression and internal criminal activity. A fair and just government will levy that as a monetary tax that is not so onerous as to harm the citizenry. A more tyrannical government will levy taxes to feed boondogles and conscript citizens into service. Even a loose, weak, voluntary government will -ask- for voluntary donations so that it can operate, though those aren't a proper tax.

    A tithe, on the other hand, is voluntary, by definition, and is intended to be a show of faith and virtue signal to others of your faith. It is not levied but requested because the church(es) need funding if they are to be influential beyond the simple (if potentially quite powerful) gratitude of their parish.

    Historically, the state was subserviant to religion and while a tithe was nominally voluntary, the faithful were expected to pay tithes to the church to such an extent that it was sometimes (arguably often) coerced during the medieval period.

    Because the states of a D&D world -aren't- typically beholden to a specific religion (outside of the odd theocracy), this important difference is important to remember.
    Last edited by Kelb_Panthera; 2016-03-31 at 04:43 PM.
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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera View Post
    Some of these are the base assumptions of the default setting. If you want to talk about different settings you have to outline the differences.
    Kelb man, you're awesome and I really respect you. But you can take a pass on the knee jerk balance/assumption rant. The stuff I posted was what directly related to the concept of tithing in my setting. The big tldr of it is that I looked at how the game worked and the assumptions behind the default setting, threw those out, and built something that worked better for me. That thing was gods with personalities and powers not domains and divine rank rules. A god/church division that allows for different competing sects and different interpretations. And a setup that rewards players for having their characters be as religious as the rest of the NPC population and not treat priests as spell vending machines. That's what was relevant and what I posted about, but it's not everything.

    The other stuff you talked about isn't an issue in my games, it's a good warning for newer GMs who want to start changing things though. The first thing to do when changing stuff up is to try and understand the principals and assumptions behind the current setup, what they reward and the emergent play that stems from them. Then figure out the difference in the results that you want. After that you start trying to change the assumptions and bases in ways that should lead to the results you want. That's what I've done, and I'm still finding small issues and fixing them but my game is closer to what I'd like it to be now.

    We can delve into what I consider to be the WBL fallacy and the magic item/economy issues in the basic setup if you want to. But I solved all that in my game and it's not related to the tithing thing.

    The tithing 'issue' can be solved very simply. First, reward it. Second, make sure the players know that WBL isn't at stake. Third, churches and priests can't be Vend-A-Heal Inc. fast spells joints with people saying "Would you like a Detect Poison with your Cure Critical Wounds today?"

    Tho ya' know... Vend-A-Heal could be an interesting twist in some games.

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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Kelb man, you're awesome and I really respect you. But you can take a pass on the knee jerk balance/assumption rant. The stuff I posted was what directly related to the concept of tithing in my setting. The big tldr of it is that I looked at how the game worked and the assumptions behind the default setting, threw those out, and built something that worked better for me. That thing was gods with personalities and powers not domains and divine rank rules. A god/church division that allows for different competing sects and different interpretations. And a setup that rewards players for having their characters be as religious as the rest of the NPC population and not treat priests as spell vending machines. That's what was relevant and what I posted about, but it's not everything.
    I get that you were talking about your own setting but this is a public forum. It's important that everyone be on the same page when discussing things. My -primary- concern was getting accross to whomever read my post, not just you, that it's important to keep that in mind and explicitly mention any departures from the common sources we're all presumably drawing from otherwise.

    There actually -is- lore regarding the deities available if you do a little looking around and there's very little about how churches are structured outside of a paragraph here and there for each god. There's -way- more than enough room for nuance, sectarianism, and internecene strife in the default religions. Signs can be misinterpreted and -direct- divine decree is exceedingly rare. I'm just not seeing where you're getting the idea that the gods are one dimensional or that their churches are cookie-cutter. I generally only assume that clergy of trade and commerce deities are mostly indiscriminate with selling their services because it makes sense for them. Other guardians of the faith can be as selective as the current plot requires and may or may not insist on service over cash for payment; this seemed so obvious a course to me that I didn't think to even mention it before now.

    The other stuff you talked about isn't an issue in my games, it's a good warning for newer GMs who want to start changing things though. The first thing to do when changing stuff up is to try and understand the principals and assumptions behind the current setup, what they reward and the emergent play that stems from them. Then figure out the difference in the results that you want. After that you start trying to change the assumptions and bases in ways that should lead to the results you want. That's what I've done, and I'm still finding small issues and fixing them but my game is closer to what I'd like it to be now.
    This is an excellent way to approach the system and I can certainly offer you my respect on this count.

    It always bugs me when DM's try to limit available wealth without putting forward a good explanation for -why- they're doing so and how they justify it in-game. That latter gets particularly irksome when they give me, "Such trade is outlawed," and think that's enough. The former downright pisses me off when it's, "I'm going for low magic," and they place no limits on spellcasters, as is -far- too often the case. I'm not suggesting you do these things. Just expressing a general thought.

    We can delve into what I consider to be the WBL fallacy and the magic item/economy issues in the basic setup if you want to. But I solved all that in my game and it's not related to the tithing thing.
    I -am- curious and it may well relate to the tithing issue in the OP's game.

    The tithing 'issue' can be solved very simply. First, reward it. Second, make sure the players know that WBL isn't at stake. Third, churches and priests can't be Vend-A-Heal Inc. fast spells joints with people saying "Would you like a Detect Poison with your Cure Critical Wounds today?"
    That feels a bit exaggerated but I can see where you're coming from. Some people want to treat magic as something special and they often feel that it cheapens magic if it's traded as a commodity much the same as wheat or pork-bellies. I, personally, disagree with that sentiment but I do understand that it's a thing.

    Tho ya' know... Vend-A-Heal could be an interesting twist in some games.
    Generally, if you don't have a cure-dispenser with you in the field, you can just relax in town for a few days to heal naturally. "Tithing" a church in exchange for spellcasting services is more for curse and disease removal or healing ability and level drain.
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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera View Post
    I get that you were talking about your own setting but this is a public forum. It's important that everyone be on the same page when discussing things. My -primary- concern was getting accross to whomever read my post, not just you, that it's important to keep that in mind and explicitly mention any departures from the common sources we're all presumably drawing from otherwise.
    Alright, cool. I just feel that the default dieties in the PH are presented as really boring. Since I don't have all the books, and none of the setting specific books, the PH stuff is like 90% of diety information outside of the divine rank mechanics and such. Plus most DMs don't put any emphasis on religion outside the temples and NPC clerics, so D&D religions tend (in play, in my area, in the groups I've experienced) to get treated like modern religions or background noise. Neither of those options fits well with active, miracle working, spell granting, gods. Heck, the default rules promote atheist clerics or clerics who worship the ideal of killing things and taking their stuff.

    So what I call the 'WBL fallacy' is pretty much as follows
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    If you're going with the default rules then the WBL table is a guideline on how much wealth the PCs ought to have at particular levels. That's fine. What everyone constantly whines and moans about are things like sundering enemy weapons, disjunction, rust monsters, etc. etc. The stuff that destroys gear. The complaint is two fold. First that martials cannot play the game without gear, especially magical gear at non-low levels. Second that not having piles of magic items makes the characters too weak to play because the monsters and encounters assume that they have the gear.

    The first bit is where I feel most of the fallacy lies. If the DM is going by WBL then anything sundered, disjoined, rusted, stolen, or tithed isn't part of your WBL. It's simply not wealth that you have for your character, and the DM will keep adding treasure untill you're at the necessary wealth level. If the DM is setting up the game with a static amount of lootable wealth and not caring if it's lost, never discovered, or given away then the DM isn't using WBL and needs to recognize that.

    I don't use WBL in my games, and I recognize that. I run a mix of guidelines to ensure that the characters have the gear they need. This includes quest lines that result in minor artifact weapons and armor after level 10 for the melee guys, divine boons as part of the piety system, NPC magic workers who can be comissioned to make stuff, opportunities to learn about foes and hazards so the party can prepare, and other things. I also limit the monsters that I use, this makes bookkeeping easier on me and lets me ensure that the PCs have access to the gear they need when they need it.


    The magic economy bit is a whole different rant. And it really is a personal rant.
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    In 3.5 D&D (in fact in all the WotC D&D versions) magic is technology. It's not like technology, it is technology. Anyone can use it, it's reliable, it's ubiquitous outside of lots of handwavium faux-medievalism, and it's essentially currency. I've been in games where the base unit of currency becomes +1 swords, rings, and amulets after 12th level. To me, in my opinion, it loses a great deal of the 'fantasy' in fantasy roleplaying.

    It's the combination of set prices and formulas, generic +1 +2 etc. items, and the magic-mart style shopping that make up the base 'economy' in the books. That just sucks the fantasy element out of game for me.

    I don't run a low wealth, or low magic game. What I run is more like a "wealth is not equal to strong magic items" plus "no boring magic items" plus "rare, powerful, and amazing magic" game.

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    Essentially outside of lower level expendable stuff like potions, lower level scrolls, low level wands, and other small expendable items the cost in money of making a magic item doubled, the time is increased five fold, and the selling price is whatever the market will bear (and the market will bear a lot). Additionally the feats to make cheaper and faster magic items were taken out behind the barn and shot. So making a real permanent magic item stopped being trivial.

    There are powerful and monopolizing guilds in my setting, just like there were historically, because powerful casters can enforce these sorts of things easily. They keep a constant flow of minor expendable items and services going (apprentice projects) and can enable the comissioning of powerful stuff. But there aren't 12th level wizards sitting around making +5 rings of jumping to sell in a market stall for 2500 gp, they have better things to do. There are also shady dealers and black markets, which are even more expensive than the guilds and risky to do business with. So when a +1 dagger takes 2300 gp and 15 days to make... nobody makes them. You just go buy a masterwork dagger and a few Oil of Magic Weapon potions and get the same effect for much less money.

    There are few or no caster aligned magic items in my games, the guilds don't sell power-ups to competition and guild mages don't go adventuring (generally, and especially not at high levels, better things to do). So the magic item distribution tends to look much more like the old AD&D stuff, lots of weapons and armor, some utility items, lots of potions and scrolls, and a limited number of high power semi- and demi-artifacts. Very little for the casters, they have to get by on their spells (and they tend to get by just fine).

    Now my house rules also buff mundane classes, put some limits on high powered caster classes, and give everyone several more skill points per level. But providing more magic items for mundanes, fewer for casters, strangling the magic-mart shopping style, and providing incentives for questing to get high powered magic had a pretty good effect for my game. Temples, guilds, and nobility had plenty of magic and kept it out of the commoners hands instead of having 2% of the entire population being able to cast Cure Light Wounds (seriously, you can math out the DMG population and wealth tables to see what the default really is). Characters either quest, adventure in the wilderness, or get into politics in order to secure magic items. People who are not clerics are interested in religion and will seek to adhere to the tenets of their faith.

    Best of all my group can and does trust that I don't run games where non-casters get left behind and they'll never utter the phrase "unload these fifteen +1 Rings of Protection so I can upgrade my armor another +1."

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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    Alright, cool. I just feel that the default dieties in the PH are presented as really boring. Since I don't have all the books, and none of the setting specific books, the PH stuff is like 90% of diety information outside of the divine rank mechanics and such. Plus most DMs don't put any emphasis on religion outside the temples and NPC clerics, so D&D religions tend (in play, in my area, in the groups I've experienced) to get treated like modern religions or background noise. Neither of those options fits well with active, miracle working, spell granting, gods. Heck, the default rules promote atheist clerics or clerics who worship the ideal of killing things and taking their stuff.
    I see now. Yeah, the PHB's little one paragraph blurbs don't really tell you much of anything useful about the gods. When you go digging into the actual books; Complete Divine, Deities and Demigods, Defenders of the Faith (really unique stuff there), Complete Champion, and all the Races of <X> ; a much clearer picture starts to form.

    The default rules don't necessarily promote non-deity clerics but they certainly don't do anything to encourage choosing a deity either. I handle this issue by simply enforcing the ex-cleric clause in the class' description; if you hit a crisis of faith or violate the tennets of the faith, you lose your spellcasting. If you don't have any clerics of your faith to cast atonement (you atheist or idealist, you ) then you can't get your spellcasting back until/unless you convert to the faith of a god who -does- have clerics that can cast atonement on your behalf. Greater flexibility in domain choices is mirrored by greater risk of permanently losing everything.

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    So what I call the 'WBL fallacy' is pretty much as follows: If you're going with the default rules then the WBL table is a guideline on how much wealth the PCs ought to have at particular levels. That's fine. What everyone constantly whines and moans about are things like sundering enemy weapons, disjunction, rust monsters, etc. etc. The stuff that destroys gear. The complaint is two fold. First that martials cannot play the game without gear, especially magical gear at non-low levels. Second that not having piles of magic items makes the characters too weak to play because the monsters and encounters assume that they have the gear.
    The loss of kit -does- get progressively more damning with each passing level but you're right, people only ever look at this one way; "The DM took ma stuff! Derp!" Because WBL is a rough guidline, taking away gear should be done with care but to never do so at all is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A good DM will take your stuff away either because you're too far ahead of the curve or as a -temporary- hurdle to be overcome. Yes, it sucks. It's -supposed- to suck. Sometimes bad stuff happens and you show your mettle by taking it in stride and overcoming.

    I blame the "everyone gets a trophy" culture that started when I was a kid. Thankfully, it never really took root in my area.

    The first bit is where I feel most of the fallacy lies. If the DM is going by WBL then anything sundered, disjoined, rusted, stolen, or tithed isn't part of your WBL. It's simply not wealth that you have for your character, and the DM will keep adding treasure untill you're at the necessary wealth level. If the DM is setting up the game with a static amount of lootable wealth and not caring if it's lost, never discovered, or given away then the DM isn't using WBL and needs to recognize that.
    I don't see how this relates to your previous statement but I do agree. Given what WBL is supposed to measure, I don't even track liquid assets or consumables (within reason on the latter). If it doesn't contribute directly to your ability to overcome encounters and/or will be gone after just one use, it -shouldn't- be assessed in measuring your power, IMO.

    Anyway, the average treasure generated during encounter planning yields an excess over what is needed to match WBL progression. This excess is presumed to be lost to raising the dead, buying consumables, and (wait for it) replacing stolen or destroyed kit. You're absolutely right that someone who doesn't account for this -isn't- playing by RAW and isn't using WBL correctly.

    I don't use WBL in my games, and I recognize that. I run a mix of guidelines to ensure that the characters have the gear they need. This includes quest lines that result in minor artifact weapons and armor after level 10 for the melee guys, divine boons as part of the piety system, NPC magic workers who can be comissioned to make stuff, opportunities to learn about foes and hazards so the party can prepare, and other things. I also limit the monsters that I use, this makes bookkeeping easier on me and lets me ensure that the PCs have access to the gear they need when they need it.
    If it works for you and your group, more power to ya. I stick pretty close to what's printed, myself. I was able to come up with what I consider reasonable explanations for the abstractions and only rarely dig into those details for a plot-hook or challenge for the PC's.


    The magic economy bit is a whole different rant. And it really is a personal rant.
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    In 3.5 D&D (in fact in all the WotC D&D versions) magic is technology. It's not like technology, it is technology. Anyone can use it, it's reliable, it's ubiquitous outside of lots of handwavium faux-medievalism, and it's essentially currency. I've been in games where the base unit of currency becomes +1 swords, rings, and amulets after 12th level. To me, in my opinion, it loses a great deal of the 'fantasy' in fantasy roleplaying.

    It's the combination of set prices and formulas, generic +1 +2 etc. items, and the magic-mart style shopping that make up the base 'economy' in the books. That just sucks the fantasy element out of game for me.

    I don't run a low wealth, or low magic game. What I run is more like a "wealth is not equal to strong magic items" plus "no boring magic items" plus "rare, powerful, and amazing magic" game.

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    Essentially outside of lower level expendable stuff like potions, lower level scrolls, low level wands, and other small expendable items the cost in money of making a magic item doubled, the time is increased five fold, and the selling price is whatever the market will bear (and the market will bear a lot). Additionally the feats to make cheaper and faster magic items were taken out behind the barn and shot. So making a real permanent magic item stopped being trivial.

    There are powerful and monopolizing guilds in my setting, just like there were historically, because powerful casters can enforce these sorts of things easily. They keep a constant flow of minor expendable items and services going (apprentice projects) and can enable the comissioning of powerful stuff. But there aren't 12th level wizards sitting around making +5 rings of jumping to sell in a market stall for 2500 gp, they have better things to do. There are also shady dealers and black markets, which are even more expensive than the guilds and risky to do business with. So when a +1 dagger takes 2300 gp and 15 days to make... nobody makes them. You just go buy a masterwork dagger and a few Oil of Magic Weapon potions and get the same effect for much less money.

    There are few or no caster aligned magic items in my games, the guilds don't sell power-ups to competition and guild mages don't go adventuring (generally, and especially not at high levels, better things to do). So the magic item distribution tends to look much more like the old AD&D stuff, lots of weapons and armor, some utility items, lots of potions and scrolls, and a limited number of high power semi- and demi-artifacts. Very little for the casters, they have to get by on their spells (and they tend to get by just fine).

    Now my house rules also buff mundane classes, put some limits on high powered caster classes, and give everyone several more skill points per level. But providing more magic items for mundanes, fewer for casters, strangling the magic-mart shopping style, and providing incentives for questing to get high powered magic had a pretty good effect for my game. Temples, guilds, and nobility had plenty of magic and kept it out of the commoners hands instead of having 2% of the entire population being able to cast Cure Light Wounds (seriously, you can math out the DMG population and wealth tables to see what the default really is). Characters either quest, adventure in the wilderness, or get into politics in order to secure magic items. People who are not clerics are interested in religion and will seek to adhere to the tenets of their faith.

    Best of all my group can and does trust that I don't run games where non-casters get left behind and they'll never utter the phrase "unload these fifteen +1 Rings of Protection so I can upgrade my armor another +1."
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    This is just a taste thing. I have no problem with magic as technology (colloquially) because it -is- technology (formally). It's no different from language or the scientific method or crop rotation in that regard.

    It only makes sense that if magic behaves in ways that are recognizable and predictable, as is clearly the case when you consider how arcane writings and the spellcraft skill work, then it's only natural to approach it with the scientific method to put it to its greatest potential uses. That this comes in the form of spellcasters and magic items is simply a quirk of -how- magic works.

    If I want things to be mysterious, then I'll run an adventure in a retooling of my setting designed to make it more mysterious in the same way I would with making sci-fi tech mysterious; set the 'modern' culture to one -way- behind the culture that produces these things, read: magic works largely the same but available items and classes are restricted as emerging techniques that aren't wide-spread enough to be freely available yet. Spellcraft DC's get a significant DC hike and players may not freely play PC class spellcasters, e.g. no bard, sorcerer, wizard, cleric, or druid; at least at first. Because I'm a gamist, I largely won't use NPC's of spellcasting PC classes either except -maybe- as a BBEG that has discovered the new technique in a very limited fashion (heavily thematic rather than optimized) or as a mentor to a PC, again, in a very limited fashion.
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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Long story short: Yes, tithing is bad unless you are using tithing as a purely RP experience. Perhaps assuming that the actual GP PCs have on hand is their 'spendable' allowance and they tithe out of funds not on their character sheet.

    But as it stands you seem frustrated that your players don't want to just make 10% of their WBL disappear. WBL is an integral part of the already patchy/shoddy balance of this game, ESPECIALLY if your players are being well-behaved and not trying to abuse the WBL. Then you're punishing them for not all rolling Artificers, and in order to counteract your punishment they might begin to try and find ways to gain more gold in ways you can't prevent without Rule 0 and pissing off all your players.

    You may want them to tithe, but remember that the point is that the players are having a fun experience and you get to tell a story to enable and enhance that. That's D&D. If you want to introduce something for personal reasons that makes the players unhappy, then what you want to introduce is harming the entire point of the game being played: Enjoyment. The game can have its ups and downs in regards to that, but at the end of the session people want to have had fun at least at some point.

    Just taking away their hard-won loot for no reason is a mean thing to do, and if you don't find a way to make it up to them in a way they are happy with, you will have unhappy and potentially uncooperative players. It's not just us you need to talk to, you need to bring this up to them and ask what THEY want. You may be the DM but the screen has to come down sometime - not all decisions can be made out of sight of the party, since you can't read the players' minds.

    Just remember, everyone needs to be enjoying themselves at least most of the time. If they aren't, do what you need to in order to at least try to fix it. If that means adding something or not adding something, then that's what it takes. They've entrusted their table time to you, reward them with challenges and vibrant RP, but don't harm one of the few things they have explicit control over. The more you encroach in that area the more non-interactive the game can feel.

    That's about all the advice that comes to mind for the moment. Hope you get this fixed and have a good time with your group!
    Last edited by Dimmet; 2016-04-02 at 08:40 AM.

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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Dimmet View Post

    But as it stands you seem frustrated that your players don't want to just make 10% of their WBL disappear.
    I just want to mention that even if they tithe, or even if they triple-tithe, I would make sure that their WBL stays normal. I will not, under any circumstances, tell this to them, so what you're saying stands.

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    d20 Re: Is tithing bad?

    The last time I played a paladin I had my character tithe, and if I ever do so again I was even thinking of following the paladin guidelines that restricted equipment… just as a bit of self challenge, I suppose.

    That's the only example I can think of, though; my last cleric was attempting to start her own church and you can't really tithe to yourself. If anything most of the groups I played with hardly roleplayed so the concept never presented itself.
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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jon_Dahl View Post
    I just want to mention that even if they tithe, or even if they triple-tithe, I would make sure that their WBL stays normal. I will not, under any circumstances, tell this to them, so what you're saying stands.
    We´re back to what I wrote earlier: If you disconnect in-game happenings and underlying mechanics (like the tithing not touching WBL in any way), then all is good and well. Then you have a fluff things done for fluff reasons.

    But: If you don´t tell your players there is a disconnect here, how should they know and act accordingly?

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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    I think forcing tithing is a dangerous thing, however if we remember, D&D is a cooperative action of the players and the DM telling a story together. There are all kinds of characters, and players need to be free to express their character's needs, desires, etc.

    Religion generally is a good way to express conflict and relationship between the PCs and something greater than themselves. For some characters religion is a sore spot - but other characters will want to express the piety of their character. The job of the DM is to foster an environment for them to do that in a creative and fun way.

    First I want to deal with it as conflict. Some of your players have personal reasons to dislike religion. As a DM, you don't have to get involved in those reasons, but it can be fun to give your players an outlet for their frustrations. For this reason, it is (sometimes) a good idea to create a campaign world that features some of the classic sins of the clergy. This is not to necessarily force anything on your players, but it is effective to give some players a foil that they have personal reasons to hate. Who doesn't like the story of a man against the gods? I can think of a few ideas just off the top of my head here:

    A corrupt monastery that gives special treatment to monks that have connections to money and power. All the other monks get crappy cells to sleep in on straw mats. The favored ones get high positions, prized morsels for supper, a giant room with a hot tub, an awesome view of the pool, and a secret door to sneak chicks in with. This of course creates conflict in a situation that is supposed to be based on personal asceticism and piety. In the real world this practice was called Simony. I have no idea why, but that's what it was called. A pious character has reason to hate these corrupt clergy because they give good clergy a bad name. A cynical character has reasons to hate these sorts of monks because they see the trouble that it causes for everyone else.

    If you've read the Safehold series by David Weber, there's a situation where the established church exists for the sake of its own benefit and lets all the peasantry starve and freeze out in the cold. It can certainly be very cool to allow your characters an opportunity to play the part of a reformer.

    I remember in Baldur's Gate II, there's a quest chain where your character breaks in to one of the temples in Athkatla and steals a precious holy symbol necklace thing... while this is a very simple gather quest, it's a good way to express some of your characters' opinions on religion.

    Now let's deal with relationship:

    Let's go back to BG for a minute. One of the obvious ways to express piety is by taking your character to a temple and making a donation. Depending on how much you donate in BG your reputation stat will change. You can also change reputation through actions as well. That reputation stat will effect the way that people treat you. Shop keepers make good deals to upstanding members of society (Think "I'm Commander Shepherd and this is my favorite store on the Citadel"). Guards will treat your characters with more or less suspicion. It effects the way that certain NPCs behave with the main character. If you have a low score Khalid, Jaheira and Minsc will stay with the party, but that causes headaches for Xzar and Montaron.

    In one of the previous campaigns that I was a player in, there was a good representation from several different world views. The DM had put together an interesting pantheon, and so it became something of a contest to prove which character was the most pious. There was of course tithing as a possibility, but there are other ways to show piety. Several of the PCs served a god of mischief and chaos, so it was - again - something of a game to prove who could do the silliest things to prove their faithfulness to their deity.

    Frequently,(in this campaign from the previous paragraph) there was a thing that characters would do called a "God Call." This would essentially request a miracle for a deity to provide. Take out a d100 and on a roll of 1, your request is granted. This chance would be effected if your character was in the good graces of the deity, and also if the request aligned with the deity's interests. This was monitored a little, so you couldn't cheat the system by just making a series of god calls all day. You might get one or two god calls a week tops, and the chance could dip below 1%.

    In addition, to God calls, if a character remained in the good graces of the deity, as they gained levels they would be given "Granted Powers." In effect this was not a game breaking thing, but my fighter that followed a healing deity eventually got the ability to cast cure light wounds once per day. This was extremely handy - and again, not game breaking. These granted powers would be based on the character and portfolio of the deity, and frequently we would meet and fight villains that had received granted powers from their deities. This gave the game a certain flavor that I feel wouldn't have been there if it had been omitted.





    As a DM, I want to create a world that feels believable and exciting. So, one of the considerations is how the church(es) effect(s) the world at large. The deities need to feel real, and their relationships and conflicts with the PCs need to be meaningful. Maybe the church owns bishoprics and can enforce tolls and tithes in that domain as if it were a baron or a count. Maybe the church funds an order of clerics or paladins. Maybe the church is a source of knowledge and funds a cadre of astronomers or wizards. Maybe the church is evil and subsidizes the kidnapping of travelers for sacrifice. Maybe the church sells indulgences and guilts people into paying extortionate fees. Any and all of these could be the means for you as the DM to hand your players an adventure.

    The only other piece of advice that I have here is to be sensitive to the feelings of your players. Some games are going to have to find adventure some other way - and that's fine. The trick is to find out if this is a good method to introduce FUN into your game.
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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jon_Dahl View Post
    I will not, under any circumstances, tell this to them
    ... Why? Or did I miss the answer to this upthread?
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    Default Re: Is tithing bad?

    Quote Originally Posted by Deadline View Post
    ... Why? Or did I miss the answer to this upthread?
    This is a fair question and I, too, am curious.
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