Minimum lifestyle: None
Characters with a religious bent might want to spend downtime in service to a temple, either by attending rites or by proselytizing in the community. Someone who undertakes this activity has a chance of winning the favor of the temple’s leaders.
Resources
Performing religious service requires access to, and often attendance at, a temple whose beliefs and ethos align with the character’s. If such a place is available, the activity takes at least one week of time but involves no gold expenditure beyond the lifestyle expense.
Resolution
At the end of the required time, the character chooses to make either an Intelligence (Religion) check or a Charisma (Persuasion) check. For each additional week spent in religious service:
Add a +1 to this check, up to a maximum of +5
There are no lifestyle bonuses/penalties applied toward religious service
The total of the check determines the results of service, as shown on the Religious Service table:
Religious Service table
Check Total | Result |
Natural 1 | Automatic complication. |
1-6 | Your efforts were unconvincing. Add 10% to the complication check. |
7-11 | No effect. Your efforts fail to make a lasting impression. |
12-21 | You earn one favor. |
22-31 | You earn two favors. |
32+ | The temple's deity visits you in a dream and grants you one divine intervention. |
A favor, in broad terms, is a promise of future assistance from a representative of the temple. It can be expended to ask the temple for help in dealing with a specific problem, for general political or social support, or to reduce the cost of cleric spellcasting by 50 percent. Earning a deity’s intervention can be in the form of an omen, a vision, or a minor miracle provided at a key moment. This latter sort of favor is expended by the DM, who also determines its nature.
Favors earned need not be expended immediately, but only a certain number can be stored up. A character can have a maximum number of unused favors equal to 1 plus the character’s Charisma modifier (minimum of one unused favor).
Complications
Temples can be labyrinths of political and social scheming. Even the best-intentioned sect can fall prone to rivalries. A character who serves a temple risks becoming embroiled in such struggles. Every week spent in religious service brings a 10 percent chance of a complication.
Once the downtime is resolved, roll a percentile die. You must beat the percent or suffer one complication. (For example: two weeks of religious service = 20%, must beat a 20.)
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