Faith rods

From DWPriests
Jump to: navigation, search

The faith rods, maces, and flails are carriers for rituals allowing a player (priest or non-priest) to perform rituals they would otherwise not have at their disposition. The services that each item allows the player to request depends on which powers have been infused into them. Note that this system means that wizards, witches and any others not worshipping a god are unable to access the powers contained within the items. The rods need to be charged by a priest, then have to be consecrated to your God and charged in order to be of use for you. So when requesting a rod, please remember it's a VERY time consuming process!

Rods (includes batons/canes/maces) need to be held to charge or perform the ritual(s) in them. This requires significant faith.item.rod skills - research is limited at present(see (and contribute to!) Bonuses For Faith Rods), but it appears that the minimum requirement to guarantee reasonable success in holding a rod is a similar bonus in fa.it.ro as the bonus in the skill(s) required to perform the ritual. This will be much higher if you are using a cane/mace/rod with multiple rituals.

It costs 46gp to attempt to hold a rod.(More research needed)

Some good old references

The ancient faith rods and how they used to work.

The very first successful resurrect by a non-Pishite: LaoTzu resses Sined.

Early research into the gp used in charging new rods by Dathed.

New research

Latest figures are from Tony's Rod Research.

Bestowing

You will need deity points, the ritual, and the relevant faith skills to put a ritual on a rod. You will need to find an empty "slot", and bestow the ritual into that slot. You can only put one copy of each ritual into each rod, and when you bestow it you will attempt to perform it normally, but with a success resulting in that ritual becoming imbued. Since bestowing costs DP it cannot be done by excommunicated priests! The different types of rod have affinities that suit some ritual types more than others (see List of Rods). It is much harder to bestow a ritual into a rod if it has a poor affinity for it.

See the bestowal cost reference.

Scouring

If you have a faith rod with a certain ritual, but you want to get rid of the ritual, you have two options: ask a priest of a different god to re-consecrate the rod, or use your scour command. But beware, you might end up with less than you intended to!

Performing

Using "perform <ritual> on <target> [using|from] <rod> " you can perform a ritual from a rod instead of from your mind. It'll still cost gp. If it's more than a one-shot imbue (see below), it'll also cost deity points. If the rod has the ritual, then you will be able to perform as though you had it yourself. You'll still need to be able to actually succeed in performing it, which will be harder than performing the ritual from your mind.

Any follower or priest can perform rituals these ways. Since they use deity points, heretics are again excluded.

Charging up the rod

When you bestow a ritual into a rod, it can only be used once!! So if you perform the ritual, it will dissolve from the rod, leaving an empty slot. It can be made to be used multiple times by pouring guild points into the rod. You can do this by praying whilst holding the rod. If you're holding two rods, the gp invested will be split over them. If you hold beads at the same time, all the gp will charge the rod, and none will charge the beads. To be able to charge a rod, you will need to be a priest of the same deity as the rod (use see consecration!). When you charge the rod, you will find that priests can see whether the ritual is "imbued", "impressed" or "imprinted" into the rod.

This means:

  • imbued: ritual can only be used once
  • impressed: ritual can be used multiple times, but the ritual will disappear when you consecrate the rod to another deity
  • imprinted: ritual can be used multiple times and it will remain on the rod when reconsecrated

When charging a rod, priests will see these levels of charge:

  1. imbued, barely visible light
  2. imbued, faint light
  3. imbued, dull light
  4. imbued, pale light
  5. imbued, dim light
  6. imbued, moderate light
  7. imbued, softly pulsing light

"The <rod name> trembles momentarily as its bond with the ritual <ritual name> is strengthened."

  1. impressed, softly pulsing light
  2. impressed, brightly pulsing light
  3. impressed, bright light
  4. impressed, strong light
  5. impressed, brilliant light
  6. impressed, dazzling light
  7. impressed, radiant light

"The <rod name> throbs with power as its bond with the ritual <ritual name> is fastened tight."

  1. imprinted - no light level!

It was previously thought that the cost to charge was related to the cost of performing the ritual. Recent research has shown that the cost of bestowing the ritual is the key figure. See the bestowal cost reference for a list of rituals and the gp cost to bestow them.

To reach the impressed stage, on a baton with good affinity, takes around 260 times the bestowal gp cost of the ritual itself. To imprint a ritual takes around an additional 360 times the bestowal gp cost, for a total of around 620 times the bestowal gp cost. If you are trying to charge a rod that has a poor affinity for a ritual, it will cost even more gp to charge. Charging rituals on multiple slot rods also takes longer.

Charging up to and including "moderate light" takes around 32 times the bestowal gp per visible stage of charging. Charging beyond this point takes around 64 times the bestowal gp per visible stage of charging. The change from Imbued to Impressed takes place part way through the "softly pulsing light" stage.

Using rods with affinity for a different type of ritual can increase the gp cost of charging by up to 100%. Using a rod with neutral affinity can increase the gp cost of charging by up to 44%.

It has been observed that when charging a rod with multiple rituals and dependencies, no linked slot can proceed from imbued to impressed, or impressed to imprinted, until the slot that it depends on is also impressed or imprinted. This means that a small ritual in a linked slot may pause until the larger ritual in the slot it depends on catches up in terms of charging. Whether the smaller ritual continues to use prayer gp at this point is not known.

Transferring rods between gods

Only followers and priests of the rod's deity can use a rod to cast rituals. But you can consecrate a rod to change its deity, and allow other gods to use the rituals. However, the rituals must be really well-connected (imprinted) to the rod to survive the consecration, else they will leave the rod. When you reconsecrate a rod, all rituals drop to the "imbued" level!! So you have to recharge the rod before being able to use it multiple times!

When a rod changes deity, the new deity takes on the responsibility for paying for the deity point costs.

Linked slots

If you look at the rods, you'll see they have several slots in which you can put rituals. Some are dependent on others. You can only put a ritual in an empty slot which is not dependent on another empty slot. Rituals must be bestowed in descending order of bestowal cost. Each new ritual you add to a rod must have a bestowal cost less than or equal to the bestowal cost of the ritual in the linked slot. Bestowing a ritual on a rod will affect that rod's affinity.

If an imbued ritual is performed and leaves the rod, it'll empty all other slots dependent on it too.

Different rods available

There's a wide variety of rods available on the Disc. There are rods with one, two, three or even four slots. The four slot rods are each unique to a certain npc of a God. (List courtesy of Nightcrawler)

Spiked black pole - Kess of Sek
Blue lacquered staff - Vy of Fish
Speckled grey staff - Naefela of Gufnork
Silver flail - Althea of Pishe
Tasselled staff - Charisse of Gapp
Marble sceptre - Hermal of Sandelfon
Bronzed crook - Very Reverend Khepresh

I'll probably be unable to list them all here, but Nightcrawler was so kind to provide me with this list of rods.

You will see that some rods have colours. Those colours indicate their affinity to certain types of rituals.