Pretty much I think. There is one change that doesn't so much change theism as change the frame around theism, and that is common magic and "normal religions."
Basically, everyone has access to common magic, that functions much like spirit magic/battle magic from RQ3/2. Normal religions combine common magic with one or more of theism, animism, veneration.
Specialized religions are basically pure theism, animism, or veneration. The advantage of following a pure religion is two-fold. First of all, the hero point cost for improvements is (at least for theism) the same as in HW, i.e. 3 hero points to raise an affinity by 1 point. On the other hand, if you are in a normal religion, all costs are double that (6 hp for +1 on an affinity). Secondly, advanced levels (devotee, etc) require that you specialize.
The advantage of following a normal religion is that you get to choose five talents, such as "attack enemy spirit," "heal flesh," "gesture to ward off magic," "light," and "jump safely." (if these remind you of certain old spirit magic spells, well, you wouldn't be alone). These can only be used as augments, not as abilities in their own right. You don't have to list them or write them in your 100 words….you get them for being part of the normal religion. For Heortlings, these are considered to come from Flesh Man. They all start at a value of 17. They cost 2HP to improve by +1.
You can move from normal to specialized religion without difficulty, by giving up your common magic…I think. My preview didn't have chapters detailing that part, but it was implied.
In short, the theism rules as written in HW basically don't change, and you can just use them and assume that your heroes know they are bound for great things, and are already focused on the magic that will take them there. Or from what is written above you can fudge in normal religions, if that would make your players happier.
Aside from that there were a few other rule changes that you can easily adopt:
Automatic augments. Instead of rolling for augmenting yourself, you can just use 1/10 of the augmenting ability, with normal rounding (I think in Barbarian Adventures they truncated any fraction). This means that starting abilities of 17 give a +2 augment.
Cultural key word starts at 17 instead of 13. I'm not quite sure I like that one (farmers start off with combat scores as high as warriors, etc), but that is what they've done, at least in the draft.
Instead of edges, weapons and armor give bonuses of around half rounded up of what the old edge was.
Followers come in two flavors now: You can have one sidekick, who gets a keyword at 17 and three abilities at 13, and 15 points of improvements to spread around. You can have any number of regular followers, who get one key word at 17. Followers typical for your profession (a hunter helper for a hunter, a warrior or healer for a warrior, a guard for a merchant….) you get a relationship of 17 with, others you get a 13 with.
That should take you within spitting distance of HQ for a group of theists, I think.
I hope this helped.
--Bryan
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