>1. Use the piety of the worshipper (Worship [God]) to generate the blessing
>augment, rather than the abilities of the liturgist (Use [Scripture]). I
>suggest this because then those of little faith don't get the rewards of
>deeper faith.
I don't know about this -- Westerners in general seem very "Medieval Catholic" to me, with the authority to bless deriving from higher human (and then divine) authority. (I realize that the rules would allow a defrocked liturgist to continue blessing people, but I doubt the society sees it that way.) Even the Hrestolic churches ascribe greater spiritual power to the person "rising through the ranks." I guess you could use piety as an bonus to the results or something -- the person with a Piety of 10W gets a bonus 3 higher than the average congregation member, or yu could average the Piety and use it to augment the Liturgist's skill, but this is getting into a lot of calculating for just a worship service.
In general, I imagine that, unless there is some overwhelming story reason, you want to work kind of generally. Father Benoit, the rural liturgist, has Use Abiding Book at 18W. The various bonuses and minuses work out that an off the cuff blessing service will use 18W (+3 bonus from the blessings), a regular holy day ceremony will use 3w2 (+4 bonus), and the occasional high holy day blessings will use 10w2 (+5 bonus). The Chief Liturgist at the big cathedral, on the other hand, has an effective score of 10W3 after all the bonuses, giving substantially greater rewards to his community (Which is one reason why the townspeople are richer and happier than the rural farmers. It's also a reason why people flee the farm to go to the city, and the lords work to keep them in the fields.) Now, I would also suggest that you go into this level of detail only if the Chief Liturgist and Father B are returning characters and regular blessings from them are a feature of the story -- otherwise, pick a bonus for the blessings and hand it out.
>2. When not important to the story, allow the multiple target penalty and
>the total support bonus to cancel for liturgical blessings only. (I suggest
>changing the multiple target penalty for liturgical blessings to match the
>negative of the total support bonus, which doesn't matter for point two,
>but matters for point three.)
Another possibility is that the multiple targets does affect things seriously, but sacred architecture cancels or ameliorates them. So the rural liturgist, blessing maybe a hundred people (even with a bonus from the church building) will be handing out +1 or +2 blessings, except on major holy days. The same liturgist, blessing a sick child in a special service, might give a higher bonus. Similarly, the Chief Liturgist at the Cathedral only provided a +1 or 2 blessing to the full congregation of a thousand or so worshippers -- he starts off with a much higher skill, but the multiple penalty effects are a lot greater. On the other hand, if a wealthy noble pays for a special service to bless his son before the tournament, the bonus (and fee) will be substantial.... (Someone else suggested something like this in this thread.)
An upshot of this would be that military orders, who are a lot more likely to need worship services in awkward places (battlefields, camps) without any kind of multiple target benefit, tend to have a lot higher liturgist to worshipper ratio, either to boost the unit's Chief Liturgist in a mass ceremony or to provide individual worship services for smaller groups.
Anyway, as Nick pointed out, it's probably best to keep this all as background thinking. If you are playing a wizardry-based game, you can calculate the usual modifiers for important liturgists and produce a range of skill levels (an therefore bonuses from blessings) depending on, say, holy days and likely congregation sizes. From that you could extrapolate any moderately weird events (e.g. a hurried blessing in the courtyard before you ride off to get reinforcements or find the Queen's Diamond Necklace). If a liturgist appears only occasionally, just adjust their skill to reflect the level of blessing you want them to give out.
Peter Larsen
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