> In practice therefore you can only become a devotee if that subcult
> is also your occupation as the overlap keeps the total below 100%.
> I don't believe that you can manage total overlap though, I'd expect
> a devotees total of job and devotion to be around 80%. So in modern
> terms a devotee is the person who works late every night, takes
> work home at the weekend and checks in with the office when on
> holiday.
>
> The other issue is relationships - if 80% of your time is spent on
> your job and god that doesn't leave much for your spouse and children.
> That's why most people don't become devotees even for the benefits.
> Disciples are even worse, the 90% means the clan will not get much
> mundane work out of them and is supporting them for their magic.
I disagree with the 80% figure for devotees - if only because I want them to be playable. Making the only theists who can use non-penalized, active, independently improvable magic into workaholic freaks is the opposite of what is MGF, IMG. I think that either the wording in HQ is out of line (see previous sentence for why), or that you are conflating disciples, who seem unplayable (at least in the games I've seen), with devotees, who are may be the most played level of theist PC - and who don't seem to be played like 80% time-spoken-for workaholics.
I suggest that the 60% time use figure for devotees includes everything - job included - in order to allow players to have PCs with (see above for adjectives) "active" magic. If the HQ book hints otherwise, I suggest that it is wrong - as it seems to be in many other cases.
I find it interesting that you put a farmer's time commitment at 50%. Having grown up in a farming community, I agree that farming is a tremendously time intensive profession. IMG, I'd say that the farmer's time commitment is 60%, and that this 60% includes the magic that he uses, just as the modern farmer's 60% includes the various technical details (keeping up with equipment, chemicals, etc.) he must manage. If the farmer belongs to a common religion, this time commitment includes dealing with the various magical resources that he uses for his job. If he is an initiate, it includes the magic from his "other sources" (if any) and from his deity - unless the deity isn't a farming deity, in which case 60% for profession plus 30% for initiate duties equals crazy dual-profession workaholic. If he's a devotee, his magic comes only from his deity, and if that deity isn't a farming deity, he isn't an effective farmer anymore.
Since my numbers don't quite fit the book, I raise the time commitment to 70% to add the 10% for holy days, communal worship, etc. Or maybe I should drop the 60% in the last paragraph to 50%, and readjust all of the numbers above to include this 10%.
In practice, I don't keep track of this time commitment, only putting time commitments into the game when they affect the game: "Today is your holy day, so you can't go off and do whatever you want - unless you want to suffer a penalty to your magic." In gaming practice, I haven't seen any players who want to play out 60% of their PC's time as job details (except for warriors and such, of course).
If you substitute "disciple" for "devotee" in the message I quoted from, I agree with you. They seem crazy, and I haven't even described them to my current playing group. I believe that any given worshiper (communal, initiate, devotee) can be a crazy workaholic, but that should be up to the player, story, etc.
This isn't meant to contradict with Greg's comment that everyone works all the time at their job (with which I agree), but is meant to address the use of time commitments to marginalize devotees.
Thanks,
Andy
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