Religious Service
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 one workweek of time but involves no gold piece expenditure.
Resolution
At the end of the required time, the character chooses to make either an Intelligence (Religion) check or a Charisma (Persuasion) check. The total of the check determines the benefits of service, as shown on the Religious Service table.
Religious Service
| Check Total | Result |
|---|---|
| 1—10 | No effect. Your efforts fail to make a lasting impression. |
| 11—20 | You earn one favor. |
| 21+ | You earn two favors. |
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. A favor could also take the form of a deity's intervention, such as 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 + 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 workweek spent in religious service brings a 10 percent chance of a complication, examples of which are on the Religious Service Complications table.
Religious Service Complications
| 1d6 | Complication | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| *Might involve a rival | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1 | You have offended a priest through your words or actions.* | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 | Blasphemy is still blasphemy, even if you did it by accident. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 | A secret sect in the temple offers you membership. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 | Another temple tries to recruit you as a spy.* | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 | The temple elders implore you to take up a holy quest. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 6 | You accidentally discover that an important person in the temple is a fiend worshiper. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Performing Sacred Rites
A pious character can spend time between adventures performing sacred rites in a temple affiliated with a god he or she reveres. Between rites, the character spends time in meditation and prayer.
A character who is a priest in the temple can lead these rites, which might include weddings, funerals, and ordinations. A layperson can offer sacrifices in a temple or assist a priest with a rite.
A character who spends at least 10 days performing sacred rites gains inspiration at the start of each day for the next 2d6 days.