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Bloody Bohemian Earspoon Inn

That is correct. But keep in mind, depending on the success of the ritual role, there could be conditions etc. ("Peoni agrees to allow you to heal the wounded Laranian knight, but as a condtion, she blinds you to keep you humble." or "Peoni decides to grant your request to heal the wounded farmer, but in order to balance things, she afflicts you with the man's injuries. The concordant must be respected...")

Piety points are probably the best way to put limits on invocations.

I agree on the Piety Points for implementing limits but for Tirrala’s Cure it says "Failures have no effect" so there is no real risk involved, at least on that one. Seems like an easy exploit for the PC's so I am angling for a way to counter it.

Thanks for the reply, just wanting to make sure I was understanding how the system works.

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Bloody Bohemian Earspoon Inn

Well, if you are using Piety Points, the "risk" is you use up your available piety points (successful or not). But, no, it's not like you roll badly and blow your head off with a misfire.

No, conditions apply per the rules only when asking for divine intervention, not when casting ritual invocations. Also, there is no such thing as the concordant in HM, you're apparently mixing up the neutrality of the Concordant Opposition (a D&D plane) with the workings of the Concordat of the Illimitible Tome (a peace treaty between a couple handfuls of Kelestian gods).

Barring backlashes (if any) from CFs, yes. That PP cost wasn't optional in the original HM1 rules, but when introducing new rituals (the 'social' ones) it became awkward to ask for PP when saying mass or celebrating a marriage. Of course it's also awkward to have all those eeeevil Agrikans able to invoke unholy skyfire non-stop.

The solution I use is to charge PP but to reward proper invocation use with some PP afterwards, sometimes less and sometimes more than the cost just paid. By proper use, I mean of course several things: does it advance the church's or deity's agenda (some churches want to keep a low profile, others seek converts), does it conflict directly with the works of another deity (apparently the Kelestian pantheon keeps count of each other's CPs, Concordat Points), do the intent and goal appear in harmony with the deity's principles, and more importantly, does it bother the GM? So casting a low circle invocation in a proper situation may actually result in a net PP gain (for the 'good works') while casting a high circle invocation for trifles will surely result in a net PP loss. Of course if the invocation fails the PP are lost and not likely to be regained since nothing happened.

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«Fair is what we see, Fairer what we have perceived, Fairest what is still in veil.»
—Nicolaus Stenonius

It sure helps if you have a Holy Relic like most of the Barbarians to help empower those divine requests for intercession since the ritual miracles are so erratic.

General default is a Priest can earn 30 Piety Points a month on average which is 2 - 4 basically sure thing ritual miracles a year and one can generate a pretty big Piety Pool based on some of the fanon types by not using up piety points so it mostly depends on your adventuring timeline.

Minimum of 1PP per standardized ritual invocation with no guarantee of success and definite potential negative consequences as far as the invoker is concerned the more often the deity is invoked.

Think of all the CF making a single request a day fueled with a single piety point over a year so mostly P-Harn campaign dependent.

Depending on the edition basically only Shek Pvar from a good chantry can work magic "regularly and reliably" at master skill level effectiveness.

I use the PP cost (CS0/MS10/MF10/CF20) except for "the six common 2nd Circle invocations". And if the player complains that "it cost to much, I can hardly do anything", then he probably should donate at least some of that shiny stuff that he was saving for himself

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"Corpora lente augescent cito extinguuntur" - Tacitus
Fenhorn's Hârnpage

I use 5 PP per circle cost - but the recipient of the divine favor pays the PP cost.

A priest does his duties blesses people's fields, conducts mairrages, etc all without personal PP cost - only if he is asking for his own benefit or expending his personal piety to enhance other's chance of recieving divine favor does he employ his own PPs to conduct ritual calls.


In HM1 all ritual spell effects are invisible/unprovable so a failure of a divine ritual is not something that can be seen. Besides if there ever is a question any failure would be attributed to a lack of faith/favor of the recipient (and in this system would likely actually be the recipients lack of faith that was the cause). Preists would function as a focal point and aid for divine intercession on behalf of the faithful.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

I like this house rule, as only those with some piety, divine favour, actually receive the benefit of an invocation. Provides players with an incentive to aquire PP's, ie; actively worship a deity. And of course the invoking cleric does not know what the intended's favour is with the deity. Also, Feanor, do you then say that in order to receive the the benefit of an invocation the recipient must be a worshipper of the invoker's deity/church? Or do you treat PP's as being neutral?

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"The woods are alive with the smell of his coming!" Ilviran chant.

PP of the god providing the favor. Those piety can come from the recipient (if he has any), the priest (if he is willing to donate), or other worshipers of the god (if they are praying for the recipient and have piety).

If none of the above, as GM, if the recipient worships another god who is allied there could be some favor exchange between the gods to allow some divine favor to flow, or the worshiper of another god could be considered to have earned some piety with the god in question, etc.

Reasonably though a priest could go around praying and providing rituals to anyone that seems worthy of the god's attention. If the person is worthy the god will provide favor, if not then it simply is lack of faith/favor of the target and doesn't reflect poorly on the priest. Also even if a priest has no piety/favor he might still be able to act as an agent of the god to the faithful - the priest provides the rituals but the faithful adherents provide the piety.


Although I encourage the players to track their piety gain and costs, so they have some idea, I also state that the only real piety count is in the GM's head. Divine favor sometmes flows into minor bonuses/luck on rolls the character doesn't even know about and the player may count piety from worship/prayer/quests that the god doesn't. If the character has been asking for favors and feels like their rituals have not been having effect (I don't tell them whether they are successful or not - they have to interpet from the results) then they may simply have run out of piety/divine favor. (Which will hopefully cause a burst of worship and devotion.)

Most often the players massively underestimate their divine favor with the god and have far more piety than they use. Occasionally though they will do something that offends the god and their rituals cease working (or seem to). Reasonable investigations will usually lead to understanding of what they may have done and provide them methods to get back in favor.


A faithful and worthy priest may have piety they can spend to boost the calls of the needy. Whether this is a good thing is debatable (are they helping the faithful or are they providing favor to those who do not sufficiently follow the god?) Acting in good faith to aid the faithful worshipers at their own expense could be considered a pious act by the god. Acting as judge and jury of who gets divine favor might not be looked opon badly if the character's judgement is good. Giving divine favor to those who act against the god's tenents or denying rituals to devout followers though would be looked on poorly.

Different gods likely have differing opinions on selfless actions and abuse of personal power.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

Cleric in Harn have always struck me as a bit like the old D&D clerics.

IMO, Miracles should be rare, unpredictable, and most likely granted to those with divine favor, advancing the interests of that Diety, etc. etc.

The Piety costs don't seem to be the best mechanic to me - you can havethat cleric who performs all the rituals, yet does not believe in advancing the favor of the god, could be of an almost heretical mindset, bet yet is capable of doing these miracles.



This is a good way to modify or work within the Piety points method IMO.



I like this way as well, Feanor. Blessing believers and fields shuold not take from the priests piety - Actually, I would think with many gods, this is a requirement of being a priest, i.e. expected by the god, and not doing so could incur the gods wrath.

I also don't care for the type and extent of the invocations. IMO there should be a few for every god:

Awe - Invoking the feeling of presence of the god
Blessing - Good fortune for the person being blessed, may or may not help.

There might be some more specifics here, but in general this is pretty well it. But blessing for instance - one can bless so that a wound heals, one can bless so that a weapon strikes, etc. etc.

The divine intervention rules I actually like better, they are not as set as to what exactly will happen, and the chance of sucess is not always great, but I feel this is more how a god should act.

The healing invocations - To me, the priests should be very well educated, and some of this takes the form of being educated has to how to heal in mundance ways. So the healing abilities of the priests should be good mundane skills, dpending upon god and sect - as well as the abilities to "bless" wounds to get them to heal better, and probably in some dieties priests the knowledge and having on hand proper herbal remedies.

But healing a hand back that has been amputated, completely healing someone who has been wounded almost unto death, bring soemone who has died back to life - IMO these should be handled through divine intervention, not invocations.

A Peonian hospital probably puts you in the best care available on Harn - They have high physician ML's, plenty of the proper herbs available, and will even bless your wounds to help them heal better - but beyond that you need divine intervention.

I also like the idea that in a blessing, the recipeint loses piety, not the priest - however, even of the recipient has no piety to donate, and is a "bad" person, Peoni above all may still try to bless the wound because it is her way. Larani and Agrik on the other hand would be less likely to heal someone that does not have some piety to their religion IMO.

Also, losing piety should be an occurrence if one does not follow the ways of the god - killing someone with a stab in the back would probably cause a loss of piety if a follower of Larani - Peoni might take someones piety points if they stand by and let innocents get slaughtered. I htink things like this should effect the ability of a cleric to perform invocations, and the ability of adherants to recieve these invocations, such as blessings.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Excellent stuff. I agree that HârnMaster clerics seem a bit too D&D flavored - while I like the style of Pvaric (is that the term?) magery in Hârn, the ritual invocations struck me as so out of place I'm still considering not using them at all. Replacing all ritual invocations with calls for divine intervention could be a great approach; the ritual invocations could serve as a guide for effects, as typical things priests ask of their deities. At the very least, I think I will use the idea mentioned earlier of applying the divine intervention results to ritual invocations as well.

I agree - though I don't have a problem with the blessing having different names and piety costs attached to them. It also makes sense that not all of the churches use all the same blessings.

I treat all the ritual invocations much like interventions. You can never know if they will be answered - or how. And if a ritual is answered it is only by faith that one accepts that the divine was behind the result.

A "Darkness Ritual" in the sewers may just result in a freak wind that blows out/knocks over lighting sources. In daylight it might strike someone as a temporary blindness.

Casting darkness in the sewers leading an enemy to the Nevehwans hidehouse is clearly more approprite use than jumping out in full daylight to cast drakness on a number of knights and far more likely to succeede.


I agree again - though I do have a story that I though worked out well:

An Ilvirian and h

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

IMPH and using the HM1/HMG invocations, I've decided that these represent the rules by which the gods have agreed to play, i.e. they're an emanation of the Concordat, hence their relative predictability, their formulaic outlook, and their general mildness. These are the very powers the assembly of ten gods agreed upon 'freely' sharing with their mortal representatives.

That is not to say, for instance, that doing miraculous cures or raising the dead is part of the expected routine duties of the Peonian clergy, but those are legit parts of their abilities, meant to be used here to maintain a level of hope (hope fuels faith, which then fuels hope, a virtuous circle to be sure) in the general population rather than as the once-and-for-all-time cure for all of mankind's ills. Similar rationales can be made for the baneful invocations some deities can bestow, except they're designed to maintain a level of fear rather than hope.

In effect, the ritual invocations should be understood as intended for demonstration and propaganda purposes, rather than for purely practical uses.
Conjoining the two is an art form I encourage my players wanting cleric PCs to master.

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«Fair is what we see, Fairer what we have perceived, Fairest what is still in veil.»
—Nicolaus Stenonius

Well that just goes to show that you should not reply to a post on this forum without having your rule book near at hand.
Actually, my intention was indeed to refer to the rules that limit the interference of deities in the affairs of mortals. Strange that I have always added the "n" in my pronunciation of that word, perhaps because the word concordant also means "agreement". Thank you for pointing out the correct spelling of the Harnic term, Macgorgor.

Better yet, tatto them in letters of fire on the inside of your cerebral cortex, nothing else really works.

Oh, spelling is always good, neither hârnic nor english is my first language and I try to apply myself, and tend to expect the same from others on this international forum; that and prpoer tnypig? of crusoe; mistakes can happen but then there are some perpetual offenders here and there. Anyway, concordant is an adjective meaning agreeing or consonant, not a word meaning agreement, now you know.

But my point was, rather than an impromptu english lesson and forum rant, that this covenant that the gods made together, as the rag-tag band of survivors of an age of divine wars, isn't geared towards neutrality, as your post seemed to suggest, but instead towards a maintenance of the status quo. This apparently means a slight surplus of benevolence in the balance, as arbitrated by Save-K'nor.

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«Fair is what we see, Fairer what we have perceived, Fairest what is still in veil.»
—Nicolaus Stenonius

Well, I agree in theory here with your thoughts if not in practice

Divine Intervention is a better way IMO of handling these "miracles" than invocations.

If you look at the abilities of Peonian Clerics, A King, major nobleman or other well-off or well-respected individual favoured by the Peonians and having access to a Peonian priest would rarely die, and even if they died could be brought back to life (Heck, maybe that's why the King of Kaldor has not died yet ).

But seriously, these should be treated more as "miracles" than standard invocations. I also play with a rule that if a god fails to grant intervention, you cannot re-petition for help for the same or a similar situation. For example - Someone has a bad wound, grievously injured, close to death. A "massive heal" invocation fails. There is no reason to try another intervention - it won't work, the god has decided upon the matter. However, I think imploring the aid of another god could work (and likley change the saved person religion).

However, if the "normal" way of healing fails from a Peonian for instance, i.e. the good medical care, herbs, and blessings - an intervention can still be asked for as no intervention was ever asked for in this situation, even if the blessing of the wound failed.

I might also add - I apply similar limitations to mages,even Fyvrian ones, when it comes to healing. They can enhance even greatly) the natural healing of a person - but they are not a cure-all like D&D healing potions. A really bad wound that gets infected can still kill someone under magical medical care, though it's chance of healing might be greatly increased (a fairly powerful level 4 perhaps spell might double the healing rate, allow the first of the two healing rolls to be made ignoring negative results, and increasing the target rate of an H1 infection to H4, but it would also require some herbs as well).

Of course, there are some spells that can allow infections to heal 95% of the time - and double the healing rate - but these require Sindarin blood

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Thank everyone for posting. Excellent feedback as usual. I'll be working out a PP based "cost" system for my new campaign.

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Bloody Bohemian Earspoon Inn