Piety Rewards

One focus area I’m working to improve as a GM on is providing rewards to my players for their efforts to role play and take their character in interesting directions of their own choosing. 

In my Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign I have a light cleric of Helm who does a great job roleplaying their devotion to their deity. In a recent session the party visited Helms Hold on their way to the ruins of Thundertree, and the cleric took the time to pray in the Cathedral of Helm...while of course the rogue pilfered from the offerings box. How can we reward great roleplaying like that?

Inspiration is a great way to reward players for roleplaying (when you remember to hand it out), but I think that the cleric's efforts deserve a more substantial (and more mechanical) reward.

I found the inspiration for how to implement this from a YouTube video by WebDM on the book Mythic Odysseys of Theros. They suggest that it almost acts as a sort of Deities & Demigods for 5e, just that you can “file the serial numbers off” and take the piety rewards for devotees of the various gods for use with the pantheon of your own world of choice.

As an example, I took the rewards for the god Helios and modified the flavor slightly so they could go to a follower of Helm. The powers from a couple appropriately themed gods became those of the wizard acolyte of Oghma.

I think this tip from WebDM is a great idea, especially to make use of the design work done for no fewer than fifteen gods in Theros. This also happily squeezes more value out of this book than it merely being a Magic the Gathering or a pseudo-mythic Greek setting (I will get around to a reaction post about Theros eventually). The mechanics for these gods effects also provide good templates to create additional ones for more specialized or distinct portfolios depending on your own pantheon. There are other similar systems, like Concordance from Strongholds & Followers, but I think the Theros implementation is particularly robust in terms of design that can reward a player throughout play. 

In the future I’d like to explore the theme of divine power in D&D, along with looking at various products and supplements that look at this topic. There are also only a few of these types of beings that have stat blocks, which is another area I’d like to explore, at the upper reaches of CR where reality and collective play experience start to get thin.

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