Divine Favor/Wrath

[bubblemonkey42]

So I have a general question about Divine Favor/Wrath. Like... really general. As a Norn, how am I supposed to reward or penalize? I've got a Harbinger who has maxed his Divine Favor using the skill Weapon of War, and he basically has no motivation to burn Divine Favor now that he's insanely powerful. Is it up to me as the Norn to purposefully put him in conflict with "gods" in order to lower his Favor? I guess I'm just kind of asking for some advice on how to run this particular mechanic.

[Panjumanju]

The intention with Divine Favour was always that it didn't just have a combat purpose but a narrative purpose within the game. Harbingers are the avatars of their gods; maxing out Divine Favour all the time should cause considerable attention from those gods. The Harbinger should be doing other things with their divine favour, like obeying their god's plans, or else Favour will be docked. And maybe that god's goals and the party goals are not aligned?

From a strictly combat perspective that Harbinger can be a beast, and if you're having trouble with their outrageous damage output, I will sometimes circumvent it with Denizens immune to it, because a party can become over-dependent on the Harbinger at the front lines. Or—bringing back to story potential—the context of who is being smoted with Divine Favour can be interesting. What would your pagan god think about you smiting this little goblin creature? Do they have an alliance with them?

The key is to not make it "gotcha" GMing, right? Just some thoughts.

//James Kerr