About the Ritual Skill
This page provides guidelines and clarifications for the use of Burning Wheel's Ritual skill (which modifies Faith tests) in the Hârn setting.
Information on applying Burning Wheel's other Religious skills to the Hârn setting can be found on the Religious Skills page.
Ritual & Hârn's Gods
Hârn's gods each have their own churches and distinct practices.
The Ritual skill represents a character's ability to perform
the sacred rituals for one of Hârn's gods, typically the one of
which s/he is an Adherent.
In Hârn, it should not generally be possible to have Faith in more than one god. However, if the need should arise, the rituals of different churches can be treated as separate skills (e.g "Agrikan Ritual" and "Ilviran Ritual").
To represent a character's knowledge of the rituals of another god (as opposed to being able to modify Faith by performing them), a Wise skill may be more appropriate. For example, a Laranian scholar who has devoted himself to studying the secret, forbidden ceremonies of the Morgathian church might possess Morgathian Rites-wise.
Ritual & Helping Faith
A successful Ritual test is required for adherents of different gods to help on Faith tests, as outlined in the Happy Helping Faith section of the Adventure Burner (pp. 344-345).
In such cases, a single Ritual test is made by the priest(s) who seeks to help. If successful, help can be given on the Faith test. If adherents of more than one god wish to help, separate Ritual rolls are needed for each group of adherents.
To reflect the relations among Hârn's gods and their churches, the following advantage/disadvantage modifiers can be applied to Ritual tests for helping:
- +1D : Laranian adherent seeking to help a Peonian (or vice versa).
- +1 Ob.: Agrikan adherent seeking to help a Laranian (or vice versa).
- +2 Ob.: Morgathian adherent seeking to help an adherent of any other god (or vice versa).
Additional modifers may be applied as deemed appropriate.