God Game Lite:Acts

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An act is any expression of a deity's will. Each act is assigned a base power level needed to pull that off. Various things will modify that power level. If the final power level is equal to the deity's level of Belief, they can do it as a major act. If the final power level is less than that, it's a minor act. If it's above, they aren't powerful enough to do that.

Every act should fall within one of four categories: Creation, Destruction, Transformation and Control. If it's too difficult to pick a single category, take the most beneficial one.

Non-Acts

There are several things a deity can do that doesn't require enough effort to be considered an act. One of the most important of these is hearing prayers. Generally, there are simply too many voices to pick out the details of any one prayer unless the deity focuses on a certain person or place, but they can sense the general nature of the prayers. This means that if something major were to happen, they'd be aware of it from the sudden flood of similar prayers.

Second, a deity can speak to one or more believers easily. How subtle they want to be is up to them.

A deity can also manifest in the material world. When doing so, they can basically choose to look however they want. This can be used to blend in and see how things are going, or stand out and make a statement. They can also manifest a creature from their divine realm for a short while.

This isn't a complete list of non-acts, but the GM should be careful of allowing too much leeway here.

Major and minor acts

Each epoch, each deity can use three major acts and any number of minor acts. There are some limits to minor acts though. Generally, an effect can't be used repeatedly on the same place or group of people. For example, a race just created this epoch can't be modified with an Transform Life effect until the next epoch, and can't be altered multiple times per epoch. Similarly, a volcano can be made to erupt, but only once per epoch.

Power Levels

The base power level of an act can be compared to spell levels in D&D, at least to a point. While the effects should be comparable, the range, duration, area of effect and other such things should be scaled to more appropriate levels. A meteor swarm cast as a level 9 spell may cover a few hundred square feet, the same thing as a level 5 act might cover a few hundred square miles. The GM should choose appropriate values. Players wanting even larger effects can increase the effective power level to achieve that.

Power level of act	Rough spell level
0	Cantrip
1	1
2	3
3	5
4	7
5	9
6	Epic
7	-
8	-
9	-
10	-

Spheres and affinities

Acts within a deity's primary sphere and within their favored category are the base at +0. The final power level of any other act will be increased. This makes the act harder to perform, but doesn't change what it does.

Acts within a secondary sphere are at +1 power level, while acts outside a deity's spheres are at +2. Acts not within either the favored or averse category are at another +1, while acts in the averse category are at another +2.

For example, Oasi wants to start a small fire using some existing flammable materials, perhaps lighting the candles in a temple. This could reasonably be a cantrip in D&D, area aside. This easily falls within the Fire domain, which Oasi has as a secondary domain. The GM judges this as an act of Control, which is unfortunately her weak point. In total, this raises the effect to power level 3. It would be the same for Ibura, though for different reasons.

Granting powers

It is possible to grant powers to the beings on the planet. Granting a power to 1 person would +1 power level over what it'd take to use it yourself. Powers granted in this way are not hereditary, but last for that person's lifetime or until the deity revokes it. Granting powers to more than 1 person raise the effective power level further. Each 100-fold increase raises the effective power level by another +1. So granting it to 10,000 people would be a total of +3. A deity can grant these powers to any group, with any conditions, they see fit. Powers granted this way are typically 1/day. To raise this to at-will increases the effective power level by another +1.

To grant the power to a whole family, or whole race, is generally harder. Basically, they need to use a Transform Life effect to alter their racial package.

Finally, it's possible to teach a race the fundamentals of magic, giving them access to various spellcasting classes. This generally doesn't require an act, but the deities have no further control over who can use what spell.

Creating artifacts

In addition to granting powers directly, deities can empower an artifact. Empowering one for the duration of an epoch (or less) is +2 power level. To empower it permanently, it's +3. Despite the term artifact, deities can empower places as well. Generally, this should be the same cost, but places bigger than a city might cost more.

Other modifiers

TODO tables of common modifiers

Overcoming penalties

If a deity wants to do something that's above their power level have a couple of options. First, by spending 2 acts at once, they can reduce the effective power level by 1. By spending 4, using banked acts, they can reduce it by 2. By spending 10 points of the appropriate resource they can reduce it by 1.

Cooperation is somewhat tricky, since it's likely that any two deities will have different effective power levels for any particular effect. If the act would be the same power level for both, they can work together to reduce the effective power level by 1.