Today was spent mulling over how to properly design Favor for clerical characters in Mythical Monsters. For those reading this article, there are three kinds of supernatural wielders in the game: Magical characters, Clerical characters, and Mystical characters.
Clerical characters are essentially priests, acolytes, and followers of a patron entity who exists beyond the corporeal world. Clerical characters act as conduits for these greater entities. In exchange for acting as agents on their behalf, clerical characters are given the ability to creature supernatural effects through the spiritual bond they share with their patron. An analogy I like to use is lightning in a bottle: a clerical character must be a bottle for the power flowing through them. Too much power and they could crack which is why only select individuals are chosen to act as agents for these greater beings.
But the topic I was musing over today was subject of Favor. Favor is a resource that clerical characters can obtain while acting as an agent. This allows characters to use Favor in lieu of vigor which allows characters to cast spells but causes a character to obtain fatigue each time they’re forced to spend it. The next question then becomes how does one obtain Favor?
I always had it in mind that clerical characters were analogous to real world holy men. They performed rituals, offered tribute, upheld oaths, and completed quests. Rituals, I decided, were the core of what a clerical character could do to obtain Favor. Monks all throughout history have devoted time in solitude towards prayer and the cults of ancient Greece certainly lend inspiration towards this idea. Essentially, a ritual is an act where a character sacrifices their time to perform some divinely-inspired action in order to obtain Favor with the entities above.
After some thought, I came up with the table below:
| Turn | Favor Gained |
| Engagement | 1 |
| Local | Resolve Rating |
| World | Resolve Rating + Resolve Test |
The table essentially states that to call upon a Patron for Favor in an immediate situation, such as during an Engagement, only summons a minimal amount of Favor. However, using a longer Local turn or an entire chunk of the day with a World turn offers greater rewards to those who perform their rituals ahead of time. Coupled with the fact that a ritual to earn Favor can only be performed once a day makes this a more interesting choice for characters that pursue this route.