Trolling the community for devious, underhanded and downright unfair ways to prevent local churches from gaining influence in a community and/or preventing use of clerical abilities in an urban zone.
No act is too heinous to contemplate or put into place. However, keeping fingerprints away from any activity is of primary concern.
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No act is too heinous to contemplate or put into place. However, keeping fingerprints away from any activity is of primary concern.
Make sure to hide the evidence of your murders by eating everyone you kill.
The group or groups that need (or needed, if this is a long since settled fact of your campaign world) to restrict or break the power of the churches starts one of their own.
Either a small cult of an evil god in the area is allowed to prosper, or, if their is no suitable cult, one is imported. When the cultists begin kidnapping people for their human sacrifices, the government is forced to act.
Mages are forced to register with the government. They need special permits to carry holy symbols, or possess spellbooks. All, ostensibly, in the name of keeping the peace- and the laws have popular support, seeing as every citizen can remember at least one very public crime spree committed by an undisciplined sorcerer, can remember fireballs in public places and how hard it is to catch someone who knows nondetection. Wizardly universities and churches are only allowed to continue operating if they agree to new management. Government agents seize control of all magical healing, magic item shops, and sources of NPC casting in the nation.
No act is too heinous to contemplate or put into place. However, keeping fingerprints away from any activity is of primary concern.Make sure to hide the evidence of your murders by eating everyone you kill.
Hmm.. if a summoned creature eats someone and then is dismissed, does all evidence go away?
Have a coven witches offer healing services etc. would reduce the influence of clerics in a community.
Have your illusionist or dream magic specialist pal deliver “divine” messages. Likely to backfire if it’s your main method, but hey, okay occasionally.
Get competing groups in, like prophets of Kalistrade.
Encourage fighting between worshippers of different deities, turning the focus away from providing services.
Ultimately, it’s pretty hard. Especially getting rid of the Pharasmins- you’ll need to replace burial and midwife services. Similarly, Abadarites may be providing useful legal and financial services.
Hmm.. if a summoned creature eats someone and then is dismissed, does all evidence go away?No act is too heinous to contemplate or put into place. However, keeping fingerprints away from any activity is of primary concern.Make sure to hide the evidence of your murders by eating everyone you kill.
Not unless it has a very, very fast digestive system.
Why are you wanting to prevent clerics from influencing?
Is the government concerned with religious fanatics?
I'd just go full out and make it illegal to worship any of the deities, with consequences being detainment and expulsion from the country. Repeat offenders would be put to death.
Not really clear whether you are talking about preventing SPECIFIC churches from operating, or a general anti-cleric thing ala Rahadoum. (which, contra to 'full Rahadoumi' suggestion, AFAIK did not rely on fabricating allegations re: churches, they responded to real events with an over the top policy) Also, you talk about keeping fingerprints away from activities, but people are giving plenty of advice which is publicly visible policy. Not clear whether you want only entirely secret plots, or only wish to keep secret plots which may appear especially immoral/illegal. Not really clear who the presumed "we" who would be doing this IS in the first place. Are they the de facto rulers of town? Are they independent conspirators? Are they a church themself? Is your goal to eradicate such "clerical influence" or is reducing it sufficient?
Given the above problems, I don't think you should use any Genie Wishes, whatever else you do.
Support an interfaith council and advocate for religious tolerance.
...yes. Make it seem like you are a huge supporter of religion, which allows you to deflect criticism of your real goal.
Advocate for more religions so that the religious community is fragmented and formed into competing factions. Make sure they are always at eachother's throats so they never have a chance to build up real power.
Advocate for religious tolerance so that you can enact policies that 'prevent one religion from infringing upon other religions'. "What? The Abadar church wants to build a temple? Too bad- the Green Faith-Erastil Council has motioned to make that area into a nature reserve".
And always make sure that you are the 'fair and neutral party that mediates conflicts'. You 'fairness' means that you will 'equally act on every side's behalf'... which actually means that you will knock every side down a notch whenever one side gets too large based off the vacuum made by your last administrative act.
This particular town is relatively small (1e "Saltmarsh"), but important to the party's activities, acting as sort of a base of operations.
There are two prominent churches in town: Pelor, and Orcus (we use greyhawk deities). There is also a presence of the Cult of Hathor (Yellow King) in town of unknown size.
The Pelor and Orcus churches have a uneasy peace, with the Orcus temple having greater power/ambition. The town's government is a town council that seems to be the center of political infighting events.
There is also a thieves guild that acts as the towns "law".
What I'm trying to accomplish is reducing the ability of the town deity worshippers from impacting events through spellcasting -- which puts them on par power-wise with other non-magic using groups.
Right now, the Orcus priests seem to have a run of the town, as there is a power-levelling training facility nearby that assists low level undead commanding priests with leveling relatively rapidly. (Dungeon is designed with undead commanding/negative energy wielding priests in mind).
A couple questions:
Is there any way to identify the controller of a summoned creature (summoned using the standard methods).
Control Undead (level 7 wizard spell): how much control does the caster have here -- up to and including suicidal orders?
1. Not that I'm aware of, other than seeing the summoner cast the spell that summons them. More generic divination spells might provide the answer but that probably isn't what you had in mind.
2. Since it lacks the qualifying verbiage of the lesser spell Command Undead, yeah, if you pull off control undead you can tell that lich to eat its own phylactery.
I doubt their is a way to do this without it being obvious that it is you that are doing it.
While you could create any number of disasters that might make people receptive to reconsidering ways that they have always done things and changing their beliefs and hence how their society is operating, ultimately someone is going to have to actually make the case and convince them to follow a particular course of action. Someone is going to have to lead and take up the banner, and of necessity that someone will be quite visible. It is unlikely you will be able to find an NPC who can, and will, do this job for you.
Absent that sort of influencing, the most likely course is that the existing established authorities, who already have influence and some skill at wielding power will just turn whatever crisis you manufacture to their own benefit.
Wait, you want to lessen the effect of divine spellcasters in the town, but the town literally has an evil cleric training camp where necromancers can gain XP mastering the undead?
Those seem like contradictory things?
Now, what I recommend keeping in mind is that even divine organizations don't actually have that many spellcasters in them - most of the rank and file are commoner/expert support staff, with warrior guards.
There might be only a dozen actual spell casters present, and maybe just one of them has over 3rd level spells.
At which point, well, they only get so many spells, and spellcasting is expensive to buy if you're not a PC.
New developments:
Our low level paladin group (we have multiple simultaneous groups with different priorities running around the same geographical area) destroyed the power-leveling facility -- it was mainly used by the Orcus priests for leveling their peons.
My questions are mainly with my arcanist (14th level) in mind, as he can influence the area better than my lower level paladin.
Appreciate the suggestions.
Have a coven witches offer healing services etc. would reduce the influence of clerics in a community.
I was thinking something similar. Lots of Arcane healers available these days, and don't forget that mundane & alchemical healers would be nearly as effective (given enough out of combat time to do so) but would come at a fraction of the cost.
Another thing to consider is the shear number of divine healers available in the area. Are you assuming that there are 100's of cleric roaming about, or are there only a few dozen? Perhaps a few dozen within any given temple? When you get a feel for the numbers of divine casters (healers specifically) vs the population, you begin getting a feel for how much influence they can wield.
The old argument of, "Yeah, but these guys have the power to raise the dead and cure disease!!" while absolutely true, lets not forget the huge financial barrier, in the form of material components required for the spells, for these services vs what most members of a population would be able to afford. These types of things are typically only available to adventurers, lords, specialists (alchemist, artist, blacksmith, etc) with a wealthy patron, etc. The local nobility, or even combined temples, are unlikely to simply "foot the bill" for trying to cure half of a large city of a disease, etc etc.
The idea of a disease outbreak can actually be made much worse when one starts considering how it is being spread. Spoiled food (worked well in the Warcraft story of the Lich King), undead or rodent attacks (rodents spread the plague aka "black death" in medieval europe), contaminated water (happen in medieval london), etc etc. Throw in an incubation period of several days, during which point it is contagious, and you have a recipe for an explosive problem on your hands.
Short of divine intervention and you could wipe out your entire city...unless you also bake into this story a specific cure which reverses the issue. Personally I'd suggest it be something simple of course, however "simple" does not have to be instant and the ripple effect of this could have long reaching influence on your campaign.
I think I may take a page from the DM. He recently had an NPC "Sniper" essentially making a kill a day in the town.
Was thinking about somehow getting a cohort to do the same and have him focus on the clerics in the town primarily and on the populace only as a way to draw out the clerics.
Using your sniper idea, target the NPC's which the Clerics are already drawn to. The relationship between Temple and Noble / Ruler have always been strong. The fastest way to see the various temples respond is to threaten their temporal allies (nobles, lords, etc). Do bare in mind however that just because you threaten their interest doesn't stop the Temple from sending paladins, templars, inquisitors, or non-casting mercenaries like Fighters or Rogues who are allied to the temple. Everyone is someone's mother, brother, best friend, etc.
If you create enough of a problem for a temple, sooner or later even the LG temples will call upon the favors owned to them ("I brought your wife / child back from the DEAD!! You own me....err umm...the GODS a blood debt!"). Once that happens it could be good or bad depending on the campaign. Does the temple send out all their heavy hitters at once while leaving the temple itself exposed for a counter assault? Are the priests and clerics still dealing with a wide spread secondary problem like undead or disease effecting the populace?
Honestly you could make a really fascinating campaign on this stuff balanced between some sort or blood debt / faction rivalry, a wide spread problem, and the nobles getting their nickers in a twist trying to figure out how they want to respond to the whole thing.
Sounds like a job for some adventuring mercenary types!
I came up with a plan to draw the Orcus clerics out into a region outside the town itself, exposing them to hostile action.
Using a necromancer's beacon, I'd draw out all the mindless and some of the intelligent undead to a point outside the town. Surrounding the beacon will be some positive energy elementals.
As the undead are destroyed by the elementals, I'd have some snipers prep'd to take out any clerics that come out to investigate.
Not sure if this is viable, as a 3rd party mercencary troop that is friendly to undead has recently come into town, so I'll need to take that into account in my plan before execution.
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Get some lawyers (non-asmodean) to come up with some really stifling laws, permits, and permits for the permits. Go full Vogon on them.
And make sure that only a limited number of permits are released for each type every year. So that the temples compete with eachother.
Bonus points if you discretely encourage the temples to make open bribes and other obvious signs of corruption. So that the public are turned off from it. Have your own rumor mill that leaks the bribes, adn stories of how you, the impartial mediator, turned them away.
Corrupted or not, any group with the power to cure the sick and raise the dead can be really hard to remove. So much so that they would likely wield MASSIVE influence over the region, perhaps even more than the nobility. Of course once the King is told that if he wants his wife, first born son, etc raised from the dead once or twice suddenly the King is a new convert of the Temple and a massive supporter of it power.
Thanks for all the advice on this, but sadly, the campaign has ended.