Skill | Divine Lore (Mind)

Divine Lore reflects your understanding of sacred teachings, religious history, holy rites, and signs of supernatural intervention. This knowledge may come from temple training, years of pilgrimage, or whispered lessons from mystics and prophets. Those skilled in Divine Lore can identify the marks of gods, saints, spirits, and infernal beings, interpret omens, perform proper rites, and separate legitimate miracles from falsehoods.

Typical Uses:

• Identifying symbols of deities, cults, or religious orders

• Interpreting sacred texts, prayers, or inscriptions

• Performing or recognizing rites of burial, consecration, or marriage

• Detecting the presence of divine magic or supernatural forces

• Discerning true miracles from illusions or fraud

• Recalling legends, prophecies, or divine laws

Situational Modifiers:
Use the Difficulty Ladder to reflect cultural familiarity, clarity of signs, and depth of obscurity:

• Trivial (+50%): Interpreting symbols from your own faith or sect

• Effortless (+40%): Quoting well-known prayers, blessings, or parables

• Easy (+30%): Identifying rites from allied or familiar traditions

• Routine (+20%): Detecting divine magic within a known temple or holy place

• Favorable (+10%): Partial translation or contextual hints available

• Everyday (0%): General divine knowledge common to your culture

• Challenging (–10%): Foreign religions or hybrid belief systems

• Hard (–20%): Obscure sects, secretive cults, or hidden orders

• Very Hard (–30%): Contradictory records or damaged sacred relics

• Extreme (–40%): Deliberately disguised or heretical divine corruption

• Near-Impossible (–50%): Forgotten rites from dead gods or lost pantheons

Working Without Training:

• Base chance is half Mind, rounded down

• One difficulty step harder than trained use

• GM may restrict identification of divine effects, major rites, or obscure theology without training

Opposed Checks:
Rare, but possible in cases of forged religious documents, fake miracles, or staged omens. May be rolled against Deception in these scenarios.

Companion Skills:

• Arcana (to distinguish divine from arcane phenomena)

• Lore (History or Myth) (for placing divine acts in a historical context)

• Insight (to gauge sincerity during religious claims or teachings)

• First Aid or Medicine (when divine healing blurs into mortal health)

Narrative Examples:

• A paladin inspects a ruin and identifies the iconography of a forgotten sun cult.

• A village priest reads the stars and proclaims an omen of prosperity.

• A traveler exposes a false miracle by recognizing sleight of hand.

• A druid interprets rare celestial alignments as signs of divine anger stirring.

[ Back | Contents | Next]

File Created: 04/30/2025
Last Modified: 04/30/2025