Preach (sage ability)

Preach is an amateur-status sage ability in the studies of Faith and Piety. The ability permits the delivery of a sermon that will compel an audience (limited to those within 60 feet of the speaker or contained within an acoustically efficient temple) of believers to embrace the moral truth of the preacher. For a period of four hours following a sermon, the audience or congregation shall willingly take action as proscribed by the character.

To produce the opportunity for giving a sermon, the character must first obtain the attention of believers. This can be done through the use of the enthrall spell, but more likely the character will need to stand in a place where the audience can see his or her whole upper body, while shouting for others to listen. If the audience is passive or moving quietly, they will stop and listen without hesitation. If the audience is already involved in violence, however, the character must make both a wisdom and charisma check (both must be successful).

It will require five minutes (25 rounds) to deliver the sermon. The character may ask for two sets of behaviours:

• That believers should cease wrong actions, lay down their arms, become passive, become patient, cease their greed, envy or lust and allow their better natures to assert themselves for the good of all.
• That believers should resolve to commit right actions, taking up arms against enemies, ending vice (or perhaps embracing it, depending upon the nature of the preacher), quit the area or act to help others.

Obviously, believers will not commit any act that is not firmly within the bounds of their religion, nor should a character ever think of asking such (thus risking excommunication).

As said, for at least four hours, believers shall accept the counsel of the character — however, after that time, all persons failing in a morale checks will abandon the character's wishes and resort to their original intentions, once again growing angry, turning to vice, fleeing before their enemies and so on. A character must be sure that a situation can be resolved within four hours in order to gain the best results from preaching — but at the same time the ability will work to buy time, move people to a different place, ensure that at least some good work will be done and so on.