Endeavoring for Success: Got to have Faith? (Patreon)

The Faith innovation tree is a hugely tempting element that is often ranked a smidge too highly due to the temptation of Surge. In truth, Inner Lantern is the 4th most important innovation to innovate (Symposium, Drums, Paint then Inner Lantern in that order), but that is not to undervalue Surge's power. It is more the fact that Symposium is king; and Surge is less useful in the early to mid game than Drums which gives evasion, strength and more; or Dash (Paint) which is almost essential for every single node 3 monster. As someone who has played an entire campaign without activating Surge or Dash once (as an exercise) I can tell you that you really feel the hole where Dash is, but you can mitigate not having Surge in most cases.

The Faith tree as a whole is a bit of a hodge-podge of mechanics, they are loosely built around rituals and worship, but the exact specifics of each individual innovation vary. This is an intentional design as it allows each settlement to flavor their religion in a different way.

Before we move on, it's also notable that the People of the Sun have campaign specific innovations for faith, but People of the Stars do not. This difference is a well crafted one and is a wonderful piece of 'show don't tell' storytelling.

Scarification

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): +1 courage and one of blinded, tough, destroyed genitals, +1 permanent luck or -1 permanent movement.

This endeavor is so nearly worth the risk. Half the time you get something positive (Body, Arms) but the rest of the time you suffer various negative stat drops from injuries. Interestingly this endeavor is resistant to Otherworldly Luck because it uses the Hit Location dice, so there is no way to skew the odds more in your favour.

The main use for this is the same one any high risk/high reward roll has. You activate it with Plebian survivors (ones who are low value and have not been on hunts) because if they get injured the only loss is their potential + the endeavor.

It's not great, but it does have that massive upside of rolling +1 luck, so you may well use it.

Rating: 3/5

Shrine

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Temporary, Random

Effect(s): 30% +1 insanity for departing survivors, 70% +1 armor to all hit locations for departing survivors

The peak endeavor for sacrifice, Shrine is something to behold when gained in the early or mid game where 1 armor per location (total 5) is a huge amount of additional durability. The limit of using this endeavor once per settlement phase alongside the slightly random nature of the table keeps it from scoring top marks, but there is often precious little reason to not grab shrine when you see it and use it every lantern year. Even the +1 insanity can be very useful for hunt parties that include Phoenix Armor survivors.

Solid endeavor and one you'll come back to time and time again.

Rating: 4/5

Sacrifice

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Temporary, Random

Effect(s): Text

Death by nose!

Shrine used to be different in 1.31, it allowed you to keep the Watcher asleep indefinitely, creating a "win" condition where you could have an endlessly stable settlement where the Watcher never woke up and broke its protection of the settlement (in exchange for the horror of killing off settlers with ritualistic rhinoplasty). This was not what APG intended to happen and the loophole was closed with the updated version. Take that community! How dare you figure out an alternative win condition, bad players!

These days this endeavor mostly turns living survivors into dead ones in exchange for removing disorders from one survivor and letting them depart even if they normally can't. This is your opportunity to get retired survivors out on a hunt even if there is no sensible reason for it! You have not lived until you've forced a survivor with no legs to go out on an L3 hunt.

It does have a place in settlements that have built massive populations and want to churn some of the plebs into new endeavors, but on the whole this entry is a hard pass.

Rating: 1/5

Sauna Shrine - People of the Sun Only

Cost: 1x endeavor, 1x organ

Type: Temporary, Random

Effect(s): 40% Departing survivors get +1 insanity, 60% departing survivors get +2 strength tokens and 1 armor to all locations.

This replacement for Shrine is not as strong as the original version due to the increased cost and reduced odds. The innovation itself is a lot better because of its passive nemesis departure survival gains, but adding the cost of an organ to its activation while also weakening the odds by 10% is a massive reduction in value. Even if you can activate it multiple times.

Still, it is important to remember that this endeavor's value increases during the 'boss rush' section of Sun. Organs do not matter so much if you are going to lose the campaign when you lose any showdown.

Rating: 2/5

Aquarobics

Cost: 1x endeavor

Type: Permanent, Random

Effect(s): 10% die, 60% -1 survival and roll again (or die) 30% gain the Legendary Lungs secret fighting art.

I want to take a moment to distinguish this table from others out there, I have often said that 'roll a 1 and you die' mechanics are bad. However, the caveat to this is in full I mean 'Being forced to roll on a table that kills you on a specific number without any choice about it is bad'.

Aquarobics is a great example of a very fatal table which is worth rolling on; for a start the innovation gives you +1 survival limit, so it does something even when you're not actively using it. But also you have to make an active choice to use this, you know the risks going in. The survivor doing this is more likely to drown than gain Legendary Lungs. 

But if you are doing this to an up and coming survivor, one who is currently low value, but will be useful when they get Legendary Lungs due to a build plan, that's a whole different matter. You can afford to risk them as they are currently "worthless", and they represent a "reward" even if they die. That's huge and this is good 'death' design and I'm giving Aquarobics an average score of three, because it is high risk and high reward. There is a place in good game design for things like this endeavor.

Rating: 3/5

Before we finish, I want to acknowledge that one of the great elements of the Faith tree is how small it is. None of the current expansions added any new faith cards to the deck (Sun brought some alternatives) and that means the Faith tree avoids Kingdom Death's biggest pitfall, bloat. It's always a tree that's pretty lean, which is part of what makes Inner Lantern quite desirable (more so than Hovel or Ammonia) and it's also a good reason to grab Scarification even if you don't plan to use it much - it's a terminus innovation and helps improve the quality of future endeavoring.