True Faith

The power of belief is very real and very palpablein the Dresdenverse. This means that unshakeable faith in a higher power—faith that the higher power will protect and guide you—has a potent magical effect when focused. These abilities don’t arise through training or innate talent; they’re the result of a life of strong faith, elevating the act of belief into a power of its own. As such, these powers are usually seen in seemingly ordinary people—but their power of belief has made them extraordinary and supernatural.

### **Bless This House [–1]**

**Description:** Your faith is proof against the invasion of the supernatural, enabling you to improve the strength of a threshold in a place where you reside.

**Skills Affected: Conviction.**

**Effects:**

**Bless This House.** By your very presence in a place, you may increase the strength of its threshold assuming you have anything to work with (a place without a threshold can’t get one). If your Conviction is higher than the threshold rating of a particular place, the threshold gets a +2 bonus while you are there. Multiple individuals who have this power can stack the effects, making a den of the faithful potentially very safe from supernatural incursion—unless someone’s so foolish as to invite a powerful supernatural creature in.

### **Guide My Hand [–1]**

**Description:** By giving yourself over to your faith, you may sense the purpose the higher powers have in mind for you, guiding your hands (and your feet) to take you to where you are most needed.

**Skills Affected:** **Conviction**, others.

**Effects:**

**Faith Manages.** Given the time to pray for guidance and provided that your goals are pure and your actions are selfless, you may spend a fate point to use your Conviction skill instead of any other skill for one roll. This effect cannot be used for any attacks or maneuvers, but it can be used to bypass other kinds of obstacles.

**Spiritual Guidance.** You have a semi-conscious awareness of where you are needed most. Usually, this simply means you are guided to the right place at the right time. If the GM agrees that such a circumstance is in effect, you need not spend a fate point to stage a fortuitous arrival (page 20). Sometimes this might work in reverse, allowing an ally to show up where you already are.

### **Holy Touch [–1]**

**Description:** When acting with a pure heart and selfless purpose, your very touch is harmful to creatures vulnerable to such things.

**Musts:** You must have taken Righteousness (below) in order to take this ability.

**Skills Affected:** Many.

**Effects:**

**Holy Touch.** If you act in keeping with your calling, keeping a pure heart and selfless purpose, your touch can be imbued with a holy power. This could qualify your touch as satisfying a **Catch** for the Toughness powers of some creatures. Even if not, creatures that would be an offense to your faith take a 1-stress hit from being touched by you. You could use this with a Fists attack, to have your hands act effectively as Weapon:1 against such creatures. In lieu of this benefit, you may have your touch justify a compel on the high concept of any creature that would be offensive to your faith. This way, you might be able to hold them at bay temporarily or otherwise keep them from attacking you.

For example, suppose your character with this ability is attacked by a Black Court vampire—you might look at the GM and say, “Hm. I want to have this confrontation, but I don’t want to fight—what if I hit it with my Holy Touch, spend a Fate point, and you compel its Black Courtier aspect to force it to deal with me a different way?” The GM says, “Okay, your touch burns the vampire and it jumps back, eyeing you cautiously. You still look like dinner, you can tell, but it’s listening—for now.”

### **Righteousness [–2]**

**Description:** Your prayers have a profound effect.

**Skills Affected:** Conviction, others.

**Effects:**

**Potent Prayer.** When pursuing your calling, you may make a prayer (page 324) to guide your actions righteously—spend a fate point to invoke your high concept and define a Divinely-inspired purpose you’re aiming at. While in effect, use your Conviction to complement (page 214) any action that directly addresses your purpose. If you either achieve your purpose, take any compels that would threaten to derail you from your pursuits, or refuse any compels that are meant to keep you true to your purpose, the effect immediately ends.

**Desperate Hour.** In times of most desperate need, you may call out a prayer for aid from the Divine. Any time you are hit by an attack that requires you to take a severe or extreme consequence to avoid being taken out, you may make such a prayer. You may also call upon this prayer in any scene where a friend, ally, or innocent victim is taken out, forced to concede, or otherwise suffer a lasting, terrible fate (like being crippled, kidnapped, etc.). Roll your Conviction as an attack against every non-allied, supernatural creature in the same zone as you, which can be resisted by their Discipline. This attack does holy, physical damage that cannot be offset by any supernatural abilities (it automatically satisfies the Catch on any Toughness powers).

You can only make one such prayer per scene.