How to Earn, Spend, and Use Divine Providence

Learn how Kingsmark’s Favor system rewards heroic actions, improves failed dice rolls, enables miraculous intervention, and supports characters of any religion.

In Kingsmark, 🕊Favor represents the providence that accompanies characters who remain on the side of good. A fortunate coincidence, an unexpected rescue, an opportunity appearing at precisely the right moment, or a second chance after failure may all represent providential intervention. Rather than treating luck as something entirely random, Kingsmark allows players to spend a limited resource to influence events when circumstances become dangerous.

Favor is both a storytelling mechanic and a strategic resource. Characters must decide whether to use their Favor immediately or preserve it for a potentially greater danger. The complete rules appear in Chapter 6: 🕊Favor Points.

🕊How Characters Earn Favor

At the conclusion of a completed mission, every character who remained on the side of good earns +1 🕊Favor, up to the normal maximum of three. Certain magic, including 🙏Prayer of Oneness, can temporarily increase this limit to five. Favor is not awarded for individual good deeds, impressive role-playing performances, or speeches about morality.

The Game Master considers the character’s conduct throughout the mission. Justice, courage, mercy, compassion, protecting innocent people, fulfilling righteous obligations, and resisting evil are examples of conduct that supports earning Favor. Deliberate cruelty, oppression, treachery, exploitation, murdering innocent people, and knowingly serving the 🪱Gloom stand against these principles.

Characters do not need to be morally perfect. A warrior might lose his temper, a Thief might steal something, or an adventurer might tell a lie to rescue innocent prisoners. The important question is whether the character remained on the side of good overall. When the answer is genuinely uncertain, the Game Master should award the Favor rather than scrutinizing every mistake.

🔥Burning Favor to Change Dice Results

After learning that a dice roll has failed, the player may burn 🕊Favor in two ways. Burning one Favor can increase the failed dice result by +1, and multiple Favor may be burned on the same roll. Alternatively, burning one Favor allows the player to discard the failed result and reroll the d12.

Suppose a character needs a modified result of 9 but achieves 8. Burning one Favor guarantees success by increasing the result to 9. If the character instead achieves only 4, spending one Favor to reroll might be more attractive than spending several points attempting to overcome the failure.

Burned Favor is permanently spent regardless of whether the final result succeeds. Choosing between a small, guaranteed improvement and another chance with the dice introduces meaningful decisions without requiring complicated calculations.

🙏Prayer, Religion, and the Creator of Sylva

Kingsmark is not a Bible lesson, and the player’s personal religion is irrelevant to the game’s mechanics. The purpose is to enjoy adventures with friends, portray believable characters, and experience memorable stories. Players may be religious, atheist, agnostic, or indifferent to religion, and their characters can possess equally diverse beliefs.

Within the established fictional cosmology, Sylva was created by one supreme Creator. Nevertheless, its inhabitants worship different gods, practice numerous religions, disagree about supernatural reality, or reject religious belief entirely. None of these differences prevents a character from earning or spending 🕊Favor. The companion Spellbook explores these traditions further, including specific religious requirements for certain forms of 🕯Holy Magic, which are separate from ordinary Favor eligibility.

All characters can invoke 🙏Prayer for providential intervention, regardless of religious affiliation. A devout character might kneel before God, a polytheist might petition a familiar deity, while an atheist might close his eyes and desperately hope for a miracle. The rules remain the same.

Mechanically, 🙏Prayer costs 🟠🟠2 Action Points, requires no Spellcasting Test, and causes no 🧠Mental Drain. A character may burn one, two, or three Favor for progressively greater providential intervention, but only when ordinary efforts are no longer reasonably sufficient. The Game Master determines whether an appropriate intervention is possible before Favor is burned. Prayer creates opportunities; it does not automatically accomplish the mission. See Chapter 15: 📜Magic System.

The opposing supernatural force is the 🪱Gloom, also called Arafel (עֲרָפֶל), which threatens Sylva through corruption and supernatural darkness. Characters who knowingly enter its service through a 🍎Soul Offering lose their Favor and cannot possess or spend it while serving the Gloom. Learn more in Chapter 16: 🪱The Gloom.

🎬Example: A Second Chance at Willowcreek

Three adventurers attempt to rescue kidnapped villagers from a ruined fortress. Among them is Elara, a skeptical Ranger who professes no belief in gods and has two 🕊Favor remaining from previous missions. When she attempts to disarm a dangerous mechanical trap, her modified result is 8 against TN 9.

Elara burns one 🕊Favor to increase her result to 9, successfully disarming the trap. Later, the adventurers discover that the prisoners are trapped behind a collapsed stone passage. After exhausting their tools and searching unsuccessfully for another entrance, they appear to have no remaining way to reach the captives.

Elara desperately whispers, “Please, there has to be another way.” The Game Master determines that a modest providential intervention is appropriate, and Elara burns her final 🕊Favor through 🙏Prayer. Shortly afterward, a shifting section of ruined masonry reveals a narrow drainage passage that might lead behind the collapsed wall.

The adventurers must still explore the passage and overcome the dangers within, but they now possess an opportunity that did not previously exist. Eventually, they rescue the prisoners and escort them safely home. Because all three characters remained on the side of good throughout the completed mission, each earns +1 🕊Favor, including Elara.

Her personal disbelief did not prevent Providence from helping her. Favor rewards the character’s actions and allegiance to good, not the religious beliefs of the player or the character.

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