A question about Sandrew's description of the Faith Levels

[Dranso]

Sandrew the Wise says to you 'As a cleric, you will also be granted many new prayers'
Sandrew the Wise says to you 'by your deity once you become an initiate in the faith.'
Sandrew the Wise says to you 'Even though, at first, your powers will be limited,'
Sandrew the Wise says to you 'the higher you raise in the hierarchy of your church,'
Sandrew the Wise says to you 'the more impressive the blessings granted by your'
Sandrew the Wise says to you 'god will be. You will certainly discover this when'
Sandrew the Wise says to you 'the high-ranking members of your faith rank you'
Sandrew the Wise says to you 'an Acolyte, then a Prelate of the church.'

It has been a while since I've created a new cleric. Is what Sandrew is stating here something currently in game? A process by which you gain more advanced prayers the higher you rank within the church.

[Lirith]

You will gain the ability to train all prayers once you are faithed (at initiate).Your faith level doesn't have any impact on what you can learn or how powerful those prayers are, all faithed clerics have access to the same things.

Sandrew could probably do with a small update to make this clearer, but I would take Sandrew's meaning as more of an IC take on the faith levels where you would expect higher ranks in the faith to have earned more power from their god, but that doesn't translate to anything in code in the game.

[Harroghty]

There are some faith trainers who restrict training based upon faith level. One can learn the spell regardless of faith level, but the teachers available may be limited by faith level.

[Areia]

As well, a fair number of the major temples out there might also have some special faith gear restricted by faith rank or some other criteria like order which generally require a middling to high rank to be a part of.

It's not really the question at hand, but for what it's worth, I really do like this mechanic and wish it were more prevalent to have some of a cleric's, druid's, and paladin's greater divine gifts be available only at a certain faith rank or maybe once having done a particular quest for one's church.

From a strictly RP prospective, it's been strange to me ever since I started really thinking about it, even back when I played a cleric, that spells like resurrection are so easy to get one's hands on. I might have been essentially a nobody-initiate, never really having interacted too much with the church and not even yet ordained to lead formal prayer services, but I could make the realms' greatest miracles with the best of them. It might give some insentive for religious PCs to actually RP their religion and interface with their faith's elder members more, rather than gaining the symbol and then giving it little if any more thought.

It might just be how I learned to play tabletop as a wee lad that makes me feel that way, though. Higher divine powers were always rare and expensive in my DM's games. It's sort of the same source for my opinion regarding supplicated items, I guess. But I can see why it might not be practically reasonable in our environment.

[Mele]

If we restricted such things as 'higher divine prayers' I feel our playerbase would find itself woefully lacking in people to perform these things. I don't find it strange for people to have nice/fun/strong-but-not-OP things that might be restricted in tabletop. Being that it's not tabletop, it's got different needs.

[Lirith]

There are certainly few enough clerics and even fewer druids as it is, I don’t see any value in restricting access. I’m one of those that remember when wizard spells above level 6 were so hard to find that most people didn’t have them in their spellbooks and a large number didn’t have trainers. I don’t think gating anything wholly behind a faith level would benefit anyone in the same way it didn’t benefit wizards.

[Harroghty]

I think that some things like this need to happen in reverse Field of Dreams order. I have found it rarely works to give someone something and hope that they do things with it. Most effective has always been (here in FK) to find someone doing something and give them what they need to take it to the next level.

This topic is an example. If someone gets a lively, structured church and wants to pitch some changes to its supporting areas than I am always happy to entertain those discussions. But, as it's been observed, I am not sure that always works the way most things are now.