I'm answering without the book handy, so please excuse any terminology mistakes.
First, supernatural abilities the Dogs have are handled like any other Trait. So a character may have Healer or Laying of Hands at 2d6, for example.
Demonic abilities are a little bit different. The default assumption is that the Dogs would never tap into demonic power (that's sorcery and it's evil) though they can if they like. Basically the demonic influence can either represent literal demonic influence in a community, with a person using sorcery and everything at the core of it. It can also just represent things having gone bad for the community; crops failing, diseased animals, etc. In both cases the demonic influence can be added to rolls.
Example: The Dogs finally discovered Old Man Winslow has been practicing sorcery, and that's why so many women have been having dalliances with him. They confront him on his farm, and he seeks assistance from the demonic forces. He may be adding quite a few dice to the encounter as he draws on their power to fight the Dogs.
Example: The Dogs realize that if they don't do something about the crops here, the people will starve. They set about back breaking labor to try and save as much of the harvest as they can, but the whole situation seems to be against them. Here that same demonic influence represents misfortune and/or the natural result of a community becoming sinful, and likely will be used as a dice pool against the Dogs efforts.
Effectively the demonic influence is a dice pool set aside to be used in situations such as the above. While Dogs is a narrowly focused game (which I think is great) it also has a surprising amount of flexibility as to how a GM wants to use some of the mechanics.
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Originally Posted by Dan Davenport
Excellent review, Christopher!
Are supernatural abilities -- divine and demonic -- handled just like any other ability, or is there a special mechanic for them?
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