Confirmed CK III - I became the SPIRITUAL Head of Faith

[xKonsar]

Short summary of your issue
I became the SPIRITUAL Head of Faith

Game Version
1.3.1

What OS are you playing on?
Windows

What platform are you using?
Steam

Do you have mods enabled?
No

Have you tried verifying your game files (Steam only)?
No

How much "pain" is this causing you?
8

Please explain the issue you experienced in the most condensed way possible
As the summary states... I became the spiritual head of faith, which should not be possible. - See "Spiritual Head of Faith.jpg"
This changed my succession as well for some reason. - See "Title succession.jpg" (Edit: This was a picture from the succession of the Empire of Italia)
As you can see on the second picture, I no longer have a primary/player heir designated by the game. - See "Children.jpg"
So what you cannot see there is that two of my four sons would get three duchies - in none of those I held any county. The other two sons got nothing, even though it should be confederate partition, which makes it even more weird.... And needless to say, the daughters got nothing either.
My character held all three counties of Latium and some counties of Tuscany directly. As well as Italy, Sardinia and Romanga as Kingdom titles and the Empire of Italia. None of those have designated heirs...

Please explain how to reproduce the issue
I don't know if you can reproduce it, but this is at least what I did:

So, I started a game as Count, conquered a bit here and there and finally overthrew the King of Italy. Then conquered Sardinia. Created the Empire of Italia. Conquered Rome from the pope (he excommunicated me for that btw ). Conquered Kent (was the easiest one to get at that time).
The idea was to make some kind of imperial state church (in RP-sense), but have a spiritual head of faith. Created the faith (most vassals converted when I created the faith). As I held two holy sites, the Spiritual Head of Faith title got created which got to the Bishop of Nice - who was my rival as well. (Edit 2: Just to clarify... the new pope was my direct vassal after he got created).
So what do you do? Right, the only reasonable thing to do. You try to murder the new pope of the faith you just created, because you do not want to risk getting excommunicated.
I just noticed after I started the plot that I was designated/named/whatever as his heir. At least it was shown that way in the character screen. I thought "oh well, I might get Nice (the county...) and I get a new pope". Well... nope. This is the result of after my char murdering him.

Is there anything else you think could help us identify/replicate the issue?
I would have loved to share the save game, but I deleted it already. I showed it some friends, and then deleted it. I only thought now that it might be a good idea to report the issue. The pictures are from when I showed them...

And should I mention that it is frustrating to have to throw away an ironman game because of that...?
Anyway, I hope you can fix this and noone else ends up with this.

I have attached a save game
No

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File(s) attached

 

[xKonsar]

I don't want to edit a third time, so I add it this way.
Why I deleted it and decided it was unplayable?
I looked at the succesion screen (where you can change your succession laws) and
1. I got a "Head of Faith"-Law or something like that, which could not be changed and simply stated "Same" (aka same faith).
2. At the bottom where there is usually your player heir it stated that I have no heir and the game will end when my character dies.

And yes, I let the game run a couple of months, since some changes take place at the first of each month etc. But it did not change. Hence I threw the game save away.

 

[Duke Reginald of Chutney]

Hi xKonsar,

This is definitely unexpected behaviour, you should not be able to become Spiritual HOF. All of the other problems you listed seem to be caused by the HOF law which shouldn't be available to player rulers. Unfortunately due to the specificity of your situation I can't seem to reproduce this so far. If you happen to find another copy of your save or encounter this problem again, please don't hesitate to upload it here as it would prove invaluable in troubleshooting this bug.

Farewell for now!

 

[xKonsar]

Okay, so... hear me out.
I started a new game, custom created character. To quicken it up... this time no ironman, and obviously an OP character with all the stats and far too many traits, because I did not wanted to play through several characters to get there again just to maybe or maybe not be able to re-create the bug. And lemme say this beforehand as well: Another reason why I did not run it in ironman was because of *cough* save game editing *cough*. Hence, I cheated the piety in later on, cause I did not have the patience to wait for several decades. Just so you know... BUT this time I have saves

Picked Siena. Started to conquer like wild. Got Rome. Got Kent. Got Kingdom of Italy (no Empire this time!). (Edit: ) Then created the faith.
What you can see here is the pope of my religion (SPIRITUAL HOF) having a son who is his heir. And now we are killing him.

Now I killed the pope and the son inherited all the titles. By the way, I have never seen a 0 year old pope

Now to confirm, we check on pope junior.

As you can see I am the heir... "nice". Now we murder pope junior.

You see the message up there? And at the left? And now we check the succession laws as well.

There we go. None of the sons inherits. No heir. And the "Head of Faith Law" is back
Now I noticed that I can solve this issue by simply giving a county and the title of the pope-duchy to for example one of my many sons. Then the bug is "basically" solved as the succession for all other titles return to normal. I did not check though if I get into an unstable state once more.
And obviously... nevertheless the player shouldn't get the pope-duchy to begin with - at least with Spiritual HOF.

Now regarding the promised save games:
Teststart - Start of the game with the custom character
Pre Bug - Before creating the custom faith
Pre Bug 2 - Before killing pope senior
Pre Bug 3 - Before killing pope junior
Post Bug - With the bug in place

Hope I could help... and I shall await what you say about this

 

[broseidon13]

This may be an issue in other cases as well, I don't have the save game ready or anything but when I reformed Asatru with a spiritual head of faith it gave the head of faith title the 'Male Preference Confederate Partition' law, and I was easily able to give her land (which I was going to do via shenanigans but I guess I didn't have to).

 

[Duke Reginald of Chutney]

Wow xKonsar, this is excellent work. I'm still not sure what you did differently than me in reproducing this...I couldn't get it to happen. Either way though this is more than enough to move forward on my end and get it into our system.

Many thanks for your hard work on this!

 

[Clsy]

this issue is created by a chain of logical error/design flaw appears in between clerical law & title law and religion conversion

in OP's example, his newly created religion have female only clergy & male dominated succession law
the government transformation due to clerical law changes turned his "Pope" into a clunky "Feudal-Spiritual faith of head"
this "feudal pope" only happens in the in the starting family, this is shown by OP's "Pope" having heir & not replaced by clergy
once title is revoke by any means, this "feudal pope" feature ends
(player can even switch to play as a Spiritual pope)

this is when this gameover snipe happens because the title drifted by to it's liege which in this case OP making him Pope with the normal theocracy succession
so when player character which is a Pope die the whole title transferred to a random clergy thus making OP gameover

iirc this malfunction exist since launch