You could tie Gawds with morale through "Faith" skill.
The higher the Faith skill, the larger morale bonus the player receives when praying.
Also, higher Faith allows the char to pray or hope for events with larger effects,
but the chance of the effect happening should always be somewhat random.
If you want to implement both karma and morale, there will be two more "bulbs" in addition to
vitality and mana and this might make the game overly complicated.
From a rational perspective, Gawds should be related with "Faith" skill.
If you implement Gawds with karma, then this is an exact opposite of what Buddhists portray karma as.
(Yes, i understand that in RPGWO context, "karma" is only a name to represent a game mechanic)
By Buddhist mythology, we are all part of the singularity which is god, but we have forgotten our connection
with the eternal One.
Karma portrays the mans' inability to make up his mind, eternally choosing between different outcomes,
which appear either "good" or "bad", thus giving the impression that everything must be in balance.
If everything were in balance, this universe would not exist (read matter/antimatter dilemma).
Keep in mind, that the more features you add, the more you have to code and even after you have
finished coding, all of the game parts should be balanced with each other to prevent dominant
strategy options (the number 1 game diversity killer, since what is the point of using less-powerful
choices, when there is one or more universally good choice available to the player).
EDIT:
Also, if you implement Gawds the way you described them in OP, it would be just another magic system
with different names. What is the gameplay benefit in that? You just separate certain magic from other magic
and fragment the options available to the player.
If you want the players to truly have fun with worshiping Gawds, the core game mechanic should be very
different from the standard mana-spell-magic mechanic.
My suggestion:
Make Gawds a passive effect through "Faith" skill. This means, that the player can not directly choose the
specific effects of worshiping his gods will cause. Instead, the game AI should randomly create game events
depending on the player faith skill and the god he is worshiping.
For example, worshiping Gawd of Luck will randomly increase loot chance and quantity from chests and critical
damage and hit chance, hitting an ore vein, digging up a treasure, successfully creating a potion, farming seeds, etc.
If you want, you can even diversify it with God of Plentiful, which governs farming, God of Mountains, which governs
mining, God of Transmutation, which governs alchemy.
The player can increase the odds of a favourable outcome for whatever he is doing through a prayer, but it should
depend on the Faith skill and give no direct indication of a received bonus (no visual +1 or whatever indication) that
the prayer works or for how long the player has the bonus for.
Also, the prayer effect should be calculated separately for each action, not granting the user a +1 bonus buff for say 30 minutes.
Praying to Gawds in this sense is also fun and useful, when the prayer reduces the odds of meeting monsters in the forest.
This would mean that players with high Faith, who have prayed to the Gawd of Safe Journeys, can lead caravans through
dangerous terrain.
The options are endless. Basically, the Gawds favour can effect all other skills and game mechanics this way.
