Penance aura

Penance is an aura available as part of the Members Loyalty Programme and can be purchased from Xuan in Burthorpe, for 23,000 Membership Loyalty Points. This aura enables the player to gain prayer points equal to 5% of any damage they receive, rounded down and is one of the most useful auras when combating high damage semi-boss mobs, such as tormented demons or glacors. For example, taking 99 damage would cause 4 prayer points to be gained.

It is activated for 1 hour and has a cooldown time of 3 hours. Also, as with all auras, if the account using it is logged out while the aura is activated, the timer will continue to run out.

Penance has been confirmed to work in PvP situations and is also considered one of the best PvP auras, since it will nearly negate the effects of Smite and completely negates the effects of Soul Split prayer draining and is very useful for maintaining prayer points during a fight.

With a spirit shield
The penance aura is often considered one of the more powerful auras when combined with the divine spirit shield, elysian spirit shield or arcane spirit shield. For instance, if you are to take a massive 1000 life points of damage, then the amount of damage actually taken is 700 life points, and the amount reduced is 300 life points. This will drain 60 prayer points. But after the damage is taken, you are restored 5% of the 700 damage taken (assuming that the aura calculates the prayer restoration after soaked damage), which results in 35 prayer being restored. Thus, the actual net loss is reduced to 25 prayer points.

With Soul Split
The penance aura, in theory, can result in zero prayer loss for the duration of the aura when combined with Soul Split. If you can both take a consistent amount of damage to sustain Soul Split indefinitely and output enough damage, you can effectively sustain yourself at a combat area while the aura lasts. The conditions need to be very consistent and perfect for this to work. If you take too little damage then you will not maintain enough prayer to keep Soul Split up, but if the monsters deal too much damage, you cannot heal fast enough.

With Redemption
For players with a lower prayer level, penance could be combined with Redemption for a number of uses, notably Thieving and possibly Agility. Players could allow themselves to be damaged to slightly above 10% of their maximum life points, then turn on Redemption. As they are damaged past the 10% mark, the prayer heals them by 20% of their maximum life points, and prayer points is drained completely. However, as the player is once again damaged to 10% health, penance would allow them to gain around a small amount of prayer points, depending on the players Constitution level, about 30 at higher levels. This should be enough to sustain Redemption till they are again damaged to under 10% health, and the cycle could repeat indefinitely.

Obviously, this is too dangerous and unreliable to be used for combat, but it is good to use while thieving as the damage received is regular. However, Five-finger discount or superior versions may prove more effective for players who bought them. Prayer items like monk robes is recommended to prevent running out of prayer points too soon.

Trivia

 * The icon found on the Penance aura resembles the superboss of the same name from Final Fantasy X, a popular fantasy video game.
 * The prayer points gained were reduced to to 10% shortly after the release of the Evolution of Combat likely because of its massively increased effectiveness with the higher amounts of damage dealt. Later it was restored back to the original 20%.
 * On 30 April 2013, the Penance Aura was nerfed from 20% to 5%.