Revised Priest Classes

The hard way to do this is to create an entirely new priest-class. Use the Faith Design Sheet from the previous chapter to work such a thing up.

First, look over the priest class rules for all the classes related to the attributes you want the god to contain. Then, choose the elements from each you like. Remember to balance your choices of the priest's combat abilities with those of his available spheres of influence so that he will not end up significantly stronger or weaker than any other priest class.

Let's create such a class as an example. Let's say the goddess Melebeth is the goddess of Love, but in the city of Askarth she is also the civic deity and is known as "The Girder-On" because she is said to arm the city's warriors for combat; she is therefore a goddess of Love, Community, and War. What does her priesthood look like?

Alignment

The goddess of Community is probably true neutral, but may be of any alignment. The goddess of Love is any sort of good alignment, and the goddess of War is any sort of Neutral alignment. Therefore, our combined Community/Love/War goddess averages out to be neutral good. Her priests should also be neutral good.

Minimum Ability Scores

The goddess of Community requires W10, Ch12. The goddess of Love requires W10, Ch13. The goddess of War requires W9, S13. Wisdom and Charisma are obviously the leaders here; the priests of this goddess must have Wisdom 10, Charisma 13, and receive +5% experience if either ability is 16 or better, or +10% if both abilities are 16 or better.

Races Allowed

None of the three priest classes (Community, Love, War) excludes any race. Therefore, this combined class allows priests who are dwarves, elves, gnomes, half-elves, halflings, and humans.

Nonweapon and Weapon Proficiencies

Community requires Local History. Love requires Herbalism. War requires Blind-Fighting. None of these seems to apply especially appropriately to this combined goddess; since she was originally a goddess of Love, with the other attributes added in this one city, the default should be Herbalism.

Taking the most appropriate Nonweapon Proficiencies Recommended, we get Heraldry, Reading/Writing, Religion, Riding Land-Based, Healing, Blind-Fighting, and Local History.

Most of the three original classes require no specific Weapon Proficiencies, so we'll follow that pattern here.

Nonweapon Proficiency Group Crossovers are obviously Priest, General, and Warrior.

Duties of the Priest

Taking the duties from the three types of priesthoods which are most appropriate to this combined class, we get:

Guidance, Marriage.

Education in the history of the city.

Vigilance: Trying to preserve the opportunities for romantic love-matches and marriages in the community, but also recommending marriages which will ally strong families and benefit the city.

Missions of defense when the city is threatened by attackers.

Weapon and Armor Restrictions

The Community goddess' priests can use dagger and knife, and two weapons representing the city. The Love goddess' priests can use bow (small), club, lasso, mancatcher, and net. The War goddess' priests can use battle axe, dagger/dirk, knife, lance, mace, maul, polearm, spear, swords (all), warhammer.

These are three pretty incompatible sets of permitted weapons. But since this combined-attribute goddess will be using weapons mainly to defend her city, we can eliminate the comparatively weak weapons of the pure love-goddess; let us settle on the weapons of the Community goddess' priesthood. This will include dagger and knife, and (for the city of Ashkarth) bows (any) and long sword.

As for armor: The Community goddess' priests could use all armor and shields, the Love Goddess' priests could use no armor or shields, and the War Goddess' priests could use all armor and shields. It sounds, by weight of numbers, as though the priests should be able to use all armor and shields. Between the superior armor and the two good weapons they can use, these priests have Good combat abilities. This means they will have very limited magic.

Other Limitations

Priests of the civic goddess must always wear priestly garments in public; priests of the love goddess get four-sided hit dice and must be wed by the time they reach 8th level; priests of the war-goddess have no other limitations.

The combined-goddess' priests should retain the limitation of wearing priestly garments whenever they're in public; these priests are still priests of a civic deity, after all.

And since the goddess is still a deity of love, the marriage restriction should remain.

But since this goddess is a fighter, let's drop the four-sided hit dice limitation; priests of this priesthood receive eight-sided hit dice like most fighting priests.

Spheres of Influence

The priests of the community-goddess get: Major Access to All, Creation, Healing. Minor Access to Combat, Protection.

The priests of the love-goddess get: Major Access to All, Animal, Charm, Healing, Necromantic, Protection, Summoning. Minor Access to Creation, Divination, Guardian, Plant, Sun, and Weather.

The priests of the war-goddess get: Major Access to Combat, Healing. Minor Access to Necromantic, Protection.

Since this priesthood, as we decided above, has Good Combat Abilities, the priesthood will have Major Access to the All sphere and two other spheres, and Minor Access to two spheres. Let's choose the most appropriate ones.

Therefore, the priests of this combined-trait goddess get: Major Access to All, Charm, Healing. Minor Access to Combat, Protection.

Powers

Priests of the community-goddess get Incite Berserker Rage, Soothing Word, and Turn Undead.

Priests of the love-goddess get Charm/Fascination, Incite Berserker Rage, Inspire Fear, Soothing Word, and Turn Undead; these priests received extra powers partly because they had only four-sided hit dice, a condition that the priests of this combined goddess do not share.

Priests of the war-goddess get Incite Berserker Rage; At 5th level: Inspire Fear.

Taking the common threads from these three goddesses, we decide that priests of the combined-attribute goddess receive:

Incite Berserker Rage, Turn Undead, and, at 5th level, Inspire Fear.

Followers and Strongholds

The goddesses of Community and Love both get their followers at 7th level, the goddess of War at 8th, so we'll settle on 7th level, and also at 7th level the priesthood will pay for half of the stronghold constructions.

The goddess of community gets 15 levels of priests and 15 levels of fighters.

The goddess of love gets 15 levels of priests, five levels of mage/consultants, five levels of fighter/guards, and five levels of Normal Men and Women with appropriate Nonweapon Proficiencies.

The goddess of war gets 20 levels of priests and 10 levels of fighter/guards.

Averaging this out somewhat, the priest of our combined-aspect goddess should get 15 levels of priests (three third-level priests and six first-level priests), 10 levels of fighters (two third-level fighters and four first-level fighters to act as guards), and five levels of mage/consultants (one third-level mage and two first-level mages). On adventures, he can take three priests (as usual, only one can be third-level; the remaining two third-level priests run the temple in the character's absence), three fighters (ditto), and one mage of his choice.

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