On Priests and Powers

[Dengarm]

In some other threads you guys implied that the Priest class would take on a very different feel depending on the type of god you worship.  I was wondering how that would work (a domain ever 5 levels, one or two domains that get better as you level, feats that expand your purview, etc.) and how much diversity there would be with these choices.

I ask because we have two players who want to play a priest (one will probably cave to the other, we like lots of classes in our parties).  One wants to play a priest of Mr. Rogers*, with domains of Neighborliness and Imagination.  The other wants to play an Athar cleric of The Great Unknown**, with domains of Creating the Universe and That's It Really (or Sitting Back And Watching?).  In your opinions, would these guys work out mechanically and be fun/interesting to play?

*Played a 3.0 game with a cleric of Mr. Rogers before and it was pretty great.  Instead of BSing some Book of Pelor and making up acceptable conduct as we went along, we knew exactly what Mr. Rogers would do in almost any situation, what he would approve of and could even quote mine.

**For those who don't know, the Athar are kind of . . . militant agnostics/deists who deny that other gods are really gods (they're just superpowerful, non-divine entities!).  Some pray to The Great Unknown, a god deists would pray to if they believed in the efficacy of prayer.

[Morgenstern]

That seems pretty doable . Priests get access to Paths, basically sets of 5 class abilites (called Steps) that they can work through in order. When you create a faith, you choose 2-5 paths and then the priests can choose which paths they want to advance along, gaining steps at each odd level as a Priest (1, 3, 5, 7, etc.).

The Paths we include in Fantasy Craft are Air, Beasts, Beauty, Chaos, Darkness, Curses, Death, Deceit, Destruction, Earth, Evil, Fire, Fortune, Good, Heroism, Knowledge, Life, Light, Magic, Metal, Nature, Order, Protection, Secrets, Spirits, Strength, Travel, War, Water, and Wilderness. I suspect it won't take long to deconstruct how those Paths were made for folks who want to add their own unique facets of universal power .

As examples of putting together your own faiths, we did up some of the common RPG cosmologies

Chaos
Granted skills: Acrobatics, Disguise, Prestidigitation, Survival
Paths: Chaos, Destruction
Ritual Weapon: Hand-Claw
Avatar: Dire Chaos Beast
Opposing Faiths: Order

Evil
Granted skills: Bluff, Ride, Sneak, Tactics
Paths: Evil, Darkness
Ritual Weapon: Scourge
Avatar: Demon
Opposing Faiths: Good

Good
Granted skills: Athletics, Ride, Search, Tactics
Paths: Good, Light
Ritual Weapon: Broadsword
Avatar: Angel
Opposing Faiths: Evil

Order
Granted skills: Craft, Investigate, Search, Tactics
Paths: Order, Protection
Ritual Weapon: Long staff
Avatar: Clockwork Golem
Opposing Faiths: Chaos

Or for a more elemental campaign~

Air
Granted skills: Acrobatics, Blend, Investigate, Prestidigitation
Paths: Air, Travel
Ritual Weapon: Bola
Avatar: Air Elemental
Opposing Faiths: Earth

Earth
Granted skills: Athletics, Crafting, Ride, Survival
Paths: Earth, Metal
Ritual Weapon: Maul
Avatar: Earth Elemental
Opposing Faiths: Air

Fire
Granted skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Bluff, Ride
Paths: Fire, War
Ritual Weapon: Jagged Sword
Avatar: Fire Elemental
Opposing Faiths: Water

Water
Granted skills: Athletics, Crafting, Disguise, Tactics
Paths: Life, Water
Ritual Weapon: Bullwhip
Avatar: Water Elemental
Opposing Faiths: Fire

[Crafty_Alex]

What makes our Priests different is the Paths and Alignment system. By "alignment" we mean something VERY open ended - you can have the traditional axiomatic alignments of Good, Evil, Chaos, and Order; religions (individual gods or patheons); elemental alignments; being born under a celestial sign; a certain heritage of mystical power; and so on. Each Alignment has an avatar, holy weapon, and 2-5 Paths which represent its aspects, influence, or traits.

If you're familiar with Back to Basics, one of our first PDF products, you'll get an idea of the structure of priests' Paths. Each of the 30+ Paths in the book has 5 steps. You can only take 1 step on the Path if you possess the previous step (so no skipping to Step 5, for instance). Paths do a whole slew of things - some grant NPC qualities, some grant feats, some grant spell-like abilities, other give you extra damage or damage resistance, other grant abilities similar to class abilities. I'm certain a creative GM can tweak current or make new Paths that fit his campaign as well - the structure is formulaic by design and a close read will reveal how we balance all this.

I have to say your priests are...special. We don't have a Neighborliness Path, for instant, but you could build a beneficent god who perhaps encouraged Good, Protection, and Travel (on the train, duh!). An Athar priest would be quite doable - there's nothing necessarily religious about the Alignment/Path system.

So what this means, practically, is that each Priest has the potential to be unique from each other, and is a direct product of the Alignment from which he draws power. Just like faith is different to each person, so too is the Priest a man on his own spiritual journey for better or worse

In play, the priest essentially works like this:

Step 0 (optional) - GM creates Alignments for the campaign.

Step 1 - GM flips on the Miracles campaign quality which brings in the Paladin and Priest as classes and turns on the mystical elements (such as Paths) of your alignments.

Step 2 - Player starts his Priest/Priest, and selects an Alignment for that character. In doing so, he gains benefits when using his Alignment's ritual weapon and access to the Paths tied to his Alignment. He also takes his first step along one of these Paths.

Step 3 - As the character gains the "Path of the XX" ability, he takes another step along one of his Alignment's Paths.

[Foghorn]

As much as I'd love to see an example of one of the Paths, I'm more curious about how the "Opposing Faith" part of it works.

[Dengarm]

That sounds awesome and is just what I've always wanted from priests, though I didn't really know it.  You guys manage to pull that off a lot. 

How many paths can a priest master over his career?  Or I guess, how many steps does he get?

[Morgenstern]

Priests get to choose from a spread of abilities at 6/9/12/15/18. Some of then are along the lines of "Does that guy have an opposing alignment? If yes, savage beatdown/miraculous defense occurs". There are some spells that do that also.

Basically it lets the GM create natural antagonism between some faiths. You can also have more than 1 opposing alignment, so if you were making a Magic: the Gathering campaign for example, White would treat both Black and Red as opposing alignments (and Mauve hates everybody ).

[Foghorn]

Every odd level gives you 10 options, so you can master 2 Paths or dabble in a few for faiths that have more than 2 Paths to choose from as long as I'm understanding it right.

Do the skills from the faiths get added to Priests class skill list, or do they get bonuses to those skills from Paths and possibly the selectable abilities?

[Morgenstern]

Exactly. The skills are added to their class skill list AND you can get bonuses to them from class abilities. Choosing your/faith/alignment tailors many aspects of your class to fit your particular flavor.

And since you asked, here's an example of a Path...

Path of Heroism
Heroism I: You gain two bonus action dice at the beginning of each dramatic scene. You may immediately give one of these dice to a hero able to see or hear you.
Heroism II: You may cast Command I and Heroism I once per scene.
Heroism III: You may cast Heroes’ Feast and Prayer once per scene.
Heroism IV: You gain the battle plan I class ability (see page XX).
Heroism V: You gain DR 5/special characters.

[MilitiaJim]

Am I assuming too much to believe that soldiers, for example, would need to multiclass into priest or paladin for a rank down a path?

[Foghorn]

So just for fun...

Generic Dwarf Deity
Granted Skills: Athletics, Crafting, Haggle, Search
Paths: Earth, Heroism, Metal, Protection, Secrets
Ritual Weapon: Warhammer
Avatar: If an earth elemental and a dwarf had a baby...so would that make Marv from Sin City the avatar if he were 2 feet shorter?
Opposing Faiths: Elves and Orcs

[Foghorn]

Am I assuming too much to believe that soldiers, for example, would need to multiclass into priest or paladin for a rank down a path?

Gives Pointman/Sage some fun things to play with

[Morgenstern]

Am I assuming too much to believe that soldiers, for example, would need to multiclass into priest or paladin for a rank down a path?

For the most part Paths and Steps are the Priest and Paladin's toys. A dilligent Sage/Pointman could grab up to 2 steps with Cross-class ability (copying the Priest's level 1 and then level 3 class abilities). I think any class can gain 1 step (and only 1 step) through feats. Gaining levels in the Priest or Paladin are certainly the main route to accessing these.

(The Paladin, incidentally is an Expert class and significantly more militant than the Priest)

[Morgenstern]

So just for fun...

Generic Dwarf Deity
Granted Skills: Athletics, Crafting, Haggle, Search
Paths: Earth, Heroism, Metal, Protection, Secrets
Ritual Weapon: Warhammer
Avatar: If an earth elemental and a dwarf had a baby...so would that make Marv from Sin City the avatar if he were 2 feet shorter?
Opposing Faiths: Elves and Orcs

Yup. It's exactly that easy .

All priests and Paladins have Impress, Intimidate, Medicine, Notice, Resolve, and Sense Motive as class skills. So the 4 alignment skills are always picked from the other 14.

[MilitiaJim]

I think any class can gain 1 step (and only 1 step) through feats.

Sounds both very reasonable and quite good.  I guess the follow one question would be about the requirements for being a paladin, but that is less important.

[Morgenstern]

Paladins need to have an alignment (not surprising), the Bandage feat, and Cha 15+ (little old school action). Pretty simple really.

Their gamebreaker fills me with glee. I'd been saving "State of Grace" for them for years...