After reading recent Savage Tide adventures and also
seeing the Core Beliefs: Wee Jas article in Dragon I
broke out my old copy of the AD&D 2nd Edition Scarlet
Brotherhood supplement. Having not looked at it in
years, I forgot how many deities are listed in there.
Some, like Wee Jas and Kord are part of the core
pantheon for 3.x but there are many other deities
listed there. Does anyone know of a good reference
converting the more obscure entities - at least in
terms of cleric domains and favored weapons?
On a side note, I liked the 2nd edition specialty
priests which had different power mixes (not all had
turn undead for example), weapon and armor
proficiencies, spells available and so on. It made
clerics a little more varied than just a different
set of domain spells. Thoughts on the best ways to
incorporate the concept without radically altering
how the cleric is designed in 3.x?
L
The best way is just to build a character along the lines of those old specialty priests. The appeal in 2nd Edition was to buck certain drawbacks of being a cleric, like prohibition against edged weapons. Now clerics can use any weapon they are proficient with. Proper choice of skills, domains, feats and possible multiclassing can bring in the flavor pretty well I would think. Rather than writing 'cleric' on your character sheet, you would just write the specialized cleric's title.
If a nuts and bolts change is really preferred, designing or renaming a prestige class can do it and I believe the Player's Handbook 2 may have options for customizing classes.
Check out the Living Greyhawk Deities 2.0 document.
The best way to recapture the feeling of old 2nd Ed speciality priests is probably to build prestige classes for the religions. I don´t think that this need to be full-fledged PrCs every time, sometimes a few levels might suffice, depending on the priesthood in question. I did something like this for the Earth Dragon (a local god of the Pomarj) and for Trithereon.
Another approach would be to break down the 2E priesthood into changes to the basic cleric class in 3.x. Example: In 3.x, every cleric has as class features proficiency in every type of armor. This is the equivalent of three feats, so a priesthood calling for unarmored priests only, you could consider giving them three feats. And as there is precedent for feats granting spell-like abilities (e.g.,for drow), you could justify giving them feats only available to these priesthoods that grant spell-like abilities or whatever 2E gave them. This would keep your workload for converting small.
Looking at the Karuth from that book (Wee Jas spec. priest) you might grant them Iron Will (Save Bonus on Will Saves), the ability to pray for low-level wizard charms and illusions as cleric spells, and perhaps magic resistance of 5+1 per level as "feats" in place of the lost armor feats. (the latter one might raise issues of game balance, though) Higher-Level charms and illusions would be a regular feat, again available only to these priests. For turning undead, there was a relatively recent article in dragon on other uses of this ability, though I don´t recall details.
Stefan
Replacing their spontaneous casting with Spontaneous Domain Casting is another good way to go. In this way instead of being mobile medical units, they are memorizing those heal spells but able to sub them out for spells on their domain spell list. The idea is that the cleric would be casting a lot more spells that deal with the their particular dieties domains.
Sean Mahoney
Somewhat Tangential to your questions, but Clerics being one of my favorite classes, I like to modify them heavily based upon the Dieties.
Some examples:
- Heavy Armor proficiency doesn't fit w/ all dieties (why would a priest of a nature diety, such as Ehlonna, stalking through the woods, be proficient w/ Heavy armor???) so I replace w/ a similarly powered feat (as both are feat equivalent). For instance, maybe in the example of a priest of Ehlonna - trade Heavy Armor Proficiency for Limited Martial Weapon Proficiency (Bows).
- Trade ability to turn undead (major special power) for something else, like access to different spells or different class special abilities (maybe a priest of Kord, for instance, can't turn undead, but can rage like a barbarian??? Just a for instance).
In sum, I love the old specialty priests attempts, if not actual implementation and encourage this type of priest customization in our game.
Thanks for the all of the responses, you guys have some great ideas, and the reference to the Living Greyhawk document - that thing is huge. :-)
L
While thinking about this and digging around in my old characters, I came upon the question: What do you think of exchanging armor proficiency not fitting for the deity/priest in question into access to another domain ?
Take, for example, Boccob, who has in 2nd Ed the restriction of wearing nonmetal armor only.
So in 3e, I would limit him to wearing light armor (or you could say nonmetal armor - that would leave hide armor and perhaps nonmetal scale mail, although I can´t imagine a cleric of Boccob in Hide Armor, they are quite sophisticated, I think.).
Thus, two feats are "free". His domains are knowlegde, magic and trickery according to the PHB, so I would consider granting access to all three domains, or choosing three of the domains listed in the LG deities document (oracle is especially fitting, as his priests had +2 caster level for divinations in 2e as well).
Opinions ?
In 2e, Boccobs priests had no ability to turn undead, so we would need other uses for that ability. Ideas ?
Stefan
Well, I suppose you could look at the various divine feats in many sourcebooks. They each give an ability per burn of a turn undead attempt. Replacing the base ability to turn with one of these (keeping the same number of attempts) would work just fine.
Sean Mahoney