Testament: In the Shadow of Sinai. (full)

[Ghostknight]

As far as the multiclassing goes, it's fine game-wise, but I'm not sure it works with the way priests were trained at the time, especially given your character concept, which is cool, but not neccesarily compatible with being a kohein. Also, regarding your tribe. Aaron and Moses were of the Tribe of Levi - if your character is closely related to Aaron, then he is a Levite as well. A kohein at the time would have been a member of the Levites. (Ghostknight can fill us in if my understanding on these points is incorrect.)

To regain spell slots, my current thinking is that a priest would need to make sacrifices at an altar - constructing and blessing one himself, if necessary because there is no altar to the Lord nearby. Again, I'll ask Ghostknight to comment here.

On the above - All Kohen's are descendants of Aaron - if one of his sons born before leaving Egypt- then they needed to do something extraordinary to become a Kohen, if born after leaving Egypt they automatically became Kohenim as did the descendants of all his sons, regardless of status. (An example of a deed which got one son his staus was the stabbing through of the prince of Simeon when consorting with a Midianite women by Pinchas). The rest of the tribe of Levi became the bearers of the ark, choir, any other tasks that was required for maintianing the ark and accroutements but not directly the responsibility of the Kohenim. The rest of Israel were the menial labour involved (the eldest son being sent to work for the levites unless they were "redeemed" by their father, usually done a month after birth with two silver shekalim- and yep, we still do this today in rememberance of our duty, usually with a set of coins we have specially made, give to a Kohen, and he customarily gives the coins back as a gift for the baby).

As for sacrificing - yep, until the uilding of the temple a Kohe would use any nearby one or construct oine himself (In the times of the prophets before the building of the temple there were some semi-permanent alters such as the one Samuel's mother prays at and is blessed by Eli at).

As a bit of a background note for your character history if you go with a Levite - the Mishnah (Oral law) notes that while the rest of the Children of Israel went to work (initially it was billed as a voluntary public works program, then it got changed into slavery), the Levites did not, as they stayed to study Hashem's laws and to increase their knowledge about Hashem (at that stage a few laws from Abraham and the Seven Noahide laws), and never actually worked as slaves - though the dercrees against the Jews applied to them as well. So a Levite character would not have a history of being a slave personally, but would have one of being part of an enslaved nation.

 

[yangnome]

If humble minion is going to play a levite priest, I'll likely need to choose something else. I don't see two priests in the party being very effective, especially on the spy mission.

 

[Maerdwyn]

Yangnome - I agree that the party probably doesn't need two priests. Given that, however, a full priest, rather than a multiclassed one, might be most effective.

Humble minion, what are your thoughts?

 

[yangnome]

BTW, I have no problem if HM wants to play the priest role. I'd happily play the priest, or happily play some other role. I don't want to sound pissy, I just want to make sure we make an effective party.

 

[Maerdwyn]

Thanks yangnome. My thinking, though, is that hm's original cenception was ranger/prophet, which I don't mind helping him make happen if he's interested. You two can decide amongst yourselves, though

 

[humble minion]

I'd much prefer to go the ranger/prophet route, which will involve some minor priestly spellcasting, but not enough to seriously threaten yangnome's character role in the party. Not that I've ever been involved in any D&Desque game in which another priest would not have been useful, mind you! But my intent to take levels of priest was entirely as a metagaming attempt to qualify for the prophet prestige class. I don't want to step on any toes here, so I'll probably take Maerdwyn up on his suggestion that we negotiate some modifications on the ranger so that I can qualify for prophet without having to resort to a ridiculously convoluted background to make it work.

Anyway, I'm likely to be incommunicado for a couple of days (moving house, yuk!) so I won't be around here. In the mean time, any suggestions on possible ranger variants, Maerdwyn? The crucial points are the requirement to have Knowledge (religion) and Diplomacy as class skills, and, less significant, my personal preference to lose the two-weapon fighting stuff. Since I'll be going ranger to 5th level in this case, we'll also need to think about how ranger spellcasting is handled, if it indeed exists. Your call, anyway - so long as it's vaguely functional, I'm happy.

Be back next week. See you then.

 

[Maerdwyn]

In Rokugan, there is following feat:

VERSATILE [General]
Choose any two related, non-exclusive skills. You have a special interest in those skills.
Benefit: The two skills you select are always treated as class skills.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time you take the feat, it applies to two new skills.

That hasn't been updated to 3.5, but since I think we'll be playing mostly 3.0, that's not really an issue. This feat could be taken by any character (not just humble minion's), with pror approval by me of the skills you make class skills, and the prestige class (if any) you will be pursuing with those skills.

Other changes to the ranger - I'm still considering these. Probably do one of the following:

1) Restrict the spell list to things that can be explained away as skills (i.e., he doesn't cast "Cure Light Wounds", but is rather very very good at herbal healing. Unfortunately, he can only find enough herbs for a couple applications in a day, and they lose their potency after a day, so they can't be stored up.)
2) grant other abilities, i.e. Trackless Step at 4th level.

To those of you who have played 3.5e: What do you thing the feasibility of allowing the 3.5 ranger amongst other 3.0 classes would be, in terms of game balance, etc.?

 

[yangnome]

I don't see any balance issues in letting the 3.5 ranger into a 3.0 game. My tabletop game is still running 3.0, but I have allowed players to choose if they wish to update their character or not. It hasn't created any big issues. The only place I could see an issue would be in the case of spell casters/spells, but those are heavily restricted by Testament anyway.

 

[Ghostknight]

On 3.5 vs 3.0- the issue is not so much in changes to the characters/ but some of thechanges in spells etc. A 3.5 Ranger should not be a significant challenge in a 3.0 game.

In terms of variants there is a variant non-spellcasting ranger in Unearthed Arcana, I will post details on Monday- I have loaned my book out!

Cheers

 

[Ghostknight]

A question on equipping characters - how do we equip our starting characters - are magic items etc still available in this setting or not? DO we need to reowrk magic items so for example would tzitzit of protection be better than a cloak of protection? Do magic weapons exist or should they be "holy" i.e. bonuses from sacred/profane sources?

What special materials (if any) are avialble? About the only clearcut element is that masterwork items are easily explained!

Thanks