Another Church...

[Silvanos]

Well my players are starting in a Nation that is a Religious Oligarchy run by the Church of the God of Loyalty, and Honor.

The Listing I have for the God is this:

7 )Ustan, God of Honor, Loyalty

Symbol: A large tree with many branches covering a sleeping human
Names: The Watchful Eye, The Protector
AL: LN
Followers AL: LN, LG, NG
Portfolio: Honor and Loyalty
Domains: Good, Knowledge, Law, Protection
Favored Weapon: “Knowldege of Honor” (Longsword)
Church: Large organization of Paladins, Knights and Battle Clerics. Ustan is a god of honor, loyalty, bravery, chivalry and also promotes the destruction of any undead creatures that walk Kestaal. His followers have the longest of family lineage of any other god. Followers of Ustan are more opt to keep track of their heritage, and to pass the teachings of Ustan down to the youth. This has kept many families in the same position within the church since the beginning. Their children learn to use weapons at a young age and begin the different tournaments at the age of 12. Once a follower reaches full status in the church, they are expected to go on a holy quest to slay an undead creature. No proof of the slaying must be returned for Ustan watches all of his followers closely.


Now I am not really pleased with this short description. I mean I like the overall aspect, but... Well I am hopeing that you can provide some insight!

Thoughts?

D

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Thoughts?

Well, what don't you like about it and what elements are you trying to introduce into the church?

Random thoughts:

1) My personal feeling about domains is that they should be limited. I like having my players make choices and for tradeoffs to exist. So unless this is a major diety, I'd nix one of the domains. Probably knowledge. I know you want the clerics to follow their own lineage, but that doesn't really justify an entire domain. Plus, reading the god's description, the whole lineage thing doesn't seem to be what the god is about. Lineage is what his followers are about. Which can make things intersting if you are a rat bastage DM (and if you aren't, you can probably ignore the rest of my reply).

2) Every good-based church needs a schism. Why? I dunno. Evil churches don't seem to have them much. You don't see followers of Lloth debating the necessity of web-based design choices in their temples. But good churchs gotta have them. In your case the Loyalty and Honor aspects make for a nice area to pry open.

Honor - "The Purehearts" - these are the guys who follow their own lineage as mandated by church canon but don't really hold much by it. They strive to serve Ustan on their own terms. No job is too small for them, a 13th level Ustan paladin will happily trot off for a couple of days to abolish a simple zombie. Their weakness is that this causes them to lack a greater perspective. By juding honor based on the now they frequently forget the consequences of their actions and ignore the historical context of a given event.

Loyalty - "The Truehearts" - these are the guys who slay undead as their god demands but are trying to solve the greater problems. They strive to serve Ustan by eliminating the cause of problems and not just the symptoms. Their focus on their past gives them an excellent sense of perspective and they will let a town be plagued by a zombie attack if it means they have a shot at taking out an evil necromancer.

3) Conflict. Now we could play nice and keep the Loyalty bunch in charge. They'd be natural for it, right? And the Honor faction would make great footsoldiers.

Muah-hah-hah.

The Ustan churge is very rigid. In its older days the natural leaders of the church were the ones who accomplished the heroic deeds. This put the honor faction in charge, while the loyalty faction did the minor administrative tasks and kept the records. The loyalists would never dream of upsetting the natural order of things and the honorists don't have the perspective to see the problems this arrangement causes. So loyalist footsoldiers are often sent on tasks that are not scaled to their abilities because the honorists dwell only on the issues of the moment. In extreme cases, veterans of many battles are sent out to banish a skeleton while a youth might be tasked with facing down a band of ghouls. It's all about who's immediately available and drawing from that pool.


So you have a church that is good-oriented but is a beauraucratic nightmare and no one in the organization is willing to address the problem.

Howzzat?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

First things first, let's discuss the god and his domains.

Ustan is Lawful Neutral in alignment. Consequently the Good domain shouldn't be an option for his clerics.

Now I disagree with Biggus Geekus on domains. I think that it's good to give clerics the possibility of selecting different domains. A deity with Law, Protection, and Knowledge domains=boring. There are only three potential combinations of those domains. In addition, Knowledge, doesn't really seem to fit with the portfolio of honor and loyalty. I would be tempted to add the Nobility and Courage domains from Complete Warrior. Now Ustan has: Law, Protection, Nobility, Courage as his domains. That's six possible combinations for his clerics which allows a lot more variety. And, even more significantly for PC clerics, there are at least three "good" domains (law is often seen as a weak domain since it's granted power is often less useful than others and most campaigns don't focus on fighting chaotic creatures so its spells are of questionable usefulness). Deities with only two "good" domains or, even worse, one "good" and one decent domain generally have cookie cutter clerics (how many clerics of Heironeous or Mayaheine have domain combinations other than War+Good?)

BiggusGeekus's ideas for the church hierarchy are interesting (and to answer his question about why evil religions rarely have schisms in D&D, the reason is twofold: first, evil religions generally follow the more historic religion as a means to power model (as opposed to a means to salvation or enlightenment) and are therefore not generally too concerned about dogma or truth. The second is that evil religions are divided by default. For example, the matron mothers of the various drow houses are all constantly trying to kill each other to gain power and favor with their goddess. They are SO schismatic that the schism can be missed). However, I think you'd do well to make the problems less widespread and his categories less monolithic than his post might indicate. People aren't consciously Purehearts or Truehearts--they just lean more or less in one direction or another. Some people try to balance the demands of the two tenets of Ustan more closely without ignoring either of them. Others may advocate more forceful, dishonorable methods (probably not clerics but even in a semi-theocratic state, some positions of power and influence will inevitably end up being occupied by fighters, rogues, aristocrats, and possibly wizards) of protecting their people and destroying their enemies--sacrificing a bit of honor for loyalty to their people or simple pragmatism.

One other thing you might do: If this culture is very martial and honor focussed, you might make everyone proficient with martial weapons (characters who don't get that as a class feature must take the FR regional feat that gives that) or just the longsword (using Martial Weapon Prof: Longsword if you don't want to rework some prestige class (Eldritch Knight) prerequisites).

 

[Silvanos]

Intresting. Yes, I will be changing the domains. I do not have the Complete Warrior, but I agree that something else would be better.

I think I like the idea of the split in the church. Heck one side could controll the over all church, but the other side could be the most prevalent... Since the entire nation is run by this church, it could be a major point of decension for the common people.

I currently am having all nobleity be related to the church in someway. So Bishops, are also Dukes etc. While the commoners have limited access due to the beuracratic madness that is required to get even the smallest request done...

So perhaps the Cleric's that are runnining the day to day operations in every hamlet, and small town are sick of ridgedness of the high up blue bloods...

Damn, I just cannot get this one into the image I have. And I cannot figure out exactly what that image is...

Thanks guys!