Defenders of the Faith Q: Sacred Fist

[Malin Genie]

I've asked before, but never really got a clear consensus answer - so I'll try again....

The Sacred Fist picks a domain 'from his deity's list' at 1st level.

Can this be a prestige domain, or are only 'normal' domains allowed?

Thanks for any replies!

 

[hong]

A prestige domain is still a domain. The difference is that a prestige domain can only be taken as part of "a prestige class that allows selection of a third domain; they are not available to newly created characters". [DotF p.77]. Going by this, I don't see why a sacred fist couldn't gain a prestige domain.

 

[novyet]

Eh, I would say no, only because the classes that allow the selection of a pretige domain say so pretty clearly. I think this should be a question for the sage though.

 

[hong]

Eh, I would say no, only because the classes that allow the selection of a pretige domain say so pretty clearly. I think this should be a question for the sage though.

Just because some classes specifically allow access to prestige domains doesn't necessarily imply that other classes don't. There are various places in the D&D rules where an option that would otherwise merely be implicit is spelled out, for the sake of clarity; this doesn't impact how the rules work when things are left unstated.

It may be possible to make an inference about the designers' intent in the case of prestige domains, but that inference would be relatively weak. It's all the weaker given the context of where the material appears. DotF is fairly clearly a compilation work; it's a bunch of prestige classes, feats, and other stuff that would have been worked on at different times by different people, and eventually collated into a single book.

Under these circumstances, I can see the person who worked on the sacred fist finishing up the class before prestige domains were done, or even perhaps before the concept had even been created. In this (quite reasonable) scenario, you would expect that prestige domains don't figure in the writeup of the sacred fist class. It would also mean that it's invalid to assume that just because prestige domains aren't mentioned, that automatically means the designer didn't intend for the class to have them.

 

[Malin Genie]

He actually answered!

Emailed the Sage - and I got an answer only a couple days later! (I never had any of the questions I sent answered before ...)

And the winner is...

Regular Domains Only