IronWolf
blank
I must say at the outset that I like this book less then I liked Sword and Fist. While the S&F is technicaly flawed in some of its rules it is still full of good, original, ideas. While there are original and inspired bits to DOF to much of this book is spent rehashing well known cliches of fantasy.
Let's go in order:
First section gives the advice on effectively playing Clerics and Paladins. It is very much like HBG in style and, altrough possibly helpfull to the novices, gives nothing new to a player or a DM with any experience.
Next bit discusses the Paladin's special mount and is one of the most interesting parts of the book. It is definitely valuable to anyone playing or DMing to a Paladin. It introduces new mounts, scaled progress chart for atypical mounts and (very balanced) look at having a Dragon as a special mount or companion.
Following is usefull but too short section on alternative uses of Chanelling (the Cleric ability that is most frequently used to turn undead). It is generalized (in a very sensible way) to things like Sealing Portals and Warding Sanctuaries. This ability of Clerics is further expanded in some feats and is, for me, the best new concepts introduced in this book.
Next is a section on Divine interventions - no rules, just a bunch of DM advice containing nothing you could not think of for yourself after any time spend DMing.
Short and somewhat usefull rules on Clerics changing faith follow, but again without anything realy new. They effectively state: Yes, you can do it and you have to prove yourself to the new god before he will let you keep your levels.
"New" uses for skills are largely useless being just several more examples of craft, profession and knowledge skills. Only useful one is Heal - enabling you to determine cause of death and other forensic data.
New feats are usefull and largely balanced. Whole lot of them are based on the alternative uses for Chanelling but two genearal and two Metamagic feats are usefull as well. This is probably a part of the book with greatest general utility.
Magic items are slightly overpowerd and not overly inspired. Called armour for example can be automaticaly equiped over any distance for the cost of only one +1 bonus. Armour of Speed is very unbalanced (granting Haste, extra partial action and all as well as +4 on AC all for a cost of only +3 enchantment) and I hope that this will be one of the first things to be errated in this book.
What follows is an incredibly lengthy (13 pages but it feels triple that) discussion on a role of churches. While this could have been a very valuabe source of setting building information it fails to be so because it gets mired in stereotypes. It begines with informaton on churches in general, lengthy and for the most part obvious: "they have adventuring and non-adventuring clerics", 'chaotic ones have less rigid organization then lawfull ones", "players can be entrusted with a mission for their church", " this missions will tend to reflect the primary tennent of the church", "players can get minor help from the churches they are affiliated with" and so on.
The part of the church chapter that could have been usefull, however, fails to be so because it concentrates heavily on the allignment as opposed to the portfollio of the church. Once again significant ammount of ink is wasted on telling us such things as that Lawfull churches tend to be organised and hierarchical and chaotic ones individualistic and free-spirited. this goes to such a lenght that relevant, and lengthy, paragraphs repeat as direct paraphrases of each other in discussions in simmilar allignments (CG and CN for example).
What could have been done, instead of repeating over and over again that churches tend to follow their allignement, is to give in depth samples of functioning of the several major churches of different portfolios (Sun, Sea, War, Earth, etc). Such a sample could incude things like: holy calendar, sample ceremonies, priest titles, relation to the populace, spiritual expectations on the worshipers, laymen and clergy, outline of principal mythoi and, why not, general allignment tendencies within the church. This could then be used by DMs as the inspiration for building their own churches as believable and integral part of their setting.
If this was applied to major Greyhawk churches it would be, aditionaly, a welcome source information on this core setting for DnD. As it is in the book, all the Greyhawk related data (they do give several Greyhawk churches as examples under each allignment) is too short and too scant on any detail to be of much use.
Another reason why I disliked this section is that it propagates the idea that it is possible to categorize everything and everyone exclusively using allignment; an idea that inevitably produces shallow characters, uninspired plots and bland settings and has thus hurt the quality of the DnD game significantly over the years
Another part of this section are floor-plans and description of some sample churches together with stat-blocks on their inhabitants. Personaly I find those rather useless as they are exactly sort of thing any DM I know would be able to draw/write in a minute if they needed a church but I do guess that some people find them usefull.
What follows the description of churches are several "sample" religious societies. Those are of variable quality, from very interesting: House of the Death (morticians that are undercover fighters against undead) and Council of Blades (some sort of warfare umpires) they range to dreary: Stargazers (knights that lke watching stars) and stereotypical: Order of Chalice (crusading demon hunters together with the Holy Grail). For me at least, this organizations, even the best ones, are lacking something that ones in Sword and Fist had. My guess is that what is missing is the sense of their place in the greater world which S&F provided by the thorough immersion in Greyhawk.
Finally, there is more obligatory floorplans, even less interesting then the ones in last section.
"If I run a temple", concuding section of this chapter is again rich in truisms ( "churches have expenses and collect tithe to cover them", "good churches run charities", "churches hold small services daily with more lavish ones on holydays", "adventuring clerics are not required to wory about day-to day functioning of the church but should be aware..." ), all correct but excrutiatingly poor in detail. Questions that player wanting to run a Temple will inevitably need to know remain unanswered: how much contributions can an average church expect from a congregation of a given size ? what are usual demographics on spell-casting clerics versus lay-clergy ? How are different rituals performed in different churches (mariage in the church of Hieroneus or Olidamara is bound to be different affair then the one in a standard Christian/Pelor church) ? How much income can be gained by exhibiting a holy relic ? by selling induligences ? How are spiritual leaders elected ? what is relation with nobility ? All in all a rather useless section in a place where much could have been written. Fortunately, mercifully short.
Finaly we get to the chapter on prestige classes, one that is most likely to be closely scrutinised in the days to come. here again quality is varying widely.
Inquisitor is a great NPC prestige class, balanced and focused it sacrifices Turning abilities for a number of very cinematic (and not excesively powerfull) abilities that have to do with penetrating through lies and disguises. As I do not allow detect lie as a normal spell in my campaigns leaving it as a special domain of rare and feared inquisitors will be a nice touch.
Concetrated Harrier is OK and will fill Bounty Hunter niche till the more general (and hopefully spell-less) version of this class appears in Song and Silence.
Contemplative is balanced if somewhat useless class. It does not seem to adress any real need but does not hurt either. I predict that it will not see much use except as an ocasional saintly NPC.
Divine oracle is somewhat OK, However, given how much trouble prophesising by PC's can be I am not too thrilled about allowing this guys in my campaign. They do, on the other hand, fill a definite niche and are fairly well balanced.
Holy Liberator is one of the best prestige classes so far, and not only in this book but in DnD at large. It fills a long needed position of a chaotic-good paladin and also gives the template for all of those who believe that the Paladin should be a prestige class.
Hospitaler is my greatest point of contention against this book. As it is written it is plain unbalanced, getting a whole lot of bonus feats, martial weapons, lay on hands, remove disease and fighters BAB while sacrificing (if multiclassing from Cleric) practicaly nothing (except accepting, not too stringent, code of conduct). it is possible that this class was not intended to keep cleric spell progression and that this is an incredible typo but, if it was intended as it is, this class is a munchkin paradise in regards to which S&F Ninja and Master Samurai pale in comparison.
Hunter of the Dead we have all seen in Dragon it is good as it stands, better as NPC then PC class but an intersting concept nevertheless.
Knight of a Chalice is a much better prestige class then the Society. It is a specialized Demon Hunter, balanced and cool at the same time. showing once again that giving prestige classes their own spell list as oposed to allowing them to progress in their previous one leads to the more interesting, and balanced, prestige classes.
Knight of the Middle Circle is as dreary as his superiors, the Stargazers from the societies chapter. I have feeling that this whole institution makes some sense in the context of the author's own campaign but as presented in this book they are rather pointless. Separate spell list, however, again guarantees the semblance of balance.
Master of Shrouds is a good (if a bit too tough) villian simmilar in spirit and feel to Crypt King and Penumbral Lord of Relics and Rituals. this sort of vilanous prestige classes are always welcome with me as they do tend to make more memorabe adversaries then usual.
Exorcist fills as important a niche as an Inquisitor but less sucessfuly. the temptation to give this fellows too much cool abilities in comaprison with what they lost in multiclassing from cleric (what exactly did they lose come to think of it ?) got better of the authors resulting in interesting but unbalanced class. Altrough lack of balance is not as severe as that of Hospitaler and Templar it will still be quite a bit work to get them to be usable. Pity as they are both interesting and needed concept.
Sacred Fist - I love this guys. They are effectively the specialty priests of Kord the Brawler sworn not to use weapons when they can get along by fist fight. I always had a soft spot for the priesthood of Kord (having had them played briliantly and hilariously by a great player of mine, many years ago) and this prestige class does justice to this (somewhat) silly but charming fellows. As I do not use Monks in my capaigns (except in Scarlet Brotherhood) this class will be the kings of unarmed combat as they deserve to be. However, I am somewhat afraid that if you do allow monks as a PC class small selection of clerical spells will not be enough to make this class measure up to the big M. Final verdict - great but sightly underpowered.
Templar is second only to Hospitaler in being the ugly face of munchkinism in this book. this guys get the Weapon Specialization and almost as many extra feats as fighter together with fighter BAB on top of the spells and some of the best combat abilites in the entire game (unconditional damage reduction starting third level and unconditional smite ability starting second level). Beware of them and hope for some prompt errata.
By the way, is it just me or is there any need whatsoever for the Templar prestige class ? Historic templars (and hospitaliers and the whole lot of them) are already represented in the games by Paladins. What niche exactly is this class suposed to fill ?
Warpriest, just like the Warmaster from S&F, this would have been a great class if the WotC would ever bother to give us the war rules for DnD. Their abilities are largely pointless outside their natural context which is formalized rules on warfare. If there were such rules this class would be good and balanced. We live in hope.
As the final comment on the prestige classes chapter I have to condemn the widespread use of Cut and Paste. "Spells per Day" section of practicaly every class follows one of the two templates (they either progress with their spells as clerics or get progression of their own). Considerate author, or one who wanted to give us as much material as possible within alloted 96 pages would have explained both of those mechanisms at the begining of the chapter and then in the individual description which mechanism to use. What this book does is cut and paste entire paragraph (almost half a page long) together with an example into every single class description thus eating out 6-7 good pages out of the book and making a reader feel like listening to a broken record.
Finally, spells.
They are suprisingly good (and have saved this book from getting 2 as my review mark) but are few in number. (They had to write those 'spells per day' paragraphs over and over again you know...). As always with clerical spells, great consideration must be given to the power thereof as they can easily unbalance the game (as opposed to arcane spells that slowly trickle down to PC's clerical spells come as a lump). I feel that the ones from this book are passing this test fairly well while introducing some very nice spells. my favourites include:
Curse of the Brute (Cleric 3) increase str, dex and con but drops int and cha temporarily
and
Divine Sacrifice (Pal 1) sacrifice HP for damage bonus
More would have been nice but would have brought in balance problems. Mechanism to introduce new clerical spells without raising this ever present issue was something I secretly hoped, against the hope, to see in this book but naturaly did not.
Prestige domains I like but am not too impresed by the reqirements that one be in one of the new prestige classes in order to qualify for one. I intend to make it optional for clerics to switch one of their old domans to prestige domains once they reach certain level in their class even if they do not intend to multiclass. They are not unbalancing, except for Cerility (whomever came up with this name) which is another cry of munchkinism in this book but is unnecessary and thus easily ignored, and some of them are long needed (Divination, Exporcism) and others are just plain inspired (Madness, Beastmaster)
Last section, appendix actualy, deals with deities of monsters and humaniod races. As a longtime Greyhawk fan I must say I was deeply disappointed not to see Wastry the Hopping Prophet and other whimsical but well developed monstrous gods of this, presumably default, setting. In exchange we got a collection of vaguely Realmsean feeling and very uninspired gods with too short descriptions.
All in all this is not a great book. It is not even a very good one. Writing style is dry, much worse then that of the S&F (not to mention "The Standing Stone" or "Relics and Rituals") and ammount of usefull information is substandard in comparison with S&F and miniscule compared with "Relics and Rituals". It does, however, have some redeeming features that may justify the purchase, at least for those of us with enough money and insufficient "life" to spend it on. It has some unbalancing elements, but, contrary to S&F, its greatest failure is not in what is in it but in what is not.
(After reading the May issue of Dragon Magazine):
Having criticised certain omissions in DOF in my review I must say that some of the objections have been adressed by the batch of articles by Mr Wyatt and others in most recent Dragon Magazine. "Playing the Priestly Part" and "Realistic Religions" are exactly the sort of information I thought would be well included in the book.
Let's go in order:
First section gives the advice on effectively playing Clerics and Paladins. It is very much like HBG in style and, altrough possibly helpfull to the novices, gives nothing new to a player or a DM with any experience.
Next bit discusses the Paladin's special mount and is one of the most interesting parts of the book. It is definitely valuable to anyone playing or DMing to a Paladin. It introduces new mounts, scaled progress chart for atypical mounts and (very balanced) look at having a Dragon as a special mount or companion.
Following is usefull but too short section on alternative uses of Chanelling (the Cleric ability that is most frequently used to turn undead). It is generalized (in a very sensible way) to things like Sealing Portals and Warding Sanctuaries. This ability of Clerics is further expanded in some feats and is, for me, the best new concepts introduced in this book.
Next is a section on Divine interventions - no rules, just a bunch of DM advice containing nothing you could not think of for yourself after any time spend DMing.
Short and somewhat usefull rules on Clerics changing faith follow, but again without anything realy new. They effectively state: Yes, you can do it and you have to prove yourself to the new god before he will let you keep your levels.
"New" uses for skills are largely useless being just several more examples of craft, profession and knowledge skills. Only useful one is Heal - enabling you to determine cause of death and other forensic data.
New feats are usefull and largely balanced. Whole lot of them are based on the alternative uses for Chanelling but two genearal and two Metamagic feats are usefull as well. This is probably a part of the book with greatest general utility.
Magic items are slightly overpowerd and not overly inspired. Called armour for example can be automaticaly equiped over any distance for the cost of only one +1 bonus. Armour of Speed is very unbalanced (granting Haste, extra partial action and all as well as +4 on AC all for a cost of only +3 enchantment) and I hope that this will be one of the first things to be errated in this book.
What follows is an incredibly lengthy (13 pages but it feels triple that) discussion on a role of churches. While this could have been a very valuabe source of setting building information it fails to be so because it gets mired in stereotypes. It begines with informaton on churches in general, lengthy and for the most part obvious: "they have adventuring and non-adventuring clerics", 'chaotic ones have less rigid organization then lawfull ones", "players can be entrusted with a mission for their church", " this missions will tend to reflect the primary tennent of the church", "players can get minor help from the churches they are affiliated with" and so on.
The part of the church chapter that could have been usefull, however, fails to be so because it concentrates heavily on the allignment as opposed to the portfollio of the church. Once again significant ammount of ink is wasted on telling us such things as that Lawfull churches tend to be organised and hierarchical and chaotic ones individualistic and free-spirited. this goes to such a lenght that relevant, and lengthy, paragraphs repeat as direct paraphrases of each other in discussions in simmilar allignments (CG and CN for example).
What could have been done, instead of repeating over and over again that churches tend to follow their allignement, is to give in depth samples of functioning of the several major churches of different portfolios (Sun, Sea, War, Earth, etc). Such a sample could incude things like: holy calendar, sample ceremonies, priest titles, relation to the populace, spiritual expectations on the worshipers, laymen and clergy, outline of principal mythoi and, why not, general allignment tendencies within the church. This could then be used by DMs as the inspiration for building their own churches as believable and integral part of their setting.
If this was applied to major Greyhawk churches it would be, aditionaly, a welcome source information on this core setting for DnD. As it is in the book, all the Greyhawk related data (they do give several Greyhawk churches as examples under each allignment) is too short and too scant on any detail to be of much use.
Another reason why I disliked this section is that it propagates the idea that it is possible to categorize everything and everyone exclusively using allignment; an idea that inevitably produces shallow characters, uninspired plots and bland settings and has thus hurt the quality of the DnD game significantly over the years
Another part of this section are floor-plans and description of some sample churches together with stat-blocks on their inhabitants. Personaly I find those rather useless as they are exactly sort of thing any DM I know would be able to draw/write in a minute if they needed a church but I do guess that some people find them usefull.
What follows the description of churches are several "sample" religious societies. Those are of variable quality, from very interesting: House of the Death (morticians that are undercover fighters against undead) and Council of Blades (some sort of warfare umpires) they range to dreary: Stargazers (knights that lke watching stars) and stereotypical: Order of Chalice (crusading demon hunters together with the Holy Grail). For me at least, this organizations, even the best ones, are lacking something that ones in Sword and Fist had. My guess is that what is missing is the sense of their place in the greater world which S&F provided by the thorough immersion in Greyhawk.
Finally, there is more obligatory floorplans, even less interesting then the ones in last section.
"If I run a temple", concuding section of this chapter is again rich in truisms ( "churches have expenses and collect tithe to cover them", "good churches run charities", "churches hold small services daily with more lavish ones on holydays", "adventuring clerics are not required to wory about day-to day functioning of the church but should be aware..." ), all correct but excrutiatingly poor in detail. Questions that player wanting to run a Temple will inevitably need to know remain unanswered: how much contributions can an average church expect from a congregation of a given size ? what are usual demographics on spell-casting clerics versus lay-clergy ? How are different rituals performed in different churches (mariage in the church of Hieroneus or Olidamara is bound to be different affair then the one in a standard Christian/Pelor church) ? How much income can be gained by exhibiting a holy relic ? by selling induligences ? How are spiritual leaders elected ? what is relation with nobility ? All in all a rather useless section in a place where much could have been written. Fortunately, mercifully short.
Finaly we get to the chapter on prestige classes, one that is most likely to be closely scrutinised in the days to come. here again quality is varying widely.
Inquisitor is a great NPC prestige class, balanced and focused it sacrifices Turning abilities for a number of very cinematic (and not excesively powerfull) abilities that have to do with penetrating through lies and disguises. As I do not allow detect lie as a normal spell in my campaigns leaving it as a special domain of rare and feared inquisitors will be a nice touch.
Concetrated Harrier is OK and will fill Bounty Hunter niche till the more general (and hopefully spell-less) version of this class appears in Song and Silence.
Contemplative is balanced if somewhat useless class. It does not seem to adress any real need but does not hurt either. I predict that it will not see much use except as an ocasional saintly NPC.
Divine oracle is somewhat OK, However, given how much trouble prophesising by PC's can be I am not too thrilled about allowing this guys in my campaign. They do, on the other hand, fill a definite niche and are fairly well balanced.
Holy Liberator is one of the best prestige classes so far, and not only in this book but in DnD at large. It fills a long needed position of a chaotic-good paladin and also gives the template for all of those who believe that the Paladin should be a prestige class.
Hospitaler is my greatest point of contention against this book. As it is written it is plain unbalanced, getting a whole lot of bonus feats, martial weapons, lay on hands, remove disease and fighters BAB while sacrificing (if multiclassing from Cleric) practicaly nothing (except accepting, not too stringent, code of conduct). it is possible that this class was not intended to keep cleric spell progression and that this is an incredible typo but, if it was intended as it is, this class is a munchkin paradise in regards to which S&F Ninja and Master Samurai pale in comparison.
Hunter of the Dead we have all seen in Dragon it is good as it stands, better as NPC then PC class but an intersting concept nevertheless.
Knight of a Chalice is a much better prestige class then the Society. It is a specialized Demon Hunter, balanced and cool at the same time. showing once again that giving prestige classes their own spell list as oposed to allowing them to progress in their previous one leads to the more interesting, and balanced, prestige classes.
Knight of the Middle Circle is as dreary as his superiors, the Stargazers from the societies chapter. I have feeling that this whole institution makes some sense in the context of the author's own campaign but as presented in this book they are rather pointless. Separate spell list, however, again guarantees the semblance of balance.
Master of Shrouds is a good (if a bit too tough) villian simmilar in spirit and feel to Crypt King and Penumbral Lord of Relics and Rituals. this sort of vilanous prestige classes are always welcome with me as they do tend to make more memorabe adversaries then usual.
Exorcist fills as important a niche as an Inquisitor but less sucessfuly. the temptation to give this fellows too much cool abilities in comaprison with what they lost in multiclassing from cleric (what exactly did they lose come to think of it ?) got better of the authors resulting in interesting but unbalanced class. Altrough lack of balance is not as severe as that of Hospitaler and Templar it will still be quite a bit work to get them to be usable. Pity as they are both interesting and needed concept.
Sacred Fist - I love this guys. They are effectively the specialty priests of Kord the Brawler sworn not to use weapons when they can get along by fist fight. I always had a soft spot for the priesthood of Kord (having had them played briliantly and hilariously by a great player of mine, many years ago) and this prestige class does justice to this (somewhat) silly but charming fellows. As I do not use Monks in my capaigns (except in Scarlet Brotherhood) this class will be the kings of unarmed combat as they deserve to be. However, I am somewhat afraid that if you do allow monks as a PC class small selection of clerical spells will not be enough to make this class measure up to the big M. Final verdict - great but sightly underpowered.
Templar is second only to Hospitaler in being the ugly face of munchkinism in this book. this guys get the Weapon Specialization and almost as many extra feats as fighter together with fighter BAB on top of the spells and some of the best combat abilites in the entire game (unconditional damage reduction starting third level and unconditional smite ability starting second level). Beware of them and hope for some prompt errata.
By the way, is it just me or is there any need whatsoever for the Templar prestige class ? Historic templars (and hospitaliers and the whole lot of them) are already represented in the games by Paladins. What niche exactly is this class suposed to fill ?
Warpriest, just like the Warmaster from S&F, this would have been a great class if the WotC would ever bother to give us the war rules for DnD. Their abilities are largely pointless outside their natural context which is formalized rules on warfare. If there were such rules this class would be good and balanced. We live in hope.
As the final comment on the prestige classes chapter I have to condemn the widespread use of Cut and Paste. "Spells per Day" section of practicaly every class follows one of the two templates (they either progress with their spells as clerics or get progression of their own). Considerate author, or one who wanted to give us as much material as possible within alloted 96 pages would have explained both of those mechanisms at the begining of the chapter and then in the individual description which mechanism to use. What this book does is cut and paste entire paragraph (almost half a page long) together with an example into every single class description thus eating out 6-7 good pages out of the book and making a reader feel like listening to a broken record.
Finally, spells.
They are suprisingly good (and have saved this book from getting 2 as my review mark) but are few in number. (They had to write those 'spells per day' paragraphs over and over again you know...). As always with clerical spells, great consideration must be given to the power thereof as they can easily unbalance the game (as opposed to arcane spells that slowly trickle down to PC's clerical spells come as a lump). I feel that the ones from this book are passing this test fairly well while introducing some very nice spells. my favourites include:
Curse of the Brute (Cleric 3) increase str, dex and con but drops int and cha temporarily
and
Divine Sacrifice (Pal 1) sacrifice HP for damage bonus
More would have been nice but would have brought in balance problems. Mechanism to introduce new clerical spells without raising this ever present issue was something I secretly hoped, against the hope, to see in this book but naturaly did not.
Prestige domains I like but am not too impresed by the reqirements that one be in one of the new prestige classes in order to qualify for one. I intend to make it optional for clerics to switch one of their old domans to prestige domains once they reach certain level in their class even if they do not intend to multiclass. They are not unbalancing, except for Cerility (whomever came up with this name) which is another cry of munchkinism in this book but is unnecessary and thus easily ignored, and some of them are long needed (Divination, Exporcism) and others are just plain inspired (Madness, Beastmaster)
Last section, appendix actualy, deals with deities of monsters and humaniod races. As a longtime Greyhawk fan I must say I was deeply disappointed not to see Wastry the Hopping Prophet and other whimsical but well developed monstrous gods of this, presumably default, setting. In exchange we got a collection of vaguely Realmsean feeling and very uninspired gods with too short descriptions.
All in all this is not a great book. It is not even a very good one. Writing style is dry, much worse then that of the S&F (not to mention "The Standing Stone" or "Relics and Rituals") and ammount of usefull information is substandard in comparison with S&F and miniscule compared with "Relics and Rituals". It does, however, have some redeeming features that may justify the purchase, at least for those of us with enough money and insufficient "life" to spend it on. It has some unbalancing elements, but, contrary to S&F, its greatest failure is not in what is in it but in what is not.
(After reading the May issue of Dragon Magazine):
Having criticised certain omissions in DOF in my review I must say that some of the objections have been adressed by the batch of articles by Mr Wyatt and others in most recent Dragon Magazine. "Playing the Priestly Part" and "Realistic Religions" are exactly the sort of information I thought would be well included in the book.
). I think this book is worth its price of 19.95 USD.
)
