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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010663" data-attributes="member: 18387">Review of Defenders of the Faith    Defenders of the Faith is Wizards class book for Clerics and Paladins.  The book does a pretty good job on covering many of the areas a character of these classes will have.  The biggest problem I have is not what is found in the book, but the cool concepts that are here that are never followed up or expanded upon in other materials.      Chapter one is called Clerics and Paladins.  This chapter deals with role-playing your character, and it talks about the different abilities the classes have.  It goes into making choices for skills and spells as you advance in level.  The first part of the chapter is good for anyone playing one of these classes to read.  Beginners will get more use out of the advice here, but even veterans may find and idea or two that had not occurred to them.  The next part of this chapter deals with special mounts.  Why have a horse mount when you can have a Dire Wolverine?  This section is very well done and only tops its self with the part about Dragon Mounts.  Next the chapter talks about channeling and Divine Intervention.  It is good for both e PC and DM to read this part.  Next we have new uses for old skills and feat.  The feats are well done and I especially like the Divine Feats.  Divine feats allow one to use his turning attempts for other things.  The Players Guide to Kalamar did do a better job of this sort of thing, but I credit Wizards for including it first.  If only they would expand upon that idea.  Next it goes into scared gear, mundane items of the religious sort.  Lastly, we have magical items.  Be wary of the Armor of Speed.  It grants haste to the wearer for only +3 market value.  That is very cheap for permanent haste.      Chapter two is called Churches and Organizations.  This section is good for a DM and a PC to read.  It starts with talking about church structure by alignment.  Unless one are using a book like The Book of the Righteous that fully details churches, the DM will find this section valuable to define his own churches.  In this section is a small sample Temple to Pelor, Wee Jas, and Erythul.  The second part of the chapter is the fun part for me.  It has religious organizations and some of these are well done and really fun to add into anyone’s game.    The Justice Blade is for Paladins of less then perfect backgrounds.  It’s a small description of the group, but really gives one some good ideas for enriching a Paladin’s background by making him come from imperfection.  The Laughing Knives are a great organization that humiliates tyrannical rulers.  There’s a great picture that goes along with them as well.  It is well done and can really add a level of seriousness and levity at the same time.  Next it talks about running a temple.  It hits upon some great topics in running a temple that I think many people might not realize.  This is well done and very useful for the player as well as the DM.      Chapter three is called Prestige Classes.  This section is hit and miss for me.  I would have liked to see some generic prestige classes that dealt more with the domains of the gods, like a Sun god prestige class or a Craft god prestige class.  However, while the prestige classes did not go in that direction, I think many of them are useful    The Holy Liberator is a great prestige class that is basically a Chaotic Good Paladin.  They get a celestial companion and many Paladin like abilities.      The Hunter of the Dead is one of the better prestige classes to appear in Dragon and I’m glad to see it reprinted here.  One of the best things is that to become this class you need to have a level or attribute permanently drained.  I think little details like that add a lot to the character of a class.      Chapter four is called Divine Magic and is of course full of spells.  Some of them like Briar Web are just improved versions of old spells.  Briar web is a second level version of Entangle.  Others are the typical buffing spells like Bear’s Heart that grants allies +4 to strength, +1d4 temp HPs per caster level, but leaves them exhausted after the spell is over.  Also in this chapter is the concept of Prestige Domains.  These are domains that are a little more powerful then normal domains and can only be gained through certain Prestige Classes.  Two of the Prestige Domains listed give a very powerful domain power that is above and beyond any other domain power.  The first is Celerity.  It grants +2 to Dexterity, +10ft to speed (if in light armor), and +2 to initiative.  Perhaps leaving out the Dexterity bonus would be more appropriate.  The other one is the Madness Domain.  It increases your wisdom for spell casting, but deceases the wisdom for everything else (saves, skill checks, etc).  The DCs can become very high, very fast and can make it so that saves are almost impossible to make.  Overall, I like the idea of Prestige domains.  I think the two listed here may give DMs problems, and I also would have liked to see this concept expanded upon in other books.      Last, is an Appendix on Monstrous clerics.  It gives a brief description of some of the non-human gods for use in one’s campaign.  The information is brief and feels more like it was tacked on.  The section could easily be expanded to be its own book.      Overall, the book is pretty solid.  There are some powerful things a DM should be aware of, but I think solving them is easy to do.  Some of the prestige classes are a little hard to understand what they get.  Consulting the Wizards web page for the FAQ and errata may become needed.</blockquote>

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