New D&D 5e Core Class: The Priest (Bronze Age/Ancient World)

[mockman1890]

Hi everyone,

Longtime ENworld reader, first-time poster! I'm a gamer and artist -- you may have seen my D&D Walkthrough Maps on the internet. I've been working for some time on a new D&D5e core class and I wanted to share it here:

http://mockman.com/2015/05/21/my-new-dungeons-dragons-class-the-priest/

The Priest (or Idolpriest, or Idolator) is a variant divine class inspired by historical priests of ancient religions -- in particular by Scott Bennie's 3rd edition supplement "Testament: Roleplaying in the Biblical Era." It's also inspired by the sword & sorcery archetype of the 'mysterious high priest," a type of character who's closer to a wizard than to the armored, mace-wielding, battlefield cleric of D&D.

The Priest:
* uses an Idol similar to the way a wizard uses their spellbook (or more like a familiar, since Idols become more powerful as the priest gains levels)
* has improved casting abilities, particularly enchantments & illusions, compared to clerics
* has less weapon & armor abilities than a cleric
* can gain Divine Boons by pleasing their Idol through prayer, ritual, offerings of jewels & treasure, self-flagellation and above all BLOOD SACRIFICE!

There's several builds and some illustrations in the PDF. I'm using the Priest now in my current 5e campaign, which is a reskinned version of "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" set in a fantasy D&D version of Ancient Babylon. But although it's inspired by ancient, Bronze Age mythology, it could just as easily work in a more traditional D&D campaign... as long as you're into the idolatry!

Please check it out and let me know what you think!

Many thanks,

Jason

 

[Ezel]

I like the idea and the features are interesting and bring to some interesting spiritual fluff that I love. I think that it has way too many features for a full caster though, both because it might bring too much power, and because it really is too much to read. The cleric in the PHB is one of the full casters with the most features and yet it has 5 blank spaces and gets to have more than one feature at once only at levels 1, 2, 6, 8, 17. In general classes don't have that many features to keep track of usually, your class ends up being pretty complicated and full of options.
There are 4 features at level 1 (in the PHB only the rogue gets to 3 features and one is a ribbon feature), it gets more than one feature at levels 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 17 and it has no blank space where it gets only spell and proficiency advancement. I think a lot of things need to be summarised, simplified and cut, otherwise it is a very nice class with a lot of good flavor.
If you notice there are usually not many lists of choices you can make entirely tied to the class, warlock gets invocations, battlemaster gets maneuvers. Then there is spellcasting and smaller sets of options like archetype choice, and only the warlock gets to choose between 2 things that pretty much make the archetype. Your priest has domains, types of idol, idol aspects, divine boons, spellcasting. That is a lot to keep track of.
I would also advise to use a layout more similar to the PHB, the current layout is very hard to read through because of titles being all very similar between each other.

 

[mockman1890]

I like the idea and the features are interesting and bring to some interesting spiritual fluff that I love. I think that it has way too many features for a full caster though, both because it might bring too much power, and because it really is too much to read. The cleric in the PHB is one of the full casters with the most features and yet it has 5 blank spaces and gets to have more than one feature at once only at levels 1, 2, 6, 8, 17. In general classes don't have that many features to keep track of usually, your class ends up being pretty complicated and full of options.
There are 4 features at level 1 (in the PHB only the rogue gets to 3 features and one is a ribbon feature), it gets more than one feature at levels 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 17 and it has no blank space where it gets only spell and proficiency advancement. I think a lot of things need to be summarised, simplified and cut, otherwise it is a very nice class with a lot of good flavor.
If you notice there are usually not many lists of choices you can make entirely tied to the class, warlock gets invocations, battlemaster gets maneuvers. Then there is spellcasting and smaller sets of options like archetype choice, and only the warlock gets to choose between 2 things that pretty much make the archetype. Your priest has domains, types of idol, idol aspects, divine boons, spellcasting. That is a lot to keep track of.
I would also advise to use a layout more similar to the PHB, the current layout is very hard to read through because of titles being all very similar between each other.

Thank you so much! Yes, it is pretty complicated, isn't it... I hadn't noticed that in the 5e PHB classes never almost never get additional features (beyond the Feat/Ability Score Improvement) at 4th, 8th & 12th level.

If I revise the PDF I'll try to be clearer with the titles & layout (and maybe use the PHB fonts)!

 

[Ezel]

I can help you out with the layout by sending you my word file if you want (I made the runeseeker class that nobody seem to find interesting, but you can check if you like my layout).

I know that after you made all of that stuff thinking about scrapping a lot of it sounds hard, but I think it's really important that you decide what you want to keep and what you want to scrap in order to have a much slimmer class. Check the PHB classes, the warlock is a pretty complicated class with 2 choices of archetype intertwining, plus various invocation choices, and it requires 7 pages. The wizard has 8 different archetypes that require some space and fills 8 pages, same for the cleric. Considering that homebrewed casters need some additional space for spell lists an additional page is fine, so try not to ever go over 9 pages when making your homebrewed class. Then to that you can add any amount of pages for homebrewed spells and monsters if needed. Since your class stands on 19 pages counting the spell list but not homebrewed spells and monsters, you are going to need to halve it.

I really hope you can manage to make the design more feasible, because I might playtest this class if it becomes simpler!