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Lazy_Harry
2006-12-13, 03:37 AM
You know, I'm just going to cut to the meat of this. :elan:

Pious Soul [General]


Prerequisites: Must be taken on creation, as the level one feat.
Benefit: You gain one domain, of your patron deity as a cleric does, and you may cast one domain spell per day as a cleric of the same level you are.
Special: You must show true piety to your deity and be one step from her alignment. Clerics may not take this feat, and if you multi-class into cleric you gain no further benefit from this feat.


This is still a fairly rough draft of this feat and really only exists to show religion is important to characters other than clerics.

Lord Iames Osari
2006-12-13, 03:45 AM
Add Wis 13+ to prerequisites. And even then I'm not sure I'd allow it.

Lazy_Harry
2006-12-13, 03:50 AM
Good call their. Its a powerfull feat sure, but it is like holding a carrot infront of the rabbit lureing them into religon...Isn't that how religon works anyways?
Prommises of makeing the world right to them in the afterlife and aid in life.

icke
2006-12-13, 05:55 AM
I have two problems with it:

1) If You want to show that religion is important to Your characters, let them practice it without giving them benefits. If You do it this way, it's not the religion thats important but the goodies they get out of it. This is an in-game problem.

2) This is an out-game, balancing pronblem. Your feat will be very hard to balance, since conveying permanent spellcasting abilities is powerfull without comparison. A WIS 13+ requirement doesn't help much, if a cleric wants to cast a spell WIS 10+spell level is required. You can change the prerequisites to "...can only cast spells the character would be able to cast as a cleric of equal wisdom", but the doesn't help with the basic problem. Many domains are just too powerfull, the best example is the luck domain: One miracle every day, to duplicate virtually every cleric spell of level 8 or lower. What would a Wizard do with that? A Fighter? Barbarian? You're casting divine spells, so armor doesn't pose as a problem.

What You could do is split this up unto a bunch of feats, maybe allowing to cast domain spells of some levels:

Pious Soul: level 1-2(prereq. WIS 13+)

Very Pious Soul: level 3-4(prereq. WIS 15+, Pious Soul)

Even More Pious Soul: level 5-6(prereq. WIS 17+,Very Pious Soul, Pious Soul)

PS IV:level 7(WIS 19+, all the others)

PS V:level 8(WIS 19+, all the others)

PS VI:level 9(WIS 19+, all the others)

I'm not sure about the last three, but the rest should be alright(I hope...).

mikeejimbo
2006-12-13, 09:48 AM
I think the best way to reward someone for roleplaying a religious character would be through roleplaying XP.

Grey Knight
2006-12-13, 12:58 PM
If I were doing this, I'd make it much less powerful. Something like an orison (0th-level divine spell) every time you take the feat, 2+Wisdom modifier times (min. 1) per day.

If they want access to "flashy" divine power that much, let them take a level of Cleric. Oh, and also a note to GMs: make sure the player has been roleplaying appropriately before letting them take this feat: no "I promise I'll start being more devout from now on" nonsense!

Lazy_Harry
2006-12-13, 01:53 PM
If I were doing this, I'd make it much less powerful. Something like an orison (0th-level divine spell) every time you take the feat, 2+Wisdom modifier times (min. 1) per day.

If they want access to "flashy" divine power that much, let them take a level of Cleric. Oh, and also a note to GMs: make sure the player has been roleplaying appropriately before letting them take this feat: no "I promise I'll start being more devout from now on" nonsense!

That is why I made it a creation feat, creation feats should be a bit more stout as a start.

I do need to edit that, so that they have the required wisdom to cast such a spell. I mean, with a point buy system what is your fighter's wisdom (who is devout to kord ).

Lets be generous and say he has a 12. So, when he is a level 2, he will be able, once per day, have a bulls. Then low and behold, he doesnt get any more till he invests in some wisdom and turns 5. When any fighter turns 4, their focus will still be in strengh or dex. So their highly unlikely to invest in wisdom.

Grey Knight
2006-12-13, 03:27 PM
Oh, I'd forgotten the "must be level 1 feat" bit by the time I got to the bottom of the page. :smallredface: In that case, things are looking a bit better, I guess.

I'd express the special restrictions as "You must remain piously obedient to your deity, and are subject to the same alignment restrictions as a cleric of that deity. If you multiclass into cleric or change your religion to that of a different deity, you no longer gain the benefits of this feat." I'd put the "must be non-cleric" part in the Prerequisites section.

mikeejimbo
2006-12-13, 04:02 PM
I would also think you should say that if you change your religion and/or alignment, you should be able to get the benefits back if you change back, but only after getting atoned somehow. (Like Atonement, but by that time you probably wouldn't have access to it.)

And there'd have to be a good roleplaying reason too.

The Vorpal Tribble
2006-12-13, 04:09 PM
Do you get the granted abilities from that domain?

mikeejimbo
2006-12-13, 04:15 PM
Do you get the granted abilities from that domain?

Dang, I forgot about granted abilities! *smacks self in the head*

Sorry, this is a tangent but I'm playing a cleric now. 'scuse me, I have to go steal my roommate's PHB.

fangthane
2006-12-13, 04:44 PM
Bonus Domain is an epic feat, requiring the character to be Epic and to have a wisdom score above 20, in addition to the ability to cast 9th level divine spells. Your feat may be taken by any other class, at level 1, with a much lower wisdom, and without any prerequisite of "closeness" to a deity. Smells like Stilton to me, I'm afraid.

If I were to attempt to balance this considering the only other feat to allow anything similar (except as a class feature) is an epic feat, I'd do it as follows:

Exceptional Piety
Prerequisites: Must be taken at character creation, Wis 13, Cha 13, alignment within one 'notch' of chosen deity per cleric restrictions
Benefit: You select one domain associated with your deity. You gain the granted power for this domain, as would a cleric, and a limited ability to cast its spells. Your effective caster level is 1/2 your class level in the class you selected at level 1; this does not stack (or improve) with levels in a subsequent multi-class or prestige class. You receive Domain spells for this domain as would a cleric of your effective caster level.
Special: If, at the DM's discretion, you are behaving contrary to your deity's dictates, all granted powers and spellcasting ability for this domain may be revoked, requiring Atonement or similar means to recover.

This way clerics can still pick it, and for some builds it's a slight benefit, while for others it's not. Other classes can take it, and it's a lot weaker than the class features it'd otherwise overshadow. It also 'gives a little back' to the basic classes as compared to prestige alternatives, since this flavour encourages single-class progression. It bogs down a bit with things like Gestalts, but what doesn't? :)

Edit - whoops, didn't notice that it says "One spell per day" - does that mean you can prepare one spell per day, of up to max domain level, or did you mean to say "one spell of each available level per day" or similar?
Can a human fighter or rogue, for example, pick two domains?

Lazy_Harry
2006-12-13, 08:52 PM
Nice modifacation on that fang.

It also lends itself to another idea, of being a two part feat. The first feat, still taken on creation, gives them the granted ability of the domain.
And the second part, only aquireable by the deity deaming the player worthy to gain the spellcasting domain abilities as a cleric of an equivlent level.
Makeing the second part a DM descression, and the first part, a stout ability that isnt entirely broken.

Also I forgot to add the "Special: If, at the DM's discretion, you are behaving contrary to your deity's dictates, all granted powers and spellcasting ability for this domain may be revoked, requiring Atonement or similar means to recover."

Thanks for reminding me on that...I may come up with a cleaned verson of this now two feat set later.

magic8BALL
2006-12-14, 08:15 AM
Add Wis 13+ to prerequisites. And even then I'm not sure I'd allow it.

Hey, "as a cleric" means "go get WIS 10 + spell level or don't bother anyway".

That said, yes it seems a bit over powering as presented. I like this idea of two feats: 1st grants Domain Power, 2nd grants Domain Spells. Add in the first MUST be taken at 1st level, and the Second at either 1st or 3rd (Humans could have both at 1st). [The first feat may be taken mulitple times. All times must still be at first level. Each timne you take it, you gain a new Domain Power.] Hell, i'd even put in a role playing prereq for these: Must serve in a church, temple, monastry, mission camp, blah blah blah for some time. Tick for Paladins and Monks. Adds flavour to these classes.

meh... I still like "as a cleric with levels equl to your hit dice". You spend 2 feats to get 1 spell per 2 hit dice, if you have the wisdom for it. (again, monks are in for a boon, not that they need the boost...) It's not like there's a whole lot of choice.

"As a cleric" also means "thou shalt not change alignment too much, nor go against the teachings of your diety etc etc or loose casting until you get an atonment", wich is actually a bigger pain than I thought, I recently found out.



What else dose the spell casting granted do for the character? eg. Can I use wands if the wands spell appears on my domain list? Scolls? Staffs? Dose this feat qualify me for PrC's? Feats?

icke
2006-12-14, 08:21 AM
What else dose the spell casting granted do for the character? eg. Can I use wands if the wands spell appears on my domain list? Scolls? Staffs? Dose this feat qualify me for PrC's? Feats?

Answered in order of original questions: Nothing. No. No. No. No. Only the follow-ups of this one.

Lazy_Harry
2006-12-18, 01:32 PM
Answered in order of original questions: Nothing. No. No. No. No. Only the follow-ups of this one.

The last no, should be changed to yes...if it is a feat that requires you to have a domain.

Delcan
2006-12-18, 02:11 PM
Rules-wise, it's broken, as others in this thread have already pointed out, so I won't comment there. Flavor-wise, I'm wholeheartedly against it. This is just compounding the problem of people playing clerics for the spells, and not for the character itself. If the only reason a character is going for a religion is for the nifty powers a deity/philosophy grants, you're doing something wrong - and this is just a feat that offers one more way of doing it wrong.

If you want to play a pious character who isn't a cleric, have them serve their church, observe its precepts, and live as a servant of that deity should. And if you're a DM and you want to reward them for that, there's plenty of in-game, story-developing ways to do it that are much more special to a player than another feat.

EddieBird
2006-12-18, 06:32 PM
If you want to play a pious character who isn't a cleric, have them serve their church, observe its precepts, and live as a servant of that deity should. And if you're a DM and you want to reward them for that, there's plenty of in-game, story-developing ways to do it that are much more special to a player than another feat.

I whole heartedly agree. I have the gods get involved in peoples lives a lot more in my world so its not uncommon for non-clerics to get rewarded. Usually the reward is one free resurrection. (I don't like killing player's characters off "forever") Sometimes its an item of some kind, but not one powerful enough to unbalence things. (the gods are wise in the distribution of their gifts) However only clerics get spells.

MrNexx
2006-12-18, 08:10 PM
Why would anyone take Arcane Disciple (or whatever it's called)?

Druid
2006-12-18, 08:48 PM
DnD does not need druids with access to miracle or mordenkainen's disjunction.