The Devout Militant of Irydria

[Sardinal]

The Royal Order of the Devout Militant

The Royal Order of the Devout Militant are the premier divine casters of the Irydrian Royal Military. Members of the Devout Militant can be found in military positions throughout the Army and Navy acting as advisors and specialists in combating the enemies of Irydria. Called Goldcloaks in common parlance, these are not just warrior priests or battle clerics, but highly trained tacticians who spend years of their lives devoted to learning how best to combat both the enemies of their faith and those of the Kingdom.

Priests who wish to join the ranks of the Devout Militant must first join the Royal Military for a period of two years. Commanding Officers who find the priests under their command worthy can the recommend them for entry into the Royal Military Academy’s College of Strategic Theurgy. This College accepts only the best and brightest, men and women of wisdom, faith, and a sound tactical mind. Training in the College lasts for 2 years after which the novitiate earns his commision gaining the rank of Lieutenant Specialist. From there they rejoin the military for another 2-4 years of field training, often working with the Lieutenants of the Arcane Militant. Once their CO determines they are ready, they graduate from this apprenticeship gaining the rank of Captain Specialist.

Captain Specialists are considered a half rank below their equivalent rank in the Military and Arcane Militant, generally acting as adjuncts and advisors in fighting the enemies they specialize in. The Devout Militant can also be given leave to form mission specific commands in order to achieve certain goals or military objectives. In these circumstances his rank is considered a half rank above their equivalent ranks in the Military and Arcane Militant in all matters concerning their mission.

In times of peace, like their Arcane counterparts, the Devout Militant operate with a great deal of autonomy. They generally split their time between furthering their training and working directly for their church. Some also spend time working with adventuring groups. In times of War, the Devout form the divine magical arm of the Military.

The Devout Militant are recognized everywhere for their famous Gold Cloaks. Made of cloth-of-gold and trimmed in black and silver these cloaks bear their military rank and priestly rank as well as medals and awards over the left breast and their emblem of the kingdom and the holy symbol of their faith over the right. Amongst themselves, the Devout Militant often use their weapons as a signifier of prestige.



The Devout Militant of Irydria

Requirements:
Alignment: Any Good
Skills: Profession: Soldier 8 ranks, Knowledge: Religion 8 ranks, Knowledge: Local 3 ranks.
Feats: Any one Metamagic Feat
Spellcasting: Must be able to cast 3rd level divine spells.
Special: Must have spent at least two years in the Royal Military of Irydria

HIt Die: d8
Skills: 2 + INT mod/level Concentration, Craft, Diplomacy, Heal, Knowledge Religion, Knowledge: History, Knowledge Local (may only take one locality that is the same location they intend to take as their Enemies of the State ability), Profession, Spellcraft.

Level Bab Fort Ref Will  Special                                                               Spellcasting
    1      0     2     0     2     Prestige Domain: Battle Domain, Rank                +1 existing Divine
    2      1     3     0     3     Enemies of the Faith                                          +1 existing Divine
    3      2     3     1     3                                                                             +1 existing Divine
    4      3     4     1     4     Faith Aegis                                                        +1 existing Divine
    5      3     4     1     4     Enemies of the State                                         +1 existing Divine
    6      4     5     2     5                                                                            +1 existing Divine
    7      5     5     2     5     Enemies of the Faith II                                      +1 existing Divine
    8      6     6     2     6     Faith Aegis II                                                    +1 existing Divine
    9      6     6     3     6                                                                            +1 existing Divine
   10     7     7     3     7     Enemies of the State II                                      +1 existing Divine


Prestige Domain: At first level the Devout Militant gain access to the Prestige Domain: Battle as described here. worldofseverall.proboards.com/thread/217/prestige-domains . They gain the granted power of the domain. Clerics may memorize the domain spells in their domain slots. Mystics may add the spell list to their class list and choose them as spells known. Other divine casters add the spells to their class list.

Rank: At first level the Devout Militant gains the rank of Captain Specialist. Further rank must be earned in the traditional manner.

Enemies of the Faith: At 2nd level the Devout Faithful’s lessons in his faith’s enemies manifest as a powerful ability to combat enemies of their faith. This has the effect of giving any weapon they hold an effect similar to the Bane effect, but it only affects worshipers of their chosen enemy faith. The weapon’s enhancement bonus acts as if it was 2 higher and it deals an extra 2d6 sacred damage to them.


Clerics Faith:          Enemy Faith
     Galleon                     Koric
       Myrr                    Chal-Sue
      Sierra                      Cyian
      Thelin                    Katdoral

If the Devout Militant worships a god not one of those listed above he must choose one of the enemy faiths listed above.

At 7th level this ability grants further damage on a critical hit. Upon confirming a crit, the weapon unleashes an explosion of sacred energy doing a further 1d10 points of sacred damage. If the weapon has a x3 crit multiplier this damage is 2d10, if it has a x4 crit multiplier it does 3d10.

Faith Aegis: At 4th level the Devout Militant gains Damage Reduction = to their class level vs evil. At 4th level this would read as DR 4/evil.

At 8th level they gain the ability to cut their value of their damage reduction in half in order to generate a 30’ radius aura that grants that damage reduction to their allies. At 8th level this would mean that the Devout Militant could have a personal DR of 8/evil or him and all allies within 30’ would have DR 4/evil. Switching between the Personal and Aura damage reductions is a Move action. This aura counts as a spell cast at the Devout Militants caster level and can be dispelled but rather than removing the effect the dispel forces the DR back to its Personal mode.

Enemies of the State: At 5th level the Devout Militant must choose one of the Enemies of the Kingdom of Irydria to specialize in combating. The Chosen enemy must come from the same region as the Knowledge: Local they chose for their class skill.

Enemies:
The Storm Horde Barbarians
The Empire of Lark
The Deurgar
The Drow Homeland

The Devout Militant gains a +2 sacred bonus to AC against minions and citizens of their chosen enemy. They also gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, Profession: Soldier, and Sense Motive Checks against them. Finally, if the Devout Militant uses the aid another action for a comrades skill checks in any of those skills, they grant a +4 bonus instead of the standard +2.

At 10th level both the sacred bonus to AC and the Circumstance bonus to the skills increases to +4. The aid another bonus increase to +6.

[seekyr]

Way, way, way broken. Seriously?

[Katdoral]

Nov 3, 2017 8:47:49 GMT -5 seekyr said:

Way, way, way broken. Seriously?

Perhaps you could be a bit more specific. What, specifically, do you find broken in this prestige class?

[seekyr]

Any time you get more from a class than you give up to get into the class, it's broken. You have full casting here. All you might be giving up from the base class is a bit of turning. For the loss of ten levels or so of turning damage, you get all of the prestige class abilities. A permanent bane effect for your enemies is serious. +2 to hit and an extra 2d6 damage? For each and every attack, no less. Not like the paladin's smite evil, which is limited in use, but each and every attack with any weapon held. Bumping up to devastating criticals at 7th.
Damage reduction from evil attacks. Do paladins EVER get this? The people always on the front lines? No? Perhaps they should look into a career change, then.
Ooh! Then, you can share it with your friends, too!
Lastly, you get the ranger's favoured enemy ability, and it grows at tenth. Hard to imagine why anyone would think this broken. Epic prestige classes don't get this much stuff.

Sorry if I was unclear as to why I thought this might be broken.

[Katdoral]

Well, some of your thinking seems somewhat narrow here. As far as the bane effect it's not simply to every attack. It's specific to the devout of one specific diety. For the price of a +1 enhancment bonus on a weapon no less. That's hardly broken since any average 6th level character could have the exact same bonus, only applied to an entire species. Also, it doesn't bump up to devestating critical. It mimics the bursting effect that various weapon enhancements get, only it also is limited to the devout of a single diety. As for the damage reduction, your wording leads me to suspect you don't understand damage reduction. It's damage reduction that is bypassed by evil creatures, not against evil creatures. Considering the class is tailored to combat evil, that's not really a boon since what you are more likely to be fighting gets to ignore the damage reduction. Though, I'll freely admit that it is the most powerful of the abilities this prestige class offers. As for the favoured enemy ability, it's also highly limited as the ranger bonus gets considerably higher and applies to more skills then it does here.

As for any time you get more from a class than you give up, that's not really a valid argument since every class, prestige or otherwise, offers character options that easily give an advantage over a single class character.

[seekyr]

The bane effect is to every attack against an opposing cleric, with whatever weapon you have. I could throw a pebble with +2 and do 2d6 damage. You could even use this to find hidden spies, were they devout enough. It's a free magic weapon with limited use. Further, it's not removable, and cannot be stolen. Welcome to 7th level, here's your free weapon for the war against--.
The damage reduction is an easy way to stop worrying about incidental misses and collateral damage, and could also be used to bully people into going along.

That any prestige class allows this is the point. A prestige class should not be a necessity, as a base class should at least be able to hang with others. This way, people are foolish for not taking one. Prestige classes should be a focus: A way for a class to get a few new abilities at the cost of not having the rest of what your base class would offer. This is a free pass towards superman.

As always, this is just my viewpoint. Whatever y'all want do with it is fine.

And for the record: Most of the prestige classes in he dmg are also broken, though not this badly.

[Katdoral]

Well, while those points are accurate, the conclusion still seems off. After all, rogues, a base class, get sneak attack that easily outweighs the bane effect. It, like the bane effect listed, has it's own restrictions of course. Could you expand on what you mean by incidentl misses and collateral damage? We don't really use an expanded critical miss chart, it's essentially either a dropped weapon or falling to prone in the case of natural weapons if that was what you were referring to. And damage reduction doesn't apply to most area effects since the majority of them are either the rare untyped damage or an energy form.

[seekyr]

The base classes are primarily balanced with the other base classes. I know that some of them seem a bit less balanced than others (Druid? We're looking at you!), but in all, they do try to at least balance with the others.
A prestige class that is based off of a base class should not far outstrip the base class to the point that no one in their right mind would continue to play it. Base classes don't stop at five, and their abilities are balanced to provide growth throughout the character's growth. If a prestige class gives more - especially much more - than they would get from the base class, people would be stupid if not foolish to continue the main class. Which is why I feel that a fair balance is that you need to get less than you give up in taking the class. Certainly not more. The archmage is a fine class, as you have to continually give up class features to get new ones from the prestige class. Many of the base classes limit what you get or remove parts of what you'd get from the base class to try and offset what you get from the new class.

'Could you expand on what you mean by incidentl misses and collateral damage?' - Sure. If you had damage reduction of 4/evil, and you were engaged in a fight with a number of evil creatures - let's use goblins - and your friends wanted to free you, they would not have to worry so much about you being in the way when they attack: You ignore four points of damage they'd inflict if they accidentally struck you. A more ridiculous form of this is the arcane archer's version of multiattack. If I have it right, the archer gets a shot (just one) at everyone around them. An archer - even one of the precision jobs - could fire in there with impunity, as the extra damage they inflict is precision damage, so you could easily get away with taking minimal damage, if you were damaged at all.

Does that help explain my point a bit more?

[Katdoral]

Alright. I see where you're coming from. I get the impression that there's a bit of bias on your part though. Your contention seems to stem from if you get more from the prestige class then the base class would supply, it's not balanced. The trouble with that is you can use combinations of base classes that would also be out of balance, using the logic supplied. Fighter going into ranger as an example. You loose a few feat choices (Though not the entirety of the fighter bonus feats since several ranger class features supply those same bonus feats), but gain the same base attack progression, additional damage via favored enemies, and a spell progression, continued fort good fort save, so on and so forth. Not to mention an animal companion. I suppose my question then, would you consider a fighter taking levels of ranger to also be broken?

[seekyr]

Fighter going into ranger gets you a few things, but you lose specialization from the fighter. It doesn't make you greater than the base class, just more specialized. Technically, the ranger is a specialized fighter in most regards. As is the barbarian and the paladin. Fighter is designed to fight, and a straight up fighter is at least equal to a ranger of equivalent level. Same with paladin or barbarian. Each specialty has its focus, but none of them take away from the fighter as a whole.
A fighter specced right can best any of them with fair ease. The barbarian is disarmed and your defense is buffed until he stops raging. The ranger has spells, but everything he does in combat the fighter does better. Bad luck if you happen to be of a race that he has as a favoured enemy, but... Paladin has a hard time keeping up with the damage. Some of the abilities help, but there isn't a clear path to victory for any of them. The nastiest bit is that a fighter straight up can be many things in one character. Might be why the Boss likes them so much.

I go for thieves, then mages/psions myself. I'm weird. I know.

Main point is that the base classes are balanced (minor exception of the druid), and people can play and do most anything with them. The sheer flexibility of the core books makes me go crazy when people gripe about all the prestige classes they want to take. Has Freitsche (did I spell that right?) taught no one anything? Kazrim should be a shining example of what can be done with a little imagination and the base rules. If you want to specialize, then go ahead - that's why prestige classes exist. Breaking the game to make it more uber is not a good path to be on. Sean Patrick Fannon's Role Playing Gamer's Bible has a pretty good bit on the types of players. The Ultimate Munchkin is one of them.
I got ahold of the Middle Earth RPG, and I just handed it to Scott and told him to break it for me. He came back not two days later and I couldn't play it because it was too easy to make the game unplayable in character creation. I'm not accusing y'all of doing this - not to this degree, in any event - but the game is arguably more fun with smaller characters who aren't going to break the world you're in. It's why I don't play my Thrallherd unless that's the sort of thing the DM wants. When it's too easy, scratch that. When the game is made in such a way that you either grab all the power you can get - and there are too many ways to rape the game to get it - or die in the party with the munchkins because the Dm has to make it challenging for them; thus making it too challenging for you. Are there ways to get this to happen? Sure. Kazrim's a fine choice. That no one wants to keep that going is sad.

Mystic theurge needs to die a horrible death, btw.

[Katdoral]

I suppose my problem is that there's really very little incentive to remain in the Cleric class, much like there's very little incentive to remain in the Sorcerer class. Cleric basically just gives you increases to the effectiveness of their turn attempts. However, around 12th level or so the HD of undead starts to jump ahead of what the turn attempts can handle. Then you start getting into turn resistance, and, albiet limited, turn immunity. We've mitigated the disparity for sorcerer, but haven't come to any consensus on how to make cleric's worthwhile as a 20 level class. Hence our expansion of prestige classes. As far as how balanced it is, it falls within the core classes when you run the math. After all, paladin's can generate an aura that helps the rest of the part either eliminate or greatly mitigate the effectivness of spells. The damage is considerably lower then that of a ranger's favored enemy, and on par with the fighter's weapon specs. And that's really the focus of the prestige class. It specializes cleric's for combating opposing faiths. Hence the inclusion of the battle domain, and the favored enemy style bonuses and such. It's important to note that while they do get combat related bonuses, they do not get an increased base attack to accompany those bonuses. I'm not sure if you calculated that or not in your assesment. Then or course there's the requirements. After all you need knowledge local, which means you have to devote some time to the study of things hostile to yourself, which brings with it a certain amount of danger. I'm not sure how you handle knowledge local on a level up, but I require when running first hand experience to before you can devote ranks to it. The faiths involved are very localized, meaning the Empire of Lark, or even worse, the Drow forest, or the undead kingdoms...None of which are hospitable to good clerics.

[Katdoral]

Also, at some point, I will likely move these posts into the tavern, however I won't do that until we seem to be finished discussing the matter.

[seekyr]

If you think that the base class cleric is underpowered, then try to fix it, rather than over power a prestige class. One thought I have is to remove aging penalties at level twenty, like the monk. Perhaps a stronger boost to saves, as the gods would be looking after their cleric. Perhaps a stepped domain bonus? More bonuses as you get closer to the god?
Personally, I feel that clerics shouldn't have to prepare their spells, but that'd be for prestige classes, too.
Giving something to a specific prestige class without giving it to the rest of them, let alone the base class, seems to be wrongly favouring that class. If it's something that you feel all clerics should have, then make it something that all clerics have. I am more than comfortable with the idea of a god granting things to their people. It might help Kazrim to stop thinking of them as spell beggars. 😊. The knowledge bit would help, but how many of them will need to have it before someone writes it down?