Thursday, March 8, 2012

Heresy?

Clerics in early D&D and retro-clones are very limited, in terms of the role they play. The character is designed around a holy warrior concept that is very much like a 12th Century Christian Crusader, which is very cool, so long as that works with the culture of your game. The old AD&D Deities and Demigods gave a lot of info on different religions that could be at play in the game, and of course later editions created pantheons that were rather suspiciously tailored to the needs of adventuring heroes.
Washing the dishes last night, I began thinking how to customize the cleric to suit different Gods. Here I have customized clerics for Gods of the Olympian pantheon whose names start with the letter A. Further adventures deeper into the alphabet are likely. I'm sure what I came up with is pretty terrible, but I think it's something to talk about.
Clerics of:
Aphrodite: weapons, armor and spells as MUs (using the cleric list, adding charm person, mirror image, charm monster, and hold monster at the appropriate levels). They do not turn undead, but captivate human, demihuman and humanoid males with their beauty. Roll on the turn undead chart, replacing skeleton with 1HD, zombie with 2HD up to Vampire with 8HD. Any humanoid affected will spend 3d8 rounds gaping. As with standard undead turning, the effect is broken if they are attacked.
Apollo: Clerics of Apollo are proficient with bows (not crossbows) and song. By singing, they will give members of the party +1 to attacks, AC, morale and saves. Enemies will take a -1 penalty to morale. The effect lasts as long as the cleric keeps singing, and can be used once/day/level. They advance as fighters.
Ares: Clerics of Ares are proficient with all melee weapons. They gain spells as clerics, attack as fighters and advance as Magic-Users. They do not turn undead.
Artemis: Clerics of Artemis are, again, proficient with bows. They can only wear leather armor. Their turning ability is useful against animals, rather than undead. A natural 20 on the turning roll will tame affected animals instead. A tamed animal will faithfully serve the cleric for 3d8 rounds.
Athena: Clerics of Athena can roll a d20 once/day/level. If the result is =/<  their intelligence score, they will know some relevant piece of information about whatever problem is confronting them. This should help, but not give away the whole store.

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