Defenders of the Faith is a 96 page expansion for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition, focusing on clerics and paladins; it retails for $19.95. The contents are printed in two columns of fairly dense text per page, occasionally broken up by black & white artwork, maps, and tables. None of the artwork seemed particularly awful or spectacular, although the artwork for the prestige classes were better than the previous sections.
Defenders of the Faith opens with the standard introduction, "what this book is and is not," and "how to use this book". This section can probably be ignored and is only one page long. Immediately following is a section on playing clerics and paladins; on the rule end, this section includes expanded rules for paladin mounts, two new ways to use turn undead, new skills and uses, new feats, some holy gear, and some new magical attributes for equipment.
The "Playing an effective Cleric/Paladin" section contains tidbits ranging from extremely obvious ("learn to identify fights you cannot win, and develop skills and abilities to get out of them") to somewhat obvious ("Because you can expect to be in the thick of melee and often need to cast touch spells on friends who are in the thick of it with you, expect to make more concentration checks than most spellcasters"). Experienced clerics and paladins will find little of use here, although I'd consider giving the section to a new player to read. One thing that is missing that would have been useful is suggestions for effective use of non cure/buff spells, such as obscuring mist, circle of protection, shatter, silence, and other such non-direct spells.
In the paladin advice section expanded mount rules are included, including a table of unusual mounts and their strength, carrying capacity, and (when applicable) flight speed. Also here is a section on retiring aging mounts, which is something I doubt many GMs consider; although it probably won't come up much in most campaigns it is something to think about at least. Finally, there's a section on "Dragon Mounts," which includes gems such as (on dragon rearing) "Patience and tact get better results than harsh words and punishment" and (on keeping you dragon with you) "Always give the dragon the reward promised it." Since in most campaigns of sub-Amber power level getting a dragon mount would be a unique and special occasion, most of this advice is probably not horribly useful. More to the point, any player that goes around breaking promises to a dragon or treating his dragon like a pack animal instead of an NPC is either extremely stupid or extremely powerful.
The best addition in this section is new ways to use the turn undead ability. General rules for a warding ability to set up a location based auto-turn effect and for using the turning effect to close portals keyed to the negative energy plane are provided. With the feats given, a cleric can expand this range of effects to give saving throw bonuses, attack bonuses, elemental resistances, and other useful buffs. With these abilities, a cleric no longer need be less useful just because there arn't any undead around to turn. Also included is a useful feat called "empower turning" which lets a cleric turn significantly more undead than usual but lowers the maximum HD of undead effected, as well as a quick-turn feat, a few metamagic tricks, an extra-smite feat, and an "improved shield bash".
The second section includes descriptions of churches of each alignment, as well as several specific organizations and a few sample temples with maps and monsters included. If you need to work a church into your campaign on short notice, or if you're low on ideas for a holy organization this section could be useful. For DMs with a more specific campaign, this section is likely to be less useful.
The third section includes 14 prestige classes: Church Inquisitor, Consecrated Harrier, Contemplative, Divine Oracle, Holy Liberator, Hospitaler, Hunter of the Dead, Knight of the Chalice, Knight of the Middle Circle, Master of the Shrouds, Sacred Exorcist, Sacred Fist, Templar, and Warpriest. These classes either continue divine spell gain as if still going up cleric levels, or gain several low-level spells along a separate track as the Assassin in the DMG does. The former generally gain several minor perks over the standard cleric in exchange for lower saving throws than a cleric of the same level and sometimes a d6 instead a d8 for a hit die. The latter generally are fairly tough fighters with several abilities specific to their focus. (demon slaying, undead slaying, doing holy missions for their church, etc.) One class, the warpriest, gains cleric spellcasting levels every other level instead of every level in exchange for plus 1 attack per level (as with the fighting-oriented prestige classes) and a bunch of group-buff effects.
Of the new classes, only the Hospitalier stuck out as particularly unbalancing, although this could be due to editing errors; the hospitaler gains plus one attack bonus per level, continues to gain fortitude save bonuses at a decent rate (plus one per two levels, plus two at L1), and gains useful skills such as lay hands, turn undead, remove disease, bonus feats every two levels starting at 3rd, AND gains cleric spellcaster levels every level. There are what appears to be a few editing mistakes in this class section; the hospitaler is listed as gaining "turn undead" in the class table, but doesn't have it under "class features"- the class features, in fact, specifically say that the hospitaler does not gain turn/rebuke ability with the increased spell levels although this is probably just the result of a cut-and-paste of the generic "gains spellcaster levels" text. Also, the extra cleric-casting levels aren’t listed in the class table, but are listed under "class features." Some DM interpretation and balancing is probably needed on this class.
After the prestige class section is "Divine Magic" section, including prestige domains and new spells. The prestige domains are domains unique to the new prestige classes, such as mind, celerity, and inquisition. As with all domains, these domains grant a power and an additional possible spell at each level that normally wouldn't be available. These domains' powers are often significantly more powerful than standard domains; mind, for example, gives plus two to five skills and plus two to saves vs enchantment. Other strong bonuses include plus two caster levels to spells of that domain, plus two dexterity plus 10' move and plus 2 initiative (in one domain), and a paladin-esque bonus of the charisma modifier to all saves. Offsetting this, however, is the fact that the most powerful of the prestige domains appear to only available to the Contemplative prestige class; the other prestige classes that gain prestige domains are limited to specific domains. If a DM were to make his own prestige classes with access to these domains, however, he would have to be careful to balance the powers of the domain carefully.
As for the spells, none stood out as particularly innovative or interesting. You get several weapon buff spells, stronger aid type spells, some buffs/debuffs, a wall of blades type spell, and a mass plant-killer. The prestige domains also gain a few spells appropriate for their focus, such as the pestilence domain's "Otyugh Swarm" which creates a swarm of Otyughs from a large mass of sewage. The most interesting spells were the new divinations; one that lets you spy through a target's eyes but can be passed to a new target that the current look-ee touches, a weather prediction spell (oddly high level at four, three for druids), and a bulk thought-reader (level eight, so it's not intruding on the wizard's detect thoughts much). Also, oddly, is a spell that creates a 15' spray of green slime.
At the very end is an appendix with a list of extra gods, including a paragraph about each and their favorite weapons. Not really much info to work with here, but if you're running a campaign with a bunch of deities running around this can be helpful; you'd just need to flesh things out if you wanted to make that diety more than a passing name.
All in all, I have mixed feelings about Defenders of the Faith. The prestige classes could be useful if PCs need ideas for a character concept and the new turning-use feats are a nice addition. On the other hand the spells aren’t that great, the sample churches section won't be useful for many campaigns, and the character advice is useful only to newbie players; these three topics comprise a good chunk of the book. DMs with a cleric-heavy campaign could use this to add more variety to their NPCs, and it certainly does give a few more options to clerics and paladins as far as feats and prestige classes. If the additions are worth $20 depends simply on how much you want the new content.
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