Defenders of the Faith is the second of the five class books produced by Wizards of the Coast. It provides advice, new spells, feats and prestige classes aimed primarily at expanding the options available to clerics and paladins. The book itself is physically attractive, the cover picture depict two adventurers fighting a fiendish adversary - I actually believe that this is a scene from James Wyatt's module "The Speaker In Dreams".
The book is divided into five chapters, as follows:
Clerics and Paladins (22 pages) begins with advice on how to play those classes, discussing effective play in combat, spell casting - especially healing and divination - the paladin's code, and turning. Variant rules for the special mount of the paladin are given, expanding the range markedly, allowing the possibility of unicorns, griffons, or even dragons as mounts!
Additional uses for turning are discussed, as well as the possibility of divine intervention. The uses of a few skills (Knowledge & Healing) are expanded, and there are 14 new feats. The chapter ends with new items, both mundane and magical.
There is a lot of useful material here. I particularly like the idea of Divine Feats, which allow you to use your turning attempts for something other than turning undead - for instance, Divine Might allows you to use your Charisma modifier as an additional bonus to weapon damage in exchange for a turn attempt.
The advice on playing clerics and paladins should prove very useful for novice players, and the sections dealing with Divine Intervention and Divination are excellent for providing guidelines for the DM.
I am a little disappointed that there weren't more feats given. Even though neither paladins nor clerics have many feat slots to use, I thought more could have been done in this area. The chapter also has one of the most bizarre flaws ever to see print in a D&D product: the armour enhancement of speed. For a measly 3 bonus, you can get a 4 haste bonus to AC, and an additional partial action every round of combat. Huh? It probably seemed a good idea at the time - actually, it still is - but the cost of it is negligible. Don't allow this enhancement if you value your sanity!
Churches and Organisations (24 pages) begins with a discussion of the role of churches in the campaign, primarily dealing with how they interact with the characters, before moving onto describing how churches of the various alignments are normally organised, with examples and hints for each of the standard D&D deities. Some temples are given floor plans and briefly described here.
After this, six organisations are described, mainly formed of paladins and/or clerics. The chapter ends with a discussion of what goes into running a temple, including the expenses and sources of income of the church, and the activities the church engages in: hiring adventures, looking after the poor and other such matters.
This chapter is good primarily for the ideas it provides the DM and players with for detailing their campaign world. The six organisations it describes may not prove useful for your campaign, and some of the information is obvious to long-time D&D players, but I believe it is definitely worth including.
Some of the organisations are extremely interesting: I especially like the Stargazers, a group of paladin and other classes that are guided to troubled areas by astrology. If there is a drawback here, it is that all of the six groups are primarily good orientated; no evil groups are discussed. This may not bother you, of course.
Prestige Classes (25 pages) describes 14 new prestige classes, as follows:
- Church Inquisitor - a class more concerned with corruption within the church than without
- Consecrated Harrier - a bounty hunter for the forces of good
- Contemplative - one who has been touched by their deity, so that they concentrate more on improving their divine powers than combat.
- Divine Oracle - a seer, with additional powers of divination
- Holy Liberator - a chaotic good paladin
- Hospitaler - a knight dedicated to protecting pilgrims, hospitals and religious sites
- Hunter of the Dead - a holy warrior dedicated to hunting the undead.
- Knight of the Chalice - a member of an elite knightly organisation dedicated to fighting demons.
- Knight of the Middle Circle - a member of the Stargazers organisation described in chapter 2, basically a paladin with quite different abilities, including tongues and true strike
- Master of Shrouds - an evil spellcaster who commands incorporeal undead
- Sacred Exorcist - a cleric who is very good at turning undead and exorcising spirits that have possessed innocents.
- Sacred Fist - a prestige class that mimics the monk
- Templar - a holy warrior sworn to the defense of a temple site.
- War Priest - a cleric who has taken additional training in combat and is able to lead armies
The prestige classes given are weighted heavily towards good; little aid is given for evil clerics. Then too, little is given for the standard paladin, instead there are many paladin variants that seem more of use to characters who want to play a paladin-like character without actually taking the paladin class.
The prestige classes aren't bad, and indeed, some of them are excellent. I particularly like the Hunter of the Dead and the Holy Liberator, both of which I could easily see used in my campaigns. However, because of the preponderance of classes only really useful with good alignments, I find them somewhat lacking. In a campaign, you may have one or two clerics, and they may not even want to take a prestige class! Meanwhile, as a DM, I have a huge number of villains, and the prestige classes are extremely useful in giving me ideas for them.
As such, I feel slightly let down by these classes. Much here is excellent, but more variety would have been appreciated.
Divine Magic (17 pages) details fifty new spells for Clerics, Paladins, Druids and Rangers, and fourteen Prestige Domains, only available to certain prestige classes described in the previous chapter.
The prestige domains are as follows: Beastmaster, Celerity, Community, Creation, Divination, Domination, Exorcism, Glory, Inquisition, Madness, Mind, Mysticism, Pestilence and Summoning.
The new spells vary in usefulness, and some seem more of use to druids than the clerics this book is meant to aid; however, spells such as Aspect of the Deity and Weapon of the Deity are inspired, if powerful, and should add greatly to the campaign.
More aid is given to evil clerics in this chapter than in most of the material proceeding. How can one not like spells such as Plague of Rats, Otyugh Swarm or Slime Wave - the latter a 7th level spell that creates a huge quantity of green slime to cover your enemies!
The prestige domains are an excellent idea, although they do seem to vary in usefulness - some would work well as normal domains, whilst others are rightfully restricted to those who have taken certain prestige classes. Unfortunately, the range of prestige classes doesn't really fit some of the domains. Which prestige class, for example, would take the Pestilence Domain? A few more evil-aligned prestige classes earlier would have solved this problem.
Finally, an appendix, Monstrous Clerics (4 pages), describes briefly the deities of many monstrous species, including the goddess of the beholders, Great Mother, and ten deities revered by giants. Alignments, domains and favoured weapons are given for each deity here described. A very brief description of elemental lords, devils and demons that might grant spells and have clergies is also given.
I am glad I own Defenders of the Faith, for there is much in it that is excellent. Its chief failing is that it doesn't go far enough, and that it is so weighted towards good-aligned characters. I think that of all the class books, it is also the most weighted towards novice players - more experienced players are likely to find less of interest in here than in the other books, though it is hardly useless even so.
So, my opinion is a cautious thumbs-up. Some good material, but not enough evil material to make it a really excellent book.
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