Priest/ Druid

[crassly_vexxed]

I have been looking through my AD&D Birthright books of recent. A question came to me. "What experience chart do the priest/druids of Erik go off of; Priest or Druid?" My other question is, "Can a paladin dual class in to a priest of another god?" Same question for for 3rd edition too. "Can a paladin multi-class into a cleric of a different god?" Any insight would be welcome. I am mostly looking for the official rule, but i know the DM is the final word for his campaign.

[Sorontar]

I have moved this from the wiki to the forum.

My understanding is that "druid" is just a specialised priest for Birthright, and this follows priest rules with the selection of spells etc being defined by the Birthright rules. However, in the AD&DII campaign I played, my character played it as an AD&DII Druid, not a priest. I was limited by what the rules were for the Druids, not priests.

As for paladins, most Cerilian temples only follow one main god, but like real polytheist societies, individuals would ask for aid from other gods when needed. I think the paladin would follow the instructions of their chief temple, which would normally associate them with a single god.

For instance, a Cuiraécen/Haelyn paladin would only work if the church was teaching something like "Let Haelyn guide the mind, and Cuiraécen guide the swordhand". Possible, but I fear, rare. We do have a few churches like that described in the wiki, but nothing that I can think of was in the canon publications.

Sorontar

[Birthright-L]

At 07:44 AM 5/13/2014, Sorontar wrote:

>My understanding is that "druid" is just a
>specialised priest for Birthright, and this
>follows priest rules with the selection of
>spells etc being defined by the Birthright
>rules. However, in the AD&DII campaign I played,
>my character played it as an AD&DII Druid, not a
>priest. I was limited by what the rules were for the Druids, not priests.

Yeah, for a while there was a whole "specialty
priest" system that was a subset of the Cleric
class, and the "Priest of Erik" was a specialty
priest for that deity that looked pretty much
identical to the druid. I don`t know if there`s
really that meaningful a difference, other than
it suggests that the other gods should have
comparable differences from the standard classes.


>As for paladins, most Cerilian temples only
>follow one main god, but like real polytheist
>societies, individuals would ask for aid from
>other gods when needed. I think the paladin
>would follow the instructions of their chief
>temple, which would normally associate them with a single god.
>
>For instance, a Cuiraécen/Haelyn paladin would
>only work if the church was teaching something
>like "Let Haelyn guide the mind, and Cuiraécen
>guide the swordhand". Possible, but I fear,
>rare. We do have a few churches like that
>described in the wiki, but nothing that I can
>think of was in the canon publications.

There are temples that use more than one god as
their focus, but they are relatively rare, and it
seems to me none that have
paladins. Erik/Rournil leaps to mind. Whether
that means there`s a special specialty priest for
that temple, or if its members were made up of
half priests of Erik (druids) and half priests of
Rournil (specialty priests) isn`t stated
anywhere. I think one could go either way in any
given campaign and it would work.

Similarly, I a "mixed" paladin could work either
way. I`ve always thought that BR was
particularly apt for new kinds of paladins (one
for each of the gods--even the evil ones.) So,
I`d think the mix could work perfectly well.

Gary

[AndrewTall]

I used to rule that although the temples held that one god's priest(esses) had the political power they had the full rainbow inside - albeit with a likely bias towards the main one.

So for example the OIT might have whole druidic circles etc under its wings with the Orthodox holding the political and economic power but the local ceremonies, etc being dedicated towards Erik. That meant that a contest action could be seen as a simple switch in allegiance of some of the tiny temples that made up the overall OIT church rather than something more drastic.

I described it a bit in PS Danigau but think I wound up confusing some people!

So I'd allow both Clerics of Erik and Druids of Erik in the Rjurik faiths, but also, perhaps controversially, also Magicians, Fighters, Rogues, Bards, etc all of whom were described as "druids" by the faithful despite the different classes that they followed - "druid" being a religious title and not necessarily a class descriptor when applied by the faith.

I always liked the idea of Holy Warriors of different faiths, with 3e it is made simple with multi-classing but in 2e you could easily make alternate paladins using the various special powers in the complete priest.

[crassly_vexxed]

So. A priest of Erik (druid) would go off of the priest (cleric) experience table and not the druid and i would not have to worry about hierophants and such? The paladin that i was looking at was of Cuiraecen and possibly dual class with Priest of Erik. I am just wondering if he would be able to keep his powers of Paladin if he did so?

[Thelandrin]

Aren't Paladins of Cuiraécen supposed to be Chaotic Good? How is he supposed to reconcile that with the "always neutral" aspect of being a druid?

[splinter]

So I'd allow both Clerics of Erik and Druids of Erik in the Rjurik faiths,

we handle it in our campaign exactly the same, since it is more player friendly.

[Thelandrin]

Well, Erik is supposed to represent both the guardian of Rjuven lore and culture and his usual nature portfolio. If you're going to allow both clerics and druids of Erik, that would be the way to go about it in my opinion.

[crassly_vexxed]

AS for the Chaotic Good alignment, it would be allowed by a priest (druid) of Erik. Priests of Erik are allowed any nonevil alignment. I am still curious about the Priest of Erik's experience chart: druid or Priest?

[Lee]

I think that what I used to rule, was that Erik's priests were all called "druids," but most of them were priests, for game terms, especially the ones that belonged to an organized church. Ones that lived on their own in the wild, were classed as actual druids.

I think I dropped the whole hierarchy that required defeating the higher-level druids, though.

[AndrewTall]

So. A priest of Erik (druid) would go off of the priest (cleric) experience table and not the druid and i would not have to worry about hierophants and such? The paladin that i was looking at was of Cuiraecen and possibly dual class with Priest of Erik. I am just wondering if he would be able to keep his powers of Paladin if he did so?

Unless he's in a church which has a dual-faith I suspect he'd either have to become a paladin/priest of Erik or lose his paladin special powers.

In practice I tended to estimate the caster level of paladins and stack the caster level with any clerical caster level rather than run two sets of spell lists - mind you I was trying to do the same with any spell caster which is probably a step too far for most people.

If you don't allow Paladins of Erik, you could have him convert to a berserker rather than a fighter to reflect become attuned a primal ferocity, or he could convert most of his levels to fighter and some to druid to reflect his previous experience with a power.

[crassly_vexxed]

I see what you are getting at. How would it work for a paladin of cuiraecen dualed into a priest of Haelyn? It mentions that Haelyn has say over his son Cuiraecen. So that might work a little better i was thinking.