At 02:58 PM 12/19/2003 +0100, RaspK_FOG wrote:
> Indeed, I do not remember anything like what is here suggested as
> “official” Birthright material! As for priests being able
> to serve an ethos, that was a mistake on your part (or so I think, since
> I have not yet been given back my 2e books 
), for the generic
> class was called a cleric, but the individual class was called a priest,
> much like with the thieves and bards, which belonged to the rogue
> class… And the standard system was that priests served a
> deity/power/[whatever], but there could be others who served an ethos,
> and the druid was one such suggestion: thus, he generally could not serve
> a deity, except for some campaign settings which specifically mentioned
> that he did so
If I might step in to quibble a bit… the generic class was actually the
priest, while the cleric was a subset of that class. For the sake of
clarifying this, here`s the relevant text from the 2e PHB:
Under the intro to the Priest: "The priest is a believer and advocate of a
god from a particular mythos."
Under the general “Priest” class, however, there are subclasses:
Cleric: "The most common type of priest is the cleric. The cleric may be
an adherent of any religion (though if the DM designs a specific mythos,
the cleric`s abilities and spells may be changed–see following)."
Under “Priests of Specific Mythoi”
"In the simplest version of the AD&D game, clerics serve religions that can
be generally described as good or evil. Nothing more needs to be said
about it; the game will play perfectly well at this level. However, a DM
who has taken the time to create a detailed campaign world has often spent
some of that time devising elaborate pantheons, either unique creations or
adaptations from history or literature. If the option is open (and only
your DM can decide), you may want your character to adhere to a particular
mythos, taking advantage of the detail and color you DM has provided. If
your character follows a particular mythos, expect him to have abilities,
spells and restrictions different from the generic cleric."
Under “Priest Titles”
"A priest of nature, for example (especially one based on Western European
tradition) could be called a druid (see below.)
And lastly under the Druid description:
"The druid is an example of a priest designed for a specific mythos. His
powers and beliefs are different from those of the cleric."
Of course, the specific mythos of the druid could just be a general nature
worship, in BR the class is limited to priests of Erik–for all that that
seems to vex the issue of elf nature magic, ad nauseam.
> And no, while the DM is allowed to tweak things as he see fit, the
> standard[ AD&D 2e PHB and DMG suggests that such a setting regularly has
> a close polytheistic realisation, not an atheistic one
I guess thats generally true, though I dont recall anything ever that
specific being suggested. It just implies that the mythos can be as
abstract as “good” or “evil” and that gods themselves need not be
included. I dont think that equates with atheistic, but I wouldnt rule
it out either.
In the case of BR priests we only had speciality priests. There are no
clerics at all… though we don`t really know for sure about the priests of
various humanoid and dwarven gods. “Shaman” and such for the most part
seems reasonable for the humanoids, but specialty priests of Moradin is the
most likely for dwarves. But there are probably are no “generic” clerics
in the BR materials.
That does not mean, however, that rangers can`t get their spells from a
generic “nature” source rather than from Erik, but there is nothing in the
cant that says rangers are paladins of Erik that I recall reading. Having
said that, I should note that I like the interpretation, but would take it
a step further by adding a “Forester” class (something like the WoT`s
class–that is, without spells) to handle the abilities of woodsmen and
hunters for BR purposes, and I`d tweak the powers of the ranger a bit here
and there to make him more “holy” than the standard 3e/3.5 ranger for a
Birthright D20 text. (Personally, I don`t like that 3.5 rangers have d8
hit dice, for instance. I know the rationale, but I just think it`s a bad
idea. “Fighter” classes should have d10 or better HD IMO.)
Gary
.