Shield of Faith

[kos97866]

Hey so,

I uploaded a prestige class I made for a friend, the Shield of Faith. You can find it in Birthright 3E > Prestige Classes.

It's meant for Fighters that has some sort of strong affiliation with a temple, but more as guardians rather than bastions of the faith. These ain't paladins.

So, I would appreciate if anyone would tell me what they thought.

I made this class for a friend who was a fighter working in his spare (ie nonadventuring) time as a guardian at the temple of Haelyn in the City. It can also work really well in a campaign where one of the players is a temple regent and another plays a fighter and doesn't want to take on a domain or is unblooded.

Kostis

[Kerio]

Interesting concept but here some suggestions ...

1) Remove the Armor/Weapon proficiencies granted -- prestige classes while primarily suited for a single class should be universally available to all classes; therefore, these currently act like 'free' feats for those not originally belonging to the fighter class. While rangers, barbarians, paladins, and fighters will reach the minimum requirements in the shortest time at 7th level; clerics, druids, monks, and rogues could aspire to become Shields of Faith at 9th level.

If you choose not to remove them, there is more incentive for those not belonging to the warrior classes to become Shields of Faith -- not necessarily what you were intending.

2) Replace Alertness with something more uniquely suited to the prestige class -- while this isn't the only advantage for becoming a 1st level Shield of Faith, it is a generally available feat which could have already been selected which decreases the desirability of joining these elite individuals.

3) Replace the automatic divine bonus to their shield AC with something similar to the Defensive Stance ability of Dwarven Defenders -- this allows more control of the magical/divine balance in the campaign. For some campaigns, the divine shield bonus could be extremely overpowering while in others it could be extremely underpowered.

On the other hand, keeping the shield aspect does provide inherent limitations and will discourage players from wanting to join the prestige class -- if you do keep it, you might want to add Shield Proficiency into the requirements. This will not affect the designed target classes but limits the other classes accordingly. If you wish to open the prestige class to a wider group, change the name to Defender of Faith and allow the player to choose an equivalent divinely blessed weapon or shield -- whether or not you restrict the weapon selection to only those which clerics of that faith can utilizes is up to you.

4) Be it a divine weapon or divine shield, you need to elaborate on what happens if the artifact is lost or destroyed -- depending on how difficult it is to replace (if at all), this can be a significant limitation. If they can just pick up another shield and continue on as if nothing has happened ... you are better making the advantages of the Shield of Faith prestige class inherent to the individual (similar to the Defensive Stance of Dwarven Defenders).

Otherwise, if the players have to try and rescue their shield if it is ever lost or stolen, the divine powers (which are temporarily lost during this period) can be significantly more powerful. You might consider granting the shield (or weapon) similar to paladin's mounts and sorcerer's familiars ... those gradually increase in ability based on the character's level and have specific rules for what happens if they ever die.

5) Building balanced prestige classes isn't easy ... for more general guidelines see the several archived articles which Monte Cook has written on his web site www.montecook.com which deal extensively with prestige class creation.

[Azrai_Dark]

Co writer of the Shiled of faith here

Thank you for the input Kerio, we made some adjustments, if you want I could send you the new class :)