Posts

• Aug 13, 2026

  Let's Read Dungeon Fantasy Adventurers: Knight

  Knights specialize in fighting, and are better at it than nearly anyone else. They favor heavy armor and, well, “knightly” melee weapons. Their name refers more to this than to their social status, which is as highly variable as that of any other delver. In the book’s own words: “… Knight sounds better than Fighter (so generic!) or Thug (offensive!).”

  So yeah, this is the equivalent of D&D’s Fighter class, but it’s a lot more honest about representing a specific type of combatant, and also about their capabilities: when they say the knight is good at combat, they mean it. As you might already be able to tell, they’re my favorite template.

  Basic Stats

  The Knight’s starting statline is ST 14, DX 14, IQ 10, HT 13. Their speed is reduced from 6.75 to 6.00.

  They have the second highest base ST, losing only to the Barbarian. Their high DX also makes them excellent physical generalists.

  Advantages

  Knights start with 2 levels of the Born War Leader talent, plus Combat Reflexes and High Pain Threshold. None of these are exclusive traits, but the last two are major boons to anyone who plans to engage in combat and Knights are the only profession that always starts with both.

  Born War Leader means Knights are much better at their profession’s main mental and social skills than their average IQ 10 would indicate.

  They have a whopping 60 points to put into further discretionary traits, all of which make them better at either fighting (like Extra Attacks and Enhanced Parry) or leadership (like extra levels of Born War Leader).

  Of note here is Weapon Master, which boosts their skill at arms from merely “unrealistically good” to “superhuman”. This advantage reduces penalties for multiple attacks and defenses, gives access to some special skills, and gives them a major damage boost with the weapons covered by the advantage. Knights are not the only profession that has access to this: Martial Artists, Swashbucklers, Scouts and Thieves also have it. But Knights are the only profession with access to the version that covers all weapons, if they’re willing to pay the 45 points it costs.

  Disadvantages

  Knights need only choose -35 points of disadvantages here, as their reduced Speed makes up for the rest. The available choices of personality problems here let you make anything from a callous and unpleasant thug to a crusty veteran soldier to a chivalrous hero. You also have a small selection of physical disadvantages representing old battle wounds.

  Skills

  All Knights have the skills to use a shield and any one ranged weapon of their choice, as well as some unarmed combat training. The melee skill packages offer the choice between skill 20 at any one weapon, skill 17 at two, or skill 16 at three. Do you want to master your chosen weapon, or do you want to be able to use anything that can show up on a random loot table?

  I’ve seen people not take the Shield skill and instead move its points to a weapon skill, increasing it by 1. That would indeed let them start with skill 21 in a weapon.

  Other skills include the tactical and leadership stuff boosted by Born War Leader, and they can pick a few from the full gamut of universal delver lore plus Intimidation.

  A Knight is likely to start with fewer skills than many other professions, but there’s nothing preventing them from learning more with earned points. And they can start out very, very good at their main job, so they can start branching out earlier.

  Special Knight Traits

  Knights can buy extra HP up to 1/2 their ST, instead of just 1/3. Also, they can buy new weapon skills or improve existing ones with earned character points instantly at any time - even mid battle!

  They also have some exclusive traits. As you might expect, these are not magic, and instead represent you being Just That Good.

  • Armor Mastery (5 points): When you wear any armor with DR 2+, increase its DR by 1. This reflects your skill at actively using the armor, turning your body so blows always strike the strongest parts.

  • Rallying Cry (5 points): Unleash the Warlord in you! This lets nearby allies who are mentally stunned (from surprise or enemy powers) immediately make a Will roll to recover. If they succeed they immediately lose the defense penalties from being stunned and can act normally on their next turn.

  • Sacrificial Block and Sacrificial Parry (1 point each): These let you attempt these defenses on behalf of someone else who is in reach. The Block works for allies who are behind you, the Parry for allies who are beside you. Roll as if you were defending yourself, and if you succeed your ally is protected as if they had succeeded. They’re “sacrificial” because they count against your own defense limit for that round.

  • Shield Mastery (15 points): Any shield you use gains +1 to its Defense Bonus, and you gain an extra DR 2 against cone and area attacks if you can interpose your shield. Captain America probably has this.

  • Shield Wall Training (1 points): This lets you use your shield to block attacks on behalf of an ally who is beside you, and eliminates the penalty for attacking while holding a large shield.

  Customization Notes

  You can use this template to make any “heavy fighter” archetype, from an European-style knight to a samurai to an Amazon to Guts from Berserk. It’s all about weapon and disadvantage choice. The book also says it’s important to decide if you want to completely master a single weapon be decently skilled in a wide variety of them. High skill is definitely powerful, but there’s value in keeping your options open in campaigns where the GM is enthusiastic about random loot.

  As a personal note, I’m going to say Weapon Master is so good it feels almost mandatory. Few things are more dangerous in the battlefield than a ST 17+ Weapon Master Knight who focuses on a single big swingy weapon like a polearm or two-handed sword. By the time the wizard finishes charging that fireball, all enemies in the field will already be dead.

  No matter your specific build, you definitely want to spend quirk points on extra money for an armor upgrade.

  The “This Ain’t D&D” Section

  For once there isn’t much to this section. DFRPG Knights are pretty similar to D&D Fighters in terms of visual style and intended function.

  The main difference here is, well, truth in advertising. Both games say the archetype is the among the best at fighting, but here this is actually true.

  It helps that GURPS melee combat goes far beyond the “I hit it with my weapon” level of detail supported by D&D mechanics, and that you actually become more effective if you use those options. With such a high skill level you can afford to do that without reducing your chances of success.

• Aug 9, 2026

  Let's Play Hell's Rebels: The Many Steps Monastery, Part 4

  Intro

  

  This post is part of my solo Hell’s Rebels campaign.

  We’re finally arriving at the end of the first adventure of Hell’s Rebels. Our players cleared out the entire Many Steps Monastery of pesky diabolists, and the only ones left are Nox and her dog, which await in room F7 just beyond their current position.

  [Player] Boss Fight! Boss Fight!

  No looting bodies or searching for treasure. Jania drinks one of Urist’s Paut potions, topping up her FP. Art drinks one of his own Minor Healing potions, healing the damage he sufered from the tar devil’s fumes last session. Urist’s Armor spell expires, and he casts another one o Arcturus instead, and then uses his Paut to replenish the lost FP.

  Jade fishes out a Blessed Paper from her pack and uses it to imbue her sword with holy power. The group lines up at the entrance to the room, and go in.

  The garden is a big chamber with a domed ceiling painted to look like the morning sky. Magical sunlight lamps provide illumination and nourishment to the grass and flowers planted here. There’s a shallow brook running through it, coming in from some subterranean source and returning to the depths afterwards. A short bridge over it allows crossing.

  Nox awaits on the other side, and she’s been getting ready to fight just as the PCs have. She is fully armored and has her glaive in one hand and a throwing hatchet in the other. Her pet hell hound Mephiry stands ready to attack these new enemies as well.

  There’s little in the way of banter. Nox says “I’m not surrendering.” Jade says “That’s fine by me.” And then the battle is joined.

  Nox positions herself at the far side of the bridge from the PCs, waiting for them to get within reach. Mephiry, the hellhound, moves to stand alongside its master. Arcturus moves along the southeastern part of the chamber and then jumps into the stream. He’s a bit disappointed that it’s only about half a meter deep, but still it won’t impede his movements as he fords it.

  Jania also moves to the margin near Art, while Jade, Rosalia and Urist decide to use the bridge. As they approach, Nox nails Rosalia with her throwing axe, gravely wounding the bard and nearly causing her to pass out. Urist halts his advance and runs towards Rosalia to render magical aid, while Jade charges across the bridge and engages the enemy.

  Nox proves to be an adept fighter and avoids Jade’s blade while she readies her own weapon. Urist heals Rosalia with a spell, but her and Jania’s attempts to hit Nox with ranged attacks either miss or fizzle.

  With Jade taking up most of Nox’s attention, however, Arcturus manages to run up to the hellhound, grapple it, and more or less break it over his knee. Before Nox can retaliate, Jade’s sword finally manages to find a gap in her heavy armor and wound her in the arm. The touch of the blessed blade proves to be the demon-possessed warrior’s undoing, causing her to momentarily burst into flame and fall down writhing before losing consciousness. A quick thrust by the same blessed sword quickly finishes her off, granting our heroes their victory on this day.

  [GM] Fight Analysis

  This fight took a surprisingly short three rounds, and went a lot better for the PCs than I imagined due to my luck in rolling for Jade’s last attack, which was a critical hit.

  Nox suffered 3 injury from the penetrating cutting damage, and another 3 as a follow-up since the sword was (temporarily) Holy. That wouldn’t normally be enough to cause any additional effects, but the critical hit table told me to treat the attack as a major wound regardless of how much damage it did. And then Nox rolled a 18 on the HT test to resist knockdown and stunning, immediately falling unconscious.

  I looked up the rules for major wounds and unconsciousness as the attack happened. It turns out unconsciousness is nasty business in GURPS. Recovery from it is much more complicated than the simple HT rolls for Stun.

  Nox can recover automatically if she heals back up to full HP, and normally her diabolical Regeneration would take care of that in seconds. However, she can’t use it to heal those last 3 HP of Holy damage.

  As there is no one around to help her, Nox will have to recover naturally. Since she has more than 1 HP we use the best-case scenario for that. It means she wakes up automatically after 15 minutes. There’s nothing she can do to wake up before that.

  Now, I gave her a contingency back in part 2 of this delve that would summon a pair of lemures when she got stunned. I could certainly activate it here, but that would lead to our full party against a pair of lemures and we already know how that’s going to end. And lemures don’t have the smarts or the resources needed to wake Nox up. The PCs won the day!

  This is why I love GURPS. You can end up with an awesome story like “the villain was so unholy she was vanquished by the mere touch of a blessed blade” just by following the rules.

• Aug 7, 2026

  Let's Read Dungeon Fantasy Adventurers: Holy Warrior

  As the book says, Holy Warriors are on a quest to bury evil six feet deep. Like the Cleric, they receive blessings from the gods, but they prefer stabbing to casting. Those Other Games call them “Paladins” or “Champions”.

  A Holy Warrior is a bit worse at general combat than a Knight, but they’re potentially much better at fighting specific types of foes like demons and undead.

  Basic Stats

  The Holy Warrior’s statline is ST 13, DX 13, IQ 12, HT 13. Their Will is increased to 14 and their Basic Speed reduced to 6.

  At a glance, that seems like it’d make them excellent generalists, but as the intro says their other traits make them more specialized.

  Advantages

  All Holy Warriors start with these advantages:

  • One level of Born War Leader: This is a Talent, a leveled advantage that boosts certain skills. In this case, it boosts skills used in tactical planning and leadership, and gives a positive reaction bonus from professional soldiers and fighters.

  • One level of Higher Purpose (Slay Demons or Slay Undead): Pick one of the two when you create your character. Each level of this gives a +1 bonus to basically every roll you make while trying to fulfill the purpose. This does include attack and damage rolls! While you’re not obligated to attack your chosen nemeses on sight, you cannot back down from a fight with them once it does start.

  • Two levels of Holiness: This is an alternate “Power Talent” for Holy Might. It gives bonuses to power rolls but unlike the Cleric’s Power Investiture doesn’t let you cast spells.

  • Rest in Pieces: A 1-point advantage that guarantees that any living foes you slay cannot return as undead.

  You have 50 more points to distribute among discretionary advantages and Holy Might abilities. The advantages have the usual stat boosts, including extra levels of Higher Purpose and Holiness, plus stuff that makes you better at fighting in general or that gives you the usual “paladin resistances” to poisons, diseases, and fear.

  Disadvantages

  Once again you’re required to take a -10 disadvantage representing the oaths you took to gain your Holy Might. Typical holy warrior choices here are Honesty, a Sense of Duty towards all Good entities (like angels and such), and a Vow to own no more than a horse can carry. That last one is a delver-friendly vow of poverty. You can still have a very nice suit of armor and a bag full of powerful weapons, but not own land or ships or other big-ticket symbols of wealth.

  The rest of the suggested disadvantages once again take you into one of the “virtuous saint” or “intolerant inquisitor” modes of thinking.

  Skills

  You start with either skill 18 in a two-handed weapon, or skill 16 in a one-handed weapon and a shield. Suggested holy warrior weapons are polearms, spears, and swords.

  For ranged combat, you learn either Crossbow or a thrown weapon skill.

  Other mandatory skills include remedial unarmed combat lessons, all the stuff enhanced by Born War Leader, and more in depth knowledge about your chosen nemeses in the form of Hidden Lore, Psychology and Physiology specializing in either demons or undead.

  Optional skills cover the usual generic delver set, plus extra monster knowledge skills for the other enemy monster type.

  Special Holy Warrior Traits

  Higher Purpose, Holiness, and Rest in Pieces are exclusive holy warrior traits. They can also increase their will to a maximum of 25 instead of just 20.

  And then it’s Holy Might time again! Holy Warriors cannot cast spells, but they can buy any of the powers and esoteric skills from the Cleric entry, and also have another list of stuff here that might be useful for them. Clerics can also buy these powers if they want. Their respective power talents give bonuses to any required rolls.

  • Detect Good (9 points): Like Detect Evil, but for supernaturally Good artifacts, locations, or beings. Very useful for rescue and retrieval missions.

  • Heroic Feats (9 points/level): By the Honor of Greyskull! You call upon the powers of the gods to grant you a temporary boost in your physical abilities once per game session.

    There’s a version of this power for each physical attribute, and each of those has two levels. Each level gives you +1d to the targeted attribute, and once active the bonuses last for 3d seconds. Holiness does not give bonuses to these rolls.

    Buying 2 levels of all three heroic blessings costs a total of 54 points. A single 1-second Concentrate maneuver lets you activate all your blessings at once, or as many of them as you like if you want to save some for later.

    I think this power is awesome, but the random bonuses and random duration are a drag. I wrote an alternate set of rules for this a long time ago. The TLDR on that is that I use a fixed +4 per level, and have the blessing last 10 seconds. That lets you pre-calculate all the changed stats from your increased attributes when you “transform”.

  • Resist Evil (1 point/level): Adds its level to rolls to resist the innate supernatural powers of Truly Evil creatures. Holiness doesn’t increase this bonus.

  Customization Notes

  The point of playing a Holy Warrior is to have wide access to Holy abilities and be very good at smiting supernatural evil, so the book recommends going all in on that. If you just want to fight well in general, pick a Knight or Swashbuckler.

  It’s harder for a Holy Warrior to “multiclass” into a Cleric than it is for the Cleric to do the reverse - your GM would have to allow them to turn Holiness into Power Investiture and pay the difference. If all want are the Cleric’s Holy Might powers, though, you don’t need to do anything extra. You already have access to them!

  Between both lists, you can assemble the entire set of classic paladin powers, but you won’t have enough points to pick everything up at character creation.

  As front-liners, Holy Warriors would definitely benefit from spending those quirk points on extra money for better armor and weapons.

  The “This Ain’t D&D” Section

  Holy warriors are pretty similar to D&D paladins. As mentioned above, you can even pick from the lists of advantages and Holy Might powers and assemble the same set of abilities D&D paladins get. Immunity to fear, improved “saving throws” against Bad Stuff, faith healing, evil detection…

  The one thing missing is Smite Evil as modeled by D&D. Instead of a limited-use big damage attack that works against your sworn enemies, you can get a constant always-on bonus to fight them via Higher Purpose, and make yourself more badass in general for a limited time with Heroic Feats.

  The other important thing to notice is that the DFRPG is far less obsessed with “paladin codes” than D&D. The only thing you really need to respect in order to keep access to your powers is a single well-defined -10 point disadvantage. You can have other disadvantages to better model your PC’s personality of course, but they work just like the disadvantages of other profession templates, and are enforced in the same way. The kind of broad and vague code of conduct that many GMs love to exploit to make palaind PCs fall is completely absent here.

• Aug 3, 2026

  Let's Read Dungeon Fantasy Adventurers: Druid

  A lot of people call druids “nature priests”, and their mechanics sorta resemble the cleric’s, but they’re something else entirely. Druids don’t usually deal with gods - they worship Nature directly, and the gifts it grants spring from the Earth itself. DFRPG can’t use these terms, apparently, but I can: clerics are Divine, druids are Primal.

  Druids cast druidic spells and have access to a power set named Druidic Arts. Their powers are less effective inside most dungeons, but they make the trek to the dungeon a lot easier and more survivable.

  Personally, I never played druids in this game, as I tend to favor urban or dungeon-based campaigns. I don’t have too many personal impressions to share about them other than what I got from reading the entry as I wrote this post.

  Basic Stats

  Druids start out with ST 11, DX 12, IQ 14, HT 13, and Speed 6. A little less ST and a bit more HT than the cleric, but otherwise pretty similar.

  Advantages

  All druids have Green Thumb 1 and Power Investiture (Druidic) 3. The first one is a Talent boosting skills that involve dealing with plants. It’s also a prerequisite for their version of Power Investiture.

  The discretionary list has the usual stat boosts, some of the same wilderness survival boosts the Barbarian gets, and advantages that can enhance your interactions with animals, plants, or spirits.

  You can also spend these points on Druidic Arts powers (see below).

  Disadvantages

  Two separate discretionary lists here, one dealing with your mystical vows as a defender of the wilderness, and the other dealing with being looked upon by “urbanites” as an unwashed hippy with an unreasonable fear of fire and machinery. Mix and match as desired.

  These vows notably don’t include avoiding equipment made out of metal, which would be a very bad idea in this game. But you can choose to have a vow to follow a vegetarian diet (which raises your cost of living) or never sleep indoors.

  Skills

  Your melee skill choices are Spear, Staff, or a weapon-and-shield setup similar to the cleric’s. Ranged choices are throwing your melee weapon, or using something quirkier like a blowpipe or a set of bolas. The druid chooses to leave archery to the Scout. Your skill will end up being 15 or 14 like the Cleric’s and the other professions for whom combat is secondary.

  Druids also get a lot of skills for handling animals and plants and surviving in the wilderness, knowing the hidden lore of spirits, fairies or elementals. They also know the two druid-only skills (see below) and can also choose to brush up on their diplomacy, first aid… or poisons.

  Spells

  Druids start with 20 druidic spells. Druidic spellcasting works similarly to the clerical version. There’s a druid-specific spell list where the only prerequisites are a minimum level of Power Investiture (Druidic). Spells cost FP, and druids get exclusive access to a lot of animal-, plant- and weather-affecting spells. When a spell also exists in other power sources, druids might get earlier access to it as well. Spells are dependent on Nature’s Strength (see below).

  Special Druidic Traits

  Druids can improve FP by 1/2 of their HT instead of 1/3. So a Druid with HT 14 can have up to 7 extra FP. They also get exclusive access to two skills:

  • Esoteric Medicine (Druidic) is a lot like the Holy version, but doesn’t depend on environmental factors. As long as you have access to its special healer’s kit, you can use this in place of First Aid or Surgery.

  • Herb Lore lets you make magical concoctions using using herbs found in nature. You normally need to pay for raw materials, but between adventures you can make a subset of the available options (including healing potions) for free by finding the herbs yourself. You can also use this instead of Alchemy to identify and deal with herbal concoctions.

  In addition to the esoteric skills and druidic spellcasting (see above), Power Investiture (Druidic) also lets you learn the Druidic Arts. These are intrinsinc powers that don’t cost FP. PI (Druidic) gives a bonus to any rolls associated with them.

  However, both these powers and druidic spells draw their power from Nature. Nature is stronger in areas of unspoiled wilderness, and gets weaker the more “built-up” or polluted the surrounding environment is. And the weaker it gets, the harder it is to use these powers.

  Zones like a rural area or a road through light woods aren’t “bad” enough to give a penalty, but any dungeon that isn’t a natural cave will give you a -3. If you’re spending a lot of time in those and glossing over the trek, you won’t be happy playing a druid. If, on the other hand, the journey is the point or your dungeon is the Underdark, the reverse applies!

  Druidic Arts

  Despite being influenced by Nature’s Strength and your level of Power Investiture, Druidic Arts cost no FP and are not considered magic. This means stuff like Dispel Magic and Magic Resistance doesn’t affect them.

  • Beast Flight (14 points): turn into a small bird or bat to fly at twice your Move. It takes 10 seconds of concentration to switch between forms, and your beast form is both tiny and weak, with Size Modifier -7, ST 1, and 1 HP. Injury is proportional, so taking 1 HP of damage in beast form means you’ll be at 0 HP when you return to your natural form!

  • Control Animal (33 points): Roll a Quick Contest of your IQ vs. the target animal’s Will. Victory means you can order them around like they were a trained animal.

  • Nature’s Shield (7 or 14 points): gives 1 or 2 DR against “elemental” damage, whether it’s from the environment or from spells.

  • Plant Empathy (5 points): You can intuit the general state of plants. If they’re sentient enough to communicate, they will react well to you and you can use your social skills on them as if they were people.

  • Speak with Animals (23 points) and Speak With Plants (14 points): Like it says on the tin. Unlike the bard version, you don’t need to sing.

  Customization Notes

  This section is mainly about spell choices, with sample “beastmaster”, “elementalist” and “green druid” sets. Druids rarely spend their quirk points on extra gear, and instead go for more spells or abilities.

  The “This Ain’t D&D” section

  DFRPG druids, as written in the core book, cannot cast healing spells and cannot shapeshift into big animal bruisers like tigers and bears. The spells and advantages that would let them do this in GURPS are pretty finicky and high-maintenance for the GM and players, and so were omitted.

  You can approach these abilities from a different angle, though. Your spell list includes Beast Possesion, Beast Summoning, and even Create Animal, so you can call or conjure up a bear and then possess it. Someone will need to look after your original body, though. You’re more Granny Weatherwax than Sun Wukong.

  And while the cleric has all the healing spells, your Esoteric Healing works anywhere, and you have a much easier (and cheaper) time making healing potions.

  Next up

  Holy Warriors!

• Jul 29, 2026

  Let's Read Dungeon Fantasy Adventurers: Cleric

  Dungeon Fantasy Clerics are described as “mortal agents of the Powers of Good”, though the exact nature of those powers is, as mentioned previously, left as an exercise for the GM. This does match the original D&D description pretty closely, but the mechanics here are a bit different. DFRPG clerics are much better spellcasters than they are frontline fighters, though they have an easier time “multiclassing” into Holy Warrior than anyone else. If divine-powered frontline fighting is your thing, though, you should play a Holy Warrior instead.

  Basic Stats

  Clerics start out with ST 12, DX 12, IQ 14, and HT 12. This is pretty good and could be taken in several directions with earned points, though it still leans towards a caster-type.

  Advantages

  All clerics have Clerical Investment and Power Investiture 3. The former makes the character count as a properly ordained priest whenever that matters. This gives a positive reaction bonus to people who share their religion, lets them perform exorcisms without penalty and is a pre-requisite for Power Investiture, their spellcasting talent. It’s quite possible your players will care more about the latter two in a Dungeon Fantasy game.

  Power Investiture does for clerics what Magery does for wizards: it lets them cast spells and acts as a bonus to their skill level with those spells. It also gives a bonus to rolls for Holy Might powers. We’ll talk about both below.

  In addition to these advantages, we get 45 points to distribute among a set of choices. Aside from the usual enhanced attributes and Luck entries, we get a few categories here:

  • Be a better caster! This includes more Investiture and Energy Reserve.

  • Guard yourself from evil! This includes advantages that give bonuses against fear, disease, and harmful mental influence.

  • Be better at your actual job! This includes things that make you better at interacting with spirits, healing people without relying on magic, and speaking extra languages.

  But that’s not all! We can also choose to spend these points on Holy abilities, which we’ll see below.

  Disadvantages

  Clerics must choose a specific -10 point disadvantage from among Honesty, a Sense of Duty to all correligionists, or a Vow to never use edged weapons. It’s part of the “divine power” package, and represents the core vows the cleric has made to access them.

  A Sense of Duty means you must help the specified group when they need it, and can’t voluntarily abandon them; a Vow is exactly what it sounds like. Neither have self-control rolls, so there is no circumstance where it’s okay to ignore them. Honesty does have a self-control number, though “resisting your honesty” too often probably counts as breaking your divine vows.

  The rest of these disadvantages are mostly split between “compassionate holy man” and “intolerant inquisitor” personality traits, with a side order of extra vows and ritual behavior that can work with either.

  Skills

  For weapon skills, you can pick the traditional “mace and shield” package, or follow Friar Tuck’s example and just take Staff. Your one-handed weapon could also be an axe, flail, or sword too - you don’t have to imitate D&D on this particular detail. Your skill will end up as either 15 or 14, which means combat isn’t necessarily your strong suit compared to some of the other delvers.

  All clerics know the basic skills required of their trade, like Religious Ritual, Public Speaking, Theology, and a few others. They also know how to diagnose health problems and apply first aid, and a bit of lore about one type of traditional foe (demons, spirits, or undead). Optional skills include all the standard Adventurer stuff, plus some things like Research for the religious scholars, Panhandling for the mendicants, and additional enemy lores.

  Spells

  Clerics start with 20 spells from the clerical spellcasting list, picked by the player, with 1 point spent on each. More on how that works below.

  Special Cleric Traits

  Clerics can raise their Will to 25 instead of just 20. Clerical Investment is described in this section too, along with two esoteric skills that require it:

  • Esoteric Medicine (Holy): A hard skill to learn, but it can replace mundane First Aid and Surgery in places with any level of sanctity above “none”.

  • Exorcism: Rituals for cleansing cursed areas and treating posession victims.

  The bulk of our special traits are supernatural powers, though. Cleric powers fall into two categories, both of which are granted by those campaign-specific Powers of Good. Holy Might comes from the “divine within” and costs no Fatigue to use. Clerical Spellcasting draws from the ambient sanctity, and does cost Fatigue.

  The cleric’s Power Investiture acts as the “power talent” for both of them. The character needs at least one level in this talent to buy the related abilities.

  Clerical Spellcasting

  The cleric’s spell list is smaller than the wizard’s, but also much simpler. The only prerequisite for learning a given spell is a minimum level of Power Investiture. Another advantage clerical spellcasting has over the wizardly variety is exclusive access to certain types of magic - most notably healing spells.

  Cleric spells cost FP as normal, but depend on ambient sanctity instead of mana. Sanctity is a measure of how much influence the cleric’s deities have over a given place. It has the same named levels and rules as mana, but is completely independent from it. Most places are “normal” sanctity. Higher sanctity can be found in temples or other places holy to the deity, and makes casting easier. Lower sanctity usually means you’re in a place that’s holy to the deity’s enemies, and makes casting harder or even impossible.

  It’s okay for the cleric to have some spell overlap with their wizard buddy, as they will still be able to cast if they find themselves no a no-mana zone that’s still normal sanctity.

  Holy Might

  These powers depend on living a virtuous life. In addition to having Power Investiture, the cleric needs to accept a specific -10 point disadvantage that restricts their behavior, as we saw above. A player who doesn’t like the three choices can work with the GM to choose some other appropriate disadvantage.

  You must obey your chosen principles - failing to do so means losing access to your holy abilities until you make some significant penance. The GM is free to come up with an appropriate one. A generous donation to the temple in town combined with some kind of dangerous quest feel to me like they’d be an appropriate starting point.

  The upside to this is that holy abilities are, well, divine powers. They don’t count as “magic”, and so cannot be Dispelled and are not affected by Magic Resistance. They also cost no FP to use and don’t depend on ambient sanctity - a virtuous cleric can use them even in the depths of Hell.

  This section contains a list of holy powers typical of clerics:

  • Contingency Casting (14 points/level): Once per session per level, you can cast any divine spell at a skill level of IQ + Power Investiture. Even if you don’t know it, and even if you don’t have the minimum Power Investiture to learn it. You still obey all other restrictions (like ambient sanctity and FP cost).

  • Detect Evil (18 points): With a second of concentration, you can roll to detect nearby sources of evil, by either focusing on a specific object or the general are around you. You also get a hint as to the power level of anything you detect, and a vague clue about its nature. Critical success in the identification roll provides more details.

  • Divine Guidance (14 points): This works like the Intuition advantage. Given a bunch of options to choose, you can roll to figure out the correct path. It’s a bit cheaper because it’s a Holy power, subject to the restrictions above.

  • Divine Omens (14 points): Once per day, you can check for omens in the world around you. There are secret rolls both to detect and to interpret them, and the better you do the more information you get about the future. Critical failure means the GM lies.

  • Faith Healing (33 points): Non-spell divine healing! Unlike the other powers, this one does cost FP proportional to how much you heal, but it’s not dependent on sanctity like a spell. You can also try to restore crippled limbs or cure diseases. Cumulative uses of the same type of healing (spell or power) on the same target give -3 per extra attempt. This resets daily.

  • Turning (24 points): The classic power to turn undead. It works on any undead labeled as “truly evil” or animated by magic described as such. If you win the Quick Contest of Will against the target creatures, you keep them at bay for as long as you concentrate on this power, and for 1d seconds afterwards. No mass undead destruction here - that’s why you have companions.

  Note that Holy Warriors also use Holy Might, so a Cleric could also acquire any of the Holy abilities listed on the Holy Warrior’s section and vice-versa.

  Customization Notes

  Making a heavily armored D&D cleric with a mace and shield is a possibility here, but note that while ST 12 is above average it can still mean your character might be substantially slowed down by heavier armor. There are several ways to remedy that, of course: higher ST is one, and it also helps you do more damage with that mace. Magic armor is also a good alternative, both for reducing weight and increasing the protection of lighter pieces. But you’ll need to adventure under heavy encumbrance for a bit before you gain access to that.

  Disadvantage-wise, “intolerant inquisitor” and “compassionate saint” are the two big choices here. The rest of this section is mostly spent on spell list recommendations, with one example centered on buffs, one on healing, and another on supernatural warfare with spells effective against creatures like demons and undead.

  Even if GMs don’t allow “multiclassing” (i.e., picking special powers from other templates), clerics still have access to the Holy Might powers listed under the Holy Warrior template. So if you want to go in a more paladin-y direction with your Cleric, you can focus on increasing combat skills and buying appropriate Holy Warrior powers with earned points.

  The “This ain’t D&D” section

  The main difference between DFRPG Clerics and D&D ones is that they’re far less “fighty” when compared to the other professions. They’re not bad at it in absolute terms, no delver is, but they’re definitely not in the same league as the Knight or the Swashbuckler. In a way, they resemble the Pathfinder “Cloistered Cleric” more than the armored “Battle Cleric” that’s the standard in most D&D-alikes.

  There’s nothing preventing you from trying to make them good combatants anyway, but you will have a longer way to go here than if you focus on your magic.

  Their spell list is pretty simimilar in feel, as seen above, but note that Turning is optional, and more similar to the old-school version of the D&D power than the more recent ones that do damage instead of scaring the monsters away.

  Example Clerics

  Rescued from the distant past of 2017, here’s Kyra from the Pathfinder iconic lineup! I don’t think I’d do anything differently if I was building her today.

  There’s also Urist, the dwarf cleric I built for my solo Hell’s Rebels campaign.

  Next Up

  The Druid!

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