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I posted here that clerics in AD&D are described as, "This class of character bears a certain resemblance to religious orders of knighthood of medieval times."
GURPS doesn't really have a clean and clear path to getting a warrior priest, but it does have mages and vows!
The Hospitalers and Templars don't really fit the mold well, so I thought to create a new order!
The Order of Knights of the Library of St. Jerome of Stridon.
Members of the order take vows. Vows to not use edged weapons. Vows to restrict their spell use to certain colleges in accordance to their religious dogma seems to fit. Basically to pare them down to the AD&D Cleric!
If I wanted to get a bit dirtier do the investiture and sanctity instead of magery and mana and let any religious mage take any spell just like a conventional mage just with different prerequisite advantages.
This has the advantage of being relatively simple and allows for different religions to have different restrictions on their warrior priests.
I think I even have a list of the vows for the Hospitalers and Templars from GURPS: Banestorm already so I have three flavors of Cleric already!
Huzzah!
I like simple solutions.
I think I might have come up with a similar solution for Druids with restricting them to Animal, Elemental and Plant colleges.
In case you didn't want to do all the work yourself, SJG does offer the Dungeon Fantasy line and RPG (one's a modification to core GURPS, the other a separate game). There are a few things I don't like about it, like the 250 point total, which I consider to be too high. Also, the tone of the game is very tongue in cheek munchkin and murderhobo-like.
ReplyDeleteEither way, I figured you should be informed.
Daosus
I own Dungeon Fantasy. I too disliked the point limit. But if it's got rules for Clerics and Druids I missed, I will check again.
DeleteI'm guilty of only skimming it and not actually reading what I'd bought. There's a huge void where the social advantages should be that made me quit making my first character with it.
I don't own, nor have played Dungeon Fantasy (hereafter DF), but the 250 points is the STARTING point value for DF characters. For several years I've been reading the blog of a guy that writes for GURPS/DF and in the current crop of characters the lowest point value is 318. https://dungeonfantastic.blogspot.com/ That's my source of DF knowledge.
DeleteIf I remember correctly, the stated reason they start at 250 points is because they're supposed to start out being "heroic" level, and thus the adventures more deadly.
AD&D Oriental Adventures had "sohei," which were warrior-monks in feudal-era Japan. The men who united Japan had a lot of trouble with those monks---they were BAD news in a fight (many of them were ronin who preferred life in a monastery to wandering the world) and they had religious fervor on their side. "Blood and souls! Blood and souls for the Compassionate Buddha!" The Ikko-Ikki, under Kennyo Kosa, held off Nobunaga at the Enrakyu-ji fortress monastery for ten years, and only surrendered because Nobunaga got the then Emperor to write them a letter asking them to surrender. Later, the Ikko-Ikki became his allies, fighting on his side against his other enemies. The samurai's signature weapon was the katana, but the sohei's favorite weapon was the naginata.
ReplyDeleteThe katana is a sidearm, a badge of rank. The signature weapon of a samurai was the bow, from horseback.
DeleteI think I can even spot which two books you're referencing too!
Naginata were common weapons and the most used melee weapon of samurai in war.