Templar for S&W: WhiteBox

This is a sorta-paladin for WhiteBox.

Templar

Templars are armored priests. Most Templars have a patron deity or serve a particular religion. Feel free to make up the details, if your Referee doesn’t use a particular mythology for the campaign you’re playing in. Regardless of the details, you are a champion of your faith and moral alignment. You might be a sinister witch-hunter, an exorcist of demons, or a shining knight of the faith. Because most of a Templar’s abilities are oriented toward healing and protecting, Templars tend to play a support role during combat, backing up the front line, but able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the party’s Fighters if need be—at least for a while. As a Templar grows in power and reputation, he might establish a stronghold for his faith: a fortified monastery, a soaring cathedral in the wilderness, or whatever strikes him as the best way to protect and serve his flock of acolytes and peasant followers.

Hit Dice: 1d6/level.

Armor/Shield Permitted: Any.

Weapons Permitted: Any melee weapons. No missile weapons, other than oil.

Templar Class Abilities

Cure Disease: Beginning at seventh level, once per day Templars can cure disease on one individual.

Healing Hands: Templars can cure themselves or an ally up to three times per day. Each use of this ability heals 1d6 + level hit points. For example, a fourth level Templar would heal 1d6+4 hp each time he uses this ability.

Holy Aura: Templars have an aura of holiness that affects undead, demons, and other supernatural evil creatures. These creatures suffer a -1 penalty to hit and to save while within 10 feet of the Templar.

Immune to Disease: Beginning at third level, Templars are immune to all diseases.

Immune to Poison: Beginning at fifth level, Templars are immune to all poisons.

Smite Evil: When fighting undead, demons, or other supernatural evil creatures, Templars deal an extra 1d6 damage per successful attack. This damage affects monsters immune to normal weapon damage.

Religious Stronghold (9th level): At ninth level, a Templar character may establish a stronghold and attract a body of loyal (or perhaps even fanatic) men-at-arms who will swear fealty to him.

Templar Advancement

Level	Experience	Hit Dice	Saving Throw
1	0	1	14
2	1,500	2	13
3	3,500	3	12
4	6,500	4	11
5	14,000	5	10
6	30,000	6	9
7	60,000	7	8
8	110,000	8	7
9	165,000	9	6
10	225,000	10	5

Holystone - Druids (revised)

Druids

Druid is a just a title used by some clerics of Gaia, Oberon, and Titania.  They focus on the natural world and work with foresters and farmers. Druids focus on spells that deal with plants, animals, water, or the earth. Druids usually avoid the Cathedral, not caring for religious politics or the city life. 

Druids usually maintain small shrines in the outdoors. They may hold services in a cave, at an ancient tree, or out in the middle of a plowed field. It depends on the druid. 

Some druids refuse to wear metal armor as a matter of faith, limiting themselves to leather armor. There are even a few who will only use a staff or club in combat. Most druids don’t follow this belief, as they maintain steel armor is made from the earth. In fact, if they know a battle is imminent, they will don plate mail if they have it available. 

This divide leads to arguments between the two sides. The anti-metal druids think the other druids are not as faithful as they should be. The metal-wearing druids think the others are foolish for denying such an obvious protection. 

There have been a couple brawls over the matter, but in general, druids would rather argue over a beer than punch each other over such a minor point of faith.

Holystone - Druids

Druid is a just a title for clerics that are nature-based. Many priests of Gaia call themselves druids, for example. Some of them refuse to wear metal armor as a matter of faith, but many druids will happily don plate mail before a major battle if they can.

Adventures featuring religion

I think it would be cool if adventures featuring religion were published. Stuff like getting hired to recover an artifact by one faction of a church in order to one-up another faction of the same church. Or to make the local priest look really good so that he can get a promotion to bishop. In a world with real gods, it seems that there should be a lot of this stuff going on. But most published adventures avoid this like the plague.

I understand part of it is to try and avoid the "satan worshiper" crap, but most of that has died out nowadays. And seriously, if White Wolf wasn't affected by it, I doubt an OSR publisher would be.

Anyways, I think it would be a cool idea. If there is a sacred scroll known to be in some ruins infested with monsters, I'm sure the local priest would love to have it recovered. And he would also take the credit for the recovery, at least with his fellow priests. It's an easy way to add politics into a game, as well. If the party cleric recovers the scroll, he might use it to gain influence with his higher-ups, trading it for more recognition and maybe a magical reward of some type.

Resurrection

I don't really care for resurrecting people in game. I would allow it if the characters are working for a  church, or if one of them is a high level cleric. Other than that, I think it should be reserved for either church figures or kings and dukes (and similarly powerful authorities). By allowing any old adventurer to get resurrected, especially if he was looting a tomb or old dungeon, really cheapens the spell for me. Resurrection should be earned, not just given out for a few thousand gold pieces.

While I can see various churches happily resurrecting people for monetary donations, I think I would have the gods refuse to grant the spell if it was abused, even once. If the dead person was devout, and actively opposing some major force of evil, resurrection would be granted with no reservations. If a cleric just goes and resurrects Ragnar the fighter, who has never worshiped at the church at all, because his buddies give the priest a chest of gems, I think the god just might cut off spells to the priest and force him to make atonement in some way.

Divine Right of Kings

Just a setting thing that I thought of:

Only kings and their immediate children can be clerics, because they are divinely blessed by blood. There are still lots of priests running around, but they are not spellcasters, unless they are a mage. While I think the King and the country would worship a god (or even more than one god), the king may also act as a living saint or even the god of his country.

Because the King has divine spells, he can just say, "It's obvious why I am King, as no one else can do the things I do. God wants me to be King." And it's quite likely a sizable portion of the uneducated populace would believe this without reservation. Shrines to the King might even be kept in villages for everyone to pray at. And the normal taxes would be considered a tithe to him freely given, instead of forced taxation.

Fantasy settings with one monolithic church

I'd like to see a major D&D campaign setting featuring just one Church, with one God. Druids would be leftovers from an older time, and might even be persecuted. Inquisitors and witch burnings would be commonplace. Penitents and Faithful Knights would also be seen fairly regularly. All knowledge would be reviewed by the Church, who would be the resident teachers throughout the land. Mages would still exist, but either work for the Church or be independent scientific types.

Saints would exist, and might even receive worship as part of the services to the God. There might even be a living Saint somewhere in the world, who would act as a beacon to the faithful. Miles-long pilgrim lines would form at the living Saint's church, with people being blessed just by his presence. Priests would have a saint's finger bone as a holy symbol, and every church would have the bones of some saint interred inside the altar. 

Also, there would be no racial gods. Evil races such as orcs might worship demons, and have demon-summoners among their ranks. The demons would also be able to grant spells to their followers. Demon-worshiping humans would be hunted, but very definitely present. Succubi could hide themselves in a King's Court with none the wiser. There might even be a very powerful mage with demon servants, that even the Church cannot fight, as he has his tower in a major city, and trying to kill him would likely wipe the city out.

I know WFRP has some of this vibe, but I'd like to make it even more like the Dark Ages of Europe, without just being a historical fantasy game.

I don't use Turn Undead

I don't particularly care for the Turn Undead ability that clerics have. It makes them too potent in my games, as I like to included lots of undead. And by having the Turn Undead ability available, players aren't nearly as scared of undead as I think they should be. If you see a bunch of zombies ambling towards you, you should be crapping your pants and running, not just having Bob the cleric scare them away.

In my opinion, undead should be among the scariest opponents a character faces. Undead are usually fearless, have some type of special attack, and just might be the walking corpse of your grandma. They should not be something that any mid-level cleric can either just scare away or destroy at will. Facing undead should have consequences, but if they can't even reach the characters, they are just a sideshow, or even worse, a comedy bit.

In the end, this ability was only created by Gary because one of the original players had a vampire character, and another player wanted a way to trump his abilities. I don't think that's a good reason to invent a rule. Sure, it would be fine for the house game, but to add it into the main ruleset that thousands of people use is unnecessary.

My house rule to address this is that instead of turning undead, clerics gain a +1 damage bonus with melee weapons when fighting undead. This still gives them the simulation of holy wrath, but it's not unbalancing or overpowering.