Product Description
Divine dedication powers these crusaders.
This book spotlights the champions of deities in the
D&D game, clerics and paladins. It’s packed with ways to customize cleric and paladin characters, including:
New feats, prestige classes, weapons, and equipment.
More uses for turning checks, and new magic items and spells designed specially for clerics and paladins.
Information about special organizations such as the Laughing Knives and the Stargazers.
Detailed maps of temples that players and
Dungeon Masters can use as bases of operation or as enemy structures that must be brought down.
Indispensable to both players and
Dungeon Masters, this book adds excitement to any campaign.
Brian R. Gregory @ 9:46 pm
If you liked Sword and Fist, and/or you are interested in playing a Cleric or Paladin character, this is a good book for you. It has alot of new spells, new armors, new prestige classes (some of which are very cool) and of course, new FEATS. So really, anyone could use it, no matter what character class you play. On the other hand, if you are looking for alot of “source” matierial, or ideas on how to play these classes, then this book will disappoint you. It is very much a RULES book, expanding the mechanics of the game but not the culture of the game. The exception to this is a nicely written section on various kinds of temples and what one could expect to find in them, but I found this information to be a bit obvious. The best reason to buy the book is for the new spells and feats. If you aren’t interested or cant keep up with the ones alreay out there, you will do well to save your money.
September @ 12:34 am
“Defenders of the Faith: A Guidebook to Clerics and Paladins” was decidedly mediocre for some reason. It contains useful information for playing a cleric or paladin in third edition, but for some reason it just didn’t seem as useful as “Sword and Fist”.
Some of the nicer ideas included the different type of paladin’s mounts (or cohorts), new (but slightly repetitive) feats, prestige domains, and new spells. The different suggestions for playing clerics and paladins were generally interesting and helpful, but nothing really new.
Not quite as good are the prestige classes. It seemed many of them were almost repetitive or boring. Unlike “Sword and Fist”, none of them made me want to try to build a character so that eventually I could use the prestige class. A few of the magic items seemed to be unrelated to the cleric or paladin class, in general.
In fact, that’s part of the problem with the book. It feels like the book was cobbled together at the last minute so that there would be a book for clerics and paladins. Unlike “Sword and Fists” brilliant little additions, there’s nothing in “Defenders of the Faith” that really makes it really interesting. It feels more like a second edition “Player’s Handbook to Clerics” for third edition and that is not a compliment.
I would say that if you’re like me and you like to own all the third edition books, feel free to pick it up. It’ll probably be useful in the long run for DMs to use for NPCs. Or if you like clerics or paladins best out of all the classes, again, give it a go and buy it. Otherwise, there really is no need to pick up this book.
Brad Smith @ 2:45 am
Which, of course, doesn’t tell us much about this, since S&F really wasn’t that good.
This is, as you may’ve guessed, the D&D3 splatbook for clerics and paladins. In it, you’ll find a collection of roleplaying and character advice, new equipment, prestige classes, and spells. There are also sample temples based on alignment, and a few other organizations.
What’s good? Well, for starters, the material is more substantive. There’s more here on almost every subject, leading to a lack of intentional filler material. The prestige classes are decent, and I liked the advice on playing a paladin. Having non-standard mounts is also a nice touch.
What’s bad? Not so much as S&F. Actually, very little specifically bad. It seemed a tad dense to me, and a lot of the new abilities are rather…munchkin-capable. (A member of my party uses one ability, I forget the name, that has him spend a turning attempt and get a massive attack and damage bonus…and his charisma is rather high) Also, the appendix with monster religions is disappointing; while a nice thing to get you started, I wonder why each humanoid race has only one deity. Check out the old AD&D2 Monster Mythology, or for demihumans, the FR supp. Demihuman Deities.
All in all, not bad. I wasn’t disappointed, but wasn’t that thrilled.
Anonymous @ 4:14 am
This book had a lot of useful information on clerics but nothing too spectacular in the way of feats. There are interesting cleric prestige classes throughout the book and paladin’s aren’t exactly on the ‘low end of the totem pole’ either. It has a very useful section on roleplaying tips for a ‘defender of the faith’ for beleivers of all deities.
The book is biased against the ‘evil side’ but it doesn’t exclude them completely either. It doesn’t take into effect that much in the fact that there are people out there who want evil clerics in their campaign, whether they be PCs or NPCs. It does help you build a complete paladin or cleric (some feats are useless but most are useful), but I think it does leave plenty of room for imagination with approval of your DM.
Overall if you are going to play a cleric (they are very important on campaigns, every group really should have one) or a paladin (a very formidable and well rounded warrior) then you should get this book, or just read it at a book store before making a decision to buy it.
This book is not intended to hold your hand a give you a step by step guide on playing such characters, because believe it or not you do need to use your imagination to some extent. A paladin in particular is tough to play as a beginning RPG player. By now you should have most of the information on playing a paladin through the use of the AD&D 2nd edition Paladin’s Handbook, or just from experience on playing AD&D 2nd edition.
If you can afford buying both the 2nd ed. Paladin’s Handbook and Defenders Of The Faith, I suggest you do so to help complete your understanding of the Paladin character.
Anonymous @ 5:45 am
I am referring to the Complete Guide to Paladins for 2nd edtion. That book had far more material in greater depth than Defenders does. Again, this book also seems underdone, like so many 3rd edition books. The most useful material was the section describing how the faiths of specific alignments, and deities, work. As for the rest, it is “overbalanced”. Most of the feats are so “balanced” as to be worthless, as are the prestige classes. The kits found in the Complete Guide are better, I think, with real balance, not +’s and -’s canceling each other out. The organizations listed were a little better, but again, the Guide had more interesting ones. Although I have focussed on Paladins, the same holds for priests. The Complete Guide to Priests wasn’t that good, so I can’t recommend looking for it. Overall, I wouldn’t bother buying this again just four about 10 pages of useful material.