“I come in the name of the Brawler, and no evil shall stand against me!”

—Tarrana, sanctified one of Kord

The cleric, the paladin, the priest, and the holy warrior—all these are classic divine hero archetypes. Whatever differences they may have, all divine heroes owe their power to deities or to their faith and devote themselves to the service of powers beyond the mortal plane.

But not all deities have paladins as their martial champions, or clerics as their most iconic servants. In some cases, the sanctified one fills both roles.

BECOMING A SANCTIFIED ONE

Among the many roles that deities fill in the world, the role of patron is among the most important. Every deity has its own portfolio and its own agenda, and each rewards faithful service differently.

A sanctified one epitomizes the ideals of her own specific deity. Although any deity can sponsor a sanctified one, these holy servants most often serve deities who lack any other obvious champions. Few serve deities who attract mostly lawful good worshipers, for example, since paladins typically function as the champions of such faiths. Sanctified ones, on the other hand, fill the role of champion for churches without other obvious choices—typically Ehlonna, Kord, Olidammara, and Wee Jas.

Unlike members of most other divine prestige classes, sanctified ones often come from backgrounds other than clerical. A sanctified one might have been a wizard, a rogue, or a fighter before becoming a champion of her religion.

To become a sanctified one, a character must be of the same alignment as her deity—a restriction even more stringent than those governing clerics and paladins. Furthermore, a deity who favors a particular character class most often draws its sanctified ones from that class.

PLAYING A SANCTIFIED ONE

As a sanctified one, you strive to live up to the moral, ethical, and religious code of your church. Because you are the personification of your deity’s best attributes on the Material Plane, it’s important to act in accordance with your patron’s wishes at all times. Since accepting the mantle of sanctified one, you have conducted a thorough study of your deity’s major characteristics, domains, portfolio, and general philosophy, and you try to behave in a manner consistent with those principles at all times.

You have no problem working with the followers of other religions, or even those who worship no deity at all. While you might (or might not) be an evangelist, you understand that getting out and adventuring in your patron’s name is the best service you can render. As a living example of your deity’s greatness, you can truly showcase the divine power of your religion.

You also recognize that your deity has particular allies and enemies within the divine pantheon. As a sanctified one, you try to keep the churches of friendly deities close and prevent the churches of rival deities from gaining power at your patron’s expense. Meeting this goal often means working with people outside your religion and forging new friendships with them. Those who share even part of your religious philosophy are on the right track, even though their paths occasionally diverge from yours.

Combat

Although your deity might or might not be focused on combat, you are an adventuring hero—a champion of your deity. Thus, to a greater or lesser extent, you are expected to use your abilities in combat to defeat your foes. You might do so in an entirely different way than another sanctified one, depending upon your gifts. The following archetypes describe your combat philosophy, depending upon the deity you worship.

Storm of Blades (Kord): As a sanctified one of Kord, you leap into the center of the fight, hacking your way toward your most dangerous foes first. You prefer to draw attention away from your allies, depending on your deity-granted abilities to protect you while you strike at the heart of the foe.

If you came from a fighting class, you probably possess good armor or exceptional speed in combat, so you trust in those defenses to help you avoid the most damaging blows. Use your luck of battle ability to avoid damaging magic, saving your chaos warp ability to help you avoid devastating critical hits from strong opponents with exceptional weapons. When you reach your enemy, use your sanctified strength to deal extra damage with a single blow.

Nature’s Protector (Ehlonna): The abilities Ehlonna has granted you are geared toward readying your allies for a fight and healing them afterward. Thus, you usually concentrate on protecting and heartening warriors, though you do keep a few surprises in store for complacent enemies. Whenever possible, use summon nature’s mount to achieve battlefield supremacy, since it lets you stay out of range of your most powerful enemies and use ranged spells or attacks to harass them. When possible, dart in to rescue wavering comrades, either pulling them from the press or healing them on the spot, depending on the resources you have available.

A Knife in the Dark (Olidammara): You aren’t a battlefield hero. As a sanctified one of Olidammara, you have no need to prove your valor—only to win. Though some might call you a coward, you know how to use your wits and abilities to keep yourself alive and free on the battlefield. Your not in the face and fast talk abilities make you difficult to hit, and you can save many lives at a time with your chaos luck ability. In general, you make yourself innocuous on the battlefield, hoping to deliver a devastating strike—or even a timely distraction—at just the right moment.

Deathspell (Wee Jas): Though you depend heavily on your spells, you aren’t a blast-away type of spellcaster. As a sanctified one of Wee Jas, you prefer to use your powers to influence minds—and sometimes bodies as well. Your resistance to death effects makes you the ideal person to confront wayward undead, and your armor of law protects you from overzealous foes that don’t know any better than to attack a servant of Death. When the time is right, your sanctified spell ability can deliver an unexpected, deliberate magical punch, thereby providing Wee Jas with more company in the netherworld.

Advancement

When you chose to devote yourself wholly to your deity, you had to earn the trust and respect of your church’s authorities. You began to study your deity and the church’s dogma in earnest and take on any missions the church leaders felt they could entrust to you. In short, you began to serve as a champion of your deity well before you formally took on the mantle of sanctified one. When you finally did, the entire congregation knew your reputation and looked up to you as your deity’s chosen representative.

But your work has only begun. Because you might very well be the only sanctified one your church has in the area, you strive harder to advance. You are welcomed into most organizations sponsored by your deity, but you must be careful not to focus too heavily on one aspect of your religion at the expense of another. For example, if you worship Kord, you certainly value strength, but it would be too easy to concentrate on refining your physical strength at the expense of the other tenets of your religion.

Try to choose feats that complement your class features and take advantage of your strengths. Worry less about covering up your weaknesses; after all, you are only a mortal. If you worship Wee Jas, take feats that improve your spellcasting ability and skills that increase your knowledge so that you can gain a better understanding of the workings of death. As a follower of Ehlonna, you should work toward becoming more in tune with nature by learning feats that connect you with the strengths of animals, plants, and the elements. You must also continue to increase your knowledge of nature and its enemies.

Resources

As a sanctified one of your chosen deity, you can expect respect, recognition, and even assistance from followers of your religion and those of allied faiths. Your church’s clergy and congregation trust you as your deity’s representative on the Material Plane. If you need healing, spellcasting, or other resources, you have a right to expect the local church or any nearby worshipers to provide such, even if you cannot offer compensation immediately.

But being a sanctified one is a double-edged sword. When asked for assistance by your church or an ally, you cannot reasonably refuse unless undertaking the requested task would keep you from performing a greater service for your deity. Even then, you should try to work out a means of accomplishing both tasks to prove yourself worthy of your deity’s trust. You do not expect to go without compensation for your services—indeed, it would be disrespectful for a church not to ensure that its sanctified ones were fully equipped. However, you never demand more than those in need can afford. Furthermore, when you receive “loans” of services or goods, you repay them quickly and with interest.

Because of such behavior, you are recognized throughout the world as a pillar of your religion and few—even the nonreligious—are disrespectful to you. Your foes might also treat you with awe, sometimes targeting you more heavily than they otherwise would. But you are a champion, so you can withstand your enemies better than most.

SANCTIFIED ONES IN THE WORLD

”They’re just as committed as paladins—and just as fanatical.”

—Lars Bentforth, Woldsdown peasant

Sanctified ones are lone champions of their religious beliefs. While they gain the respect of those around them, they also find themselves segregated from their fellow worshipers. At times, sanctified ones can come across as too perfect, or too intense. Even those who worship “relaxed” deities such as Olidammara often make others around them feel inadequate or without purpose. Such reactions stem from the fact that sanctified ones don’t just believe—they know.

First and foremost, members of this prestige class are adventurers. However, their patron deities have given them abilities that enable them to go forth and advance divine agendas in the world. Few sanctified ones spend their time in large temples or holy places protected by cities or fortresses. Most often, they are out in the wild, mingling with the desperate and the hopeless. Nevertheless, they are seldom out of touch with their churches, and they are always on call when the church leaders are in need of heroes. Sanctified ones simply never get to enjoy the fruits of their labors for long.

In an adventuring party, a sanctified one often serves a support role because she feels more comfortable helping others succeed than drawing the glory to herself. Such an attitude might seem odd to others, especially since sanctified ones draw so much attention from their foes, but it makes sense to the holy champion. She knows that someday the foes sent against her will succeed in destroying her, but she plans to go down fighting and if possible keep her comrades alive and fighting. So while a sanctified one might either draw fire or stand back and heal, she doesn’t use her party members as ammunition or fodder for her enemies’ swords. Rather, she willingly plays the role her deity has chosen for her.

Organization

Sanctified ones have no organization of their own, both because they are so few in number and because they tend not to bond with characters outside their ranks. And while sanctified ones of different religions might work together, they are too committed to the tenets of their individual beliefs to share any common organizational philosophy or structure. Thus, sanctified ones often find themselves on the outside looking in, serving the causes in which they so fervently believe but isolated from their fellows.

However, each sanctified one automatically belongs to at least one organization—her church. She might also join another organization within that church—perhaps one run by members of a different prestige class. Bu many prestige classes with religious strictures are too narrow in focus for a sanctified one. Such a character isn’t interested in just one aspect of her deity’s portfolio; she wants to promote the whole package.

NPC Reactions

People fortunate enough to meet a sanctified one of their own church often treat her as a hero. They see her as someone their children should look up to and someone they themselves should venerate, but a measure of desperation is often intermingled with this hero worship. People have heard that sanctified ones go only where their church needs them, and that they settle where the fire is hottest. Thus, common folk revere sanctified ones but hope they are simply passing through, looking for trouble in some faraway land. Such NPCs usually begin any interaction as helpful, or at worst friendly.

Clerics react to a sanctified one of their own faith in similar ways. Most see her as a devoted follower of their religion, welcome her into their sanctuaries, and share news, food, and problems with her. Church leaders—be they lay persons, actual clerics, or other divine casters—recognize their deity in the face of the sanctified one and see her presence as a blessing. But they too worry about trouble. Why is the sanctified one there? What does the god need done? How is her mission going to affect the church, the congregation, and the clergy? Nevertheless, devout clerics are helpful to sanctified ones on almost any occasion.

A few clerics, however, disdain and even envy sanctified ones. Some such individuals come from fringe sects or overly structured temples in which rote has replaced belief in the hearts of the worshipers, and others have a slightly different alignment from their deity. In such cases, the cleric may view the sanctified one as too stratified, or too intensely devoted to a “narrow-minded view” of the deity. This situation isn’t as unusual as it might seem— plenty of clerics of Kord are neutral good, and few of them appreciate hearing a “hero” of the religion espousing the importance of chaos, individuality, and luck. Such clergy members sometimes mutter against the sanctified one and can, if left unchecked, turn her from a visiting hero into a harbinger of doom in the minds of the worshipers. Envious clergy might appear to be helpful in initial interactions, but turn out to be unfriendly or even hostile toward the sanctified one in the long run.

But the true enemies of the sanctified one are the foes of her religion. Worshipers of evil deities put even higher prices on the heads of sanctified ones than on those of known paladins because they rightly see a strike against such a hero as a strike against the religion she represents and the deity she worships. A sanctified one who lingers too long in one place has more to worry about than mutterings of envious clergy; she runs a very real risk of assassination or a strike by her religion’s enemies. Enemies of the sanctified one’s church are always hostile toward the champion herself.

Most non-evil members of other religions see sanctified ones as powerful adventurers and seldom treat them much differently than they would a high-level paladin or cleric—usually friendly, though occasionally indifferent. This attitude can be a relief when the sanctified one simply wants to rest in a place where her deity isn’t worshiped. But when the deity calls again, she must ride!

SANCTIFIED ONE LORE

Characters who have ranks in Knowledge (religion) can research sanctified ones to learn more about them. When a character succeeds on a skill check, the following lore is revealed, including the information from lower DCs.

DC 10: A sanctified one is a servant of [deity’s name] and has achieved a strong connection to her faith.

DC 15: A sanctified one almost certainly has at least one special power granted by her deity.

DC 20: A sanctified one of [deity’s name] can use one or more of the following abilities: [special abilities].

DC 30: Characters who achieve this level of success can learn important details about the sanctified ones in your campaign, including notable individuals, the areas where they operate, and the kinds of activities they undertake.

Since sanctified ones don’t have their own special organization, the best way for a character to approach membership in this prestige class is to find a devout clergy member (usually a cleric) of the appropriate religion and ask about champions of the deity. Several attempts might be required to gain the appropriate information. Almost every member of any organized religion has heard of sanctified ones, but few have ever actually met one. Alternatively, when a character completes quests in the name of a deity, she might be approached by a high-level cleric or even a sanctified one and offered the opportunity to participate in the initiation rites.

SANCTIFIED ONES IN THE GAME

If you wish to add sanctified ones to your game, you should probably include more detailed information about religion as background for adventuring. Religion is a great motivator for adventuring in the D&D game, and the quest to become a sanctified one is a process characters can begin at any level.

You can introduce sanctified ones as NPC heroes when your PCs attain the appropriate character levels. Because of their general attitudes, they make terrific NPCs—they seldom feel the need to “grab the glory,” and they would rather help others achieve success than be lauded for doing it all themselves. A sanctified one wants others to become heroes, especially if doing so links their names to the worship of the right deity.

When a player evinces interest in devoting his character to a deity, introduce the concept of the sanctified one as a goal and allow the PC to work toward it. Luckily, most of the PC’s goals probably match those of any other adventurer—namely, defeat evil and become more powerful. Multiple aspiring sanctified ones in the same party can make for a fun and interesting group.

Adaptation

This section presents four examples of sanctified ones using deities from the core D&D game. You can adapt these to other campaign settings by matching up first portfolios and domains, and then alignment. You might need to swap out one or two powers, but fortunately, most of the powers clearly link to specific domains.

If you wish to create your own sanctified one for a different deity, start with the following basic guidelines.

• The deity probably doesn’t have any other “mainstream” champions, such as paladins or members of a notable prestige class. A religion that already has paladins is less likely to need a sanctified one. This rule doesn’t always apply, but it’s a good guideline.

• The sanctified one is a five-level prestige class for a reason. The deities chosen are usually patrons of other classes, and obviously so. A patron deity of druids wants its followers to be druids. Allowing them to deviate for five levels and gain some appropriate abilities is fine, but any greater investment in another class actually steers the sanctified one away from the deity’s patronage.

• The sanctified one’s abilities should involve some small amount of choice. Even though these characters are supposed to follow their religions’ ideals, no one mortal could possibly do justice to all of them. So build a short list with more choices than a character could possibly take, and see where the concept goes from there.