Folio the First · A supplement for d20-style tabletop play
The Warpriest
A battlefield cleric for your table: armoured in prayer, loud in the line, and fully prepared to explain the theology afterwards.
This is a self-contained supplement. It holds one class, ten degrees of advancement, sixteen litanies, a dice bench and a character forge that prints its own sheet. Nothing to install and nothing to look up elsewhere. Open it, roll something, and begin.
Prologue
What lies within this book
Every tradition has its quiet clerics: the ones who tend lamps, copy scrolls and are mentioned in gratitude, usually at funerals. The Warpriest is the other kind. She marches with the line, kneels in the mud between volleys, and speaks litanies aloud over the din until the din runs out of arguments. This supplement gives that character a complete home: class features, a ten-degree advancement table, sixteen litanies to learn, and the tools to build and roll one in a single evening.
The rules are written for any table that rolls a twenty-sided die against a Difficulty and counts hit points under a friendlier name. Here they are called Vigor. Armour is Guard, prayers cost Fervor, and the long rest is a Vigil. If you can add a small number to a d20, you already know the hardest part. Everything else is stated on the page where you need it, with no appeal to rulebooks you may not own.
The tone is liturgical on purpose. Litanies have verses, vows are sworn rather than selected, and the day ends in prayer rather than in bed. None of this changes the arithmetic, but a table that says “I raise the shield” in a solemn voice has a better evening than one that says “I cast a spell”. The solemnity is also, occasionally, a bit. The GM asides in the margins are best read aloud by someone who has seen the party’s last three plans.
Nothing here is tied to a setting. The gods are unnamed, the armies belong to anyone, and the war is whichever war your campaign is already having. Drop the Warpriest into a siege, a crusade, a border skirmish or a very large tavern, and the class will find its way to the front rank.
The Contents
Three folios to turn to
- The Codex Class features, the four vows, the glossary and the ten-degree table, set in two columns the way a proper manuscript demands. Open the Codex
- The Litanies Sixteen prayers in four ranks, sorted by purpose into Ward, Rebuke, Mercy and Command, and filterable by rank or by word. Read the Litanies
- The Forge A dice bench from d4 to d100, and a character forge that rolls four dice, drops the lowest and builds a sheet for the printer. Enter the Forge
The Office of the Day
Draw a litany from the missal
Not sure which prayer to learn first, or which one your character would be foolish enough to try? Draw one at random. The missal picks from all sixteen litanies with equal fairness, and with no regard whatever for your plan.
Each draw shows the litany’s name, rank, purpose and verse. The full rules live on the Litanies page, one click away.
The missal is closed. Draw a litany to see what today’s office asks of you.
The Four Vows
Swear one before the first blow
Every Warpriest takes a vow at the first degree. It shapes a number on the sheet at once and grants two further boons at the fifth and ninth degrees. Choose the one you would still want to be sworn to in the fourth hour of a siege.
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The Shield
+1 Guard
You stand between the blow and the kneeling. Sturdy, patient, and annoyingly hard to move.
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The Pyre
+1 Dread
You burn what must be burned. Your litanies bind harder and your foes resist them less.
-
Mercy
+1 Fervor
You carry the needle beside the mace. One more spark of devotion in the pool, and one more hour of use from it.
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The Standard
+2 Initiative
You raise the cloth and the line follows. You act sooner, and you make sure everyone knows it.
A Sermon for the Game Master
Three counsels for running her
First, let her be loud
A Warpriest who whispers is an ordinary priest with better armour. Ask the player to speak the litany’s verse aloud, or a line of their own devising, each time one is cast. Tables that do this tend to look up from their phones. We have a hunch rather than a study.
Second, make Fervor visible
Put real tokens on the table, one per point of Fervor. When the pile shrinks, the whole table feels the weight of the war, and the player feels the decision. A stack of coins asks a better question than a number scrawled on a sheet.
Third, let mercy cost something
Bitter Mercy hurts the one who speaks it. Dawn After Battle arrives only once per Vigil. The class gives sharply and then asks for patience, so build scenes in which patience is possible: a defended doorway, a lull before the second wave, a quiet corner of the field.
The dice are waiting
Roll a handful on the bench, or go straight to the forge and meet your Warpriest before the kettle boils.