After the emotions of ending a campaign wind down, a new excitement starts to bubble up in all of us. The great question that has an endless array of possible wonderful answers: What are we going to play next?
For some groups, the answer is decided before you even get to this point. You are dedicated to a single system, or someone bought a new system that everyone is excited about, or the next GM has been trying to get the party killed for weeks so that they can start the game they want to run.
Some character types are easier to play than others. A fighter in old DnD is much easier than a wizard, especially for new players. Street Samurais over deckers. Minor talents over white court vampires. A big part of this difficulty curve has to do with mechanics, but another part has to do with familiarity.
Religious characters, for example, are often challenging to play. They are often played for mechanical benefits (healing, advantages versus evil, balance of magic and equipment, etc.) without consideration for their beliefs, which is much more limited when compared to the ever-popular hero that makes his own way and plays by his own rules.
Rather than rant about clerics that mechanically serve the goddess of generosity and yet steal from crippled beggars, I’d like to take a more constructive approach. Religious characters can be a lot of fun to play, and it is not hard to play them well if you have a good grasp about what their religion means to them. So with that in mind, let me share with you some tips to help play a devoted holy character.
