Devotions
Devotions are short class-like sets that are designed to give a character a way on expanding upon their existing abilities. A Devotion is not a prestige class. A devotion represents a more general kind of tendency in an individual's development, rather than a distinct path that is shared by others. Regardless of anything else, Devotions follow the following rules:
- Devotions do not cause multiclassing penalties, ever. They are like Prestige classes in this regard.
- A character may only ever have one Devotion. This is a mechanical concern rather than a flavour one - the nature of Devotions means some pretty neat abilities show up in them, and they're supposed to be ways to round out a character's flavour, not a new power option.
- A Devotion may or may not have prerequisites for taking one or more levels. An example of this is the Ne'er-do-well, which requires you to have twice as many points of Base Attack Bonus as you have levels in Ne'er-do-well. Therefore, to take your first level of Ne'er-do-well, you need to have a Base Attack Bonus of +2, to take your second level you need a Base Attack Bonus of +4, and to take your third, a Base Attack Bonus of +6. Since the Ne'er-do-well does not give you any Base Attack Bonus, you therefore have a character who progresses - if he is as quick in it as he can be - as, say, fighter 2/Ne'er-Do-Well 1 at level 3, then fighter 4/Ne'er-Do-Well 2 at level 6, and then finally fighter 6/Ne'er-Do-Well 3 at level 9. This is deliberate - it keeps people from diving straight into a Devotion and grabbing a really powerful ability early on.
- A Devotion can afford to give out an ability that is very good and scales up very quickly. An example of this would be the Hardened Veteran, who gets Damage Reduction 1/-, 2/-, and 3/- very quickly. These abilities are capped at this point, and the character has them as his only class features.