1 The Goddess’s Hand

A Priest playbook for the shining city-states. Written against Wizards & Lizards v0.10 (BETA, not yet playtested).

Every shining city is a goddess, and every goddess keeps her people through hands like yours. You stand in the line with mace and shield where you are needed, and you are the one who kneels in the blood and the smoke and says not yet to a friend who was leaving, and means it, and is heard. Your power is mercy, and mercy, like fire, is borrowed and must be spent with care.

1.1 You Keep Them Standing

You stand armored in the line, trade blows when you must, and mend what the fight breaks and lift the fallen back onto their feet. Where the mage must go bare, your goddess’s favor runs through steel and armor: a gift granted, not a power stolen. Like all who channel more than a body holds, you spend stress to work your mercy, so your devotion runs on the same fuel as your nerve.

1.2 Make Your Priest

Your Presence begins at +2. Might, Agility, and Wits begin at +0; the tables below will raise them. (Presence is your stress, your mercy’s measure, so yours runs deep.)

You begin with:

• Hit Points 15 (sturdier than any spellcaster, you are no soft scholar).
• Speed 2.
• Stress 4 + your Presence (the most of any company, when you tend Presence).
• Defense = Agility + shield + cover.
• Training in armor up to mail and the shield, and in simple arms, a mace, a staff, a sling, a spear. And, unlike the arcane, your prayers and Tending work unhindered in armor; the goddess does not mind the steel.
• Tending, the goddess’s mercy in your hands (below), and a blessing from your calling.
• Medicine, the healer’s craft of the body as well as the soul, learned beside the prayers.

Now walk the tables. Roll or choose; take what each one grants.

1.2.1 Whose hand do you carry? (1d6)

1. The Walled Mother, goddess of a fortress-city. (+1 Might · Soldiery)
2. The Lamplighter, who keeps the dark from the streets. (+1 Wits · Watchfulness)
3. The Green Lady of the faewood at the city’s edge. (+1 Agility · Nature)
4. The Drowned Saint of the dockward chapels. (+1 Presence · Old Lore)
5. The Bright Forge, goddess of the artificers’ quarter. (+1 Wits · Mechanics)
6. No goddess at all, only a battlefield and what you learned there. (+1 Might · Surgery)

1.2.2 What did the hand ask of you? (1d6)

1. To follow the company that left and keep them whole. (skill: Resolve)
2. To tend the poor your city forgot. (skill: Streetwise)
3. To carry a relic to a place you have not yet found. (skill: Wayfaring)
4. To speak for the goddess where no one else will. (skill: Oratory)
5. To learn every prayer the old chapels are losing. (skill: Devotion)
6. To never again stand by while someone dies in reach. (skill: Vigil)

1.2.3 Whom do you watch over?

Choose another player’s character, the one whose life you hold first when the worst comes. While you can see them, you may Tend them from a short distance, no touch required, and once per session you may Lift them from the Fallen for no stress at all.

1.2.4 Your relic (1d6)

1. A vial of the goddess’s tears. Once per day, a Tend also clears every condition.
2. A censer that never goes cold. Allies who rest near it clear an extra stress.
3. A surgeon’s roll of bright steel. Your Tending mends 1 more HP.
4. A prayer-book in a dead tongue. You may carry one extra blessing.
5. A bell that the faewood fears. Once per day, ring it to drive off the fae, or to wake the freshly slain for one last word.
6. A coin from a saint’s eyes. Once per session, refuse a death: an ally stays standing.

1.3 Tending

The goddess’s mercy is worked through your hands and your stress:

• Tend (1 action, 1 stress): touch a willing ally and restore 4 Hit Points, or clear one condition from them.
• Lift the Fallen (1 action, 2 stress): a Downed ally within reach opens their eyes and rises with 4 Hit Points. No roll, it simply works; the steep cost buys a sure thing in a bad moment.
• Over a short rest you may lay hands on the whole company, each ally clears an extra 2 Hit Points beyond their own breather.
• If marking a prayer’s stress would carry you past your last box, you falter: the mercy does not come, and the goddess’s silence is its own kind of answer.

1.4 Advanced Actions

You have Tending already. Choose one more now; you will gain others as you rise.

• Sanctuary. Spend an action to raise the goddess’s ward: until your next activation, allies beside you have +2 Defense, and the frightened among them may stand fast.
• Smite. Your mace-blows (and a hurled word) count as magical harm and strike the unhallowed at +2 damage; the wraith that turns aside steel does not turn aside the goddess.
• Rebuke the Dead. (1 action, 1 stress.) Every undead within about two zones must Endure (3d6 + Presence) at −(your level + 1). On a miss (8−) it is Frightened of you until it takes damage or the fight ends; on a partial (9–12) it is driven back but not Frightened. Even the mindless dead must roll. It clears a path; it does not kill.
• Blessing. Spend an action and 1 stress: an ally’s next roll is made at +2, the goddess leans her weight on it.
• Stern Mercy. Your Tend may restore 6 HP instead of 4, but a Tended ally may not be Tended again until they have drawn breath in safety.

1.5 Your Actions

Like every adventurer you have the shared actions, roll 3d6, add the attribute, read the ladder (8− miss, 9–12 partial, 13–17 success, 18+ critical):

Strike (Might) · Shoot (Agility) · Defend (Agility) · Maneuver (Might/Agility) · Endure (the fitting attribute) · Skill (use one of your skills). And you may always mark stress to push a roll, resist a blow, or work a prayer.

1.6 As You Rise

You grow over five levels. At 2nd and 4th you gain a skill and an Advanced Action, a deeper prayer; at 3rd and 5th you raise an attribute (cap +3) and your mercy mends more. Raise Presence above all: it is more lives kept.