Most faiths have a definite organization, with more experienced priests leading less experienced ones. In some faiths, bribery and corruption can allow a less experienced priest to gain power and influence over more experienced ones, but this is uncommon.
In the AD&D® game, most faiths are organized based on the experience levels of their priests. The higher in level a priest is, the higher he may be in the faith's organization.
But the DM needs to note a couple of important facts.
First, most NPC priests start at first level and never rise any higher than second. The player-character priest, who gains levels throughout a career that is mostly characterized by adventure is an exception to the usual rule.
Second, the PC priest, with his (comparatively) meteoric rise through levels, may not wish to or may not be able to enjoy the benefits and responsibilities of most priests. Many priest PCs will wish to forego the duties of running a temple and stay on the road, acting as a mobile agent for their faith. This is a viable option for a priest in a campaign.
More on this subject is discussed in the "Role-Playing" chapter.
Experience Levels and Hierarchy[]
Below is the usual arrangement of priesthoods in a campaign. First is the organizational structure which NPC priests usually follow; then, we'll talk about player-characters and their place in the structure.
Level Zero (Normal Men and Women)[]
A "level-zero" priest is someone who has just been accepted into a priestly order and is receiving his initial training. Player-characters do not have to start out at zero-level; the only zero-level priests that the PCs will ever encounter will be NPCs undergoing training.
Level One-Level Two[]
First-level priests are typically assigned as aids, clerks, and assistants to higher-level priests, and keep that assignment through second experience level. During this time, the low-level priests will be getting practical field experience in the execution of their duties, in the way the priesthood works with the population, and in the way the priesthood's organization works in the real world.
Most first-level priests are assigned to priests of third to fifth level, but some few (especially very capable ones) will be assigned to much more powerful priests.
Level Three-Level Five[]
At third level, the priest will be assigned to a single community (a village, a small town, a broad tract of land containing many scattered farms, or a single small neighborhood in a large city).
If he asks for one, and the faith's leaders (i.e., the DM) agree that he needs one, he will be assigned a first-level priest as an assistant. This priest isn't a follower in the same fashion as the followers he receives at a higher level, and might wish to be re-posted elsewhere if his superior is unlikable or difficult. (However, if this assignee is still with the priest when that priest reaches eighth or ninth level, the DM might decide for him to become one of the priest's official followers.) If he doesn't ask for a subordinate priest, he won't receive one.
The priest is assigned a small building to serve him as a temple or church. (This is not the same as a stronghold.) The priest is supposed to finance repairs to the building, food and supplies for himself and any assistants, and salaries for any servants he chooses to hire through tithes and donations. Half of all tithes and donations are sent on to the superiors, and the rest go to the priest's own temple for these purposes. If the priest doesn't receive enough tithes and donations, the faith will probably not help him; his mission is to inspire his flock, and inadequate tithes and donations are merely evidence that he needs to work harder at it.
Level Six-Level Seven[]
At around sixth level, if the priest has done a good job of maintaining his church and seeing to the needs of his flock, he may be given a more important assignment. He could become the chief priest of a large town (one with more than one church; the third-level priests operating those churches would report to him), or the central church authority over several villages.
He may keep any subordinate he has had previously. He will automatically be assigned two additional first-level priests as subordinates. Again, they do not precisely constitute "followers," though those specific characters could become followers when the priest reaches the appropriate level.
If the priest's work does not merit a better posting, he won't lose his experience levels or his subordinate, but he'll be stuck in the little church that he has been operating all this time. When a priest reaches sixth or seventh level and is still the priest of a one-horse town, it's often a sign that he is not held in high regard by his superiors. It may merely be a sign that there are too many priests in the priesthood and advancement is slow.
Naturally, a higher-level priest can ask to be posted to or remain posted to such a small community. Some people will snicker at his lack of ambition while others will admire his dedication and his care for the common man.
Level Eight-Level Nine[]
At around eighth or ninth level, again assuming that the priest has done well in his priestly career so far, he will be allowed to build a stronghold. The faith will finance half its cost, and it remains the property of the faith when the priest retires his post.
However, the stronghold is semi-autonomous; the priest's superiors seldom interfere in its operations. They might interfere, especially by sending another priest to investigate, if they receive rumors of incompetence, greed, or trouble from the stronghold. Otherwise, the priest is free to operate it much as he pleases.
The priest's assigned area may remain the same. He might continue to be chief priest over a large town or collection of villages. At his request and with his superiors' permission, or solely at his superiors' wish, he may instead build his stronghold in some other place: In a frontier where he is supposed to defend the peace, in a wilderness area where he and his subordinates are supposed to work undisturbed by the secular world, etc.
At this same time, the priest will receive his followers, as we have discussed earlier this chapter. The followers manage the stronghold and its duties under the priest's administration. As discussed earlier, the levels, classes and goals of these followers will depend on the attributes of the faith and on the specific goals of the priest for his stronghold. If it's to be a military post manned by holy warriors, the followers will mostly be capable fighters; if it's to be an educational monastery, most of the followers will be Normal Men and Women or first-level priests with appropriate scholastic talents.
During this time, the priest's progress and efficiency will be carefully measured by his superiors, who are considering what role the priest will play in the higher-level politics of the faith.
Level Ten-Level Twelve[]
Sometime between tenth and twelfth levels, the priest may find himself promoted to prominence over a much larger area; he will be administering a bigger chunk of the religious "map." Priests of numerous cities and regions in his vicinity (at least a fifty-mile radius) will be reporting to him, and of course he will still be reporting to his superiors. By twelfth level, he may be the high priest over an entire nation (assuming that the faith spans several nations, as many faiths do).
He does not, however, receive any more followers.
Level Thirteen-Level Fifteen[]
The most powerful of a faith's leaders belong to these experience levels: The high priest of the faith and his immediate advisors. If the DM wishes, politics or the god's preference alone may decide who the high priest is, and the high priest might then not have to be the highest-level priest of the faith. The faith's high priest might be chosen by vote or omen, and could be a thirteenth-level priest while all his immediate advisors are of higher level.
Level Sixteen-Level Twenty[]
These experience levels don't have any effect on the priest's ranking within his faith. They are reflections of additional knowledge that he has learned... but don't grant any additional benefits within the structure of the faith.
PC Priests and the Hierarchy[]
Now, just how do player-character priests relate to this whole organization? Many campaigns are set "on the road;" the player-characters spend much of their time travelling from place to place in search of adventure, and it's hard to keep a church-bound priest active in such a campaign. So, here's how to keep the priest in the campaign.
In a campaign, it's often not appropriate for first and second level priests to be assigned as scribes to some small-time village priest. If the DM wants to avoid this, he can assign the character to a third-level priest (especially a physically harmless one, who won't contribute much combat ability to a PC party) who travels. This third-level priest may be a friend and travelling companion of one of the PCs, or may be an unusual priest who prefers to train his subordinates by life on the road.
When the PC reaches third level and is supposed to be assigned his own village, he may instead be given a special mission which will keep him on the road and with the other PCs. For instance, if the PC party typically encounters new monsters or magic, the faith may want the PC priest to stay with them to benefit himself (and the faith as a whole) with these new experiences and knowledges. The PC priest could keep this assignment all the way from third to seventh levels.
At eighth or ninth level, when the PC is supposed to be "settling down" and building a stronghold, he should do so. The DM should work up a whole series of adventures centered around the stronghold, its construction and defense. After the stronghold is built and settled with followers, if the PC priest wants to remain on the road with his allies, he should be able to do so. He must leave most of his followers at the church to operate it, and should take no more than two followers with him. Naturally, the stronghold was built and organized with this in mind, and the priest will still have to return to the stronghold a few times per year in order to sign important papers and set new policies... but for the rest of the year he's doing the temple's business on the road.
This can remain the situation for the rest of the priest's career in the campaign. Alternately, as the priest reaches higher levels, the DM may wish to orient the campaign around him and the concerns of his faith; we discuss this in the "Role-Playing" chapter.
Finances of the PC's Temple[]
We mentioned tithes and donations above, and there's always a temptation to provide some sort of lengthy and involved money-management scheme for the campaign, so that the DM can keep track of every copper piece that flows through the temple coffers.
But that doesn't contribute to the spirit of adventure that AD&D® game campaigns are supposed to promote. So we're going to provide you with a much simpler system for keeping up with a temple's tithes and donations.
The First Temple Assignment[]
When the priest character is first assigned a temple or church, the DM decides, entirely arbitrarily, whether the faithful who attend that temple contribute enough for the priest to lead a mean, average, or comfortable existence.
"Mean" indicates that he gets barely enough to eat and cannot afford repairs or salaries for servants; "Average" means that he and one subordinate get an ample diet and can afford one servant; "Comfortable" means that the temple can house more than just its one or two priests (it can, for example, house one or two horses per priest) and can afford two or more servants per priest.
Then, the DM decides whether or not this economic condition is one that will change with the priest's management. If the local population isn't contributing as much as it could, the new priest might be able to inspire them to a better performance. If the last priest was a very charismatic leader, then perhaps the new priest will start out with a Comfortable or Average existence but then see it start to slip away.
Then, from time to time, the DM can confront the priest with situations which can affect his standing.
Example: An unpopular man seeks sanctuary in the priest's church; if the priest denies sanctuary, he'll be more popular with the locals, but will not have done his priestly duty; if he provides sanctuary, he'll have done his duty, but will see contributions slip or dry up altogether.
Example: A young man of the area asks the priest's advice on a difficult problem: Should he marry the girl of his choice, and alienate his father, or acquiesce to his father's arranged marriage, and wed the wealthy girl he does not love? If the priest answers one or the other, it has no effect on his standing in the community. But if he can suggest and implement a plan which will allow the youth to marry his love, keep his father's affection, and not alienate the family of the spurned girl, the priest's standing will be improved, and so will the economics of his temple.
Later Assignments[]
As the priest is given larger and more important postings and assignments, the DM should assign him to temples which are always compromises for him. The DM decides how many men and women these temples have on their staffs, what the standard of living is for the temple-dwellers (usually modest, though not uncomfortable, etc.). And these temples simply do not receive enough from tithes and donations normally to live up to all his expectations, much less to build up a large treasury of available coins.
Example: If the priest dreams of having a body of soldiers decked out in full plate and riding trained warhorses, what he has is a squadron of foot soldiers in chain.
Example: If the priest wants to live a luxurious existence, with expensive furnishings and many servants and a hedonistic lifestyle, what he gets is dull stone walls, used furnishings, and one scruffy servant (or none).
In all situations like this, the priest must either:
(1) Re-structure the temple's budget, which results in shortages elsewhere in the temple's existence (taking from the kitchen to pay the armory results in poorer food and worse cooking; taking from the armory to redecorate makes for brighter and less-defensible temples; taking from the repair fund to improve the kitchen makes for better meals and buildings which start to fall apart; etc.);
(2) Finance the changes from his adventuring treasures (which means that the priest will find it hard to save up a "retirement fund" of any consequence); or
(3) Tap into the monies which are supposed to be sent on to the higher ranks of the faith (which will work for a time, perhaps a very long time, but will eventually result in a temple investigation... which is very bad for the faith as a whole, as it causes disillusionment among the populace when the true facts emerge).
Notes on Economics[]
By presenting temple economics as choices of lifestyle ethics, rather than numbers on a column-sheet, the DM encourages role-playing within his campaign and doesn't have to devote a lot of time to keeping track of silver pieces.
Non-Priests Working For the Faith[]
One last note about levels of priests within the faith: There are many non-priest characters who belong to the administrative organization of any faith in a campaign world.
Most are Normal Men and Women who work in individual temples, as servants, messengers, grooms, and sometimes as teachers, scribes, and consultants.
Many are warriors hired to protect temples in dangerous areas, to act as bodyguards for travelling priests, and to train priests in the finer points of combat.
Some are mages, bards, and even thieves hired as consultants and specialists.
PCs, Forces and Philosophies[]
Some players will eventually ask themselves, "If the gods are sentient but forces and philosophies are not, then if I become priest of a force or philosophy, I don't have some god dictating what I can and can't do. I can do anything I want to."
The DM needs to step on this sort of foolishness when it crops up. Though forces and philosophies are not sentient beings, they can still enforce their ethos and tenets on their priests.
For example, if a priest of the Philosophy of Good does evil things, the natural power of the philosophy will abandon him (denying him all his priestly until he repents, makes amends, and again follows the restrictions of the priesthood).