A long time ago when I posted the Oath of Detachment, I mentioned that I thought of it as my best work on a technical level but wasn't my personal favorite. I didn't go further into that difference at the time, but now is the time, because here is the Sacred Oath that is my favorite piece among all the paladin homebrew I've created: the Oath of Benevolence.
What makes this one so special? Some of it has to do with the archetype's inspiration, and some of it has to do with my personal taste and style.
So, what is the Oath of Benevolence's inspiration? The answer may surprise you as unlikely: the classic Victorian children's novel A Little Princess, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. A Little Princess is my favorite book (tied with some fierce competition), and as an avid Fifth Edition homebrewer I got it into my head to offer a tribute to this wonderful work through my Dungeons & Dragons hobby.
It's a strange choice of inspiration, I will grant, being a book about schoolchildren in Victorian England who neither fight nor adventure. And yet the principles exemplified by main character Sara Crewe felt so appropriate for a Sacred Oath, a vow to live the way Sara strove to live. And so, the Oath of Benevolence was born.
This is how I described the Oath of Benevolence when I first shared it in an online homebrewing community:
What do you give when you have nothing? What do you become when you are nothing? The Oath of Benevolence is sworn by paladins whom, when presented with these questions, choose to give all that is good and become everything that is just, in spite or even because of all they lack. Inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess, the Oath of Benevolence is my Fifth Edition tribute to both the incredible story and the moving character of one little princess, Sara Crewe.
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| Art created by Ethel Franklin Betts for the book. This appears on the first page of the Oath of Benevolence with some image manipulation to blur the sign so the English text isn't distracting. |
As with many sacred oaths, the tenets form the core of the Oath of Benevolence, describing a way of life defined by compassion, dignity, and hope in the face of injustice, suffering, and wrong. This thematic foundation then gives inspiration to the features, enabling me to create an archetype with mechanical impact and combat application even with nonviolent source material.
Making homebrew based on other media isn't unheard of. After all, on this very blog I've shared Temples & Triforces, my homebrew project inspired by The Legend of Zelda. However, I wonder if my choice of inspiration is comparatively unusual. Without aggregate data to study this it's impossible to say how true this is generally, but at least from personal observation I have yet to see anyone else create homebrews inspired by stories from childhood that had very little to do with adventure.
While not exactly the same subject, the possible oddness of the Oath of Benevolence prompts me to also reflect on personal taste in homebrew and Dungeons and Dragons. When I say "taste" I could also maybe use the word "style." Style, however, implies creator-centrism, but taste can include readers.
Why do I bring up taste and style? I don't think it's a secret that no two Fifth Edition homebrewers are the same. Even though we all work with the same tabletop game, the homebrew different creators produce can be wildly different. One creator might have a very dark and grim style. One might aim for spectacle, another restraint. And players and readers themselves have their own tastes. One might acknowledge a homebrew subclass or spell as being well-crafted but not to their taste, and so they don't use it. After all, the same is true of official content. I know fans of Fifth Edition who appreciate the design of, say, the barbarian but do not themselves enjoy playing barbarians as a matter of what they enjoy in the game, a matter of taste.
I describe my own taste and style in the word "wholesome." I like the tone it hits, though I realize it's still a little vague. What do I mean by wholesome? In the context of this blog post, I suppose I can say that I mean something like A Little Princess. The Oath of Benevolence is premised on goodwill and a good heart. It's not naive, but it is to some extent guileless.
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| More art from Ethel Franklin Betts. This is an image that I originally wanted to include in the homebrew itself. It's a great piece depicting a great scene in the book. However, the earlier image does a much better job of capturing the essence of the oath, and on the next page it made sense to have an image that offered a visual example of the subclass in action (the image is meant to portray phantom parlor). |
I think some of this is evident in my other homebrew as well. The Chivalric Order eschews the grim horror of warlocks selling their souls to instead explore the life of a sworn servant of goodly knights. The Seelie Knight is an archetype premised entirely on acting out of love. My Temples & Triforces favors a soft-edged take on Hyrule. Even the Oath of Detachment, which I intentionally designed with a sinister edge, has a quirk table with amusing entries to take the edge off (such as being a head-over-heels Mordenkainen fan).
In saying all this, I don't mean to imply that there's a special reason. This just happens to be what I tend to like to do. Not all my homebrew is universally this way, but it often turns out to be. In large part, my style reflects my taste in media, which itself reflects on me as a person and the experiences and context of my life. This is all just an opportunity to make observations. Maybe you've already noticed this about homebrewers, or maybe you'll start noticing it. What kind of style do your favorite homebrewers follow?
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