Group Patrons
Source: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, p. 83
Each adventuring group is bound together by the quests it embarks on and by the dangers its members face together. This chapter offers another way to bind your party together: a group patron. These patrons provide a strong binding element: an individual or an organization that unites a party as a team in service to a greater purpose. A group patron can help set the tone of your party’s entire campaign. For example, a group whose patron is an academic institution is likely to have a very different story from a group that serves a military. A patron can influence characters’ relationships, their backstories, and the types of dangers they face.
During character creation, every player has the opportunity to weave connections between their character and the other members of their party. Rather than (or in addition to) creating a web of established relationships, players can work with the DM to choose a group patron. And if you’re interested in being your own patron, see the “Being Your Own Patron” section at the end of the chapter.
How Patrons Work
The following sections present several group patron options. The description of each patron provides an overview of the types of organizations the group patron represents, perks of membership, and quests the patron encourages adventurers to undertake.
With the input of your DM, you can customize these patrons to reflect specific establishments in your campaign world or to serve as a launchpad tailored for organizations of your design. For example, the guild group patron could represent the Harpers or the Zhentarim of the Forgotten Realms, the Clifftop Adventurers’ Guild in Eberron, or a homebrew league of caravan guards. Or perhaps a criminal syndicate, military force, or other category of patron better fits the party’s goals. Choose and customize the group patron that works best for your party and the types of adventures you want to explore.
Group Assistance
Having a group patron gives an adventuring group a common purpose, which inspires better coordination in the form of guidance and encouragement. As a result of this unity, each member of the party can grant advantage to an ability check, an attack roll, or a saving throw of another member of the party. To grant advantage in this way, a character and the chosen target must be able to see or hear each other, and neither can be incapacitated. Once a party member grants this advantage, that individual can’t do so again until they finish a long rest.
Perks
A group patron offers your party a number of perks for your service. These range from standard business arrangements, such as a steady wage and access to staff facilities, to extraordinary boons, such as audiences with powerful figures or exceptions from certain laws. Specific perks are presented in the description of each group patron.
The DM should not feel limited to providing only the perks noted in each group patron’s description. Patrons give a party access to solutions and support they wouldn’t have otherwise, and a patron can use their varied resources to guide their agents or prepare them for greater adventures.
Assignments
A more hands-off patron can still significantly motivate your group. Maybe you seek adventures based on what pleases your patron, possibly earning status and rewards within your organization. An academy, for example, might not organize particular missions, so you hunt down ancient artifacts knowing that your patron will reward you for bringing them back. You have the freedom to chart your own destiny, while letting the patron shape the nature of your group and the adventures you undertake.
Example Patrons
Here are some of the most likely patrons for an adventuring group. Presented in alphabetical order, these patrons can serve as inspiration for you to create patrons of your own:
- Academy
- Ancient Being
- Aristocrat
- Criminal Syndicate
- Guild
- Military Force
- Religious Order
- Sovereign
Academy
A quote from Tasha
For all you novice wizards thinking about magic training, seriously consider apprenticing. I know liches who are still paying off their academy loans.
The world’s mysteries are innumerable, but you pursue them with vigor. As operatives for an academy, you seek to unravel the secrets of existence and the deeper riddles beyond.
In your work, you brush shoulders with the wisest in the land, travel to places spoken of in myth, and discover truths beyond imagining. Denying ignorance, you pursue wondrous sights and endlessly unearth new facts. Undiscovered creatures, the covetous dead, and jealous rivals impede your work, but in the pursuit of knowledge, no risk is too great.
Types of Academies
Any assemblage of scholars and truth-seekers can function as an academy. Generally, an academy unites a network of learned individuals, allowing them to share their knowledge, further their research, and support common goals. Passing on wisdom to the next generation is part of an academy’s mandate, but members find opportunities to undertake far-flung research expeditions—only so much can be learned in libraries, after all. An academy’s focus can be broad or singular, artistic or scientific, mundane or magical. For every topic with unexplored possibilities, an academy seeks to plumb its depths or elevate its study.
Roll or pick from the Academy Type table to determine the institution with which you’re aligned.
Academy Perks
With an academy as your group’s patron, you gain the following perks.
Compensation
The academy pays for the work you do on its behalf. The nature of your employment influences your compensation. On average, the academy pays each member of your group 1 gp per day, or enough to sustain a modest lifestyle. Alternatively, you receive a bounty (at least 250 gp) for each artifact or relevant discovery you bring back from your adventures and donate to the academy.
Documentation
Each member of your group has identification denoting your affiliation with the academy. This association carries clout in scholarly or artistic circles. The academy also secures documentation, letters of introduction, and traveling papers if your work requires them. Such documents grant you special status, such as access to forbidden regions or neutral standing in embattled areas. Such identification isn’t always a boon, though. In a land frequently plundered by foreigners, your documents could mark you as nothing more than aggrandized looters to some.
Research
Research is part of your group’s job, but your patron also has abundant resources to facilitate such efforts. You can call in a favor to delegate the work of researching lore (a downtime activity described in the “Player’s Handbook” and “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything”) to a colleague, contact, librarian, or research assistant. You’re responsible for covering expenses incurred as part of this research, and the DM determines its success or failure.
Resources
Academies host libraries, museums, record repositories, and training facilities, and you can use them to further your work. You can call in a favor from faculty members to access resources not available to the public—dangerous relics or magic items, spellbooks, gear, and the like. Additionally, you can consult with the faculty of your academy as the experts in various fields.
Training
Because you’re associated with the academy, you receive a discount on any education you wish to pursue. When you undergo training as a downtime activity (as described in the “Player’s Handbook” or “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything”), you pay half the normal cost, assuming the academy teaches that subject. Training in languages, musical instruments, and other tools is also available, at the DM’s discretion. In addition, you can gain proficiency in the Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion skills by this method, as if you were learning a language. A character can learn only one of these skills in this way.
Academy Contact
How much autonomy you have in choosing your missions and how often you’re expected to perform on the academy’s behalf depends largely on your place in the institution’s hierarchy. As students, new professors, or support staff, you aid the work of a senior professor or entire department. If you are further along in your career, you have your own goals and assistants, but you still take on assignments to further the goals of esteemed experts, deans, or the academy as a whole. In any of these cases, a specific contact manages your relationship to the academy.
Roll or pick from the Academy Contact table to determine who manages the relationship between you and the academy.
Academy Factotums
If you have an academy as your patron, you are likely engaged in a scholarly pursuit or support someone who is. Consider being a promising student or a new member of the faculty. While you have a modest course load that you handle behind the scenes (or using any of a variety of downtime activities), your primary interests involve aiding your contact in their research. Alternatively, you might work to further the academy’s efforts in another way, perhaps related to security or funding.
The Academy Factotum Roles table provides suggestions for functions you perform within an academy and the backgrounds frequently associated with each role.
Academy Quests
The focus of your study and the academy’s research defines the missions you undertake. Academics struggle to keep one step ahead of their scholarly rivals, making many of them suspicious of—even hostile toward—other intellectuals. Beyond rivals within their own profession, academics face challenges from their subjects (whether members of lost civilizations or magical beings) or suspicious anti-intellectuals. Not everyone wants to be the subject of scholarly scrutiny or thinks that solving the world’s mysteries is important or desirable.
The Academy Quests table presents a few of the sort of endeavors your work or studies lead you to undertake.
Ancient Being
A quote from Tasha
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Your group is bound to the designs of an ancient being of tremendous power and influence. You might serve as the creature’s eyes and ears in the world, carrying information back to it. Or perhaps you work as its direct agents, enacting its will. Whether you chose this arrangement or were tricked into it, you can count on the strange resources of your benefactor as long as you serve its purpose.
Types of Ancient Beings
From brooding dragons to unfathomable voices whispering from the dark, ancient beings guide and empower mortals for inscrutable reasons. The relationship your group has to its patron might be a clearly defined exchange, or it could be uncertain or forceful. Whatever the nature of the being, as long as your group fulfills its role, the being offers rewards.
Roll or pick from the Ancient Being table to determine the being your group serves.
Ancient Being Perks
With the ancient being as your group’s patron, you gain the following perks.
Equipment
Your patron’s network has access to certain magic items. You can purchase common magic items from your patron contact. The DM determines the available stock or can call for a group Intelligence (Investigation) check to ascertain if the ancient being’s network can successfully locate a desired item. The DC for this check is 10 in a city, 15 in a town, and 20 in a village. If the check fails, 1d8 days must pass before the same item can be searched for again in that community.
The DM sets the price of a common magic item or determines it randomly: 2d4 × 10 gp, or half as much for a consumable item such as a potion or scroll.
Research
Relying on an ancient being’s network of contacts, the being’s vast collection of lore, or perhaps the being’s direct teaching helps you unearth hidden secrets. If you can contact your patron or their agents, your group makes ability checks made to research lore related to your patron’s interests and influence with advantage.
Sanctuary
Your patron’s agents have safe houses or other secure gatherings spread across a wide region. Your group knows how to locate these friendly enclaves and can maintain a modest lifestyle in one for no cost. In return, you must defend the sanctuary or protect the secret of its existence.
Strange Gifts
Your patron grants your group a small measure of esoteric power. At 5th level, and again at 13th, you gain one supernatural gift as described in the “treasure chapter” of the “Dungeon Master’s Guide”. The DM determines which supernatural gifts are available.
Ancient Being Contact
The organizational contact who dispenses assignments or delivers the word of your patron runs the gamut from prosaic to otherworldly. Roll or pick from the Ancient Being Contact table to determine who or what conveys your patron’s will.
Ancient Being Operatives
Consider the overarching goals of your group’s ancient being patron when determining who they recruit as agents. In what arenas does that being likely hold sway? A powerful lich recruits other ambitious spellcasters, as well as skilled warriors to serve as bodyguards. A dragon values socially adept agents and those who influence society’s decision-makers. Consider how your capabilities and interests align directly with those of the ancient being, or how you unwittingly fell into the patron’s service.
The Ancient Being Operative Roles table suggests a variety of parts you can play within an ancient being’s schemes and the backgrounds frequently associated with each role.
Ancient Being Quests
Though their work remains mysterious, ancient beings send their agents to exact their will in myriad ways. Servants of other powerful beings try to stymie your patron’s plans, while misguided (or entirely justified) monster hunters seek to rid the world of their ancient foe. An ancient being’s lengthy history inspires unusual and potent enemies.
The Ancient Being Quests table presents a few options for the sorts of work your patron expects from you.
Aristocrat
A quote from Tasha
There’s a Bandit Kingdoms saying that I’m forgetting—something like “those who rub against money are closest when the collectors come.” I don’t remember the specifics, but it seems applicable here.
Your group serves at the pleasure of a member of the nobility. Motivated by money, power, and politics, your patron uses your group to further their agenda without dirtying their hands, or perhaps they send you to the palaces of their enemies as envoys of peace. In exchange for loyalty and discretion, your patron is a powerful ally whose favor bestows far more than gold.
Types of Aristocrats
From the heads of scheming merchant families to immortal sorcerer-queens, each member of the aristocracy holds a measure of wealth and power—and they desire more. The rulers of a barony could struggle to reclaim the influence they once held, while the new head of a business dynasty might seek to catapult their fortunes to new heights. By aligning with such patrons, you stand to benefit enormously from the fruits of their ambition.
Roll or pick from the Aristocrat Types table to determine what kind of noble you serve.
Aristocrat Perks
With an aristocrat as your group’s patron, you gain the following perks.
Expenses
Your patron reimburses you for extraordinary expenses incurred as part of your work. You are required to account for your expenses and must explain any extraordinary expenditures, but routine travel, ordinary equipment, and basic services don’t draw a second glance.
Immunity
As long as you remain in the aristocrat’s good graces, you are nearly immune to prosecution under the laws within the aristocrat’s sphere of influence. When you are carrying out your orders, you have a great deal of leeway in how you choose to go about that, and the law isn’t an obstacle. Committing serious crimes—especially if they are unrelated or unnecessary for the assigned work—is a sure way to fall out of your patron’s good graces, however.
Luxury
Your patron deigns to host you at their home or in other luxurious accommodations for a brief period as reward for a job well done. Such a stay typically lasts for no longer than two weeks per year, during which you maintain an aristocratic lifestyle for no cost. You must defend the locale if necessary, but you’re largely afforded time to relax as you please. However, poor (or outright destructive) guests rarely receive invitations to stay again.
Salary
Your employment under an aristocratic patron brings an income of 1 gp per day, or enough to maintain a modest lifestyle. At the DM’s discretion, your salary increases or decreases depending on the aristocrat’s nature, the type of work, and the length of your employment.
Aristocrat Contact
Aside from a few exceptions, aristocrats prefer to have someone else handle communication with the hired help. As a result, you communicate with an intermediary who serves as a go-between in your dealings with your patron.
Roll or pick from the Aristocrat Contact table to determine who serves as your patron’s proxy.
Aristocrat Retainers
Aristocrats seek agents to pursue business, political, criminal, or personal agendas. In return, you might serve an aristocrat merely for the salary or to gain access to particular tools, information, or political clout. Or you could be a lesser family member, expected to serve the will of family leaders. Regardless of your skills or social standing, aristocratic patrons with enough foresight and imagination find a use for agents from any background.
The Aristocrat Retainer Roles table suggests a variety of parts you might play in an aristocrat’s agenda and the backgrounds frequently associated with each role.
Aristocrat Quests
A missive from your patron proffers a different kind of mission each time. For one assignment, you act as an envoy during delicate trade negotiations; the next, you’re sent trekking through mountain passes to gather a favorite flower for a party. Foes are endless, and yesterday’s ally might be tomorrow’s target. The only things that are certain are the variety of your patron’s whims and that tomorrow there will surely be more.
The Aristocrat Quests table presents the sorts of work you might conduct at your highborn patron’s request.
Criminal Syndicate
A quote from Tasha
Crime—what’s the point? Why steal from someone when you can simply outwit them or turn them into a toad?
A network of criminals employs your group. You could be full-fledged members in good standing with the syndicate or probationary inductees looking to make your mark and earn its trust. Perhaps your group works for the syndicate against your will: you owe them big for a job gone wrong, for killing the wrong person, or simply for being born into a family that’s already in conflict with powerful, unscrupulous people.
Types of Criminal Syndicates
Criminal syndicates range from the local thieves’ guild, to a corrupt consortium of merchant princes, to a ring of otherworldly invaders infiltrating all levels of society for a nefarious purpose. Whatever form it takes, the syndicate is largely concerned with increasing wealth for its members at the expense of society at large.
Conversely, the syndicate could be an underground organization of good-hearted people fighting against a wicked power structure. Criminal syndicates with a heroic bent include the band of plucky outlaws who hijack taxes from the cruel baron and return them to the downtrodden and a hard-bitten ring of deserters who fight their homeland’s invaders.
Roll or pick from the Syndicate Types table to determine what type of criminal organization you serve.
Criminal Syndicate Perks
With the criminal syndicate as your group’s patron, you gain the following perks.
Assignments
The syndicate doesn’t pay you directly, but it assigns you to particular tasks on behalf of its clients or the organization. Someone hires the syndicate to perform a task (such as an assassination), and the syndicate passes 85 percent of the fee on to your group. If the aim is to enrich the syndicate (such as by pulling off a heist), you have the privilege of keeping 85 percent of what you steal. Other syndicates take more or less than a 15 percent share, at the DM’s discretion.
Contraband
You have access to your syndicate’s business in contraband, such as poisons or narcotics. You don’t receive a discount on these goods, but you can always find someplace to purchase them.
Fences
Members or associates of your syndicate are skilled at disposing of stolen goods, and you have access to this service as well. Fences are useful for selling not just illicit goods but also expensive items such as works of art and magic items. In the case of magic items, this allows you to delegate the work of finding a buyer (a downtime activity described in the “Dungeon Master’s Guide” and “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything”) to the fence. When using the syndicate’s fences, you run no risk of a double-cross or other mishap in finding a buyer, but the syndicate takes 20 percent of the sale price as a finder’s fee.
Safe Houses
The syndicate maintains safe houses or other secret hiding spots across a wide region. Your group knows how to locate these nondescript redoubts and can maintain a poor lifestyle in one for no cost. Revealing a safe house, whether purposefully or by accident, causes you to lose favor with the syndicate and may see you banned from using them.
Syndicate-Owned Businesses
The syndicate owns several businesses, primarily as fronts for laundering money. When you buy from one of these businesses, you get a 5 percent discount. The DM decides what goods and services are available.
Criminal Syndicate Contact
Each member of the syndicate has a place in the organization. You report to a contact who handles your contribution by giving you assignments, collecting the syndicate’s cut of your swag, or seeing that you receive your fee for contract work from outside clients. The contact is your first point of communication if you need to reach out to highly ranked members of the syndicate’s hierarchy.
Roll or pick from the Syndicate Contact table to determine your contact within a criminal organization.
Criminal Syndicate Members
Whether you’re a lifelong scoundrel or an ambitious upstart, you seek to gain wealth, fame, and influence within a criminal syndicate. A syndicate is motivated by profit, employing agents with all manner of talents. Nimbleness and novelty prove vital not just to exploiting untapped prospects but to avoiding the law. You embody rare experience and skill, positioned at the forefront of daring new criminal ventures.
The Criminal Syndicate Member Roles suggests positions you might fill in the organization and the backgrounds frequently associated with each role.
Criminal Syndicate Quests
Your work as a syndicate member involves more than simple street swindles or pickpocketing. Someone with your skills cooperates with others for greater purposes that offer both dangerous risks and splendid rewards. The law of the land is your most persistent enemy, but other criminal syndicates challenge you as well—or become your targets.
The Criminal Syndicate Quests table explores what kind of work you do for the organization.
Guild
A quote from Tasha
There’s power in groups. One bee’s a pest, but nobody messes with the swarm.
Your group has ties to a powerful consortium of professionals who work together for mutual benefit. You might be long-time members of such a guild, descended from a family of crafters or merchants from which you inherited membership, or perhaps you’re working to earn entrance on your own merits. If you serve the guild’s interests well, it promises to take care of you. Guilds hate to waste valuable assets, after all—that’s just bad business.
Types of Guild
The guild structure covers a swath of business ventures, differentiated by their specialty. A conglomerate of blacksmiths, jewelers, carpenters, tailors, alchemists, scribes, and sages all could organize as a guild. Whatever their trade, these experts share contacts, exchange resources such as materials or tools, and leverage their collective influence to affect politics for their benefit. Alternatively, merchants and other business owners might also organize into guilds. Merchant barons who effectively rule a city or nation through iron-clad control of the economy or a network of innkeepers who share news and supply routes could both represent guild patrons. A guild could even embody a more sinister group, such as one that deals in terrifying wares like deadly monsters, dangerous knowledge, or souls.
Roll or pick from the Guild Types table to determine the general sort of organization you operate within.
Guild Perks
With a guild as your group’s patron, you gain the following perks. These perks require an annual contribution of 15 gp paid to the guild (replacing the 5 gp per month cost for characters with the Guild Artisan background). These dues fund the guild’s services and activities.
Accommodations
You can stay at your organization’s guildhall. The rooms are comparable to those in a comfortable inn, but at a modest price (5 sp per day).
Equipment
You can requisition the use of specialized tools, laboratories, libraries, or other crafting space and equipment to use within the guildhall. When you make an ability check with a set of artisan’s tools using the guild’s equipment, add double your normal proficiency bonus to the check.
Resources
You can leverage the guild’s extensive contacts to locate exotic materials for crafting, spell components, or magic items, or buyers for them (a downtime activity in the “Dungeon Master’s Guide” and “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything”). You can locate or sell legal commodities using the guild’s resources, and any prices tip in your favor by 10 percent.
Training
The guild retains knowledgeable tutors in subjects pertinent to its interests. When you undertake the training downtime activity (as described in the “Player’s Handbook” and “Xanathar’s Guide to Everything”), the training takes half as long if you are studying a subject the guild specializes in. The DM decides if the guild has tutors available for a given subject.
Guild Contact
Even as a member in good standing of the guild, you can’t simply stroll up to the guild master and demand their attention. Your superiors within the guild manage work contracts, request the use of guild resources, and facilitate getting your group in contact with the right people to assist their interests.
Roll or pick from the Guild Contact table to determine your immediate contact within the guild.
Guild Representatives
As a guild member, you might be a professional who works directly toward the guild’s specialty or whose fortunes align with the guild’s interests. Alternatively, you could provide the guild with services to which their members aren’t suited. For example, guards, explorers, negotiators, and spies can be useful to a guild, whether its interests lie in trade goods, entertainment, or more questionable ventures. Whether a guild operates entirely within the law and how public its interests are also influences which of your skills it deems most valuable.
The Guild Representative Roles table suggests positions you might fill in a guild and the backgrounds frequently associated with each role.
Guild Quests
As a member of the guild, you’re called on to ply your skills in the organization’s service. You are required to undertake various tasks, either for the guild’s benefit or on behalf of an influential client. Competition is fierce in the business world, and the challenges presented by rivals or circumstances can pressure you into dealings you find distasteful.
The Guild Quests table presents a few options for the sorts of work the guild requires of you.
Military Force
A quote from Tasha
The whole machine of war is barbaric. In a sane world, conflicts would be resolved by contests of apocalyptic magics or by continent-reshaping brawls between titanic, soul-fueled reptiles. You know, reasonable options.
Your group serves as a team of soldiers in a larger military force, one dedicated to combat missions or other dangerous tasks. You could be a band of mercenaries, a special forces unit, or a squad of regular infantry. Perhaps you protect a nation’s people from monsters, or you fight secret battles in the wake of a war that has supposedly ended. Or the nation requires military forces at the edges of civilization to protect the frontier and to lead advancement into new territory.
Types of Military Forces
Military forces represent a variety of organized bands of warriors. They can be the disciplined regiments of a nation’s standing army, a fleet of ships comprising a kingdom’s armada, or a devastating horde of warriors and magical beasts. A given kingdom’s military could be a rigidly ordered force or a blood-soaked throng.
Roll or pick from the Military Force Types table to determine the general type of military patron you serve.
Military Force Perks
With a military force as your group’s patron, you gain the following perks.
Armory
You can purchase nonmagical weapons and armor at a 20 percent discount at a facility associated with your military force. You can buy magic items at the DM’s discretion, but you receive no discount.
Chain of Command
You are part of a hierarchy that provides you with orders. If you cause trouble in your own nation, you answer to your officers, not local law enforcement.
Official Access
Your rank in the military force grants you access to places that are off limits to civilians. With your commander’s permission, you can enter dangerous training grounds or military installations, like an army’s regional headquarters or a repository of top-secret intelligence. You can also request that your commander grant you authority to act in their name or provide access to experts or leaders higher in the chain of command.
Orders
You undertake your missions at the direction of a commanding officer, who expects your absolute obedience. These missions have clear and precise goals, leading you on the path of adventure. In rare cases, you’re trusted with open-ended tasks that afford you leeway in interpreting orders.
Salary
Each member of your group earns a regular salary or share of the military force’s spoils. The amount varies depending on your organization and your position within it, but at minimum you enjoy a modest lifestyle. You receive a small salary (as little as 1 sp per day) and food and housing on a military base. Or you receive 1 gp per day but rely on that money for room and board. With higher rank comes higher pay. As an officer, you maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
Military Force Contact
Your primary contact within your hierarchy is your superior officer, the person who gives you orders and is responsible for your success or failure.
Roll or pick from the Military Force Contact table to determine who assigns you missions.
Military Force Envoys
You might join a military force for a wide range of reasons, or the military has reasons for seeking you out. Those with specialized skills contribute to a range of missions, from infiltration and mystical operations to diplomacy and strategy. Perhaps your past deeds or the will of your family pushes you toward military service, regardless of whether you believe you’re suited to such a life.
The Military Force Envoy Roles table suggests a variety of military roles you could fill and the backgrounds frequently associated with each role.
Military Quests
The wide-ranging work of a military unit calls for both power and subtlety. Your missions could run the risk of shattering a fragile peace recently established with a rival nation and plunging multiple nations back into war. Or perhaps your group’s missions pit you against rival combatants during an active engagement, as you influence the war effort. Rival mercenary companies, armed resistance fighters, and monsters drawn to the presence of bloodshed also present familiar threats.
The Military Quests table provides possible missions you’re tasked to accomplish.
Religious Order
A quote from Tasha
Sure, serve that religious order, and soon you’ll be doing a thousand loads of your high priest’s laundry, because—conveniently—it’s divine will.
Your group acts in the service of a religious institution. The patronage of a religious order isn’t simply a matter of each member of your party belonging to the same faith, though. The faith’s administration—with its own resources, goals, and leaders—directly sponsors and guides your adventures.
Types of Religious Orders
Not every religious order represents an alliance of worshipers devoted to godly ideals. Perhaps your group is a team of devotees pursuing a cause for your faith, or maybe you’re a bunch of cynics taking advantage of a wealthy congregation. Your collective faith could compel you to hunt evil monsters or stave off otherworldly invasions, to protect the powerless from oppression, or to spread the teachings of your religion in a hostile land. Or perhaps you serve a corrupt hierarchy by making its enemies quietly disappear—though even cynical mercenaries can become true believers when confronted with the miraculous.
Roll or pick from the Religious Order Types table to determine the type of religious patron you serve.
Religious Order Perks
With a religious order as your group’s patron, you gain the following perks.
Divine Service
In times of need, your group can appeal to the priests of your faith for magical aid. An NPC cleric or druid of your faith who is of sufficiently high level casts any spell of up to 5th level on your group’s behalf, without charge. The caster provides any costly material components needed for the spell, as long as you demonstrate your need and are in good standing with the faith.
Equipment
Each member of your party has a holy symbol or druidic focus, even if it isn’t needed for spellcasting. Each of you also has a book containing prayers, rites, and scriptures of your faith.
Proficiencies
Each member of your party gains proficiency in the Religion skill, if the character doesn’t already have it.
Religious Order Contact
Your established order enjoys a robust following. It might be a cloister of priestly scholars who use your group as the adventuring arm of the organization, or perhaps a legion of paladins who call on your group’s finesse where swords and shields fail. You might receive orders directly from the immortal entity you worship or through an earthly agent, such as a high priest or an archdruid.
Roll or pick from the Religious Order Contact table to determine who relays messages to and from your order’s deity.
Religious Order Member
Your primary duty to a religious order is to further your god’s reach. That obligation ranges from proselytizing or performing religious services to meting out divine punishments or recovering lost relics. Beyond that, the needs of your order vary widely. Your patron relies on your group due to your particular skills or, perhaps, because it’s divine whim.
The Religious Order Member Roles table suggests positions you might fill in an order and the backgrounds frequently associated with each role.
Religious Order Quests
The services you provide your religious order vary depending on the deity you serve and your party’s aptitudes. Regardless, religious orders are opposed by antagonistic faiths, foes whose rivalry with your order emulates the conflict between your respective gods. Some religious orders also hunt and destroy fiends, undead, or other beings they consider abominations, seeking to rid the word of their influence. Others root out heretics, real or imagined, to demonstrate the primacy of their deity.
The Religious Order Quests table presents a few examples of how you can honor and serve your deity.
Sovereign
A quote from Tasha
I never had much interest in ruling, partly because the titles all sound so stuffy. But “witch queen” has a lovely ring to it, don’t you think?
A leader without allies is not long a leader. You serve a sovereign—a national figure or otherwise—and work to achieve their goals no matter the cost.
As agents of a sovereign, you serve as diplomats or enforcers, spies or fixers, bringers of aid or executors of justice. You work within the system to uphold the status quo or step beyond the law to prevent war and worse. Politics, espionage, and mystery are facts of your world, as is hope and the fragile promise of peace.
Types of Sovereigns
Broadly defined, a sovereign ranges from the head of a government to the leader of a powerful, private institution. Queens, chieftains, sultans, and rajahs are ready choices for powerful individuals who patronize a party of adventurers. Those on track to become such individuals—such as cunning senators, royal heirs, or influential celebrities—also fill a sovereign’s role. When choosing or creating a sovereign to serve, consider whether that leader commands a government organization or another faction. While this section assumes your patron is the head of a country or other national body, they could oversee a powerful private division, a cult of personality, or an elaborate expedition. Also, consider the scale of your patron’s organization. While serving as spies engaging in international intrigues could lead to world-changing escapades, being fixers for the mayor of a struggling town offers a personal connection to a place and its people.
Roll or pick from the Sovereign Types table to determine what sort of liege you serve.
Sovereign Perks
With the sovereign as your group’s patron, you gain the following perks.
Elite Access
While in service to the sovereign, you have access to the highest echelons of society. With your patron’s permission, you can gain access to the halls of power, from national capitols and military headquarters to noble estates and troves of state secrets. You can also request that the sovereign grant you access to perks of their position, like access to diplomatic receptions or use of the royal guards.
Expenses
Your patron reimburses you for extraordinary expenses incurred as part of your work. You are required to account for your expenses and must explain any extraordinary expenditures, but routine travel, ordinary equipment, and basic services don’t draw a second glance.
Immunity
As long as you remain in the sovereign’s good graces, you are nearly immune to prosecution under the laws within their sphere of influence. When you are carrying out your orders, you have a great deal of leeway in how you choose to go about that, and the law isn’t an obstacle. Committing serious crimes—especially if they are unrelated or unnecessary for the assigned work—is a sure way to fall out of your patron’s good graces, however.
Salary
Your employment under a sovereign patron brings an income of 1 gp per day, or enough to maintain a modest lifestyle. At the DM’s discretion, your salary increases or decreases depending on the sovereign’s nature, the type of work you perform, and the length of your employment.
Sovereign Contact
You might benefit from direct contact with your group patron. This includes audiences or secret meetings with the sovereign, depending on the nature of your work. Alternatively, the sovereign might purposefully want to keep their distance from you, either due to their busy schedules or to maintain plausible deniability regarding your work. In such cases, an advisor or functionary oversees your assignments, serving as the primary contact between you and the sovereign.
Roll or pick from the Sovereign Contact table to determine who manages the relationship between you and the throne, if not the sovereign directly.
Sovereign Proxies
You serve a sovereign out of national pride, out of tradition, or for your own practical reasons. The needs of a leader potentially embroil you directly in political intrigues, court maneuverings, or threats from national foes. It’s up to you and the sovereign to determine whether your work is publicly acknowledged or top secret—and if the latter, what happens if your work is exposed.
The Sovereign Proxy Roles table suggests ways you might serve a sovereign and the backgrounds frequently associated with each role.
Sovereign Quests
The services you provide a sovereign largely depend on the nature of your group patron and their nation. While some of your missions involve official tasks—missions undertaken in the sovereign’s name—others might be covert, making your patron’s identity a highly guarded secret. Political rivals, enemy countries, and natural disasters all pose dangers to the sovereign’s nation. Yet a sovereign who sows chaos, enacts tyrannical decrees, or jeopardizes a population’s way of life is likely to inspire rebellions. In such cases, a sovereign’s agents must decide where their loyalties lie.
The Sovereign Quests table presents a few of the sorts of missions you undertake for your liege.
Being Your Own Patron
For some players, the idea of running a crime syndicate, mercenary company, arcane scholars’ collective, or other organization is far more exciting than working for someone else. Founding your own organization offers a greater degree of autonomy, though potentially at the cost of support and reliable work.
When you’re the boss, the perks of belonging to an organization become expenses you have to worry about; when you run your own mercenary company, for example, you need to stock your own armory, rather than drawing on an existing organization’s stockpile. The organization brings in income, but you’ll have to spend it to keep the organization running.
When you run your own organization, use the Running a Business downtime activity (described in the “Dungeon Master’s Guide”) to reflect your organization’s ongoing activities. More than one character can take part in this activity at a time. When rolling to determine the business’s performance, add the total days spent by the characters to the roll to determine the business’s success (still observing the maximum of 30). If the business earns a profit, multiply that profit by 4 + the number of characters who took part in this downtime activity.
Don’t discount the value of adopting an NPC to serve as your contact within your own organization. A secretary, majordomo, or apprentice keeps up with your group’s bureaucracy while you’re conducting missions and passes along information that could lead to your next adventure!