SRD:Divine Minions

=Divine Minions=

All types of beings may serve deities. In general, a deity only accepts minions who have accomplished some great deed in service to the deity. Such minions usually have the same alignment as the deity. No minion’s alignment is opposed to the patron deity’s alignment on either the law–chaos axis or the good–evil axis.

Proxies
A divine proxy speaks and acts on behalf of the divine being. When the demand for a deity’s presence is too high, the deity may use proxies.

Proxies are divine minions invested with a small portion of the deity’s power. A deity may invest 1 rank of its power (reducing its divine rank accordingly) in a single servant for as long as the deity chooses. The minion must be physically present for the deity to perform the investiture. While so invested, the proxy gains any salient divine abilities held by the patron deity as well as the powers and abilities of a rank 1 demigod. Without the requisite ability scores or divine ranks, the proxy may not be able to use all those powers and abilities. A deity may have more than one proxy, but it must lose 1 divine rank for each proxy it invests. A deity can retrieve a single divine rank as a standard action, and doing so it does not require the physical presence of the proxy.

Petitioners
Some spirits demonstrate their devotion to their deity by traveling to the deity’s home plane. Those that survive the journey across the planes become servants of their deity. While a few may remain disembodied spirits, most become petitioners through the divine will of their patron deity.

In general, petitioners appear in the form that they had when they died, though they may be remade by deities to fit the nature of their particular afterlife. In general, petitioners who become divine servants are creatures that originally had at least 1 Intelligence and 1 Wisdom.

The following creature types may become petitioners depending on the deity: aberrations, animals, dragons, fey, giants, humanoids, magical beasts, monstrous humanoids, and plants, oozes, and vermin with sufficient ability scores. Constructs and undead are not usually made into petitioners, though the spirits of their original forms may be. Elementals and outsiders tend to meld with their native planes, and as such do not become petitioners. Their spirits may still be called back from the dead, however.

See the petitioner template for more information on petitioners.