Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/09/100-days-of-halloween-sisters-of-rapture.html

NOTE: This review covers both the OGL and Pathfinder Editions of this product. Where they differ will be detailed below.

We are getting much closer to Halloween now! It is cooler here in Chicago and I am ready for the seasons to change. Here at the Other Side, I am kicking up the witch topics hitting on products I have had for a while but have not reviewed or talked about. Tonight is a good case in point. I have had this particular product in both the OGL and Pathfinder versions for years. I have not found a group that it would work well for, however. There is a lot of material here that I can use in my witch worlds. But, well. Let me get into the products and you decide.

Sisters of Rapture

OGL (d20 3.5) and Pathfinder versions.

PDFs, both 72 pages of content (76 and 74 total respectively). Color covers and interior art.

For Mature Readers. Let's approach this one upfront. The art featured on the cover is a rather tame example of the art that can be found inside. Point blank, there is a lot of nudity here and lot of sexual situations. The entire idea of the Sisters of Rapture is a class of semi-divine spellcasters centered around love and sacred sex. If this is not your thing then best to back out now. Again I have struggled with how to use some of these concepts in my games.

We know that history has had temple prostitutes, sacred sex, and many pagan rituals involving fertility. There are historical examples to fit this book more so than say the martial arts monk side by side with a horse-riding paladin in a quasi-European Medieval setting.

Plus, and I want to be truthful here, there is a lot a great and well-written material here that begs to be used. So let's get to it. Also, why am I doing these along with witches?

Unless mentioned the OGL and Pathfinder sections are largely similar. They are not 100% the same, more like 90% but both deal with their source game where they need too.

Introduction

Here we are introduced to the central concept of this book. That of the power of love. We learn of the Sisters of Rapture, a "close-knit organization of warrior-priestesses, dedicated to preserving and protecting the ideals of the various goddesses of love, beauty, sex, passion and other related concepts."

In terms of RPG applications the author (and artist) T. Catt, points to the various artists of fantasy art.

Chapter One: Love's Blessed

Here we are introduced to the Sisters of Rapture base class, also known as the Rapturous. They are a bit of a fighter, a bit of divine spellcaster, and maybe some rogue added in. They are dedicated to the various goddess of love. Their raison d'être is to spread pleasure and love around their worlds.

Here we also get our first look at the art of T. Catt; mostly nude women. Now I just finished watching HBO's hits Rome and Game of Thrones, so this fits that aesthetic, but like I said it is not going to be for everyone.

In terms of 3.x OGL/Pathfinder classes, they have somewhat medium combat abilities, good Fort and Will saves, with low Reflex saves. They can cast spells up to the 9th level, same as all full casters. They also get a power every other level. Their spells are known as "Carnal Domain" Divine spells. They get d8 HD and can only be women of any species.

There is a limit on the number of spells they know like sorcerers. Their powers largely focus on and around their sex and sexuality. There are several "kiss" powers for example. I actually rather like the Kiss powers, I have used something similar and lets be honest history is repleat with various sorts of powerful or significant kisses.

Depending on the Goddess they follow they can gain different powers. So Aphrodite grants her Rapturous different powers than Freya. Freya in particular grants her Rapturous a "Righteous Rage" ability to Rage like a barbarian of half her level.

What does this sound like? Yeah. Witches and their patrons.

Chapter Two: Love's Chosen

This covers the various Prestige Classes. I mentioned before that I like Prestige Classes, I always have. These classes work well with this base class. Though I will point out that other classes should be able to qualify for these to be within the spirit of the d20 rules; these don't really do that.

The Inamorare is something like a muse. They get some Bard-like abilities (mostly inspiration) and of the five levels they advance in spell casting in three of them. The Patron Mother takes on the role of training the next generation by taking on a Rapturous apprentice. In this respect, she more similar to a cleric. The Spellswinger (and I admit I like that name) swings both ways, Divine and Arcane magic. NOW this Prestige Class does require that character be able to cast Rapturous and Arcane spells.Yes, they are all about sex magic. My favorite though might be the Stormsister. These Rapturous are the strong arm of the Sisters and they punish anyone that harms women or stops love.

The Pathfinder version also includes various archetypes for the base class. These include the Abbess (closer to her Goddess and church), Divine Virgin (celebrates the pure divine love and refrain from sex), and the Sacred Prostitute (think of the Epic of Gilgamesh),

Chapter Three: Love's Method

This covers skills and feats. For skills there is Knowledge (Carnal). I can't help but wonder if the author was familiar with the old AD&D Netbook Book of Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. No, don't go dig it up, it's not worth it. There is also Perform (Sexual Techniques) and various Professions.

Feats are an interesting lot and could have a lot of interesting applications. Blown Kiss, for example, allows the Rapturous to "blow a kiss" or deliver a touch spell/power attack at range.

The Pathfinder also covers various traits.

The next portion of this chapter covers the Carnal Domain Spells. There are only nine, but since the publication of this book there have been plenty of others that would work.

There are some magic items. The Rings of Faithfulness are certainly interesting.

Chapter Four: Love's Divinity

This chapter covers the various goddess of love, beauty, and sex. These include the expected Aphrodite/Venus, Isis, and Freya. Others are briefly mentioned. Shout outs to my favorites Astarte and Brigit. Additionally, we are presented with a "new" Goddess, Parvati.

The Pathfinder version is largely the same but I think a mention of the Goddess of Love Shelyn and her lovers Desna and Sarenrae should be in order here. I feel that their combined faiths would be perfect for the Sisters of Rapture. (I know these goddesses are not "open" in terms of the OGL so they could not be included in this book).

Chapter Five: Love's Order

This details the society and church organization of the Sisters of Rapture. This includes the religious practices of the Sisters and the roles they are play within the church organizations.

Chapter Six Love's Relations

It seems odd to call these creatures monsters, but they are creatures/people that are associated with or related too the Sisters of Rapture. There are the Theliel, the Archons (Angels) of Passion. The Beloved, undead victims of the Succubus. The Congress of the Wolf, an all-male group in opposition to the Sisters. We just call them the Patriarchy. There is Lileetha the Queen of the Succubi. The Half-Nymph and Huldra. The Pleasure Ooze looks like a woman but is really an ooze that wants to eat you. As does the Venus Mantrap.

I will say this for Pathfinder. The "Evolved" monster stat block makes it a lot easier to read than the base D&D 3.x one.

Appendix 1: Who's Who

This covers various Raprurous NPCs. Theophania Leandros the current Overmother, Althea Acarides a half-nymph Sister of Aphrodite, Saereid an elven Sister of Freya, Ninythys a human Sister of Isis, and Kamala Siddah a humanSister of Parvati.

Appendix 2: Modern Rapturous (OGL)

Here the books differ quite a bit. The OGL version covers the Modern d20 book and how the Sisters of Rapture exist in the modern age.

The OGL book ends with one of the most attractive-looking character sheets I have ever seen.

Appendix 2: The Nefer-Sefet (Pathfinder)

This is a special sect of Isis-worshiping Sisters of Rapture that attach themselves to an Arcane spell caster and bolster their powers. Essentially they are a living Meta-magic battery for these arcane spell casters.

Both the required OGL pages.

So. What to make of all of this.

Well, there is a lot of great mechanics here. The class is solid and even if you toned down the sexual aspect of it there is a lot her that is good to play. You have to ask though what is here that a cleric could not do or even should be able to do. This is a divine spellcaster. There are some powers, but I think a cleric could cover similar ground. I guess at some level the differences are the same between a cleric and this class and a wizard and a witch.

I also can't but help but admire the complete level of detail the creator has gone in on this. While others might scratching their head about where to use this class you know that T. Catt has thought about all of these things and more. It's obvious from the level of detail here.

Among other things, the half-nymph is a great idea, the various feats have some wonderful uses, and the creature section has some surprise hits.

I guess each Game Master has to decide on their own how to best use this sort of book.

It's added an interesting and certainly enjoyable twist to my groups game. Thank you very much.

I will admit, I had been hoping for something a little less ... fanservicey ... and more a straight-up treatment of an alternative cleric class dedicated to a more generalized idea of pleasure and love as opposed to just orgasm.

That said ... I'm a pretty rabid feminist. It's not all that hard to offend me. But the only things in this book that made me raise an annoyed eyebrow were a single class ability's "you must be naked or scantily clad to use this power" and the Pleasure Ooze monster. The rest was ... tasteful. I was shocked.

While this material wasn't what I was looking for, it's a well-illustrated, high production value, high quality book for those looking to add a very explicit choice to their class selection.

An... unusually tasteful product that, in my opinion, works rather well with the system. Certainly not the sort of thing to bring to a game session with the folks, but certainly a viable option for groups mature enough to respond with something other than "giggle boobies..."

Sisters of Rapture is a 76-page PDF (71 pages if you remove the covers/OGL page) for the OGL Fantasy written by T. Catt and published by Fantastic Games. This product is for mature audiences -with a ‘Not for Sale to Persons under the age of 18' on the cover- due to its focus on matters involving sex and the erotic art (much of it also by T. Catt) used as illustrations.

The layout is 2-column on a nice watermark that does not distract and there is considerable full-color artwork much of it showing considerable bare skin of artistically drawn women, so you are warned. Fortunately, there is also a printer friendly version (51 pages) without art or watermark.

Following a short introduction it moves directly into the Sister of Rapture class, a full 20-level base class. Combining focused spontaneous divine spell casting, mid-range combat ability and a variety of minor love and romance-based class abilities. Differing ability paths are available based on their patron goddess allowing for greater diversity of character types.

Four prestige classes that build on the Sister of Rapture are included: Inamorare, who seek to inspire artists and others. Patron Mother, who guide the next generation. Spellswinger, who mix arcane and divine magic. Stormsister, who bring down justice on those who abuse women. The prestige classes look balanced but are also even more focused than the basic Sister of Rapture on particular aspects of the class.

New skills sub skill of knowledge and perform, new feats (eight of them, one being metamagic), a new clerical domain (carnal) with a new spell for each level. While some of the new spells suffer from ‘cute name syndrome’ they all look balanced. Eight new magic items of a variety of power levels, including one cursed item, round out this section. This section provides a good number of additional options to round out the Sister of Rapture class.

The next section is one of my favorites. It discusses the relationship between the Sisters and their divine patrons. It highlights how the different goddesses interact with the Sisters and suggestions for incorporating other goddess into the Sisters’ faith. Following is a section on how the Sisters organize their faith.

The main section ends with a variety of monsters, creatures and enemies. Ranging from potential allies such as the Passion Archon to various races such as half nymph and the fey Huldra and enemies such as the Congress of the Wolf, a male supremacist group, and the Succubus Queens. An interesting selection of beings, several of which can be used in just about any campaign.

Two appendices cover: Notable characters from the Sisterhood, providing a wealth of NPCs. And rules for the Sisters in D20 Modern. Lastly, a multi-page colorful character sheet for the Sisters of Rapture ends the product.

As long as you know what you are buying, you should not be disappointed in this product. It contains exactly what is promises and more.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

This is what a d20 splatbook should be - focused on one aspect of roleplaying and weaving the rules around it.

You get your standard prestige classes, feats, et all. But rather than just a list of these, which are a dime a dozen in d20 books, the twist is that it is all built around a well-thought out organization.

The art is a unique in its style and fantastic. The pdf itself is laid out that it looks like it went through a few professional editors.

I really appreciate the author including the "stripped version," the bookmarks, and the errata notes. You can really tell the author cares about his creation.

My only peeve is a good one, I want more! I'm sure the author researched a lot, especially on the three real world goddesses. More on their clergies, churches, clerics, and differenfes would be awesome!

Sisters of Rapture gets many things right that other similar products have gotten wrong. Sisters of Rapture focuses upon the roleplaying aspect of the game, and not upon silliness or upon obscure game stats for things you shouldn't roll dice for.

The writing is excellent, detailed and easily adaptable to any game world, published or home-brew. The sample characters are believable fantastic characters, and not one-dimensional lusty female stereotypes. For added benefit, there is the Congress of the Wolf organization that opposes the Sisters of Rapture.

Then, there is the art. Whereas many other similar products have used second-rate line art or photomanipulations, Sisters of Rapture utilizes beautiful full-color and black-and-white art that adds to the product, not distracts from it. This product is worth the price just for the art alone!

If your game includes scenarios of an adult nature, you absolutely cannot be without this product.

A great book! Containg many beautifully drawn pictures from well known web-and rpg-artists, this e-book is a piece of art all in itself.

Romance. Sex. Love. Call it what you will, it’s a subject that has never really been done well in D&D. Serious attempts to cover it invariably seem to foul it up, while more humorous endeavors lampoon themselves (and their readers) right from the beginning. However, by narrowing their focus and using a more concrete central theme (that of a specific organization) Fantastic Gallery’s debut product, Sisters of Rapture, actually seems to be one of those rare products about sex and love in the d20 System that gets it right.

Or at least, it gets it right in terms of thematic presentation. Looking at Sisters of Rapture from a technical standpoint, Fantastic Gallery has made all of the mistakes you’d expect a new company to make when releasing their first PDF. There are, for example, no tools to facilitate ease of navigation; bookmarks, something that every PDF product should have, are absent here. Likewise, while not necessary, hyperlinks in the table of contents are usually a perk, but there’s also nowhere to be found. The biggest missing thing, however, is a printer-friendly version of the book. Such a thing is absolutely necessary here – not because of the ornate page borders and backgrounds (though that’s also part of it), but because of the artwork. While I greatly enjoyed the art here (more on that below) it’s imperative that customers have the ability to print out a version without it. Many, if not most, gamers would be embarrassed to bring pages of this book to the table if it meant they’d also be showing pictures of naked women. Hopefully, this will be corrected in an update.

Having said that, the artwork here is everything you’d expect (and hope) it to be in this kind of product. In other words, naked women abound! Done in full-color, the quality of the artwork here ranges from pretty good to damn nice (it’s a welcome change from, say, photoshopped images of real people), and almost all of it depicts women in some state of undress. The majority of these are women either topless, or wearing only diaphanous clothing above the waist, though there are also plenty of women showing full-frontal nudity. Interestingly, none of the artwork here is truly salacious; there’s only one picture of a couple actually having sex, and they’re shown from the side, tastefully hiding the naughtier bits.

So, having said all of that, what is this book actually about? Well, it’s right there in the title. Sisters of Rapture is about an all-female religious cult of the same name. Devoted to love in all its forms (as a concept, an act, a force, etc.) the Sisters largely focus on their own holy trinity of deities: Aphrodite, Isis, and Freya, though other love goddesses are not excluded. The first chapter shows us the Sister of Rapture base class, and its here that the book begins to showcase that it can handle d20 mechanics as well as it can artwork and exposition. As a spontaneous divine-spellcasting class, the Sister of Rapture has the finer nuances of good mechanics, making sure to give unique class abilities at every other level, and allow for swapping out spells known periodically as levels are gained. My only complaint was that there’s no listing for an epic progression to this class, something that I consider mandatory when introducing a new base class, but that’s a comparatively small omission.

The second chapter introduces four new prestige classes, all five-level classes and all of which are intended for a Sister of Rapture character. Interestingly, while all of the prestige classes offer some degree of advanced spellcasting ability, all expressly state that they only add to the SoR’s divine spellcasting ability, firmly tying them to that class. The Inamorare uses love to inspire her fellows to greater heights. The Patron Mother takes a younger Sister of Rapture under her wing, guiding and guarding her. The Spellswinger is like the mystic theurge, but can use sex to pay for metamagic. The stormsister is a vigilant protector of women everywhere. These PrCs were all good in design, save for the Spellswinger – she gains Sexual Energy Points which are used to buy-off levels of metamagic. However, it takes a relatively short period of time to gain SEPs, and they can be replenished indefinitely. This makes this class’s main power prone to abuse, as PCs will be prone to taking short stops throughout an adventure to let the Spellswinger “recharge” herself.

The third chapter contains most of the crunch you’d expect to find in a d20 book of any stripe. Here is where we get the new skills, spells, feats, and magic items. The book doesn’t try to give too many new things here, which is good since less is probably more where this subject is concerned. Many of the feats, in particular, are tied to the Sister of Rapture class, and couldn’t be used by other characters. I enjoyed this section for some of its more innovative concepts (Penelope’s Portable Playroom, for example, is a pocket dimension specifically set up to watch over small children, letting Mom go adventuring in the meantime), and it handled the more overtly sexual matters with a deft touch (for example, the sex-based spells are exclusively part of the new Carnal domain). There were a few things that could have been added, however, such as a table summarizing the feats; similarly, the Carnal domain’s domain power didn’t seem to have any game effect.

The fourth chapter of the book covers the religious aspects of the Sisterhood, covering each goddess and what they mean to the Sisters of Rapture, as well as a section discussing other goddesses in the organization. There’s very little game mechanics here, mostly limited to just what classes worshippers of these goddess are inclined to take (though there’s the occasional oddity, such as the mention that Aphrodite – a traditionally chaotic deity – has paladins). The major new crunch here is a sidebar describing the goddess Parvati as an alternate choice for a deity.

Chapter five is devoted to the organizational hierarchy of the Sisters of Rapture. The SoR base class is given a table showing what titles are earned at what levels, and various sections in this chapter describe what rights and responsibilities those titles come with. This part of the book is totally fluff, but it does a good job of better showcasing the group that this book is about.

Chapter six is the ubiquitous “monster chapter” of the book. This section was the one that I had the most problems with. While some of these creatures were great in theory (the Passion Archon – Heaven’s answer to the succubus), I found errors in pretty much every stat block I looked in. Now, there’s never been an RPG book that didn’t need some errata, but it’s still a bit disheartening. Moreover, there were some odd choices for additions to this chapter. For example, the Congress of the Wolf, a brotherhood of evil misogynistic men, is debuted here, with abbreviated stat blocks given for three sample members. Why wasn’t that put in its own chapter on enemies of the Sisters of Rapture? Similarly, Lileetha is a succubus queen, which sounds cool…until you realize she’s just a succubus with class levels (and she’s got a CR in the mid-teens, so how does she have “a large army of fiercely loyal balors”?). This chapter isn’t bad, but could have used some more work.

The book closes out with two appendices. The first covers a half-dozen high-ranking members of the Sisters of Rapture, with abbreviated stat blocks and fluff information on their history and personality. The second appendix is a nice bonus, giving us a Modern d20 version of the Sister of Rapture class, made into an advanced class here. It would have been nice to also have conversions of the prestige classes, but I can’t really complain about that, since a Modern version of even the base class is more than would normally be expected. Finally, there’s a character sheet for a Sister of Rapture class…a long character sheet, as it’s a whopping eight pages in length.

Sisters of Rapture is a good supplement by any standard, and a very good one by the standard set by previous books about sex/romance in d20. Having a good balance of crunch and fluff, great artwork, and good design, it doesn’t try to be everything, and excels in an area where most books fail because it doesn’t try to surpass every limit. It’s not a perfect book by any means, but what it does, it does well, giving an organization that lets you plausibly introduce mature themes into your game to the degree that you’re comfortable with. Check this book out, and put a little Rapture into your game.