The Cleric sucks ... or discuss the Cleric

[Nobby-W]

I'd disagree there is no archtype for Clerics, D&D is a huge fantasy mashup and the saints one finds throughout medieval myths and books like The Golden Legend are capable of all kinds of miracles and magical acts in folk tales and other sources: Joan of Arc and St. Francis being probably the most famous. Perhaps only a few are warrior-priests but they are there.

In S&S we have the classic 'Lean Times in Lankhmar' that portrays the importance of religion and priests in the definitive S&S setting although Leiber's typically ironic and witty story treats the manifestation of the divine with ambiguity.

Ever since The Complete Priest in 2e the bog standard Cleric need not be the default anymore than the snoozy 'Magic User' of 1e unless the GM and player prefer it.

I remember reading that the inspiration for the fighting cleric was Odo of Bayeaux, who makes an appearance on the eponymous tapestry. He had the notion that clerics shouldn't draw blood so he used a mace instead of a sword.

 

[Voros]

I'm not following the logic that active Gods mean they don't need priests.

In Greek myths the Gods are very active in the world and priests and religion in the myths and RL were very much an active, even everyday, ritual part of life. That was something the TV series Rome captured quite well even within a realistic framework I thought.

To just eliminate priests and therefore Gods and divine magic and just make everyone a 'magic-user' (a singularly terrible, unimaginative title) in a fantasy world seems to be giving away too much flavour and interest to me, to even bring perhaps too modern a sensibilty to the game and the world.

The very notion of magic as seperate from Gods seems like a more modern idea to me. One could claim magic is more tied to spirits not Gods but my limited understanding of ancient religions again is that the two are intimately related.

Hence the common fantasy trope that magic fades away as belief in the old Gods fades in man's minds.

One of the cool things about playing in a fantasy world to me is to try and imagine the ancient and mythic mindset of people in a world where magic and Gods (and the two are intimately connected in most of those worldviews) are a lived reality.

This is one of the strengths of Glorantha, it doesn't shrink away from religion like so many fantasy rpgs but if anything puts it at the centre of play.

I believe it was Leiber who said one of things he didn't like about LotR was the lack of sex and religion (the latter is there but quite muted and even disguised) as they are such important motivations for societies, humanity and drama in general.

 

[zanshin]

I enjoy playing Clerics and have done since AD&D. I like gish classes in general, and I like the leader/rescuer elements of cleric. They have created their own identity which has then translated into wider culture (Buffy the Vampire slayer!).

It is part of what makes D&D it's own thing, like Umber Hulks and Ochre jellies.

Tunnels & Trolls ditched them, giving wizards the wonderfully named Poor Baby spell to heal ailing delvers.

I am fine with both design decisions.

I think 4e & 5e D&D did a fine job of making the cleric one role among many for providing healing. You want Arcane healing? Bard is a great choice (which also refluffs as Warlord pretty easily for all those warlord lovers out there playing 5e).

I get what people are saying, that Cleric is a fairly narrow interpretation of the Priest role and there is overlap with Paladin. I think the realms introduced from 2e onward helped address that, and they still get chainmail and maces because legacy. However I think for D&D's standard settings they work just fine.

So, I am fine with Cleric for D&D, and don't feel a need to replicate the specifics of them for other games.

 

[robertsconley]

I could probably think of more reasons, but that'll do as a start.

Well I can think of one very good reason for the Cleric. Because who the fuck else can kill Dave Fant's Sir Fang a vampire lord?

 

[zanshin]

Well I can think of one very good reason for the Cleric. Because who the fuck else can kill Dave Fant's Sir Fang a vampire lord?

Yes, the Van Helsing type is definitely an influence.

 

[robertsconley]

Yes, the Van Helsing type is definitely an influence.

Yup and wasn't just Van Helsing, Dave Arneson threw in a bit of Charlesmagne along with other stuff, shook the bag and out popped the cleric prototype that Gygax adapted for his D&D manuscript.

The thing folks need to remember about the Cleric is that it arose out of play, it wasn't designed as part of some larger scheme. Instead it originated from players saying "Hey if Dave can play a dame vampire shouldn't there be a Van Helsing?" Dave obviously replied "Sure but it won't just be a Van Helsing type". Given the what out there at the time like the Hammer Horror films, Looks like Dave played up the religious aspect.

As an aside in the Blackmoor campaign, many of the "bad" guys were players as well. Dave had some NPCs but in the first years, the action on both sides were driven by players. Not a typical RPG campaign setup.

D&D happened to work out the way it did because what Dave could transport with him to Lake Geneva when he ran that fateful game for Gygax and crew was the Blackmoor Dungeons. And that what Gygax used as a template to get his own Greyhawk Dungeon campaign going.

 

[Séadna]

The very notion of magic as seperate from Gods seems like a more modern idea to me. One could claim magic is more tied to spirits not Gods but my limited understanding of ancient religions again is that the two are intimately related.

Sound right to me.

Most early religions have some "realm" that precedes the gods of which they are the earliest emanations or among first things to develop from that realm. This "realm" is pre-existent and eternal and takes many forms: Water (Mesopotamia, Japan, Polynesia), the undifferentiated dark (Greece), the dark differentiated via Ice and Fire (Norse), Fate (Norse, Mayan, Aztec), Earth (Niger-Congo), Mind/Conceptual potential (Australian), Sky and Water (Mayan), intermixed primal concepts (some strains of thought in China). Almost always the pre-existing realm is described as Chaotic and the gods are the first to order it.

Magic tends to either call on:
The pre-existing realm
The "ordering" powers of the gods
Or just involves directly asking the gods or lesser divinities for intervention. This being because they have more power over the stuff of the world.

The latter would have been the most common form of magic on average.

Runequest replicates this quite well as it has the Gods but also the Runes (the Gloranthan equivalent of the pre-existing realm), but with strange blurrings between the Gods and the Runes. Some have them as seperate, but for others the Runes are simply a way of thinking about the gods and still for others the gods are just humans putting a personality to the Runes. That reflects common philosophical debates around the gods and the pre-existing realm in many polytheistic cultures.

Even a more monotheistic text like the Bible references this worldview, if only to "parody" or refute it in early Genesis.

 

[raniE]

Well I can think of one very good reason for the Cleric. Because who the fuck else can kill Dave Fant's Sir Fang a vampire lord?

You did catch that I mentioned Sir Fang in that first post right?

 

[robertsconley]

This is one of the strengths of Glorantha, it doesn't shrink away from religion like so many fantasy rpgs but if anything puts it at the centre of play.

I think that something like Glorantha is great but as something pursued as a fun pasttime it is step into the uncanny valley and thus a niche taste for most.

It is a bit of juggling game to making something that feel authentic yet is also approachable. For my own stuff it isn't that I downplay the role of religion but rather I also play up non-religious magic as well. Postulating that there is a inherent supernatural force within the world call magic that folks can tap into without the benefit of faith.

The further back in time you go in my setting, the more religion dominates various aspects of life in various cultures. And for some of those cultures that still true in the present day of my campaign. But for the main cultures that I use, enough time has passed that chance and circumstance combined to allow a secular side of society to grow similar to our own history.

This incudes an independent tradition of arcane magic. While magic was around since the dawn of time, for millennia spellcasting was the sole practice of the faiths of various cultures. Some religions discovered arcane magic but it was just a curiosity and treated like any other skilled profession controlled or dominated by the faith like scribes. In my setting the collapse of a major empire a 1,000 years ago and the widespread chaos it caused, allowed arcane practitioners to become independent and from there developed what I now depict using the magic-user class from D&D.

I believe it was Leiber who said one of things he didn't like about LotR was the lack of sex and religion (the latter is there but quite muted and even disguised) as they are such important motivations for societies, humanity and drama in general.

Yeah what Leiber and other are not considering the impact of the events of the First Age. Outside of the hobbits, story of the Lord of the Rings is centered around cultures that are descended from those events. For those cultures, you have the immortal elves as living memories of the existence of the Valar. The Valar are not gung-ho about being worshipped, they don't preach or give revelations about Eru-Ilúvatar although they expect Elves and Men to honor the principles that Eru teaches about Middle Earth.

Outside of those cultures, there are religions although false ones promoted by Morgoth or Sauron.

 

[robertsconley]

You did catch that I mentioned Sir Fang in that first post right?

I missed it.

 

[raniE]

I missed it.

It was kind of buried at the end of the note that the Cleric is essentially a finished character, not a broad archetype, so not too surprising I suppose.

"I'm a priest of a certain religion. I get my magic from my god, and that magic is focused on healing and supporting others, and can be taken away if I don't behave according to my religious tenets. I have also sworn an oath not to shed blood so I won't use any edged weapons in combat, relying on blunt force instead, but I do go about heavily armored and with a mace. Also, I'm very focused on hunting down the living dead, especially the vampire Sir Fang."

 

[robertsconley]

But the Cleric is not. The Cleric isn't a broad archetype, it's a finished character concept. (snip)

Secondly, the Cleric instantly makes the game less good for generic fantasy use. Why? Because while most fantasy stories have some sort of fighters and some sort of magic-users, very few that pre-date D&D have anything resembling the Cleric class in them. It basically only exists in the "D&D genre" of fantasy.

The cleric is no more "finished" than the magic-user which relies on a specific list of spells and a specific way of casting those spells (memorization). It is just as much a signature of D&D style fantasy as the traditional four classes.

The RPGs I seen that hew more closely to fantasy literature then to go with pulp style sorcery where magic has a price and often deals with various supernatural entities like demons or spirits rather than immaterial forces.

And the Swords & Sorcery are not devoid of religion either. Most of the time they are portrayed as evil cults and function as antagonists for our heroes. But we know there are goods like Conan's Mitra that are function in a more historical manner.

This is one of the reasons I don't use a lot of OSR stuff even though I generally like the rules and ideas. The omnipresence of the Cleric, even in stuff that's supposed to be dark fantasy or alternate types of fantasy or more generic and basic than modern D&D is kind of suffocating. And yes, I could just remove the Cleric, but all the healing spells, spells to remove curses and unpetrifying people etc are locked into that class. Can't give anyone else healing, nope, it's got to be some sort of Priest class that does that.

The problem isn't clerics or what they can do in terms of mechanics it how they are depicted. And the problem present for nearly all the classes, the default presentation doesn't have enough life in them. My solution was not to reject the tropes of D&D. But rather to breath life into them by fleshing out. At first I did this by switching to skill based RPGs like Fantasy Hero and GURPS. I still had Fighters, Clerics, Magic User, and Thieves, but thanks to the added options and more important sticking with it for campaign after campaign, I fleshed each of them out beyond their original presentation. Eventually returning back to my roots in the form of Swords & Wizardry.

The result well it was my Majestic Wilderlands supplement.
Like the other thread rather than launch into a detail explanation I will give another 14 day PDF coupon for you and other to see what I did.
The Majestic Wilderlands

Now don't get me wrong, if you and anybody like the pulp Swords & Sorcery and would like in an RPG that fine. But we all know there are some pretty crappy Swords & Sorcery novels out there sitting alongside the great ones.

My point is that bog standard D&D tropes can be compelling if used part of a setting that a consistent whole.

 

[raniE]

I'm not following the logic that active Gods mean they don't need priests.

In Greek myths the Gods are very active in the world and priests and religion in the myths and RL were very much an active, even everyday, ritual part of life. That was something the TV series Rome captured quite well even within a realistic framework I thought.

To just eliminate priests and therefore Gods and divine magic and just make everyone a 'magic-user' (a singularly terrible, unimaginative title) in a fantasy world seems to be giving away too much flavour and interest to me, to even bring perhaps too modern a sensibilty to the game and the world.

The very notion of magic as seperate from Gods seems like a more modern idea to me. One could claim magic is more tied to spirits not Gods but my limited understanding of ancient religions again is that the two are intimately related.

Hence the common fantasy trope that magic fades away as belief in the old Gods fades in man's minds.

One of the cool things about playing in a fantasy world to me is to try and imagine the ancient and mythic mindset of people in a world where magic and Gods (and the two are intimately connected in most of those worldviews) are a lived reality.

This is one of the strengths of Glorantha, it doesn't shrink away from religion like so many fantasy rpgs but if anything puts it at the centre of play.

I believe it was Leiber who said one of things he didn't like about LotR was the lack of sex and religion (the latter is there but quite muted and even disguised) as they are such important motivations for societies, humanity and drama in general.

I think the thing with the title of Magic-User is that it's supposed to cover a lot of ground. It's essentially someone who uses magic. That could be a Necromancer, calling on the spirits of the dead for knowledge and power, a Wizard studying ancient tomes full of dark knowledge, a Shaman calling on the powers of the spirit world, a priest using secret rituals to bring forth the powers of their deity, or anything in between. Same with Fighter, also a boring title. A Fighter could be a noble Knight in shining armor atop a noble steed, a seedy Mercenary with dented mail, a swashbuckling Pirate, or any other sort of warrior. This leaves the GM more free to decide on the metaphysics of their world, and leaves it open for the players to decide what kind of Magic-User they're going to be.

 

[AsenRG]

Of course the cleric sucks!

So, this came up in this thread about how many classes work for you, but the discussion deserves its own thread, and that thread deserves to not be dedicated solely to talking about the Cleric. Anyway, it came up that some posters (me included) really don't like the class design for the D&D Cleric. So, I'll present my reasons for not liking clerics, and others can chime in defending the cleric or further bashing the class.

So first off, the Cleric is just odd as a class, especially in OD&D. This game has three classes. Fighting-Men (which got shortened to Fighter pretty much immediately), Magic-Users and Clerics. Now, the Fighting-Man and Magic-User are pretty basic concepts. One is an archetypal hero, a Conan or Percival or Roland or what have you. The magic user is also fairly obvious. Think of Merlin, Gandalf (although there is that whole no swords thing), Circe or even Dr Fate/Strange. These are fairly broad archetypes. But the Cleric is not. The Cleric isn't a broad archetype, it's a finished character concept. "I'm a priest of a certain religion. I get my magic from my god, and that magic is focused on healing and supporting others, and can be taken away if I don't behave according to my religious tenets. I have also sworn an oath not to shed blood so I won't use any edged weapons in combat, relying on blunt force instead, but I do go about heavily armored and with a mace. Also, I'm very focused on hunting down the living dead, especially the vampire Sir Fang." That's a whole character right there. Give that sucker a name and the name of their deity and you're good to go. Going from two broad concepts to one much more specific is very strange.

Secondly, the Cleric instantly makes the game less good for generic fantasy use. Why? Because while most fantasy stories have some sort of fighters and some sort of magic-users, very few that pre-date D&D have anything resembling the Cleric class in them. It basically only exists in the "D&D genre" of fantasy. This is one of the reasons I don't use a lot of OSR stuff even though I generally like the rules and ideas. The omnipresence of the Cleric, even in stuff that's supposed to be dark fantasy or alternate types of fantasy or more generic and basic than modern D&D is kind of suffocating. And yes, I could just remove the Cleric, but all the healing spells, spells to remove curses and unpetrifying people etc are locked into that class. Can't give anyone else healing, nope, it's got to be some sort of Priest class that does that.

I could probably think of more reasons, but that'll do as a start.

Oh, and I also agree with the above post!

 

[robertsconley]

I think the thing with the title of Magic-User is that it's supposed to cover a lot of ground. It's essentially someone who uses magic. That could be a Necromancer, calling on the spirits of the dead for knowledge and power, a Wizard studying ancient tomes full of dark knowledge, a shaman calling on the powers of the spirit world, a priest using secret rituals to bring forth the powers of their deity, or anything in between. Same with Fighter, also a boring title. A Fighter could be a noble Knight in shining armor atop a noble steed, a seedy Mercenary with dented mail, a swashbuckling Pirate, or any other sort of warrior. This leaves the GM more free to decide on the metaphysics of their world, and leaves it open for the players to decide what kind of Magic-User they're going to be.

The Cleric is no less expansive. A cleric of the god Set in my Majestic Wilderlands is very different from a cleric of the goddess Mitra beyond the obvious part of the two deities being enemies. And different still from Silvanus, Dannu, Nephthys, etc.

To make it work, it about defining religion which for me it not a checklist of dos and don'ts but rather a description of the culture that surrounds the worship of a deity or deities. If that not defined and all that is given is some type of "code" then yeah it going to be boring and bland.

Magic User have the exact same issue in D&D. There are no mechanic other than picking certain spells that a Necromancer, Wizard, or shaman are made with OD&D or AD&D.

 

[VisionStorm]

I think the thing with the title of Magic-User is that it's supposed to cover a lot of ground. It's essentially someone who uses magic. That could be a Necromancer, calling on the spirits of the dead for knowledge and power, a Wizard studying ancient tomes full of dark knowledge, a shaman calling on the powers of the spirit world, a priest using secret rituals to bring forth the powers of their deity, or anything in between. Same with Fighter, also a boring title. A Fighter could be a noble Knight in shining armor atop a noble steed, a seedy Mercenary with dented mail, a swashbuckling Pirate, or any other sort of warrior. This leaves the GM more free to decide on the metaphysics of their world, and leaves it open for the players to decide what kind of Magic-User they're going to be.

That's the way I look at it. Plus mechanically, splitting up magic into multiple sources (Arcane/Divine) complicates the system by requiring multiple, artificially distinct spell lists to cover very similar spell effects dealing with the hundreds of variations of what's essentially a damage effect or a buffer effect, etc. Which needlessly adds to bookkeeping, ostensibly to handle distinctions that are already covered by character background and RP.

If you want to play a spiritually inclined mystic, you can already do that without needing to build the entire magic around whether your spellcaster prays to the gods or not. I prefer the way that Shadowrun handles the distinction between hermetic mages and shamans. They both use essentially the same magic system, with access to the same spells, but shamans have their own stylistic trappings that simply modify how that base system works, or suggests (but not demand) what sort of spells or uses of magic (spirt summoning) they tend to prefer.

 

[raniE]

The cleric is no more "finished" than the magic-user which relies on a specific list of spells and a specific way of casting those spells (memorization). It is just as much a signature of D&D style fantasy as the traditional four classes.

The RPGs I seen that hew more closely to fantasy literature then to go with pulp style sorcery where magic has a price and often deals with various supernatural entities like demons or spirits rather than immaterial forces.

And the Swords & Sorcery are not devoid of religion either. Most of the time they are portrayed as evil cults and function as antagonists for our heroes. But we know there are goods like Conan's Mitra that are function in a more historical manner.


The problem isn't clerics or what they can do in terms of mechanics it how they are depicted. And the problem present for nearly all the classes, the default presentation doesn't have enough life in them. My solution was not to reject the tropes of D&D. But rather to breath life into them by fleshing out. At first I did this by switching to skill based RPGs like Fantasy Hero and GURPS. I still had Fighters, Clerics, Magic User, and Thieves, but thanks to the added options and more important sticking with it for campaign after campaign, I fleshed each of them out beyond their original presentation. Eventually returning back to my roots in the form of Swords & Wizardry.

The result well it was my Majestic Wilderlands supplement.
Like the other thread rather than launch into a detail explanation I will give another 14 day PDF coupon for you and other to see what I did.
The Majestic Wilderlands

Now don't get me wrong, if you and anybody like the pulp Swords & Sorcery and would like in an RPG that fine. But we all know there are some pretty crappy Swords & Sorcery novels out there sitting alongside the great ones.

My point is that bog standard D&D tropes can be compelling if used part of a setting that a consistent whole.

I can guarantee you that for me the problem is Clerics. I like broad classes that requires the player to breathe life into their character. But really, the problem for me isn't having a religious element in a game. I like Glorantha, I own The Book of the Righteous (supplement for 5e detailing a pantheon ready to be dropped into a fantasy world wholesale or in various discrete chunks) etc. It's more that having that enforced distinction between arcane magic and divine magic, putting some kinds of magic in one category and some in the other immediately reduces the genericness of the product. I've never used D&D as my go-to fantasy game, and the existence of the Cleric and the divide between godly magic and ungodly magic put up by its existence is a huge reason for that.

Thanks for the coupon, I'm not sure it did anything though?

 

[robertsconley]

Thanks for the coupon, I'm not sure it did anything though?

If you have a drivethruRPG account you will get something like this

 

[Lofgeornost]

A queries and points:

1. On fantasy fiction before D&D not having activist gods that interfere in the setting, with priesthoods, etc., this is a question of what stories you are talking about. Dunsany's first published fantasy book, IIRC, is The Gods of Pegana and his second Time and the Gods. Both are filled with exactly this sort of thing. Henry Kuttner's The Mask of Circe revolves around Apollo and Circe and their cults, though admittedly these are (to a degree) explained away as naturalistic super-beings with super-science, and his Prince Raynor story "The Citadel of Darkness," features an important role for a high-priest and for the god Pan, who destroys a city at the end of the tale. Tsathoggua, or his avatar, plays a very active role in Clark Ashton Smith's "Tale of Satampra Zeiros," though admittedly in a ruined temple without any priests. Those are just a few examples of the top of my head; I'm sure people more versed in the source material than I could provide a lot more. And of course ancient epics are full of activist gods--think of the Iliad, or Gilgamesh, for instance.

2. On the idea that what priests do is simply magic, so there need be only one class, magic user--sure, you can make that argument. It's doubtless true that the old distinctions that flow out of Frazier's Golden Bough (religion is public/communal and petitions gods or supernatural forces, while magic is private/individual and commands supernatural forces) don't hold up very well. In fact, some people argue that 'magic' is entirely incoherent as a category, that one cannot really say anything reliable about its boundaries, and others make the same claim about 'religion.' But--and it's a big but, IMO--many cultures do in fact discriminate between magic and religion, often along the lines of 'what priests do is good and socially acceptable' and 'what magicians do is not.' It can be useful, I think, to capture that in the design of a game, if you want to include it in the cultures of the setting. So clerical powers and magicians' spells might well in that case be mechanically separate.

This is different from arguing that the precise way this is done in D&D is appropriate or that it transfers well to other games. But, if a game is to be class-based, I don't have any real problems with it including a priest class which is different from its magician class, or them having rather different powers.

3. On the absence of religion in Tolkien, I think Leiber was right, but that Tolkien's decision to do this was a very conscious decision that reflected his own religious beliefs. I don't have the references, but IIRC Tolkien was quite clear about this in some of his letters or unpublished essays.

 

[raniE]

If you have a drivethruRPG account you will get something like this

View attachment 30521

Yeah I got a notification that it had been added to my cart, but then my cart was empty, and going to the store page for the book didn’t seem to show a discount.

 

[raniE]

A queries and points:

1. On fantasy fiction before D&D not having activist gods that interfere in the setting, with priesthoods, etc., this is a question of what stories you are talking about. Dunsany's first published fantasy book, IIRC, is The Gods of Pegana and his second Time and the Gods. Both are filled with exactly this sort of thing. Henry Kuttner's The Mask of Circe revolves around Apollo and Circe and their cults, though admittedly these are (to a degree) explained away as naturalistic super-beings with super-science, and his Prince Raynor story "The Citadel of Darkness," features an important role for a high-priest and for the god Pan, who destroys a city at the end of the tale. Tsathoggua, or his avatar, plays a very active role in Clark Ashton Smith's "Tale of Satampra Zeiros," though admittedly in a ruined temple without any priests. Those are just a few examples of the top of my head; I'm sure people more versed in the source material than I could provide a lot more. And of course ancient epics are full of activist gods--think of the Iliad, or Gilgamesh, for instance.

I don't think this is an accurate representation of what has been said. It seems to be conflating two different claims, first that nothing particularly similar to the cleric class appears in myth or fantasy fiction pre-D&D, second that having a cleric class and the split between divine and arcane magic that comes with it requires your setting to have activist gods, something not present in all fantasy fiction. Most myth and fiction with clearly present gods doesn't have anything close to the Cleric class. Cadmus, Bellerophon, Perseus, Achilles, Odysseus, Heracles etcall existed in myths with extremely active gods, yet they themselves are clearly Fighters.

2. On the idea that what priests do is simply magic, so there need be only one class, magic user--sure, you can make that argument. It's doubtless true that the old distinctions that flow out of Frazier's Golden Bough (religion is public/communal and petitions gods or supernatural forces, while magic is private/individual and commands supernatural forces) don't hold up very well. In fact, some people argue that 'magic' is entirely incoherent as a category, that one cannot really say anything reliable about its boundaries, and others make the same claim about 'religion.' But--and it's a big but, IMO--many cultures do in fact discriminate between magic and religion, often along the lines of 'what priests do is good and socially acceptable' and 'what magicians do is not.' It can be useful, I think, to capture that in the design of a game, if you want to include it in the cultures of the setting. So clerical powers and magicians' spells might well in that case be mechanically separate.

This is different from arguing that the precise way this is done in D&D is appropriate or that it transfers well to other games. But, if a game is to be class-based, I don't have any real problems with it including a priest class which is different from its magician class, or them having rather different powers.

Yes, the problems with the whole "in the cultures of the setting" is that D&D has no particular setting, and is supposed to be more generic. The GM is supposed to make up their own settings. Now if I wanted to have the kind of distinction you mention above as part of the setting in a game which features no differentiation between arcane and divine magic, I'd simply say "magic is seen as acceptable if you are a member of the clergy, unacceptable trafficking with demons if you aren't." There, distinction added, on a purely setting level. I could go further and start marking which spells are deemed as okay and which are blasphemous too, but it doesn't require mechanically separating the two.

3. On the absence of religion in Tolkien, I think Leiber was right, but that Tolkien's decision to do this was a very conscious decision that reflected his own religious beliefs. I don't have the references, but IIRC Tolkien was quite clear about this in some of his letters or unpublished essays.

It's notable how much this differs from the writings of his friend C.S. Lewis.

 

[robertsconley]

It's more that having that enforced distinction between arcane magic and divine magic, putting some kinds of magic in one category and some in the other immediately reduces the genericness of the product. I've never used D&D as my go-to fantasy game, and the existence of the Cleric and the divide between godly magic and ungodly magic put up by its existence is a huge reason for that.

Without getting into a debate about Rule Zero and all that, I can say from personal experience that OD&D (and other editions) doesn't break if you remove that distinction. It different but still D&D.

Now I didn't opt to do that with either my Majestic Wilderlands supplement or my Majestic Fantasy RPG rules. Why? Because the distinction wasn't important enough in light of keeping my take approachable for fans of the classic editions.

Having said that there is zero reasons according to the metaphysics of how magic work in my setting. The difference between divine magic and arcane magic is not the spell lists, but rather the fact that clerics are granted something I call divine insight that allows them to memorize spells without a spellbook. Both clerics and magic-user cast spell in the same way and draw on the same magical energy.

And it highly likely that my take on D&D 5th edition will not have distinct spells lists for clerics and wizards. For Druids, Paladins perhaps because they have more specific training and the work done on this so far makes sense to me. For clerics rather than come up with separate lists for each deity, I am leaning toward saying fuck it and just make the whole list available to both classes. According to my metaphysics there is no reasonable reason that a cleric of Sarrath can't cast a fireball.

Here a partial explanation of how magic works for my stuff.

The Arts of Magic

In the Dawn Age, magic could only be cast through elaborate rituals. The level of ambient mana was too low to permit casters to memorize spells to cast at a moment’s notice. Through rituals the mana was slowly gathered and infused into an item such as a scroll, charm, or wand. Only then it could be quickly released to create the spell the caster desired.

After the Dawn War, the gods imprisoned the surviving demons in the Abyss. To seal the Abyss from the Majestic Fantasy Realms the gods created ten crystals of powers. Nine of which were set around the entrance and the tenth, the Chromatic Crystal, was used to activate them and seal the Abyss. A consequence of this was that the ambient level of mana was greatly increased. The crystals gathered the ambient mana, cycled it through their lattice to power the seal, and then released back in a concentrated form into the Majestic Fantasy Realms.

Suddenly magic-users found they no longer had to rely on lengthy rituals to gather the necessary mana to power a spell. Instead, a complex series of mediations allowed the caster to prepare to cast a spell at a moment’s notice. When needed the magic-user uses his will to open a channel to let the mana flow through the spell’s form which created its effect.

Each of the crystals was created by one of the gods. They imbued their inner essence into each crystal’s lattice to add to the strength of the seal. This also subtly altered the mana after it flowed through the crystal. When the Order of Thoth, the Elves, and others studied magic, they found that certain mana worked better to create a particular effect. There are nine types of mana, each based on one of the crystals used to make the seal to the Abyss. In addition, there is a tenth type of mana, the original ambient mana left over from the creation of the world.

The study of the ten types of mana is universally known as the Arts of Magic, a near universal nomenclature has developed to describe each type; The Claw, The Eagle, The Flame, The Hearth, The Lantern, The Skull, The Storm, The Tree, and The Web. The original ambient mana is known as The Forge.

The Theory of Spellcasting

Magic is possible through the flow of mana throughout the world. Through training and willpower a magic-user can shape this flow into useful spells or bind it into objects to be released later. Magic comes in several forms: spells, rituals, magic items, and innate abilities. Spells work through memorization of techniques that allow the caster to create a Form with their will. The Form is held within the mind until needed. The caster calls it forth and channels the local mana into the Form which creates the effect of the spell. After the effect is released both the mana and Form dissipate and the caster has to spend time to recreate the Form.

Magic-users and Mages from the Order of Thoth create their Forms through reading and performing the required techniques from a spellbook. Their training and skill determines how many Forms can be created and held at any one time.

Clerics create their Forms through Divine Insight granted through prayer and meditation. Like Magic Users their training and skill determines how many Forms can be created and held at any one time.

Wrapping it up
The take away, I hope isn't that my method or that bog standards D&D tropes are superior or great. Only that if one is to use ANY set of tropes think a bit about why things are what they are and write some notes on it. Focusing on the elements that impact how character are to be roleplayed. I know the above read like nuts and bolts material. However as you will see in the MW supplement what I focus is the culture that grew around these details and that directly relates to how character (PC or NPCs) are to be roleplayed.

After all it is the people that make RPGs interesting.

 

[raniE]

Yeah I got a notification that it had been added to my cart, but then my cart was empty, and going to the store page for the book didn’t seem to show a discount.

I tried it again, and it seems to have worked on the third try. Thanks!

 

[raniE]

Without getting into a debate about Rule Zero and all that, I can say from personal experience that OD&D (and other editions) doesn't break if you remove that distinction. It different but still D&D.

I consider the older D&D rules, the OSR type stuff, to be the AK-47 of RPGs. It's got loose tolerances, so it might not be the most accurate, but it won't jam on you often, and when it does it's easy to remedy. Fiddling around with the rules isn't going to break anything, but if I'm adding or removing stuff anyway, why not just go with something where that work has already been done for me (I'm lazy that way). It surprises me that so few OSR products have removed the Cleric. It seems like an obvious thing to do to make your product distinct.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

You could replace the wizard and cleric with Esotericist and then within that class choose a specific tradition to follow.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

These are fairly broad archetypes. But the Cleric is not. The Cleric isn't a broad archetype, it's a finished character concept. "I'm a priest of a certain religion. I get my magic from my god, and that magic is focused on healing and supporting others, and can be taken away if I don't behave according to my religious tenets. I have also sworn an oath not to shed blood so I won't use any edged weapons in combat, relying on blunt force instead, but I do go about heavily armored and with a mace. Also, I'm very focused on hunting down the living dead, especially the vampire Sir Fang." That's a whole character right there. Give that sucker a name and the name of their deity and you're good to go. Going from two broad concepts to one much more specific is very strange.

I actually think the problem comes as much from it being too broad and too specific.

It has this very specific group of abilities.

But it comes across as a very Christian warrior-priest in a setting with lots and lots of Gods.

And the abilities don't make sense across the board. Why does my priest of the thunder god have the ability to heal people and why does he care about undead at all?

A lot of early campaign settings changed that and as Voros mentioned, the 2e splatbook fixed that. I loved that splatbook in general because of how distinct it made each cleric.

Barbarian - "So, you're a follower of love? Sounds weak. Which god do you follow?"

Cleric - "Actually, I don't follow a deity. I draw my power from the metaphysical concept of love"

Barbarian - "NERD ALERT EVERYONE"

Secondly, the Cleric instantly makes the game less good for generic fantasy use. Why? Because while most fantasy stories have some sort of fighters and some sort of magic-users, very few that pre-date D&D have anything resembling the Cleric class in them. It basically only exists in the "D&D genre" of fantasy. This is one of the reasons I don't use a lot of OSR stuff even though I generally like the rules and ideas. The omnipresence of the Cleric, even in stuff that's supposed to be dark fantasy or alternate types of fantasy or more generic and basic than modern D&D is kind of suffocating. And yes, I could just remove the Cleric, but all the healing spells, spells to remove curses and unpetrifying people etc are locked into that class. Can't give anyone else healing, nope, it's got to be some sort of Priest class that does that.

I could probably think of more reasons, but that'll do as a start.

Early on I think that pretty much was just the fact you needed a way of healing that didn't involve going and camping outside the dungeon for several days. And I'm not sure that a specialised Healer class (hi Palladium!) would be more fun to play.

Besides, by the time of AD&D it was pretty much its own unique fantasy anyway. I don't remember half-orcs from fantasy literature and gnomes were pretty rare. Rangers weren't exactly common either (Robin Hood is either a Fighter or a Thief in my view) let alone assassins.

My favourite version of the Priest class has to be Dragon Warriors though.

That's partly helped by the fact religion is clearly defined in the Legend setting. You have the True Faith which is Christanity. Ta'ashim is Islam. And then the Old Faith (Hollywood style paganism) plus some animism and weird animal gods in the distant lands and a demon worshipper or two.

But what I really like is the powers. The Priest does have a few supernatural powers fitting with the setting, mostly at higher ranks. Exorcism, Cure Madness etc.

But where the Priest really shines is the fact that they're a scholar. Not only are they literate (in a land where that's rare) they can even speak long dead languages. And know about history and architecture and other highly useful things that your average warrior is ignorant of. Even if they choose to take the "Healing Hands" skill later on that's a "herbalism and first aid" ability, not magical.

I really like that twist on the class and it helps distinguish it from the magic using classes.

 

[robertsconley]

It surprises me that so few OSR products have removed the Cleric. It seems like an obvious thing to do to make your product distinct.

It because it give the result a niche of a niche taste. And not helping is that there are several excellent takes already out there like the Hero's Journey, DCC RPG, ASSH, etc.

 

[xanther]

Clerics are just a relic of medieval fantasy miniature combat ideas. I suspect it was because someone really liked the warrior bishop idea, the whole St. Cuthbert thing etc. The cleric is very niche and very geographically limited. Of course it became some broad quasi-christian thing and having heal spells meant you can't remove it.

However like a lot of D&D concepts, it became a sacred cow. Impervious to change as originally written.

It is not like there wasn't attempts to make it more general for the polytheistic pantheons that are assumed in D&D, however at the time when it was most ripe for changing....having a class where it was more explicit you could play the priest of a pagan deity would have sent would have sent the right (D&D is a tool of satan) folks into a a media frenzy. I suspect. One reason I believe it was kept quasi-Christian, in addition to the sacred cow status.

And oh, on archetypes....that is simply a post-hoc justification of what was done. That was never ever mentioned back in the day when a new class was created. Really D&D classes are more professions in overall concept. Calling them arch-types is just raising them to sacred cow status in my mind.

All that being said, clerics are one of the most powerful classes (too powerful usually) and do like playing them.

 

[ffilz]

I love D&D and it's separate spell lists for clerics and magic users with only some overlap.

And I love Cold Iron with it's spell list that is mostly shared by clerics and magic users. There is a small handful of cleric specific spells, mostly in the healing department, but there's also a turn undead spell. And not even all clerics get those spells. There are also spells off the big list that no clerics get. Each cleric cult has a set of spells it grants, so clerics don't have the wide flexibility that magic users get, what they get in exchange is a different way of powering spells and they get some spells at lower level than magic users (the healing magic in particular). I haven't done the kind of metaphysical setting work Rob has done, but I'm comfortable with how this division works.

I think it's interesting that different games have different takes on spell casting and that some games have just a single way of doing magic while other games have just one or two ways, and a few games have lots of differentiation between types of casters.

If all games defined magic the same way, it would be boring, and just as problematic to setting creation as D&D's cleric concept.

 

[ffilz]

Clerics are just a relic of medieval fantasy miniature combat ideas. I suspect it was because someone really liked the warrior bishop idea, the whole St. Cuthbert thing etc. The cleric is very niche and very geographically limited. Of course it became some broad quasi-christian thing and having heal spells meant you can't remove it.

Please note the origin of the cleric. It has a very specific origin in the Blackmoor campaign as has been mentioned in this thread. It does not come out of some general war game culture thing. It's a specific reaction to another specific character instance in the Blackmoor campaign.

However like a lot of D&D concepts, it became a sacred cow. Impervious to change as originally written.

It is not like there wasn't attempts to make it more general for the polytheistic pantheons that are assumed in D&D, however at the time when it was most ripe for changing....having a class where it was more explicit you could play the priest of a pagan deity would have sent would have sent the right (D&D is a tool of satan) folks into a a media frenzy. I suspect. One reason I believe it was kept quasi-Christian, in addition to the sacred cow status.

And oh, on archetypes....that is simply a post-hoc justification of what was done. That was never ever mentioned back in the day when a new class was created. Really D&D classes are more professions in overall concept. Calling them arch-types is just raising them to sacred cow status in my mind.

All that being said, clerics are one of the most powerful classes (too powerful usually) and do like playing them.

Why should Dungeons and Dragons redefine the cleric? Sacred cows are not bad things. Change too many and the game is no longer the same game at all.

You want different interpretations of magic? Well, there's T&T, TFT, RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery, Bushido, and many more that each have their own take on magic.

 

[Lofgeornost]

I don't think this is an accurate representation of what has been said. It seems to be conflating two different claims, first that nothing particularly similar to the cleric class appears in myth or fantasy fiction pre-D&D, second that having a cleric class and the split between divine and arcane magic that comes with it requires your setting to have activist gods, something not present in all fantasy fiction. Most myth and fiction with clearly present gods doesn't have anything close to the Cleric class. Cadmus, Bellerophon, Perseus, Achilles, Odysseus, Heracles etcall existed in myths with extremely active gods, yet they themselves are clearly Fighters.

You are right, I was conflating those two things. My mistake. I would agree that there is not really much of anything in fantasy fiction that is very close to the D&D cleric, if you insist on the precise set of powers given to D&D clerics as part of the picture. But priests who have supernatural powers certainly do appear. The fact that 'fighters' exist in ancient epics does not show that 'clerics' are absent, since they are by no means mutually exclusive. For instance, the Iliad begins with Chryses, a priest of Apollo, praying to the god to punish the Achaeans for the theft of his daughter; Apollo obligingly sends a plague (did Chryses cast 'Cause Disease'?)

Yes, the problems with the whole "in the cultures of the setting" is that D&D has no particular setting, and is supposed to be more generic. The GM is supposed to make up their own settings. Now if I wanted to have the kind of distinction you mention above as part of the setting in a game which features no differentiation between arcane and divine magic, I'd simply say "magic is seen as acceptable if you are a member of the clergy, unacceptable trafficking with demons if you aren't." There, distinction added, on a purely setting level. I could go further and start marking which spells are deemed as okay and which are blasphemous too, but it doesn't require mechanically separating the two.

As others have noted upthread, this cannot really be the case. Including certain types of armor, weapons, buildings, and especially magical effects and creatures creates an implied setting. OD&D is clearly much more pseudo-medieval than, say, pseudo-Homeric Greece, though in many ways it is a kitchen sink. The more detail a game provides in terms of material culture, magic, and monsters, the more implied setting it has.

You can of course say all magic is the same and leave individual GMs to separate out religion from sorcery, but then the rules-set does not support the metaphysics of the world that those GMs want. It's not that the other solution (magic and religion are the same) is vanilla and supports no particular metaphysics; instead, it is choosing one option over another. It would be just as valid to say that if a given GM doesn't like the magic vs. religion split he or she can just ignore it--make all spells of all types available to all spell-casters and reskin the 'turn undead' ability into a spell. In either case, the game's rules have to either support the idea that magic and religious supernatural power are identical, or that they are different.

 

[robertsconley]

Why should Dungeons and Dragons redefine the cleric? Sacred cows are not bad things. Change too many and the game is no longer the same game at all.

To support this thesis, folks need to remember that both the initial concept and how it was used in succeeding years has withstood the ultimate test, actual play. Time and time again a majority of the hobbyist are happy with the choices. And the one time they were not (D&D 4e) they promptly flocked to an alternative that promised more of the same.

In short the entire package of D&D fantasy is a feature not a bug.

You want different interpretations of magic? Well, there's T&T, TFT, RuneQuest, Chivalry & Sorcery, Bushido, and many more that each have their own take on magic.

I consider it an interesting challenge to flesh things out, make things that reflect my setting, yet still "color within the lines" that most consider to define classic D&D. The same with the other editions I work with like D&D 5e. And as a bonus it makes things that I truly care about like my setting and adventures that more accessible.

 

[AsenRG]

I consider the older D&D rules, the OSR type stuff, to be the AK-47 of RPGs. It's got loose tolerances, so it might not be the most accurate, but it won't jam on you often, and when it does it's easy to remedy. Fiddling around with the rules isn't going to break anything, but if I'm adding or removing stuff anyway, why not just go with something where that work has already been done for me (I'm lazy that way). It surprises me that so few OSR products have removed the Cleric. It seems like an obvious thing to do to make your product distinct.

Funny, if I have to compare the older D&D rules to something that fires bullets, it's Type 92 that comes to mind, instead...
AK-47 is more like d100 games!

 

[raniE]

Funny, if I have to compare the older D&D rules to something that fires bullets, it's Type 92 that comes to mind, instead...
AK-47 is more like d100 games!

I think we've had this conversation before. I'm not familiar with the Arisaka Type 92 at all so I have no idea what you mean here.

 

[Klibbix!]

In either case, the game's rules have to either support the idea that magic and religious supernatural power are identical, or that they are different.

This is what I'm thinking as well, and it goes beyond the rules too. If Class A can fight well, but not cast spells, and Class B can cast spells and fight, but not as well, then you have to have some sort of thematic or fictional reason to explain the distinction.

There seem to be two different arguments here: one arguing that the D&D Cleric has no clear antecedent in literature or media, and one arguing that the Cleric's abilities could just as easily be the province of another class.

 

[AsenRG]

I think we've had this conversation before. I'm not familiar with the Arisaka Type 92 at all so I have no idea what you mean here.

"The D&D chassi seems best geared towards making one type of fantasy, D&D-style fantasy, so I wouldn't call it 'reliable', 'universal' or anything like that."

And yeah, I know you'd disagree. Eye of the beholder and all that.
To be honest, this post was prompted more by me reading recently about Japanese WW2 firearms than by any practical necessity.

 

[raniE]

"The D&D chassi seems best geared towards making one type of fantasy, D&D-style fantasy, so I wouldn't call it 'reliable', 'universal' or anything like that."

And yeah, I know you'd disagree. Eye of the beholder and all that.
To be honest, this post was prompted more by me reading recently about Japanese WW2 firearms than by any practical necessity.

I don't know if I'd disagree, BRP is definitely another candidate for AK47. I just have no clue about the Arisaka so I can't say whether it fits my conceptions of D&D. When you say it's like the Arisaka, what are you trying to convey by that?

 

[Lofgeornost]

There seem to be two different arguments here: one arguing that the D&D Cleric has no clear antecedent in literature or media, and one arguing that the Cleric's abilities could just as easily be the province of another class.

Yes; I would see it as two levels of question:

1. Is it a good idea to have a separate class for wielders of supernatural power whose source stems from religion (priests, basically) instead of just one class for all those with supernatural powers?
2. Is the D&D cleric a good instantiation of that separate class?

I wouldn't argue with anyone who answered the second question with a 'no'; there are things I like about the original D&D cleric, but it is a rather odd concatenation of various ideas and doesn't fit very well into a lot of settings.

For the first question, though, I think it makes just as much sense to have such a separate class as not to have it, and on a variety of grounds--simulating the way that many societies (and some stories) distinguish between religion and magic, creating another niche/role for players to assume, etc.

 

[Klibbix!]

Yes; I would see it as two levels of question:

1. Is it a good idea to have a separate class for wielders of supernatural power whose source stems from religion (priests, basically) instead of just one class for all those with supernatural powers?
2. Is the D&D cleric a good instantiation of that separate class?

I wouldn't argue with anyone who answered the second question with a 'no'; there are things I like about the original D&D cleric, but it is a rather odd concatenation of various ideas and doesn't fit very well into a lot of settings.

For the first question, though, I think it makes just as much sense to have such a separate class as not to have it, and on a variety of grounds--simulating the way that many societies (and some stories) distinguish between religion and magic, creating another niche/role for players to assume, etc.

I would agree. Despite my issues with the class thematically, it does give a good option for players to enjoy playing. I have no issue really with how D&D distributes the abilities between the classes. A game that splits up character option into classes is always going to have some arbitrary allocations of powers and I'm ok explaining that away with, "it's a game!".

If I was going to hack the game or design my own, I might make some changes.

 

[raniE]

You are right, I was conflating those two things. My mistake. I would agree that there is not really much of anything in fantasy fiction that is very close to the D&D cleric, if you insist on the precise set of powers given to D&D clerics as part of the picture. But priests who have supernatural powers certainly do appear. The fact that 'fighters' exist in ancient epics does not show that 'clerics' are absent, since they are by no means mutually exclusive. For instance, the Iliad begins with Chryses, a priest of Apollo, praying to the god to punish the Achaeans for the theft of his daughter; Apollo obligingly sends a plague (did Chryses cast 'Cause Disease'?)

Right, and that kind of person fits in under the label Magic-User, I.E. someone who uses magic. The fact that there is in myth and fiction often less division between magic and gods than in D&D isn't a point in favor of Clerics, but a point in favor of all such powers going under the Magic-User banner, and then it's up to the GM to decide what that means in their own campaign world.

As others have noted upthread, this cannot really be the case. Including certain types of armor, weapons, buildings, and especially magical effects and creatures creates an implied setting. OD&D is clearly much more pseudo-medieval than, say, pseudo-Homeric Greece, though in many ways it is a kitchen sink. The more detail a game provides in terms of material culture, magic, and monsters, the more implied setting it has.

I started playing D&D with AD&D 2e, where you had bronze plate armor and khopesh swords on the equipment lists together with handguns, and had advice in the DMG for which items fit into which era, so the game certainly cast a wider net then. But still the Cleric and the arcane/divine divide remained.

You can of course say all magic is the same and leave individual GMs to separate out religion from sorcery, but then the rules-set does not support the metaphysics of the world that those GMs want. It's not that the other solution (magic and religion are the same) is vanilla and supports no particular metaphysics; instead, it is choosing one option over another. It would be just as valid to say that if a given GM doesn't like the magic vs. religion split he or she can just ignore it--make all spells of all types available to all spell-casters and reskin the 'turn undead' ability into a spell. In either case, the game's rules have to either support the idea that magic and religious supernatural power are identical, or that they are different.

Or you can just take the markings about which spells are acceptable and make them hard rules about kinds of magic and say the player has to decide where their magic comes from at character creation. Doing that is a lot easier than combining separate lists into one that contain different versions of the same spells already and turning a class feature into a spell. One is a much simpler hack than the other.

And I maintain that in the type of fantasy stories and mythology that D&D was based on, there's not any real such separation of arcane vs divine magic. Maybe the closest is the idea of Law vs Chaos, but that goes out the window anyway as soon as you start having Lawful Wizards and Chaotic Clerics.