The Cleric sucks ... or discuss the Cleric

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This thread has me thinking about how I'd specifically alter Divine magic.

I was flirting with the idea of doing away with Clerics and combining the Druid, Cleric, Magic-user and Illusionist spells into one huge list and then dividing them up between X number of Spirits, like the spirits of the Lesser Key of Solomon or something. Then, the sole casting class, call it the Theurgist, makes agreements with specific Spirits to gain access to certain spells. If you split up the Spirits into Angels or Demons, for example, you could have a "Priest" who only makes pacts with Angels, or a "Wizard" who is less picky about who they serve. Have it so there's a specific sacrifice, or agreement that must be made with each entity, and I think you'd have an interesting class.

For example:
Spirit: Ardamyx, Lord of the 7th Tower
Classification: Angel
Pact Conditions: Cannot eat meat
Spell Bestowals:
Speak with Animal
True Seeing
Locate Object
Detect Lie
Wind Walk
 
This thread has me thinking about how I'd specifically alter Divine magic.

I was flirting with the idea of doing away with Clerics and combining the Druid, Cleric, Magic-user and Illusionist spells into one huge list and then dividing them up between X number of Spirits, like the spirits of the Lesser Key of Solomon or something. Then, the sole casting class, call it the Theurgist, makes agreements with specific Spirits to gain access to certain spells. If you split up the Spirits into Angels or Demons, for example, you could have a "Priest" who only makes pacts with Angels, or a "Wizard" who is less picky about who they serve. Have it so there's a specific sacrifice, or agreement that must be made with each entity, and I think you'd have an interesting class.

For example:
Spirit: Ardamyx, Lord of the 7th Tower
Classification: Angel
Pact Conditions: Cannot eat meat
Spell Bestowals:
Speak with Animal
True Seeing
Locate Object
Detect Lie
Wind Walk
That's certainly the most elegant way of modifying it without having to start completely from scratch. Plus it has the bonus of form following function; where the mechanics follow setting conceits instead of vice versa (which is the way D&D tends to do it).
 
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That's certainly the most elegant way of modifying it with having to start completely from scratch, plus it has the bonus of form following function; where the mechanics follow setting conceits instead of vice versa (which is the way D&D tends to do it).
Exactly, you can just make each of the entities generically named, like Spirit of Fire and Shadow or something, and then fit it to whatever setting you want.
 
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.
I am not sure what the bolded sentence has to do with the example I gave. It was not an example of 'less division between magic and gods' but of a priest praying for a god to a result and getting it. The result is the same, grosso modo, as the 'cause disease' spell, suggesting that this is the fictional reality that the rules are supposed to represent. Chryses, the priest of Apollo, does nothing like a magician casting a spell.

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.

I don't recognize the reference to 'markings about which spells are acceptable.' There's no such thing in OD&D or RC, the only versions of D&D I've spent much time with. But since in a D&D framework I don't see much need to get rid of clerics, as opposed to tweaking them, it doesn't matter much to me what particular approach one would use to do that.

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.

This is an interesting, and difficult, question because it is simultaneously empirical and definitional:
  • How do we tell if a given action is magical, religious, both, or neither? What appears magical or religious to us may not have done to people in other times or cultures. For example, there's fairly good evidence that some Classical Greek physicians employed amulets and incantations as part of their healing repertoire. No-one at the time seems to have labeled this as magic or as religion, but as medicine, but we would tend to label it a magical procedure.
  • What is the evidence that there is, or is not, a separation of divine versus arcane magic in the relevant fiction, history, and myths? This is where actual empirical research is needed. I can think of fictional examples that point in either direction. One of the most striking is from two novellas by Tanith Lee, written in 1975 and 1976. In the first "Companions of the Road," it's clear that there is a considerable difference between magic and religious supernatural power; the hero of the story is beset by evil magicians and has an encounter with a priest. In the second, "The Winter Players," it appears that there is a division between the supernatural power granted by the gods and magic, but it turns out that this is not the case. Obviously in this case the same writer, at essentially the same time, could play with either concept.
In any case, I'd say it's clear that both historical cultures and modern fantasy fiction sometimes did distinguish between magic and religious supernatural power. For a historical example, one might turn to Greece c. 400 B.C., according to Matthew Dickie's Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (p. 27):
It is in the latter part of the fifth century BC that the first sure signs of a
consciousness of magic as an activity apart are to be detected. At this point men
are to be found placing a variety of quite disparate procedures under the single
heading of mageia, goeteia or pharmakeia and expressing abhorrence for a form
of conduct that is at the same time mysterious, secretive, audaciously wicked,
irreligious, that seeks to upset the due course of nature and that does not accord
the gods their proper dignity, but treats them as creatures to be manipulated at
will. Before that time there is no secure indication of the formation in the minds
of men of such a category of thought, although there are some tantalizing but
insubstantial signs that earlier in the century the concept had in fact taken shape
or was in the process of taking shape.

For another fantasy fiction example, the distinction shows up clearly in Mask of the Sorcerer by Darrell Schweitzer, which I've been reading lately. IMO it is one of the best Sword and Sorcery novels of the last 25 years. That does put it long after D&D, but it is not remotely influenced by it, I would say. Here is the quotation:
Sorcery is not magic. Do not confuse the two. Magic comes from the gods. The magician is merely the instrument. Magic passes through him like breath through a reed
pipe. Magic can heal. It can satisfy. It is like a candle in the darkness. Sorcery, however, resides in the sorcerer. It is like a blazing sun.
The magic/sorcery distinction here maps pretty closely to the divine supernatural power/magic distinction I've been discussing above.
 
I am not sure what the bolded sentence has to do with the example I gave. It was not an example of 'less division between magic and gods' but of a priest praying for a god to a result and getting it. The result is the same, grosso modo, as the 'cause disease' spell, suggesting that this is the fictional reality that the rules are supposed to represent. Chryses, the priest of Apollo, does nothing like a magician casting a spell.



I don't recognize the reference to 'markings about which spells are acceptable.' There's no such thing in OD&D or RC, the only versions of D&D I've spent much time with. But since in a D&D framework I don't see much need to get rid of clerics, as opposed to tweaking them, it doesn't matter much to me what particular approach one would use to do that.
I mean, it's a reference to this bit, which you already responded to.
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.


This is an interesting, and difficult, question because it is simultaneously empirical and definitional:
  • How do we tell if a given action is magical, religious, both, or neither? What appears magical or religious to us may not have done to people in other times or cultures. For example, there's fairly good evidence that some Classical Greek physicians employed amulets and incantations as part of their healing repertoire. No-one at the time seems to have labeled this as magic or as religion, but as medicine, but we would tend to label it a magical procedure.
  • What is the evidence that there is, or is not, a separation of divine versus arcane magic in the relevant fiction, history, and myths? This is where actual empirical research is needed. I can think of fictional examples that point in either direction. One of the most striking is from two novellas by Tanith Lee, written in 1975 and 1976. In the first "Companions of the Road," it's clear that there is a considerable difference between magic and religious supernatural power; the hero of the story is beset by evil magicians and has an encounter with a priest. In the second, "The Winter Players," it appears that there is a division between the supernatural power granted by the gods and magic, but it turns out that this is not the case. Obviously in this case the same writer, at essentially the same time, could play with either concept.
In any case, I'd say it's clear that both historical cultures and modern fantasy fiction sometimes did distinguish between magic and religious supernatural power. For a historical example, one might turn to Greece c. 400 B.C., according to Matthew Dickie's Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (p. 27):

Right, but the question here isn't only "is magic considered a separate thing to religion" although that also plays a part, but also "and do people expect priests to have supernatural abilities". Say you were making a game about the modern world, but with hidden magic that isn't considered connected to major religions. The fact that magic is in the setting considered different than the divine does not mean that you need to give priests different magical abilities. So for your examples, the first one is fairly irrelevant when talking about the fantasy fiction around in the half-century before D&D, for the second I have no idea what it means. Okay, the hero encounters a priest. Does the priest have supernatural powers? The existence of a priest in a work of fantasy does not imply that the priest can throw around spells/miracles.


For another fantasy fiction example, the distinction shows up clearly in Mask of the Sorcerer by Darrell Schweitzer, which I've been reading lately. IMO it is one of the best Sword and Sorcery novels of the last 25 years. That does put it long after D&D, but it is not remotely influenced by it, I would say. Here is the quotation:

The magic/sorcery distinction here maps pretty closely to the divine supernatural power/magic distinction I've been discussing above.

That depends. Does this difference influence what they can do with the magic/sorcery, or only how it is done? You get a similar distinction, although not with the religious angle, between Wizards and Sorcerers in newer editions of D&D. But the spells are the same, they just choose them from differently curated lists.

edit: You asked in an earlier post if this was about the specific iteration of the Cleric, and of course, yes, that's the whole point of the first post. The Cleric is a weird mishmash of stuff that is way too specific to cover even all iterations of "Christian holy warrior" (hence the Paladin), much less the far more expansive "priest" archetype. Basically, unless you had the specifics of the Blackmoor campaign and Sir Fang, the Cleric isn't a class you would ever include in the game. As is evidenced by all the other generic fantasy rpgs of that time. They were all inspired by D&D but they all seemed baffled by the Cleric and none of them incorporated anything similar to it.
 
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Yep the classic D&D Cleric is an odd sock, I always found it strange that there was no academic priest class but they had a fighting priest class.

For me it seemed even more odd by adding a Paladin class considering they could of just made some variants within the preexisting Cleric class.

But then they did the same thing by a nature priest class by itself called Druid

(I also though it odd that Barbarian wasn't just a variant of Fighter)

All these things added up to me staying with RQ as a teen, and not jumping ship to D&D and AD&D.

I thought one of the cleanest models for class in a D20 system was True20, whereas you only had three Classes, basically a combat-heavy one, an academic arcane one, and a jack-of-all-trades one. These were so broad you could cover just about any character concept, so I found the arcane class was great if I wanted an academic priest - I would have loved for D&D 5E to have taken a similar approach in regards to Classes.

I just find the classic D&D Cleric very limiting in scope

HARP Fantasy did a reasonable job for a Class-based system, as it's Cleric class was very broad in scope, you could really adjust the flavour of it according to which Deity the Cleric was aligned to.
 
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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?
"Jams frequently":smile:. That's a common complaint, according to what I'd read about the Type 94 (I've obviously never shot one).
And this thread itself showcases one of the reasons why. So, is there a cleric archetype in fantasy:wink:?
My answer: No. If there were magic-wielding priests, they were sorcerers as well...and sorcerers were basically dealing with demons anyway, making them all some kind of "warlock" variant.
But if you want to run a setting using D&D without hacking the system(which many people find too much bother IME)? Sorry, you need clerical and occult magic, separate:thumbsup:!
Thus, the system jams and needs to be "cleaned up"...:grin:

OK, admittedly it sounded funnier before I explained it:shade:!
 
In any case, I'd say it's clear that both historical cultures and modern fantasy fiction sometimes did distinguish between magic and religious supernatural power. For a historical example, one might turn to Greece c. 400 B.C., according to Matthew Dickie's Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (p. 27):
It is in the latter part of the fifth century BC that the first sure signs of a
consciousness of magic as an activity apart are to be detected. At this point men
are to be found placing a variety of quite disparate procedures under the single
heading of mageia, goeteia or pharmakeia and expressing abhorrence for a form
of conduct that is at the same time mysterious, secretive, audaciously wicked,
irreligious, that seeks to upset the due course of nature and that does not accord
the gods their proper dignity, but treats them as creatures to be manipulated at
will. Before that time there is no secure indication of the formation in the minds
of men of such a category of thought, although there are some tantalizing but
insubstantial signs that earlier in the century the concept had in fact taken shape
or was in the process of taking shape.

Yes, but there is still a spiritual component and interaction with the Gods. In the text you quote it mentions: "does not accord the gods their proper dignity, but treats them as creatures to be manipulated at will." I believe that might be a reference to the fact that many real life "magic" systems involve invoking gods or spirits to petition them for certain services. It is possible some people in the ancient world took issue with such practices if not done under the purview of a priesthood or following certain religious tenets, but members of a priesthood would have engaged in essentially the same types of practices if they were initiated into the mysteries, since pretty much all mystical practices involved entering altered states of consciousness to gain spiritual insight and/or commune with spirits or deities. It's just that some people did this within a more official religious context while others were solitary practitioners working on their own.
 
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.

Lord of the Rings shows its influence here with half orcs, half elves and of course Rangers.




I agree with the OP, in that Clerics were too specific. Would have been better as a warrior / mage.

They could have kept the separate magic and devine spell lists. Then an academic priest would have simply been a mage pulling from the devine list, and a wizard would use the magic list. The warrior / mage (who sacrifices some martial ability for magical power) could similarly have been a warrior priest or a martial wizard depending on which magic list they pulled from.

I like the idea of subclasses for the Ranger, Paladin, Barbarian, Druid Bard etc, rather than completely separate classes.
 
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.


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.

Sure but Leiber was discussing LotR itself as a novel not the various, largely at that time unpublished material by Tolkien that is more clearly drawing on the romance of the sagas and medieval romances.

As to Glorantha, I've never gotten the criticism of it being too deep, it is all there for one to use or not as one wants. Nothing, least of all Stafford himself, is forcing anyone to use all the lore anymore than the Third Imperium is required to play Traveller or to disappear down the rabbithole of WoD lore. I mean you have to actually go out and buy these books for it to become an issue, no one is forcing it into your hands.

I don't see Glorantha as any more dense a setting than mythic Greece, Rome or historical Euro-medieval setting.

My understanding of Glorantha largely comes from the rulebooks, Cults of Prax and adventures like Big Rubble and the Dragon Pass video game and I've never felt intimidated by it. Same as Tekumel, I think the original game or something like The Petal Hack gives you all you need to play the game.
 
I don't have any issues with the Cleric. I think from a mechanical standpoint it could be the same class as a wizard, but I think the archetype is quite different. I don't think, for example, that people roll up a wizard with a wizard in mind and then think, Oh shit, this is actually a cleric! The religion thing tends to be a decent separator.
 
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.

Yes, the Bible (or the Old Testament I'm thinking of) does distinguish between magic and divinity, if I'm recalling right with the suggestion that most non-divine magic is really more illusionism. But later non-Bibical stories of the Saints are full of more folk magic.

Plus I suspect that distinction may grow out of monotheism and hostility to rival religions or beliefs. Pagan, polytheistic and nature religions don't seem to have that dichtomy (but I'm no expert on early religion). It's an interesting question.

I think Glorantha captures at least that idea of a holistic pagan magic world view.

And you're right about Tolkien, I recall that passage but again Leiber was discussing LotR as a novel, I don't think he was concerned about such meta-textual considerations and I'm not sure such considerations really impact his (or Moorcock's less forgiving) critique.
 
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Sure but Leiber was discussing LotR itself as a novel not the various, largely at that time unpublished material by Tolkien that is more clearly drawing on the romance of the sagas and medieval romances.

As to Glorantha, I've never gotten the criticism of it being too deep, it is all there for one to use or not as one wants. Nothing, least of all Stafford himself, is forcing anyone to use all the lore anymore than the Third Imperium is required to play Traveller or to disappear down the rabbithole of WoD lore. I mean you have to actually go out and buy these books for it to become an issue, no one is forcing it into your hands.

I don't see Glorantha as any more dense a setting than mythic Greece, Rome or historical Euro-medieval setting.

My understanding of Glorantha largely comes from the rulebooks, Cults of Prax and adventures like Big Rubble and the Dragon Pass video game and I've never felt intimidated by it. Same as Tekumel, I think the original game or something like The Petal Hack gives you all you need to play the game.
Any real world settings are super dense though, far denser than even the most detailed secondary worlds. It's just that we already know so much about the setting just from our normal lives.
 
Any real world settings are super dense though, far denser than even the most detailed secondary worlds. It's just that we already know so much about the setting just from our normal lives.

Do we know about ancient Greece from our normal lives? I know it just from the books I've read.
 
Do we know about ancient Greece from our normal lives? I know it just from the books I've read.
Reading books is part of normal life. You know where Greece is, what Greek people look like, the names of Greek cities, probably some Greek myths etc. and if someone mentions India, Africa or the mythical island of Atlantis you aren’t flummoxed because you haven’t read about these obscure places in a setting book. Think about how much knowledge about the game world you’d go into a game set in Ancient Greece with. How much setting material do you think you’d need to read to get that level of knowledge about a fictional world you’d never heard of before? You know what the pyramids are, how often would one go into a game set primarily on the city states of Genarra and just happen to have a bunch of knowledge about what the ancient tombs of a semi-nearby kingdom look like?
 
Reading books is part of normal life. You know where Greece is, what Greek people look like, the names of Greek cities, probably some Greek myths etc. and if someone mentions India, Africa or the mythical island of Atlantis you aren’t flummoxed because you haven’t read about these obscure places in a setting book. Think about how much knowledge about the game world you’d go into a game set in Ancient Greece with. How much setting material do you think you’d need to read to get that level of knowledge about a fictional world you’d never heard of before? You know what the pyramids are, how often would one go into a game set primarily on the city states of Genarra and just happen to have a bunch of knowledge about what the ancient tombs of a semi-nearby kingdom look like?
The extent to which reading books is part of 'normal life' in a fantasy setting perhaps isn't so easily quantified.
 
The extent to which reading books is part of 'normal life' in a fantasy setting perhaps isn't so easily quantified.
I’m not talking about in a fantasy setting, I’m talking about you the player. How much knowledge do you personally, in our world, have about the secondary world you know the most about? Okay, now take that knowledge and compare it with how much knowledge you have about our world. The knowledge of our world is going to dwarf what you know about any secondary world by several orders of magnitude.
 
Yes, that is it. He describes early Medieval magic as basically being a transitionary state--with heavy influence from religion (and old folktales), but he makes a statement about how the view of magic and faith is the difference between (I don't remember his exact wording but propitiation vs something) but faith asks, magic compels or demands. It is an interesting book. That doesn't aid my argument in my preference for clerics, but it did have an impact on High Valor, and why Faith and Will often are conflicting (but can be balanced if you try.) Because self-will is "I make this, I do this, YOU will do this.." sort of magic. While Faith is "please in our time of need, aid us" or "if it is in your will guide us.." Making magic all about YOU are in command, which often leads to egomania and self-destruction, where blessing and prayers, in the sense of this game world, is all about asking to serve and giving what happens to a higher power to let it help, though that can lead to NOT enough self-reliance, and not being able to tend to things you must, that the divine isn't going to do for you, period.

Mind you High Valor has a Christianity Expy in the setting. Splintered branches early on (with religious knights) and priests that have a different focus on what they do/how they interpret things because of A) Fantasy and conflict B) The Early Catholic Church could have split more than it did over many different things. The Nicene creed was one. But in High Valor, they're dealing with weird fantasy monsters FOR real. Which helps drive some to more martial needs and others to more protective of knowledge/regaining it, and so on.
 
I’m not talking about in a fantasy setting, I’m talking about you the player. How much knowledge do you personally, in our world, have about the secondary world you know the most about? Okay, now take that knowledge and compare it with how much knowledge you have about our world. The knowledge of our world is going to dwarf what you know about any secondary world by several orders of magnitude.
Of for sure, sorry I misunderstood. The goal of setting mastery is a fools errand.
 
Reading books is part of normal life. You know where Greece is, what Greek people look like, the names of Greek cities, probably some Greek myths etc. and if someone mentions India, Africa or the mythical island of Atlantis you aren’t flummoxed because you haven’t read about these obscure places in a setting book. Think about how much knowledge about the game world you’d go into a game set in Ancient Greece with. How much setting material do you think you’d need to read to get that level of knowledge about a fictional world you’d never heard of before? You know what the pyramids are, how often would one go into a game set primarily on the city states of Genarra and just happen to have a bunch of knowledge about what the ancient tombs of a semi-nearby kingdom look like?

I'd say the average person knows bupkis about Greece, modern or ancient (actually probably even less about modern Greece). I'm into myths and the classics and Cold War history, which Greece has a tragic role in, but that is very, very much the exception in RL.

I recall meeting the partner of a co-worker on a campus while they were walking their dog and I asked what the name of the dog was.

She said Hector and I asked if he was named after the character in the Iliad and she was shocked that someone knew the reference. And we both worked on an arts campus.
 
Y'all are talkin' about Greece? I know Greece. I know all about Greece. That's there them Spartoons live, like in the movies! They was doin' ok until their whole economy crapped out and those gutless Euros wouldn't bail 'em out. I heard they all had to sell that fancy gold armour just to pay off debts, and that's no way to treat a veteran.
 
That's like the opposite of setting mastery mostly. Think of me watching Braveheart and you'll be spot on.
Yeah, like how I refuse to watch the new Star Wars...
I don't understand why you think it's you who has issues, though. To me, clearly it's Braveheart's scenarist who Did Not Do The Research:shade:!
 
I kind of take a contrary view. To everyone's surprise!

Anyway, BECMI clerics are a bit pants because of a fairly poor section of spells. And a badly thought out spell progression. Which Bruce Heard has posted an alternative to on his blog.

But other than that, Clerics rock. Especially 5th ed Clerics. Take a Tempest Domain and away you go.

Even in BECMI, using the Weapon Mastery rules instead of the normal weapon limitations, you have a holy warrior with the Cleric. And thats a great thing for the game.

And when you have a bloke in a dress chucking clouds of poison gas, teleporting and making illusions, the no historical precedent line is not really a supportable position.
 
I'd say the average person knows bupkis about Greece, modern or ancient (actually probably even less about modern Greece). I'm into myths and the classics and Cold War history, which Greece has a tragic role in, but that is very, very much the exception in RL.

I recall meeting the partner of a co-worker on a campus while they were walking their dog and I asked what the name of the dog was.

She said Hector and I asked if he was named after the character in the Iliad and she was shocked that someone knew the reference. And we both worked on an arts campus.
I think you’re wrong. I generally think the whole “Americans know nothing about the outside world” is way oversold, but regardless of that I live in Europe. Everyone knows some stuff about Greece here. But I’d still wager real money that the average non-knowledgeable American knows way more about this world and even about what it looked like 3000 years ago than they know about Glorantha or the Forgotten Realms.
 
Have any of you read Magic in the Middle Ages, by Keickheffer?
In a word, yes.
Yes, that is it. He describes early Medieval magic as basically being a transitionary state--with heavy influence from religion (and old folktales), but he makes a statement about how the view of magic and faith is the difference between (I don't remember his exact wording but propitiation vs something) but faith asks, magic compels or demands...
Yes, that is the view from Fraser's Golden Bough I mentioned earlier. It doesn't hold up that well for some cultures, but for others it does, particularly Christian Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. There, theologians were quite clear that religious power and magic were fundamentally different in character and nature.

Since OD&D's clerics lean pretty heavily on medieval European archetypes, it's not surprising that the game introduced a division between clerical supernatural powers and magic.
 
Right, but the question here isn't only "is magic considered a separate thing to religion" although that also plays a part, but also "and do people expect priests to have supernatural abilities". Say you were making a game about the modern world, but with hidden magic that isn't considered connected to major religions. The fact that magic is in the setting considered different than the divine does not mean that you need to give priests different magical abilities.
I would say that, if you are "making a game about the modern world, but with hidden magic that isn't considered connected to major religions" then you would probably not want to use D&D as your rules-set. The example seems very biased--a deliberate attempt to create a game where it would make no sense to have a distinction between clerical powers and magic--and then using that as an argument against the split.

In any case, just because there is a cleric class with supernatural abilities, it doesn't follow that every priest of a given cult has such powers. People in D&D setting can have no 'class' but just be level 0 folks, without any special abilities. You could make a setting where a subset of the clergy of any given cult are specialists in supernatural powers (i.e. D&D clerics), but others are bureaucrats, scholars, specialists in rituals that are not usable like 'spells,' etc.
So for your examples, the first one is fairly irrelevant when talking about the fantasy fiction around in the half-century before D&D, for the second I have no idea what it means. Okay, the hero encounters a priest. Does the priest have supernatural powers? The existence of a priest in a work of fantasy does not imply that the priest can throw around spells/miracles.
Both of the first two examples come from the same author (Tanith Lee) and were written at about the same time (1975-76), just when D&D was taking off. They are too early to have been influenced by it. I would consider them evidence of the typical views in genre literature of the time. In one case, it seems that magical power is different from what priests do (IIRC the protagonist goes to the priest hoping for holy protection from evil magicians, and is told 'that is possible but I/the god won't do it for you') and in the other the main character, the priestess of a god, believes her magical powers come from the divinity but we learn in the course of the story that they don't, but are genetic.
That depends. Does this difference influence what they can do with the magic/sorcery, or only how it is done? You get a similar distinction, although not with the religious angle, between Wizards and Sorcerers in newer editions of D&D. But the spells are the same, they just choose them from differently curated lists.
Since it's a work of fiction, it doesn't have things like spell-lists. But sorcery (i.e. magic that doesn't come from the gods) is fundamentally different from 'magic' (which does). I'll put the differences in a spoiler since knowing them in advance would affect the novel's impact:
We don't see much divine magic worked by humans in the book, but the impression it gives is that this is mainly healing and prophecy. Sorcery, which comes from the sorcerer, is almost always negative in nature. A number of sorcerers in the book, though not the main character, achieve their magic effects by causing others pain. One can learn sorcery by reading books, but this is not the main way sorcerous power and knowledge is gained. Instead, when someone of sorcerous bent murders another sorcerer, the soul (including the knowledge and abilities) is absorbed into the killer. So most powerful sorcerers are in effect gestalts containing many personalities. All sorcerers at some point in their career attend a 'secret college' where they study but also, to graduate, have to murder their mentor or study-partner. There's no hint of any of this for divine magicians.

So, I would say, that if you were designing a game to deal with this particular setting, and it was a class/level game, it would make a lot of sense to have sorcerors as a separate class from divine magicians. You would need special rules for how one sorcerer absorbs another's powers, how to use things like pain as a source of magical potency, etc. that you would not need for divine magicians. And divine magicians would probably not be able to do most of the things that a sorcerer can do, and vice versa. Sorcerous healing, for example, replaces the damaged tissue with a magical substance, while divine healing is more natural.
You asked in an earlier post if this was about the specific iteration of the Cleric, and of course, yes, that's the whole point of the first post. The Cleric is a weird mishmash of stuff that is way too specific to cover even all iterations of "Christian holy warrior" (hence the Paladin), much less the far more expansive "priest" archetype. Basically, unless you had the specifics of the Blackmoor campaign and Sir Fang, the Cleric isn't a class you would ever include in the game. As is evidenced by all the other generic fantasy rpgs of that time. They were all inspired by D&D but they all seemed baffled by the Cleric and none of them incorporated anything similar to it.
As I said upthread, I'm not interested in defending the specific powers, etc. of the OD&D cleric, which are fairly idiosyncratic. Some other fantasy games of the time did use clerics, like Empire of the Petal Throne, where they fit well enough. I can't recall but I think that Chivalry and Sorcery did too. You might object that these are not 'generic' fantasy games, but neither was OD&D, really; it was aimed fairly strongly at pseudo-medieval fantasy, in terms of the technology, society, and monsters it included. And of course medieval Europe is a good example of a culture which did discriminate very strongly between supernatural effects produced by the divine and magic (that was not).
 
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Well of course Medieval Europe, and even Christianity when it arrived, distinguished between magic and miracles. The other guys faith and myths of raising from the dead are lies, the work of evil forces. Our self same stories (used to justify why we are right and true) are divine and good.
 
Yes, but there is still a spiritual component and interaction with the Gods. In the text you quote it mentions: "does not accord the gods their proper dignity, but treats them as creatures to be manipulated at will." I believe that might be a reference to the fact that many real life "magic" systems involve invoking gods or spirits to petition them for certain services. It is possible some people in the ancient world took issue with such practices if not done under the purview of a priesthood or following certain religious tenets, but members of a priesthood would have engaged in essentially the same types of practices if they were initiated into the mysteries, since pretty much all mystical practices involved entering altered states of consciousness to gain spiritual insight and/or commune with spirits or deities. It's just that some people did this within a more official religious context while others were solitary practitioners working on their own.
There is no doubt, I think, that much of what ancient people labeled 'magic' called on divinities or other spirits that might also be invoked or propitiated by priests, or just individuals, in actions that would not have then been labeled magical. Other fictional (at least) descriptions of magic from ancient Greece do not explicitly call on spirits or divinities. You'll note, though, that the original quote references other characteristics of magic: it's secretive, it aims at harm, and it commands spiritual forces rather than propitiating them or treating them with due respect.

The key issue, for me, is: did a particular culture that one is trying to simulate (or riff on, if you prefer) in a game distinguish magic from supernatural effects achieved through religion? If it did, then it makes sense to mirror that in the rules of the game. If not, then not.
 
I would say that, if you are "making a game about the modern world, but with hidden magic that isn't considered connected to major religions" then you would probably not want to use D&D as your rules-set. The example seems very biased--a deliberate attempt to create a game where it would make no sense to have a distinction between clerical powers and magic--and then using that as an argument against the split.

In any case, just because there is a cleric class with supernatural abilities, it doesn't follow that every priest of a given cult has such powers. People in D&D setting can have no 'class' but just be level 0 folks, without any special abilities. You could make a setting where a subset of the clergy of any given cult are specialists in supernatural powers (i.e. D&D clerics), but others are bureaucrats, scholars, specialists in rituals that are not usable like 'spells,' etc.

The example is there simply to point out that whether a culture sees a difference between religion and magic and whether priests/other religious figures have special powers are completely orthogonal questions. They have nothing to do with each other. You can have a setting with no difference seen between magic and religion (all magic is just talking to spirits and the like) where priests have special powers, and one where they don't have special powers. You can have a setting where magic and religion are seen as two separate things where priests do have special powers, and one where they don't have special powers. There being a vague perceived difference between sorcery and the divine in a world does not make for a difference in archetypes. You can make a good, historical argument for a clear distinction between disciplined soldiers and undisciplined warriors, but in OD&D they were both considered Fighting-Men.

Both of the first two examples come from the same author (Tanith Lee) and were written at about the same time (1975-76), just when D&D was taking off. They are too early to have been influenced by it. I would consider them evidence of the typical views in genre literature of the time. In one case, it seems that magical power is different from what priests do (IIRC the protagonist goes to the priest hoping for holy protection from evil magicians, and is told 'that is possible but I/the god won't do it for you') and in the other the main character, the priestess of a god, believes her magical powers come from the divinity but we learn in the course of the story that they don't, but are genetic.

Right, but the priest doesn't actually do any magic, or anything else supernatural? Then we have absolutely no idea about whether or not the priest character did have any special powers, and whether they were in fact different from the sorcerer if they had them. This is my point.

Since it's a work of fiction, it doesn't have things like spell-lists. But sorcery (i.e. magic that doesn't come from the gods) is fundamentally different from 'magic' (which does). I'll put the differences in a spoiler since knowing them in advance would affect the novel's impact:
We don't see much divine magic worked by humans in the book, but the impression it gives is that this is mainly healing and prophecy. Sorcery, which comes from the sorcerer, is almost always negative in nature. A number of sorcerers in the book, though not the main character, achieve their magic effects by causing others pain. One can learn sorcery by reading books, but this is not the main way sorcerous power and knowledge is gained. Instead, when someone of sorcerous bent murders another sorcerer, the soul (including the knowledge and abilities) is absorbed into the killer. So most powerful sorcerers are in effect gestalts containing many personalities. All sorcerers at some point in their career attend a 'secret college' where they study but also, to graduate, have to murder their mentor or study-partner. There's no hint of any of this for divine magicians.

So, I would say, that if you were designing a game to deal with this particular setting, and it was a class/level game, it would make a lot of sense to have sorcerors as a separate class from divine magicians. You would need special rules for how one sorcerer absorbs another's powers, how to use things like pain as a source of magical potency, etc. that you would not need for divine magicians. And divine magicians would probably not be able to do most of the things that a sorcerer can do, and vice versa. Sorcerous healing, for example, replaces the damaged tissue with a magical substance, while divine healing is more natural.
It seems like there might not even be any actual divine magic, only sorcery, in the setting the way you describe it. Again, having characters in a story say "magic is different from religion/sorcery is different from magic" doesn't mean that is a relevant distinction to make in a game.

As I said upthread, I'm not interested in defending the specific powers, etc. of the OD&D cleric, which are fairly idiosyncratic. Some other fantasy games of the time did use clerics, like Empire of the Petal Throne, where they fit well enough. I can't recall but I think that Chivalry and Sorcery did too. You might object that these are not 'generic' fantasy games, but neither was OD&D, really; it was aimed fairly strongly at pseudo-medieval fantasy, in terms of the technology, society, and monsters it included. And of course medieval Europe is a good example of a culture which did discriminate very strongly between supernatural effects produced by the divine and magic (that was not).
 
The key issue, for me, is: did a particular culture that one is trying to simulate (or riff on, if you prefer) in a game distinguish magic from supernatural effects achieved through religion?
If it helps, historically most cultures differentiated between "sanctioned" supernatural effects and unsanctioned ones. Sanctioned meaning beseeching the correct gods or higher beings (often those approved by the state) in the correct manner.

Non-religious magic often took the form of by-passing the gods' will by appealing to forces beyond them or "binding" them. Most often however "magic" involved invoking the wrong gods. Such as going to the Yōkai rather than the Kami or appealing to beings outside Ahura Mazda's Court in Persia.

Probably a few ways to depict that in a game.
 
The example is there simply to point out that whether a culture sees a difference between religion and magic and whether priests/other religious figures have special powers are completely orthogonal questions. They have nothing to do with each other. You can have a setting with no difference seen between magic and religion (all magic is just talking to spirits and the like) where priests have special powers, and one where they don't have special powers. You can have a setting where magic and religion are seen as two separate things where priests do have special powers, and one where they don't have special powers. There being a vague perceived difference between sorcery and the divine in a world does not make for a difference in archetypes. You can make a good, historical argument for a clear distinction between disciplined soldiers and undisciplined warriors, but in OD&D they were both considered Fighting-Men.
The point in question is not 'does the setting distinguish magic and religion' but 'does in distinguish between the supernatural powers assigned to religious figures (priests) and those assigned to magicians'. If a given setting does not assign special supernatural powers to priests, then of course they should not be a separate class, .
Right, but the priest doesn't actually do any magic, or anything else supernatural? Then we have absolutely no idea about whether or not the priest character did have any special powers, and whether they were in fact different from the sorcerer if they had them. This is my point.
IIRC, it is fairly clear in the story that he could, he just chooses not to.
It seems like there might not even be any actual divine magic, only sorcery, in the setting the way you describe it. Again, having characters in a story say "magic is different from religion/sorcery is different from magic" doesn't mean that is a relevant distinction to make in a game.
The book is about sorcery and sorcerers. It doesn't deal with divine magic in any depth, any more than a story about gangsters is likely to detail what legitimate businessmen do. The quote I gave above is from one of the top sorcerers in that world and, unless you have counter-evidence, I'd say it is a good prima-facie indication that (1) there is divine magic in the world and (2) it is quite different from sorcery (i.e. what D&D would call magic).

To put the shoe on the other foot, where in either the historical and mythical materials or the genre literature that went into the inspiration for D&D is there evidence that the supernatural power of religious figures and magic are just the same thing? I'm sure there are examples, but what are they? I'm not asking as a debating point--I'm genuinely interested. I think it would be intriguing and useful to discuss in some depth, maybe in another thread, how these materials deal with magic, magicians, and supernatural powers attached to religious figures. My guess is that, for literature at least, most cases are quite ambiguous. Magic or the supernatural in such stories is above all a plot device; authors rarely spend any time discussing its nature.

Finally, what is the gain in not distinguishing between religious supernatural powers and magic? Obviously, it makes things simpler, but is there any real advantage beyond that?
 
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