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goto124
2015-01-06, 02:06 AM
I've heard people wanting to play clerics, or even paladins, who somehow don't worship any gods. I'm not sure how this works out, especially Roleplay-wise, and how they're different from the normal kind. After all, most clerics/paladins practically surround the idea of gods.

How do you guys play such clerics/paladins? It would be nice to hear examples from others.

jedipotter
2015-01-06, 02:55 AM
Each god puts there own spin on alignment. Osiris, Ilmatar, Ukko, Tyr, Torm, Paladine, and Rao are all different.

But some people don't like gods, and they would much rather follow just ''vague goodness'. Though, really nothing changes.

You'd just role play ''serving good'' .

BWR
2015-01-06, 04:52 AM
Short answer: yes it works.

Longer answer: how do you want divine characters to work in your game? If they need a divine entity to give them powers then obviously you can't play a funcitoning paladin or cleric without a patron deity (though you could play a character who thinks she is a p or c, but who actually doesn't have powers or gets them from another source).
Godless clerics are generally fluffed as being so devoted to a particular philosophy and their faith empowers them even if there isn't an external source giving them power. Otherwise devotion to an insentient, impersonal, universal power source is also popular. This is the reasoning behind druids (being devoted to nature, not necessarily any godly personification of nature), and it works for all sorts of things like fire, water, darkness, race, etc.
Godless paladins have been fluffed the same way, or with loyalty to a temporal lord or organization as source of power.

The biggest problems about allowing this sort of power source is, IME, that some players take it as carte blanche to do whatever they want without any consideration for an actual philosophy or ethical mandates (even moreso than they would with a nominal patron deity, that is). If you just want to play and run games for a character with a certain powerset without bothering about gods or formalized ethics and philosophy, and just want a bit of mindless fun, this is fine. If you want them to have a bit more of a roleplaying aspect with an actual attempt at a justification for their powers, make sure the player writes up a brief but concrete concept for the power source and a short list of do's and dont's.

Get hold of "The Complete Priest's Handbook" and "The Complete Paladin's Handbook" from 2e for a more in-depth look at the godless varieties of divine characters.

Milo v3
2015-01-06, 05:14 AM
There is nothing in the rules for paladins that says they get their powers from gods. They get their divine power from Good. This is the same as how druids get their spells from Nature (though some may worship deities), or a cleric can worship a concept rather than a god.

If you fluff your paladin as getting his magic power from a deity, you are actually reflavouring.

neonchameleon
2015-01-06, 06:41 AM
I've heard people wanting to play clerics, or even paladins, who somehow don't worship any gods. I'm not sure how this works out, especially Roleplay-wise, and how they're different from the normal kind. After all, most clerics/paladins practically surround the idea of gods.

Any suggestions?

Paladins need an ideal to which they dedicate their life. It doesn't matter what that ideal is - but it comes before everything including their own life. Deity-less clerics need a system to spread. A Communist Cleric would work pretty well.

goto124
2015-01-06, 09:51 AM
Updated the original post. I was hoping to hear from people who've tried such a character before.

Beta Centauri
2015-01-06, 10:08 AM
Updated the original post. I was hoping to hear from people who've tried such a character before. I've had deity-less divine characters before. I'm not sure what's difficult to understand. They work exactly the same, but without reference to any deity. It would be like a fighter who followed a particular moral code in their actions, yet wasn't beholden to any particular deity.

hamlet
2015-01-06, 11:30 AM
For whatever it's worth, I've always imagined paladins as being "godless" in as much as they are not really specific followers of a deity or small group of deities. Real churches operate largely upon a concept of realpolitik and so compromises are made in order to make it more palatable to the local populace and government, even among the hard core LG deities. It's hard to enhance the goodness of folks if you are constantly browbeating them and overwhelming them with condemnation Pholtus style you know? Even the gods themselves bow to it to a certain extent.

Paladins, on the other hand, tend to be a little less yielding in terms of ideology and their impression of goodness. While they might pay homage to good dieties, they don't bend their knees to any specific god and sign up for the church.

In the campaign that I'm currently working up (for the last two years, I'm going insane, help me!) paladins (and to a certain extent, classed clerics) operate largely outside of the purview of the organized religion. There are no gods, just "The Light" and "The Dark" along with some good old Nature Worship. Paladins and their Cleric brothers simply tend to buck the system to much to be useful members of the clergy, so they tend to be useful outsiders or even pariahs because of it. Having one show up in town makes the locals a bit nervous.

Psyren
2015-01-06, 02:08 PM
The easy way to do this for a cleric dovetails neatly with the main crunch reason people play deity-less clerics in the first place - namely, to get access to two domains that no listed deity offers. Now, what separates the bad roleplayers from the good ones is that the bad ones stop there. "Ok, I got Planning and Undeath for my build, I don't need to justify or explore it." Whereas the good ones think deeper - "what kind of philosophy or faith would extol those two virtues? What other domains might be in that portfolio?"

Complete Divine pg. 6 has a couple of passages on this:


Serving an Abstract Principle: You don't need to serve a deity to be a cleric. You can simply choose two domains you like and act to advance the cause of a congruent philosophy. (A cleric can only select an alignment domain if his alignment matches that domain.) This can be a good choice if you want to pick two domains that no one deity offers, such as the domains of Fire and Trickery in the core D&D game. This gives you a great degree of freedom when imagining your character. the question "what philosophy or belief system would find fire and trickery important?" has a number of interesting potential answers. But your character won't have the built-in roleplaying hooks or automatic connections to NPCs that a cleric of Fharlanghn has, for example.

Serving Nature: Similar to serving an abstract principle is the notion of a character that simply advances the cause of nature. It 's particularly easy to imagine druids and rangers that worship nature in the abstract father than venerating a specific deity of nature. Again, this frees your character up to make her own way philosophically, but it doesn't have the built-in backstory that an Ehlonna-worshiping character might have.

So generally that is where I start from too - what are the domains I want my deity-less cleric to have, and what philosophy or belief system could incorporate those domains? You can come up with one that fits any combination of two domains you can think of, provided they are not diametrically opposed things like Good and Evil (which you couldn't combine anyway.)

Delusion
2015-01-06, 02:27 PM
I have played a deityless Paladin few times (though not all the times were DnD). I also have a web series about deityless Paladins...

Anyway I have never really felt like a Paladin needs a deity. To me being a Paladin is about trying to do the right thing. Its about holding yourself to a system of morals, something you really don't need a religion to do. And why they have a magic powers? Well plenty of people in DnD and other fantasy worlds have magic powers independent of the gods. Druids get their magic from Nature and Bards get it from the power of Rock etc. I don't have much trouble wrapping my head around Paladins getting their powers from their own sense of Justice or from the Greater Good or whatever. I like the 5e model especially where they get it from the magical Holy Oath.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-06, 02:32 PM
I think my issue with deity-less paladins is some sort of assumption that paladins are holier or more faithful or somehow more good then other classes...Even the one that can cast miracle or have a nice chat with god and has nothing other then faith and piddling combat skills powering them.

Beta Centauri
2015-01-06, 02:36 PM
I think my issue with deity-less paladins is some sort of assumption that paladins are holier or more faithful or somehow more good then other classes... Which still doesn't require a deity.


Even the one that can cast miracle or have a nice chat with god and has nothing other then faith and piddling combat skills powering them. Nothing except that miracle you mentioned.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-06, 02:53 PM
Eh, I meant more when people think that paladins should not have a deity, but clerics should. I guess clerics are fueled by faith, paladins by their code?

Also: this. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/commune.htm) Not the best method, but they're still getting answers.

Beta Centauri
2015-01-06, 03:01 PM
Eh, I meant more when people think that paladins should not have a deity, but clerics should. I guess clerics are fueled by faith, paladins by their code? There's no one way to think about it or to handle it. One paladin might do everything with the code in mind, another might adhere to the code incidentally or through lucky circumstances and just plow ahead out of sheer cussedness. Maybe a paladin is a former villain who had its alignment forceably changed and is under a Mark of Justice to adhere to the code. Or anything else anyone can or wants to imagine.

Red Fel
2015-01-06, 03:27 PM
I've always seen Paladins as consummate idealists. Either they hold themselves to an ideal, or hold themselves out to the world as an ideal, or hold the world to an ideal... One way or another, there's an ideal, and there's some holding. Unless the specific system or setting requires it, I generally don't make my Paladins deity-specific. They may appreciate more those deities whose portfolios align with the Paladin's ideal, but I've never seen them as required to follow a given deity if the setting doesn't demand it. (Contrast this with the Cleric-of-a-deity who later becomes a Paladin, or the Paladin concept specifically designed around a given deity, like 3.5's Ruby Knight Vindicator or PF's Champion of Irori.)

I tend to play my Pallies as idealizing Good. They want to be the best person they can, they want to inspire others to be Good as well. They don't hold people to unreasonable standards, but want to believe that people are capable of great things, so they encourage, help, and protect. No deity required.

Clerics... Here's the thing. Speaking generically, a "Cleric" in the TTRPG context has two defining traits - some sort of mysticism or divine magic, and religion. And frankly, the first one is flexible - I've seen settings where Cleric is more literal, in which case you're simply a member of the clergy, full stop. Point is, there's usually a religious component.

But let's be realistic here - religion doesn't mean deity. It means faith. You're a practitioner of a faith. Maybe a preacher, maybe a student, maybe simply an itinerant wondering wanderer. Now, it can be the Faith of the Drowned God, the Church of the Sevenfold, the Path of the Red King, or what-have-you; it could also be the Children of Night, the Sons of Sun, the Youth in the Treetops, or the Lovers of the River Bed; it could be the Students of Science, or the Comrades of the Common Folk, or the People of the Inner Spirit; it can be anything. Worship a god of rocks, worship a rock, worship rock'n'roll; worship a god of trade, worship the idea of economy, worship a literal coin; worship a god of sacrifice, worship a specific historic place of sacrifice, worship the idea of sacrifice, or simply stab people for fun. Point is, there are a lot of ways to paint faith for a Cleric that don't involve gods (again, unless the setting requires it). 3.5 specifically makes provision for Clerics of an ideal, for instance.

When I play a Cleric, it usually boils down to being a particular flavor of melee-ready spellcaster. I play a Cleric when I want a powerful spellcaster who can get his fists dirty, metaphorically speaking. The rest is mutable; Good, Evil, friendly, cruel, etc. I find Cleric to be much more generic than Paladin, and thus more fungible.

My logic, for Paladins or Clerics, starts with concept. If faith in a particular deity is integral to that concept, I include it. If not, and the setting doesn't require it, I don't include it. Same as I would for my spellcasters, my melee combatants, and my skillmonkeys; same as I would for my hackers, my starship pilots, and my futuristic laser-toting psychic monks; same as I would for my snipers, my grunts, and my demolitions experts. Deity-worship is an aspect of the character, for me; it's fluff, not crunch, unless I particularly want the crunch.

Psyren
2015-01-06, 03:42 PM
I think my issue with deity-less paladins is some sort of assumption that paladins are holier or more faithful or somehow more good then other classes...Even the one that can cast miracle or have a nice chat with god and has nothing other then faith and piddling combat skills powering them.

Think of it this way. You're a paladin who worships a good deity. Over time your deity starts issuing some rather strange edicts, which become more and more morally iffy. You're not sure what's going on but nothing is outright evil. One day your deity commands you to kill a child, no questions asked or explanation given. Do you do it?

It's worth remembering that even the most powerful deities in most settings are merely representatives of their various spheres, concepts or ideals. Gods in D&D can die and their portfolios can change hands, but the concepts themselves cannot. When Leira died in FR, mortals everywhere weren't suddenly unable to tell lies - Ao simply gave her job to someone else (Mask.) D&D gods can even impersonate one another or have their portfolios stolen or confiscated. They are not infallible and treating them as equal to their portfolios can be a deadly mistake.