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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other Handling clerics in a setting without deities



Avianmosquito
2017-02-16, 07:19 AM
Aelsif is my current campaign setting and it's a homebrew. And now that I'm writing an unofficial sourcebook for Aelsif, there are some issues I need to resolve that didn't need to be resolved when it was just a homebrew. Chief among them is how to handle clerics. Aelsif has a significant problem with clerics, and that's that Aelsif's deities aren't real.

Clerics believe in and worship gods, but these gods are fictitious. A cleric may worship Odin, but Odin is not hearing their prayers or granting their spells because he doesn't exist. Rather, these clerics worship a fictional character, base their lives off their interpretation of a story book and cast spells with their own power they don't need to worship a deity to attain. If this sounds like an especially unsubtle allegory, remember that this isn't explicitly laid out in-game.

Now, that doesn't mean this setting is devoid of powerful entities some may worship as deities, but these aren't actual deities and they don't grant spells. A sahuagin cleric worshipping It Yeek'Kal Thet is worshipping a being that does actually exist, but It Yeek'Kal Thet is not actually a deity and he's casting spells with his own power, not hers. Though that said, her power is great enough that it's not unreasonable that the sahuagin worship her if it prevents another rampage. (It doesn't, by the way.) Of course, it may also be a factor in her worship that her existence is so existentially horrifying that just witnessing her inflicts crushing despair and causes permanent charisma damage that eventually drives the victim to suicide. Such a creature needn't be a deity to act as one.

This raises an issue regarding domain spells, primarily. To resolve this issue, domains have been nuked from high orbit. Your choice of deity instead grants you weapon focus on their favoured weapon(s) and proficiency if the weapon is martial. Some deities favour a form of elemental damage instead of one of their weapons, allowing their favoured weapon to deal 1d6 extra damage of that type with each hit, which is counted as a touch attack even though the main attack is not. (I don't know, is 1d6 a reasonable substitute for Aelsif's +2 weapon focus? I mean, armour in Aelsif provides a small amount of ER in addition to AC, that 1d6 may get totally screwed by an opponent's armour despite being a touch attack.)

Each deity will grant either an exotic weapon or a simple and a martial weapon. Odin, for example, has the shortspear and arming sword in reference to his legendary weapons Gungnir and Gram. Similarly, Thor's clerics gain proficiency and focus on the warhammer and electric damage on each hit. This allows them to deal 1d6 electric damage on each hit with their hammer, and only their hammer. See the thread on armour in Aelsif for why this isn't as powerful as it looks. For an additional example, look at It Yeek'Kal Thet, whose favoured weapon is the whip, and as that is exotic she doesn't have a second.

Hopefully, this all makes sense.

Milo v3
2017-02-16, 08:05 AM
My setting has clerics most clerics worshipping deities which don't exist. I just use the concept cleric rules, but provide a template for what the most common "interpretations" of that deity and what domains it "generally" provides.

Avianmosquito
2017-02-16, 08:36 AM
My setting has clerics most clerics worshipping deities which don't exist. I just use the concept cleric rules, but provide a template for what the most common "interpretations" of that deity and what domains it "generally" provides.

This would also work, but I find it gives a bit too much leeway for "creative" interpretations. "Of course Thor was fire domain! He uses lightning and lightning lights things on fire, so fire!" Why bother having set domains at all if they can basically just pick any two domains they want with any deity? If you prefer that it's a good choice for your setting and a lot less work than my system is, but I prefer my way.

Milo v3
2017-02-16, 08:49 AM
This would also work, but I find it gives a bit too much leeway for "creative" interpretations. "Of course Thor was fire domain! He uses lightning and lightning lights things on fire, so fire!" Why bother having set domains at all if they can basically just pick any two domains they want with any deity?
I require my players to roleplay and have their characters make sense in the setting, so they can only come up with interpretations as long as they make sense, so they'd have to come up with the mythos behind their character's interpretation if they are using one of the non-default ones.

"Of course Thor was fire domain! He uses lightning and lightning lights things on fire, so fire!" wouldn't be enough. But a paragraph worth of description where the player talks about why the culture he was raised in believes that fire is part of Thor's mythos to such a severe extent that it would be a justifiable domain would.

Deepbluediver
2017-02-17, 01:18 PM
I can think of two ways to handle it if you don't want gods and goddesses but you still want clerics.

If you still want spellcasting clerics, just make all magic (effectively) arcane, and so people who believe themselves to be clerics of a deity are really more like a variety of sorcerer. It's sort of like the difference between having levels in a class (mechanically) versus having a title that you give yourself, regardless of what you've actually taken.

The second one is a little more out there. In my setting, gods derive a portion of their power and personality from people's belief in them. The amount of physic energy a god gets from any one person is almost insignificant, but when you multiple that by millions it adds up. In your setting you don't have deities, but you could still have the idea that all the belief creates a sort of energy-stream that particularly fervent followers can tap in to.
In essence, rather than man killing god, man has GIVEN BIRTH to god, or at least a fascimile.

Avianmosquito
2017-02-17, 02:23 PM
I can think of two ways to handle it if you don't want gods and goddesses but you still want clerics.

If you still want spellcasting clerics, just make all magic (effectively) arcane, and so people who believe themselves to be clerics of a deity are really more like a variety of sorcerer. It's sort of like the difference between having levels in a class (mechanically) versus having a title that you give yourself, regardless of what you've actually taken.

The second one is a little more out there. In my setting, gods derive a portion of their power and personality from people's belief in them. The amount of physic energy a god gets from any one person is almost insignificant, but when you multiple that by millions it adds up. In your setting you don't have deities, but you could still have the idea that all the belief creates a sort of energy-stream that particularly fervent followers can tap in to.
In essence, rather than man killing god, man has GIVEN BIRTH to god, or at least a fascimile.

Aelsif's pretty close to the first one. Magic is magic, divine and arcane are a strictly artificial distinction. Divine casters behave mostly the same as they do in other settings, and while they believe the magic is granted by their deity they're actually casting magic entirely on their own the same way arcane casters are. All it means is divine casters have no deity to take spells from them if they deviate too much from the supposed deity's ethos, and domains aren't a thing.

johnbragg
2017-02-18, 03:26 PM
There's no big problem with what you're doing here. Clerics would still be Tier 1 casters with a solid melee chassis.

But if you're not 100% sure you've made the right move, I can justify NOT doing it.

1. Deities who grant spells may not exist as self-willed personas, but since people believe in, worship and reverence them, they DO exist as magical energy batteries, which clerics draw power from. A million commoners performing the worship-rituals for a pantheon dozen gods a handful of times a year gives you plenty of worship-juice to power a thousand or ten thousand clerics, paladins, favored souls etc.

2. You don't have to get rid of domains either. It's just part of how cleric magic works, for the same reason/nonreason that Fire domain clerics can't cast fireball. Suggest typical domains for the gods, and then trust your players and DMs. Or not so much trust them as accept that you can't control them anyway.

So just list domains for a "typical cleric of Banjo, god of laughter" and accept that players and DMs will either take the suggestions or not.