Have you ever played in a game that didn't require divine casters to follow a god?

[Talakeal]

In all of my years playing D&D, I have never run across a DM who will allow you to play a divine caster who doesn't worship a god, and the vast majority of them aren't even aware that it is an option.

Now, for clerics having a god is the default and following a concept or pantheon is more of an "optional" rule, but for paladins, druids, and rangers, not having a god is RAW. Never met a DM who didn't house rule it to not only require that all divine casters have a god, but that rather than following their code of conduct they have to follow their gods (and by extension usually churches) dogma and edicts even when they run contrary to the code of behavior listed in the PHB.

Judging by a lot of alignment threads on the forum it seems pretty common misconception, as in every "does my paladin fall?" thread there is at least one person stating that it depends on the paladin's god.

Is this normal, or have a merely had unusual luck in sample size? Why do people have such an aversion to divine energy sources that are not gods to the point where they won't allow (or in most cases even comprehend) any other option?

[goto124]

Why not? Divine caster following gods is often pure fluff anyway. Where do they get their power from? Where do wizards get their power from? Does it matter that much?

It's all fluff.

[Atanvarno]

Oddly enough, so far as I can recall, nobody in my normal playgroup has ever actually played a cleric or paladin that worshiped a specific god, rather than an ideal.

I guess its just a matter of personal prefference?

In a short campaign I once played a cleric who worshiped Communism (If I recall, we decided he could take the domains of community and mind control).
He was on an extended journey, spreading the wonders of a god-free lifestyle. He had a tendency to use Create Food to give away food while trying to convert people.

... that was a really silly campaign.

[TheCountAlucard]

Depends on what you mean by "divine caster." And "god."

I play Exalted, so I'm gonna say "yes." Many of the player characters in my games have been spellcasters, and while the Unconquered Sun may have blessed their souls with his divine fire, few showed him any particular reverence for it.

[Temotei]

Deity worship is a personal choice in the games I'm involved in. It matters little and is mostly just a little bit of extra flesh on a character that few will know about or even care about unless it's a plot element/you worship a deity who has actively harmed/helped people in a community.

So regardless of class, deity worship is just a character/player choice.

[Solaris]

I once had a player make a favored soul who was his own source of divine power. It never saw the table (opted for a half-dragon five-headed hydra instead), but I had no problems with it. While I've yet to make an atheist setting and have the option for them to do the divine link-up, I've never required clerics to have a connection to any particular deities, much less paladins, rangers, or druids.

[Talakeal]

Depends on what you mean by "divine caster." And "god."

I play Exalted, so I'm gonna say "yes." Many of the player characters in my games have been spellcasters, and while the Unconquered Sun may have blessed their souls with his divine fire, few showed him any particular reverence for it.

I am not familiar enough with Exalted to remember if there actually is "divine magic", although I suppose the Exalted are all ultimately powered by deities.

I am familiar with World of Darkness though, and I know in that you can use True Faith to perform miracles. And, just like D&D, even though the book explicitly says you don't have to follow any particular religion or deity to use True Faith I have yet to find a storyteller who will allow it at the table.

[Grek]

I've played a Cleric of Communism before. People will definitely let you do this if you ask.

[Tragak]

There are thousands of gods in a polytheistic setting, some albeit more important than others. If a Cleric believes in a cause (Goodness, Healing, Nature, Travel…) but doesn't follow one of the gods of that cause, then it's not that he follows none of them, it's that he follows all of them

[claricorp]

In my games its not common but there have been clerics that have an ideal instead of a god.

[Svata]

Yes, in a game that just wrapped up over on the PbP section of this board. And I've DM'ed a couple (they fell apart, but they still happened).

[Jay R]

In this context, divine means "from a god". It comes from the Latin adjective "divinus" from the noun "divus" that means "god". As long as my games have a more-or-less medieval European background, yes, of course divine magic has to be divine.

Theoretically, some player might come up with some reason for me to allow a character to have spells of healing, creation of food and magic, etc., that do not come from a god. If so, the character could be played by cleric or druid rules, but he would not be allowed to call the character a "divine caster". That's just illiterate.

[Talakeal]

In this context, divine means "from a god". It comes from the Latin adjective "divinus" from the noun "divus" that means "god". As long as my games have a more-or-less medieval European background, yes, of course divine magic has to be divine.

Theoretically, some player might come up with some reason for me to allow a character to have spells of healing, creation of food and magic, etc., that do not come from a god. If so, the character could be played by cleric or druid rules, but he would not be allowed to call the character a "divine caster". That's just illiterate.

Does that also mean that if you are running a setting where wizards are common and their magic taught openly they can no longer call themselves arcane?

[goto124]

Wizards who call themselves arcane will be thwaped upside the head, and godless cleric who call themselves divine will get bird poop on their face. Even when indoors, or deep underground

Or, it was called arcane back when it was actually arcane, and no one bothered to change the name since. Same could go for 'divine' casters.

[LibraryOgre]

I've seen few enough games where it's possible; while it's an option in 3.x, most characters took a deity. Some settings made it mandatory (you have to have to have a deity to cast divine spells in FR, for example).

In other editions, it varied; 1e specified that all clerics (including druids) needed a deity. 2e said that they had a deity, but could abstract it to a generic idea of goodness... it's the Priest Handbook that introduced worshiping forces and philosophies, and Planescape that went kinda whole hog on the idea.

[Gavran]

Never heard it as a requirement, but I may have played where it was and it just didn't come up. I think in most settings it does make sense to worship a specific god (or gods), but I've never once considered not being okay with any alternatives: worshipping an idea, a people, yourself, not having any clue where your power comes from, whatever.

[Tengu_temp]

A DND player with a cleric who doesn't follow a diety, but an ideal, is almost always a sign of cheap powergaming - cherry-picking the spheres you want, and choosing the power of CoDzilla without wanting any pesky in-character responsibilities or codes of conduct to get in the way. Settings where godless clerics are an established and big part of the world might be an exception, but don't have to be.

[Dimers]

I've played in settings that were polytheistic or animistic without requiring divine-oriented characters to pick one primary patron. I've played in a couple games where you weren't required to worship anything in particular. When I run games, I tend to let the players help me fill out the pantheon by describing what god they'd like to worship. Lately, I've been leaving deities very distant from the material world, so it doesn't matter whether you choose to worship Someone specific -- they don't really care.

In D&D 3.X, I prefer not to use the highly generic cleric and paladin classes. Those really can't portray the huge variety of full-casting and martial-half-casting mortal servants a god might have. Sorry, but taking the Trickery and War Domains doesn't cut it for my goddess of strategy and spying ... it really needs a completely different chassis. So for selection of granted powers, spells known and class features, I work with the player closely to get something the deity would actually want to make a covenant with.

[Cealocanth]

I have played and DMed in two seperate campaigns where this was the case. The issue I've seen usually comes at the consequences of giving someone power. One would think that it doesn't matter where a divine caster's spells come from, because they are just going to pick a god that lets them act like they want and go with it anyway, right? I've found that the "your god wouldn't allow you to do that" ruling comes into play more often than would be expected, and here's why:

All characters with an inherent amount of magical ability know that their ability comes at some sort of price. Wizards spend years studying, druids draw their power from nature and have to respect it, sorcerers are playing with dangerous forces that can bite them in the butt, etc. With divine characters, that levy of power comes in the form of "you have to obey these rules, or you will lose your power." Really, it's regardless of wherever the power comes from, a player needs to know that just because they can manipulate divine power doesn't make them a god. This is important because for some reason, some players mistake divine power as an excuse for causing chaos in the group, as opposed to just another power source. Even if you use a system where there is no functional difference between holy energy and arcane bolts, players seem to get it in their minds that divine power = godhood, and I've seen a few players get disruptive and start breaking the game because of this. As a GM, it is very important that you have a means to pull the plug. Even if you enjoy watching chaos erupt from a dysfunctional group, there comes a point that it is time to bring down the hammer, tell the wizard that he is just not powerful enough to move continents, the sorcerer that attempting to blow up that dragon would likely set your blood on fire, and the cleric that their god would not allow them to detonate a magical nuke in the middle of a major city.

However, that doesn't mean that divine power needs a god. Rather, it means that divine power needs a way to levy power just like everything else. If you remove gods, you have to implement something that acts as that price for power. Maybe your divine power comes directly from faith alone, but that also means that if a player loses control of their mind or bites off more than they can chew, then catastrophic events could ensue. Maybe your divine energy is stolen from creatures who have it, and the only way a mortal can gain divine power is by siphoning off an angel and pitting the forces of light against them. Whatever it is, a GM needs a way to reserve power, just to maintain control when that one problem player comes in and tries to ruin everyone else's fun. A system I've seen work quite well is if divine power comes from occult sources, and the caster needs to perform nightly rituals to maintain their powers for the next day. Again, it's not about balance so much as it is about mentality. Tell some players they can invoke the power of the divine, and they will act in a disruptive manner until you let them do that. Tell the same players that they can invoke the power of the divine, but only if they act according to the rules, then the same player will try to find a way around your rules, but at least they will follow them and order is maintained.

[goto124]

I guess part of the fun of playing a divine caster is being tied to some sort of god. If a player became a cleric or paladin purely for the mechanics, and doesn't like the associated fluff, the DM could handwave it and allow said player to be more like a wizard RP wise. Or disallow it altogether, and ask the player to pick another class.

[Beta Centauri]

None of the games I run require it, but players of divine characters (and even some divine ones), if there are any in the group, still tend to follow one.

[Talakeal]

A DND player with a cleric who doesn't follow a diety, but an ideal, is almost always a sign of cheap powergaming - cherry-picking the spheres you want, and choosing the power of CoDzilla without wanting any pesky in-character responsibilities or codes of conduct to get in the way. Settings where godless clerics are an established and big part of the world might be an exception, but don't have to be.

I've seen few enough games where it's possible; while it's an option in 3.x, most characters took a deity. Some settings made it mandatory (you have to have to have a deity to cast divine spells in FR, for example).

In other editions, it varied; 1e specified that all clerics (including druids) needed a deity. 2e said that they had a deity, but could abstract it to a generic idea of goodness... it's the Priest Handbook that introduced worshiping forces and philosophies, and Planescape that went kinda whole hog on the idea.

While I can kind of see this for clerics, iirc rangers, paladins, and maybe druids have t required a god as default in any edition of D&D outisde of forgotten realms.

Also, I am not sure I like the idea of using RP restrictions as a balancing mechanic. For one thing they tend to do it arbitrarilty, for example giving low powered classes like monk and paladin heavy restrictions while putting non on OP classes like wizard. For another, I dont find that having restrictions on behavior helps with RP as it forces me to look at the characters personality and behavior as a cardboard cutout of an archetype rather than a living breathing human with real motivations and character flaws.

[saeval]

I generally run Dragonlance campaigns, and they tend to take place after the gods left (they come back, leave, come back, make storytelling difficult) and there is a class called Mystic that is generally a divine sorcerer. I generally also allow them to just call the cleric class mystic, if that is what the player wishes. Mystics in dragonlance get their power from basically the planet/themselves/soul energy blah blah. interesting cause then you get things like clerics, who turned into mystics cause their god abandoned them... then: gods back! It brings flowers and finds them in bed with shrubbery healing people without their permission.

[Gavran]

A DND player with a cleric who doesn't follow a diety, but an ideal, is almost always a sign of cheap powergaming - cherry-picking the spheres you want, and choosing the power of CoDzilla without wanting any pesky in-character responsibilities or codes of conduct to get in the way. Settings where godless clerics are an established and big part of the world might be an exception, but don't have to be.

That is just... an absurd generalization. The editions I play doesn't even have "CoDzilla", and you're crushing dozens of great character concepts with that unchecked scorn. You might as well say "anyone who wants to play a wizard is bent on breaking the game with utter disregard for everyone else." I'd say you're spending too much time on the 3.5 forums if you really believe most players are like that, except I'm pretty sure I've seen you saying you don't play D&D on more than occasion.

[Forrestfire]

I've never played with a group who did require Clerics to worship a god.

A DND player with a cleric who doesn't follow a diety, but an ideal, is almost always a sign of cheap powergaming - cherry-picking the spheres you want, and choosing the power of CoDzilla without wanting any pesky in-character responsibilities or codes of conduct to get in the way. Settings where godless clerics are an established and big part of the world might be an exception, but don't have to be.

At least in my experience, even in 3.5, which is where the issue you're discussing existed, Clerics are overall much more fun for the group when they play CoDzilla, or pick their abilities to fit what they want their concept to do, or the like. A Cleric with DMM Persist Divine Power is a fun, versatile melee or ranged combatant. It's also nowhere near what the Cleric's actual power is, so I find the assertion that using the Cleric class to make a passable gish is "cheap powergaming" to be patently absurd. If someone wanted to cheaply powergame, they'd pick a god to worship, and use Planar Ally to get friends to obliviate the need for gishing or fighting in the first place, or later on call their god up on the divination phone to get answers as-needed.

And in the end, why would whether or not they want in-character responsibilities matter? If a player wants to use the Cleric chassis to play someone whose magic is superpowers, or fluffed as some sort of arcane magic training, or bound souls, or whatever, what's there to stop them? Someone taking on fluff responsibilities for their character should be rewarded with fluff benefits. A Cleric who is a priest of a church has access to their records, resources, allies, and the like, in exchange for the responsibilities that job carries. The same would apply to a Wizard or Rogue who is a priest of a church.

[LibraryOgre]

While I can kind of see this for clerics, iirc rangers, paladins, and maybe druids have t required a god as default in any edition of D&D outisde of forgotten realms.

Did you mean "haven't" instead of "have t"? Sorry if you didn't, but I'm proceeding on the assumption that you did.

As I said, though, 1e required that clerics and druids have deities; it's mentioned in the DMG when discussing spellcasting. It was also a hard requirement in Dragonlance. Dark Sun didn't have deities, though you had to pick a single elemental (or paraelemental or quasi elemental) force to worship, whereas druids were devoted to a particular stretch of land. Birthright, likewise, required that your priests have a deity. Planescape did not (including priests who worshiped themselves, priests who had abstract concepts as their deity, and all sorts of other options), and made explicit another option: Pantheon worship.

Also, I am not sure I like the idea of using RP restrictions as a balancing mechanic. For one thing they tend to do it arbitrarilty, for example giving low powered classes like monk and paladin heavy restrictions while putting non on OP classes like wizard. For another, I dont find that having restrictions on behavior helps with RP as it forces me to look at the characters personality and behavior as a cardboard cutout of an archetype rather than a living breathing human with real motivations and character flaws.

The thing is, the Paladin was not a low-power class for most of it's life. While 3.x severely depowered non-casters (and half-casters) and powered up full casters, a Paladin was pretty darn stout in 1e, and not bad in 2e. The monk likewise lost a lot of power in the transition from 1e to 3.x, because of the changes the game made in combat and magic. Wizards, by comparison, were relatively WEAK in AD&D, because saving throws worked differently, it took them forever to regain spells that they'd cast, and they seldom had a lot of spells or resources to work with (making magic items was a high-level ability, and much more under DM control, and less subject to cheese unless your DM was a Cheddar Monk).

[Kalmageddon]

I think it's a simple matter of making the character more invested in the setting. Gods and religion in general tend to be integral part of many fantasy worlds, where it's known for a fact that gods do exist and frequently show up to take care of business. So having a divine caster not identifying himself as a servant of one god or another would seem weird, unless it was some kind of atheistic statement, in which case if there is no precedent in the setting nor any good reason to be like that it might just sound like special snowflake syndrome.
And once again, even in settings where the gods may or may not exist, like in Eberron, churches and faiths play a pretty big role. If you just want to play a caster why not pick a wizard? Or anything that doesn't have the "divine" stamp on it, for that matter.

The only exception I could see working is an Oracle or other spontaneous casters that don't really choose to have their powers and might very well be confused or recalcitrant to find out that some higher power is using them for some purpose.

Finally, the fact that a Cleric or some other divine caster can be an atheist always sounded more like an excuse to have the player pick whatever Domains they want instead of selecting from a limited list, instad of it being a roleplay opportunity of any kind. Basically just a little addendum to please those that want to make a custom list of Domains, be them munchkins or just players that are a little picky.

[Yora]

My setting doesn't really have gods. There are only shamans and they don't really follow the spirits.

[GungHo]

Yeah, all the time. By default, I don't usually establish pantheons unless someone actually starts asking for one. Usually it's something like the Light or The Dark/The Void, quite similar to something like Warcraft or Star Wars, if for no more reason than establishing a pantheon and keeping it consistent from the DM's angle is a lot of work without much payoff unless someone's actually "seeing" it and I've become creatively lazy as I've aged.

[Kalmageddon]

My setting doesn't really have gods. There are only shamans and they don't really follow the spirits.

I think that this is just semantics. If they have to follow some kind of supernatural entity in order to have their powers, it doesn't matter if you call them "spirits" or "gods", it's still having to follow some kind of religion in order to cast divine magic.