Known Clerics of the Realm

[ripx187]

Clerics. (sigh) I've noticed a trend in fiction to mitigate these guys too. I honestly can't tell you the last fantasy book that I've read that had a true, spell casting cleric in it. Maybe that says something about society?

BITD I enjoyed playing them, but I never played them as spell casters. They were fighters to me, but now I've noticed most players treating them as mages. They keep them in the back and they only come out when there is undead around. I don't get it.

In my current campaign, I just decided to go with it. I created an unpowered and wealthy religious system that is only concerned with keeping the status quo. It is corporate, folks pay honour to statues that represent jobs, and their place in life. The royalty promotes this philosophy in public, but privately they worship a being that they call The Architect. An element of Illuminati or Freemasons secret society that the public scoffs at as just crazy talk.

There is evidence all over the place of an older religion, stone circles and strange patterns are everywhere, this is an old and lost religion. Its practitioners are viewed as servants of the devil and are enemies of mankind. The church would love nothing better than to destroy these circles but they're protected by ancient magics, thus people just built around them. These are the true gods. Gods that date back to the days of high magic.

The mages know about these old gods and study secret books long thought burned by the state religion, but they don't really understand them. The forces which govern the magic are different, they can't cast these spells but they study what is known. Again, if you are caught with any of this you will be burned. Of course, it wouldn't be illegal if nobody was doing it.

The evil aspects and the rage of these gods is played out as well. The State Religion does have a reason to fear. The Druids who act as the eyes and ears of these gods seek only to punish and destroy. A few peaceful folks in the countryside have not given up on mankind, they quietly council and heal and pray that they are not turned in, but they are not the norm.

The players know none of this. They'll find cleric scrolls and holy relics in the ancient dungeons and buried cities. Will anyone be interested in trying to unlock the mysteries of this lost religion as a player character? That isn't up to me.

Maybe the problem with playing clerics is that you serve the DM? All of the other classes can make their own way, but in many campaigns, the cleric is left to kind of serve the setting.

AD&D 2nd Edition really screwed this class up, there are so many spells written up that just don't do anything that it becomes overwhelming. I had players who'd come over to play and spend the entire game just sitting there reading spell descriptions. That isn't fun.

[ripx187]

The popular religion is not a spell-casting class, however, I generate the bulk of treasure randomly to save time and already I've rolled up three Cleric Scrolls. I chose to interpret these to be Lore dating back to an ancient religion and/or history which occultists are deeply interested in. These scrolls may possess powers which can be unlocked in the appropriate hands, but they also contain snippets of information, pieces of legends and myths which have been lost and forgotten.

Looking at the Rules as Written, I was very pleased to see that 1st lvl clerics have no spells. The bulk of the common clerics are first level, however, this begs the question, do the higher level clerics actually have spells which they keep secret? Do they know that they have them or simply lack the faith to cast these? These are interesting questions. Perhaps these scrolls are actually songs which must be sung, however, the language of reading the notes presented are lost yet the melodies themselves are still hummed by mothers and used as children's songs and nobody has any idea.

Another item which this brings up, if I write up a short snippet of lore, would the players be interested? One of my favourite video games is "Bioshock" and finding those little recordings which slowly tells the story of what happened actually became a huge part of the game for me. I know that I'm a huge nerd; The best part of Lord of the Rings was the mythology which Tolkien created. Only one of my players read and enjoyed The Silmarillion as much as I did, but hopefully, if I keep the handouts short the players will really dig it.

[True Black Raven]

I really like what you are doing here. I too do not understand people that keep their clerics hiding at the rear with the magic-users.  I have often thought that the clerics should be more like the paladin and do away with the paladin. I think of clerics as that Holy Warrior going toe to toe with the enemies of the faith.

[ripx187]

Thank you for all of your kind words and encouragement, True Black Raven. It really does mean a lot


I think that the error in our play-style happened a long time ago. We played primarily 2nd Edition AD&D and for 20 years we just never noticed that a basic Cleric was hidden in the text. I mean, we read it a thousand times but it just never clicked that this was there. So, instead of playing Cleric and trying to understand what it was, we'd design and play our own priests, and these were always spellcasters, not soldiers of the faith, but leaders of it (or we assumed that they eventually would be). You have habits that last 20 years, it is hard to break them. I have an easier time excepting this because my favourite Priest served the God of War. You learn just how tough that class is when you don't hide in the back!

[Mighty Darci]

This is good ripx187 and I hope that you do more with it.