Explain Clerical magic in D&D to me.

I couldn’t disagree more.

A good god is presumably going to be more concerned with having clerics around to actually do their will than such petty concerns as whether they are fanatical to the point of suicide at their whim. And any chaotic or evil god is going to have to deal with the fact that half their followers are going to be actively opposed to such a worldview. Erythnul might be able to get away with it, in a Khorn-esque “Erythnul cares not from whence the blood flows!” kind of way, but a free-spirited follower of Olidammara or selfish worshipper of Hextor is going to tell God to get lost.

One might assume that gods are not in and of themselves wellsprings of power, but rather draw their power from sacrifices, worship, and devotion of or by followers. Bob’s god needs mortals to worship and make sacrifices for him, so he allows Bob a few measly spells per day to help Bob protect fellow worshipers and try to convert other non-worshipers, as well as to work towards large-scale or long-term religious change in the beliefs and worship habits of people around. Bob’s god has a large pool of magic available, and he allows Bob to use it in exchange for devotion, both on the part of Bob and Bob’s converts.

Things like praying, sacrificing, constructing of monuments, temples, and cathedrals make gods stronger, so they have a vested interest in getting mortals to help. And if the mortals use the powers for their own interests occasionally, well, that’s about like a barista allowing herself the occasional free coffee. The employer (god) would rather she didn’t, and it may (or may not) be expressly against the rules, but it’s a perk of being a devout worshiper of that god. Viewed another way, mortals are raw resources for the gods, necessary in providing the worship necessary for the divine struggles between gods. So a small investment in a cleric might provide dozens more worshippers.

This is pretty much explicit in Forgotten Realms, last I checked at least. The story as I heard it goes that Ao (the overgod) got somewhat pissed that gods were pretty much ignoring their followers and just focusing on petty squabbles and outright forgetting about them or treating them like cannon fodder so Ao reordered reality so that gods (presumably below a certain amount of power, since Ao oddly isn’t affected by this and has almost no worshipers to speak of) need belief to survive. This lead to things getting… interesting eventually like the Wall of the Faithless (you refuse to follow a god?* Your spirit becomes a brick in an organic wall of torture until you melt into nothingness!) and some other campaign-specific stuff (almost spoiler all of MoTB was based around a petty little last-ditch effort by Myrkul to keep him barely alive forever).

Planescape, of course, is similar in that almost all of the outer planes are run entirely on belief, to the point that anyone that is currently residing in those planes can actually cease to exist if everyone stops believing they exist (or, if someone’s will is strong enough, just one person believes that strongly enough, I think in game mechanic terms it’s just a really high DC Wisdom check).

  • I say refusing to follow a god because in Forgotten Realms not believing in gods entirely pretty much makes you (in TV Tropes terms) a “Flat Earth Atheist” meaning an atheist who doesn’t believe in gods despite the fact that they quite regularly avatarize and do showy displays of power, though your average peasant may have a legitimate reason to not know either way level 1 commoners tend not to be the thinking sort. It’s more likely that one would be soured on the gods or not want to participate in their little games and squabbles than not believe in them entirely.

In the latest edition of D&D the process of becoming a Cleric permanently infuses the character with a portion of the divine being’s essence, allowing a Cleric to use his powers even if he or she deviates from his deity’s calling. Of course, betraying a deity can carry punishments far worse than excommunication, so most toe the line.

This of course can be changed to suit one’s campaign.

Hmm, that sounds an awful lot like the old Divine Minion/Proxy system, albeit slightly altered so they only have a part of their power rather than full reign to act in their stead. (I don’t entirely understand the divine minion template to be honest, I’m going off the topics I’ve read about it, half of the discussions include abilities I can’t even find on the actual paper enumerating the abilities).

I’m in a similar position in a campaign I’m in. I’m playing a lawful good cleric. About half the rest of the party’s alignment appears to be chaotic stupid. So, my cleric’s made it absolutely clear that if anyone else violates his alignment restrictions, they aren’t getting healed any more. The couple of times someone’s crossed him, he’s withheld the mojo until they made substantial contributions to his church.

I think there are actually two different “divine minion” templates, which grant different abilities. So that’d be why you can’t find the abilities folks are talking about; they’re on the other version of the template.

The Eberron campaign setting makes the whole raise dead/resurrection/etc issue kind of interesting, in that it’s just not going to happen in the normal course of events. Of course, this assumes that the DM and players are adhering to the spirit/intent of the setting, as opposed to just playing in “business as usual” fashion but simply in a different setting.

Eberron kind of did away with “racial” deities/religions (with one notable exception). Religion is a personal decision that has little to do with race or nationality (again with one notable exception). There are four major religious divisions, each with its own take on the whole “raise the dead”:

The Silver Flame: The “deity” of this religion isn’t so much a “being” as it is a “force”, though it exists and is visible in the church’s main cathedral. The Flame is essentially the force of Good that keeps the major evil demons and such bound, preventing them from wreaking havoc. The Church of the Silver Flame teaches that when a follower of the Flame (or even a Good non-follower) dies, his or her spirit immediately joins with and strengthens the Flame. Therefore, raising the dead is virtually forbidden, because returning the spirit to the body would subtract that spirit from the Flame, slightly weakening it. A cleric of the Silver Flame would simply not perform the act (barring an overwhelmingly compelling reason or a direct command from the Flame itself), and a follower of the Flame would not want to be raised (and the various “raise dead” spells in D&D require that the deceased’s spirit be willing to return to life).

The Church of the Silver Flame is the one exception to the “no national religions” concept; it’s based in the nation of Thrane, which happens to be a theocracy where the Church of the Silver Flame is the government. The religion has plenty of followers outside of Thrane, however.

The Sovereign Host/Dark Six: This is a pantheon of 15 deities, who may or may not actually exist. The Sovereign Host are the nine non-evil deities of the pantheon, while the Dark Six are the mostly evil deities (though one is Chaotic Neutral). Worship of the Sovereign Host is the most widespread religion among the civilized races of Eberron. Worship of the Dark Six is mostly limited to the “uncivilized” races. Though active worship of the Dark Six is strongly discouraged in “civilized” lands, its existence is still acknowledged and some civilized people regularly pay tribute to these deities when appropriate (for example, sailors regularly offer tribute to The Devourer, who has dominion over the seas). But followers of either group hold essentially the same belief about the afterlife: upon death, a person’s spirit travels to the plane of Dolurrh, where it immediately begins to forget its life, eventually becoming a mindless entity that cares about nothing. So unless a raise the dead spell is cast almost immediately after death, the chance of the spell being successful steadily decreases the longer the person has been dead. Again, that’s due to the requirement that the spirit must want to return to life. Unlike the case of a spirit that has joined with the Silver Flame, however, the spirit of a Sovereign Host follower simply stops caring enough to want to return, and is eventually unable to even make the decision.

The Blood of Vol: Another religion with an actual, tangible “deity”, though “deity” isn’t really the correct term since the focal point of the religion is Vol, an undead, half-elf/half-dragon lich. And the religion itself is more of a front for her schemes than anything else. This religion teaches that death is something to be avoided altogether, and it’s considered an honor to become an undead creature. “Raising the dead” in this religion generally consists of being brought back as a zombie, an animate skeleton, or some other form of undead.

The Undying Court: The one “racial” religion of Eberron, practiced solely by the elves of Aerenal. It’s sort of the opposite of the Blood of Vol. Honored elves who distinguished themselves in life are brought back after death as “undying”. These are essentially “good” undead - animated by “positive energy” rather than the “negative energy” of undead. These “undying” serve as revered councillors to the rest of the elves. Again, no actual deity here. Also, not all elves follow this religion - those who live outside of Aerenal tend to practice the same religions dominant in the culture they live in.

In any case, though, getting raised in Eberron is difficult, even outside the restrictions mentioned above, simply because there are very few clerics who are high-level enough to cast the spells. The continent of Khorvaire, where most of the action takes place, has just come out of a century-long internal war, and there simply aren’t many high-level NPCs of any sort left. The idea there was to break away from past campaign settings where there always seemed to be some high-level NPC available to bail the player characters out if they got in over their heads; the PCs are supposed to be the amazing heroes.

One of my old DMs loved that particular alignment, and had lots of fun with it. More than one player stomped his foot and grabbed his dice and went home, but the gaming group, as a whole, was stronger and better for losing the idjits.

I don’t think that it’s unreasonable for a cleric to refuse healing and other magic to characters who are acting in direct violation of the cleric’s goals. After all, a thief wouldn’t check for traps and pick locks and such if he wasn’t guaranteed a part of the swag, and a fighter wouldn’t become a tank and soak up damage if he didn’t get his share, either.

Mmm, but there’s a difference between insisting that you be given the fair share that everyone else is getting and insisting that the rest of the party live according to your rules…imagine if the thief refused to disarm traps if the rest of the party didn’t steal things, or if the fighter refused to protect people who didn’t assist him in his personal goals when the party has better things to do…

Of course, if things get to that point, it’s time for the DM to break ‘character’ and have a frank discussion with the players about what game they all are interested in playing, and how they can get to that point.

Incidentally, one of the 3.5 edition splatbooks (supplemental rulebooks beyond what’s in the three core books) has a spell called Faith Healing, which works like a better version of Cure Light Wounds (cures 8+1/level instead of 1d8+1/level), but only works on worshipers of the same deity as the caster.

In a similar vein with what Chimi said, in 3.5ed its mentioned somewhere (probably in the PH) that you can get power directly from your alignment. As in, I’m a LG cleric and I can call on the non-personal forces of Law and Good to heal. My guess is that, while the gods exist and grant mortals power, they’re ultimately just the paragons of their alignment with a focus in whatever portfolio they have. Deities and Demigods backs this up with deities having numerical ranks that determine their power, but could theoretically be trumped by a higher rank ad infinitum. (I don’t have the book, but the SRD for 3.5 has the rules.) Furthermore, in the supplements dealing with devils and The Nine Hells (Fiendish Codex 2: Tyrants of the Nine Hells especially), they talk about how they get their power directly from harvesting souls. They don’t serve any gods and are probably more powerful than most any evil deities themselves. While devils are ultimately self-serving, you could call their devotion to it worship.

When it comes to 4th ed, though, I dunno. Alignments were changed around and from what I understand, demons and devils are more like powerful servants of evil deities than independent evil forces in their own right.

The OP’s been answered, so I think I’ll just share this (Cleric is the next-to-last entry, but they’re all funny): http://www.bookofratings.com/dnd.html

I’m very sorry Lore got a real job.

Here’s 1/3 of the D&D monster ratings. I suggest reading the others, especially the one on Gelatinous Cubes. Living deadly mall fountain!

Also? Damn you. 20 minutes later and I’m on the Hostess products rating. There goes the rest of my evening.

Oh, I think that it’s appropriate for a LG cleric to refuse to heal a CE character, if the CE character is acting against the party’s goals (if the cleric knows or thinks that the CE character has betrayed them, for instance). In one particular case, the guy who was playing the CE character just wanted to cause strife in the group because he wasn’t picked as party leader. Aside from that, though, my clerics usually didn’t require anything more than a prayer of thankfulness at the end of the adventures. Generally, my clerics* are all about helping the party with clerical magic, rather than muscle. Clerics have a lot of spells that can be very useful in combat as well as healing spells, and most DMs allow healing potions in the game as well as clerical healing. Most of my DMs have also agreed with me that my god might get pissed at me if my cleric were to help someone who’s actively working against my god and my party.

*If I want to be a melee fighter, then I’ll roll up a fighter, or even a paladin.

My own clerics were kind’a funny in that I never wanted to play one; whenever I did, it was caused by the GM’s sexism (that’s a lot rarer now, I’m told, this was 20 years ago).

So, while I know female players who had to play a female elf cleric of the goddess of magic (because chicks can’t be mages) or female halfling/gnome/ whatever-the-shorties-were-called-in-the-universe-for-the-day’s-game cleric of the god of commerce (who sounds suspiciously like Hermes in also being god of, uhm, lost items, messengers and politicians), but I don’t know what their theology was, I can tell you that my female dwarven clerics of the god of war with two-handed axe were happy to heal anybody who’d been kicking ass on the same side as the cleric. You kick ass with me, you get healed. You don’t kick ass with me, you get cut off at the knees. War Theology 101, see…

I appreciate all the replies. It sounds like Eberron is a really interesting campaign setting. I might give it a try, or at least incorporate elements of it into my campaign setting.

OK, I can maybe sort of see the wizard university not admitting women, or maybe even the laws of magic being tied to gender in such a way that women simply can’t be wizards, but are you saying that some DMs wouldn’t allow female thieves? That doesn’t make sense at all; it’s not like thievery has any metaphysical requirements or need for formal education. Someone decides to become a thief, they start trying to pick pockets, and hopefully get good at it before they get a hand chopped off.

Some DMs, and some players, are incredibly sexist. These days, not so much, but I started playing in the early 80s, when a female gamer was a real rarity, and most of the female characters were played by guys, who generally played a woman that they wanted to date, that is, a perpetually horny, extremely attractive human, elf, or half-elf female.