Oh cleric what are thou? When most classes can heal...

Ratskinner

Adventurer
I admit I have a hard time wrapping my head around people who say they want to play a cleric with no ties to the religious part. I mean, it's in the title. The word "cleric" has a clear definition: a priest or religious leader. That's sort of the core feature of the class, like magic users using spell books. If you want to play a class that has similar abilities but not the religious part, I get that, but it should be a different class altogether. Kind of like the sorcerer is to the wizard.

Saying you want to play a cleric without the religious part is like saying you want to play a Colonel without dealing with any military stuff. It's counter to what the word literally means.

I've never actually seen a Cleric (or played one, FTM) who actually spent any time ministering or running a church or community. (Beyond preaching from the business end of mace) In fact, the only thing I see clerics behaving as are heavy casters...with HEALING! Were there "Congregation" rules somewhere that I missed. (I'm not sure I'd count the following tables from 1e.) This impression is, I think, doubly enforced when historically one man's priest is another man's wizard is another man's demon-pact holding foul miscreant.

In that regard, I can certainly understand the desire to play a heavy caster with healing. The fluff for most D&D classes is mostly irrelevant. (The 5e Ranger, is an example of one that isn't as much so. Its abilities are heavily thematic.)

Personally, I'd be fine if the cleric class evaporated and its pieces and facets became scattered.
Zealot Warrior - Paladin
Spellsy guy, heavy with healing magic - some kind of Wizard or Sorcerer subclass (might make more sense in Sorcerer).
Charismatic leader of church - I think that's already a background...or mostly anyway.
 

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Staffan

Legend
Speaking of clerics of forces/philosophies, here are some examples from various settings:

Planescape

The Great Unknown - Some of the Athar, a faction who expressly disbelieves in the divinity of beings like Zeus or Silvanus (those are certainly powerful beings, but they aren't divine according to the Athar, and they certainly do not deserve any worship), believes that there is something worth worshiping, even if that thing is not personified.

Dark Sun

Elemental Clerics gain their abilities from the elemental planes, not from elemental gods. Gods do not exist as such in Dark Sun, though some clerics personify their elemental patrons.

Jakandor

Storm Priests venerate and placate the impersonal forces of the storms and winds who once brought the Knorrmen to Jakandor.
On the Charonti part of the island, you have Philosophers, who are devoted to the ideal of The Just Society (in various interpretations), as well as the more specialized Jurists who handle affairs of Law. You also have Pantheists who believe there is some truth to all religions, and can gain some magical power that way.

Eberron - this is the motherload.

The Blood of Vol is a philosophy that claims that there is a divine spark within everyone, and that the gods cursed mortals with, well, mortality in order to prevent them from having the time to develop that spark into godhood. They often consort with undead - mindless undead are seen simply as tools, and higher undead are simultaneously revered and pitied. The way the Seekers see it, higher undead have given up their chance at godhood in order to become more powerful servants of the cult.

The Silver Flame is a spiritual force consisting of the souls of almost all the couatl who once resided in the world, dedicated to binding and defeating evil. This refers both to supernatural evil (the Silver Flame is the force keeping most of the Rakshasa Overlords contained in Khyber, deep beneath the world) and the evil in men's hearts (which should generally not be fought with force of arms, but with persuasion unless necessary).

The Path of Light is a philosophy whose followers believe that acting in accordance with it, and spending time in contemplation and meditation, can speed up the cycle of the rebirth of Dal Quor, the plane of Dreams, and change it from the place of nightmare it currently is into something better. It is opposed by the Dreaming Dark, residents of Dal Quor who like the plane as it is, and fear being "recycled" into other beings should the plane be reborn.

The Path of Inspiration is philosophy acting as a front created on Eberron by the Quori. The main tenets are devotion to the Riedran state and its Inspired rulers - think North Korea. Clerics are rare but do exist, and are explicitly not powered by the actual Inspired rulers but by their faith in what they represent. Thus, the Inspired can't remove divine casting from their priests, so if one of them starts getting ideas their main recourse is eliminating the priest.

Homebrew

I'm having some vague ideas about a homebrew where you do have gods worshiped (I'm thinking about ripping off the Dawn War pantheon), but that worship is unrelated to clerical magic. Instead, the various domains represent inherent aspects of reality, and some people have the skill and power to tap into those aspects for various miraculous effects. Some of those would associate themselves with a particular deity, but others would not, and the main function of religion would be social rather than magical. The main benefit of this would be to enable cleric PCs and NPCs without having them tied to a particular church - I always found it annoying the way the Zhentarim were made into direct representatives of Bane in the Realms, and would like to avoid such nonsense.
 

Chaosmancer

Legend
I've never actually seen a Cleric (or played one, FTM) who actually spent any time ministering or running a church or community. (Beyond preaching from the business end of mace) In fact, the only thing I see clerics behaving as are heavy casters...with HEALING! Were there "Congregation" rules somewhere that I missed. (I'm not sure I'd count the following tables from 1e.) This impression is, I think, doubly enforced when historically one man's priest is another man's wizard is another man's demon-pact holding foul miscreant.

I tried it in one game. DM even seemed interested in seeing where I could take it, but we kept teleporting to other continents and falling through layers of reality too often for me to actually get any traction in the town we founded.

It was even worse when my Warlock tried to create a cult. We didn't stay in one village longer than a few hours at a time, not exactly conducive to building a following.
 

KenNYC

Explorer
Reality check on: "the Cleric has no identity".

Does the Wizard have an identity, when more than 50% of the character classes cast spells?
Does the Fighter have an identity, when everyone kicks ass in combat anyway?
Does the Rogue have an identity, when everyone can try everything, and get any proficiency from a proper background?

As a 1e child, I would say the answer to all of those questions is "not really". 5e has sort of stripped theme and character from all the classes, and has made it all very democratic and fair, but it is all sort of meaningless now. Gone is all the mood and character of the different classes, and all that has replaced it is stats, abilities and how many dice you roll. You're fighting vampires? Of course you would want a priest. Intrigue in the world of city crime is the job for the rogue, not a wizard.

The biggest casualty I have seen so far is the assassin, who went from this interesting class where you and only you would have to kill an assassin of higher lvl to advance and you had your own xp chart for assassinations, and it got completely dumbed down into nothing more than how many dice you throw when doing damage.
 
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Yaarel

He Mage
Aye. I don't think of the cleric as a hero who gains his power from faith. Rather, he's a hero who draws his power straight from the Divine.

Whatever the Divine is is up to the cleric and the setting. Perhaps it's a god, but it might be the spark that makes a god a god, the primal Influence of Law and Chaos that shapes the outer planes, or even the midichlor force that flows through all life that is better left unexplained.

In some campaigns, I make the ‘divine force’ and the ‘positive energy plane’, the same thing. In this context, the positivity is a mysterious, transcendent, omnipresent, source of all being.

Some clerics are mystics that strive to be ‘in tune’ with the way this energy ripples thru the multiverse.

Ultimately, both energy and consciousness derive from ‘there’.
 

Ratskinner

Adventurer
I tried it in one game. DM even seemed interested in seeing where I could take it, but we kept teleporting to other continents and falling through layers of reality too often for me to actually get any traction in the town we founded.

It was even worse when my Warlock tried to create a cult. We didn't stay in one village longer than a few hours at a time, not exactly conducive to building a following.

Exactly, It kinda makes the whole "religious leader of a community" thing pointless...but its not like Cleric is alone in that. Almost every class has fluff baggage that generally gets ignored.
 

Chaosmancer

Legend
Exactly, It kinda makes the whole "religious leader of a community" thing pointless...but its not like Cleric is alone in that. Almost every class has fluff baggage that generally gets ignored.


But, it isn't exactly a hard fix either. The DM just has to give more space for that storytelling. It would require the right group and (in my mind) a more laidback attitude to how long things are taking, but it can be done.
 

D

dco

Guest
So where does this leave the cleric? Does he still have a role, an identity? Role Playing wise, absolutely (worshiper of a deity is a pretty strong "identity") but "rule-wise", "party role wise" - what does the cleric do?
How many classes can cast Bless and the other cleric spells?
How many classes have the other features of the cleric class?
Only the cleric, so the class is well defined rules wise, or as good as the others.
 

Ratskinner

Adventurer
But, it isn't exactly a hard fix either. The DM just has to give more space for that storytelling. It would require the right group and (in my mind) a more laidback attitude to how long things are taking, but it can be done.

I disagree* or not.**

That group is stuck (or could be) in the same way that all those folks who founded the Forge and the Indie game movement were. They're playing a game that is basically not supporting the kind of things they want to do. (Which is different from allowing it.) Without rules support, they're basically sitting around a table playing "let's pretend" and hoping it works out satisfactorily.

I mean, honestly, the D&D ruleset only directly and reasonably-completely addresses combat, marginally (nowadays) addresses dungeoneering/exploration, and pays some handwavey "make an ability check" lip-service to the rest. Sure the DMG gives you almost-rules for renown and....well the DMG gives you almost-rules for renown. There's also two pages on "Social Interaction" which seem to address shifting a creature's likelihood of trying to kill you and not much else. Everything else we're talking about for the cleric and all the other class' fluff, too is reduced to a 4.2 page section that's literally called "Downtime". Its like saying "the rules for sportsball don't cover this, but we'll put it in the half-time show."

And just to re-iterate, that's perfectly fine for the game. This game is called Dungeons and Dragons, not Temples and Townhouses. In many ways, you're probably better off hand-waving the cleric running a church for 8 months between adventures. But if you're really coming to the Cleric class hoping to play some contemplative man of god and digging into the issues of being a religious leader in a fantasy-medieval community....well, you got the wrong game, IMO.

All just my$.02

*Not that it can't be done, obviously it can be done. But should it? That is, you can do it, but I don't really consider it a "fix".

**If you're simply talking about letting the players ramble a bit more about their backgrounds, etc.
 

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