Poll : Do you allow godless clerics?

I think Zappo is talking about 2E generally here, not just Planescape.

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I was talking about Planescape, and my assertion is only that under the PS setting, the theory on divine power is very specific.

I said that in 2E you could have clerics of good and evil (thanks Hong for the PHB quote); Planescape was a 2E setting, so by default it inherits 2E's properties unless stated otherwise, and nowhere it explicitly says "no generic clerics". In fact, it even explicitly mentions the existance of generic clerics in the Athar description (without making them appear exceptional, either). In any case, generic clerics fit with the Planescape theme of belief.
That's all I wanted to say. Psion asked why generic clerics are appropriate to Planescape, I just tried to answer giving my reasons.

Me, I agree with Kamikaze Midget - the 3E PHB, without an explicit setting, makes no assumption on the source of the classes' power. That's a setting thing, so how it makes sense is not a concern of the PHB. A discussion of whether godless clerics make sense or not should only be made in relation to a specific setting.

More food for thought: what if generic clerics received power from the deities matching their belief? For example, a cleric of good could receive power from the collection of your setting's good deities. Or a cleric of fire could receive power from all deities that are involved with fire in some way. The priest doesn't even need to know about this: as long as he furthers the portfolio of these deities, even if partially so, they'll lend him a hand. Would that be a sufficient justification for a "godless" cleric?

hong said:

There are Taoist priests, and in legend and folktales they could also do all sorts of wacky magic. If that isn't good enough to make them divine spellcasters in D&D, I don't know what is.

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Hong, the Taoist priests (I acknowledge such a position exists) lead worship of traditional Chinese folk deities. While self-styled Taoist and Confucian "priests" have existed intermittently over the past 2000 years, they are not priests of Confucianism or Taoism; they are priests of Chinese folk deities.

hong said:

1. Any class that gives people the ability to make skeletons and zombies blow up, and call down a column of fire from the heavens, is usually going to do a weak to awful job of emulating anything from the real world.

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The question is: does it emulate the attributed mystical powers derived from real world religions?

2. There are more divine spellcasters than just clerics.

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I already pointed that out, but apparently, attributing a spiritual tradition with any other form of priesthood than "cleric" in D&D is "demeaning and insulting".

3. I hope you're not implying that all those clerics of Cyric, Bane, Hextor, Nerull and whatnot are good emulations of the Christian priesthood.

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So, you are asking whether intolerant faiths that sanction things like torture, burning at the stake, and conversion at sword point are reflective of the Catholic church of the middle ages? Do you really want me to answer that?

trancejeremy said:

In most cases, they are more or less just powerful people. If you read a lot of the old Greek stuff, you get the impression that most of them didn't have much use for those sort of gods, either.

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They worshipped the gods to placate the forces of nature and humanity that they represented. The Greeks fell away from this over time, slowly turning to a kind of atheism in a manner which some have paralleled to modern times, but I digress.

The Romans and Hindus performed these rituals to the gods to make them happy. Yeah, they were powerful people... Powerful, greedy, selfish and wrathful people.

They weren't exactly evil (even Hades) - they were complex individuals with goals that tended to trod on mortals quite a bit.

I can see worshipping an omnipotent god, or something like the mother godness (ie, the embodiment of nature), but worshipping something like the god of wine or god of hairbrushes just seems silly.

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Dionysius was one of the precursors of the Christian god, actually

Before the mystery religions, there was no real concept of heaven as we think of it today.

Most of the D&D god worship seems to be simply bribes. If you worship the god of x, you'll get power of some sort. That's always rubbed me the wrong way. A quote by a semi-famous Islamic writer has always struck a chord with me:

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This was the way of most Indo-European faiths, really. You bribe them with flattery and offerings, and you avoid their wrath and if you're lucky, you get a blessing.

"I will not serve God like a laborer, in expectation of my wages."

I cannot see most people worshipping a D&D style god in that manner.

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You're thinking everyone shares your mindset, or that most people do, which I doubt is the case. Not an insult, just a comment.

Hey -- on a non-debate-oriented note, isn't it neat the way the poll has been sitting at between a 50/50 and 55/45 split almost since the outset. I'm finding the evenness of the split quite unexpected.

I have no problems with godless clerics.

It seems wierd that some people are saying no godless clerics under any circumstances, but godless druids are all right.

Both are major divine spellcasters tapping divine power.

I can see a campaign cosmology where divine power is just a different source of supernatural power with its own quirks and characteristics, just like arcane and psionic magic. Anybody could claim to be worshipping the gods and working for them, but it wouldn't necessarily matter for their powers if they were not. This allows spies in church clerical hierarchies, which is not normally reasonable in D&D games where you are tied directly to gods.

This is sort of the way it works in ravenloft.

Non-theistic clerics may not fit the religions of a particular campaign world, but not realizing the value of the concept is a bit culutrally short-cited. Gods are one option of many.

Storm Raven said:

The question is: does it emulate the attributed mystical powers derived from real world religions?

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Yes. NEXT!

I already pointed that out, but apparently, attributing a spiritual tradition with any other form of priesthood than "cleric" in D&D is "demeaning and insulting".

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KeWL P0W3rZ for everyone, I say.

So, you are asking whether intolerant faiths that sanction things like torture, burning at the stake, and conversion at sword point are reflective of the Catholic church of the middle ages? Do you really want me to answer that?

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That's the first time I've heard anyone suggest that the evil deities in generic D&D worlds like Greyhawk and FR are somehow meant to be explicitly emulating these aspects of the medieval Christian church. Next, you'll be arguing that Sauron was based on the pope or something.


Hong "has NOT mentioned Hitler" Ooi

fusangite said:

Hong, the Taoist priests (I acknowledge such a position exists) lead worship of traditional Chinese folk deities. While self-styled Taoist and Confucian "priests" have existed intermittently over the past 2000 years, they are not priests of Confucianism or Taoism; they are priests of Chinese folk deities.

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Putting "words" in "quotes" is, indeed, a time-honoured way to have them mean exactly what you want them to mean.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/taoism.htm

In particular:

The priesthood views the many gods as manifestations of the one Dao, "which could not be represented as an image or a particular thing." The concept of a personified deity is foreign to them, as is the concept of the creation of the universe. Thus, they do not pray as Christians do; there is no God to hear the prayers or to act upon them. They seek answers to life's problems through inner meditation and outer observation.

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