D&D 5E MTOF: Elves are gender-swapping reincarnates and I am on board with it

[Lanefan]

Heck, the druid fills that role (and did in 1e as well) pretty well.

Maybe this isn't the best time to mention that we turned our 1e Druids into divine-based Nature Clerics about 35+ years ago and they're still that way today?

 

[Satyrn]

Maybe this isn't the best time to mention that we turned our 1e Druids into divine-based Nature Clerics about 35+ years ago and they're still that way today?

By "we" do you mean the guys who wrote up 2e's cleric?




. . . are you David "Zeb" Cook?

 

[Lanefan]

By "we" do you mean the guys who wrote up 2e's cleric?




. . . are you David "Zeb" Cook?

No...and no.

We - as in our gaming crew - made this change about ten years before 2e came along.

 

[Jester David]

The gods lack existence anywhere. In the setting, the word ‘gods’ never happens.

That’s nice.
And if doing a Lord of the Rings or Song of Ice and Fire style game—aka the two most popular fantasy stories—things like fireball and cure wounds probably shouldn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean D&D should have to dump those options as a baseline.
The game can’t account for every variation imagination.

Having no gods or faiths of any kind in your game is still simple. Again, it’s a single line of flavour.

“In this world, the gods do not exist and people have rejected supernatural origins for events. Clerics draw their power from the Positive Energy Plane <or other source>, which fuels their pseudo-divine power. All attempts to contact or ask advice from deities instead communicate with good aligned outsiders.”
​

That took me 2 minutes and 14 seconds. On an iPad. It’s not a noteworthy amount of time to “remove” gods from clerics.

My concern is personalizing character concept. And personalizing cosmology concept.

But in any case, with regard to gaming design, the paladin class works better without alignment mechanics, the cleric class works better without gods mechanic.

There are lots of games that remove the divine from the cleric. Really... they just have a “mage” or “spellcaster” class and let you choose between healing or offenive magic. Because without the gods, magic is just magic.

But that’s not D&D. D&D is not and has never been an entirely generic RPG system. D&D has always been a game with pantheons of gods and its own lore and baseline assumptions. Even in Basic D&D variant where their were zero gods, they were replaced by Immortals and clerics dedicated explicitly to an alignment.

Removing gods from the game would help YOU. But it wouldn’t help virtually the rest of the audience who has gods and has always had gods. It doesn’t help Dragonlance or Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms or Spelljammer or Planescape or Ravenloft.
If clerics divorced from the gods was something a large percentage of the fan base wanted, that would have shown up in the feedback.

 

[Yaarel]

There are lots of games that remove the divine from the cleric. Really... they just have a “mage” or “spellcaster” class and let you choose between healing or offenive magic. Because without the gods, magic is just magic.

In fact, a religion without gods is still a religion. And an officiate of such a religion is still a ‘cleric’.

 

[Lanefan]

In fact, a religion without gods is still a religion. And an officiate of such a religion is still a ‘cleric’.

Technically in real-world terms, this is correct.

But in D&D, where the term "Cleric" carries some rather specific meanings with it? Maybe not so much.

Why's that? Because while some are cool with Clerics getting their spell abilities from wherever, others - both in-game and meta-game - want to look under the hood and figure out where those abilities are coming from.

Put another way: if a D&D character claims to be a Cleric to a godless religion and has spell abilities that back up said claim, I'd want to know more. A lot more. Starting with which infernal entity is currently puppetteering said "Cleric" and how do I stop it...

Lanefan

 

[Mercurius]

Forgive me if this has already been said, but I think there is a false equivalency of "Blessing of Gender" with being trans in our world. That said, it is a rather clever way of providing something that might appeal to trans people, while not forcing it or making it a "trans thing." It is inclusive without being political or coercive of a specific social belief system. IMO.

Furthermore, some takes on reincarnation hold that we alternate between male and female bodies. So this sort of thing already exists in our own world's metaphysical lore.

 

[Cyrinishad]

For example, Buddhists can have ‘clerics’ and a ‘religion’ without ‘gods’.

To think ‘religion’ means the same thing as ‘gods’ is ethnocentric.

D&D benefits from being open to the religious traditions of more ethnic groups.




The cleric class can welcome religions that are ‘nontheistic’. For example, both reallife Daoists and fantasy Dark Sun clerics, can be characterized as ‘nontheistic elementalists’.

The core rules work better when they get out of the way of cosmology and world building.

Setting books are the place to flesh out cosmological assumptions − whether Dark Sun or Forgotten Realms or Lord of the Rings or Modern d20 or homebrew.

D&D has always been open to the religious traditions of all ethnic groups... because the planet Earth exists... and everyone on it should be allowed to play D&D, obviously.

The cleric class does welcome non-theistic religions, it always has... As per the explicit text in the DMG, the cleric class chooses Spellcasting Domains not Deities.

The core rules are not getting in the way of anyone's cosmology or world-building... The only person that can possibly get in the way of their own creativity about cosmology, world-building, or character concepts is themselves.

 

[Satyrn]

if a D&D character claims to be a Cleric to a godless religion and has spell abilities that back up said claim, I'd want to know more. A lot more. Starting with which infernal entity is currently puppetteering said "Cleric" and how do I stop it...

You might very well learn that there is no infernal puppeteer . . . and thus that your DM read and liked what unlucky page 13 of the DMG says: "In some campaigns, believers hold enough conviction in their ideas about the universe that they gain magical power from that conviction. In other campaigns, impersonal forces of nature or magic . . ."

There's also bits before that on dualism, animalism, etc. etc.


I just don't get how Yaarel thinks 5e doesn't support homebrewing settings when the DMG is chock full of encouragement to do so - and the PH cleric even prevents all its setting info with the strong suggestion that it all depends on the setting (otherwise why is it telling me a tempest cleric might worship Kord, Thor or some other god that is unlikely to exist if one of those 2 does)

 

[Riley37]

it is a rather clever way of providing something that might appeal to trans people, while not forcing it or making it a "trans thing." It is inclusive without being political or coercive of a specific social belief system.

I thought that discussion of MToF was no longer part of this thread, but hey, good point!

As for the rest of the thread: when someone loves wallowing in misery, leave him alone and let him wallow in peace. Unless, that is, he's wallowing as Performance, and you're volunteering for audience participation.