D&D (2024) 2024 Players Handbook: Cleric rules are culturally inclusive

[The Myopic Sniper]

This is the way I have always run things going back to the early 80s. It just seems (to me) like the obviously sensible way that cleric magic should be run and interpreted.

I don't think that the YouTube Outrage creators will bother with "CLERICS GONE WOKE!" type videos since this how a majority of DMs and players I have known over the years have always done things except in worlds where they are emulating a pre-existing fictional magic system and adapting it to D&D or are creating a world that varies wildly from the D&D default.

I am glad to see default real world and fictional pantheons dumped from the PHB. That should always be a discussion between the player and the DM.

 

[Bluenose]

PCs from previous campaings could become patrons of new PCs in a new one in the same setting.

Some power could be a secret society, or a true deity using some secret identity, or a collective of ancestors' souls.

If a PC does something people remember and worship them for, I've always taken the view that in future campaigns they'll have a cult dedicated to them and be available to new PC Clerics.

One of my players had a Cleric who worshipped one of his previous characters, and made up a whole religious text describing the Life of Lernal that he quoted from. As he, I and some of the other players knew, most of the events described didn't happen the way the Holy Text described. As the PC pointed out, Lernal had never been the most honest of characters and if he'd exaggerated things to people late in his life then it would have been entirely in character.

 

[Yaarel]

can a PC become the source of another PCs cleric powers?

As I understand the 2024 rules, the Clerics draw their power from an "immortal force", in other words, some paradigm within the thoughtscape of the Astral Plane, principally the alignment planes. As a cosmic tenet, it should be a fundamental principle relating to existence, creation, survival, or purpose of living.

If this force involves a personification, the person would necessarily be an "immortal" native of the Astral Plane, especially a Celestial or Fiend. If a player character became a saint, hero, demigod, or so on, maybe as an Epic Destiny, then one needs to die so the immortal soul is now in the Astral Plane free from the Material body, or else "transfigure" so the Material body translates into a new Astral nature to become a native of the Astral Plane.

I think of this planeshifting astralization as a kind of immigration from the Material to become a naturalized citizen of the Astral. Compare how some Elf communities materialized from the Feywild spirit world to become natives of the Material Plane.

When a player character becomes an Astral, an Immortal, one gains the Celestial or Fiend creature type. Depending on whether multiple creature types are possible in 2024, the character might therefore lose the Humanoid creature type.

If a player character becomes a figure of a sacred tradition, it isnt oneself per se that is revered or worshiped, but the "immortal force" that the character has proven to attune to and unite with. This unity cant be faked − unless of course the cosmic principle is itself Deception or Trickery. The character must reliably demonstrate unity with the particular immortal force by notable actions during the Material life of the character. So that, the translation into an Astral creature type, whether Celestial or Fiend is already in place as part of the immortal force.

Note, an ancestor who descendants revere is the immortal force of the "survival" of the family, tribe, or ethnicity that claims descent from the eponymous ancestor. Sometimes an individual ancestor also associates with an other specific immortal force as well.

 

[Yaarel]

Generally, the Cleric class "domains" are a good guideline for what can qualify as an "immortal force".

The forces vary from culture to culture, and each culture can have its own "dominions" within the Outer Planes and the rest of the Astral Plane.

Perhaps minimally, it requires ten person in the Material Plane to sustain an Astral dominion. But normally thousands even millions sustain it. The culture can be a subculture existing as part of one or more other cultures.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's good that they're more explicit in 2024, but the "immortal entity" line is a little odd to me. Is the intent that all clerics are theistic, and that nontheistic faiths aren't good fits for the cleric class? Or is the intent that this "immortal entity" is not necessarily a personality? If I wanted a cleric who worshiped their own immortal soul as a way to access divine power, is that intended? Or a cleric who devotes themselves to skepticism? Or a philosophical ideal of freedom? Or do we always need some kind of personality (a spirit or an ancestor or a god or a king or a bodhisattva or some particular someone)?

I don't think anyone will care if I run clerics as possibly nontheistic, but I am curious about the design intent a bit, because the implication is that there's some being - some entity - that needs to be involved. It's not enough just to believe in an ideal, according to that language. Which is unusually exclusionary.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Planescape back in 2e had non-theistic Clerics, the most obvious one being the Clerics of the Athar faction. But they also described the Believers of the Source (now part of the Mind's Eye in post Faction War 2e and PS 5e) as having such Clerics. And at least one Herald of the Dust (Dustman in 2e) NPC was described as a Cleric of Death (and not a particular Death Deity). I personally think that it could be extended to other Factions in the PS setting, after why wouldn't a Cipher (Transcendent Order member) not be able to draw Divine power from the Cadence of the Planes?

 

[Staffan]

Isn't that how it's been since 3 or 3.5 when you could have a cleric of X ideal RAW? Falls-From-Grace was that back in PS:T back in the late 90s.

The game has gone a bit back-and-forth on the topic. I'm not sure how things were in 1e, but I'm pretty sure core 2e assumed gods, even if it offered the possibility of ignoring the actual divinities and just have clerics of Good and Evil if you didn't want to bother with that. The Complete Priest's Handbook introduced the possibility of getting priest magic from Forces and Philosophies instead of just Gods, leaving things mostly open but having some of its priesthoods specified as being dedicated to a Force (e.g. Nature) or philosophy (e.g. Divinity of Man). Different settings took things in different directions – I believe FR required an actual deity to power priest spells (so if your god died, as they so often do in FR, you were SOL unless you could join up with another one), while Planescape definitely had priests of philosophies and forces around, and Dark Sun had its priests powered by elemental planes (either directly or via some intermediary).

Core 3e got us back to Clerics as opposed to Priests, and was open to the possibility of clerics getting power from forces and ideas. 3e FR then said "We're not having any of that, here you still need gods" while Eberron went in a whole different direction, with distant and possibly non-existent deities and plenty of philosophies (Blood of Vol, Dreaming Dark, Path of Light) and forces (the Silver Flame). 4e even went a step further and said that the core thing that enabled divine magic was investiture – once initiated, you could not lose that ability, so groups with this ability were pretty careful whom they invested with it.

With 5.0, the pendulum swung back the other way. There's nothing in the PHB cleric description that implies that a cleric could get their powers from anyone other than a god. There's a nod to how Eberron works in the appendix providing domains for lists of gods, but that's it. So it's nice to see that 5.5 returns things to how it used to be.

 

[MarkB]

I like the clarification that being a priest doesn't automatically make one a full-fledged cleric in the class sense - that many or even most priests may not be able to call upon any divine powers.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Clerics draw power from the realms of the gods and harness it to work miracles. Blessed by a deity, a pantheon, or another immortal entity, a Cleric can reach out to the divine magic of the Outer Planes − where gods dwell − and channel it to bolster people and battle.

HELL YEAH.

This is a much better take than any non-4E edition of D&D, very much including 2014.

I agree. I always "make" a cleric worship a deity or other powerful supernatural entity in order to get their spells and abilities. The idea of a cleric worshipping a concept or ideal has never sat well with me within the confines of a game world where gods and devils/angels are a known quantity.

As I started with 2E, this approach never made sense to me. The primary distinction between Cleric and Priest of a Specific Mythoi/Speciality Priest was that Clerics didn't have to worship a specific god, and were modelled after "Holy Warriors" (Templars, Sohei, etc.) rather than Priests. The rulebook even calls out that you could follow the general concept of Good or Evil, and the game works fine.

Only in 3E did the specific god paradigm become mandatory, and I think D&D became somewhat lesser for it. Especially as in a lot of settings none of those things are a "known quantity" (they barely are even in Greyhawk, and it's ironic you say that whilst being called Dragonlancer, where in Dragonlance the existence of Angels and Devils/Demons is somewhat... variable over the editions - certainly they aren't just strutting the lands like they are in the FR).

 

[DragonLancer]

For me, I think it comes down to the naming convention. In my mind a cleric is a priest and priest's usually worship/serve a deity. I used to find it odd that clerics could serve other paranormal entities as they seemed more the aspect of a sorcerer or warlock. Serving a concept or just tapping into the outer planes doesn't feel very clericy to me.

You also mention Holy Warriors but to me that is more paladin than cleric.