D&D (2024) Are Bishops "Clerics" or "Priests"

[ThrorII]

So, years ago I ran a Castles & Crusades game (AD&D via 3.5e) set in Greyhawk. I ruled that village priests and even bishops (head of a church in a city) were just 'normal men' (0-level), and ONLY had spell casting up to their title (using the old level titles, where a 'priest' is a 3rd level cleric, and a 'bishop' is a 6th level cleric) AND ONLY inside their church/cathedral.

So, yes, that bishop can cast a 3rd level spell for you, BUT only in his cathedral, and ONLY tomorrow after he prays all day to St. Cuthbert for it, and ONLY after you make your donation to the Verbobonc Orphanage Fund....

 

[Staffan]

This is one of those areas where different parts of the game have always been at odds with one another. You have had world-building guidelines saying that people with PC classes and spellcasting ability are rare and that PCs are Special. And then you have descriptions of tiny towns where you have a 9th level cleric as a parish priest because that's what you need to enable PCs to return to town to have any lasting maladies fixed. And of course the retired 10th level fighter bartender so he can handle any PCs that decide to get boisterous.

 

[HammerMan]

. And of course the retired 10th level fighter bartender so he can handle any PCs that decide to get boisterous.

As a player this is my biggest pet peeve. Like it’s cool once or twice but when every town has guards and bartenders at party level +4 I get annoyed… like “why is the local lord biteing me can’t he afford all the NPCs that are better?

 

[Staffan]

As a player this is my biggest pet peeve. Like it’s cool once or twice but when every town has guards and bartenders at party level +4 I get annoyed… like “why is the local lord biteing me can’t he afford all the NPCs that are better?

That goes back to the big problem with D&D's zero to superhero paradigm. Either the PCs are weak enough that guards and the like can actually deal with them, and then you wonder why they keep getting sent out to do stuff instead of using said guards, or they are strong enough that they're able to tell whatever authorities are around to eff off.

In flatter systems, you can solve this by making PCs more competent than guards but not so much more competent that they can take 10-to-1 odds, and at the same time making them expendable in ways regular citizens aren't. But that's hard to do in a system that escalates as much as D&D.

 

[Parmandur]

So, years ago I ran a Castles & Crusades game (AD&D via 3.5e) set in Greyhawk. I ruled that village priests and even bishops (head of a church in a city) were just 'normal men' (0-level), and ONLY had spell casting up to their title (using the old level titles, where a 'priest' is a 3rd level cleric, and a 'bishop' is a 6th level cleric) AND ONLY inside their church/cathedral.

So, yes, that bishop can cast a 3rd level spell for you, BUT only in his cathedral, and ONLY tomorrow after he prays all day to St. Cuthbert for it, and ONLY after you make your donation to the Verbobonc Orphanage Fund....

So, NPCs with ritual casting. Makes sense.

 

[Kobold Stew]

In my opinion, the biggest benefit of backgrounds in 5e was that it gave a perfect answer to this question.
Clerics were not priests; characters with the Acolyte background were.

Acolyte gave the you the Shelter of the Faithful feature, which included the line "you can perform the religious ceremonies of your deity". Anyone with that feature was, if they wanted, a priest (see note 1).

For me, that was perfect: I could make a cleric that wasn't a priest, and a rogue who was, both of which I did. The Background gave something that wouldn't impact play but could be beautiful for shaping story. Honestly, I think it's the best addition to the game that 5e brought.

And then, they gave it away, at least for this one case. Because in Xanathar's they introduced the Ceremony spell. This implied that if you wanted to be married, or someone to perform a funeral, it required a level-1 spell. Not only was the spell silly (newlyweds get +2 AC?) but it undermined what the background feature guaranteed.

And the 2024 PHB will not have background features at all. I'm sorry to lose them: I thought they were great but they never captured the community, so far as I can see.



(note 1) You could still make a custom background of "heretic" for example and have that feature but Deception instead of Insight, and could of course choose that your character had knoweldge but not dispensation, or whatever. It's the feature not the specific background itself that's relevant.

 

[Staffan]

And the 2024 PHB will not have background features at all. I'm sorry to lose them: I thought they were great but they never captured the community, so far as I can see.

Background features was a great idea, poorly implemented. Most of them just boiled down to "You can support yourself doing X during downtime". There should have been more like the Sage's "If you don't know the answer to something in your field, you will at least know where to find it."

 

[MGibster]

I've always thought it was weird that everyone in D&D who goes to church has to be a spellcaster of some sort. Just like every town guard has to be a heroic Fighter, and everyone who plays a lute must also be a bard. Do regular people even exist?

Way back when I was still playing AD&D, the barkeep was always a retired adventurer who kept a sawed off bastard sword behind the bar. But, yeah, it seemed like clerics were pretty darn common in a lot of old school D&D adventures in that accessing their services was trivial.

 

[bloodtide]

Clerics were always made to be rare. They are divine combatants fighting for their faith. They defend divine sites. Strike at divine foes. And otherwise do military actions. "Divine Special Forces".

"Bishop" is just a rank in a organized religion.

However, when describing a world in any setting, the poor writers are "stuck" using the Player's Handbook PC classes to describe everyone. So a church has twenty five clerics, for example.

1E and 2E had some vague "other divine classes" that got divine powers, but were not "battle clerics". But they are scattered in dozens of books. And few, if any, ever made it into any setting lore put out by TSR/WotC. 3E came the closest with offical NPC classes in the core rules, and the divine spellcaster: the Adept.

After 3E, the idea was just dropped.

Of course, for World Building, someone would need to make a "priest" NPC divine spellcaster with UNIQUE abilities and spells. So, like a 300 page book minimum....maybe at least three books to cover "good". "neutral" and "evil". Of course, no company would dare do that.....

In my own game I have the bulk of the divine spellcasters of each faith quite weak 'non-combatants'. Most of them have quite low ability scores....even wisdom. A lot of the priests can only ever cast low level spells (going by the ye old 2E restrictions), no matter how high level they are. Priests also have a unique spell list, that is basically the lite version of the Clerics non combat spells. A priest does not cast the silly "video game super instant" heal spell Cure Wounds. The priest casts Fast Healing.


And each priest of each faith has a lot of super specialized spells. The goddess of beauty grants the spell "Detect Love Song". The god of blacksmithing grants the spell "Hammer Time". The goddess of farming grants the spell "Hoe your own Row". The goddess of the Moon grants the spell "Blue Moon". The god of the sun grants "Pocket full of Sunshine". The god of sailing grants the spell "Sail Away". And so on.

 

[Jack Daniel]

The idea that spellcasting clerics aren't run-on-of-the-mill clergy or run-of-the-mill church militant, they're rare and exceptional individuals like prophets and miracle-workers, has been around for a long time; but I don't think it was ever codified into any flavor text in a D&D rulebook until 5e. (I could very well be wrong — there might have been a bone tossed to the idea in the 3e DMG — but this is my recollection.)

So here's the problem: even if "clerics aren't just priests, they're prophets" is now the WotC party line — and I'm not saying that it is, but it would certainly make sense to have that be the party line, because it's an idea that solves a lot of problems; it's been around as an idea for so long because it's a good explanation as to why, exactly, world-altering clerical magic that should lift any setting out of the Middle Ages is in fact too rare to accomplish that — not everybody is going to toe that line.

Module writers, especially if they're 3rd party, are just going to do whatever they want. They'll just make that NPC bishop or prelate who sends the PCs on quests a high-level cleric, because of course they will. They have no reason to make the NPC a 0-level commoner administrator; in fact, they have an incentive not to do that, because it lessens the chance of a murderhobo PC straight-up ganking that NPC out of the blue for yuks and throwing a wrench into the module's plot.

And then there's legacy content. Old modules follow old conventions. And in 1st edition, in particular — it sticks with us because it's where all the famous adventures that have staying power come from — levels were in fact tied to social station. As you gained levels in cleric, you literally went up through the ranks in the church hierarchy — acolyte, adept, priest, vicar, curate, bishop, lama, patriarch, high priest — so a bishop is specifically a cleric of exactly 6th level in this scheme.

Think about Canon Terjon and Cannoness Y'Dey in The Temple of Elemental Evil: they're 6th level clerics, and they also hold approximately bishop-level ranking within the hierarchy of the Church of St. Cuthbert. And this makes perfect sense for a sword & sorcery world like Greyhawk's Oerth, because it's a dangerous place! Having cushy, noncombatant administrators is a luxury of safe, civilized worlds. But in a place like Hommlet, in the Viscounty of Verbobonc, in the Flanaess? Someone like Terjon or Y'Dey can only be a hierarch of their church because they're a sufficiently-leveled cleric to hold their own!