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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emerikol" data-source="post: 6351386" data-attributes="member: 6698278">In my world, the elves do not believe in the divinity of the Gods.  They recognize there are powerful extraplanar beings, some good and some bad but they do not consider them worthy of worship.  There are no elven gods in my current setting.   The elves practice a form of ancestor reverence and akashic approaches to supernaturalism.  Their "clerics" draw upon the power of their ancestors.  (Or so they claim).  This question depends a lot on your world.   I've ran both these types of worlds.World Type #1 (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk)The gods are active.  They communicate their wishes to the "church" leaders.   They offer power directly to those who are faithful.In a world such as this almost everyone believes in the gods as powerful beings.  Some though might not believe in their divinity.  They might view the gods as nothing more than super powered people just like them.   In this world, you always have clerics who are aligned with their God.  If you want to know if a church leader has fallen from grace just ask him to cast a high level spell.World Type #2 (Eberron)The gods are hands off.  The religions are steeped in ritual and discipline.  The leaders of the religion guide the faithful based upon holy texts and their perceived divine guidance though there is no direct communication in almost all cases.  In a world such as this some might doubt even the existence of the gods.  They might view clerics as self deluded wizards.  They might believe that it is a cleric's religious "training" that enables him to cast spells.In this world, you don't know about where a cleric stands with his god.  He might be a totally corrupt self serving religious charlatan who can cast ninth level spells without any problem.  The reason is that it is the church practices that give him his power and not the gods themselves.Right now in my current world, I run a modified version of number one.  My clerics have to learn a great deal about their rituals and discipline to even be able to receive their power from the Gods but they do receive it from the gods.   Except the elves of course who are more like the clerics in #2.  As you can see it is possible to mix and match these approaches from pantheon to pantheon.</blockquote>

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