Cleric shenanigans (metaphysical, no right answers)

[Elderbrain]

This has actually been presented as a character option, a PC or NPC who is so convinced of their own divinity that they actually got spells. I can't think of an official WOTC or TSR option (thought one may exist), but definitely third-party. Presumably if the characters lost confidence in him/herself, the spell ability would disappear....

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to fundamentally alter the cosmology created to explain D&D spellcasting, you probably ought to do what 2e Dark Sun did and actually create new spell casting rules and classes. Even Eberron, which I don't think moved the rules as far as they needed to accommodate it's altered cosmology, at least made some changes in how the class worked and what existed within the setting (no Outer Planes, for example). Still, for all the changes, the populace of Eberron's "common sense" judgment that the Gods do exist and are the origin of Divine magic seems most likely to explain the mechanics of the game and the described fiction. All Eberron has really demonstrated is that it's Gods are a bit weird philosophically compared to the normal D&D pantheons, but they seem to function pretty much the same way.

Eberron is a bit further down the "Divine magic is a matter of belief" path: People are able to gain and cast divine spells when their ethics seem directly opposed to the god's - as long as they still believe that they are doing their work.
They are also able to gain divine power from definite non-gods, whether from philosophies, belief in the divinity within yourself, or that the Gibbering Mouther in the cellar is a gestalt of generations of your family's ancestors.

 

[Laurefindel]

(...)

Here are several thoughts, and I'd love to hear some counterpoints/riffs:

1)
Faith is the source of the cleric's spellcasting power. Divine forces may "mediate" (allow, negate, tamper with) their access to the weave, but the power lies with the cleric. This is how you get factions within a church, and heretics. Even if God A denies you access to the weave, God B may enable it as furthering God B's cause. The cleric can't show, on a spell-by-spell basis, that their power is enabled by their god, because it isn't. THEY are the source of their own power.

(...)

Divination could be made into specific spells PER DEITY. So when you find a scroll, it might be Divination (Odin).
Or it could be that Divination simply comes with a <insert deity name> section. The spell is generic, but you make it unique when you cast it. This would accommodate Druid castings in a clean way.

Anyway, before this gets much longer... thoughts?

That's how I like to interpret it. Clerics have magical powers of their own, but unlike wizards who focus the magical constructs in their mind with formulaic quatrains, gestures and the quintessence of physical materials, clerics focus this magical energy through prayers and devotion.

If they lose their faith, they lose their ability to focus the magical energies (or whatever) into spells, but the gods themselves, as powerful as they are, have little to do with their cleric's ability to cast spells. At best, they can guide the cleric spiritually, display actual powers (divine intervention feature), or "block" their magic if they think the cleric is out of line.

I also like to see druids as proto-wizards; an ancient art predating divine and arcane magic, harking from the days where neither magic nor gods where really understood. Many druids probably called themselves wizards, enchanters or sorcerers back then. The origins of somatic and verbal components is lost to most cultures, including many words in ancient sylvan languages no longer spoken, and components rich in quintessence mostly discovered by trial and error throughout the millennia. Their magic is much more freeform than that of cleric, but not quite as versatile as modern wizards, and will ever remain "tainted" and restricted by the natural themes from which it is drawn and by which it is "filtered".

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The idea that deities (or their servants) granted clerics their spells, either when they prepared them or cast them, isn't part of standard* D&D in editions since 3e (and I think Eberron was moving away from that too). 4e did something different and specific, and 5e has left it somewhat vague.

Here is one interpretation of how it works, that I believe is more or less consistent with current products. It's not the only interpretation, but it's mine and I like it.

Clerical spellcasting is bestowed on mortals from some divine source, usually meaning gods and their ilk. Clerics receive the ability to channel this divine power when they become clerics, whether by investiture/ordination in some religious hierarchy, personal mystical experience, or whatever. From that point on that power to channel divine energy into spells is theirs. No divine agency is required for them to go all the way up to 20th level and beyond as a fully functioning cleric. In fact, if that power is granted through investiture from established clergy, who were granted it from other clergy, it's quite possible that it goes back thousands of years to get to the point where the deity actually granted it to the ancient founders of the religious hierarchy.

But wait you say, so they can just do whatever they want and their god has no say? Of course not. You don't need to grant their god the ability to "refuse to give them spells" or take away their class features to do that. First, if they are part of any sort of religious hierarchy, they probably have quite a lot to say about how the cleric behaves as a representative of the religion. Getting kicked out of your religion and declared a heretic if you refuse to do proper penance and shape up is nothing to laugh at (especially if their livelihood was tied up in that hierarchy). But that's just the mortal situation. I said that the gods don't have anything to do with a cleric's spellcasting (other than being contacted by spells that allow you to contact deities), I didn't say that they are fools who don't care what people do in their name. If a cleric goes around representing themselves as a cleric of such and so, and blatantly disregards the teachings of such and so, you can bet that sooner or later, unless such and so has a clergy who will handle it for them, such and so is going to be giving that cleric a stern talking to at the least. They may not be the power cord on the cleric's spell machine, but they still have legions of powerful divine servants they can send down to smite that cleric to dust.

That's more interesting to me than tying their abilities directly to an NPC (and I do something similar with warlocks).

*Forgotten Realms may be a bit different, I don't recall the specifics. But that's because its deities are jerks who have redirected all the astral conduits on Faerun to a layer of Hades and trapped all the power they get from their followers to prevent it from leaving their realm of control to float more naturally to the Outer Planes where it's supposed to. That's probably why they have a ridiculous number of Greater Powers--too much mortal worship power trapped there.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If they lose their faith, they lose their ability to focus the magical energies (or whatever) into spells, but the gods themselves, as powerful as they are, have little to do with their cleric's ability to cast spells. At best, they can guide the cleric spiritually, display actual powers (divine intervention feature), or "block" their magic if they think the cleric is out of line.

Again, I say: it depends on the campaign setting. In the Forgotten Realms clerical magic comes directly from gods. Lose the favour of your god and you lose your spells. This isn't a core rule, it's a setting specific rule. In some universes clerical spells can be fuelled by faith in yourself or some ideology, but not In the Forgotten Realms. If a cleric from Eberron where to somehow travel to the Forgotten Realms, their spells would stop working until they adopted a deity. However, if a cleric from the Forgotten Realms was transported to Eberron their spells would still work since in that world the thing they believe in does not have to exist.

 

[Staffan]

It's likely that they don't. First edition through 3e offered a fairly consistent take on the cleric class, with the only modification to the class in 3e being a little used call out that you could be a cleric but not have a deity. Part of the reason that I say that it is little used, is not even WotC seemed to take that very seriously, as the vast majority of resources for clerics published by WotC assumed a tight relationship between a deity and their cleric, and you certainly didn't see a lot of published clerics of an idea or a philosophy.

Eberron explicitly had clerics of forces and philosophies.

• The Blood of Vol is a philosophy based around the concept of the Divinity Within - every living being has a spark of divinity within, and by nurturing this spark you can overcome mortality. But this is hard for mortal creatures, and the gods are bastards for cursing mortals with short lives so they don't have the time to do this.
• The Silver Flame is a force consisting of the spirits of almost all the couatl who gave their lives to become a force binding various fiends, preventing them from exerting influence on the world.
• The Path of Light is a philosophy built around the belief that performing various rituals and meditations on the physical plane will accelerate the next age of Dal Quor, ushering in an age of light and goodness as opposed to the darkness and evil that currently dominates the plane.

In Planescape, you had the Athar who rejected the divinity of beings like Zeus or Tymora, but some of them were clerics of "The Great Unknown".

You also have the Charonti on the island of Jakandor. The dominant belief in their society is the ideal of a just society, which is akin to konfucianism. There were two priest kits dedicated to these priests - both the more general Philosophers as well as Jurists who were responsible for the judicial stuff in that society.

Even Eberron, which I don't think moved the rules as far as they needed to accommodate it's altered cosmology, at least made some changes in how the class worked and what existed within the setting (no Outer Planes, for example).

Eberron certainly has outer planes - or at least other planes, since it doesn't have any distinction between outer and inner planes. The main difference from "mainstream" D&D in this regard is that the gods do not dwell on the planes, and the planes don't have any particular alignment association.

 

[Laurefindel]

Again, I say: it depends on the campaign setting. In the Forgotten Realms clerical magic comes directly from gods. Lose the favour of your god and you lose your spells. This isn't a core rule, it's a setting specific rule. In some universes clerical spells can be fuelled by faith in yourself or some ideology, but not In the Forgotten Realms. If a cleric from Eberron where to somehow travel to the Forgotten Realms, their spells would stop working until they adopted a deity. However, if a cleric from the Forgotten Realms was transported to Eberron their spells would still work since in that world the thing they believe in does not have to exist.

Oh, I know I'm deep in houserule territory, but as the OP pointed out, the PHB seems to support the "faith as the key to a door inside the cleric's own powers".

For what it's worth, I run my Forgotten Realms exactly as the OP stated. The gods will want you to think otherwise obviously...

 

[Sword of Spirit]

By the way, does anyone not ignore the last few edition's insistence that most priest aren't clerics/don't have spellcasting powers? I know I have always ignored that, partly because the entire rest of the game's published materials (adventures, NPC statblocks, etc) ignores it and gives every NPC priest spellcasting. I'm not sure why they somehow felt they needed to start saying that in recent editions. One of those solutions in search of a problem it looks like.

 

[MarkB]

By the way, does anyone not ignore the last few edition's insistence that most priest aren't clerics/don't have spellcasting powers? I know I have always ignored that, partly because the entire rest of the game's published materials (adventures, NPC statblocks, etc) ignores it and gives every NPC priest spellcasting. I'm not sure why they somehow felt they needed to start saying that in recent editions. One of those solutions in search of a problem it looks like.

I certainly don't ignore it. My current game is set in Eberron, and one of the setting's principles is that adventuring classes in general, not just clerics, are relatively uncommon.

Faith takes many forms. The form that grants you a direct link to divine powers is just one of them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Oh, I know I'm deep in houserule territory, but as the OP pointed out, the PHB seems to support the "faith as the key to a door inside the cleric's own powers".

For what it's worth, I run my Forgotten Realms exactly as the OP stated. The gods will want you to think otherwise obviously...

I'm an FR vet, so I'm citing 2nd and 3rd edition rules for FR. I don't think it's ever been make explicit in 5e. Other DMs are free to rule differently.

But I think it makes campaign settings more interesting if there are fundamental differences in how magic works, and I think divine magic is one of the best ways for those differences to be represented in rules.