Could you play in a fantasy world without clerics

[FireLance]

One idea I'm toying around with (inspired by the VP/WP system of d20 Star Wars) is that all PCs start the battle with Vitality Points equal to their current Hit Points. Damage is initially taken off VP, but once a PC's supply of VP is gone, wounds are taken off his HP. A PC can spend an action point to recover some VP (but not HP) and one base class I'm tinkering with (essentially, a bard with access to Book of Nine Swords maneuvers instead of spellcasting) can help his companions recover VP (again, but not HP) through the use of Devoted Spirit maneuvers.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

We used to play DragonQuest more than D&D back in the day, and there were no clerics at all, and virtually no magic-users of any kind. It was all WP/VP (they called it fatigue and endurance). If you like grim'n'gritty, there's no problem playing in that kind of world/system at all, and I would gladly do so again.

 

[Ciaran]

Playing Devil's Advocate, I can see it. Some people wouldn't want to, because it's not their cup of tea. Some aren't in it for gaming all kinds of scenarios, and having little or no magic, or having to go through the drudgework of accounting for every hit point, or playing coward by picking and choosing their battles, is counter to having fun, kicking butt, and taking names.

You're jumping to an unsupported conclusion, Henry. The OP asked whether people would play in a world without clerics, not if they would play in a world without healing spells. I, for one, run a game without clerics, but I've opened the entire clerical spell selection to arcane casters.

 

[Meeki]

Truthfully I think playing without divine magic makes D&D quite boring. First it limits the diversity of characters that the PC's are able to play. Second it basically forces every PC to make a "survivalist" character, unless they want to struggle and fall behind the rest or just waste time in the campaign natural healing (which can be pretty brutal depending on the DM). Even if the campaign is combat lite they need to still have a way to survive in combat. The fighter would probably have around 30 AC at level 5 (full plate, shield, 1 dex, combat expertise, dodge, ring of protection, etc) because getting hit is not something the party can deal with. High con would be a must. I know this may sound like a bit of min-maxing but without divine magic and healing I feel that the campaign would only promote it even more so. Clerics allow PC's to make interesting characters with low hp and low ac, such as a bard/barbarian (which, btw, would provide the only form of arcane healing out of the PH). Oh a party of all bards with a wand of arcane cure light wounds might work

You do not have to take out divine magic in order to lessen the influence of your Gods. If you want your PC's to be more clever in overcoming encounters then make your cleric stretch his healing ability over alot of combats or throw them up against creatures that do more than just hp damage. Do not rely on the PC's to much to be creative in combat, its also up to the DM to create situations that are creative. Also you could make clerics stick to a stricter doctrine of their religion or their god won't grant them spells or you can do away with Gods all together and have clerics draw their power from concepts of "good-evil" and "law-chaos" or something to that effect as described in the Players handbook. Gods are not necessary. I would recommend looking into dieties and demigods and look at their divine rank system for some ideas.

 

[Brother Richard]

Way To Make it better

You could create a campaign where truenamers are the only healers, but for now, truenamers are brokenly stupid. You could try to fix it. I like to give truenamers DC 15+CR and no skill boosting items allowed for this check.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Midnight. Yeah there are "Clerics" but they all serve the enemy. There are generally no PC clerics unless you are running an evil campaign.

 

[Stormborn]

Yes, we played a long running Homebrew of mine that mimicked the Baroque era. There was a large monolithic church, and several fairly powerful cults, but little magic at all. There were thaumaturges and alchemists who could produce potions and items that gave some magical effects, and thus potions were available but expensive. Mostly, however, I allowed the PCs to recover hp = to 1HD per level for each 8 hours of rest. Basically it meant that everyone got to roll first thing in the morning and heal all the way back up, usually.

 

[Umbran]

It seems that priests who gain spells from the gods (and wear heavy armors) have become a scripture carved in marble, where most D&D/d20 settings are concerned.

Given Arcana Evolved, among other games, I think this is overstated somewhat.

Setting aside the problem of recovering hit-points and resurrecting the dead, would you be interested to play in a campaign world without spellcasting clerics and druids?

I have done to before, in D&D and other games. I see no reason to not do so again.

A world where priests have no magical powers if they aren't wizards; a world without pantheons, and where one cannot know if the exisitng cults and religions are mere superstition, or just valid philosophies/spiritual concerns, or if indeed they worship deities that exist for real and created the world and its races, and need to be worhipped to gain their protection.

"Pantheons" - groupings of gods worshipped by various cultures - seems to me to have nothing to do with the rest of the material here. Whether or not there's divine magic does not impact the existance of pantheons.

 

[Jer]

Yes, absolutely. I once ran a campaign (back when I ran Basic/Expert/Companion D&D) where I replaced clerics with "white magicians" - they advanced and prepared their spells like magic-users, but selected spells from the cleric's list and could turn undead like a cleric (later I added that they could also turn demons and cancel magic jar "posessions" using the same turn undead mechanics). In my world they were associated with certain religions, but they didn't get their spells directly from the gods - they got them through study and preparation just like other wizards. Their turn undead powers didn't come from the gods but from ancient Universal Laws about undead (and demons) that they were able to exploit with their training. There was no direct proof that the gods actually existed, other than their messengers insistence that they did (Archons for the Lords of Order, and Demons for the Lords of Entropy in that particular world). The gods had a "hands off" approach to their followers and the Prime Material and Inner Planes (we never got to the Outer Planes).

It worked pretty well - I ended up having to allow access to some magic-user spells to the one person who played the "white magician" because casting nothing but healing and protection spells in combat got to be boring after a bit (advancement like a magic-user, remember). I think it would work even better in the new system than it did in the old one, though, and the spells lists could be tweaked better for the "white magician" than the old "12 spells per level" lists of the Basic/Expert D&D sets could handle.

 

[Desdichado]

Maybe I'm interpreting the question wrong. Is it "a game without clerics" or "a game without clerical magic?"

I'd happily do both and would in fact prefer them both, but I'm just curious. If the idea is being put forth that the cleric class as written is a staple of modern fantasy, I'd heartily disagree. It may be a staple of D&D, but it's one of the main things that sets D&D apart from most fantasy that I've read.