Could you play in a fantasy world without clerics

[tzor]

The simple answer is yes. I love the traditional campaign settings with clerics, but I also love other settings where the gods are either less powerful or not all that obvious. The current RuneQuest setting of Lakhmar looks to be that type of level. Gods are assumed of course and annoying in theory but they don't equip their clerics to the same level as the corrupt vile ugly cursing wizards.

 

[Vrecknidj]

Wow, count me among those who say "yes." It's remarkable how many people have said so.

Anyone want to say "no," and say why?

Dave

 

[Garnfellow]

Mechanically, if one wanted to run a cleric-less game but still more-or-less maintain the same power levels of standard D&D, the nifty reserve point rule from Unearthed Arcana goes a long way to addressing the hit-point recovery problem.

Of course, you're still SOoL if you're killed.

If you pull clerics (and while you're at it, alignments too) out of the game, you go a long way toward making a vanilla fantasy ruleset that would emulate far more fantasy settings than the straight-up D&D rules do.

 

[Henry]

Wow, count me among those who say "yes." It's remarkable how many people have said so.

Anyone want to say "no," and say why?

Dave

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.

Also, some people have a favorite type of fantasy, and that style wouldn't emulate that type of fantasy.

 

[drothgery]

It wouldn't take much mechanics tweaking to have a game where archivists are the only major divine casters. Call them 'white mages'. They can find ancient scrolls describing rituals of power in dusty tomes and such, but present-day priests would have no magic directly granted to them.

 

[Dark Seraph]

Yes I would. I find that it robs players of some choice opportunities to truly get creative in dealing with difficult and challenging circumstances when they have a ready safety net in the form of the "traditional" D&D cleric with an almost on-tap supply of healing and curative spells ready to bail them out. Having DMd for most of my D&D career, I cant say I have ever played, when I did play during the early years, in such a setting, but it would certainly be something I would get on the Q for.

This is not intended to hijack this thread but as a connected sub-topic, for those who have run or played in such a setting / game, how has or have you handled healing, besides toning down the frequency and/or the intensity of violent encounters?

DS

 

[kensanata]

how has or have you handled healing, besides toning down the frequency and/or the intensity of violent encounters?

We're playing a Kitsunemori campaign, and I dislike potions, and none of my players wants to be a classic healing priest. So I've decided to use powerful shrines: Meditate at a shrine and heal 1d6 per hour, or gain +1 to an attack bonus or AC for the next hour. Tapping into shrines is easier the bigger they are – DC is 20 - power rating, which varies from 1 (holy stone with some flowers) to 9 (fully equipped temple fortress).

 

[Desdichado]

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? (...) Do you already play in such settings? What do you think about it all?

Yes, yes, and I actually quite prefer it. What are you looking for exactly--just to gauge interest, or do you want me to talk a bit about how I overcame the lack of the healer role in game?

 

[Dragonhelm]

I played in such a game with Dragonlance. It was a post-Cataclysm era game when the gods had left the world. The DM was fairly brutal, too, in order to keep the feel, so we had to work doubly hard if our characters were to survive. There was a fairly high mortality rate in the game, but the characters who did survive became like living legends to us.

All in all, I think it enhanced the game to not have clerics and gave us a real sense of danger.

 

[Aramax]

The old Dark Sun setting was similar to this idea,its clerics were elemental not god driven.
I personally like the whole dietes and cleric thing and would probably not run w/out it but I
dont think I would mind playing in it.