Cultural trappings

[Celebrim]

Admittedly, some of the flavor of the cleric class as written came from Christianity, but the way the class works is very different from either Jew or Christian traditions.

I don't have to refute that D&D is poorly suited for gaming Christian traditions. I only have to refute that the Cleric class requires an active polytheistic setting.

For that matter, both the cleric and the wizard are poorly suited for modeling the magical traditions of any real world stories. In most stories, magical power is primarily limited by plot devices or simply completely unlimited. What can the enchanted animals of Grimm's fairy tales do? Anything required by the story. What is the limits of Gandalf's power? The answer is seemingly 'What is good for the story', and in a certain since this is lampshaded in the story in that Gandalf can only do for the Children of Illuvatar what helps them help themselves. He runs into limits on his power pretty much only offstage when confronting other supernatural wonder workers. Magicians and wonder workers show up in stories usually as story movers with unexplainable and unfathomable and generally unlimited power. Naturally when it comes time to play a game where you get to be a wonder worker, those story limitations no longer work for the sort of story RPG's strive for.

Miracles were meant to be signs of God's power, not a daily allotment of spells that could be cast anyway and at anytime the cleric felt like.

True enough, but this is a flavor issue. If you wanted to run a game with Christian theology lite, it's just a matter of pretending that the daily allotment of signs of God's power is a the list of things that God wants his servant to accomplish that day and the time that the cleric performs the miracle is the time on that day that God prompts the cleric to do so.

...but the RAW seem to lean very heavily to a polytheistic pantheon.

Not I think for mechanical reasons though.

 

[Sadrik]

It is an interesting notion to strip the cleric of their cultural priestly trapping. It is a very deeply seated sacred cow that the cleric be a god worshiper. However that said, in the interest of making this an interesting thread what would the differences be from developing a godless cleric and the standard one. In the PHB they can already choose to not worship a god. Honestly, I have never seen a player ever do that in all my years, but I suppose it can be done. I think the text could be re-written from a stand point that the cleric is not a deity worshiper as default and then add in the gods aspect via a campaign setting.

Sure, but if you go that far... What about the Paladin and Druid and Ranger how do they get by without explicitly worshiping the natural order or whatever. I suppose those classes are easier to remove the deity/centric notion and by stripping the wilderness out of the druid you wind up with a pretty good godless/nature-less class. Paladin, well paladin...

So with this update:
Strongly culturally or geographically biased classes:
Barbarian - Savage and Wilderness
Bard - Instrument and singing entertainer only
Druid - Wilderness
Monk - Asian, punching
Paladin - European, Priestly
Ranger - Wilderness
Cleric - Priestly

Pretty strongly not culturally or geographically biased classes:
Fighter - None
Rogue - None
Wizard - None
Sorcerer - None