thullgrim said:
let me get a little more specific. The dwarves believe that long ago their gods forsake them. They are under the impression the gods up and left them. Their have contact with outside races and cultures. It would seem hard to sustain a culture in a D&D world without some form of magical healing. I agree on the state of medical science though.
Thullgrim
First, you need to decide whether Clerics
must serve a god, or can also serve philosophies (as has been mentioned) instead. If they can serve philosophies or other non-deity sources of divine power, then there can still be Dwarf clerics with the whole range of spells.
Second, you must decide what's really going on. It does not matter
what the Dwarves believe if there are gods that set up the rules for how magic (especially healing magic) works. If the gods are still there, and give out healing magic to the other races, the Dwarves can believe anything they like, but there will be no healing magic for them unless or until the gods decide to give it to them.
Next, you should understand [b}why[/B] the Dwarves are cut off. You said the Dwarves believe the gods long ago abandoned them. What of the scenario was more like the Dwarves misunderstood the nature of their relationship with the gods ? Suppose, for a moment, that the idea was that the mortal races worship the gods. Period. Nothing required in exchange, that's just how it is supposed to be. The gods, for their part, voluntarily give magic to their followers; perhaps as a way of showing each other up, of for other reasons. Dwarves, being somewhat avaricious as a racial fault, may have decided that this was some sort of trade; that the gods give them healing magic in exchange for worship. Over time, the Dwarven priests may have subtly altered the nature of their prayers, "bargaining hard" with their "trading partners" as Dwarves are known to do. The god were busy with other things, and did not really notice at first. Gradually, pleas became requests, and requests became demands; then the demands became commands. That's when the gods stopped giving the Dwarves magic, to remind the mortals of their place in the greater scheme of things. The gods are still there, waiting for the Dwarves to re-discover their humility. Until that time, though, there will be no Divine magic for the Dwarves.
Once you know what is going on, you can decide what the logicial effects are. No raising the dead means that funeral rites might change. Those who expect that they might be someday returned would want to be buried; a race that does not believe that can happen might move to destroying the body (to prevent its abuse as Undead) in a funeral pyre.
