D&D without the Cleric

[harperscout]

In an effort to create a different feel to the D&D game, a friend of mine and I spent about 4 hours in my basement dividing up all the spells in the PHB into spheres (Life, Death, Elemental, Celerity, etc). In doing so, we combined all spells into one spell list, and divided them not by class, but by description.

Now that we have done this, we are debating what to do with the Cleric Class.

The notion of a cleric hurling a fireball, followed by a lightning bolt, all while wearing heavy platemail feels like it is too over-powering, but is it?

We thought that following Monte Cook's lead would be a good idea also, and just nixing the Cleric all together, and simply creating a feat for it would work as well.

I realize that this is all very broad and not very clear about the idea, but has anyone tried something like this? Or has someone nixed the Cleric class all together in a traditional D&D game and what was it like?

Attached to the thread is the spell list as we reorganized it. Feedback is apriciated.

Thanks.

 

[Crothian]

Nixing ther cleric is find as long as magical healing comes from somewhere else. That's the only thing that a cleric does that needs replacing.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

In nearly every D&D game I've run there has been no cleric or druid. They've made do with potions and wands/staves which they could use via ranger levels, paladin levels, bard levels, use magic device or in one case by dropping 1 level into cleric. Wasn't too much in combat healing but PCs usually live long enough to get patched up after the battle.

 

[Kisanji Arael]

This sounds very much like what I'm doing in my game. I've found that water spells seem to merge very nicely with healing. Also, one could put a cauterization spell in fire or a "the healing of the land" in earth if you felt like it.

Of course, what do you quality as "life" spells if healing doesn't make the cut?

Could you extrapolate? I'm really interested in your work. (Oh, and where's your attachment?)

 

[harperscout]

I am not excatly sure what happened to the attachment, and of course I am not on the same PC as where the attachment is.

Anyway, yeah, we put the healing spells into the "Life" Sphere and the Harm spells into the "Death" Sphere. I think our breakdown actually worked out very nicely. What we were trying to accomplish was a revamping of magic in a way that diversified the primary spell casters - wizards, Sorcerers, and to a lesser extent - druids. We are requiring a wizard to specialize in one sphere, and only allowing access by any spell caster to a max of 9 spheres (there are 11). Its great, because now a wizard may specialize in the knowledge domain and look a lot like what a cleric is today and won't be limited by only having wizard divination spells.

One area of focus we are looking at is doing away with the cleric, and (following Monte Cook) creating a "Priest" feat that any class could take which would denote that character as not just a fighter, but a fighter who also is a priest (here is where you get your warrior-cleric, or your wizard-cleric). Now a wizard could specialize in the Life sphere, also take the celarity and knowledge spheres, and include the priest feat and look very much like the cleric contained in the PHB.

Where I am stuck in my brainstorming is: what would a feat tree look like to follow the Priest feat. I think it would be interesting to give characters the opportunity to spend their energy on the religious committment, and take feats that reflect this.

Feat Tree example:

Priest (+2 diplomacy check when interacting with followers of your same faith, and you gain the skill knowledge religion)
- Senior Pastor (req: Priest Feat, Wisdom 14) (benifits: +2 intimidate check, and you gain one of the supernatural abilites granted by your god. This ability may be used a number of times equal to your charisma modifier)
- Proctor of the Church (req: Priest feat, Senior Pastor feat, Wisdom 16) (benifits: You gain Knowledge Nobility and Knowledge geography as class skills. You also gain a secondary supernatural ability granted by your god. This ability may be used a number of times per day equal to your charisma modifier)
- Rite of Holy Orders (req: Priest feat, Senior Pastor feat, Wisdom 18) benifits: You gain +4 to all charisma based skills when interacting with anyone who follows your same god. You gain a third supernatural ability granted by your god. This ability may be use a number of times per day equal to your charisma modifier.


Okay, so that is a rough sketch, just off the top of my head what I think a feat tree could look like. I haven't even thought of what the supernatural abilities could be yet. Heck, we don't even have the god's designed yet.

Wouldn't it be cool to see a fighter with a Wisdom of 18, a charisma of 16, and then fill in the rest of the stats around that? It would just be cool to see character creation be taken outside of the norm and people to consider options like this.

Alright so you asked me to extrapolate a bit... so beat it up now

 

[XeviatTranion]

I'd be very interested in seeing your spheres. I'm currently designing an elemental magic system, classifying all spells into Air, Earth, Fire, Water, All, and some into Void. I'm looking into the possibility of reducing the number of casters to 1, 2, or 3 (currently I have 5, not counting the half-casters), so help categorizing magic would be great.

 

[Herobizkit]

Very very easy fix.

Cleric = Wizard, or Sorcerer, at your leisure.

All spells become arcane. "Clerics" are merely Wizards who specialize in Healing and Life magic.

 

[Nyaricus]

harper scout, i'd love to see what you've done here. Please grab and post that attachment ASAP - this looks so cool Very 2nd edition feel with the spheres and all, and i dunno, this might help my low magic world in some ways . . . cant wait to see this, anywasy

Cheers!

 

[Aikuchi]

I'm certainly interested in seeing you efforts as well.

I'm in the midst of unifying magic into a whole miasma rather than divisible by arcane and divine sources. Merging them is more in line with the altered cosmology I've introduced and the deific systems.

I look forward to reviewing your list

Thank you for your efforts.

 

[ARandomGod]

Very very easy fix.

Cleric = Wizard, or Sorcerer, at your leisure.

All spells become arcane. "Clerics" are merely Wizards who specialize in Healing and Life magic.

I agree with this.

Of course, I'd leave life and death in the 'necromancy' sphere (rename that at will, of course). Any magic that heals has a great potential for harm. If you know how to grow tissue together you know how to grow it apart. If you can encourage the life-force of a mammal to strengthen, you can encourage the life-force of parasites and diseases too! For that matter, if you can drain the life-force of parisites and diseases to heal, you can drain straight from the life-force of the "host" as well, couldn't you?

And then, personally, I'd boost the "scholar" class (which is what I'd name it) to have d6 HP, and be able to wear light armor. Possibly only with a feat...