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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4673040" data-attributes="member: 54707">Me personally, Joe, I've done away with spells for Clerics. Instead Clerics, Monks, and Hermits gain spiritual and saintly power for deep prayer, contemplation, meditation, communion with God, pilgrimages, and the doing of good works. (Then again I've done away with spells for Wizards too, but in a different way. Or rather I should say Wizards can have spells if they wish, but don't need to have them, they can control magic without spells.)Clerics pray and do other things for spiritual power and then later on, when in an adventure they pray for specific effects and then God either grants that prayer, does not grant that prayer, or grants in an unanticipated or unforeseen way. But there are no spells, though players can use spells to give them ideas for what to pray about. (Spells become idea-templates for what one might pray for as an effect, but they aren't spells with preconceived formulaic reactions.)God does all the actual deciding of how what the cleric prays for works. (I have a system for this.) This way divine magic becomes what it really should have been all along, not magic at all but a miracle based on spiritual power and capability. The spiritual power and authority comes from God but the spiritual work is channeled (though channeled is not the proper word I sue it for sake of easy understanding) through the agency of the cleric or monk or hermit.If however one were playing a more rational Cleric-deity spell structure I think EW had a few good ideas.Especially these:You might also have angels or other godly servants deliver them by dreams, vision, or visit, prayers might be found in ancient prayer books and sacred texts (maybe even in disguised form), written into monuments, stored in secret or invisible writings on icons (maybe even the Icon Image itself reveals the prayer or spell), revealed as pilgrimage or a trip to a shrine or "sacred spot," connected with a relic (such as inscribed into the bones of a Saint), woven into the threads of a sacred shroud, and so forth and so on.</blockquote>

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