Does anyone miss the generic cleric?

[shadow]

There was a poll awhile back about godless clerics. That got me thinking about early incarnations of the game where clerics served generic religions. The 2e PHB even said that in the basic game clerics served religions that only needed to be described as "good" or "evil". Although I like the new flexibility of the class, I am beginning to miss the generic clerics. Part of the problem IMHO is that 3e pretty much forces the DM to create a detailed pantheon for his campaign.

I don't know about other DMs, but I don't like to bring up religion in my game. It's a very sensitive subject for many people. I've faced two problems with religion. The first came from a conservative Christian player who was a little wary of having to "worship" false gods, even if it was just a game. On the other end of the spectrum, I've met some really disturbing players who religiously read the 2e Forgotten Realms Faiths and Avatars book and got a little too into it and actually wanted to act out the rituals to their god.

The 1e and 2e cleric allowed me to take religion out of the game, and just have clerics serve a generic religion. The game worked perfectly fine without having to detail the god, or gods the cleric served. Now it seems that 3e, with the different domains is requiring me to create various deities for my campaign. Doubtless that many DMs really love creating detailed pantheons with detailed histories. That's fine, but I never understood why most DMs can accept a generic universal language (common) and generic economies that seem to be based on treasure found in dungeons, but are unable to accept generic religions.

It is possible to create a generic religion, but 3e is really geared toward a very specific polytheistic faith system. The DM's guide even says that polytheism is the default assumption. This is quite a far cry from 1e and 2e where the DM could design his own religious system and incorporate religion into the game as much or as little as he wanted to.

 

[Remathilis]

There was a poll awhile back about godless clerics. That got me thinking about early incarnations of the game where clerics served generic religions. The 2e PHB even said that in the basic game clerics served religions that only needed to be described as "good" or "evil". Although I like the new flexibility of the class, I am beginning to miss the generic clerics. Part of the problem IMHO is that 3e pretty much forces the DM to create a detailed pantheon for his campaign.

I don't know about other DMs, but I don't like to bring up religion in my game. It's a very sensitive subject for many people. I've faced two problems with religion. The first came from a conservative Christian player who was a little wary of having to "worship" false gods, even if it was just a game. On the other end of the spectrum, I've met some really disturbing players who religiously read the 2e Forgotten Realms Faiths and Avatars book and got a little too into it and actually wanted to act out the rituals to their god.

The 1e and 2e cleric allowed me to take religion out of the game, and just have clerics serve a generic religion. The game worked perfectly fine without having to detail the god, or gods the cleric served. Now it seems that 3e, with the different domains is requiring me to create various deities for my campaign. Doubtless that many DMs really love creating detailed pantheons with detailed histories. That's fine, but I never understood why most DMs can accept a generic universal language (common) and generic economies that seem to be based on treasure found in dungeons, but are unable to accept generic religions.

It is possible to create a generic religion, but 3e is really geared toward a very specific polytheistic faith system. The DM's guide even says that polytheism is the default assumption. This is quite a far cry from 1e and 2e where the DM could design his own religious system and incorporate religion into the game as much or as little as he wanted to.

3.x doesn't FORCE you to create a pantheon, by any stretch of the imagination!

You could easily set up two cosmic forces (we'll call them light and darkness) and allow priests to pick domains depending on thier outlook.
For example

Light: Good, Law, Sun, Healing, Protection, Knowledge
Darkness: Evil, Chaos, Death, Destruction, Trickery, War
Either: Air, Animal, Plant, Travel, Water, Fire, Earth, Magic

Simple generic patrons mostly decided from an alignment POV. you can tailor it more or less.

1e fit all priests into one class, with NO customization. 2e gave you so much customization, it was impossible to balance. 3e seems to fall nicely in between.

 

[Spatula]

The 3E cleric is very generic, aside from the domains, but the domains don't require you to design a detailed pantheon. Just have cleric PCs pick two domains. Or assign domains based on alignment - A cleric worshipping "good" would get Good plus Healing or another alignment domain (Lawful, Chaotic). This is assuming that you don't just use the stock pantheon presented in the PHB, for whatever reason.

Or remove domains altogether. The cleric already has plenty of power without them.

 

[Ron]

Despite having no problem with the current cleric, I kind of enjoy the old generalist clerics. I always assume that, even in a polytheistic society, many of the lesser deities would not have many shrines dedicated exclusively to them. As such, it would made sense to have generalist clerics that would be able to mediate the affairs of the mundane with the divine, without being servants of a specific diety. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what happens in most South American's tribes, as well as with the Afro-Brazilian religions. I known that some Greek and Roman goods had specialist priest, but I wonder if there weren't also generalist clerics. As I understand, normal people would ask divine favors to several dieties, depending of the specific need. Polytheism, as implemented by D&D sounds a little bit weird, as it implies that most of the people is devote to a single diety.

 

[Halivar]

Or remove domains altogether. The cleric already has plenty of power without them.

From the OP, it doesn't seem as if it's the domains that are the problem. This guy's group is having a problem with specific RP religions with named deities n' junk. I can see that.

It just so happens that I and everyone in my gaming group are "conservative Christians" (if you had to apply strict secular categories to it), and we often invite friends from church, etc. to play with us. In our regular gaming group, we don't have a problem with using the D&D pantheon (after all, Tolkien had his "Illuvitar" and most Christian folk don't call Tolkien a satanist).

But if I were, say, having over kids from the youth program at the church (which we often do) come over to play, I would allow free use of mix-n'-match domains and nameless "good" vs. "evil" clerics. Mostly this is because we don't want angry parents calling us up and yelling at us for debasing their kids.

In the end, the D&D pantheon doesn't have a real big affect on our game (except that one time we had Bahamut show up and shower us with gifts... that was cool ), so removal of the pantheon altogether is not really that big of a deal.

That is, if you're not playing with the BoED (*drool*). A little harder then.

 

[Aaron L]

I can't imagine a game where the gods and'or religions aren't named. Do you have names for cities in the game, or are they just the place where you sell loot? I've read about this tyoe of game several times now, and each time it gets more bizarre to me. How can you have a setting without something as basic as religions even named? Do the nations or kingdoms have names??

 

[I'm A Banana]

In my "inspired by the three great monotheisms" campaign setting, there could even be a question as to whether or not a deity exists, and not affect the mechanics at all...

The basic idea is that faith powers your spells, regardless of worship or not...deities serve as ways to focus your faith and associate with others. They're powerful loci for faith, it seems, but far from essential.

Worship "good" and "evil" and play mix-n-match with the domains...no problems at all.

 

[hunter1828]

I've never had "generic" clerics in a game. Going all the way back to original D&D in the late '70s I made players pick a deity for their cleric (heck, I usually made all players regardless of class pick a deity).

hunter1828

 

[Halivar]

I can't imagine a game where the gods and'or religions aren't named. Do you have names for cities in the game, or are they just the place where you sell loot? I've read about this tyoe of game several times now, and each time it gets more bizarre to me. How can you have a setting without something as basic as religions even named? Do the nations or kingdoms have names??

All I can really say to this is point to stories that I consider "flav-o-rific" that do not typically involve named deities like WoT (the "Creator" verses "the Dark One") and LotR (if you don't include the Silmarillion).

I'm not saying it's preferrable, just saying it's possible. Heck, I've played fun campaigns where we didn't even have defined, consistent maps, governments, regions or geography. In the end, flavor and atmosphere depend entirely on how the DM and players tell the story.

For most people (and my gaming group), that includes a named pantheon. It just doesn't have to, though.

 

[shadow]

I can't imagine a game where the gods and'or religions aren't named. Do you have names for cities in the game, or are they just the place where you sell loot? I've read about this tyoe of game several times now, and each time it gets more bizarre to me. How can you have a setting without something as basic as religions even named? Do the nations or kingdoms have names??

Actually, I've played in games where cities were just places to sell loot.

I think it's interesting that most people are able to able to accept many totally generic and evasive D&D concepts, but are not able to accept a generic religion. Take for example languages. In most campaigns I've played in speak language is a totally useless skill. Everyone has no problem accepting the fact that everyone on the planet speaks modern day English (eg. common). Even in the rare instances when there are other languages, they are usually pretty generic; elves speak Elvish, dwarves speak Dwarvish, etc.
The same goes for economics. No one has a problem with the totally generic economic system found in D&D. Every country uses the same coinage, which is apparently based on treasure looted from ancient ruins. No consideration is ever given to relative rarity of goods, supply and demand, ect.
With the amount of generic concepts found in most campaigns, I have no trouble accepting generic religions. In my current campaign, the cleric works for "The Church". No more needs to be said.

The interesting thing is that Tolkien never directly mentioned religion in The Lord of the Rings. Sure, the Similarillian goes into a lot of detail about the religion and myths of Middle Earth, but The Lord of the Rings never directly mentions any type of religion. So, it is possible to do a story without religion.