Getting rid of clerics in my homebrew.

[shadow]

I must admit, I've never liked the cleric class. Whereas the other classes have at least some representation in fantasy and mythical archetypes, the cleric class seems like a true D&D-ism. Sure there are myths and legends of priests and servants of gods, but I can find no examples of spellcasting priests in either classical mythology or fantasy literature (with the exception of D&D inspired fantasy novels). Moreover, the cleric class forces the D&D game to have one particular type of cosmology - a polytheistic loose pantheon where the gods are extremely active in mortal affairs.
In my homebrew setting, I've been wanting to do things a little differently. I've been developing a lower magic setting dominated by a monotheistic church. In my setting, the divine doesn't often interact in the affairs of mortals; I'm not against the idea of occasional miracles, but they should be mysterious and, well, "miraculous", not the mechanistic approach to divine magic of the cleric class. The cleric class as written makes this setting difficult. As such, I've thought about eliminating or modifying the cleric class. The difficulty lies in the fact that clerics are built into the foundation of the D&D game and are one of the default assumptions of any campaign. Most adventures and challenges are built with the assumption of healing and divine magic from the cleric class. Eliminating the cleric could completely unbalance a game. I've thought of a number of different solutions:

1. "The cult of saints" - A number of people have suggested that I keep the cleric class and simply change the gods to saints allowing me to keep the monotheistic church. However, this is a poor solution in my opinion. It really doesn't really change the core problems - the prevalance of the divine in the affairs of mortals and the mechanistic approach to divine magic. This simply takes the standard D&D assumption and gives it a new name.

2. Eliminate the cleric class altogether - This creates a lot of problems in designing adventures since it can completely unbalance the game.

3. Change the flavor of "divine magic" - Here the cleric class is seen as a different type of wizard. This, too, creates a lot of problems in trying to explain the setting. If clerics are just another type of wizard, why do they get a d8 hit die and get to wear armor when the "other wizards" only get a d4 hit die and no armor proficiency? (Not to mention the idea of cleric domains.)

4. Replace the cleric class with the healer class from Complete Divine - This would allow healing, but I'm sure many players would complain since the healer is underpowered compared to the cleric. Besides, the healer lacks all the neat spells the cleric has access to (In fact all the healer class can do is heal!)

5. Make clerics rare - Only the most faithful servants get access to spells. This could work; in fact, it was my original idea. However, I still don't like the idea of the mechanistic approach to divine spells.

6. Eliminate the cleric class and redistributing cleric spells to sorcerers and wizards - This would be very difficult to pull off since I would have to rebalance the spell lists. Also, I'm afraid it would make the sorcerer and wizard classes too powerful.

7. The Eberron approach - Everyone gets divine magic, but no one knows if it comes from the gods or not; clerics can actively work against the church and still recieve spells. Again, one of my problems is the prevalance of divine magic and its mechanistic approach.

8. Rewrite the cleric class - This could work, but it would be a lot of work trying to find something balanced and completely change major aspects of the game.

9. Some thing else - Any ideas?

 

[Tsillanabor]

I tried to do that and failed-closest I could come is getting rid of the cleric and keeping the druid.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Have you seen the archivist class from Heroes of Horror? It still has divine magic but it's not directly bestowed by the gods; rather, the archivist collects prayers and rites where he finds them and records them in a prayerbook, casting divine spells much like a wizard. Their intensive study of monsters allows them to give their allies tips and strategies for fighting them, increasing their effectiveness in combat.

The feel of the class is kind of perfect for a world without clerics: when knowledge of the gods is scarce and precious, gathering up all the information you can and recording it to gain an advantage against the aberrations, undead, demons and magical creatures stalking the land is a vital task. Knowledge of the gods could have been lost in a prior age, leaving only scraps of information to be found and treasured, or the gods could be deliberately distant from the world, doling out wisdom only to those who prove themselves worthy of it.

It's also much easier to control what kinds of magic archivists have access to, since like a wizard they must rely on what can be found in their travels or what limited insights they can glean from their own researches. You can cut out all sorts of troublesome, flashy or difficult spells by simply saying they can't be found.

 

[Turanil]

9. Some thing else - Any ideas?

Not sure this suggestion will fix your poblems, nonetheless...:

I much liked the Elenium novels by David Eddings:

It portrayed a monotheistic religion represented by the Holy Church, the whole thing looking loosely like the Christian faith in medieval times. In any case, its priests had no magic (they would be best represented by the Expert class), and the god worshipped never intervened in mortal affairs, so the priests had to ponder everything by themselves and interpret the religion's scriptures.

Nonetheless, there were evil cultists, demons, and what not with sorcery at their disposal who threatened civilization. As such, the Holy Church had been obliged to create four orders of knights (one order per kingdom of that faith, if I remember well) who were train in magic as well as in warfare to more effectively fight these evils. Note that not all of these knights were at the same level of competence regarding this use of magic.

So, here would be my suggestion: your monotheistic priests are of the Expert class, and don't have magic at their disposal. Then, there is an order of Knight Templars with magic, best represented by Clerics. Maybe the majority of templars are paladins, and only a few are of the cleric class (but still LG with paladin obligations), being those who train the others in magic. Only a few characters would be gifted, have the natural talent plu enough faith to become of the cleric class. So in the end, clerics are rare. Plus clerics are not priests, but Knight Templars fighting as Church Knights to defend the faith.

As for a cleric's spellcasting, you could change the flavor instead of changing the mechanics. They don't cast spells, they speak aloud prayers that will be answered only if they are to be used for a just cause that would further the faith. Whereas a wizard may cast a spell whenever he wants for any purposes however ludicrous (provided he has the spell prepared that's it), if the clerics casts a spell makes a prayer for a purpose not related to the religion (or fighting supernatural enemies of the faith), he looses his spellslot and nothing happens.

 

[Mordane76]

I tried getting rid of the cleric class for similar reasons to the ones you are dealing with - the homebrew setting I developed had at its center a religious duality similar in many respects to present-day Zoroastrianism, and I wanted the religions in my game to feel like present day religions in which God isn't coming down every other Thursday for tea.

However, I ran into the same problem you had - if I nix clerics, then I kill balance, because D&D assumes a certain access to curative magic. My first response was to create a PrC cleric class and limit divine magic to the first five levels of spells (0-4) while leaving druid intact with minor tweaks in their origins (definitely more animistic than divine). This worked to a degree, but it definitely made things more difficult in lower levels, and the cleric player was obviously underpowered beside his compatriots.

When I came back for a second go at the setting, I decided to change my perception of the gods instead of their followers, going more or less with what you called "The Eberron Approach." Without going into much detail (since some of my players are aware of ENWorld and might be reading this), this approach has allowed me the feel I wanted without sacrificing PCs, and player enjoyment, to get it. At some point, I expect the truth behind divine magic will come clean and it will make a great storyline, something I've been working on for awhile.

 

[Someone]

6. Eliminate the cleric class and redistributing cleric spells to sorcerers and wizards - This would be very difficult to pull off since I would have to rebalance the spell lists. Also, I'm afraid it would make the sorcerer and wizard classes too powerful.

After testing this variant myself, I can tell you this isn´t the case, specially if the only spells that make the transition are the "recovery" spells: Cure X wounds, Restorations, etc. Having to prepare cure spells and whatnot actually makes spellcasters less powerful, since they have to use part of their spells prepared/known to healing instead of the other interesting things wizards do.

Certainly, the sorcerer in my clericless game didn´t felt so powerful curing the party after each battle.

 

[Herobizkit]

I enjoy having clerics present in my game, as they can truly add flavour to any standard swords n sorcery type game... provided the DM includes said flavour in his or her game.

In your campaign, clerical magic is treated differently. So, here are my default suggestions for any cleric-less game.

1. Specialty Sorcerers who use cleric spells for their spell list instead of wizard spells. This can also be accomplished by replacing the cleric with the Favored Soul class (from the Miniatures Handbook, same place as your Healer). Sure, they can't turn undead, but that's what makes undead SCARY, right? Remove the extra treats and give them free metamagic every 5 levels and paf! Instant wizardly healing magic caster.

2. Replace the "Heal" skill with the "Treat Injury" skill found in d20 Modern. You can find it in the d20 Modern SRD.

3. REALLY mess them up; make the healers a strictly NPC class and hire them out like mercenaries. By definition, the healers in your campaign do not wander the countryside smashing evil and/or preaching to the uneducated, so why pretend they do just because "the game will be unbalanced" otherwise?

Also, bards have "cure" magic on their spell list, so if they REALLY want healing magic THAT bardly, er, badly... That fact alone could add some flavour to your game. For example, maybe Bards have the 'healing gift' so the lords and ladies have an agreement that Bards are 'untouchable' in their realms. They have the fantasy equivalent to diplomatic immunity in their own realms, perhaps even combined with the knightly right to ask for food and shelter from anyone. If no one wants to play a Bard after all that, then sucks to their ass-mar.

If you really care THAT much about balance, consider making healing tonics available (at cost) or be generous with wands/Staves of curing. If it were me, though, I'd tell the PC's to suck it up and be resourceful, because the safety is 'off' in your world.

 

[Sarellion]

Arcana Evolved/Unearthed was designed so that clerics aren´t needed. All spellcasters can cast healing spells with some of them having special healing abilities that don´t cut into the class spellcasting slots.

The question is if you want to introduce them and how much it´s going to affect your game. The spellcasting system is different from the D&D one. I personally would probably put the emphasis on the Arcana system and introduce a few non spell casting classes like rogue(would probably need modification) or fighter into the Arcana system.

But there are a few people on the board who mixed both systems and probably know more about it.

 

[Drowbane]

Things to do for my Homebrew...

- One basic spellcaster class, perhaps modeled after the Wizard (except d6 HD... HD will go from 6 to 12)
- Eight schools of magic. I feel as if I would have to throw out *alot* of spells that don't really fit the schools they are shoe-horned into... Conjuration's Orb spells for example.

Something along the lines of how Psionics works in the XPH. Each of the Arcane Specialists would have spells unique to their specialty, trade secrets of their school... and all could also learn from a pool of more mundane spells of the 8 Schools.

Thoughts?

Edit: The oddball magic users of 3.5 (Warlocks, Incarnates, Totemists, Binders, Psions, Wilders, etc) would be largely unchanged.

 

[Psion]

If you are going to do that, I'd yank out spellcasting classes entirely and replace it either with Arcana Evolved spellcasters or Elements of Magic Revised.