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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shadow" data-source="post: 2991361" data-attributes="member: 2182">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?</blockquote>

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