Good Clerics and "Wasted" Spell Slots

[mmu1]

Here's something I've been thinking about lately:

How do Clerics of most good deities justify going to bed at night with unused spell slots? (the non-adventuring ones, at any rate - who can reasonably expect to be able to sleep through the night without being attacked) After all, there are tons of beneficial spells that have no monetary or XP cost, and which take between 6 seconds and several minutes to cast. The effort to prepare those spells each morning is the same whether they get cast or not, so hoarding them really is just pure laziness.

I'm not asking, mind you, to come up with a hand-wave or justification for it. That's easy, you can just say "God X wants you to help only those who believe in him" or "Goddess Y wants her followers to make their own way in the world instead of relying on the priesthood to solve all their problems for them".

Instead, what I'm asking is whether it's morally justifiable - for someone Good (in the D&D alignment sense) - to let a valuable resource that costs the user virtually nothing to go to waste when it'd be simple to find someone who needs it. (as in, when you're in a major city)

Is the huge inconvenience you'd incur if you announced yourself as a source of free healing enough to justify not doing so? What, exactly, do NPC Clerics do with all the time they don't spend casting Remove Disease and Lesser Restoration on PCs? Do they need to keep spells reserved for paying customers to keep their struggling temples afloat in difficult economic times?

 

[amysrevenge]

How do Clerics of most good deities justify going to bed at night with unused spell slots?

I think at the core the problem is that it has proved very difficult for developers to produce a realistic, internally consistent, sensible society that would evolve around the ubiquitous presense of magic. The physical effects of magic are easy - the social effects are most definitely not.

I vaguely recall an article in Dragon years back about designing castles in a world with magic. Earth-style castles serve practically no purpose in a world with a) intelligent flying monsters and b) magic users. There are any number of fantasy tropes that either make no sense or would really be wildly altered in a "real" setting - city walls, taxes, laws, hierarchies, social organizations, etc. It would be an interesting exercise (for someone more creative than me) to try to come up with such a setting, but I think that we would be hard pressed to recognize it or operate within it if it truly took all of the social effects of magic into account.

 

[Creeping Death]

Well, for one, the people would take you for granted. Or take your patron god for granted. When you start giving things away to people, that's what they come to expect. They then develop and attitude of entitlement that is not good for them nor good for you. Once that happens feelings of resentment can build. This would be a bad thing and therefore the opposite of good.

 

[roguerouge]

Because redemption and salvation requires an active choice to change and a certain amount of sacrifice.

 

[delericho]

How do Clerics of most good deities justify going to bed at night with unused spell slots? (the non-adventuring ones, at any rate - who can reasonably expect to be able to sleep through the night without being attacked)

Well, quite a few reasons:

1) Per the DMG, most societies will have a very small number of (mostly low-level) Clerics. The rest of the temple staff will actually be Adepts or lay members of the clergy. So, actually, there won't be that many spell slots to go around anyway.

2) Only Clerics can convert spells, and then only to Cures (in the case of Good Clerics). If they have prepared the wrong spells, they may well not have an obvious use for them anyway. The rural Cleric might well prepare Purify Food and Water as a matter of course, and find that most days it is not needed (it's the sort of spell that they probably don't need often, but when they do, it's one they really need). Combine that with a lack of injury in the community, and you have an unused spell slot.

3) Many faiths, and particularly rural faiths, will place a significant level of importance on self-reliance. The Cleric can't be everywhere, so people will have to take care of themselves. Therefore, simply because the Cleric can use his spell slots of solve various trivial problems, it doesn't mean that he should. (Most parents don't do their children's homework for them.)

4) The Cleric has to eat, the temple has to be maintained, and so forth. Just as a Good blacksmith can sleep at night even knowing he hasn't reshod every horse in the village for free, so too can the Good Cleric sleep without using every spell he has.

5) Even if the Cleric was determined to use every slot in as constructive manner as possible, it would actually be quite an effort for him to find that optimum use. At the end of the day, if the Cleric has half a dozen minor spells left, how much time should he be spending going out and about finding people to benefit? And how does he choose who is worthy?

 

[roguerouge]

Because there aren't that many basic cleric spells that are useful in daily life if no one is injured? And the ones that are useful might alienate your community if used daily?

Useful spells outside of combat and in daily ordinary life:

0: create water, guidance, light, mending (daily use might upset craftsmen), purify food and drink (outside emergencies, daily use might upset farmers who depend on people buying replacement food).

1: endure elements (comprehend languages affects only you, while the combat buffs don't last long enough to help hunters)

2: augury (although that failure rate ensures that you'll mislead a number of people), gentle repose (for wakes), make whole (and see the craftsmen hate you), status (might help with hunting parties, I guess), zone of truth. The ability buffers, due to their limited durations, are less helpful than they once were: bull's strength (barn raising, I guess), owl's wisdom (if they come to you for advice on a problem), eagle's splendor (short duration really limits this one; perhaps to help those two kids who'd be good for each other get together).

3: Animate dead (in certain ruthlessly unsentimental societies; daily use might upset everyone, but especially laborers), continual flame (think rural electrification projects, daily use might upset candle makers and lamp oil purveyors), create food and water (daily use might upset the farmers), locate objects (daily use might upset city guides and urchins), prayer, remove curse/blindness/deafness, speak with dead, stone shape (daily use might upset stonemasons and other builders), water walk and water breathing (daily use might upset ferrymen).

So, I'd say that the cleric can cast the following spells daily without too many obviously negative repercussions: guidance, create water, endure elements, zone of truth, and prayer. Everything else is either unsuitable, unreliable, too short in duration or takes work away from people who need it.

 

[WayneLigon]

Instead, what I'm asking is whether it's morally justifiable - for someone Good (in the D&D alignment sense) - to let a valuable resource that costs the user virtually nothing to go to waste when it'd be simple to find someone who needs it. (as in, when you're in a major city)

I assume that priests of Good deities do exactly what you're suggesting. Now, in most of my worlds, the main cathedral to The Good God in a major city might have a couple hundred priests, priestesses, acolytes, etc running around the grounds but only maybe 5-10 of those people are going to be spellcasting Clerics or Paladins.

Those spellcasters will quietly be guided to those in greatest need for the best use of their limited ability to help; I need to come up with a term or name for the visitation, really. On the road, they'll quietly inquire as to who is ailing or who had an axe slip when cutting firewood and is now dying of infection, etc.

I'm sure that some places probably have a Healing of the Sick rite as part of their holy days. You get so many people show up and the expend a Cure Moderate Wounds wand or Remove Disease wand on them until it runs dry. Now, why don't they just pump those out and have everyone disease-free? It's ruininously expensive and at some point morality always takes a back seat to economics.

That kinda depends on how you view your economy, though. To me, 5000gp is an amount of money few people other than adventurers see in their lives. Honestly, I just use the prices because I'm too lazy to come up with another way of putting brakes on magic item creation and purchase, which is the only and sole reason that money usually even exists in D&D. After about third level, no-one ever worries about money for anything else, ever again.

I just assume that the PCs have this kind of cash and everyone else is glad if they see some silver a few times a week. 5000gp to make a third-level-spell wand is a little steep to cure 50 people in a city of 25,000, so they might well do that just once a year or only on special occassions like crowning a new king. They'd probably try to lay in a stock of 2-3 in case of a major plague. They might well do it based on some kind of lottery to prevent riots.

 

[genshou]

...or takes work away from people who need it.

If you read the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, it does a pretty good job of explaining the use of magic in construction. Yes, having even one high-level Wizard who can cast telekinesis means a lot less work required by basic labourers. Then again, look at modern construction and farming. Civilization adapts based on the tools and methods available to it. Where there are magical means to create food or construct masonry, they will often be the preferred method. I've put spellcasters in the stonemason's guilds in my campaigns. It's reliable and safe work for the physically frail NPC wizards, who don't much feel like going underground to kill things and take their stuff.

 

[mmu1]

Because there aren't that many basic cleric spells that are useful in daily life if no one is injured?

I think you're understating things a bit, but even going with that list, it's hard to imagine a human society in which a Cleric wouldn't be able to use up as many Lesser Restoration and Remove Disease spells each day as he could memorize - and save a lot of lives in the process.

Cure spells are small potatoes in comparison, in daily life (going strictly by the rules) - since in the vast majority of cases the damage will either kill outright, and there's nothing you can do without a 9th level cleric and 5000gp worth of diamonds, or it won't, and the injured person will recover in a week or two with adequate medical care.

Sure, it's boring as hell for a caster, and a good reason why no PC will ever do it, but it's simple and it's the right thing to do.

 

[mmu1]

I just assume that the PCs have this kind of cash and everyone else is glad if they see some silver a few times a week. 5000gp to make a third-level-spell wand is a little steep to cure 50 people in a city of 25,000, so they might well do that just once a year or only on special occassions like crowning a new king. They'd probably try to lay in a stock of 2-3 in case of a major plague. They might well do it based on some kind of lottery to prevent riots.

You know, this brings up a good point. If you have 5000gp, you can probably save more lives by using it to feed the poor, clothe the orphans, establish a hospital, etc. than by blowing it on a handful of spells that will only help a few people.

So I suppose a Good and pragmatic church might choose to sell spells to a small number of rich people, in order to get the money that could improve the lives of many more.

On the other hand, is it right to let someone face certain death (for example, by saving a Cure Disease for a paying adventurer or a noble) to potentially be able to use that money in the future to help a larger number of people?

Also, what if no paying customers turn up? When is the point, late at night, where you decide you're better off going out an healing the sick after all, because adventurers that fought wererats and will pay hundreds of gold for multiple Cure Disease spells probably won't be turning up after all?

I'd argue that genuinely Good churches would try to earn as much money for charitable works as possible, but would never let someone who needed help right now die because, potentially, they might be able to achieve a greater good down the line. Which means they'd need to be vigilant about not letting spells go to waste, ever.