How do you handle your clerics?

[CruelSummerLord]

In real life, many priests can be found preaching sermons every week, handing out food at soup kitchens, counselling convicts and the homeless, peforming marriages, teaching children, performing baptisms, hearing confessions, and everything in between. That doesn't leave a lot of time for adventuring, and it can become awkward if a PC has to keep running back to a specific temple every week to give a sermon, or some other priestly duty gets in the way.

How do you as a DM handle these things? Or, if you're a player, how does your DM handle it? Do your world's churches have specific adventuring arms of the faith that gather resources, intelligence and maybe converts for it, and perform specific tasks when required, in exchange for not having to handle the healings, sermons, exorcisms, and everything else in between? Do you require your PC clerics to do these things, or are you as a player or DM not keen on doing those things? Or do you enjoy actively roleplaying these types of experiences, disputes within the church hierarchy, etc.?

How do your clerics get along with other party members who may not belong to the faith? Are they allowed to travel in the company of such 'heretics'? Should they be required to convert before they can be healed? Are your players actively required to seek converts, or could they be needed for specific blessings, marriages, confessions, or exorcisms?

Post away.

 

[Kishin]

Well, what follows is of course opinion, bear in mind that Clerics != Priests in all cases, or at least, possessed of priestly duties. IMO They're sufficiently martial enough that most adventuring Clerics are probably drawn from a sect/branch within the church that functions in a more templar-like fashion. While an adventuring Cleric could still be wandering the land proselytizing and spreading the faith, its just as feasible to think that they advance the goals of the faith in another fashion (ie. Smiting evil, performing heroic deeds, or even acquiring wealth for the church's coffers)

Personally, I like how Eberron handles it. Therein, you have a large percentage of the clergy (particularly those handling day to day matters, such as leading worship) as Experts, rather than Clerics, who represent a rarer, better trained and gifted individual within the faith. Nothing's stopping these Clerics from fulfilling the duty of a normal priest, but I find its a good way to delineate the difference between a normal priest and a Cleric while at the same time placing emphasis on the mystique and wonder of divine magic.

YMMV, of course. Its ultimately a DM's own thing. I just don't think most players of religious characters want to be burdened with the frivolities and minutiae of a religious organization.

 

[jdrakeh]

D&D Clerics are basically Crusaders. They're much less lay priests than the title "Cleric" suggests. They wield powerful magic, explore strange new lands, and kill lots of monsters. Sure, they also heal stuff, but that's easily their least pronounced characteristic. At face value, they're combat-ready Crusaders who curry favor with a deity.

Personally, I hate this. HATE IT. This has long been my biggest dislike of D&D in all of its incarnations and was the primary reason that I started looking at other fantasy games. For years there simply weren't lay priests in D&D settings -- only spell-flinging, ass-kicking, Clerics. Not only is this very bizarre in terms of social structure but, to boot, this hedges in on the Paladin's niche considerably.

Really, the biggest difference between a Paladin and Cleric in D&D is that Paladins are assumed to be mounted and they get a matgical sword. So Paladins are Holy Cavalry and Clerics are Holy Foot Soldiers. Honestly, that's a pretty good fit for a martial-oriented game that has a lot of crusading going on, but it's a piss poor fit for most (if not all) fantasy fiction that I've read outside of D&D novels.

Years ago I created a Priest class that was basically the Cleric with less pronounced combat ability, though I eventually decided that I'd be better off simply using a system that either made a honest-to-god priest the default for "holy" characters or laid down some rationale for the default priest analogue having a pronounced warrior nature.

That was when I discovered HarnMaster and Runequest.

 

[Phazzar]

Whenever someone plays a cleric in my group (No one has in awhile, actually) they usually have a task that their church gave them to accomplish, as you suggested. They may be wanting to find some magical staff or something for their church, or they may just be on a pilgrimage.

In groups the cleric gets together well with the others as long as they don't make fun of their god or something. The cleric doesn't judge them unless they do something the cleric is seriously against. Usually nothing ever comes up and if it does it goes away fast.

 

[Aus_Snow]

To me, D&D Cleric = Templar.

There are, in my opinion, better options for a Priest base class (even the Cloistered Cleric from Unearthed Arcana, by Wizards of the Coast, could do the trick handily enough).


Also, to my mind, any adventuring priest/cleric/templar/whatever does just that: adventure. So really, the kinds of potential issues listed and hinted at just don't come up.

Other kinds of 'priests' can fill those other, more "static" roles.

 

[Aaron L]

In my world, Clerics are the mystic knights of the Church, specifically trained to go out and adventure and fight Evil. They don't preach (unless they really want to), they are trained to fight. Priests of the Church are Experts and (sometimes) Adepts.

All the Clerics belong to one religion, the Church of VHRN. Other religions have other classes as priests, such as Shugenja for the elemental warrior-priests of the Dwarves, Ardents for the philosopher-priests of the Medaeans, and Sorcerers for the devil worshiping tribes of the Cold Wastes.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

Personally, I hate this. HATE IT. This has long been my biggest dislike of D&D in all of its incarnations and was the primary reason that I started looking at other fantasy games. For yars there simply weren't lay priests in D&D settings -- only spell-flinging, ass-kicking, Clerics. Not only is this very bizarre in terms of social structure but, to boot, this hedges in on the Paladin's niche considerably.

If you would like a brief snippet into a world that actually has a glimpse of actual priests doing actual priestly things .... look at my Story Hour. In the first post there is a table of contents with links to chapters. Chapter 5: A Little Revenge gives a glimpse of the party of four adventurers interacting with priests who perform healings, make a medical diagnosis (after all, in those societies priest often meant doctor), and even spending multiple hours in meditation. Chapter 6: Heritage Reincarnated (among other things) gives a glimpse of a priest training one of the characters in magical arts.

Now, shameless plug aside ... This is one of the reasons that I really love the concept of Favored Souls over Clerics. Besides the fact that I like the mechanics of the FS (minus wings) much better than the Cleric, I find that Favored Souls fit the adventuring/butt=kicking image I have that most people fit clerics into. Not that the cleric doesn't fit, mind you. I just personally think that the FS fits better.

I used to play a bunch of clerics all the time. Now I hardly ever play clerics. I opt for Favored Soul almost always. It is mechanically much easier, they don't have the clunky turn undead mechanic to worry about, and their spell list is more challenging.

 

[Darklone]

Remove the cleric class. All clerics are bards.

All pagan/heathen priests are druids.

I don't like the crusader cleric that are more paladin than the paladin in D&D either.

 

[Phlebas]

I make cloistered cleric the default, unless you're following a martial god, and then follow the eberron idea that a lot of the day to day running of the church is looked after by experts and laymen, with clerics being the champions of the faith.

2 clerics in my campaign, one of which is on a mission to build a new temple since the old one was destroyed a century ago, the other is angling to be made high priest of his faith. both have 'duties' but i allow them to take time off if they're leaving the city on a mission of some kind.

I actually think it adds a lot of flavour to a campaign when characters are trying to finish adventures to make a sermon, or turn up to a meeting. keeps the time pressure on which is good for tension. I have a city based adventure (with occasional trips out - think 'city slickers')

As for the group - theres some good natured banter, and a race to convert one of the rogues (who happlily prays to all gods as do most of the population) . I wouldn't be happy with a 'convert' or no healing though I'd be quite happy with clerics refusing to help anyone who'd been disrespectful until they apologised or did some penance

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Clerics are not parish priests, administrators, et cetera. Those roles are filled by adepts and experts. Eberron does it this way and so do I in my own settings.

How do your clerics get along with other party members who may not belong to the faith? Are they allowed to travel in the company of such 'heretics'? Should they be required to convert before they can be healed? Are your players actively required to seek converts, or could they be needed for specific blessings, marriages, confessions, or exorcisms?

It would entirely depend on the faith and the individual cleric - there are Muslims who get along fine with Baptists and Roman Catholics who find it hard to tolerate the company of Buddhists.

Keep in mind the example of military chaplains, though - not every soldier can be stationed with a chaplain of his specific faith, so they might have to turn to a priest or rabbi or imam of a faith they don't belong to for spiritual counselling.

Right now I am really fond of Eberron, where there is tension between the faiths sparked by hardliners on both sides, but the two major religions of Khorvaire generally accomodate each other - in loose terms, the worshippers of Sovereign Host relate to the Church of the Silver Flame as Jews do to Christians; one faith owes its historical foundations to the other and believes itself to be the more complete faith, but the original is still going strong. The Sovereign Host has had things a lot better than Judaism has, though!

Other minority religions are little-understood, and criticised generally according to their surface associations. The elven religions sidestep the question of which god to worship by focusing on revering the great elves of the past; the kalashtar Path of Light likewise concentrates on something a little more specific, if no less abstract, than the Sovereign Host or the Silver Flame; the Blood of Vol gets a bad rap for its associations with the undead and would probably get a worse one if it was more generally understood that its faithful believe all deities to be evil tyrants that must be overthrown to lift the curse of mortality from the world.

There are some clear oppositions in the setting if you want to play them up: the Blood of Vol and the Church of the Silver Flame are natural enemies, as are the Sovereign Host and their evil "siblings", the Dark Six.