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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haldrik" data-source="post: 8048410" data-attributes="member: 6694221">I basically agree. The main need in the Players Handbook is a heads-up. WotC updates the core rules in the Players Handbook to give players an official welcome to use the Cleric class for various kinds of sacred traditions. Players just need to know they can use the Cleric in these ways. For details about a particular religion, only the specific setting can describe it. The Cleric class description does well to be brief and suggestive.I reread the Xanathars sidebar. Its "cosmic force" covers many reallife nontheistic sacred traditions. For example, Daoism has the "forces" of Yang and Yin, that extend to the five elemental ways of moving: moving down like water, moving up like fire, moving outward and encompassing like air/tree, moving inward and concentrating like metal, and finally just being still like soil/space. The Hellenistic elemental states of matter are absolutely sacred concepts, that inform all being: earth/solid, water/liquid, air/gas, fire/plasma (including sun, stars, and lightning), and the fifth element being force (understood variously, such as gravity keeping planets in orbit or spirit being inherently conscious). These elemental motions or substances are sacred concepts that are cosmic and holy, and at the same time, devoid of theistic personfication.Dark Sun is correct to ascribe the four elemental "forces" to the Cleric class as sacred.I go further here. Make Dark Sun psionics the "fifth element", being simultaneously "force" and "consciousness". Ultimately, the four elements are each made out of "force", in a kind of grand-unification-theory, that informs the Dark Sun sacred teachings as a kind of monism. Psionic phenomena thus receives veneration as a comprehensive holistic reality. Meanwhile the four elements weave together matter as a detailed atomistic reality.The "cosmic force" also includes abstract concepts, like the power of love. Compare certain traditions in Christianity and Sufi Islam, where "God is love", literally. In this sense, the monotheism is abstract, and beyond a finite personification. This nontheistic monotheism, sotospeak, is useful for D&D because "God" understood as a sacred abstract principle allows for a monotheism that, heh, doesnt require the DM to pretend to be an infinite omniscient Being. Within a 5e perspective, the souls in Shadowfell/Gray and elsewhere eventually disintegrate. It is unclear if or where these souls go. Possibly D&D monotheism preserves an optimistic hope that these souls transcend, reunifying with the "Infinite" beyond. Perhaps, some Dark Sun traditions can interpret psionics with special sacred significance in the sense of an expanding mind and force, that anticipates this future reunion with the infinite. Dark Sun is bleak and lifeless, and such optimistic sacred traditions should be rare for flavor reasons. But perhaps realistically, where the finite is cruel, perhaps there is solace in the hope that the infinite is compassionate. This hope motivates the sacred tradition to make this finite world more compassionate, more in unity with the infinite.An other benefit of the Xanathars articulation of a "cosmic force" is it feels more realistic. D&D 3e expanded the Cleric by making "faith" the source of divine power, which ended up solipsistic and silly. A popular D&D comic, the Order of the Sticks, humorizes the absurdity well, by having its bard character gain levels in Cleric by having "faith" in his hand puppet, Banjo the Clown. By constrast in D&D 5e, a hand puppet is less likely to function meaningfully as a "cosmic force". For D&D 5e sacred traditions, there must be some kind of identifiable "force" thus feels more plausible. For example, the "power of love" in the sense of one individual seeking the wellbeing of an other individual, can be a plausible nontheistic "ethical philosophy" corresponding to the power of the Chaotic Good alignment.Finally, with regard to sidebar. For the Players Handbook, the Cleric class does well to specifically mention "animism" as a sacred tradition. Earlier editions of D&D presented the "shaman" in ways that occasionally defame "uncivilized" ethnicities. It is helpful for the sidebar to mention animism in a positive light as a sacred tradition that "reveres" (not worships) nature and seeks healthy coexistence with nature, and relates with the (psionic) minds and personalities of natural features in a reciprocal neighborly way. For Dark Sun, the ethical philosophy of Preserving is a kind of sacred animism. Also specify "ancestor reverence", since so many reallife sacred traditions are expressions of love toward ancient family members. In Eberron, the elven sacred tradition involving positive-energy undead is an expression of "ancestor reverence". Basically, glance thru what Eberron and Dark Sun are doing, and be inclusive of the religious diversity within these official settings. These sacred themes are prominent tropes across all of the D&D stories anyway. This brief summary for the Cleric class allows plenty of room for a player to explore various character concepts for their Cleric character. They can find a concept that they love, or at least can figure out a concept that they can live with.</blockquote>

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