I am not happy with the current list of divine classes

[Sadrik]

I would like the divine characters made to fill roles of a religion rather than the current schema which is sort of- every religion has clerics- period.This is a fundamental question, how different should each cleric be from one another should every deity have different and separate class? Or should each class be a toolkit and the DM or campaign setting tell you which options are available to you. I think all of the roles are not being covered and I would hope that in 4E we get a much better spread of divine character possibilities. Lets look at the current list of divine power source classes from 3rd edition.

Cleric: the catchall divine class made to attempt to cover every deity and their worshipers, so powerful that their are few real choices outside of this class. Always argued to be a "knights templar", which does not make any sense for many deities.

Druid: shapechanger with nature spells, generally regarded as a powerful class.

Paladin: LG fighter with a smattering of spells,

Ranger: fighter-rogue, that should not get divine spells imho, and hopefully they wont in 4e- take a few levels in druid...

Shugenja: divine sorcerer, worships elemental spirits and gets elemental-like powers. Tied to an OA theme.

Favored Soul: divine sorcerer, that eventually becomes angelic.

Spirit Shaman: an alternative to the shapechanging druid and tied to a nature based spirit theme.

Archivist: a scholar of the divine, one who studies divinity and draws powers from that study.

There may be others that I am unaware of but those are the main ones.



A class is made up of three so far as I can tell: power source, role and profession. So, the question is what power source: divine, role (defender, striker, leader, control) and most importantly which profession should the classes encompass. These should be based off of the deities role in the game world. Ok, so here are some of my suggestions:

Paladin (defender): The paladin should take on the role of "knights templar" and holy warrior. Become a little more divine and allow most war gods, gods of justice, gods of the beast, and gods of personal skill and strength to devote themselves to this class of characters.

Priest (leader): The priest should take on the profession of divine scholar and scribe. Scribing is one of the most important roles in the ancient world for religions. The priest could be representative of a scholar of all things divine, a church scribe, and adherent to a more magical or less militant deity.

Mystic(controller or leader???): The mystic is the class that would take the religion to the extreme and not necessarily fit into a church like setting, could be seen as cultists, divine prophets, ascetics, and disciple of some little known or understood deity. Many deities could fit into this class. In fact, at least half of the deities would fit into this type of class.

Cleric(leader): This should represent the main line church based divine leader. With a little more bent toward militarism than the priest but less than the paladin. The cleric would likely still be the most present class among the deities.

Divine Assassin(striker): Not every deity is a good guy and not every deity holds good and righteous values. This is sort of the rogue/cleric that a paladin being a fighter/cleric. There are some examples of this in the real world.

Archivist(controller or leader???): A true scholar of divinity almost arcane in their understanding of the gods and the powers that they grant, not tied to a single divinity, they study and tap the power of the gods through their formulaic understanding of the deities. Where the cleric is master of one deity the archivist is master of none, but knows the concepts that make up all divinity.

Outside of those that are more organized: their are the druids shugenja and spirit shamans. What do you do with the characters that worship the elements, spirits or natural world? Do you make them part of the classes above and just make them part of their traditions or do you go a different route and make them based completely on a new power source. Personally, I like the idea of making them based on a different power source a nature power source or "feywild" power source to coin their new plane. Leave the divine power source to beings worshiped in the outer planes. But the natural power source could have its own classes that are represented as those above for the divine power source.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Or should each class be a toolkit and the DM or campaign setting tell you which options are available to you.

This is my preference, but then again, I believe that classes shouldn't be "job titles." I think they should be more like "career paths." Cleric career paths, IMHO, should have several options based upon their domains. Basicly, take the concept of domains and make it so that instead of getting a single power from each, you get a whole list of class features. Like any other class, you don't get those class features as early if you take a PrC, even if the PrC increases divine spellcasting levels

 

[Sadrik]

This is my preference, but then again, I believe that classes shouldn't be "job titles." I think they should be more like "career paths." Cleric career paths, IMHO, should have several options based upon their domains. Basicly, take the concept of domains and make it so that instead of getting a single power from each, you get a whole list of class features. Like any other class, you don't get those class features as early if you take a PrC, even if the PrC increases divine spellcasting levels

They are going to want to sell books and they want to have classes in every book. I am coming from that perspective. Otherwise, I think it would be good to have talent trees to take care of every deity. And have the "priest character simply select a role, a power source (divine) and a class. Then let every class feature be selected by the character based on their role, power source and class.

Or should each class be a toolkit and the DM or campaign setting tell you which options are available to you.

From everything that I have seen, this is the direction that they are decidedly not going in. Classes will fit in very specialized niches and most importantly (from their perspective) there will be many of them. Showcased by a PHBII, PHBIII etc.

 

[Keldryn]

I would like the divine characters made to fill roles of a religion rather than the current schema which is sort of- every religion has clerics- period.This is a fundamental question, how different should each cleric be from one another should every deity have different and separate class?

I don't think that each deity should have a different and separate class, as I don't think it really makes that much sense. But the whole D&D clerics and deities thing has become this weird entity unto itself that doesn't really resemble real-world or fictional mythologies -- he whole "utterly devoted to a single divine entity" cleric who is granted the ability to cast spells by his/her deity.

I think that religion should be most de-coupled from the character class system, as I think that would make more sense. It seems to me that the "high priest" of a god of War would be more likely to be a Fighter than any other class, perhaps with a touch of divine favour enhancing his martial skills.

Paladin (defender): The paladin should take on the role of "knights templar" and holy warrior. Become a little more divine and allow most war gods, gods of justice, gods of the beast, and gods of personal skill and strength to devote themselves to this class of characters.

I think it robs the Paladin of must of its flavour to simply make it a divinely-powered warrior. I prefer the older concepts of the Paladin as a warrior devoted to the ideals of good, and he receives his power from that devotion, not granted by a specific deity, which essentially makes the Paladin into a Cleric with worse spells and slightly better hit points and attack bonus.

Priest (leader): The priest should take on the profession of divine scholar and scribe. Scribing is one of the most important roles in the ancient world for religions. The priest could be representative of a scholar of all things divine, a church scribe, and adherent to a more magical or less militant deity.

I think the role of a "priest" can and should be fulfilled by a member of any class. Being devoted to a deity or pantheon, a scholar of all things divine, and a scribe doesn't have much to do with being granted the ability to cast spells by a divine entity. Why would the church of the god of knowledge or magic have priests and scribes of a Cleric-like class, rather than Wizards or Bards, for example, which seems to fit the theme a lot better.

But D&D isn't about to dump Clerics and divine spells, so I'd like to see Clerics move away from the devoted to a very narrow and specific cause sort of character. The way the class is currently structured, I think better fits the idea of a divine agent of a church (which could represent a pantheon of gods, a philosophy or belief, or even a single deity if people really insist on that) whose responsibility it is to go out into the world and act on behalf of the church. They are the protectors and warriors of the church, far too valuable to waste by having them hang around the church scribing documents and giving lectures to the common folk. Most of the members of a church who aren't taking an active (i.e. dangerous) role in the world should be commoners, experts, aristocrats, or what have you.

The idea of being a priest of the God of Thunder seems a little silly to me -- what possible useful purpose could he serve in the world? It's not like the God of Thunder needs mortal agents to run around the world stomping their feet really hard to make thunder happen.

I'm not necessarily opposed to divinely-powered characters, but I would really like to see a move away from the devoted-to-an-extremely-narrow-and-specialized-deity model to one where the priesthood represents an actual belief system (in the game world) that has some relevance in society. The Cleric is an extremely versatile class, as written, and it would be nice if the game's flavour actually worked with that concept instead of against it.

I like the idea of a divine-powered Mystic who spends a lot of time in isolation, pondering the mysteries of the divine and of the world; he's a fairly well-rounded character. But if he's a Mystic because he's a priest of the God of Philosophy and Navel-Gazing, then that strikes me as a bit silly.

I really disliked the 2nd Edition era where we had a Forgotten Realms book with essentially 80 different Cleric/Priest classes, one for each god.

 

[Celebrim]

The only major problem with the current system is that there are too many divine classes.

I don't think we need more than three at most.

Those three archetypes are:

Cleric/Priest: The current class is almost perfect IMO.
Shaman: Any concept that accesses the divine by a means other than the worship of a diety. The Green Ronin implementation is almost perfect IMO, except that it needs to kill the Druid and take some of his stuff. Wildshape probably needs to go (and turn into a spell perhaps with a talent tree that enhances access to it).
Champion: Divine half-castera, currently occupied by Paladin and Ranger. The Book of Righteousness implementation of Holy Warrior is the best I've seen so far, but it needs to be extended to all alignments, more domains, and be incorporated with a spell descriptor system that makes it more natural to assemble spell lists for domains.

One of the problems I've seen with most alternative cleric classes, is that I haven't seen one that is balanced once multiclassing is taken into consideration. The main cleric class is very resistant to multiclassing because they lose so much by doing so. But most implementations of non-cleric priestly classes I've seen can successfully out-cleric the cleric (uber-cleric) with a build like cleric 1/priest X or fighter 1/priest X, or else they can out sorcerer the sorcerer at a given level. This is the problem you run into with a scholarly cleric class. It starts heavily overlapping another niche, and that's almost always a recipe for disaster in a class system.

The best way to work around that flavor issue IMO is with a good system of drawbacks and advantages. If you want to play a non-combat scholarly cleric, take some combat drawbacks.

 

[Morrus]

They'll have the same amount of "stuff" in the PHB as they had in the 3rd Edition PHB. They won't be cramming eight years of books into one 200-page book, because that would be silly (well, impossible). Other "stuff" will come later.

 

[Celebrim]

But the whole D&D clerics and deities thing has become this weird entity unto itself that doesn't really resemble real-world or fictional mythologies -- he whole "utterly devoted to a single divine entity" cleric who is granted the ability to cast spells by his/her deity.

Huh? You don't think that there were priests of a single diety? You don't think that they were ascribed supernatural powers?

I think that religion should be most de-coupled from the character class system, as I think that would make more sense.

I agree only to the extent that if we are trying to capture an ancient feel (and that is a big if), there should be mechanics for the impact of religious observance by non-clerical classes. Then how much or how little religion should impact your campaign would be up to you, to tweak or ignore or emphasize, and not up to the mechanics or any single class.

It seems to me that the "high priest" of a god of War would be more likely to be a Fighter than any other class, perhaps with a touch of divine favour enhancing his martial skills.

We already have the 'fighter with divine favor' concept in the Paladin (which is IMO better referred to as the Champion class since the Paladin is somewhat specifically Christian in concept). I'm fairly sure that the priests of Ares (for instance) fought, but I'm equally sure that they weren't considered warriors first and foremost. And the priesthood of Athena - who is equally a war goddess - would certainly not have been warriors first and foremost.

which essentially makes the Paladin into a Cleric with worse spells and slightly better hit points and attack bonus.

Well, yes and no. Again, compare the cleric with the Holy Warrior class from 'Book of the Righteous' and I think you'll see that while that is true, the 'Champion' archetype still covers ground that would be difficult to cover with multiclassing alone. This is true also of the 'gish' (swordmage, bard, however we choose to implement it).

Why would the church of the god of knowledge or magic have priests and scribes of a Cleric-like class, rather than Wizards or Bards, for example, which seems to fit the theme a lot better.

If this is the flavor you prefer, it is easy to create it. Simply rule that X diety doesn't have clerics, and that his temples are staffed primarily with class X (whatever class X that you think is appropriate).

The way the class is currently structured, I think better fits the idea of a divine agent of a church (which could represent a pantheon of gods, a philosophy or belief, or even a single deity if people really insist on that) whose responsibility it is to go out into the world and act on behalf of the church.

Not my favored choice, but for a flavorful implementation of this see 'The Book of the Righteous'.

The idea of being a priest of the God of Thunder seems a little silly to me -- what possible useful purpose could he serve in the world? It's not like the God of Thunder needs mortal agents to run around the world stomping their feet really hard to make thunder happen.

Are you sure? Because while the idea of a omnipotent monotheist God need help from mortal agents to keep the world working doesn't make much sense, it is not at all clear to me that that necessarily is the case in a cosmology where the mightiest beings are mortals writ large with various foibles, limits to thier power, and where worship is more like bargaining than supplication.

I'm not necessarily opposed to divinely-powered characters, but I would really like to see a move away from the devoted-to-an-extremely-narrow-and-specialized-deity model to one where the priesthood represents an actual belief system (in the game world) that has some relevance in society.

To be fully frank, I see that not as failure of the class, but a failure of imagination and learning on the part of the DM. It takes work to make religion relative to an invented world, and most published gaming source material just doesn't help ease that burden. If you aren't yourself religious, or a student of religions, or a serious historian, I'd be terribly surprised if a society where unique philosophy, beliefs, and rituals played a great role simple sprung out of your head. And unfortunately, game designers seem rarely to fall into one of those three classes, and even more rarely manage to convince a company to publish a book of religious fluff when they are. Again, to hammer the point home, read 'The Book of the Righteous' if you don't think that the current system can be made to work.

Incidently, the same would be true of most anything. Seriously making ecology part of your world is hard unless you've studied it somewhat. Seriously making sailing vessels part of your world is hard unless you've studied them. Designing realistic and interesting cave systems is hard unless you've either studied them or better yet grubbed around in them for a few hours. It's not intended to be a knock on anyone; I'm just saying that if you don't really grok the material don't blame the game system for your shallow fluff.

 

[TwinBahamut]

There are pretty much just two types of priest in the world. The classic Christian name for these are the secular clergy and the regular clergy. The secular clergy are those who perform rituals and act as the mediator between normal people and the divine, what we normally call just priests or clerics. The regular clergy are those who hold themselves to an ascetic "regula", or rule, which is intended to let them lead a more holy life dedicated to their faith, in otehr words, monks. There is really no other significant kind worth mention, or further division strictly necessary. Even the difference between monotheisti and polytheistic religion changes this very little (since I would argue there is not a well-defined distinction between the two...).

Religious warriors as a whole, don't need to be cosidered as their own clerical role. I don't think there is a single religion which has a group of priests solely trained for battle. There are warriors who take up arms in the name of their religion, but they are never considered priests. There are priests who take up arms, but that is never considered to be the thing they should be doing. There were many monks (especially in eastern Asia) that took up arms, but that was mostly for self-defense (not always), and their martial arts tended to be based on the ascetic principles and religious ideals they devoted themselves to.

The D&D style Holy Warrior or Paladin is pretty much a D&Dism inspired by particular individuals, not institutions, and should stay that way. I always cringe whenever I hear someone talking about having orders of Paladins protecting every church... Ugh...

The Druid is an odd beast, since real-world druids were pretty much conventional priests. The class itself is more thoroughly based on the idea of the wise forest hermit, but that idea has closer ties to D&D arcane casters, and real world monks.

D&D really needs three, and pretty much only three, Divine classes.

1) A proper cleric, designed to serve as a religious leader for a community. I say ditch the heavy armor and weapons, leaving those to multiclass characters, and stick with the kinds of things clerics are supposed to do (which the traditional cleric class does poorly).

2) A proper monk, which gains supernatural power through ascetic devotion. Less emphasis on martial arts, and more emphasis on divine power and sage-like wisdom, would help a lot.

3) A Paladin, just to cover the rare indivdual who is called to action for a just cause directly by a divine power. The current rules are good enough, I guess.

Of course, if you want greater historical accuracy, the Arcane/Divine split needs to go, but since that battle is already over for 4E, there is no use dwelling on it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, my gnome illusionist/bard, whose race and neither of whose classes will appear in the PHB, weeps tears over the unfair exclusion of the shugenja and archivist.

 

[rgard]

Yeah, my gnome illusionist/bard, whose race and neither of whose classes will appear in the PHB, weeps tears over the unfair exclusion of the shugenja and archivist.

'O' for three. I feel your pain. I guess that once the format of the other races and classes is set, it won't be hard build your version gnome illusionist/bard. It may be better than the WotC version that is published later.

Thanks,
Rich