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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5853260" data-attributes="member: 2067">Sure, it could be. But part of the thought experiment above that was to play with the idea of how "essential" to the model of a class the class's mechanical abilities are. If you disentangle the idea of "worships a god" from a cleric (e.g.: change the fluff), but leave them mechanically unchanged, what does it look like, and what function does it serve?Turns out, the mechanics of a cleric are a bit too specific to just serve any god. While 3e and 4e have made some advances in that, having to multiclass into cleric still brings a lot of mechanical baggage along with it that might not fit the mode of the particular deity your character likes. You have basically two choices: either make the class more mechanically generic (which has its problems, but also has its benefits), and/or kick the idea of "cleric = divine god worshipper" to the curb, to make it more specific flavor-wise, and to give it a better function that is unrelated to its god-worshipping capabilities. If you do the second thing, you open up the field of "specialty priest" to be some other mechanic than the cleric class. You don't need to be a cleric to be an ordained member of the church of the god of thieves, or to call on divine power from that god. You can be a thief, and still have those granted powers. Or you can be a bard of the goddess of lust, and have the goddess of lust's granted powers without being a cleric.I think, for D&D, I'm leaning a bit more towards removing the "cleric = divine god worshipper" flavor, and reinforcing the idea that a cleric is actually a particular sort of magic-user, one who uses a particular kind of magic in a particular way for a particular purpose, and that purpose may or may not line up with the goals of any particular god.Not every god needs clerics. Not every cleric needs gods. You don't need to add a new class to gain divine power, or to be a saint. Clerics are no more inherently tied to a deity than, say, druids, or rangers, or assassins are. It's a bit of a change, and, of course, I still think that there should be quite a bit of modularity involved (turn undead? How about turn  whatever!), but for a class-based game, I like it better like that than going more generic, I think.</blockquote>

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