I've finally figured out why 3rd edition bugs me

[fanboy2000]

A whole set of magic and magical abilities that is labeled "divine"

Yes, it's labled divine. But the word has no mechanics behind it. It's just a discriptive term. True, some magic items are unsuable to a wizard if they use the divine version of that spell. But that one game mechanic is can be ignored with out braking the game, without even brusing it.

is tied to outer-planar creatures, is explicitly related to gods/higher powers/metaphysical realities

1. You're confusing setting with rules. In Greyhawk (and most published D&D settings) Clerics do, indeed, get their powers from the gods.
2. If you don't like that, all you have to do is alter the setting. No rules changes need to be made.
3. PHB pg 32 explicitly states that clerics can also receive their powers from their faith. Recoiving spells from faith or god does not alter the way the cleric works as a game construct; from a setting POV, there is no way an outside observer would know where the cleric gets their spells. There is no skill check someone could make to find out how. Indeed, it could be that the cleric doesn't know himself. The cleric could think one thing and reality be another. From a game mechanics standpoint, it's all the same.

(remember, alignment is real in D&D--physical objects react to it)

It's not unusual for DMs and players to ignor alignement. Eberron doesn't place the emphisis on it other published setting have. So groups remove it altogether.

and is distinct in both content and methodology from other sorts of magic is "nothing"? How is that *not* at least *pointing* in a particular direction?

Your still confusing setting with mechanics. All a worldbuilder has to do is change the setting, and atheist, agnostic, and whatever religion you want is posible.

Has anybody in this thread ever known someone who said "i want to play a wizard/sorcerer/mage" and chosen the cleric class to do so, ignoring all talk of alignment, higher powers, etc., both in the mechanical details and in their roleplaying?

I haven't met a player who wanted to, but I've read a published TSR D&D setting that did so. In Lankhmar: City of Adventure, TSR said wizads were divided into two catogories, white wizards, and black wizards. White Wizards took levels in cleric, black wizards took levels in wizard. Preists didn't cast spells and had no levels in a PC class. (0-level characters sense this was 1st ed.)

I'll give you that it could be done--but i claim that the bits are so explicit, and so tightly tied to the mechanics, that it's unlikely-bordering-on-impossible that anybody would, other than in response to a challeng posted in a thread like this, actually come to the conclusion that "cleric" was a mechanical widget suited for playing a non-faithful character in a D&D setting.

I'm just going to agree to disagree with you. Because I don't think the rules you sight are either rules or rules of any importance; that's a diffrence in opinion that pretty much guaranties we're talking about diffrent things.

 

[Turjan]

Nothing in the 3e mechanics points in one direction or the other.

Oh, right. A spell like "Commune" doesn't point to anything . Of course, this is tied into mechanics; don't let this sentence about "casting from his own power" in the PHB fool you; some spell descriptions have to declare this notion void.

Anyway, I think it would be a good idea not to forget the central questions regarding the arcane/divine divide during this discussion:

1) Why are wizards barred from healing magic?

2) Why are clerics the better necromancers than wizards?

And here, a "because it is like it is" is not an acceptable answer.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Oh, right. A spell like "Commune" doesn't point to anything . Of course, this is tied into mechanics; don't let this sentence about "casting from his own power" in the PHB fool you; some spell descriptions have to declare this notion void.

Anyway, I think it would be a good idea not to forget the central questions regarding the arcane/divine divide during this discussion:

1) Why are wizards barred from healing magic?

2) Why are clerics the better necromancers than wizards?

And here, a "because it is like it is" is not an acceptable answer.

Commune is in there to enable a cleric who does serve a god to get into contact with his deity and get his help. Always remember that the PHB is modeled on Greyhawk as a default world, where the gods indeed ARE real, and very active. If you want to play on a world where the gods are not even remotely certain, simply leave that spell out of the picture?

1) Because, by D&D default, clerics are the guys who are allowed to work miracles and handle the stuff of life. They get it "preshaped" to hit points, so to speak, via their spells, while wizards and sorcerers don't handle that kind of energy, again, by default, and don't get miracles. If you want to change that, there's nothing in the rules that completely prohibits you from adding healing spells to the wizard/sorcerer list. Arcana Unearthed is an example for that. A lot of necromantic healing magic, like in the Forgotten Realms or Scarred Lands, is also available.

2) For the most parts, you can refer to 1). Clerics, by D&D default, are the guys who routinely handle the stuff of life and death, so they get to use it on corpses earlier than wizards. As for the Create Undead and Create Greater Undead spells...well, for that, you need some kind of spirit to stuff into your corpse. And guess who's handling souls and spirits by D&D default? Right...clerics. Again, if you want to change that, nobody's keeping you from it, and there's a host of Necromancer PrC and variant base classes who have already done so.

One thing to keep in miind about the D&D core ruleset is that it might look like a completely setting-neutral tool, but it isn't. It has a default world behind it, on which most of the default assumptions are based. If you want to change those assumptions, you can do so without problems, it's simply not in the core rules.
And some people might actually like their wizards not being able to simply be the source of extensive damage spells AND all-curing healing magic in one person .