Lovecraft Priests?

[Keeper of Secrets]

I would say that anybody could be a priest in a Lovecraft scenario. Actually, I would probably gravitate towards giving them wizard abilities and have a general creepiness to them.

 

[Aaron L]

Alienists work very well for this.

 

[radferth]

I can recall very few instances of priest anywhere in fantasy literature having powers because of their priestliness. A lot with wizardy-type powers, but not with specific holy powers. When I place Lovecraftian "dieties" in my game world (I always do), I specifically do not have them grant any cleric powers, unlike other gods. A being like Yog-Sothoth would care about having worshippers about I much as I would care if someone told me their was a colony of leaf-cutting ants in Bolivia that thought I was kinda neat. Granting clerical powers seems to imply that you care on some level, and Lovecraftian gods most definitely do not care.

 

[dcollins]

So it sounds like we're sort-of circling in on agreement that Lovecraft "priests" don't have any intrinsic special powers... although wizard-type magic is very much in place?

Which for me seems like it leads to an appropriate campaign setup of just deleting all "divine magic", and have "arcane magic" only (Wizards, Sorcerers). Rather nicely solves a number of flavor issues, like: (1) no healing magic, so combat is really deadly, (2) no easily curing diseases or curses, so watch out (3) no raising of the dead, (4) no turning undead, (5) much harder to have exactly the right spell available at any time. (Assumes some tinkering with Bards, as well.)

 

[gizmo33]

So it sounds like we're sort-of circling in on agreement that Lovecraft "priests" don't have any intrinsic special powers... although wizard-type magic is very much in place?

I agree. Without being able to cite chapter and verse, I think it's a strong theme of HPLs cosmic horror stuff that humans do not have the kind of close, pious relationships with gods that have their best interests at heart. The kind of "worship" that seems to go on ("on camera" anyway) is more of a "cargo cult" of sorts - humans (or non-humans) just fearing something they don't really understand.

Edit: however, I'm still not sure what you mean by a "Lovecraft-heavy" DnD campaign. I guess you would just drop the cleric, paladin, ranger, ...?

 

[dcollins]

I am thinking along the lines of delete: Cleric, Druid, Paladin. Either delete or modify: Bard, Ranger (maybe Ranger leave in, no spellcasting abilities). Hello, Heal skill.

 

[gizmo33]

This is sort of what I was getting at with my first post though. It's almost like DnD is the wrong game - especially 3E DnD because a ranger without spells and special abilities is not balanced with a fighter of equal level.

It's hard to imagine anything involving "heroic" gaming within a strict HPL campaign. If you take the RE Howard approach, you could bring in certain elements of the Old Ones into your campaign world, but there you have good deities and things are much more like good ole regular DnD.

As I've joked before, the one way I can understand HPL being like DnD is if the players were the monsters and Earth was the dungeon.

Anyway, I'd be curious about what an outline of an adventure would be like.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

So it sounds like we're sort-of circling in on agreement that Lovecraft "priests" don't have any intrinsic special powers... although wizard-type magic is very much in place?

I would agree, also.

The two instances of priests/religious ceremonies I can remember off hand are:

The Doom that came to Sarnath: Where the troglodyte-like things dance horribly beneath the gibbous moon. The humans come and kill them and take their idol. Then, the humans are cursed and become troglodyte-like things.. but the curse presumably comes from the god.

The Call of Cthulhu: The natives in the swamp dance in ritual around a small idol of Cthulhu. But they have no powers, and indeed, Cthulhu sleeps right through their rituals. So he really does not care.

I like the idea of "priests" gaining powers through pacts, rather than casting spells.

 

[jdrakeh]

I like the idea of "priests" gaining powers through pacts, rather than casting spells.

There's a skill-based spell system in Strange Aeons (which I believe can still be found over at Butch Curry's Zombie Nirvana site in the Miscellaneous Debris section) that specifically models Lovecraftian magic in the sense that anybody who can read a given language has the potential to cast a spell. And, hey - it's free, so if you think it sucks, you're not out any cash

 

[Kesh]

Basically, Lovcraft's priests simply had more experience with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, which included certain rites & spells.