Making everyone a cleric (sort of)

[Psychotic Jim]

One option may be to use the Incantation rules (from the 3.x Unearthed Arcana) but give them a divine origin. Instead of arcane words of power, rather, they're prayers and recitations to curry the gods' favor. Just make most of the checks Knowledge (religion) instead of Knowledge (arcana). In this set up, clerics could be experts at quickly channeling the power of their deity whereas less dedicated but still faithful characters (ie, non-divine casters) could use the Incantation rules.

 

[roguerouge]

It might be interesting to see what the effect on the world would be if everyone could cast orisons all day, including cure minor wounds, but there are no clerics. What would that world be like? Would there be a spike in adventuring?

 

[Maidhc O Casain]

It might be interesting to see what the effect on the world would be if everyone could cast orisons all day, including cure minor wounds, but there are no clerics. What would that world be like? Would there be a spike in adventuring?

Except in PF, Paizo had the foresight to remove Cure Minor Wounds from the list in order to prevent unlimited healing . . .

 

[jedavis]

This reminds me of the Piety system from Mythic Vistas - Trojan War. Each character had a piety score, which allowed them to request divine boons (or, if your piety score goes negative, call down divine censure). If you want more active gods and fewer clerics, something along those lines might be the way to go .

 

[dammitbiscuit]

When my group members were like "Man, our party sure needs a cleric" and they stared at me expectantly, I rolled up driving a Worldthought Medic.

Ever since 4e demonstrated that there can (and should!) be solid alternatives to a cleric being part of every freaking adventuring party, I've tried to do that in my Pathfinder and 3.5 games as well.

 

[Brett_Carrie]

I think you are all forgetting the fact that without specific characters doing specific things there would be no sense of individuality within a roleplaying group. Clerics are the divine healers that everyone looks up to, if they took out the cleric class then who would heal people? if they could heal themselves, would that not also mean they wouldn't need curing potions? therefore you are not only destroying a well-rounded character class, but also a whole list of items. One of the fun things about Roleplay is the fact that you make a character that suites you, if you were a barbarian, how would you learn to heal yourself?

Another thing is you must think of it from the GM's point of view, as a GM you want to cause enough damage to make a pc think about their actions, one of the best things you can do as a GM is to knock out the cleric meaning that they all have to do their best to keep alive until the cleric comes round, this is a true way of making your players do their best and it clerics also allow you to release mobs into an area and as a cleric can patch them all up afterwards, surely this is more fun for the players?

Brett Carrie

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

Healing

Brett, my experience playing RuneQuest (a game where every PC can heal himself) leads me to disagree with you. In my experience , nothing is lost if PCs can heal themselves. Rather, a role which most players don't seem to want (being the party healer) is no longer needed.

How does a barbarian get healing?

Maybe he prays for it, at the temple, sacrificing incense and a pig and gaining in return the ability to heal himself once some time before the moon becomes full again.

Maybe he enters into a ritual with the assistance of the village shaman in which a spirit of healing from the spirit world is called down and the barbarian engages it in a contest of wills that results in the spirit being bound in a ritual object that the barbarian carries, and from where the spirit can be commanded to heal the barbarian once per day.

Those are just a couple of examples.

Ken

 

[Set]

One option may be to use the Incantation rules (from the 3.x Unearthed Arcana) but give them a divine origin. Instead of arcane words of power, rather, they're prayers and recitations to curry the gods' favor. Just make most of the checks Knowledge (religion) instead of Knowledge (arcana). In this set up, clerics could be experts at quickly channeling the power of their deity whereas less dedicated but still faithful characters (ie, non-divine casters) could use the Incantation rules.

This is a neat idea. Incantations are already perfect for those plot-train-moving 'magical rituals' that the evil cultists are using to summon That Which Lurks or whatever, and having a series of them that replicates some divine casting (or replaces it entirely) could be neat.

Monte's Arcana Unearthed pretty much does away with Divine casters nicely, as do various other settings (Wheel of Time, for instance), so it's definitely do-able.

With it's 'hands-off' dieties, Eberron, had it not been explicitly required in the setting design to incorporate all 3.X core elements, would have been a perfect test-bed for this sort of concept. Same for an update of Dragonlance, really, as that's another setting that has spent at least a decent chunk of it's existence without functional Clerics. Dark Sun or Ravenloft would be funky places to also play with that sort of thing, as Clerics work quite differently in Dark Sun (and there are no 'gods'), and it's plausible that a Cleric entering Ravenloft would find themselves cut off from their own patron powers, and forced to use Incantations and appeals to what powers do exist (must of them dark) to get things done.