No Divine Magic

[Koneko]

I've been doing a bit of world-building in my spare time (hooray for summer vacation) and I've hit a bit of a snag.

The world is monotheistic (more or less, there are other powerful Outsiders in the cosmology, but none of them are worshipped). The majority of the population are followers of this single religion. However, the church is a less-than wonderful entity; they sometimes do things which aren't good in a black & white sense, but are good for the church.

I was thinking of maybe just removing the idea of divine spellcasting altogether, and have most of the higher-up clergy be sorcerers or wizards, who attained this status not thought a necessarily powerful divine connection, but simply through power itself.

Does anybody have experience running games without divine magic? What pitfalls have you encountered (both in running the world, and in how the PCs cope with the world). I think that I would allow healing potions as mere alchemical creations. Or maybe I could alter arcane spell lists to include important divine spells that I'd otherwise be completely axing.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks! ^_^

 

[Umbran]

Well, the biggest single issue is, IME, healing. Enough potions to match a full fledged cleric, especially as the party reaches higher levels, ought to be a pretty large expense, a constant drain on their resources. Another option is to boost the efficacy of healing and herbalism skills.

You might find a need to alter other classes spell lists - bards have healing spells. You'd have to decide what you're going to do with paladins - ditch them completely, or give them something instead of spellcasting. Similarly with rangers. They get divine spells, but that isntt necessarily from woshipping a deity. What do you want to do with them? Or, if you've got an occasional druid in the game, from outside this church structure, they'd become worth their weight in gold - healing and reincarnation! I'd betcha the church would frown on them

One can run a game without clerics, and without divine splls in general, but it takes a lot of thought. You'd probably want to spend a lot more time reviewing your encounters.

 

[fusangite]

I think the idea is good in principle; there's no reason to have separate types of magic and you're correct in observing that just having arcane magic widens your theological and cosmological options. So, I endorse this idea in principle 100% including your idea of populating a religious hierarchy with wizards and sorcerors.

Obviously, the question that faces you is that high level arcane spells inflict lots of damage and high level divine spells repair it. You might therefore have to consider creating some kind of arcane healer class or prestige class. Otherwise, I think your world would become very dependent on necromancers and bards. I think it might be problematic, based on their social role, for bards to become the only people in society capable of healing so I'd be inclined to either create arcane healers or remove cure spells from the bard lists. The idea of the only magical healing being necromantic (ie. vampiric touch, et al) could make for an interestingly dark world indeed, reminiscent of the runequest sorceror societies.

 

[Nifft]

Are there Druids?

Are there heretical groups who do thier own interpretation of the Words of the True Lord? (In our world, there's plenty of disagreement between related monotheistic religions.)

Are there Bards? Are there Psions (who can do *some* kind of healing)?

--

What if Bards and Druids were the only healers? They'd be sheltered by villagers everywhere, and the Church would hunt them down and try to kill them. Lucky that Bards are good at Bluff checks and Druids can fly away...

What happens to Paladins if there is no Lawful Good deity?

-- Nifft

 

[Umbran]

What happens to Paladins if there is no Lawful Good deity?

Actually, there's already a solution for this in the PHB (pg 41, discussing Paladins and religion). Paladins don't need a deity. Following a god is typical, but not actually a requirement. The Code of Conduct is the thing that makes a paladin.

In fact, if you read the PHB, even clerics don't need a deity. They can choose domains based upon an ideal, instead.

 

[Koneko]

I was thinking a lot about the effect that eliminating clerics would have on other classes. Paladins for one would probably be right out, and bards should be fine just without cure spells. Druids would probably exist but be *very* rare and very hermit-like. Rangers could probably get by with very few mods as well.

I think perhaps the best route would be to design it around a primarily low-magic world (which there are plenty of discussions on around here), and make mages rare or limit their power (i.e. magic is common in ritual form, but it takes a very rare individual to be able to control magic at the level that casters in a regular D&D world do).

Or maybe, if there's only a single kind of magic, create a unified caster class to replace clerics, druids, wizards, and sorcerers.

Nifft - I've always enjoyed the idea of "endorsed spellcasting" (to coin a term), where people who used magic and who weren't specific members of either the church or a mage's guild were hunted down. NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!

I mentioned the idea to a friend, and his response was "You WANT your characters to die?" I guess I'll have to put a lot more thought into this than I first realized. Eep!

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

It's also possible to run divine magic in your campaign, but simply not have it be an exclusive association of the church.

The church could claim to have some type of magic that represented something outside of the hedge faith of the cleric or the proud knowledge of the wizard and was instead some combination of the two.

Or the church could simply not rest its claim to legitimacy on divine magic. Certainly, most churches rest their claim on divine revelation, but there is no reason that divine magic has to be the actual manifestation of this relationship.

There's nothing that says you need to have a church be a cleric and nothing that states you need clerics to be a church.

Clerics could even be seen as inherently anti-religious since they have such an individual relationship with a god, granted this isn't a view most 20th century Americans and Europeans are going to have, even those who are religious, but not everyone has had melinia of more or less individual religion to deal with.

In a lot of cultures and times religion is really more about the ceremonies everyone does together and the poltical and economic services provided to and by priests more than anything else.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

I'm with Strangemonkey on that one. In my homebrew, I have a monotheistic church similiar to the one you're describing. Clerics in my world are practioners of Animism, the belief that spirits dwell in all things. In exchange for the powers the animists receive from the spirits, they honor and placate the spirits (which love/need that kind of attention to maintain their existance). The church, of course, sees these people as cousins to demon-worshippers. The class is around, then, but ostracized (except for in non-human communities like elves, dwarves, and what not).

This approach has helped to limit their impact on the campaign world (i.e. no more "what do we care if the king got assassinated? They'll just raise him") without taking it away as an option for PC's.

Also makes for some interesting RPing in the group when one or more characters are religious and see that these animists aren't a bunch of baby-stealing devil worshippers.

Good luck on your homebrew!

 

[brehobit]

I've got something similar in my game world but the whole thing is pretty complex (and because the main church is Christian I have to worry about magic "proving" the existance of God...)

The simple solutions are either

#1 there are good priests in the religion they just don't dominate the Church and in fact the powers-that-be in the Church and the good priest are more than happy to keep their distance. Once a generation or so there is probably a reformist movement that fails or only resets things back to the last reformist movement. (This could be great for plot points as the various factions move against each other and involve the PCs)

#2 Let arcane casters cast healing spells. Take the bard healing spells and move them into Sorc/Wizard.

You could combine 1 and 2. In fact if you go with 1 you should probably also go with 2 (otherwise the "real" Chruchmen and the current leaders could be easily distinquished. (Well perhaps illusion and non-magical trickery could cover it...)

 

[Nifft]

IMC, I use "Divine Aspects" to confuse the issue of religious truth. A Divine Aspect can be thought of like a Christian Saint who intercedes on a petitioner's behalf. A LG god (such as Raelor) would have NG, LN and LG aspects -- in the case of Raelor, those are the General (LN), the Protector (LG) and the Life Giver (NG).

IMC there is one main church ("the Church of Light", dedicated to the Sun God Raelor). Their official position is that, just as all things draw light from the Sun, all other Powers draw their strength from Raelor, and are therefore merely aspects of Him.

This annoys other churches, but (luckily) the Church of Light is farily benign, and no civil war scale conflicts have erupted.

I'm sure you could adapt this system to a darker theme in your world.

-- Nifft