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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grydan" data-source="post: 6042021" data-attributes="member: 79401">(Emphasis added.)Why?This is one of the heaviest bits of setting that gets embedded into the system in D&D, and I simply do not like it.The Cleric is the servant of some god (well, not originally, as there wasn't actually a mention of any gods whatsoever in the original class description way back when, as far as I can see), but who says every god cares about the life/death cycle?Say I decide to use the Norse pantheon in my setting. Thor is the god of, among other more well known domains, healing. So it makes sense for a cleric of Thor to go about healing people's wounds (though he should also be bringing the thunder...).But the cleric of Týr? He's the god of law and justice and the sky and a whole bunch of other things, but not a single one of them is healing, life, or death. Why should any of his followers gain those particular gifts? How would he bestow them, if they're something Thor or someone else is in control of?How about if I'm using the Olympians? Now, a few of them are hooked into that whole life/death cycle to be sure, but healing folks is Apollo's turf. Hermes might escort you to the afterlife, but he's not going to give anyone the ability to make return trips. Aphrodite's got procreation covered, but that's making new life, not keeping those already here around. Hades rules the dead, but he's generally not all that keen on the idea of giving anybody back once he's got them. Ares' domain will have you killing or getting killed, but healing and resurrection are off the menu.Most real-world pantheons that I'm aware of included a god or goddess who was the patron of healing. D&D-specific pantheons generally leave this out because they all post-date a system that assumed that clerics of all deities were healers.The idea that all clerics are healers and able to turn the undead traces back to the fact that the sources of inspiration used to create the class were monotheistic rather than polytheistic, and were put together to represent one specific archetype, not the entire category of "divinely empowered representatives of the gods". They're armoured priests from the Crusades combined with elements from Hammer horror vampire flicks with a few other random bits from various other sources. The fact that the published settings the system was used in, even from the earliest days, embraced polytheism (whether it was planned or not) created a tension that I don't think has ever been fully resolved.Making all clerics healers isn't a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. It creates unnecessary limitations on the system, the settings, the DM, and the players.It's almost as bad as making all healers clerics.</blockquote>

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