Unless literally everyone in the church has a leveled cleric, there is going to be far more non-casters than casters. So what do you do with a more valuable rare resource? You use it where it can do the most good. Which is more useful to the church: doing the daily tasks of running the church or using the magic your god gave you to expand the church, show lay people miracles, convert the masses, proselytize, cure the sick, heal the dying, resurrect the dead...or sitting behind a desk?
I'm not talking about administrators. I'm talking about ranking members. Also, maybe this is one of those things where, in a fantasy world, things would be look very different rather than be based on a real-world, non-magical version. Like how castles in a world with dragons and flying mounts should look different than in the real world.
Perhaps, in a world with divine magic, the high-ranked priests don't hang around in the temple. Perhaps the spell-less people who do all the day-to-day minutia never get a high rank no matter how much they might deserve it. Or perhaps there's multiple branches of a church, with one branch being divine and the other being administrative.
If someone is wildly more powerful than you, getting them to obey you is a big ask. People with more power (leveled casters) tend to push people with less power (non-leveled non-casters) around like they're nothing. Getting a caster to obey a noble...good luck.
Or they could become allies, not minions or servants.
As mentioned, the godly tend to not care much for worldly power. It's one of their key traits, come to think of it. It's how you can tell if someone's really godly or really full of lies. How much do they care about worldly power and wealth?
That... really depends on the religion in question. Considering that there are gods of wealth, power, intrigue, murder, etc., in some settings.
Thanks for proving my point above about casters vs non-casters and how hard it would be for non-casters to bring casters to heel. A 5E NPC with even a few levels of a caster class could take over. Only if the caster got something out of it would they deign to let a non-caster rule them.
That's literally what I said before.
But for a
religion, well, what does the god or religion say about allying with or obeying non-divine rulers? The problem is that very few, if any, of D&D religions have actually gone into any aspects that don't immediately affect the PCs. Take a look at the Forgotten Realms gods. Now, admittedly, I'm not hugely into the Realms so I could be wrong on this, but. I'd imagine churches dedicated to gods like Helm, Waukeen, Tyr, Eldath, Gond, Sune, or Llira might very well have rules saying "follow secular laws and obey secular leaders" with caveats if the secular leader is being evil. Why? Because either their gods support the secular leaders, get some benefit out of having them around, or have portfolios that have nothing to do with politics whatsoever.
Right. I'm describing how things work in my world. You're free to do things differently in yours. It would be great if you'd stop telling me I'm building my world wrong.
I at no point have ever said that. My original post in this thread was pointing out that the nobility (whom the peasants are presumably going to be revolting against) would likely have access to a spellcaster who is more powerful than they are.
You immediately jumped on that, saying it turned the fiction "far too much into the odd realm of superhero fantasy. " And then got upset when I brought up the idea of court mages and religious advisers to the nobility by... actually, by ignoring that idea entirely by talking about how very few spellcasters there would be. If anything, you are saying that I (and others) are building
our worlds wrong because having court mages is "superhero fantasy."
Honestly, if there are so very few spellcasters, then logically they'd be
more powerful because there would be fewer people capable of opposing them.
