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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8420129" data-attributes="member: 2209">I normally consider the PH more as a D&D rules book than as a D&D advice book except the areas it specifically talks about advice. The 5e DMG has a lot of advice sections and options, but also a bunch of default rules. The section on quasi-deities seems more a default definitional rule for the edition than a piece of optional advice.Saying a Demigod in my 5e campaign can have clerics seems like saying a non-god demon lord or a quasi-deity in my 3e campaign could directly power clerics, a departure from a minor rule for the edition, not simply a choice different than a suggested option.Reading the 5e PH every reference to clerics talks about how they need a god and how they channel the power of the gods. It says to talk to your DM about what deities are available in the specific campaign.It also talks a bunch about how not every priest is a cleric.The only 5e PH reference to philosophy is in the D&D Pantheon of Eberron section under other religions with the Blood of Vol and the Path of Light. If those philosophies were not listed in the Eberron Gods section with domains they grant I would have assumed from just the 5e PH that they were non-theistic religions that do not grant clerics powers in 5e. As it is, the setup seems to imply that the philosophies actually are or have deities, perhaps hidden ones powering their clerics. Also that the elven ancestor religions are full of elven ancestor gods.Hidden gods and ancestor gods are cool concepts and work with the 5e PH god appendix and the 5e PH descriptions of clerics needing gods and channeling the power of gods.Knowing 3e Eberron I know that whether there were any gods at all was an undefined setting mystery with clerics of incompatible cosmological beliefs gaining clerical powers.Given the variety of cosmological setups in prior official D&D worlds that the PH presumably wishes to support out of the box (including tight pantheon Dragonlance, uncertain divine mystery Eberron, and elemental clerics but no deities Dark Sun), I would have preferred for the PH to explicitly tell players that while the norm is for clerics to gain their powers from deities, other cosmological setups can exist depending on the campaign and to ask their DMs about the specific campaign cosmology. Or to say they use divine power and leave divine power vague or undefined so it can encompass the various different cool ways that clerics have had their cosmological setups in D&D.Looking at the DMG quasi-deity section of the divine rank sidebar I would have preferred that not be there at all. It is oddly specific and does not seem to add much to the game. It only serves to confusingly redefine the terms used for four types of historical D&D beings (quasi-deities, demigods, titans, and vestiges) and say they are not as a default gods and cannot grant cleric spells if they are worshiped, unless they get enough worship to ascend.</blockquote>

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