This is the idea that originally sparked this whole series of subheadings:
The cleric has some interesting rules that, at times, can be challenging to explain from an "in universe" perspective.
The actual casting of Divine Spells and where they come from pretty much is already explained (though it's sure to get a detailed examination within the published material), as it comes from the deities themselves, fueled by the cleric's god, allowing the cleric to perform miracles to prove the god's existence and potentially convert the nonbelievers. Atleast, that's a quick stripped down view at it.
However, there are other rulings about the class that bring up some interesting questions:
Clerics can't use bladed weapons: We all know clerics can't use weapons with an edge, the rule's been around forever. Supposedly it comes from a edict made to questing priests during the Crusades and adopted into the D&D mythos as talked about here (where he also goes on to debunk the legend). Now, while I'm not in favor of stripping what is a iconic rule about the cleric. It brings up the question within the world of Deminar, why can't clerics use bladed weapons? Obviously they did not have any Christian Crusades into the Holy Land, so what is it? The AEC states, "Strict holy doctrine prevents clerics from using any
cutting or impaling weapons," but that's not a real answer. Is it due to ancient pacts with the gods in exchange for divine casting abilities, is it part of a strict code of ethics about drawing blood held throughout all churches? Does it have anything to do with the actually casting of divine magic in the first place?
Turn Undead: All clerics can Turn Undead in LL/AEC rules, stating, "The cleric is able to call upon the name and power of his deity to repel, and even destroy, undead." Again, the question is why? I think it's because there's an assumption that most clerics within a group are worshiping a just god, one that supports freedom, life, good, flowers, etc. and that undead are a sort of abomination on the natural order of things. However, why do clerics of evil gods have the same ability? Later D&D rules add things like the ability to control undead if you're evil and some such, but again, we're trying to use the standard rulings as much as possible to make it a setting that doesn't require a lot of rules changes to run (and therefore be more accessible). So again, I'll pose the question of why? Is it because undead trap souls, therefore denying a god the ability to have it to build his domain (something all gods, good or evil, lawful or chaotic, want)? That doesn't explain away skeletons and zombies and other "soulless" undead though. Is it that this setting has no "God of Undeath" and it's against the natural order to all gods, where raising the dead isn't a matter of good or evil, lawful or chaotic, but rather a violation of the universal order of how things work, and therefore every god grants his vessels the ability to repulse and destroy them? And why does it just make undead run away at some points and at others flat out destroy them? Does the "holy power" just not have the same amount of juice all the time, so the some undead flee from the potential harmful power (a sort of unnatural instinct, like being born knowing that you probably shouldn't touch fire)?
All Clerics Get the Same Spells: This might be the only ability that gets some tweaking in Deminar. As I'm playing around with the concept in my head of each god having a small handful of specific spells that only clerics of their doctrine get. However, the "core set" of spells still remains the same, and while the reversal of certain spells into "good" and "evil" forms can help explain away some of it based on what god a cleric worships, there still seems to be a lot of uniform spells across the board. Is it another godly pact, where everyone got together and said, "well, to play fair, we should all grant our followers similar spells so that one doesn't have a clear advantage over another?" Does it have to do with the nature of divine spell casting itself, whereas although the gods grant the ability to manipulate magic, a cleric can still only access the energy of magic in a limited number of ways? Or, is it something that comes down from generations of religious codifying, where clerics throughout the ages slowly began whittling down their spells to a unified set of tested and true versions?
So, interesting things to look at and ponder the "why" factor from within the workings of the world itself. I look forward to any comments and thoughts on the matter, discussion is encouraged, but play nice!
Right, here we go.
ReplyDeleteBladed Weapons:
I'm a fan of the idea that, rather than be set with blunt weapons only, each Deity allows a certain set of weaponry to their clerics. The idea being that each cleric represents their chosen God - the weapons that the cleric uses should also represent the preferred armament of the God him/herself. The same should apply to armor. There might be a little wiggle room.
As for the only blunt weapons things, if we boil the cleric down we come across the following: He is basically a fighter who sacrifices some raw combat ability for the ability to womp on undead, especially at low levels. The healing thing is just kinda bolted on (though, iconic for the class). Until you get to higher levels, you don't get enough spells (especially in LL) to cast that often. The blunt instruments follow that sort of Undead Killer concept, as piercing weapons are nigh-useless against skeletons, and slashing weapons (in concept, if not rules) aren't as useful against things without flesh.
Turn Undead:
This just supports the Undead Killer concept that the Cleric has. I can think of a few reasons why, most of the ones that you named. Souls trapped (by their own design or not) in the Prime Material, violation of a dead body, violation of the natural order, the presumably dark arts used to raise them, etc. Priests and other Holy Men (mostly of the Good variety) perform last rights and can lay souls to rest, and send them on their way. Perhaps the last vestiges of the soul remaining in the Undead corpse recognizes this - some run to prolong their stay, some are more willing to return to the realm of the dead. Others might not have enough soul - or a strong enough willed one - to be effected either way, and so the ability to Turn has no effect. Maybe destroying an undead actually forces the soul to go to the cleric's God's realm - which would be incentive for any God to grant the ability!
Same Spells:
Some later editions cleaned this up, with the addition of a few spells for each god (if I remember). As with the weapons and armor, I believe this should be on a case by case basis per God. They represent the God, they should take on his aspect as they can.
That's it, for now! More later, perhaps.
The "anti-undead" was the handwave excuse I settled for a few months ago. It really doesn't make sense to me about avoiding bloodshed: you hit someone with a heavy object hard enough or enough times, and blood will come out. I guess if you do it right and collapse the rib cage that'll take someone down without much blood, but everybody loves going for the headshots. Unless you want to have clerics trained in a special fighting method that reduces the chances of bloodshed. Internal injuries only. It's kinda silly, yeah.
ReplyDeleteI like Sean's idea that killing undead with souls sends the soul to the cleric's god. Maybe the reanimation magic that traps the soul in the body keeps the soul from remembering which god it wanted to go to, so it's up for grabs. The logical abuse of this would be for a cleric to work with a necromancer who creates undead so the cleric can kill them and give the souls to his god. It's probably not going to come up, but maybe you shouldn't use this idea specifically to avoid the "exploit", just in case.
I'll quote one of my friends on the concept of tuning undead: "... what was the inspiration for that vampire movies where vampires cringe at the site of a crucifix? BAH!" I think the explicit demonstration of the strongness of a cleric's faith, combined with their reputation to mess up undead, makes the undead in question realize that they are probably screwed and need to leave, or if the cleric's will is strong enough, fall apart. When it fails? Pssh, he doesn't know how to use a sword without hurting himself, we can take him.
For spells, maybe due to every cleric's unique relationship with their god, they're not all able to cast the same spells. But since the relationships have much in common between clerics, through years of trial and error clerics determined which spells any of them could cast without problems, and which spells clerics of a certain god can cast reliably. I guess all the gods are tapping into the same magical divine juice source to give powers to their clerics, and the clerics are only able to get the juice in certain forms. (I use the term "juice" as a discrete amount of any magical power, I guess here it would be processed faith.)
If you don't like any of this stuff, maybe thinking about why you don't like it will give you some ideas.
@Sean: While I like the idea of each cleric having his own list of weapons based on his god of choice, I worry it runs into the risk of being too unlike the AEC rules. I want to do as little rule tweaking as possible, also there is a good challenge in making things work within already established "canon"
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I think we'll indeed use the House Rule of a deity having a favored weapon that may break the "blunt weapons" rule, and could easily make that 2-3 weapons, but with blunt weapons being the driving force all clerics have.
@both: The idea of explaining that as them being better undead slaying weapons and therefore all clerics train with them, work out great.
@both: The over all concept of undead being anathema to ALL the gods seems to be a strong point for you both. If the idea is souls = building up your celestial forces/defenses, then those souls inhabiting reanimated flesh when they should be dead would be a bad thing. So everyone wants undead destroyed. The idea of the souls always going to the god who's cleric killed them DOES seem a little exploitable though, as pointed out, so it might just be a general willingness to kill undead regardless of who gets the soul, just to make sure that soul gets to someone.
@Sean: Like the weapon idea, I think while we offer some unique spells per god, we can't have a different spell list for every god, it just seems to change the core rules too much. I want to stick to B/X or rather the AEC as much as possible.
@Chester: You seem to be a fan of the "codified throughout the ages" concept of the magic, where the clerics convert their power into a similar handful of spells because they're the ones that worked best over the years.
@both: I think a combination of unique spell or two per god with the concept of being able to manipulate the divine magic in only a certain way works well.