Dull & Defanged- Clerics

This is the first of the Dull & Defanged series, which explores how basic concepts of D&D have gotten watered down over the years, and how to fix them in your game.

Now, Clerics:

I went to a Catholic high school. There was a chapel and monastery on campus. No, it wasn’t a boarding school. Yes, it was co-ed. Yes, we wore uniforms. Yes, there were a lot of old-money brats there. No. I was never molested.

Once, in junior or sophomore year, the Bishop of the Diocese of Tulsa came to one of our chapel services and gave a homily about being a good Christian during Halloween. He told the entire student body about how Druids in olden times would dress their children as pumpkins to disguise them so that spirits would not kidnap them during Halloween. I shit you not.

For starters, pumpkins are a New-World crop. There was definitely lots of pre-Columbian contact. But Druids did not have a lot of gourds lying around.

The more acute among us realized that this supposed figure of authority was either a moron, or a casual liar on the level of Bob Dylan How can a young person respect that?

A large cross-section of young people hold religion in utter contempt. We still wonder about the nature of creation and how to live a good life and all that. But we’re not taking our answers to these questions on faith, so to speak.

So naturally, pretty much none of us want to play Clerics. 

Being beholden to some questionable entity for our powers? No thanks. Having to maintain a standard of behavior? How restrictive. I mean, we play this game to relax and have fun. Geez! From my observations, players are more likely to select the cuddly, independent, non-denominational Druid for their healing and buffing needs. (But that is another post)(Incidentally, 5^th edition has something called a warlock- an arcane magic-user who gets power from pacts with demonic entities. Isn’t that essentially an evil cleric? Shouldn’t these classes be unified under a single mechanic?)

I want to play a Cleric, though.

IRL, I don’t have a lot that I really have faith in. But I think I would like it if I did.  If everyday life doesn’t offer a lot you can believe in, doesn’t belief become an appealing fantasy? People will do dumb and harmful things for the sake of having something to believe in. Fortunately, we have this nifty fantasy game where we can simulate just that.

So what made clerics seem so lame, and how can we fix this?

I wasn’t around or playing much at the time, but I have a theory (baseless supposition) that back in the seventies, people were reading the books in appendix N http://www.amazon.com/Gygaxs-amp-Appendix-Inspirational-Educational/lm/R3A9UPKOXVI0I1 and getting crazy-awesome inspiration for how to play Clerics without having to be guided much by the rules.

Then came the 1980s and the Satanic Panic. The business-side of the hobby suddenly had to worry about public image, since most people playing D&D still had to get it by their moms. TSR suddenly had to make their product seem less freaky-deaky.

  Less Freaky-Deaky, Please.

 Clerics were described as generally good or bad, and compared to historical groups like the Templars or the Hospitaliers. This is not so bad, but it definitely shys away from the lurid pulp-cultists and alien religions of the Appendix N material.

(Incidentally, good clerics were restricted to bludgeoning weapons. People quibble about how historical this is or isn’t. Those saying it is total BS seem to say that the only precedent for this is the image of Bishop Odo in the Bayeux Tapestry.

 

But as I recall, Moses, was known for carrying a staff and using it to do Jehovah’s will. And Martin Luther was also known for hammering things.)

AD&D Clerics did have one particularly brilliant feature. At certain levels, they were granted the ability to attract followers and to build churches and abbeys. This is a little arbitrary, I'm a little shaky on how a cleric can kill a kobold, leveling up, and suddenly be qualified to build a fortified abbey. But the idea that a cleric is expected to expand the empire of their deity is a powerful one. It shows that a Cleric is supposed to have a degree of influence and involvement with the setting.

In later editions; 3^rd and later, this feature is stripped away, and the building of churches or congregations is never mentioned. Clerics are reduced to holy murder-hobos and the play-experience suffers for it

Consider the roles that clergy played in historical societies. For a good chunk of history, religious professionals were just about the only people with access to education. They took on positions of authority in communities. They were the sort of people that common folk trusted (they definitely wouldn’t trust wandering warriors and definitely not wizards) Consider how these offices expand in a world where the cleric’s magic has an observable and material effect.

Religious figures also take on violent and adventurous aspects. Violent Evangelicism is the aspect of organized religion which draws the bitterest criticism, and a good deal of blame for the evils in the world. But aggressive clericalism actually dovetails nicely with a game which is basically about killing things and taking their stuff.

All this stuff needs to be mentioned or depicted in the core rulebooks, or else it will leave the sphere of normal possibilities of play.

Let me sum up by going over the equipment list of a possible, aggressive Cleric:

Weapons and armor: Possibly unnecessary. You should have followers and devotees to handle this stuff. It also depends on the public image you are going for.

Case of paper and writing utensils: for writing sermons and drawing doodles of the temple you want to get built some day.
Torches or equivalent: For burning the edifices and churches of competing gods
Crowbar: For dismantling false idols.
50’ of rope: For lynching heretics and blasphemers.
Healer’s Kit: For if you run out of spells. Or just don’t want to waste them. Healing people a PR thing.
Holy Symbol: For turning undead. But mostly for brand-recognition

 Now go out there and convert something!