This post is part of the papal conclave Blog Bandwagon/Blogclave. As the world turns its gaze towards the Vatican, the blogosphere turns its attention to the cleric. Subscribe to Prismatic Weekly for a roundup of all this post's siblings once the conclave has chosen a new pope!
Here's an interesting tidbit from original Dungeons & Dragons' Book I: Men and Magic:
It's accepted as a fundamental D&D-ism that magic-users/wizards have spellbooks, yet for some reason the need for clerics to keep spellbooks did not become ingrained in future editions in the same way.
As early as AD&D 1st edition, clerics "have their spells bestowed upon them by their respective deities". Gygax elaborates that cleric spells are granted either by the cleric's "education, training, and experience" (1st and 2nd level spells), followed by intermediaries of their chosen deity (3rd through 5th level spells), then by the deity itself (6th and 7th level spells).
Although clerics cast their spells the same way as magic-users and require the same amount of time to memorize them, the way in which they acquire new spells and what they must do to memorize them is very different. While magic-users must scribe their spells in a book and study the book to memorize them, clerics simply gain access to all spells of the next level when they gain a level, and memorizing them requires only time spent in prayer - no book necessary.
This is unfortunate. I quite like the idea of the adventurer cleric with a book of prayers bestowed upon them by their church. Such a book would contain the initiate spells typically learned during the cleric's background education. In keeping with AD&D, let's say that these are the 1st and 2nd level spells. This is convenient in that it maps neatly onto D&D 5e's "Tier 1", which covers character levels 1st through 4th and spell levels 1st and 2nd.
To acquire additional spells from their deity, the prayer book-wielding cleric must not only continue to serve the deity's cause, make contact with various divine intermediaries and, eventually, the god itself, but they must also write the prayers associated with these spells into their prayer book.
(As an aside, this same principle can also be applied to the paladin, who in many versions of D&D casts spells the same as the cleric. The druid - and by association the ranger, who is to the druid as the paladin is to the cleric - could also keep a more "nature-y" book of sorts. After all, the druid is often treated as something like a subclass of cleric.
On the other hand, druids were not in OD&D, and so I can easily argue that the excerpt at the beginning of this post does not apply to them. Druids have also acquired their own unique identity over the years, so my inclination is for them to have an entirely different method of learning and/or preparing spells.)
Of course, I don't like how every cleric of every deity is able to cast more or less the exact same spells, so the prayer book of a cleric who worships but one deity would be somewhat limited, and the prayer books of any two clerics of differing faiths would be quite different from one another.
However, much like the enterprising magic-user or wizard must delve into abandoned wizards' towers and lost libraries for new magic, this would incentivize the cleric to go forth and acquire additional prayers from other gods. After all, there is not usually one "true" god in a D&D setting - there are multiple, some in alignment with one another and others at odds. So long as the Lawful Good cleric remains in their principle deity's good graces and does not seek out the prayers of rival Chaotic and Evil deities, there isn't much reason why the prayers of multiple gods can't coexist in the same book.
This encourages the cleric to adventure in a slightly different way. No longer is the cleric the crusader or templar, spreading their deity's gospel, proselytizing to those who will listen and smiting those who won't. Instead, the cleric becomes a syncretist or polytheist, accumulating the diverse magics of a wide array of faiths and lesser and greater divine beings.
The cleric must rely on their social acumen. Much like the magic-user must on occasion convince a learned wizard to tutor them in some new spell, the cleric must ingratiate themselves with people of different faiths so that they may become an initiate and incorporate their prayers into the cleric's personal belief system.
Unlike magic-users, whose spell repertoire is limited by their Intelligence and what magic they can find (and perhaps by their specialization), the cleric is limited by their piety - new spells are learned from a given deity by continuing to serve that deity's cause. It may be a simple matter of studying the proper rituals (their words, signs, and sacred components) to learn 1st- and 2nd-level spells, but more powerful magic requires direct intervention by the deity and its intermediaries, which is only earned by the accrual of favor (that is, the cleric's level of piety with each deity would need to be tracked - like experience points, for example - to determine when they can begin to cast the higher-level spells bestowed by the deity - even if the cleric "knows" the rituals and has them written in their prayer book).
If the cleric fails to continue to satisfy the deity, those same spells can be taken away. Many masters means many obligations - the more deities the cleric courts, the more patrons they acquire and must satisfy, or else lose their powers. Each new deity that is petitioned makes the balancing act more precarious (this is also why you should let warlocks, in more recent editions of D&D, petition as many patrons as they can - but that is a topic for another time).
I'm sure there are some who will feel that this somehow "nerfs" the cleric. The cleric is meant to get automatic access to all their spells, and now I'm suggesting instead that they jump through a bunch of hoops to get them? I'm long past the point of caring about those sorts of things.
On the other hand, this would give the cleric a great deal of flexibility on par with that of the wizard, if the player is enterprising enough to take advantage of the opportunity. It makes the cleric more dynamic, grounded in the fiction of the game world, and allows individual clerics to distinguish themselves from one another. That's worth it in my eyes.
Thoughts and prayers?
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