2025-05-08 I am not interested in clerics
I noticed a bunch of posts on the topic of clerics. I got them via the fedibot that reposts the blogs from the OSR Discord server (@osr@social.alexschroeder.ch, feed RSS). They all linked back to Emergency Bandwagon: Conclave Edition:
**The Pope has died.** A new Pope, his hour come round at last, slouches towards the Chair of Saint Peter to be ensconced. In the meantime, WE BLOGGING.
A new challenge for bloggers: write something in anyway related to clerics (perhaps particularly their hierarchy and rituals?) and post it between when the conclave begins on May 7 and when the smoke emanates from the chimney indicating that a new Pope has been selected.
That made me laugh.
Clerics really seem to stir people up!
I really don't like the cleric class. – Splitting the cleric into the Holy Trinity
I don’t like clerics and never really have. – Divine Magic Works in Mysterious Ways
Of all the classes, the cleric strikes me as the dullest—so let's fix that. – Kill Clerics, Become Warlocks
In my own house rules, there have been no clerics since 2016. Back in 2019 I reported that I had still no clerics. And I still don't. I also never went back to using "paladin" abilities as mentioned in that "no clerics" post and I never went back to using reputation for "divine favour".
As @phf@tabletop.social of ((nil) is (not(null))) also uses these house rules to run Barrowmaze and I'm an occasional player, I get to use the rules from the player side, too. And it works! It works even if the whole dungeon is filled with undead. It's just harder.
I encourage you to give it a try. An adventure that requires a specific class to be in the party is a dull adventure. Therefore, all adventures can be played without clerics. It might be a bit harder, or it may feel different, but it can be done.
And I'm by no means a fanatic. I've played clerics. In my Arden Vul game, we use AD&D 1st edition rules. And there are clerics, of course. It's OK. I don't mind. The undead turning doesn't really make much of a difference. And the highest level cleric just recently started multi-classing as a magic-user.
In a way that seems to validate my idea: There are no clerics. Cleric spells are regular spells and magic-users can learn them, if they want. If you want to cast spells and wear armour and wield weapons, play an elf.
That brings me to another idea: I am thinking that we maybe don't need all these classes. We just need fighters and wizards and a multi-class options. If experience always double for the next level, then a fighter-wizard – what used to be an elf – is a level below their peers. Which is exactly the effect of double experience point requirements for elves in B/X or how OD&D elves work where you need to pick fighting elf or spell-casting elf at the beginning of the adventure. That leaves the question of whether comparison: One extra level of wizard is powerful, for sure. Is an extra level of fighter powerful? Probably not so much. A fighter with no wizard levels is simply easier to play. But that's a thought for another day – and no excuse to bring clerics back.
#RPG #Halberds and Helmets #Clerics
- *2025-05-08**. Best quote by @mdhughes@appdot.net:
The only reason they were ever in the game was Gary had an annoying vampire PC, and rather than do anything OOC (unaware that Rousseau had published The Social Contract in 1762), he made a grudge class for someone else. – Dungeoning & Dragoning and My New Rules, No Clerics Allowed