Today, I was struck by one of the questions in the theWeem interviews (part 1) (part 2) :

Weem: Speaking of you playing, you also run games (DM) of course, what is your favorite house rule?

GG: … I generally ignore rules, not add more house ones. If the game is flowing smoothly, the players immersed in the actions of their characters, fun being had, then all is well. Rules are meant to facilitate that through explanation and quantification of things that are nor actual (spells, monsters, etc.). I see no benefit in adding more unless the enjoyment of the game is somehow enhanced by such. …

Do you have a favorite Gygax quote? Pointer to an interview, you enjoyed? Comment away.

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The usual ground rules:

Try to remember that this is just an exercise in what I would have done. Everything here is opinion. Feel free to disagree, consider me an idiot, whatever. If 4E works for you and your gaming crowd, then by all means play it to your hearts’ content. I applaud all fun had in this hobby. However, as I’ve stated numerous times, 4E doesn’t work for me or my gaming crowd. As a result of this, I would not have made the same changes to the game that WotC did. What follows is where I would have focused my changes and where I would have gone with the intellectual property.

My methodology in the process will be guided by a short list of principles:

• Rules should be simple guides, with options to be expand by the DM.
• Rules should lead to interesting options.
• Rules ignored should be rules removed.
• No Rule is sacred.
• No inspiration forbidden.

For this process I’ve decided that my jumping-off point with be trying to turn 2E into a better version of 4E by removing the bloat of the 3.xE versions of the game. Today’s focus: fixing the cleric class in D&D.

I shouldn’t have to, but I will point out a brief note on the use of god in this discussion. I’ve used god in places where it will stand for both god and goddess. The use of the simple god isn’t meant to infer that I’m not referring to a female goddess, it’s just easier for me to type. – KO

The role of the Cleric

Clerics are supposed to fill the role of support. It is my opinion that, where the fighter as cavalry, magic-user as artillery, and thief as covert ops holds sway, clerics should be seen as logistics and support. They’re the glue that holds a party together. In fact, that’s the role Gary intended.

A study of the spells usable by clerics will convey the main purpose of the cleric. That is, the cleric serves to fortify, protect, and revitalize. – AD&D Player’s Handbook, page 20.

Embrace it, let the “support and protective role” nature of the class flourish.

So where did the class go wrong in my estimation? Simple, the cleric class has become an unmanageable morass of everything so much in the past editions that its actually become the everyman. Let’s take a look at the reasons why and see if we can’t address the cleric as the everyman.

A Bold Statement

It’s not the fault of the class; it’s the fault of the DM. That’s right, if you’re a DM and clerics in your game have become walking, buffing tanks that stand toe-to-toe with the fighters, then the blame falls squarely on your shoulders. You gave the player too much narrative control in the cleric. You didn’t put boundaries on the class. And that’s what the cleric should have. In fact, that’s what the cleric needs to flourish. Here’s a class counter-intuitive to my own way of doing things – this class needs to be reigned in. Before it is allowed to be in the player’s hands, you have to put some boundaries on it.

Step 1: Defining god

As a DM, you need to define the divinity in your game before you allow a player to take on the role of a cleric. Without a defined structure under which to play the class, players will take narrative control over the gods and start making decisions that should reside with the DM.

A few examples and descriptions of decisions players tend to make that should at least be influenced by Step 1:

• Which spells they can pray for and cast. You, the DM, play the role of gods in your world. By natural extension, you should decide how to interpret the requests of the cleric for divine influence. The player should make requests, not make decisions.
• Armor and weapon selections. You define what weapons are appropriate for worshipers. If the god of healing abhors death and pain, then weapons such as nets and the like are appropriate, not clubs and knives. However, if the same god of healing enjoys the presence of pain and torment on the mortal plane in order to glorify his power over these concepts, then by all means allow your worshiper to inflict damage with tools most dire… but be sure they’re ready to expect the same god to desire the glorification too.
• Their place and interactive role in the scheme of the party. Worshipers of the god of death might find their place in the front of the party where they can glorify their god by sending all comers to his welcoming bosom. Followers of the self-denying god of the void might require the party to give up (and not sell) any treasures they don’t necessarily need.

The nature of the gods in your game should set guidelines on how the class should be role-played as well as help to flesh out the allowances given a cleric. Again, this is really counter-intuitive for me since I prefer an open system, but here the rules are required to prevent a class that gains all the benefits with none of the drawbacks. In essence you need to define your world’s hierarchy of gods, what worshipers are allowed and what benefits of worship brings. The 1E Deities and Demigods alluded to this concept. 2E tried to do this more significantly. 3E tried to step it back to the 30,000 foot view with domains, but the benefits were never balanced with drawbacks and led to DMs using the templates as presented as rules to be played. I don’t think that was the intention, but is sure became the normal method of defining the class.

Again I know, in the past I’ve derided balance, and yet here I’m espousing it. But this class needs balance within it to function properly. A specific god should be countered by a specific other god. Powers granted to the worshiper should come with drawbacks. Fail to balance the internals of this class and you’re removed interesting decisions. My issue with balance is between the classes, not within a single one.

In following with the idea that rpgs need guidelines, I won’t go into detail on specifics since those are for you as the DM to decide, but here are a few examples:

• A god of war isn’t going to look to fondly on a cleric who constantly requests what might be considered a coward’s spell. Perhaps worshipers of your war god views pain as the natural outcome of struggle and therefore doesn’t grant healing, or perhaps worshipers of this faith view death in combat as glorifying and consider resurrection and raise dead spells heretical.
• Perhaps the god of health refuses to grant requests for damage-dealing spells.
• A god of death might be more than happy to grant damage-dealing spells but ignore all requests for healing since the reaper must come to all… Of course if the healing will allow their instrument to further the cause of death, healing might be just the ticket… or maybe that raise dead spell results in the creation of an undead instead.
• Perhaps devout worshipers of the All Father are revered as skilled politicians and negotiators but are forbidden by doctrine from assisting the winner’s side in a battle once it has begun. Though they are not required to offer aid to the weaker side, they must extract themselves from any conflict (verbal or physical) and offer no further assistance to the winning side during the fight. Once the weaker side is defeated however, aid can once again be offered to the victor.

These definitions of how a god views the world should help to define the class and give the player some interesting options in game play. See how each helps the player shape their role within the world? Counter-intuitive I know, but it has to be this way. Step 1 is to define the nature and role of the gods in your world. Fail to perform this step and clerics will forever be the everyman since it’ll be the player who decides if a spell is appropriate or the use of a weapon or armor allowed. I’m all for allowing players narrative control, but in this case, the guidelines and framework under which they must work should be set forth first. That’s your job as a DM.

Step2: The power of faith

The next step to fixing the cleric class is to remove healing spell access from arcane spellcasters. Arcane classes shouldn’t be healers and healers shouldn’t be arcane spellcasters. Blurring the lines was a terrible idea. Returning the class-niche protection actually does more for the game than removing it ever did. In addition, I would remove any part of the Heal skill that grants direct HP recovery. While a properly bound and dressed wound may speed healing, the same bandages and dressings do not grant healing themselves. There are only two actual ways to get HP back, rest and divine intervention. This bolsters the support role of the cleric and takes the role of revitalization out of the hands of the arcane classes.

The nature of the divine spell

Clerical spells are the manifestation of the god’s intercession on behalf of the worshiper because of their faith.

I can’t stress this concept enough. Divine spells aren’t recipes or formula like their arcane counterparts; they’re the direct result of requests for divine aid. As a result, for spell selection, a cleric should operate like a sorcerer. All spells below the cleric’s level (and approved by the god worshiped) should be open at any moment for a cleric to cast. The two part reason for this is simple: 1. gods wouldn’t send the faithful crap spells based on some preconceived rule that says all requests are to be done during the hours of 6 to 9, and 2. no god will ignore a request for a different spell just because those prayed for don’t fit the bill. 3E removed the restriction partially by allowing spontaneous casting of healing spells. I contend that maintaining the restriction on all other spells is a ridiculous rule. This means that henceforth, like the sorcerer, a cleric can cast any spell of his level or below at any time. They need not prepare spells, they simply ask for divine intervention and either get an answer or don’t… or at times get a spell they hadn’t requested but is deemed by the god more appropriate.

Pray for a miracle, get it. Need healing? Done. Need to cure a diseased teammate? You got it.
Could also lead to; pray for a miracle, get something else. Need healing? Maybe a bless instead. Need to cure a diseased friend? No, but providing food and water for the night would be more appropriate.
But also; pray for a miracle, get ignored. Need healing? Not right now. Need to cure a diseased friend? No, his god has plans for his soul when he dies and I’m not going to anger the other god just because you can’t see the big picture here.

If we change the nature of cleric from “a list of pre-prayed for miracles” to “the instruments of their god’s will”, we see the cleric in its real light and realize that they should be the vehicle through which the glory and might of said god is portrayed. Healing and protecting and assisting the team suddenly glorify the god, by nerfing the cleric’s support mechanisms we’ve limited that glory and made for a less interesting character. Allowing a  cleric character’s player to select a spell at the time of casting makes more sense in this analysis since no god’s going to ignore a legitimate request if the worshiper really needs it.

Seriously, who wants their god to answer, “Oh, uhm… sorry, you prayed for Cure Light Wounds this morning. Now you’re asking for me to forget that request and grant you Bless Water instead? What do I look like to you? Some sort of divine wish granter or something? Look, I’ve got to go… some guy’s requesting that I help him turn some undead now. Geez, when are you worshipers going to get with the program and take care of some of this stuff yourselves… sheesh, you’re like pulling me in a thousand directions or something. You’d think you guys think I’m like omniscient and omnipotent or something. Next time be more careful what you request in your morning prayers will you? As of right now you’ll just have to make due with the Cure spell thingy. Maybe tomorrow. Oh, and don’t forget to donate that 10% tithe next time you hit the temple… I’m your god remember, I’ll know… omniscient remember?”

The book is just words, faith gives it power

Since divine spells are seen now as requests of intervention offered because of faith, then it is all to logical that clerical scrolls hold no real magic. As a result, though it’ll lead to some further discussion I’m sure, clerical scrolls should be eliminated as magical treasure items. Leaving clerical scrolls in their standard form leads to ideas that the scroll can force intervention by a divine being. As a DM, I’m personally not ready to go down that path for a 1st level bless spell. That’s not to say that scrolls of ceremonies and prayers should not be considered treasures, but they hold no magical power in the hands of any but a cleric. Even if I can envision some forgotten ceremony that might entreat a slumbering, ancient and powerful god for a boon, without faith, the ceremony is but words on a page.

You cannot fail

There is No Failure Rate on divine spells since the Cleric’s spells are manifestations of their god’s actions via their faith. Failure would indicate their god is displeased with them. Random displeasure really doesn’t have a place in the role of a Cleric. I’m not going to go into this further other than to say that some will contend that the failure mechanic for divine spells should be introduced as a means of describing when a god determines a spell isn’t necessary. I disagree. That’s your job as the DM and referee, not the role of a random roll of the dice.

I know, I know. The DM is a jerk and will decide on a whim that my cleric can’t cast an all-important spell at the precise time it needs… Look, if your DM is a jerk, then forcing rules upon him to prevent his jerk-ishness isn’t going to stop him from finding ways to be a jerk. Here’s an idea, if your DM is a jerk, then stop playing with him.

Fear factor

Worried? So what happens if we do this? What’s our new fear? This might overpower the cleric. Suddenly, in the class of the cleric, we have a support structure for any crazy thing the party wants. What are our options? Where do we draw inspiration? Do we nerf healing spells? Nerf the Cleric? what?

Here’s an idea, what if we embrace the cleric’s role as support and let him cast as many supporting and healing spells as his heart desires so long as it falls in line with the desires and motivations of the god? Have we really changed the class too much?

But wait! There’s more…

Let’s look at what the cleric brings to the table now:

• Gird yourself in the Armor of God – Clerics, when their god permits, can use it when magic-users can’t. Since divine spells are demonstrations of faith and not arcane recipes that require precise motions, armor doesn’t impact spellcasting capabilities. However, that armor should always be appropriate to the divinity worshiped.
• Take up the Sword of Truth – Likewise, clerics should be allowed to use any weapon so long as it is appropriate to the god they worship.
• You can’t write this stuff down – Clerical scrolls are now gone as magical treasures since faith can’t be penned in a manuscript.

In exchange for stepping into a support role, the cleric has a lot going for them. That said however, when it comes to spell grants, armor and weapon selections, it is the DM’s responsibility to, as the role of the divinity, interpret the requests of the cleric and grant the spell that their god thinks is most appropriate (if at all.) Its the role of the DM, in conjunction with the player, to help identify which requests are answered, which are ignored, and which are answered in ways different than expected. Remember that “God answers all prayers, but sometimes the answer is No” and also “He works in Mysterious Ways.”

Imagine the depth the cleric now has because we’ve fenced him in. Suddenly the god becomes the focus as glorified via the character’s actions and decisions. That’s where and how the cleric should be.

©2010 KORE rpg. All Rights Reserved.

Up to 1d4-1 Related posts:

1. Magic Items and Failure
2. Magic – The first thing I’d change in D&D
3. 1 Spell 3 Systems: Hasted Decomposition

Science fiction never imagined Google, but it certainly imagined computers that would advise us what to do. HAL 9000, in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” will forever come to mind, his advice, we assume, eminently reliable — before his malfunction. But HAL was a discrete entity, a genie in a bottle, something we imagined owning or being assigned. Google is a distributed entity, a two-way membrane, a game-changing tool on the order of the equally handy flint hand ax, with which we chop our way through the very densest thickets of information. Google is all of those things, and a very large and powerful corporation to boot. – William Gibson, 2010

He certainly has an interesting take on Google as an organization and how it intersects with everyday life.

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The other thing that this system would do is really make scrolls viable items again, even for magic-users. No chance of fizzle!

That’s an interesting idea to infer since I hadn’t really addressed casting spells from scrolls. Naturally that got me thinking, ”Should spells cast from a scroll (or wand, staff, rod, item, etc.) follow the failure rules?”

My initial answer? I really didn’t know. But that’s an interesting question worth examining more fully.

In with the new

First up, a really short primer on the way I proposed magic should work by eliminating a bunch of the ills Vancian magic brings to the system. Those interested in reading how I got to these changes should read this post.

• Magic-users can cast any spell they’ve studied without the need to prepare.
• Arcane spells have an innate failure rate equal to Spell Level x 5% that determines if the caster performed the incantation correctly.
• Armor causes arcane spells to fail to be cast.
• Sorcerers, if they’re still present, have access to any arcane spell so long as the spell level is not above their class level.

I’ve already declared my dislike of one time use scrolls, so the idea of no failure from such a device is, at least on the surface, a concern.

The only thing we have to fear

Let’s examine this concern in the same methodology as we examined the magic system proposed. We do so by looking into the fears and examining a mitigating factor or a way around the concern. So what’s our fear?

• That we’ll have magic-users (not all arcane spellcasters – reason identified here) who are carrying around massive amounts of scrolls in order to circumvent the failure rules. And since rules ignored are rules removed, eventually we’ll have a situation where the failure mechanic will be ignored and we will find ourselves in violation of the second fear identified during the redesign of the magic system itself.
  • Related to the above, that they’ll be carting their spellbooks into battle in order to do the same.

Establishing a baseline rule

Let’s examine how other magical items work and see if we can find (or invent) a good general rule.

If we apply a spell failure check from a scroll, then by natural extension, shouldn’t we do the same from a wand, or a staff? What of a spell cast from a magical sword? Though some of the inspiration for our new failure mechanic comes from a view of magic not unlike that in the Harry Potter books, and failure with wands is appropriate in that analysis, it hardly seems fitting with the theme to make Bilbo’s player roll to see if Sting can sense the orcs in the caverns above him.

And what of the extremes? What of Artifacts? Can you fail to operate one? Probably not likely. Fail to operate it properly? You bet! Perhaps that’s not a good metric to use in our analysis.

What of the opposite extreme? What about a simple potion, can the magic contained within it be consumed incorrectly? I think not.

It appears, under this analysis, that magic items really shouldn’t be hindered with spell failure. Therefore I would nearly be inclined to conclude that spells cast from scrolls must not have a failure possibility.

Concerned yet? Don’t be. We’re about to take that turn at Albuquerque.

Where does the magic reside?

And this is why I disagree with Mark’s view of scrolls.

In the previous mentioned analysis of magical items, the magic of the items resides within them. Swords are magical, wands and staves alike. The very liquid of the potion imbibed is infused with magic. Using that magic releases it from the item in question. Think of each item as a repository for the magic, they’re magical in nature.

But what of scrolls? If you take the classical stance that the magic of the spell on the scroll is the scroll itself, then you arguably need to have one-time use scrolls that can be used without fear of failure. Sorry, but that feels artificially Vancianesque to me. And you’ll need to come up with some logic why, for some strange reason, this may or may not apply to the spellbook (or at least it only applies when you cast the spell out of the book directly.)

These are the standard views of scrolls versus books. But the rules for when the magic is released aren’t very logically homogeneous. In some cases transcribing the spell to the book destroys the original scroll. but the reverse (from book to scroll) doesn’t. And I could go on but I won’t. Suffice to say that DMs have argued and twisted their logic to account for when the magic is released and when it isn’t, but it strikes me as a collection of special case rules.

I’m not a fan of lots of small special cases when a single logic could bring all possibilities into the fold.

I take a different stance. I see the scroll no different than the book. Both contain the recipe, not the magic. The magic has to be harnessed by someone who knows how to apply the formula. That’s why only magic-users can use scrolls and why, even if commoners could read the thing, they can’t cast the spell.

But there’s a drawback (for the player) to this line of thinking. However, it addresses our fear identified above because in this view it is the magic-user who is casting the spell, not the scroll. So failure rules apply even to those spells cast from a book or a tome or a scroll. If the item casts the spell, then failure doesn’t apply. If the item provides the methodology but the spell is cast by the character, then roll for success.

Sorry murph, I’m going to have to disagree; spells cast from scrolls should be subject to the same failure percentage as those cast from memory.

Find my logic faulty? Tell me where I went awry.

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Up to 1d4-1 Related posts:

1. Magic – The first thing I’d change in D&D
2. Clerics – Restoring the faith in D&D
3. Wither goest thou, Black Dougal?

Marketing, Done Wrong

I think not.

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