Divine Magic Works in Mysterious Ways
I don’t like clerics and never really have. Primarily, I have never liked the strange brand of polytheistic assumed setting that D&D has (though not at the outset, as explained by Delta [of D&D Hotspot fame) in this post that articulates many of my issues with fantasy polytheism) (see also this post from Delta, evincing that religion need not be a primary concern for a campaign or setting, but this post has the killer quote “Among other multifarious reasons, the armored, adventuring, miraculous man-of-Catholic-faith is simply not a type you see very much in the roots of the genre, if at all. The inclusion really sticks out like a sore thumb in OD&D.”).
However, my haterism aside, if one is to have divine magic in your game, it should at least feel different in kind from arcane magic. In fact, I would be hesitant to call it “magic” in-universe, and would instead call them prayers. That is because arcane magic is simply manipulation of forces of the universe whereas divine magic is at its heart a conversation between the cleric and their (or in a monotheistic setting, the) god. Divine magic is the “Isn’t there somebody you forgot to ask?” meme of magic systems.
[I put a call out to the Blogosphere to write something clerical while the Conclave is in process, and this is my entry. I’ll try to collect them all and round them up on my Substack newsletter, Prismatic Weekly.]
The Answer to Your Prayers
One of my favorite formulations of the cleric comes, of course, from Goblin Punch. One of the better ideas therein is that “A cleric doesn't choose their spells, their deity does.” Because the referee plays as the deity, it means that they pick the cleric’s spells based on what they have prepped, which may also give some insight into what the cleric might face that day. This is good and certainly a step up from Moldvay’s guidance that “[s]ince clerical spells are divinely given, they do not have to be studied; the cleric need only rest and then pray for them.” However, both of these represent only half the conversation. In an ideal system, the cleric prays for their spells, and their deity decides which they will grant.
At the end of each in-game day, the cleric prays for the spells they will have available the next day. The number of spells they are able to pray for is limited to whatever amount they are ordinarily allowed to prepare in whatever system you are using. They give their list of such spells to the referee who then rolls d20s, in secret, for every single cleric spell that the cleric could cast, not just the requested spells. For the spells that were requested, the DM adds the cleric’s Wisdom score to the d20 results. All rolls are at advantage if the cleric prayed in a church of their deity or if they performed some sacrament in connection with their prayers. If the cleric has offended their deity or their church, then all rolls are at disadvantage. If they have been excommunicated from the church, no spells will be granted. If, for any spell, the total is a 20 or higher, then the cleric is able to use their spell slots for that spell.
The next day, the cleric is fully unaware of whether or not they have a given spell prepared until they try to cast it. There is an element of fate of casting a spell you don’t know you have and hoping that your deity saw fit to bestow that power upon you. When they cast a spell they prayed to have and it works, it feels like god has answered their prayer specifically. When they do a hail mary on a spell they didn’t even pray for and that works, it feels even more miraculous.
Heal the Sick, Cleanse the Lepers, Raise the Dead, Cast out Devils
I don’t like cure wounds and similar spells. It operates as a tax on the cleric, limiting their ability to focus on weirder, more niche spells. My view is that if it is listed in Matthew 10:8 (you don’t need to look it up; just read the subheading above instead), the cleric should simply be able to do it regardless of what spells they have prepared that day.
Errant deals with a similar problem for wizards with its rules for maleficence (although I believe this originated with Wonder & Wickedness). The wizard issue is that wizards are motivated to stock up on blasting spells instead of all their weirder, more niche spells. But in Errant, a wizard need not do that because they can always just convert spell slots directly into a damaging spell without needing to know a specific spell for damaging. So for clerics, it could work similarly except for healing. Spend a spell slot and you get a number of d10s equal to that slot plus one for use in healing. Same with turning away devils/demons (rather than undead, although for clerics of evil deities they may instead turn away angels), except you roll the d10s to determine how many hit dice of devils/demons you can turn instead. For curing a disease, you have to roll above the diseased creature’s hit point maximum with your hit dice. For raising the dead, perhaps you have to roll above triple the dead creature’s hit point maximum AND wait three days for them to come back from the dead. Now, there is no need for the cleric to worry above praying for these spells in advance. This is especially important because being able to heal is core to a cleric’s role in the party, and the above prayer system could otherwise result in them not having access to healing magic. That would like the fighter waking up being unable to swing a sword.
Apotheosis
Magic must always be dangerous, whether arcane or divine. Here, I must steal another idea from Errant, one that I witnessed first hand in a game run by the author. In Errant, all divine magic runs the risk of apotheosis. If you roll the wrong (or right, depending on your perspective) result on the dice, “[y]our body erupts, giving birth to a physical manifestation of your covenant; an avatar of a deity, or belief otherwise made manifest. You are dead.” This once happened to Zedeck Siew’s cleric, Ball Bearing, as he saved my wizard from almost certain death in a dungeon. I lived and his cleric died, reborn as his deity, which must surely wander that dungeon to this very day. The way I would institute this here is that all clerics must choose, at the outset, what number (between one and ten) their religion holds most holy. Typically, evil deities will choose 6. If the cleric is using their magic to heal wounds or turn demons, and they roll triples, then this same result happens: they die, and an avatar of their deity steps into the world in your place. Healing 3d10 or more damage always runs this risk for a cleric, but surely they know what they signed up for and welcome it.
Clerics are too infrequently depicted as masked nuns.
As an aside, I am courting serious evil energy by publishing this post. Likely everyone who maintains a blogging presence knows of the spam that ends up in comments from people purporting to have their life and/or marriage saved by sending a WhatsApp message to a miracle healer. If you want to read a mildly humorous story about this phenomenon, I suggest this 2017 post from the To Say Nothing of the Cat blog. But it’s still alive and well as I write this, and I get nearly weekly comments (promptly deleted), particularly on my posts involving magic of any sort. I wish there were an incantation I could do to keep blog spammers away. Perhaps that is a condition for which online witch doctors should begin offering cures.
