Elfgames have a fascinating and frustrating relationship with divinity. Clerics have been a part of the game since 1974 and have been in every edition since then, much to the chagrin of some referees. I was infamous in my own college games for changing out deities every six months, kept on a large and brightly colored excel spreadsheet which my players largely ignored. I can count on one hand how many clerics we had in ~4 years and that was in 5th edition where they were fun.
What are my issues with clerics exactly? I think I can break down into three parts roughly. First is the work:fun ratio for the referee. A dungeon is 1 to 1 roughly. Every room you write up and key is fun for you and the players. You can fill it full of traps and treasure and lore and all the bits that tickle your sadistic lizard/referee brain. However, a pantheon of gods is a lot of work especially if you aim for the "Greek standard" where every "sphere" or "domain" is accounted for a la the Olympians of pop culture. And yet it may never come up without engineering on the referee's part. If no one plays a cleric, the work isn't wasted per se but it isn't used and that's frustrating. Consider making that lore actionable.
Second, these "spheres" and gods are hardly accurate to how they were purported to exist in real life, a great example of truth being stranger than fiction. Humans have had innumerable gods, ones we thought lived in temples or statues. I saw an exhibit at the lovely Royal Alberta Museum about Angor Wat where priests bathed the statues the believed the gods lived in. Other cultures left food out for them, burned their enemies' temples to the ground and even stole them to live in their own temples after a successful battle. The goal was to make the god homeless or kidnap them basically. "My god can kick your god's ass and this battle will prove it." The Romans loved this shit. If enemies bested them in a battle they would try to steal those statues/idols next time around because they figured the gods were actually worth a damn, winning fights for their foes. These are nowhere close to the strangest examples of worship.
Additionally, they didn't have neat gameable spheres, like Life, Law and Death. Gods were local and the line between godling, nature spirit, demon, fairy and leprechaun was fraught by conquest, colonization, translation and syncretization. One Pict's forest spirit was a Brits' elf and a Germanic kobold could be a brownie, pixie or goblin and live in your home, your mines or your ship depending on what story you subscribe to.
To compound this point, D&D gods are far too human and Christian. Nothing wrong with this in and of itself but Christianity is an outlier in religions in that it was both moral and non-transactional. Greek and Norse gods didn't tell you how to live a "moral" life e.g. what was bad and good, beyond some taboos, they were simply examples of archetypes in their own cultures. Just as well, humans made bargains with gods in most every other religion. I give you sacrifice, if you give me rain. If you give me victory, I give you ten heads of enemy priests. Easy peasy, none of that "all sins forgiven for free" stuff. An orcish god would surely require a river of blood for such a blessing. The gods were integral to the lives of everyone, for practical purposes not tied to the state of one's soul and ultimate divine destiny.
This leads to the third point which is how poorly gameable they are. Clerics in most iterations of the elfgame lineage are simple wizards with less flashy spell lists, some healing and weapons of enbludgeonment. Spells are prepared the same way (usually some combination of level and wisdom) except you know all of them and have to pick them from a line up. No spell scroll treasure for you. But also no money wasted on expensive inks. For a game with 50 years of gods, spirits and holy warriors there are no exemplary rules for cursing your enemies, praying for good fortune or tracking your relationship with your god. Don't even get me started on player's asking how there god "feels" about them. Your referee has no idea. Go ahead ask him right now. He can't ever remember how many goblins are in the next room and he wrote the damn thing. Watch him lie.
 |
| Your heart Cleric, he wants to light your heart on fire. He wants to light everyone's heart on fire. |
To summarize: Gods in D&D games are poorly designed, with no way to track their mercurial moods and interaction with them is gated by a whole class that might as be a medic with a mace.
Much blood has been spilled on the subject of what to do about this in the OSR. Goblinpunch has mused on it often and gets much closer to a solution then I've seen anyone else get [1][2]. Delta's D&D Hotspot removes them entirely with a veritable laundry list of perks to doing so, not the least of which is protecting genre conventions [3]. Paper and Pencils did a lovely original bit making them anti-magicians [4]
And yet, I still find the role valuable. I just think they could be more weird.
Some changes I've made. First you need a system where non-clerics can use the gods before clerics can specialize.
1. Anyone can pray at a temple, alter, shrine or cairn and receive one blessing with a sacrifice, usually 100 gp or with an animal sacrifice the god likes or perhaps 1d6 hours/days/years of begging. It takes the form of a D6.
2. Anyone can "turn" undead or ward off spirits with an apotropaic amulet or other "holy" symbol. Usually, you roll a D6 unless its particularly potent apotropaic. Except vampires who always receive the fullest extent of the turning. This is the tradeoff they made a millennia ago for their power.
Now priests-as-class can improve on that.
1. Call them priests.
2. Priests gain blessings equal to their WIS when they pray at a relevant site, not just one. I recommend the improvements in B/X where WIS 13-15 would garner +1 blessings, 16-17 +2 etc.
3. Priests gain a bonus to turning or warding based on level or template. Usually this represented by a second D6 to roll the 2d6 for turning we know and love. Let them also turn enemies of their gods, usually specific types of animals or monsters.
4. Priests can bless their allies who in turn gain the blessing they prayed for
5. Add in some taboos of your choice which prevent the receiving of blessings. Phlox's Vain the Sword 2e has some great one's called gigres [5]. Enacting one of these taboos loses you all your favor and blessings. A vengeful or bored god may curse you as well. I recommend cursing them with animal heads with a hefty CHA penalty until they regain favor.
Blessings are vague and powered by favor dice. You may pray for "protection", "victory" and "fortune" and spend favor dice to enact these blessings. Favor dice are acquired by performing awesome deeds a la a Greek hero. A d6 or a d12 if impressive or relevant to the god's interest. A priest gains 1 favor dice each morning by praying. When you spend it, you may modify a damage roll, make an attack automatically hit or heal an ally depending on the blessing. A blessed ally can also spend this dice (no more heal-botting, a la Goblinpunch).
Gods should all be unique, local and weird. They also have a specific home. An example:
Thudestra, cloud warrior sylph lives on the island of Larados amongst a series of standing stones. She is a goddess of the sick and lame, injured warriors, thunder and venomous snakes. She hates snakes and her image on a shield will drive away anything that slithers on a failed turning save. Legend holds she was born when the Chaos Serpent's venom dripped to earth and the sky father Zizat stepped in it. His pain was so great his yells still rebound today, the source of waves on the beach and his immortality precluded his death. He hacked his heel from his foot and from the blood and venom was born Thudestra, who rattles great chains in storms to emulate his cries. This is where thunder comes from.
A tax for you humble reader:
Weird God ideas
1. Emerged from the carcass of a hippopotamus
2. Has many limbs ending in the shape of every local fauna
3. Sleeps in a giant flower during the dry season and their tears bring the rain when they awake
4. Has the head of a flea and created the local spirits from bones thrown in a well
5. Sinks islands because they are the many heads of their arch foe the World Hydra
6. Born twice because their crawled into the mouth of their progenitor to receive sacred knowledge from their intestines.
Honestly this could be a longer much weirder table and it still wouldn't come close to being as weird as any given people's mythologies and religions. Go read about some.
