💥 Bob World Builder DICE! www.onlycrits.com/products/bob-world-builder-limited-edition-metal-dice-set ✅ LIKE & SHARE: th-cam.com/users/BobWorldBuildervideos ✅ PATREON: www.patreon.com/bobworldbuilder
@@BobWorldBuilderhey man are those still available? I know there are a limited number, and I’ve recently come into the funds to be able to support :) Honesty Bob, I’ve been watching you for almost a year now, and I love your chill energy and knowledgeable experience. Matt Mercer, Matt Colville, and Never Stop Learning got me started as a DM, but you’ve kept me learning throughout my last year as a DM :)
I think I prefer Clerics to have a god or gods in my campaign, but if someone has a great character idea with an ideal they want to follow, I'm ok with that as well. The character of gods is based on human ideals anyway, so as far as I'm concerned the same can be said in D&D.
I think we're on the same page they should have a God unless they have a creative solution like being so delusional that they totally believe that their rock 🪨 gives them powers so it does, that would be nuts. Take care 😎 🤘 🍻
@@RobKinneySouthpaw I love Kuo-Toa. I had a player with a sorcerer character who had been raised by a cult (as a sacrifice) to believe he was a god. Then he met and befriended some Kuo-Toa after defeating their "god" in combat. Things got interesting after that...
@@bt3779 I disagree. I would say that it requires a form of worship, but that doesn't have to be in service of a god. It might be more thematically appropriate to choose a different class, but that could be discussed with the DM at character creation.
Currently playing a cleric who worships ancestors. It's quite fun describing spells in terms of him calling upon the knowledge/skills of the tribal spirits.
This is one of the best examples of why the class's broad mechanical niche is essentially required to permit divine sources other than a deity. Cleric is fairly unambiguously the correct class to execute on this concept.
I once was in a game where there was a Warlock and a Cleric, both serving the same deity on their own way. It created a lot of good RP moments between them. A lot of fun things can come when you blur the lines of what a cleric, warlock or paladin must serve!
Clerics worshiping deities to gain abilities is one of the reasons they are my favorite class. I love all the different gods with their varying themes. I will always choose one for my Clerics but if a player wants to go with an ideal, I'd allow it as a DM. Even though that kinda treads on the Paladin a bit imo.
They're such a fun class! And I agree that the relationship with a deity is a big part of what makes them interesting. There's overlap with Paladins for sure, but I agree that each group is free to parse that out how they want to
I dumped alignment from my game about 30 years ago, and all religious characters who draw power from the church/God/higher power are allowed to use their spells/ability as long as they broadly follow the beliefs as set down by their faith. This opens the door for different interpretations of the "Faith". One of my players' current main antagonists is the local head of the church of what would normally be considered the Healers/Peace Makers/Light Bringers/Pacifists yada yada... a group most traditional players would immediately associate with "Lawful Good". Lord Stellan has chosen to interpret the scriptures so that the poor don't get as much attention as the rich, based on tithes and tributes, deeming the wealthy "more worthy." One of the players follows the same God but is from a different City and is appalled that there are parts of town where disease is rife among the poor, and the church does nothing to alleviate it. It's made for some brilliant exchanges between so called "pacifists".
@@andrewtomlinson5237 spot on, this is the only way religious classes should be done in DnD in my opinion. if your deity saw fit to grant you power, you 100% should follow them like a real calling or pick a different class. it doesn't have to be hard set living like a monk living in poverty, just more than the usual "i pray to them at the end of the day and don't drink alcohol".
I understand the whole "I want your personal opinion, not a recitation of the book" but a lot of people really do prefer to defer to the book. Ben Milton referred to this in his last video as the official vs folk d&d dichotomy. Definitely worth a watch.
I watched that video as soon as it went up haha, Ben is great! And yeah, it helped me realize that I'm definitely a folk D&D player, but the internet-D&D community is very mixed between the folk and official groups!
I think it's worth noting that the bar set by the question was very high. Do clerics usually have a deity? Yes. Is it _required?_ A single counterexample is all that is required to definitively say "no". Dark Sun and Ravnica establish that the canon answer is factually "no".
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos "Dark Sun and Ravnica establish that the canon answer is factually "no"." Well, no. It's factually no for Dark Sun & Ravnica. Different settings are different. And at least in Dark Sun's case, the clerics are still channeling a divine power - that being nature/the elements themselves.
As a Counterpoint to Dark Sun: In Dragonlance (the beginning) was the big thing that the Deities where no longer present and therefore there was no Divine Magic.
And no proper Clerics... ..apart from Goldmoon, and the one who gave Riverwind the Blue Crystal Staff. Goldmoon was a Spell-less "Cleric" who worshipped "False Gods" and was brought up to believe that when she died, she would ascend to divinity. She discovered Mishakal towards the end of the first adventure (in the books she was thought to have died and been reborn) and becomes a "True" Cleric of that goddess and starts to get spells. Ironically, if you played a home made PC in DL1 rather than the pre-written PCs, the only "Cleric" you could play before the revelation was one who actually worshipped Gods (that didn't exist) and you had to roleplay that to show what class you were! But got zero spells as a result. At that point you could switch to a new God and start getting spells. So at the outset of Dragonlance you had to be MORE focussed on your false "God" without getting any of the associated powers and bonuses... the Clerics all HAD Gods that they worshipped... just none of them existed.
Dark Sun in 2E was largely cut off from the rest of the multiverse due to the actions of the Dragon Kings and didn't have clerics or paladins following gods because of it.
One of my favorite parts of most TTRPGs is that the different divisions between classes and abilities don't have to be tied down to the in-universe explanations given in the sourcebooks-- they're essentially just templates of abilities that give your character life! If your group is fine with it, warlocks can absolutely have their power without a patron, or a cleric's magical power can come from entirely within them akin to a Divine Soul sorcerer. It's just a whole book of suggestions that can be modified or replaced as your group sees fit!
Hexblade Warlocks especially are encouraged to have (it seems) a sentient weapon/semi sentient weapon or just a special weapon they bond with, which could be separate them from drawing upon a specific Patron. The power is more so their bond to the weapon and their gaining of magical power reflects their prowess with the weapon
I think this is one of the central concepts of TTRPGs that people whose only experience of the hobby is 5E don't get. There have always been rules lawyers in the hobby (I still distinctly remember the first one I met at a con in the mid-80's who stopped a game dead in the water to argue with the DM about the specific wording of a spell) but it seems like in the last decade the D&D community has really embraced the idea - encouraged, I think, by WOTC - that there is a right and a wrong way to play the game that I rarely encountered prior to that.
@@BobWorldBuilder I heard they pulled all sponsorship contracts in damage control. Get that bag, don't let them weasel out of it like they likely will to legal prosecution.
I think it comes down to the setting and what the group wants. As a DM I prefer to go with what the story wants, and if a player wants a god for their cleric, or if they wanna be based on an ideal. That’s cool with me. 🎉
My homebrew setting would allow for either kind of cleric. We treat most of the gods as being the collective manifestation of peoples faith in the deity.
The 1st Ed AD&D dmg pg 38 has an interesting take on a cleric's spells. Where depending on the spell level they received it from different sources of the deity. 1st and 2nd levels needed no divine source but 3rd through 5th were from a subordinate of the deity. And 6th and up directly from the deity. So technically in 1st Ed you don't need a deity for the first 3 level. Though having a deity for the character imo adds a lots of RP interaction.
I really like that. It's weird to me that at level 1 clerics already have a direct line of communication to their god when really they should just be s regular-ass cleric at that point.
That reminds me of the Donatist controversy in Christian history. There was a disagreement over whether rites performed by priests who had denied Jesus in the face of persecution counted. The conclusion was that as long as the rite was performed correctly and received by the laity in good faith, whether or not the priest was fallen didn't matter. In D&D (if one is playing an edition or houserules where fallen clerics losing spells is a thing), I could see different religions having signature spells that their priests are always able to cast for the faithful no matter what. A cleric of a healing god might never lose the ability to cast cure wounds, for example.
@@BobWorldBuilder At the end of the day, the game should be about fun and player empowerment. If we want to have this restriction be part of the characters struggle and that is his story arc, then sure. However, to have a DM force this restriction on a player who just wants to serve light and joy without anthropomorphizing it, is cruel.
Personally, I don't think you should abandon role-playing elements unless you have something to replace them with. As a DM I'll insist you explain yourself whenever you want to have the powers without a patron / deity.
I agree about including deities as an important RP element! I personally find clerics more fun this way, and yeahhh the source of power thing gets interesting, but if a person who's a paladin can just believe in some idea really hard, then another person who's a cleric could too I guess. Like I said in the video, it gets tricky when you consider how other classes and settings function
@@BobWorldBuilder I think the opposite argument can be made equally well, since a number of sources insist that a paladin is just as bound to a god as a cleric is. You're right, though; debating the minutiae of generic d&d is kinda fruitless, since it's designed to be flexible and up to interpretation. Only settings themselves can speak authoritatively on the matter and only insomuch as rule zero will let them.
@@colbyboucher6391 True. 5e isn't the only edition, though. Frankly 3.5 & 5 paladins are more conceptually distinct than any other core class imo. Alignment restrictions were replaced with oaths, which offloaded a lot of the religious zeal in favor of chivalric conduct. Before that paladins were jokingly given a special alignment: lawful stupid, where these knuckleheads would blunder into divine combat against "heathens" and diplomacy was always at the tip of their sword. As much as I struggle to enjoy 5e, this change was definitely an improvement.
I think these rules are just mechanics, and shouldn't be tied to flavor that strongly. As a DM, I let players write whatever they want in their sheets in order to realize their vision.
My girlfriend played a sort of atheist cleric - a Knowledge Domain gnome. She had the theory that the gods just weren't there anymore, and divine magic was only the manifestation of cosmic 'residue-like energies' coming through the light of the stars. She dropped out of her monastic school and set out to the world trying to assemble other people with her ideas. It was a lot of fun.
"Trying to assemble other people with her ideas" Huh, the atheist seeks to establish a cult, or atleast an organisation centered around belief. Thats hilarious
I wonder however, where the powers come from for characters who may ascend to god hood. Where do the gods come from? It seems like there should be a path wherein a player acquires divine power by simply becoming a personification of an abstract idea, embracing whatever it is and bringing it within himself and letting it guide whatever he does to simply be the ideal. There should be little room for lip service in this interpretation as there is no godly other.
@@ianollmann9393 So if we're talking about D&D, all magic comes from the Weave. Arcane, divine, primal, all magic comes from the weave. Gods are beings who tap into the weave in a special way, but in D&D lore the gods certainly can be killed and replaced: there's no Nerull in 5e, for example; he's been replaced by the Raven Queen. But allowing a character to ascend to godhood could be problematic in your next campaign when that character's player starts calling down divine vengeance on some poor goblin somewhere.
@@AJBernard I feel the DM can deal with this without too much trouble, such as pointing out that except in special session as allowed by DM, gods are controlled by DM and not the player.
Not a "god" necessarily, but some sort of divine force that certain ideals would easily connect to. You could be one with "nature" or a follower of Gia, and I'd believe your character as a nature cleric. But re-flavoring can always change the dynamic. For example my space Marine in a sci fi campaign uses his "esprit de corps" to obtain his War cleric abilities and uses his Military symbol as a religious symbol/arcane focus.
In my opinion the difference between a cleric and warlock is not that the source of the power, like what entity provides it, but how it is provided, These days you also have celestial warlocks that can make deals with gods, so its no longer an argument that their patrons are weaker, even from just the phb an fey warlock could choose a god from the feywild as their patron. What I think the big difference between an cleric and warlock is is that a cleric gets their power through faith, while a warlock gets their power through a deal, and is handed it from his patron, A cleric could theoretically be a cleric of a god without the god actually knowing of its cleric, unlikely, but since the magic is based on the faith of the cleric, the gods state or even existence is irrelevant. That while a warlock makes a direct pact with their patron, they are given their powers, and thus its a very different thing.
Ultimately I believe that a cleric's faith towards a deity is rewarded with love - even if a corrupted one. The warlock is a businessman. You give me X, I do Y for you. The parts don't necessarily like each other.
In my campaign, we have a non-god cleric. I worked with the player and we decided that ultimately, clerics were more about faith and devotion, so a specific deity wasn't strictly necessary. Instead, they went with a dad-style character whose magic comes from his love for his wife and kids. Sets up lots of good tension for the sessions in a way that feels classically cleric, without a god.
I think if you don’t have a god, you’re kinda missing out because that could be a great role playing opportunity! Not that I would stop a player if they had a good story justification! Edit: After seeing everyone’s thoughts, I think I feel even more strongly that the Divine spellcasters should have a truly unique magic that differentiates them from a warlock. It would be cool if divine magic could not be counterspelled or even be called magic. I always thought it was really cool that despite a wizards godly power, they can’t cast healing spells. I like that healing/resurrection is different somehow and it makes sense that this requires nothing short of a miracle. This makes the bard unique too as the only arcane spellcaster that can heal, I’ve always thought that symbolized picking up holy songs and words of protection from divine texts. I also think the divine spellcasters should have clearly defined relationships with their deities to enhance the flavor and theme. In 5e i think paladins have much stronger flavor than clerics because they take an oath and have to adhere to it. I would like to see more mechanical/ role playing elements involved with being a cleric (ie the powers of the Rot domain are useless over flowing water, the followers of the sun domain wear gold masks when they cleanse the undead, nature domain clerics grow mushrooms etc.) This question makes me yearn for a time when a cleric was badass simply for being the best at fighting undead, rather than all the zany subclasses that overshadow the core features of the class, but maybe I’m being a bit of a dnd boomer about that.
What i think is extreamly intresting is that the blood hunter is essentially the modern variant of a vampire hunter, which a cleric was already meant to be. Its very intresting that the celric was meant to kinda fill 2 roles in ADND
In the Forgotten Realms, I definitely think Clerics need to worship gods. The power doesn't come from inside the Clerics, it is granted from an outside force. The rain cannot decide to grant a particular person power, at least in traditional D&D settings. Perhaps in other settings, everything in nature not only has life, but also consciousness to decide. In older editions, taking a strong stance on the war between chaos and order might have been fine, because the gods that exist may have enlisted your help even without worshipping them. But I would bet a lot of players who said "no" also don't want to take a side in a cosmic conflict. However, divine power may flow differently in different settings. And I say this as an atheist in real life: having to choose a god to access divine power doesn't seem like a big ask to me. It isn't offensive to me; I am already playing a game with magic, psychic powers, and realms of order and chaos. If anything, I would like a way to do a little healing with arcane magic; artificers in 4e had some ability to do this, so that'd fit the bill. But I'm not picky, though; it's not something I need. But very good video showing the best of both sides.
I think you should have a closer look on where Mentzer went with clerics later on. Basic there is mostly a re-skin of the earlier Moldvay Basic, but by the third box (Companion, character levels 15-25) he raises the possibility of beings called 'immortals', each serving one of 5 'spheres' of power (Matter, Energy, Thought, Time and Entropy) and the possibility that such might even be the end point of a PC's life. Through the Masters set (level 26-36) we get specific pathways whereby that might happen laid out, and then we get the real game changer, the Immortals Set. A D&D rules set whereby PCs who have become said immortals are play out cosmic scale adventures. When Classic D&D was repackaged into the Rules Cyclopedia this all stayed, and the revamped Immortals rules even had Immortal level spells such as 'hear supplicants'. Mechanically classic D&D doesn't require that clerics have 'gods'. But what we got in its place was bigger, broader, and both playable and far more interesting. I don't know if you're familiar with the rest of those product lines, but it's very much worth checking them out.
@@BobWorldBuilder Hope you have fun discovering them, the BECMI line (expanded later by the GAZ series for the Mystara setting) make up a game that remains among the most versatile and playable versions of the D&D game. And still the version that more sets out to empower DM's to make the game their own than any other to this day.
I'll just copy what I wrote in the community post yesterday: A lot of people seem to be hanging their answer on the class' name - "cleric". Forgetting that D&D classes are (or should) rarely be known as distinct metaphysical entities in their settings, meaning while we call the class a cleric, people in a setting would neither know of the cleric class specifically, let alone the name we use for it; And on top of that the "cleric" name and the worship of gods is only _flavour,_ not part of the class' mechanics. Flavour that can, is and should be often changed out for different flavour depending on character and setting. Flavour is important - you need _something_ if you want your D&D to have a narrative -, but the choice of flavour is not integral. A lot of clerics will worship gods, since the class lends itself to that idea very well, but insisting every cleric should is both a failure of imagination and an unreasonable, controlling edict upon your fellow players. I'd even venture to call it slightly toxic. Sure, if that's an important part of the setting, you can insist on it, but insisting it be part of _every_ setting your group plays in, let alone every setting _any_ group plays in? That's toxic.
Really good point that in-world, these characters are really defined as or known as "clerics" haha, that definitely gives more license to reskin their power however you want!
I made a godless Tiefling cleric whose whole schtick was traveling from church to church, pretending to be whatever domain that town's church was in order to grift free stuff. Also, he grifted the party by knowing no healing spells, adding to an inside joke that our whole group had no healers or tanks. Fun stuff lol
My Tiefling cleric used to be very religious and then became an apostate who now wears her old holy symbol upside down on a chain as a symbol of her break with the faith. I should see about maybe adding in the grifting aspect, I like that!
Just wanna say I like how you handled the established titles sponsorship. There's a lot of drama around it right now but I think you laid out clearly what it is. The products not for me but I understand we all need to earn a living and I think it was a good sponsor spot. (Corrected spelling)
I think I responded to your original poll. My answer is, "Yes, unless the player has a good reason not to." Like, godless clerics in D&D, I feel, should be anomalous. Not necessarily unheard of, but definitely rare and strange. If my player wants to play a godless cleric, they have to sell me on it. They need to tell me why their character would take a more difficult, more obfuscated path to channeling divine magic.
Yeah while I' would encourage a cleric player to use a god or maybe pick a different class, ultimately if they really want to play that class without a god, I'd be okay just using the flavor of a different class
Grest video, and thanks for providing captions. Could you perhaps see if you could place 'quotes' on screen a smidge higher so they're not obscured by the captions? Niche request I know but figured I'd mention it. As for my thought, Clerics should have a God with at least elemental or creative capacity and they should be loyal to them. Although they don't need to be defined against warlocks I think this helps differentiate the two.
Thanks! Yeah for my fully scripted videos, I always try to put in the script as captions. And it is tricky making room for text on screen in the video along with captions--YT took the best spot by default! Ultimately, I agree that a cleric's magic just has to come from somewhere!
Mr Bob I would LOVE to see a full length DnD history documentary from you. Your voice very relaxing and you presentation perfect for the format! Your knowledge is seemingly pretty vast and I feel the quality would be much higher than other docs I've seen. I would gladly donate towards the cause if need be. =)
Great video! Minor correction at 9:25 or so: the Druid class first appears in OD&D supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry, in 1976, and is later brought along into AD&D a few years later.
I see two reasons to allow a cleric not to choose a god, of which the first in my opinion overshadows all arguments against the opposite: 1. A Player feels uncomfortable with fictional worth ship. Be it an Atheist being uncomfortable with worth ship itself or a religious person being uncomfortable with having "false" or "fake" believe (As they might feel it being disrespectful to their own beliefs). 2. There is a Precedent already. Paladins used to need a god, but now they don't, so I don't see any reason why Clerics shouldn't get the same treatment. Especially since religion irl isn't necessarily reliant on gods.
We should define first what we mean when we say "god". We could assume that some cleric can derive its power from an undetermined "entity" or "force", not necessarily a "person like" god with a name and humanoid semblance. What I think is necessary is that the force has to be immanent.
Great point! That's touched on in the early editions, I guess seeing the 'power" as cosmic forces of alignment, but it mostly comes up toward the end of the video thinking about different settings for D&D
Great video that adds another topic for session zero. When I first started playing RPGS I went along with the group and setting. After DMing my first campaign, I wanted try different settings and rule systems. Our group use to discuss this often and we looked at the paladin in maintaining oaths and vows to continue to receive divine powers. So, a simple system we developed tied clerical powers to daily and long term behaviors and actions. Essentially, a cleric must demonstrate through their life the types of powers they want to have. There’s obviously some interpretation but regardless of alignment or affiliation, the cleric receives spells that are a reflection of their life choices.
I wouldn't say that clerics NEED to have a god or even gods to serve. After all it is just a class, but a lot of the abilities are derived from having a supernatural being or greater force at work within the cleric. It definitely comes down to the player and how they wanna roleplay it. However, as a DM I really enjoy the aspects of having a god to help engage the player in the world. Maybe they worship a god that's banned by the kingdom, or a lesser god that no one knows. There's room for interesting PCs that are a part of a cult to this persons god, or have secret smuggling routes for totems and holy items for their god.
I completely agree! I think it's more when they have some bond with a god, but if the player didn't think that's fun, I wouldn't force it to be that way
Had a friend in our party that played as an agnostic cleric. It became a running bit that we had to stop at every local temple in case she might get sign from the divine. The whole party would crowd in and just be like….uh… you feelin anything yet??….
I really enjoy videos like these that explore the history of our great hobby. I had watched DM It All's videos on Fighter, Rogue, and Monk, so it was nice to see Cleric here.
Faith is the requirement. It doesn't have to be in a deity or Pantheon. It can be alignment, philosophy, or force. The common argument is that non-clerics have faith. Well, non-paladins make promises. Non-warlocks make deals. Non-wizards read books. Non-barbarians get angry. A clerics Faith is strong enough to serve as a divine conduit. You just gotta believe hard enough.
Does a cleric need a god? Several official game worlds said "no". Athas (Dark Sun) clerics received their powers from the elements or the Sorcerer-Kings, and Mystara/OD&D received their powers from Immortals...which are kind of like gods, but a bit different (and more limited in power).
It depends on how high-divinity your world is. In my game, the gods are nearly silent, so a cleric could doesn’t need a god at all to recieve power. In a higher divinity game, that cleric would get word from the god giving them power, and then they would have a god whether they like it or not.
One of my favorite clerics is Kristen Applebees whose entire arc is about wether or not she serves a diety and/or which one. So, I'm definitely in the camp of clerics not particularly needing a diety at all times. Religious trauma played out through a character is fun, unique and a good way to process those sorts of feelings.
I do ask my players to have some sort of interactable entity to deify... I wouldn't devote (pun intended) so much time on the deity itself but I want their Divine Intervention to come from somewhere (someone?); whereas with warlocks I do make a point to try and incorporate them into my campaigns for the warlock to have interactions, however way possible... (even goolocks can have visions or something, even if the patron doesn't even know they exist...) this gives flavor and a sense of existence to the player, a world beyond their pc, imo... but yeah, should cleric have deities? up to the gm I say; I ask for them for RP and to make sense of a class feature
I agree that it's more fun and interesting to roleplay the character if they worship a deity, at least for me personally. And yeah, it ultimately comes down to the setting (how important/present gods are) and what the group wants!
"If it were up to me, two of them would just become subclasses" This had me curious. I'd love to see your version of classes/subclasses. Maybe a future video going into how you classify, what you'd add/remove, and your reasoning? Could even be the start of an awesome expansion, but obviously you've got enough work on your plate as a content creator, so no pressure.
In past editions, I could totally see a paladin being a cleric subclass. But the oath mechanic has made it unique enough to stand on its own. Same with Warlock. The patron mechanic is really interesting and deserving of its own space. The sorcerer though? To me it's a worse Wizard. I'd totally make it a subclass. The bard is a tough one. I can see why it was a rogue subclass at first, but it did grow over time.
Basically it would be something like the game 5 Torches Deep which takes the 12 main D&D classes, and reduces them to four classes with three subclasses each. Honestly it's very similar to how One D&D is framing the class groups!
I think the question whether or not clerics need gods is more related to the setting the game takes place in rather than the cleric itself. Personally, I'm of the opinion that clerics do get their powers from the gods (in most of my campaigns) since that is very thematic. If clerics can get their powers through conviction or whatever you want to replace gods with, why are they tied to divine magic in the first place? If you want a healer without ties to divinity you can play a bard, or if you want to just blast things apart with magic you can roll up a sorcerer who gets their magic through their bloodline. It kind of erodes the identity of magical classes if their sources of power are all the same or kind of wishy washy, but in the end its up to the DMs and their players to decide what works for them and I'm not going to hold this over anyone.
Yeah I think it made more sense to reflavor in previous editions where the class mechanics were already very distinct (since there were so few classes). Now that there's a lot of classes with a lot of mechanical overlap, choosing to overlap the flavor as well blurs them together. Still, I'd default to whatever makes sense for the setting and whatever the group finds fun!
On the topic of the Sun being a deity, I have a convention of giving each star system with life in it a solar jinushigami (essentially, that system's Ameterasu) that is the patron of unspecified sun worshipers.
The way it works in my homebrew world is that literally anyone can use divine "magic" *as long as they have 100% conviction that they can use it*. This of course only works with groups who are focused on RP over optimization as this fact cannot really be known in-universe. Various religions, cults, philosophies and etc. merely provide some basis to people for *believing* that they can wield divine magic, a Paladin does not get power directly from his oath, but from his belief in the power of his oath for example. This also means that some individuals can become powerful divine casters without any conventional and understood in-universe reason, gaining their conviction from madness, sheer power of weaponized egoism or even simple naivete. As I said, this doesn't work for every group, but for me and my friends this way of handling divine "magic" has worked extraordinarily well, both for worldbuilding and for roleplay. Oh and divine sorcerers don't need conviction, they are simply born with the ability to use divine magic like any other. Although it does mean that some divine sorcerers actually don't have any divine blood in them at all and instead gain their abilities from *believing* that they are divine sorcerers.
I love how you started this "in my homebrew world..." that's a very important piece of this discussion which I probably didn't emphasize enough throughout the video!
I think the add read was very, very rained in compared to the older ones on other channels. Taking this one add in isolation I have no problems with how it is presented. I think we still need to see some receipts for the donations/planted trees from ES though.
@@Mopperty He did say if we bought, the land would be by the cats land, which likely isn't true as they totally don't keep track of the land that well.
Yeah, while I had this promo planned since before the recent discussions about the sponsor, I personally researched their tree planting efforts, and found them to be true. It's easily verifiable on their partnered org's website. In addition to the fact that they have always advertised the "titles" to pets, like I emphasized here, it seems clear to me that it's just a fun gift
These sorts of videos are absolutely my favorite things to watch on TH-cam. Old D&D (and other TTRPG) lore is just so enthralling to me. Professor Dungeon Master over at the Dungeon Craft channel did a series of these a couple years back, and they’re just awesome. Keep it up, Bob! I’ll definitely continue watching, liking, and sharing. 😊
The very concept of an antitheist cleric being in existence in a reality where gods exist, and yet has a similar power to those devoted to those gods, is intriguing. I think another reason for why this is a hot topic is likely due to the rebellious nature of players, me included, that don't want flavor text to force the character into a narrow box. I think piety is a good role play trait, but to bind mechanics to the behavior of a character is a quick way suck the fun out of playing them. It's also why they got rid of alignment based stuff. What exactly separates the warlock from the cleric on a flavor basis? Can there simultaneously be a cleric and warlock of the same God? Or is warlock stuck with dealing with demigods and dead gods? To me it's kinda like the difference between a religion and a cult. One is just far older, and has had more time to spread.
I like that reference to religion vs cult as an analogy here, and I agree that in a setting where the gods are active, I'd prefer to have any clerics choose a relationship with a god. If a player still didn't want that, I may encourage them to choose a different class, but ultimately I'd default to what the player is going to have more fun with
@@BobWorldBuilderTo me, the difference between a cleric and a druid is that a druid can gain power from worshipng a force of nature. This does make me wonder why we dont have a gravity or magnetism druid. I think that bottom line, a cleric is defined strongly by their faith or conviction to a cause. Judge dread can be an Order cleric in a world where the gods stopped listening. Personally I like the juxtaposition of atheists in a world where gods are proven real. Then you could explore different ideas, like for example, what if you have a campaign where you are in the aftermath of a war of gods in which a lot of domains were left open. I could totally see people attempting to embody them for the chance at becoming a God.
Brilliant note to end on! For my games I have a Cleric who is essentially writing the laws of the newborn god they worship. The actions they take and favours they ask of their god are affecting the development of this god's identity. I also have a player who plays a wizard with 8 Intelligence. And I have a warlock who's patron is the creater of all of reality and the gods themselves. I love flipping things on their head if it makes sense and it's fun :3
Cleric is my favorite class, has been since the first time i played one. I have played many of them and played them both ways (w and wo deities) both are viable options. But my opinion is that clerics are most fun when they have a deity. I feel it really leans into the intention of the class, and having established churchs provide infinite oppertunities for quests or help. Not to mention i have had countless hours of fun attempting to convert my party to my religion. Ive even had a few whole parties convert and you tall about shinanigins when you get a whole party on the same page. Overall i feel like the diety is not nessacery but should be encouraged.
This is pretty much how I feel about it! I personally find it more fun with gods involved, and I encourage it, but depending on teh setting and on player preference, I'm open to mixing it up
It's a complex question because it comes down to the fundamental world building question: What is the source of Divine Magic? In 5e Divine Magic is pretty clearly something that just exists and can be used without a Deity. A Sorcerer subclass is capable of using it with no Deity, Paladins, and any character that takes the Magic Initiate feat lol You then have to answer: How does the Cleric's Divine Intervention ability work with no Deity? But the answer is already built into the ability "The DM chooses the nature of the intervention". Maybe a spontaneous manifestation of the Positive Energy Plane appears to answer your call, or maybe some random god who's cool with you decides to answer your call. Maybe your orientation as a Cleric to no Deity makes you valuable and sought after by the gods, or maybe it makes them fearful that you may grow to rival them someday. . .
I kinda like the rule of Clerics worship a God, Paladins worship an ideal. It makes the difference between them distinct even when their roles overlap. Okay so after listening to the rest of the video, sorry panel from hell was today. I still think that a Cleric needs a God, or at least a Relgion I didn't make that distinction before and someone below mentioned it yes a Relgion makes sense to me too, for them to be a Cleric. The whole ideals thing muddles the line between Cleric and Paladin too much imo. Also as far as homebrewing D&D,as someone else mentioned, I feel like that's a different conversation and my analysis of it is only for D&D in its base setting or any other generic fantasy setting that doesn't require the classes to be changed for it to make sense. If you start bringing up homebrew settings like Final Fantasy that's a different conversation all together.
Yeah I think those divisions all come down to personal preference! Especially since now even several official subclasses blur the lines of where powers come from
I think that pigeonholes them mechanically too much. If you are playing a game set in one of the Final Fantasy settings and you want to play a White Mage, you wouldn't roll a Paladin. It doesn't do all the things you'd expect, and it does a number of things you wouldn't. But most iterations of the White Mage draw their power from "the Light", not a deity.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos yeah, but that's homebrew. Once you've changed the setting, all bets are off. Bards aren't Red Mages, Paladins aren't Dragoons, etc. Within a homebrew, anything is possible. Like you said, FF derives its power from the Light or Chaos or some other concept. But adapting D&D to a homebrew setting shouldn't change the base game. Just because White Mages (Healers, Clerics) draw their power from the Light doesn't mean every other cleric should, too.
@ericpeterson8732 D&D is necessarily flavor-agnostic, as evidenced by internal inconsistencies across published, offical campaign settings. Nowhere in any 5e book say that D&D _can't_ simulate a Final Fantasy setting. And, in fact, there are official WotC modules that confirm that 5e _can_ simulate Ravnica, where there _are_ Clerics and there _are not_ deities.
I would say Clerics needed a God, as they are similar to Warlocks in that they get all their power from a higher source and may lose it if they stray too far away from their intended path. If Cleric only required some level of faith in anything, then that's a paladin basically. Paladins are based on the unwavering faith and oath in their own cause or the cause of whom they follow. If we let Clerics regularly revoke the Gods and simply have their own version faith, that would take away the key and very interesting difference between the Paladin and Cleric flavor-wise.
Uhh Paladins already can lose their powers by not following their beliefs. Paladins and clerics draw their power from the same sources (gods, beliefs and forces of nature) and can lose these powers if they do not follow through. I also tend to lean towards whatever option is most fun. D&D is a game. I think a good example of a cleric following a belief is Kristen Applebees from Dimension20's Fantasy High. She begins to realise the god she follows is pretty evil, and begins researching other philosophies and world religions. She stops following her god completely, and begins gaining her powers from the philosophies she follows. If a cleric has to follow a god, you are basically saying all clerics must be unwaveringly faithful in their deity. All clerics must have the personality trait that they follow their god and do not question them or they will lose their powers and become useless. It also depends on the setting. I don't expect my DM to create a god that fits every single domain if they make a custom world. Most D&D campaign settings do not have gods that align with every domain. This is one of the strongest reasons why you can worship a domain and not a deity because if you can only worship a deity, then some domains may narratively be impossible to use in a setting.
@@floofzykitty5072 There is A LOT of breathing room between "unwavering faith" and "completely ceasing to follow a God altogether permanently". Personally as a DM I require clerics to draw their power from a higher being, but said higher being doesn't necessarily require unwavering faith. A God of mercy would be much more likely to forgive/not punish a cleric which has strayed in their faith than a God of revenge, for example.
I agree with a lot of the points raised, however I do think that we need to maintain a conceptual distinction between clerics, warlocks, and paladins to justify their separation into different classes, though it may only be a vague one
I’ve been playing since the original, both as player and DM, and the discussion over specific gods for paladins and clerics has never came up. It’s just generally implied they served whatever god that may be over that realm, in their alignment.
@@BobWorldBuilder everyone I knew back then were Christians, and cleric players envisioned praying and divine power, but no one ever brought up specific deities. About the only time it’d ever come up is if it was part of the adventure.
Glad to see you actually delved into the history and showed how Clerics, as originally introduced, were essentially a spellcaster/fighter combo class halfway between your fighter and mage. Personally, I think the 5e Warlock should entirely replace the Cleric class, as it requires the interaction with the patron that the Cleric class pays lip service too, but does not enforce mechanically. There is too much baggage about Clerics just being the Healer, whereas the Warlock patron goal accomplisher is far more along the lines of what Clerics used to be flavor-wise.
Oddly no. The reason is the original “cleric class” was a placeholder example for whatever holy person the gm wanted for his story with the rules stating to make your own variants based on your campaign’s needs. The Druid was the same way. At least this was true in 2nd edition but I cannot remember if this stretches back to first.
Do rogues need to wear cloaks? Do barbarians have to have a big weapon? Well… no… you can do whatever you want dnd. That doesn’t mean it’s more fun. Maybe that’s just me, but the vibe of dnd is half of what makes it work.
Hey Bob. This was an amazing which was both entertaining and informative. Never had a player not take a jog God and play a cleric. And as I haven't looked on a deep dive into the rules I just assumed that the deity was necessary
Personally, I like the idea that both clerics and paladins need gods, otherwise they have no access to magic. I also prefer a no or limited martial weapons limit for clerics. clerics as holy men with greater direct divine access, powers, and paladins as fighting holy men but limited in magic due to the sins of fighting.
This is pretty much how I run it too. I don't understand the idea of paladins getting magic from just *believing really hard* haha, however if that's how a player really wanted to run their cleric, I'd be okay with it.
Bob, you summed it up perfectly. “A cleric is NOT a paladin” If you have no god, you shouldn’t have powers, and without powers, you’re just a paladin. Ok? Ok. Glad we all understand what makes a cleric a cleric and not just a knight.
Whether or not Clerics "need" to worship a god as per an official rule, piety is such an interesting roleplay dynamic and game mechanic that it deserves a class built around it, and the Cleric best fits this archetype, more so than any other. If D&D uses a class called 'Cleric' that wield 'Divinity' as a tool, then I would say that they should be bound to serve a deity. Some people may disagree, and that's okay, but given how important religion has been throughout all of human history (barring the most recent century in Europe and North America), and in and D&D setting where deities are functionally proven to exist and influence the world, there's no reason not to require Clerics to worship a Deity.
Yeah I totally agree that it's more interesting to roleplay the character if they worship a deity, and that it's more fun for me personally! I think it ultimately comes down to the setting (how important/present gods are) and what the group wants
I can see this side of the argument- obviously the gods exist in D&D, and clerics draw their power from divine influence, so it certainly makes sense that they’d need to be dedicated to a certain god. I’ve just never pushed the issue as a DM, because I never saw the need to know exactly what deity they’re serving
I think this argument discounts the prominence of animist and soft polytheistic religions in the history of religion, personally. I think it also fails to capture the entirety of the "divine full-caster" trope, which the class is mechanically required to do.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos An argument could be made that Animist religions would actually be better suited to Druids than Clerics, given that, historically, Clerics were members of the Clergy, which implies a "harder," more structured religious system. As for the "Divine Full-Caster" trope, where does it fail? The features are all flavored around either Spellcasting or Divinity, and the Spell List is filled with examples which feed into that archetype.
@occultnightingale1106 Druid has mechanical baggage, particularly Wild Shape, that makes it poorly suited to mimicking most real-world animist lore. For example, a witch-doctor communicates with spirits to get things--specifically healing--to happen. Animals are in no way associated with this. Shinto priests would be clerics, but do not worship "deities" in the sense implied by the sentence "The power of your spells comes from the devotion to your deity." It fails to capture the whole archetype _if a deity is required_ because there are prominent examples of characters that are pretty obviously mechanically clerics, yet do not have a deity. Every White Mage in the Final Fantasy series comes to mind.
I’ve always found it difficult to solely recognize one god in a polytheist universe. As a cleric you choose a domain, you should dedicate mostly to one god in your setting wich is compatible with it, but the other gods will still be recognized by you.
A lot seems to depend on the personal feelings of the DM. As a player and an atheist (small a), playing clerics used to be hard for me to get excited about. Too much religious encumberance. However, this got tons easier when I played a dwarven light cleric who worshipped “Rudolf the Red”. I had so much fun using stone mastery to carve small dwarven statues and altars (essentially modern garden gnomes) to leave around and advocating joy and giving to children, that this was a great character to play, with an easy ethos to proselytize.
My latest Cleric character actually gains his power from ancestor worship, mostly because we are playing in Forgotten Realms and I know nothing of official DND lore.
Hey Bob, I can only assume you weren’t aware of the recent controversy surrounding Established Titles, so I would recommend reading up on it/watching Legal Eagle’s video on them before you accept another sponsorship deal with them.
I mean Bob did mention it " It won't make you a noble (lord/lady)" but still said it a good gift. Which is a fair response to still stick to the sponsorship deal
Why assume he's not aware? Why not assume he's under contract and just needs a little time to finish commitments? How could you not be aware as every video lately has its a scam as the top comment?
Yeah while I was aware of recent discussions about the sponsor, I already had this planned with them, and I personally find that since they advertise the title for pets, it should be well understood that it is not to be considered official in any way, just a fun gift
You know how in dictionary definitions you see something like "such-and-such, ESPECIALLY on the grounds of this-and-that". I see Clerics as "spellcasters who gain their powers from divine sources, especially if they carry holy symbols and have particular devotion to a deity." Great video, Bob!
My concern is not whether my character needs a god based on their class, but based solely on the character themselves and that has so far been a yes. I am a very spiritual person, I enjoy learning about real world faiths, and I like exploring that through my roleplay as well.
Dieties and Demigods (later Legends and Lore) actually does assume Clerics were a follower of a god or pantheon. Your spells depended on it as only certain spell levels were available to you depending on who/what you worshipped. If I remember correctly: Any faithful Cleric could cast 1st and 2nd level, but I believe Demigods could grant 3rd and 4th, Lesser Gods could grant 5th and 6th, and only Greater Gods could grant 7th (the cap at that time) level spells.
I believe you are correct and I still use a version of this in my 5e game: I assume priests who can cast 1st and 2nd level spells are fairly common because they only need faith and to follow proscribed ritual, and so any sizable settlement probably has the equivalent of a 1st-3rd level clerical spellcaster. But I'm also mindful of the 5e kuo-toa, who can through mass delusion "create" deities that grant spells, so I don't think that all clerics necessarily have to worship a deity (I've always been a fan of worshipping forces or philosophy since 2e).
I really like this concept! Not that there are a ton of clerics in the game world per say, but a powerful god probably wouldn't feel the need to make direct contact with just any ol' cleric!
Technically no a cleric doesn't need a god, they can be devote to a philosophy. The 3rd Ed had clerics devoted to Law or Chaos a la Michael Moorcock's Multiverse books, or Good or Evil in addition to deities. But I think developing deities is fun because you get to design their faiths, history and myths which enriches the world. Even if you use basic philosophies of Good, Evil, Law and Chaos, you can still create "saints" and exemplars of the faith to add to the mythologies of the philosophies. Great video though!
I feel like a cleric does need a god or higher power connection simply because the divine magic is separate from the other magic. It doesn't matter if a wizard studies for 100 years they can't cast divine magic unless they change or dip into cleric or paladin. But this all depends on the setting you are playing in. It's just the main setting that 5E takes place in makes sure to separate the magic.
Yeah default 5e setting definitely implies that a god should be part of the clerics life and magic, but the DMG does say that you can reflavor it in other ways, and I think it's always fair to reflavor what you want!
I once heard a psionic character (we were playing Pathfinder at the time) describe the forms of magic by analogy to a marionette. The divine caster uses the control bar--or asks someone to use it for them--playing within the boundaries the designers of the world and its naturally-occuring magics intended. The arcane caster tugs at the strings, understanding and utilizing magic as one might understand and utilize physics. The psionic caster simply grabs the puppet, imposing its will onto the world with its mind just as it would with its body. I thought that was an interesting description. I think different classes, and even different members of a class, fall at slightly different points on this spectrum, but I've found it a useful framing device for conceptualizing a given character's relationship with magic.
@@BobWorldBuilder Finishing your video my 'stance' is pretty much the same, at least for my table. I like the idea of gods being the personification of elements or principles. So sure you can follow the Ravnica idea and worship wealth but sooner or later a wealth deity will notice you or a new one will be born. I too also have the Sun be a god and aspects of it have been different sun gods throughout history. At the same time the Moon, the Planet, and even that small river that brings fish and clean water to your village is a god.
The thing not to forget is how this influences your world. If deities are just backdrop with little meaning or if they stand for something beyond good and evil. Say you have a god of thieves, it makes a huge difference if that includes assassins or merchants. If it includes merchants, that aspect could be prayed to openly. Or how it came to be? I'm thinking about the Elder Scrolls where the Khajiit Rajhin was such an incredible thief, that he stole his divinity. In Forgotten Realms sailors pray to the chaotic storm god/ess(?) so that s/he does not cause a storm during their next trip. Why would you want to ignore the possibilities for roleplay?
![CAMPปลิ้น | EP.83[1/2] เปิดแคมป์หลอนต้อนรับ 2 ตัวพ่อแห่งวงการผี!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/2uPuHYHgwiI/mqdefault.jpg)
💥 Bob World Builder DICE! www.onlycrits.com/products/bob-world-builder-limited-edition-metal-dice-set
✅ LIKE & SHARE: th-cam.com/users/BobWorldBuildervideos
✅ PATREON: www.patreon.com/bobworldbuilder
I received mine in the mail yesterday. Pretty sweet! Also, where can I find the podcast that you mentioned?
@@joshtracy443 Awesome! Thank you for getting a set :) The podcast is on my second channel - Bob's RPG Radio!
@@BobWorldBuilder great, thanks!
@@BobWorldBuilderhey man are those still available? I know there are a limited number, and I’ve recently come into the funds to be able to support :)
Honesty Bob, I’ve been watching you for almost a year now, and I love your chill energy and knowledgeable experience. Matt Mercer, Matt Colville, and Never Stop Learning got me started as a DM, but you’ve kept me learning throughout my last year as a DM :)
I just got mine today they are badass! And I've already binged all the podcast episodes
I think I prefer Clerics to have a god or gods in my campaign, but if someone has a great character idea with an ideal they want to follow, I'm ok with that as well. The character of gods is based on human ideals anyway, so as far as I'm concerned the same can be said in D&D.
I think we're on the same page they should have a God unless they have a creative solution like being so delusional that they totally believe that their rock 🪨 gives them powers so it does, that would be nuts. Take care 😎 🤘 🍻
Yeah I really like this approach because I share the preference for them having a god, but I'm definitely open to other ideas
@@TurboWulfe my GM brain. "Interesting concept. How do you feel about playing a Kuo-Ta?"
@@RobKinneySouthpaw I love Kuo-Toa. I had a player with a sorcerer character who had been raised by a cult (as a sacrifice) to believe he was a god.
Then he met and befriended some Kuo-Toa after defeating their "god" in combat.
Things got interesting after that...
@@bt3779 I disagree. I would say that it requires a form of worship, but that doesn't have to be in service of a god. It might be more thematically appropriate to choose a different class, but that could be discussed with the DM at character creation.
Currently playing a cleric who worships ancestors. It's quite fun describing spells in terms of him calling upon the knowledge/skills of the tribal spirits.
That's AWESOME! :)
This is one of the best examples of why the class's broad mechanical niche is essentially required to permit divine sources other than a deity. Cleric is fairly unambiguously the correct class to execute on this concept.
I once was in a game where there was a Warlock and a Cleric, both serving the same deity on their own way. It created a lot of good RP moments between them. A lot of fun things can come when you blur the lines of what a cleric, warlock or paladin must serve!
Clerics worshiping deities to gain abilities is one of the reasons they are my favorite class. I love all the different gods with their varying themes. I will always choose one for my Clerics but if a player wants to go with an ideal, I'd allow it as a DM. Even though that kinda treads on the Paladin a bit imo.
They're such a fun class! And I agree that the relationship with a deity is a big part of what makes them interesting. There's overlap with Paladins for sure, but I agree that each group is free to parse that out how they want to
I dumped alignment from my game about 30 years ago, and all religious characters who draw power from the church/God/higher power are allowed to use their spells/ability as long as they broadly follow the beliefs as set down by their faith.
This opens the door for different interpretations of the "Faith".
One of my players' current main antagonists is the local head of the church of what would normally be considered the Healers/Peace Makers/Light Bringers/Pacifists yada yada... a group most traditional players would immediately associate with "Lawful Good".
Lord Stellan has chosen to interpret the scriptures so that the poor don't get as much attention as the rich, based on tithes and tributes, deeming the wealthy "more worthy." One of the players follows the same God but is from a different City and is appalled that there are parts of town where disease is rife among the poor, and the church does nothing to alleviate it. It's made for some brilliant exchanges between so called "pacifists".
@@andrewtomlinson5237 spot on, this is the only way religious classes should be done in DnD in my opinion. if your deity saw fit to grant you power, you 100% should follow them like a real calling or pick a different class. it doesn't have to be hard set living like a monk living in poverty, just more than the usual "i pray to them at the end of the day and don't drink alcohol".
I understand the whole "I want your personal opinion, not a recitation of the book" but a lot of people really do prefer to defer to the book. Ben Milton referred to this in his last video as the official vs folk d&d dichotomy. Definitely worth a watch.
FYI, search Questing Beast if you are unfamiliar with Ben’s channel
I watched that video as soon as it went up haha, Ben is great! And yeah, it helped me realize that I'm definitely a folk D&D player, but the internet-D&D community is very mixed between the folk and official groups!
I think it's worth noting that the bar set by the question was very high. Do clerics usually have a deity? Yes. Is it _required?_ A single counterexample is all that is required to definitively say "no". Dark Sun and Ravnica establish that the canon answer is factually "no".
@@BobWorldBuilder I have two wolves in me: one builds their own system from scratch and the other gets into arguments with Pack Tactics.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos "Dark Sun and Ravnica establish that the canon answer is factually "no"." Well, no. It's factually no for Dark Sun & Ravnica. Different settings are different. And at least in Dark Sun's case, the clerics are still channeling a divine power - that being nature/the elements themselves.
As a Counterpoint to Dark Sun: In Dragonlance (the beginning) was the big thing that the Deities where no longer present and therefore there was no Divine Magic.
That's a great point!!
But all that is required to negate an "always" statement is a single counterexample. Nobody is arguing clerics can _never_ have a deity.
But WTC and young generation of players dont know official settings, and use only "sandbox style".
Future will be dark 😒
And no proper Clerics...
..apart from Goldmoon, and the one who gave Riverwind the Blue Crystal Staff. Goldmoon was a Spell-less "Cleric" who worshipped "False Gods" and was brought up to believe that when she died, she would ascend to divinity. She discovered Mishakal towards the end of the first adventure (in the books she was thought to have died and been reborn) and becomes a "True" Cleric of that goddess and starts to get spells.
Ironically, if you played a home made PC in DL1 rather than the pre-written PCs, the only "Cleric" you could play before the revelation was one who actually worshipped Gods (that didn't exist) and you had to roleplay that to show what class you were! But got zero spells as a result. At that point you could switch to a new God and start getting spells.
So at the outset of Dragonlance you had to be MORE focussed on your false "God" without getting any of the associated powers and bonuses... the Clerics all HAD Gods that they worshipped... just none of them existed.
Dark Sun in 2E was largely cut off from the rest of the multiverse due to the actions of the Dragon Kings and didn't have clerics or paladins following gods because of it.
One of my favorite parts of most TTRPGs is that the different divisions between classes and abilities don't have to be tied down to the in-universe explanations given in the sourcebooks-- they're essentially just templates of abilities that give your character life! If your group is fine with it, warlocks can absolutely have their power without a patron, or a cleric's magical power can come from entirely within them akin to a Divine Soul sorcerer. It's just a whole book of suggestions that can be modified or replaced as your group sees fit!
Excellent! Yeah we're free to frame the in-universe explanations however we want!
Hexblade Warlocks especially are encouraged to have (it seems) a sentient weapon/semi sentient weapon or just a special weapon they bond with, which could be separate them from drawing upon a specific Patron. The power is more so their bond to the weapon and their gaining of magical power reflects their prowess with the weapon
I think this is one of the central concepts of TTRPGs that people whose only experience of the hobby is 5E don't get. There have always been rules lawyers in the hobby (I still distinctly remember the first one I met at a con in the mid-80's who stopped a game dead in the water to argue with the DM about the specific wording of a spell) but it seems like in the last decade the D&D community has really embraced the idea - encouraged, I think, by WOTC - that there is a right and a wrong way to play the game that I rarely encountered prior to that.
Hey Bob, thanks for making your Established Title sponsorship more clear that those are not real titles. That's appreciated.
Thanks!
@@BobWorldBuilder I heard they pulled all sponsorship contracts in damage control. Get that bag, don't let them weasel out of it like they likely will to legal prosecution.
Don't forget that there is literally no evidence that they're actually planting trees.
Its not even real conservationn. The buisnesses claiming to plant trees would of carpeted the world if they were really planted.
@@KKirmaci wait I mean they definitely donate to a tree planting charity, its not like theyre just lying about thst
I think it comes down to the setting and what the group wants. As a DM I prefer to go with what the story wants, and if a player wants a god for their cleric, or if they wanna be based on an ideal. That’s cool with me. 🎉
This is a great way to look at it! Setting is crucial, and of course it's all about what kind of game the group wants to play :)
My homebrew setting would allow for either kind of cleric. We treat most of the gods as being the collective manifestation of peoples faith in the deity.
Agreed! This question is entirely setting-dependent. There is no universal answer to it.
Bob... you navigated the intricacies of Established Titles MASTERFULLY!!
Loved the video, too!!!
Thank you!
The 1st Ed AD&D dmg pg 38 has an interesting take on a cleric's spells. Where depending on the spell level they received it from different sources of the deity. 1st and 2nd levels needed no divine source but 3rd through 5th were from a subordinate of the deity. And 6th and up directly from the deity. So technically in 1st Ed you don't need a deity for the first 3 level. Though having a deity for the character imo adds a lots of RP interaction.
That's a pretty cool way to run it! Makes sense that a god might not make time for every worshipper haha
I really like that. It's weird to me that at level 1 clerics already have a direct line of communication to their god when really they should just be s regular-ass cleric at that point.
@@colbyboucher6391 was a running joke with my gaming group that there cleric was there own deity from 1-3rd. 😅
That reminds me of the Donatist controversy in Christian history. There was a disagreement over whether rites performed by priests who had denied Jesus in the face of persecution counted. The conclusion was that as long as the rite was performed correctly and received by the laity in good faith, whether or not the priest was fallen didn't matter.
In D&D (if one is playing an edition or houserules where fallen clerics losing spells is a thing), I could see different religions having signature spells that their priests are always able to cast for the faithful no matter what. A cleric of a healing god might never lose the ability to cast cure wounds, for example.
@@BobWorldBuilder At the end of the day, the game should be about fun and player empowerment. If we want to have this restriction be part of the characters struggle and that is his story arc, then sure. However, to have a DM force this restriction on a player who just wants to serve light and joy without anthropomorphizing it, is cruel.
Personally, I don't think you should abandon role-playing elements unless you have something to replace them with. As a DM I'll insist you explain yourself whenever you want to have the powers without a patron / deity.
I agree about including deities as an important RP element! I personally find clerics more fun this way, and yeahhh the source of power thing gets interesting, but if a person who's a paladin can just believe in some idea really hard, then another person who's a cleric could too I guess. Like I said in the video, it gets tricky when you consider how other classes and settings function
@@BobWorldBuilder I think the opposite argument can be made equally well, since a number of sources insist that a paladin is just as bound to a god as a cleric is. You're right, though; debating the minutiae of generic d&d is kinda fruitless, since it's designed to be flexible and up to interpretation. Only settings themselves can speak authoritatively on the matter and only insomuch as rule zero will let them.
@@ardentdrops 5e is actually very explicit about Paladins being more about a strongly held ideal than a god specifically.
@@colbyboucher6391 True. 5e isn't the only edition, though. Frankly 3.5 & 5 paladins are more conceptually distinct than any other core class imo. Alignment restrictions were replaced with oaths, which offloaded a lot of the religious zeal in favor of chivalric conduct. Before that paladins were jokingly given a special alignment: lawful stupid, where these knuckleheads would blunder into divine combat against "heathens" and diplomacy was always at the tip of their sword. As much as I struggle to enjoy 5e, this change was definitely an improvement.
I think these rules are just mechanics, and shouldn't be tied to flavor that strongly. As a DM, I let players write whatever they want in their sheets in order to realize their vision.
I love this approach!
My girlfriend played a sort of atheist cleric - a Knowledge Domain gnome. She had the theory that the gods just weren't there anymore, and divine magic was only the manifestation of cosmic 'residue-like energies' coming through the light of the stars. She dropped out of her monastic school and set out to the world trying to assemble other people with her ideas. It was a lot of fun.
Sounds like even without a god, that PC had a lot of rich roleplay opportunities! Awesome!
"Trying to assemble other people with her ideas"
Huh, the atheist seeks to establish a cult, or atleast an organisation centered around belief. Thats hilarious
Yes. Clerics need a god. There needs to be a source for that power.
It certainly has to come from somewhere!
@@BobWorldBuilder I like that an actual cleric weighed in on this discussion, lol.
I wonder however, where the powers come from for characters who may ascend to god hood. Where do the gods come from? It seems like there should be a path wherein a player acquires divine power by simply becoming a personification of an abstract idea, embracing whatever it is and bringing it within himself and letting it guide whatever he does to simply be the ideal. There should be little room for lip service in this interpretation as there is no godly other.
@@ianollmann9393 So if we're talking about D&D, all magic comes from the Weave. Arcane, divine, primal, all magic comes from the weave. Gods are beings who tap into the weave in a special way, but in D&D lore the gods certainly can be killed and replaced: there's no Nerull in 5e, for example; he's been replaced by the Raven Queen.
But allowing a character to ascend to godhood could be problematic in your next campaign when that character's player starts calling down divine vengeance on some poor goblin somewhere.
@@AJBernard I feel the DM can deal with this without too much trouble, such as pointing out that except in special session as allowed by DM, gods are controlled by DM and not the player.
So true. It all a matter of what and how you want to RPG. The books are guides for your table
Expensive guides.
That have all the pertinent information available free on line
Bingo!
Not a "god" necessarily, but some sort of divine force that certain ideals would easily connect to. You could be one with "nature" or a follower of Gia, and I'd believe your character as a nature cleric. But re-flavoring can always change the dynamic. For example my space Marine in a sci fi campaign uses his "esprit de corps" to obtain his War cleric abilities and uses his Military symbol as a religious symbol/arcane focus.
I agree, and that sounds like a cool campaign!
In my opinion the difference between a cleric and warlock is not that the source of the power, like what entity provides it, but how it is provided,
These days you also have celestial warlocks that can make deals with gods, so its no longer an argument that their patrons are weaker, even from just the phb an fey warlock could choose a god from the feywild as their patron.
What I think the big difference between an cleric and warlock is is that a cleric gets their power through faith, while a warlock gets their power through a deal, and is handed it from his patron,
A cleric could theoretically be a cleric of a god without the god actually knowing of its cleric, unlikely, but since the magic is based on the faith of the cleric, the gods state or even existence is irrelevant.
That while a warlock makes a direct pact with their patron, they are given their powers, and thus its a very different thing.
This is an excellent point! Deal/pact vs faith is a cool way to look at it
Ultimately I believe that a cleric's faith towards a deity is rewarded with love - even if a corrupted one. The warlock is a businessman. You give me X, I do Y for you. The parts don't necessarily like each other.
I feel like cleric having a god can be a good plot device or otherwise so I like clerics having gods.
I totally agree!
In my campaign, we have a non-god cleric. I worked with the player and we decided that ultimately, clerics were more about faith and devotion, so a specific deity wasn't strictly necessary. Instead, they went with a dad-style character whose magic comes from his love for his wife and kids. Sets up lots of good tension for the sessions in a way that feels classically cleric, without a god.
Wow! Yeah that is loaded with roleplay opportunity, and of course dramatic conflicts if the PC's family were ever at risk
@@zogwort1522 Well, the people at my table like it, and you're not at my table, so 🤷♂️
I think if you don’t have a god, you’re kinda missing out because that could be a great role playing opportunity! Not that I would stop a player if they had a good story justification!
Edit: After seeing everyone’s thoughts, I think I feel even more strongly that the Divine spellcasters should have a truly unique magic that differentiates them from a warlock. It would be cool if divine magic could not be counterspelled or even be called magic. I always thought it was really cool that despite a wizards godly power, they can’t cast healing spells. I like that healing/resurrection is different somehow and it makes sense that this requires nothing short of a miracle. This makes the bard unique too as the only arcane spellcaster that can heal, I’ve always thought that symbolized picking up holy songs and words of protection from divine texts.
I also think the divine spellcasters should have clearly defined relationships with their deities to enhance the flavor and theme. In 5e i think paladins have much stronger flavor than clerics because they take an oath and have to adhere to it. I would like to see more mechanical/ role playing elements involved with being a cleric (ie the powers of the Rot domain are useless over flowing water, the followers of the sun domain wear gold masks when they cleanse the undead, nature domain clerics grow mushrooms etc.)
This question makes me yearn for a time when a cleric was badass simply for being the best at fighting undead, rather than all the zany subclasses that overshadow the core features of the class, but maybe I’m being a bit of a dnd boomer about that.
What i think is extreamly intresting is that the blood hunter is essentially the modern variant of a vampire hunter, which a cleric was already meant to be. Its very intresting that the celric was meant to kinda fill 2 roles in ADND
In the Forgotten Realms, I definitely think Clerics need to worship gods. The power doesn't come from inside the Clerics, it is granted from an outside force. The rain cannot decide to grant a particular person power, at least in traditional D&D settings. Perhaps in other settings, everything in nature not only has life, but also consciousness to decide. In older editions, taking a strong stance on the war between chaos and order might have been fine, because the gods that exist may have enlisted your help even without worshipping them. But I would bet a lot of players who said "no" also don't want to take a side in a cosmic conflict. However, divine power may flow differently in different settings.
And I say this as an atheist in real life: having to choose a god to access divine power doesn't seem like a big ask to me. It isn't offensive to me; I am already playing a game with magic, psychic powers, and realms of order and chaos. If anything, I would like a way to do a little healing with arcane magic; artificers in 4e had some ability to do this, so that'd fit the bill. But I'm not picky, though; it's not something I need.
But very good video showing the best of both sides.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this! There are certainly solid reasons for either approach
I think you should have a closer look on where Mentzer went with clerics later on. Basic there is mostly a re-skin of the earlier Moldvay Basic, but by the third box (Companion, character levels 15-25) he raises the possibility of beings called 'immortals', each serving one of 5 'spheres' of power (Matter, Energy, Thought, Time and Entropy) and the possibility that such might even be the end point of a PC's life. Through the Masters set (level 26-36) we get specific pathways whereby that might happen laid out, and then we get the real game changer, the Immortals Set. A D&D rules set whereby PCs who have become said immortals are play out cosmic scale adventures.
When Classic D&D was repackaged into the Rules Cyclopedia this all stayed, and the revamped Immortals rules even had Immortal level spells such as 'hear supplicants'.
Mechanically classic D&D doesn't require that clerics have 'gods'. But what we got in its place was bigger, broader, and both playable and far more interesting. I don't know if you're familiar with the rest of those product lines, but it's very much worth checking them out.
I've heard of the RC but haven't looked into it, and I was totally unaware of those high level sets! This is really interesting!
@@BobWorldBuilder Hope you have fun discovering them, the BECMI line (expanded later by the GAZ series for the Mystara setting) make up a game that remains among the most versatile and playable versions of the D&D game. And still the version that more sets out to empower DM's to make the game their own than any other to this day.
Unless a player explicitly wants a god involved it is never needed.
So true!
I'll just copy what I wrote in the community post yesterday:
A lot of people seem to be hanging their answer on the class' name - "cleric". Forgetting that D&D classes are (or should) rarely be known as distinct metaphysical entities in their settings, meaning while we call the class a cleric, people in a setting would neither know of the cleric class specifically, let alone the name we use for it; And on top of that the "cleric" name and the worship of gods is only _flavour,_ not part of the class' mechanics. Flavour that can, is and should be often changed out for different flavour depending on character and setting. Flavour is important - you need _something_ if you want your D&D to have a narrative -, but the choice of flavour is not integral.
A lot of clerics will worship gods, since the class lends itself to that idea very well, but insisting every cleric should is both a failure of imagination and an unreasonable, controlling edict upon your fellow players. I'd even venture to call it slightly toxic. Sure, if that's an important part of the setting, you can insist on it, but insisting it be part of _every_ setting your group plays in, let alone every setting _any_ group plays in? That's toxic.
Really good point that in-world, these characters are really defined as or known as "clerics" haha, that definitely gives more license to reskin their power however you want!
I made a godless Tiefling cleric whose whole schtick was traveling from church to church, pretending to be whatever domain that town's church was in order to grift free stuff. Also, he grifted the party by knowing no healing spells, adding to an inside joke that our whole group had no healers or tanks. Fun stuff lol
Man that's good! haha
My Tiefling cleric used to be very religious and then became an apostate who now wears her old holy symbol upside down on a chain as a symbol of her break with the faith. I should see about maybe adding in the grifting aspect, I like that!
Just wanna say I like how you handled the established titles sponsorship. There's a lot of drama around it right now but I think you laid out clearly what it is. The products not for me but I understand we all need to earn a living and I think it was a good sponsor spot. (Corrected spelling)
I sincerely appreciate your understanding here.
I think I responded to your original poll. My answer is, "Yes, unless the player has a good reason not to."
Like, godless clerics in D&D, I feel, should be anomalous. Not necessarily unheard of, but definitely rare and strange. If my player wants to play a godless cleric, they have to sell me on it. They need to tell me why their character would take a more difficult, more obfuscated path to channeling divine magic.
Yeah while I' would encourage a cleric player to use a god or maybe pick a different class, ultimately if they really want to play that class without a god, I'd be okay just using the flavor of a different class
Just got my dice set and I love them. Great collaboration.
Thanks so much! Glad you like them! :)
Grest video, and thanks for providing captions. Could you perhaps see if you could place 'quotes' on screen a smidge higher so they're not obscured by the captions? Niche request I know but figured I'd mention it.
As for my thought, Clerics should have a God with at least elemental or creative capacity and they should be loyal to them. Although they don't need to be defined against warlocks I think this helps differentiate the two.
Thanks! Yeah for my fully scripted videos, I always try to put in the script as captions. And it is tricky making room for text on screen in the video along with captions--YT took the best spot by default! Ultimately, I agree that a cleric's magic just has to come from somewhere!
@@BobWorldBuilder appreciate its tricky and appreciate having decent captions in the first place! Makes a big difference so thank you! :-)
Mr Bob I would LOVE to see a full length DnD history documentary from you. Your voice very relaxing and you presentation perfect for the format! Your knowledge is seemingly pretty vast and I feel the quality would be much higher than other docs I've seen. I would gladly donate towards the cause if need be. =)
Great video! Minor correction at 9:25 or so: the Druid class first appears in OD&D supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry, in 1976, and is later brought along into AD&D a few years later.
I see two reasons to allow a cleric not to choose a god, of which the first in my opinion overshadows all arguments against the opposite:
1. A Player feels uncomfortable with fictional worth ship.
Be it an Atheist being uncomfortable with worth ship itself or a religious person being uncomfortable with having "false" or "fake" believe (As they might feel it being disrespectful to their own beliefs).
2. There is a Precedent already.
Paladins used to need a god, but now they don't, so I don't see any reason why Clerics shouldn't get the same treatment. Especially since religion irl isn't necessarily reliant on gods.
This is awesome. I badly need the druid class and the origin of the whole "no metal armor or shields".
We should define first what we mean when we say "god". We could assume that some cleric can derive its power from an undetermined "entity" or "force", not necessarily a "person like" god with a name and humanoid semblance. What I think is necessary is that the force has to be immanent.
Great point! That's touched on in the early editions, I guess seeing the 'power" as cosmic forces of alignment, but it mostly comes up toward the end of the video thinking about different settings for D&D
Great video that adds another topic for session zero. When I first started playing RPGS I went along with the group and setting. After DMing my first campaign, I wanted try different settings and rule systems. Our group use to discuss this often and we looked at the paladin in maintaining oaths and vows to continue to receive divine powers. So, a simple system we developed tied clerical powers to daily and long term behaviors and actions. Essentially, a cleric must demonstrate through their life the types of powers they want to have. There’s obviously some interpretation but regardless of alignment or affiliation, the cleric receives spells that are a reflection of their life choices.
I wouldn't say that clerics NEED to have a god or even gods to serve. After all it is just a class, but a lot of the abilities are derived from having a supernatural being or greater force at work within the cleric. It definitely comes down to the player and how they wanna roleplay it. However, as a DM I really enjoy the aspects of having a god to help engage the player in the world. Maybe they worship a god that's banned by the kingdom, or a lesser god that no one knows. There's room for interesting PCs that are a part of a cult to this persons god, or have secret smuggling routes for totems and holy items for their god.
I completely agree! I think it's more when they have some bond with a god, but if the player didn't think that's fun, I wouldn't force it to be that way
12:26 that just means that deities and domains are not strictly bound, and that you can assign whatever gods you want to whatever domain.
That may be true, but I'm too distracted thinking of the memes associated with your profile pic to formulate a thoughtful response
Its a world of magic. Worship the barbarians sock collection if you like. That's the fun of the game for me.
Hahah, the wildest part is that the Barbarian has more than one pair of socks! or even wears them lol
@@BobWorldBuilder i imagine they are "trophies"
Had a friend in our party that played as an agnostic cleric. It became a running bit that we had to stop at every local temple in case she might get sign from the divine. The whole party would crowd in and just be like….uh… you feelin anything yet??….
I believe Squeaks thinks she a God not a Nobel
Really interesting video!! 😁
I really enjoy videos like these that explore the history of our great hobby. I had watched DM It All's videos on Fighter, Rogue, and Monk, so it was nice to see Cleric here.
Thanks! Yes their videos are so well done!!
There's something so interesting about goin back to old videos and seeing sponsorships that would later turn out to be total scams
Faith is the requirement. It doesn't have to be in a deity or Pantheon. It can be alignment, philosophy, or force.
The common argument is that non-clerics have faith. Well, non-paladins make promises. Non-warlocks make deals. Non-wizards read books. Non-barbarians get angry.
A clerics Faith is strong enough to serve as a divine conduit. You just gotta believe hard enough.
Yeah that's how it seems to me too!
Does a cleric need a god? Several official game worlds said "no". Athas (Dark Sun) clerics received their powers from the elements or the Sorcerer-Kings, and Mystara/OD&D received their powers from Immortals...which are kind of like gods, but a bit different (and more limited in power).
It depends on how high-divinity your world is. In my game, the gods are nearly silent, so a cleric could doesn’t need a god at all to recieve power. In a higher divinity game, that cleric would get word from the god giving them power, and then they would have a god whether they like it or not.
Totally! Setting (and player preference) are the main factors here for me
One of my favorite clerics is Kristen Applebees whose entire arc is about wether or not she serves a diety and/or which one. So, I'm definitely in the camp of clerics not particularly needing a diety at all times. Religious trauma played out through a character is fun, unique and a good way to process those sorts of feelings.
I do ask my players to have some sort of interactable entity to deify... I wouldn't devote (pun intended) so much time on the deity itself but I want their Divine Intervention to come from somewhere (someone?); whereas with warlocks I do make a point to try and incorporate them into my campaigns for the warlock to have interactions, however way possible... (even goolocks can have visions or something, even if the patron doesn't even know they exist...) this gives flavor and a sense of existence to the player, a world beyond their pc, imo... but yeah, should cleric have deities? up to the gm I say; I ask for them for RP and to make sense of a class feature
I agree that it's more fun and interesting to roleplay the character if they worship a deity, at least for me personally. And yeah, it ultimately comes down to the setting (how important/present gods are) and what the group wants!
"If it were up to me, two of them would just become subclasses"
This had me curious. I'd love to see your version of classes/subclasses. Maybe a future video going into how you classify, what you'd add/remove, and your reasoning?
Could even be the start of an awesome expansion, but obviously you've got enough work on your plate as a content creator, so no pressure.
In past editions, I could totally see a paladin being a cleric subclass. But the oath mechanic has made it unique enough to stand on its own. Same with Warlock. The patron mechanic is really interesting and deserving of its own space. The sorcerer though? To me it's a worse Wizard. I'd totally make it a subclass. The bard is a tough one. I can see why it was a rogue subclass at first, but it did grow over time.
Basically it would be something like the game 5 Torches Deep which takes the 12 main D&D classes, and reduces them to four classes with three subclasses each. Honestly it's very similar to how One D&D is framing the class groups!
@@BobWorldBuilder very cool! glad to hear the game is moving in that direction
I think the question whether or not clerics need gods is more related to the setting the game takes place in rather than the cleric itself. Personally, I'm of the opinion that clerics do get their powers from the gods (in most of my campaigns) since that is very thematic. If clerics can get their powers through conviction or whatever you want to replace gods with, why are they tied to divine magic in the first place? If you want a healer without ties to divinity you can play a bard, or if you want to just blast things apart with magic you can roll up a sorcerer who gets their magic through their bloodline. It kind of erodes the identity of magical classes if their sources of power are all the same or kind of wishy washy, but in the end its up to the DMs and their players to decide what works for them and I'm not going to hold this over anyone.
Yeah I think it made more sense to reflavor in previous editions where the class mechanics were already very distinct (since there were so few classes). Now that there's a lot of classes with a lot of mechanical overlap, choosing to overlap the flavor as well blurs them together. Still, I'd default to whatever makes sense for the setting and whatever the group finds fun!
On the topic of the Sun being a deity, I have a convention of giving each star system with life in it a solar jinushigami (essentially, that system's Ameterasu) that is the patron of unspecified sun worshipers.
Very cool!
The way it works in my homebrew world is that literally anyone can use divine "magic" *as long as they have 100% conviction that they can use it*.
This of course only works with groups who are focused on RP over optimization as this fact cannot really be known in-universe.
Various religions, cults, philosophies and etc. merely provide some basis to people for *believing* that they can wield divine magic, a Paladin does not get power directly from his oath, but from his belief in the power of his oath for example.
This also means that some individuals can become powerful divine casters without any conventional and understood in-universe reason, gaining their conviction from madness, sheer power of weaponized egoism or even simple naivete.
As I said, this doesn't work for every group, but for me and my friends this way of handling divine "magic" has worked extraordinarily well, both for worldbuilding and for roleplay.
Oh and divine sorcerers don't need conviction, they are simply born with the ability to use divine magic like any other. Although it does mean that some divine sorcerers actually don't have any divine blood in them at all and instead gain their abilities from *believing* that they are divine sorcerers.
I love how you started this "in my homebrew world..." that's a very important piece of this discussion which I probably didn't emphasize enough throughout the video!
I have no idea how the Established Titles controversy hasn't reached this channel yet, but it's honestly shocking that it hasn't.
I think the add read was very, very rained in compared to the older ones on other channels. Taking this one add in isolation I have no problems with how it is presented. I think we still need to see some receipts for the donations/planted trees from ES though.
@@Mopperty Absolutely.
@@Mopperty He did say if we bought, the land would be by the cats land, which likely isn't true as they totally don't keep track of the land that well.
I don't know, that wording was VERY careful.
Yeah, while I had this promo planned since before the recent discussions about the sponsor, I personally researched their tree planting efforts, and found them to be true. It's easily verifiable on their partnered org's website. In addition to the fact that they have always advertised the "titles" to pets, like I emphasized here, it seems clear to me that it's just a fun gift
Cleric needs something divine to grant them spells: a saint, a powerfull angel, a demigon, a god or a whole pantheon.
I agree that the magic must come from somewhere!!
These sorts of videos are absolutely my favorite things to watch on TH-cam. Old D&D (and other TTRPG) lore is just so enthralling to me. Professor Dungeon Master over at the Dungeon Craft channel did a series of these a couple years back, and they’re just awesome. Keep it up, Bob! I’ll definitely continue watching, liking, and sharing. 😊
The very concept of an antitheist cleric being in existence in a reality where gods exist, and yet has a similar power to those devoted to those gods, is intriguing.
I think another reason for why this is a hot topic is likely due to the rebellious nature of players, me included, that don't want flavor text to force the character into a narrow box. I think piety is a good role play trait, but to bind mechanics to the behavior of a character is a quick way suck the fun out of playing them. It's also why they got rid of alignment based stuff.
What exactly separates the warlock from the cleric on a flavor basis? Can there simultaneously be a cleric and warlock of the same God? Or is warlock stuck with dealing with demigods and dead gods?
To me it's kinda like the difference between a religion and a cult. One is just far older, and has had more time to spread.
I like that reference to religion vs cult as an analogy here, and I agree that in a setting where the gods are active, I'd prefer to have any clerics choose a relationship with a god. If a player still didn't want that, I may encourage them to choose a different class, but ultimately I'd default to what the player is going to have more fun with
@@BobWorldBuilderTo me, the difference between a cleric and a druid is that a druid can gain power from worshipng a force of nature. This does make me wonder why we dont have a gravity or magnetism druid.
I think that bottom line, a cleric is defined strongly by their faith or conviction to a cause. Judge dread can be an Order cleric in a world where the gods stopped listening.
Personally I like the juxtaposition of atheists in a world where gods are proven real.
Then you could explore different ideas, like for example, what if you have a campaign where you are in the aftermath of a war of gods in which a lot of domains were left open. I could totally see people attempting to embody them for the chance at becoming a God.
Brilliant note to end on!
For my games I have a Cleric who is essentially writing the laws of the newborn god they worship. The actions they take and favours they ask of their god are affecting the development of this god's identity.
I also have a player who plays a wizard with 8 Intelligence.
And I have a warlock who's patron is the creater of all of reality and the gods themselves.
I love flipping things on their head if it makes sense and it's fun :3
Cleric is my favorite class, has been since the first time i played one. I have played many of them and played them both ways (w and wo deities) both are viable options. But my opinion is that clerics are most fun when they have a deity. I feel it really leans into the intention of the class, and having established churchs provide infinite oppertunities for quests or help. Not to mention i have had countless hours of fun attempting to convert my party to my religion. Ive even had a few whole parties convert and you tall about shinanigins when you get a whole party on the same page. Overall i feel like the diety is not nessacery but should be encouraged.
This is pretty much how I feel about it! I personally find it more fun with gods involved, and I encourage it, but depending on teh setting and on player preference, I'm open to mixing it up
@@BobWorldBuilder Thank you for all you do
It's a complex question because it comes down to the fundamental world building question: What is the source of Divine Magic? In 5e Divine Magic is pretty clearly something that just exists and can be used without a Deity. A Sorcerer subclass is capable of using it with no Deity, Paladins, and any character that takes the Magic Initiate feat lol You then have to answer: How does the Cleric's Divine Intervention ability work with no Deity? But the answer is already built into the ability "The DM chooses the nature of the intervention". Maybe a spontaneous manifestation of the Positive Energy Plane appears to answer your call, or maybe some random god who's cool with you decides to answer your call. Maybe your orientation as a Cleric to no Deity makes you valuable and sought after by the gods, or maybe it makes them fearful that you may grow to rival them someday. . .
I kinda like the rule of Clerics worship a God, Paladins worship an ideal. It makes the difference between them distinct even when their roles overlap.
Okay so after listening to the rest of the video, sorry panel from hell was today. I still think that a Cleric needs a God, or at least a Relgion I didn't make that distinction before and someone below mentioned it yes a Relgion makes sense to me too, for them to be a Cleric. The whole ideals thing muddles the line between Cleric and Paladin too much imo. Also as far as homebrewing D&D,as someone else mentioned, I feel like that's a different conversation and my analysis of it is only for D&D in its base setting or any other generic fantasy setting that doesn't require the classes to be changed for it to make sense. If you start bringing up homebrew settings like Final Fantasy that's a different conversation all together.
Yeah I think those divisions all come down to personal preference! Especially since now even several official subclasses blur the lines of where powers come from
I think that pigeonholes them mechanically too much. If you are playing a game set in one of the Final Fantasy settings and you want to play a White Mage, you wouldn't roll a Paladin. It doesn't do all the things you'd expect, and it does a number of things you wouldn't. But most iterations of the White Mage draw their power from "the Light", not a deity.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos yeah, but that's homebrew. Once you've changed the setting, all bets are off. Bards aren't Red Mages, Paladins aren't Dragoons, etc. Within a homebrew, anything is possible. Like you said, FF derives its power from the Light or Chaos or some other concept. But adapting D&D to a homebrew setting shouldn't change the base game. Just because White Mages (Healers, Clerics) draw their power from the Light doesn't mean every other cleric should, too.
@@ericpeterson8732 5e hardly even has a default setting, though.
@ericpeterson8732 D&D is necessarily flavor-agnostic, as evidenced by internal inconsistencies across published, offical campaign settings. Nowhere in any 5e book say that D&D _can't_ simulate a Final Fantasy setting. And, in fact, there are official WotC modules that confirm that 5e _can_ simulate Ravnica, where there _are_ Clerics and there _are not_ deities.
Bob, you should talk about 4e. the community appears to be growing and undergoing a bit of a rennaisance
I would say Clerics needed a God, as they are similar to Warlocks in that they get all their power from a higher source and may lose it if they stray too far away from their intended path. If Cleric only required some level of faith in anything, then that's a paladin basically. Paladins are based on the unwavering faith and oath in their own cause or the cause of whom they follow. If we let Clerics regularly revoke the Gods and simply have their own version faith, that would take away the key and very interesting difference between the Paladin and Cleric flavor-wise.
Uhh Paladins already can lose their powers by not following their beliefs. Paladins and clerics draw their power from the same sources (gods, beliefs and forces of nature) and can lose these powers if they do not follow through.
I also tend to lean towards whatever option is most fun. D&D is a game. I think a good example of a cleric following a belief is Kristen Applebees from Dimension20's Fantasy High. She begins to realise the god she follows is pretty evil, and begins researching other philosophies and world religions. She stops following her god completely, and begins gaining her powers from the philosophies she follows. If a cleric has to follow a god, you are basically saying all clerics must be unwaveringly faithful in their deity. All clerics must have the personality trait that they follow their god and do not question them or they will lose their powers and become useless.
It also depends on the setting. I don't expect my DM to create a god that fits every single domain if they make a custom world. Most D&D campaign settings do not have gods that align with every domain. This is one of the strongest reasons why you can worship a domain and not a deity because if you can only worship a deity, then some domains may narratively be impossible to use in a setting.
Yeah there's a lot to discuss about how these three very similarly-flavored classes handle it!
@@floofzykitty5072 There is A LOT of breathing room between "unwavering faith" and "completely ceasing to follow a God altogether permanently".
Personally as a DM I require clerics to draw their power from a higher being, but said higher being doesn't necessarily require unwavering faith. A God of mercy would be much more likely to forgive/not punish a cleric which has strayed in their faith than a God of revenge, for example.
I agree with a lot of the points raised, however I do think that we need to maintain a conceptual distinction between clerics, warlocks, and paladins to justify their separation into different classes, though it may only be a vague one
That's fair :)
I’ve been playing since the original, both as player and DM, and the discussion over specific gods for paladins and clerics has never came up. It’s just generally implied they served whatever god that may be over that realm, in their alignment.
Interesting! Many folks who started in that era seem to lean the other way, based on comments I've seen anyway, so I admire you're open-mindedness!
@@BobWorldBuilder everyone I knew back then were Christians, and cleric players envisioned praying and divine power, but no one ever brought up specific deities. About the only time it’d ever come up is if it was part of the adventure.
I now want to play a Trickery domain cleric whose catchphrase is "Bold of you to assume my god is real."
I think if you asked
"Do PCs need parents?"
You'd have a similar response.
Haha I totally agree!
I like the dark sun setting where the other form of magic is derived from elements and not deities. So fun to play a clerk of fire or a druid of water
Our house rules allowed that the more work that the player put into creating the religion, the more flavorful feats and abilities would be offered.
That's a nice way to incentivize playing this fun class!
Very nicely done - you're enjoyment spilled over the ether!
Great stuff friend 👏 👍
Thank you!
Your answer was my immediate answer, glad to be in good company
Great topic had a laugh good fun as always, Later Bob
Awesome! Glad you liked it
Glad to see you actually delved into the history and showed how Clerics, as originally introduced, were essentially a spellcaster/fighter combo class halfway between your fighter and mage. Personally, I think the 5e Warlock should entirely replace the Cleric class, as it requires the interaction with the patron that the Cleric class pays lip service too, but does not enforce mechanically. There is too much baggage about Clerics just being the Healer, whereas the Warlock patron goal accomplisher is far more along the lines of what Clerics used to be flavor-wise.
As a DM, I see it as flavor. God, no god. I don't care
Same! :)
Oddly no. The reason is the original “cleric class” was a placeholder example for whatever holy person the gm wanted for his story with the rules stating to make your own variants based on your campaign’s needs. The Druid was the same way. At least this was true in 2nd edition but I cannot remember if this stretches back to first.
Do rogues need to wear cloaks? Do barbarians have to have a big weapon? Well… no… you can do whatever you want dnd. That doesn’t mean it’s more fun. Maybe that’s just me, but the vibe of dnd is half of what makes it work.
Haha good points! And especially that the "vibe" or atmosphere of the setting you play in is a big part of how much or how little this matters
@@BobWorldBuilder you’re so cool.
Hey Bob.
This was an amazing which was both entertaining and informative. Never had a player not take a jog God and play a cleric. And as I haven't looked on a deep dive into the rules I just assumed that the deity was necessary
Personally, I like the idea that both clerics and paladins need gods, otherwise they have no access to magic. I also prefer a no or limited martial weapons limit for clerics. clerics as holy men with greater direct divine access, powers, and paladins as fighting holy men but limited in magic due to the sins of fighting.
This is pretty much how I run it too. I don't understand the idea of paladins getting magic from just *believing really hard* haha, however if that's how a player really wanted to run their cleric, I'd be okay with it.
Bob, you summed it up perfectly.
“A cleric is NOT a paladin”
If you have no god, you shouldn’t have powers, and without powers, you’re just a paladin.
Ok?
Ok.
Glad we all understand what makes a cleric a cleric and not just a knight.
Whether or not Clerics "need" to worship a god as per an official rule, piety is such an interesting roleplay dynamic and game mechanic that it deserves a class built around it, and the Cleric best fits this archetype, more so than any other. If D&D uses a class called 'Cleric' that wield 'Divinity' as a tool, then I would say that they should be bound to serve a deity. Some people may disagree, and that's okay, but given how important religion has been throughout all of human history (barring the most recent century in Europe and North America), and in and D&D setting where deities are functionally proven to exist and influence the world, there's no reason not to require Clerics to worship a Deity.
Yeah I totally agree that it's more interesting to roleplay the character if they worship a deity, and that it's more fun for me personally! I think it ultimately comes down to the setting (how important/present gods are) and what the group wants
I can see this side of the argument- obviously the gods exist in D&D, and clerics draw their power from divine influence, so it certainly makes sense that they’d need to be dedicated to a certain god. I’ve just never pushed the issue as a DM, because I never saw the need to know exactly what deity they’re serving
I think this argument discounts the prominence of animist and soft polytheistic religions in the history of religion, personally. I think it also fails to capture the entirety of the "divine full-caster" trope, which the class is mechanically required to do.
@@ms.aelanwyr.ilaicos An argument could be made that Animist religions would actually be better suited to Druids than Clerics, given that, historically, Clerics were members of the Clergy, which implies a "harder," more structured religious system.
As for the "Divine Full-Caster" trope, where does it fail? The features are all flavored around either Spellcasting or Divinity, and the Spell List is filled with examples which feed into that archetype.
@occultnightingale1106 Druid has mechanical baggage, particularly Wild Shape, that makes it poorly suited to mimicking most real-world animist lore. For example, a witch-doctor communicates with spirits to get things--specifically healing--to happen. Animals are in no way associated with this. Shinto priests would be clerics, but do not worship "deities" in the sense implied by the sentence "The power of your spells comes from the devotion to your deity."
It fails to capture the whole archetype _if a deity is required_ because there are prominent examples of characters that are pretty obviously mechanically clerics, yet do not have a deity. Every White Mage in the Final Fantasy series comes to mind.
Yes Bob. I, too, would make the Paladin and Warlock into a Fighter and Wizard subclasses, respectively. Good man.
🙏
"Crom!..." -Conan the Barbarian
Such an inspiring quote!
@@BobWorldBuilder It's a long quote too, like your name, Bob, is extremely long. Lol
Yes. I think it adds flavor and things worldbuilders get to work with.
I’ve always found it difficult to solely recognize one god in a polytheist universe. As a cleric you choose a domain, you should dedicate mostly to one god in your setting wich is compatible with it, but the other gods will still be recognized by you.
Good point!
A lot seems to depend on the personal feelings of the DM. As a player and an atheist (small a), playing clerics used to be hard for me to get excited about. Too much religious encumberance. However, this got tons easier when I played a dwarven light cleric who worshipped “Rudolf the Red”. I had so much fun using stone mastery to carve small dwarven statues and altars (essentially modern garden gnomes) to leave around and advocating joy and giving to children, that this was a great character to play, with an easy ethos to proselytize.
I don’t think they need a god but I love playing them as needing gods. 😊
Same!
My latest Cleric character actually gains his power from ancestor worship, mostly because we are playing in Forgotten Realms and I know nothing of official DND lore.
That super cool!
Hey Bob, I can only assume you weren’t aware of the recent controversy surrounding Established Titles, so I would recommend reading up on it/watching Legal Eagle’s video on them before you accept another sponsorship deal with them.
Was gonna say the same.
This comment needs to be highlighted
I mean Bob did mention it " It won't make you a noble (lord/lady)" but still said it a good gift. Which is a fair response to still stick to the sponsorship deal
Why assume he's not aware? Why not assume he's under contract and just needs a little time to finish commitments? How could you not be aware as every video lately has its a scam as the top comment?
Yeah while I was aware of recent discussions about the sponsor, I already had this planned with them, and I personally find that since they advertise the title for pets, it should be well understood that it is not to be considered official in any way, just a fun gift
You know how in dictionary definitions you see something like "such-and-such, ESPECIALLY on the grounds of this-and-that". I see Clerics as "spellcasters who gain their powers from divine sources, especially if they carry holy symbols and have particular devotion to a deity."
Great video, Bob!
My concern is not whether my character needs a god based on their class, but based solely on the character themselves and that has so far been a yes. I am a very spiritual person, I enjoy learning about real world faiths, and I like exploring that through my roleplay as well.
No wonder none of us can agree on alignment. It's determination or definition has kept changing with each edition
Dieties and Demigods (later Legends and Lore) actually does assume Clerics were a follower of a god or pantheon. Your spells depended on it as only certain spell levels were available to you depending on who/what you worshipped. If I remember correctly: Any faithful Cleric could cast 1st and 2nd level, but I believe Demigods could grant 3rd and 4th, Lesser Gods could grant 5th and 6th, and only Greater Gods could grant 7th (the cap at that time) level spells.
And no, I don't think you need to worship a god in 5e but it gives you RP flavor and hooks if you do.
I believe you are correct and I still use a version of this in my 5e game: I assume priests who can cast 1st and 2nd level spells are fairly common because they only need faith and to follow proscribed ritual, and so any sizable settlement probably has the equivalent of a 1st-3rd level clerical spellcaster. But I'm also mindful of the 5e kuo-toa, who can through mass delusion "create" deities that grant spells, so I don't think that all clerics necessarily have to worship a deity (I've always been a fan of worshipping forces or philosophy since 2e).
I really like this concept! Not that there are a ton of clerics in the game world per say, but a powerful god probably wouldn't feel the need to make direct contact with just any ol' cleric!
Technically no a cleric doesn't need a god, they can be devote to a philosophy. The 3rd Ed had clerics devoted to Law or Chaos a la Michael Moorcock's Multiverse books, or Good or Evil in addition to deities. But I think developing deities is fun because you get to design their faiths, history and myths which enriches the world. Even if you use basic philosophies of Good, Evil, Law and Chaos, you can still create "saints" and exemplars of the faith to add to the mythologies of the philosophies. Great video though!
I say they need to worship *something* what that is, depends.
Nice!
One of my favorite 3e characters I ever played was a Cleric/Barbarian multiclass who worshipped the god of bears and used the Strength domain.
I feel like a cleric does need a god or higher power connection simply because the divine magic is separate from the other magic. It doesn't matter if a wizard studies for 100 years they can't cast divine magic unless they change or dip into cleric or paladin.
But this all depends on the setting you are playing in. It's just the main setting that 5E takes place in makes sure to separate the magic.
Yeah default 5e setting definitely implies that a god should be part of the clerics life and magic, but the DMG does say that you can reflavor it in other ways, and I think it's always fair to reflavor what you want!
I once heard a psionic character (we were playing Pathfinder at the time) describe the forms of magic by analogy to a marionette. The divine caster uses the control bar--or asks someone to use it for them--playing within the boundaries the designers of the world and its naturally-occuring magics intended. The arcane caster tugs at the strings, understanding and utilizing magic as one might understand and utilize physics. The psionic caster simply grabs the puppet, imposing its will onto the world with its mind just as it would with its body. I thought that was an interesting description. I think different classes, and even different members of a class, fall at slightly different points on this spectrum, but I've found it a useful framing device for conceptualizing a given character's relationship with magic.
@@BobWorldBuilder Finishing your video my 'stance' is pretty much the same, at least for my table. I like the idea of gods being the personification of elements or principles. So sure you can follow the Ravnica idea and worship wealth but sooner or later a wealth deity will notice you or a new one will be born.
I too also have the Sun be a god and aspects of it have been different sun gods throughout history. At the same time the Moon, the Planet, and even that small river that brings fish and clean water to your village is a god.
The thing not to forget is how this influences your world. If deities are just backdrop with little meaning or if they stand for something beyond good and evil. Say you have a god of thieves, it makes a huge difference if that includes assassins or merchants. If it includes merchants, that aspect could be prayed to openly. Or how it came to be? I'm thinking about the Elder Scrolls where the Khajiit Rajhin was such an incredible thief, that he stole his divinity.
In Forgotten Realms sailors pray to the chaotic storm god/ess(?) so that s/he does not cause a storm during their next trip.
Why would you want to ignore the possibilities for roleplay?