Why no Clerics? I'm not critiquing, in fact, I find this interesting. It's got possibility for ganking some ideas. I was just wondering as to your reasons for no clerics, and how you'd deal with healing / HP recovery?
Good question. I think I'm going to get this a lot -- and I should. It was the hardest thing for me to personally let go of, and it took me months (if not years) to come to terms with it. Clerics have always, always been part of D&D.
Item I. Largely I want to return some stuff back to OD&D, like (a) number of classes (3), and (b) amount of available divine magic/healing (very little). Particularly for (b) I finally realized that I just had to abort clerics entirely -- they're just way, way too potent in the d20 System, and no amount of tinkering I attempted could fix that. (Domains; spontaneous healing; huge spell list; access to every spell; good blasting spells).
Item II. I never (in 30 years) got clerics to work right in my campaign worldbuilding. I won't elaborate too much on that, but you can see more in my blog linked below. Too many clerics, in too many churches, with too many separate faiths to design and track, and with too much magical power in the world. If the OD&D system had been retained (no spells at 1st level) then I might make sense of it, but I remember struggling with it all the way back in the 80's. So, finally taking the jump, I found that my world building work is also miniaturized with this system.
Item III. There's this numerical elegance (maybe OCD on my part) to having 3 classes, 3 nonhuman races (each with one class favored), 3 levels of attack bonus, 3 good saves, and 3 levels of armor/weapon proficiency. Since clerics (a) lacked a core race that favored them, (b) duplicated an attack bonus with rogues, and (c) didn't have one focused good save, the list looks cleanest to me with them gone.
The solution to healing is that you've got to make natural
potions of healing (or something) available to PCs for purchase in the campaign. Presumably they'll nurse those, use them when critically needed, and most of the time be using natural healing. That's something that matches what I see in fantasy stories, but I never saw it in D&D, and I missed it.
Getting rid of clerics was really, really (really) tough. In retrospect I'm very happy with it.
