Raven Crowking
First Post
ConcreteBuddha said:
Just for the record, clerics of forces and philosophies appeared in 2nd Ed, and thus are not really an addition. These options were specifically codified in The Complete Priest's Handbook.
RC
-
The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
I enjoy clerics without gods
- Thread starter HellHound
- Start date
Just for the record, clerics of forces and philosophies appeared in 2nd Ed, and thus are not really an addition. These options were specifically codified in The Complete Priest's Handbook.
RC
ConcreteBuddha
First Post
Psion said:
Yeah, it's confusing me, too.
Humanophile said:
Well, I'm not particularly keen on typical "fantasy" as "people" describe it. Can't stand Tolkien-european-medieval-forest-bow-dragon-peasant-Conan games. I like the fantasy concept that gods are, well, mysterious.
Can't stand the Time of Troubles in FR. Drives me batty.
Just a matter of taste, of course.
Is arcane magic (or psionics) powered by faith?
I always thought of arcane magic to be more like RW science. The fireball happens not because of the wizard's faith in the fireball or force of will, but because the wizard has learned how to manipulate the forces of the universe using arcane tools. Same way a RW particle accelerator works, or a cannon, or a flashlight. The tools are different, the results are different, the process is the same.
I've always thought that Mage the Ascension was fundamentally about divine casters (mages) vs. arcane casters (technomancers). So it's funny that you brought that up to support your position. Same source material, different POV.
Henry said:
Say I believed in bushido. Domains were War and Law. Then I had a crisis of faith. Too many bloody wars. Too much blind loyalty. I disagreed with the philosophy. I lost my powers.
Then I started believing in helping others. I traveled around and healed everyone I met for free. I had an atonement cast on me. I gained my powers back. I am now a traveling healer, domains Travel and Healing.
Sure, it's not a relationship in the sense of human + human. But oftentimes people have relationships with nonsentient nonhuman things. Like your chair. Or the sea. Or an idea.
mhacdebhandia
Explorer
This is what I wrote in the draft of a handout I intend to give my players once I've finished designing the campaign I want to run:
"The campaign lacks a coherent pantheon – some clerics are servants of a single deity, some of several at once, some of philosophies which may or may not incorporate the gods and goddesses of the world into their doctrine. While no religion is monotheistic in an exclusive sense, some religious orders claim primacy for their god(s) over all others. The clerics of the World Mother, for example, claim that She is the creator of all things, including other deities, especially the natural world; there are, however, druidic philosophies which do not recognise any personification of the force(s) of Nature at all.
"The gods apparently do not require doctrinal purity in return for the favour they grant their worshippers – most clerics agree that this is an accomodation born out of the gods’ conviction that mortals’ believing part of the truth is better than none, and may lead them to the whole in time, though extremists of all stripes suspect that those clerics who dissent from the truth are merely drawing their power from the elemental forces of the universe loosely associated with the god they claim to follow, as clerics of philosophies do."
I have taken this approach mostly because, as a postgraduate student of religion, I want to use a more complex religious structure in my campaign world than you often find in fantasy settings with established, objective pantheons with deities you can point to.
I also find it more interesting to allow for the possibility that the mortal followers of the gods might in truth serve forces attempting to corrupt the worldly institutions of the faith.
Obviously, I must spend some time contemplating the question of alignment-detection magic before this could ever work, but at the present time I lean towards the idea of using some in-game resource (magic items, spells, the supernatural blessing of a deity) to make it difficult to detect such infiltration rather than the solution of banning alignment-detection magic altogether; on the other hand, since my campaign will not include the paladin class, I suppose I could do that too. I think I prefer the idea of characters believing that alignment-detection magic can fail to reliably discern the truth, however.
To solve the problem of players choosing too-powerful domains for a "philosophical cleric", I will write up the campaign world's major philosophies myself, and participate in the creation of any additional causes or philosophies which players not satisfied with the ones I've written want to think up.
I also like the idea of including philosophies which share extensive similarities with deity-centered faiths, differing in many cases only on whether or not the deity (or deities) really matter. As a real-world example, for instance, different sects of Buddhism differ on their approach to the Buddha and figures such as bodhisattvas. Some Buddhist traditions do genuinely treat these figures as functionally equivalent to deities - "Pure Land" Buddhism, for example, called Ching-t'u in China, approaches a real similarity to Protestant Christianity in its doctrine of salvation through personal faith in Amitabha Buddha. At the same time, though, Buddhist sects retain a sense of commonality of thought with each other, and I want to try to capture that sense of amicable disagreement on specifics.
Then, of course, I will also have violent disagreements between different faiths and sects of the same faith. Hurrah!
"The campaign lacks a coherent pantheon – some clerics are servants of a single deity, some of several at once, some of philosophies which may or may not incorporate the gods and goddesses of the world into their doctrine. While no religion is monotheistic in an exclusive sense, some religious orders claim primacy for their god(s) over all others. The clerics of the World Mother, for example, claim that She is the creator of all things, including other deities, especially the natural world; there are, however, druidic philosophies which do not recognise any personification of the force(s) of Nature at all.
"The gods apparently do not require doctrinal purity in return for the favour they grant their worshippers – most clerics agree that this is an accomodation born out of the gods’ conviction that mortals’ believing part of the truth is better than none, and may lead them to the whole in time, though extremists of all stripes suspect that those clerics who dissent from the truth are merely drawing their power from the elemental forces of the universe loosely associated with the god they claim to follow, as clerics of philosophies do."
I have taken this approach mostly because, as a postgraduate student of religion, I want to use a more complex religious structure in my campaign world than you often find in fantasy settings with established, objective pantheons with deities you can point to.
I also find it more interesting to allow for the possibility that the mortal followers of the gods might in truth serve forces attempting to corrupt the worldly institutions of the faith.
Obviously, I must spend some time contemplating the question of alignment-detection magic before this could ever work, but at the present time I lean towards the idea of using some in-game resource (magic items, spells, the supernatural blessing of a deity) to make it difficult to detect such infiltration rather than the solution of banning alignment-detection magic altogether; on the other hand, since my campaign will not include the paladin class, I suppose I could do that too. I think I prefer the idea of characters believing that alignment-detection magic can fail to reliably discern the truth, however.
To solve the problem of players choosing too-powerful domains for a "philosophical cleric", I will write up the campaign world's major philosophies myself, and participate in the creation of any additional causes or philosophies which players not satisfied with the ones I've written want to think up.
I also like the idea of including philosophies which share extensive similarities with deity-centered faiths, differing in many cases only on whether or not the deity (or deities) really matter. As a real-world example, for instance, different sects of Buddhism differ on their approach to the Buddha and figures such as bodhisattvas. Some Buddhist traditions do genuinely treat these figures as functionally equivalent to deities - "Pure Land" Buddhism, for example, called Ching-t'u in China, approaches a real similarity to Protestant Christianity in its doctrine of salvation through personal faith in Amitabha Buddha. At the same time, though, Buddhist sects retain a sense of commonality of thought with each other, and I want to try to capture that sense of amicable disagreement on specifics.
Then, of course, I will also have violent disagreements between different faiths and sects of the same faith. Hurrah!
ConcreteBuddha
First Post
Rock on!
mhacdebhandia
Explorer
Crud, I need to get my knives out of the boxes in the wardrobe before Sunday.
That reminds me, Hong, I need to ask you about the whole Virtue system. Remind me on Sunday.
That reminds me, Hong, I need to ask you about the whole Virtue system. Remind me on Sunday.
Last edited:
Heh, I thought that would come up eventually.mhacdebhandia said:
I started out keeping track of people's Virtue scores, but I gave up on it after a while. I didn't feel comfortable "scoring" the players on how good they were. Now it's an informal system; if a PC majorly screws up, then they lose their Virtue (and could become an NPC depending on whether they piss people off OOC), but otherwise it doesn't really affect play in terms of game mechanics.
The Quest of the Avatar basically consists of doing subquests that are handed out by each shrine. On completion, you have the option of becoming a partial avatar of that virtue. In practice, this means you should have a rough idea of what the virtue entails, and not behave in a way grossly counter to it. So far I've been pretty lenient in policing virtue restrictions on behaviour; having fun is the main objective here, not philosophical/ethical rigour. We're generally on the same page as regards what "good" means, so conflicts hopefully won't arise.
mhacdebhandia
Explorer
So you generally consider heroes - i.e., PCs - to be of good standing in all of the Virtues unless and until they screw up in a major fashion?
The system has basically evolved into three broad states for a Virtue: normal, fallen, and enlightened. Unless you're really capital-E Evil, you won't be fallen. That's for high-level villains, people who have committed major atrocities, demons, etc. Most everyone is in the "normal" state, including petty crims, commoners, knights in shining armour, and PCs (starting out, anyway). Only those who go to a shrine and do the stuff it tells them can (potentially) become enlightened.mhacdebhandia said:
Virtue is correlated to D&D alignment, but there's no direct link. You can be of evil alignment and not be fallen. You can be of good alignment and not be an avatar. I suppose I could find a way to link the virtues to your alignment in terms of game mechanics, but that strikes me as just opening up a huge can o' worms. Better to keep things informal, IMO.
There is one link between virtue and game mechanics that I should have mentioned before. To use feats and spells in the Book of Exalted Deeds, you have to have achieved avatarhood in at least one virtue. You can take one such feat for each virtue you've done; similarly for the level of BOED spells you have access to. Eg Carmen has (IIRC) avatarhood in Compassion and Sacrifice, so she can cast up to 2nd level BOED spells, and can have up to 2 BOED feats.
EDIT: All that said, I'm not averse to characters who want to have deep philosophical debates either. As long as it doesn't degenerate into paladins vs orc babies.
Last edited:
