Analysis of Level 1 Spells
Analysis of Level 2 Spells
Analysis of Level 3 Spells
Analysis of Level 4 Spells
Analysis of Level 5 Spells
Analysis of Level 6 Spells
Analysis of Level 7 Spells
Conclusions
I've talked before about how the default religion of D&D is is analogous to the Catholic Church in the middle ages. Based on my last post reworking cleric magic I want to examine the what the divine powers granted to a cleric tell us about his religion. First I want to examine the implied setting of original D&D for clues about the religion and then I will go through the BECMI spell list and note what each spell tells us about the deity, religion, and beliefs of the Basic D&D cleric.
Analysis of Level 2 Spells
Analysis of Level 3 Spells
Analysis of Level 4 Spells
Analysis of Level 5 Spells
Analysis of Level 6 Spells
Analysis of Level 7 Spells
Conclusions
I've talked before about how the default religion of D&D is is analogous to the Catholic Church in the middle ages. Based on my last post reworking cleric magic I want to examine the what the divine powers granted to a cleric tell us about his religion. First I want to examine the implied setting of original D&D for clues about the religion and then I will go through the BECMI spell list and note what each spell tells us about the deity, religion, and beliefs of the Basic D&D cleric.
Original D&D:
One Sixth of all strongholds are ruled by Patriarchs (name
level clerics), or possibly Evil High Priests. This implies that the church has
a significant political presence, yet it doesn’t dominate the local rulers.
Also, the fact that they specifically rule military strongholds implies a more
militant view of the church’s role in society, or at least the Clerics, if not
the whole church.
Again emphasizing the militant aspect, “Clerics are served
by fighters of 4th level (hero) or 8th level (superhero), ents or hippogriffs.”
These strongholds are clearly military outposts of the church. The alliance of
the church with Ents is interesting to say the least; the implication being
that one of the goals of this religion is to protect the natural world. I think
this is reinforced when the Evil High Priest are allied with Trolls, Vampires,
White Apes, and Spectres (Nazgul). The Evil High Priests, who are the direct
enemy of the Patriarchs, are allied with unnatural creatures, the undead,
trolls that regenerate, and white apes as an evil version of the normal ape.
This supports “Clerics are much closer to the knight templar type,” they are an
organization that fights against enemies of the church and the undead.
It is also telling that when a Patriarch’s stronghold is
visited by an adventurer, a tithe is demanded. This can’t be a literal tithe of
ten percent, or an annual tax that the clergy impose on the local populace
(though we can assume this takes place also), the Patriarch has no way of
knowing what income the adventurer has had over the last year or if he recently
paid a tithe to another Patriarch. This means that the Patriarch isz demanding
some sort of payment, not necessarily a tithe of ten percent, to prove that
this adventurer is loyal to the church, and if the adventurer doesn’t have the
money, he can prove his loyalty by going on a quest.
“each town must have some fairly active necropolis attached
to it, and the population must bar themselves indoors at night.” Because of
this, I suspect that Evil High Priests have more influence in the towns. The
patriarchs may or may not have a presence in these areas, but it seems that the
enemies of the church have more influence here. This may be due to the great
number of dead bodies that accumulate in graveyards, or to the lack of faith of
city folk. I also suspect that the raise dead spell of the clerics is meant to
fight this plague of the towns. The fact that the spell is ineffectual after a
few days tells us that the spirit/soul of the person has departed the body and
gone to the afterlife.
From the Google+ group OSR
ReplyDeleteLance Duncan:
After deciding to use the cleric spell list as is, I decided I could backwards engineer the religion of the cleric using the spell list, but first examined the implied setting of OD&D
Brett Slocum:
I like the comparison between Clerics and The Knights Templar. Martial elites who are also ordained and know magic/miracles. Religious fighting orders.
Lance Duncan:
the comparison to the Templars is from the source document at http://initiativeone.blogspot.com this was just an analysis of what was put forward there.
Nathan Jennings:
That seems about right. I treat clerics as knights of religious orders. I call their religion the church of law. That pretty well does the trick.
Ian Borchardt (Reverance Pavane):
My old campaign clerics were always members of a monastic militant order, although they were the special members who had magical powers and were trained (both magically and physically) in defeating the supernatural. The majority of the order had no magical powers though and were simply the armed forces of the Church.
The no blunt weapons limitation was interpreted as them using maces whose head was in the shape of a hand or fist, in honour of their patron saint who was renowned for pummelling evil with his great fists. [Rather than it being a combination of the European sign of the mace as a symbol of authority (especially divine authority), the injunction against using swords in the bible as explained by Saint Thomas Aquinas ("those who live by the sword shall die by the sword, so don't use swords..."), or the fact that the original cleric was modelled on Bishop Odo of the Bayeux tapestry fame.]
[It's also interesting to note that Hero and Superhero were originally Chainmail definitions, and the the Superhero was only available to Lawful forces. Essentially these were the Very Old School paladins.]
On the other hand the names of the various clerical levels are formal names within the Western Church's hierarchy (except Lama which could be taken as being an Abbot instead, especially of a Palantine order). But I think having every Village Priest be a 3rd level cleric was just a wee bit too powerful, so this was interpreted as the position a Cleric could retire to. Of course being a full-time priest meant that your pastoral duties generally precluded you from adventuring. And Clerics were generally considered too valuable to farm out to pastoral duties (unless they did need to retire or to recover from the trauma of their work).
Which assumption also implied that a cleric could only be ordained as a priest when they reach 3rd level, and this is the level where they could then actually perform the offices of the church (such as marriage, etc).
It had also the fun effect that your normal ordinary village priest outranked a 1st or 2nd level Cleric (as class) in the Church hierarchy and could order them to perform tasks in service of the Church...
The Imperial Church was firmly on the side of Law in that game, since the objective of the church was to bring civilisation (Law) [aka the Empire] to the wilderness (Chaos), whether the wilderness wanted it or not. Whilst Clerics were quite rare (as rare as any other spellcaster), they were often seen with adventurer groups, because adventurer groups often went to places where the things that clerics were supposed to defeat dwelled. Which in turn gave the Church's imprimatur to adventuring (and the Church would often offer hospitality to adventurers, and not just because there was a cleric in the party).
Nicolas Dessaux Shared privately:
ReplyDeleteSome interesting points.
Pierre M:
Cleric / priests don't have to belong an organized religion, and there is no need of such an organization to justify the very existence of holy persons.
Besides, the more divine power you allow in your game, the harder you will be able to justify trivialities like permanent death, disease, etc.
Lance Duncan:
+Pierre M the cleric by definition is part of an organized religion. a cleric is a member of the clergy, the priests and monks and other members of an official church. allowing the clerics to perform miracles/spells doesn't necessarily trivialize death and disease, you can limit how common spellcasting clerics are and high level clerics in particular. it is more about how the dm runs the setting than the rules associated with the cleric.
Pierre M:
I'll need an actual keyboard to reply :)