We Considered (Mostly) Removing Clerics But Talked Ourselves Out Of It

Whilst driving our deaf daughter to the not-so-local deaf school I told my wife to give me some motivations for an adventuring fighter. Since finding generic treasure is an easy and logical default, I told her to try and avoid that if possible. It didn't take her long to come up with the following:

• The thrill of combat.
• To test himself and improve his skills.
• His wife and daughter got killed by a monster, or leader of some marauding warband or somesuch, and he wants to avenge them.

Then I asked her for some rogue/thief motivations:

• She left a gang to try and make it on her own. Alternatively, was forced out of a gang for some reason (wanted, framed and/or pissed off the wrong guy).
• To improve her skills so that she can ultimately sneak into a location and steal a valuable object. Alternatively, find the location of some legendary treasure. Yeah, it's loot-related, but more than just "I want generic gold because I'm poor" so I gave it a pass.
• Become an infamous thief/treasure hunter (ie, fame and glory). While also somewhat loot-related, this is more about notoriety so I let it slide.

Then wizard motivations:

• Find/obtain special materials (rare herbs, monster parts, elemental cores, etc) to create magic items and/or alchemical items. 
• Discover new/forgotten spells. Or, use discoveries to create new spells.
• Find a suitable location to create a wizard tower (in Delvers you can build towers on certain locations to effectively draw out "magic" points at a set rate, which can be used to power and sustain spells). Adventuring would also let the wizard amass cash to actually pay for the construction.

Finally, cleric motivations...

This took awhile, and she could only really mutter something about spreading the word of her god, which is about what I'd expect but not something I'd expect to happen with any regularity throughout the course of typical adventuring activity. Really if you wanted to spread the word of your god, prove that he exists and can directly and consistently influence the mortal realm, you'd be better suited traveling from town to town and performing miracles on his behalf.

While most characters can be simply and logically motivated by money, it sounds odd for a cleric, who has been chosen by his god to be a mortal conduit for its divine power, to slum around in dungeons smashing skeletons and butchering orcs for the possibility of acquiring loot of varying quality. Presumably, clerics aren't commonplace (at least, less so than fighters and wizards), so why would one risk life and limb for material gain, unless it was absolutely necessary, and it rarely is.

Even if it were, if the church really needed money it'd probably send out its lesser "divinely inspired" folk. And if it had to send out the cleric? If he was the only one qualified? He would probably stop adventuring as soon as he gathered up all the necessary cash. I can't envision a cleric of, say, healing deciding to just up and head out to explore a sky tomb on another plane of existence, and I couldn't see his god being too happy about it, either.

Maybe if it is believed to contain a long-lost relic of his god, but then I could just as easily see the church paying a group of adventurers to retrieve it. Maybe the cleric goes along as insurance (and assistance), but I don't think he'd make a regular habit of dungeon crawling once all is said and done.

It's been a while so, wondering what, if anything, Dungeons & Dragons had to say about clerics and adventuring, I pored through Player's Handbooks across the editions. 1st and 2nd Edition offered nothing, while 3rd Edition states that "ideally, a cleric's adventures support his god's causes, at least in a general way". Okay, but I fail to see why Moradin or Fharlanghn would care (or even appreciate it) if you strolled down into the local catacombs and killed some skeletons, zombies, and ghouls, primarily to procure valuables and experience points.

4th and 5th Edition didn't offer anything new, implying that the gods are in fact content to imbue you with divine power on the off chance they might want you to go find some holy relic now and then and/or smite the occasional evil-doer. It's a hands-off approach on par with the warlock, where a demon is apparently fine granting you nigh-unlimited infernal might as part of some vague bargain—which is unlikely to have any campaign-relevant ramifications, presuming your ten-page backstory doesn't describe how you already fulfilled it—and then not give two shits what you do with it.

One possible explanation that I just conceived of while writing this post, that threatens to unravel my entire premise for potentially relegating the cleric to kinda-sorta optional status, whilst simultaneously refining the concept in context for the implied setting in Dungeons & Delvers (which will be more fully realized in 2nd Edition) merely required me to shift the class's focus.

Our original cleric was derived from our Dungeon World cleric, a superlative substitute over the official low-effort offering, which was more about you naming and describing a god, as well as his Domains, which would determine how you could manifest various Miracles. In Dungeons & Delvers you would pick Domain Talents, which would serve as gateway Talents for various abilities and Miracles.

The concept was flexible enough that you could play a cleric that would be more comfortable in light armor and a supporting role, but with a few Talents (all of which could be taken at 1st-level), you could be better suited towards combat (there was also a battle cleric variant class, but that didn't make it in the core book). 

We didn't really concern ourselves much about the plausibility of a Forge or Knowledge-oriented cleric crawling around in dungeons, figuring that if that was an issue a group would resolve it in a similar manner to however they did so with clerics in Dungeons & Dragons (if at all).

The solution is to adjust the cleric concept so that it's more akin to what you saw in 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons, with a twist: not only will the cleric will be assumed to have a martial bent, it will also be charged with the elimination of unnatural and evil forces plaguing the world. Given that these can all commonly be found in your typical dungeon environment, it gives clerics a logical reason to want to adventure.

While priests will be far more commonplace and might have access to a Miracle or two (possibly restricted to use within the confines of consecrated ground), clerics will be instilled with far greater divine power and responsibilities.

Clerics will also be far less common, which would also explain why they would want to travel with other stalwart allies that are at least indirectly aligned in accordance with their ideology: their odds of survival are far superior than were they to go it alone. This of course means that some Domains wouldn't make much sense, but does provide some reasonable restrictions, a box to think and design within, which certainly helps.

The good news is that unlike Dungeons & Dragons our game doesn't assume access to magical healing, or even magic in general, so it's entirely possible to get by without it. Not that clerics even have universal access to healing miracles. To get that you need to actively spend a Talent, or wait until 5th-level and use Divine Inspiration to get temporary access to Healing Touch.

This means that if you don't allow them, period—or even want to run a low-or-no magic campaign—it doesn't change the game much (we don't always have them in our playtests): you can just invest in mending potions and healing salves, the latter of which is really cheap but only ups your Recovery Rate.

Among a slew of new items, services and other effects 2nd Edition will also feature blessings, which characters can purchase at temples. These effectively give a character a one-time access to a divine buff, so long as he is in good standing with that god (which gives non-divine characters a reason to bother worshiping gods), and are triggered via a short prayer.