Their spells would bounce like billiard balls off anyone in a state of grace; simply the usual modicum of decency and determination would get a man
through. You could be killed by them, or through their machinations; you could be fooled, dazzled, victimized; but in a certain ultimate sense, you could not be conquered unless you wanted to be.
-Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson

"The saint endeavours to recover a gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something which was never his. In brief, he repeats the Fall."
-The White People by Arthur Machen

I just finished reading Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson and it makes a better case for clerics to be separate from magic-users than anything else I've ever read. In a lot of books (and in history) trying to draw a clear distinction between divine and arcane magic is foolishness, for example in Conan does it ever really matter if Conan's enemies are priests or not? The same applies to D&D, clerical magical seems to start out as I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Catholic but as it developed into pseudo-paganism what spells clerics get and which magic-users get gets more and more arbitrary until in 4ed "power source" is mostly irrelevant fluff.

In Three Hearts and Three Lions on the other hand, divine magic is explicitly Christian (or at least Abrahamic) power that serves the purposes of Law while all arcane magic is, when you get right down to it, Satanic (although not necessarily all practitioners,  magicians seem able to bind and command demons while remaining basically decent people) and Chaotic.

In Three Hearts and Three Lions divine magic seldom does anything that would have any effect on physics but instead it works to protect and oppose the influence of Chaos so it's really easy to differentiate magic and the divine in that book: Law upholds the natural order while Chaos subverts it.

OK, so let's run with that. What should explicitly Christian clerics look like? Let's try to make their powers tied as closely to Christianity as possible. Also instead of having clerical magic be something separate from the workaday ritual of medieval Catholicism let's try to infuse the sacraments and the rest with magic. I'm an atheist personally but how so much of modern fantasy takes Medieval themes and sidelines the religion that was so important in Medieval times always struck me as strange.

Protection vs. magic

This is the clearest benefit of the divine in Three Hearts and Three Lions, it lets spells bounce off of you, enables you to erect barriers against magic and keeps agents of Chaos away from churches (until human allies defile them). One thing I liked in the book was this protection is dependent on what you're doing right now, even minor failings (like jealously) can break this protection, but you don't have to go through the whole D&D paladin atonement annoyance to get the power back up, just act decently the next day.

In the book going into a church can break illusions and presumably other spells, so high level clerics would then be walking talking bundles of Dispel Magic. Throw in exorcism of those possessed by demons and you've got a good bread and butter powerful for clerics and would make a lot of Chaos be as much about tempting as killing D&D parties.

Prayer

In Three Hearts and Three Lions the clearest benefit of prayer is that holy words cause physical pain to creatures of chaos. In D&D terms this would seem to be extending Turn Undead to Turn Chaos, which would be a very potent ability.

Lay on Hands

Lay on Hands and clerical magic is mostly about recovering lost HPs but historically (IIRC) and in Three Hearts and Three Lions it's more about getting rid of disease which fits in the anti-magic wheelhouse of clerics if you think of diseases as curses rather than as caused by germs.

Burial

One thing that appears over and over in folklore is how many problems with undead come about as a result of people not being buried properly. Cutting an arc of slaughter through the opposition without burying any of them is asking for undead and having a cleric along can help with that.

Holy water

Stick an expiration date on holy water so it's useful to have a cleric along to bless more. Let them bless weapons and well which would allow them to count as +1 weapons for purposes of hitting can only be hit by magical items critters.

Marriage

In Scandinavian folklore marrying a troll woman can turn her (mostly) human. This sacrament could be a good way of driving out Chaos from certain creatures.

Also many creatures of Chaos desire to marry mortals as the pact of marriage gives them power of them, which being already married prevents.

Inspiration

For Gandalf-style inspiration perhaps a mechanic along these lines: clerics can drive out supernatural fear and other magically-inspired emotions and against Lawful people they can inspire one of the Seven Virtues. For example a cleric would have a good chance of being able to exhort an NPC towards "charity" but couldn't choose the form that that charity would take.

Communion

In Three Hearts and Three Lions, the main character feels nervous about heading out into the lands of Chaos without taking communion but doesn't give us any more details than that. Putting mechanical benefits to taking the Host might take this mental exercise a bit into the preachy though. What about Baptism? Extreme unction? Confession?

Detect Magic

The Chalion books by Bujold have some of the best treatment of religion I've seen in fantasy books. The most important power of saints in those books is to see things from a divine point of view and see what's going on with people's soul and detect magic in general, which is a good power for clerics.

Another thing I like about Bujold's treatment of religion is the priorities her gods have. They really only care about the spiritual so things like people starving or war don't really bother them much but disturbances to the life cycles of souls such as undeath piss them right off. I like how her gods are benevolent but have very different priorities than humans.

Relics

Note sure what to do with these exactly or if I want D&D clerics carrying around a bunch of reliquaries, but stuff like the Venetians raiding the Holy Land for saintly body bits to take back home is D&D as fuck and I'd like to include it.

Miracles

Having clerics being able to produce miracles that alter the physical world on command never quite felt fantastic and, well, miraculous enough. Maybe instead put in mechanics for miracles but have them be implemented by the DM in a way that surprises the player.

OK, moving on from good powers for Christian clerics to concluding remarks I think it's important to note that:

Donatus Magnus was wrong

Donatism is an early Christian heresy that says that sacraments carried out by immoral priests don't count. Catholic dogma, on the other hand, says that no matter how many puppies your priest kicked the morning of your marriage your marriage still counts. So most of those above powers should still work no matter what the cleric has been up to. To the extent that they depend on the morality of the cleric, they should depend on what they're doing RIGHT NOW when they're using their power and having a clerics powers fail because they're being a jerk but then work just fine later seems more gamable than loss of all powers across the board after screwing up.

Overall for Christian clerics I'd like to have them gain more and more potent powers that are always on, ones that are powerful but that don't really affect the physical world, rather than porting Vancian magic over to them, which I always loved but thought was a far better fit for magic-users.

Lots of awesome ideas for an old school D&D- or OSR-powered "Mythic Medieval Europe" game.

Obviously some serious reworking of Clerics is demanded — you might even do away with "divine magic" entirely in favor of the special abilities you mentioned above.

As a base I'd use OD&D, B/X or maybe even DCC (for the very Chaotic feel of wizardry). 2e and 5e also feature Wild Magic, which could be the default for Chaotic sorcery in such a setting.

Regarding Donatism — doesn't Holger loses his protection against Chaos when he sleeps around? I might be misremembering.

And would other Monotheistic faiths (Jewish, Islamic) offer similar benefits? Would pagan priests all be Chaotic magicians (OD&D and B/X magic-used, DCC wizards)? Or would we have OD&D-style, NPC/monster-only druids? And what would their magic look like?

Have you seen the Friar class from Fantastic Heroes and Witchery? It sounds like just what you're looking for.

I am merely popping in to endorse this thread. I've not read the book in question, but I did have several gaming buddies who were quite devout christians (more so than teh devout gaming buddies I still have...), at least one of whom stopped gaming because of the pagan elements.

So, I am most curious to have a way of supporting my friends beliefs in gaming... and vaguely feel that this is a drastically under-utilized aspect of culture in gaming, if that makes sense.

As LibraryLass said, the friar class from FH&W is a great fit for this. For a more traditional B/X-style system, I've found the cleric spell list from LotFP to actually fit in really well with this general idea, given it's strong focus on anti-Chaos (particularly with the way things like Dispel Magic and Anti-Magic Shell were reworked)

Quote from: The Butcher;788997And would other Monotheistic faiths (Jewish, Islamic) offer similar benefits? Would pagan priests all be Chaotic magicians (OD&D and B/X magic-used, DCC wizards)? Or would we have OD&D-style, NPC/monster-only druids? And what would their magic look like?

As far as I can remember without spending some time looking it up, of the Israelites, generally only the various prophets demonstrated 'divine magic' abilities within the OT, so I'd lean towards no, at most, I'd limit it to Levite priests instead of rabbis in general.

As far as Islam, since it's a rather extreme Christian heresy to the point of being a separate religion, I'd strongly lean towards no.

Quote from: Archaeopteryx;789030As far as I can remember without spending some time looking it up, of the Israelites, generally only the various prophets demonstrated 'divine magic' abilities within the OT, so I'd lean towards no, at most, I'd limit it to Levite priests instead of rabbis in general.

What about the miracle-workers and exorcists of Jewish folklore? Some weren't even rabbis — I remember one being a scochet (ritualistic, Kashrut-compliant butcher).

Quote from: Archaeopteryx;789030As far as I can remember without spending some time looking it up, of the Israelites, generally only the various prophets demonstrated 'divine magic' abilities within the OT, so I'd lean towards no, at most, I'd limit it to Levite priests instead of rabbis in general.

As far as Islam, since it's a rather extreme Christian heresy to the point of being a separate religion, I'd strongly lean towards no.

You forget that it is "extreme Judaic heresy" to be a Christian by the same definition.

Three Hearts and Three Lions is incredible and and should be read by anyone with an interest in fantasy as a genre or the history of D&D. It's almost the ur-text of '74 OD&D.

I say this as an Atheist who usually finds Christian fantasy insipid.

Quote from: Catelf;789064You forget that it is "extreme Judaic heresy" to be a Christian by the same definition.

I'm no religious scholar (Pundit might have something better to say here) but it goes something like this.

Christianity started off as an insular, sectarian, politically charged Jewish heresy; got reworked into a fashionably Neoplatonic religion for the Ancient Mediterranean rich and famous (think Scientology) by a wily former tax collector called Saul (or Paul) of Tarsus; and picked up some serious Mithraic syncretism along the way.

And of course it was all fairly haphazard and all over the place, until Constantine converted and convened all those Councils to get all (or most) priests to agree on just what was and wasn't, uh, kosher. Including giving the Bishop of Rome (or, as we call him today, the Pope) primacy over all other bishops and dioceses.

Methinks that casting the Abrahamic God as Law personified is good enough for the restricted purposes of such a campaign, assuming you're going to lump all "pagans" together as the fledgling but still dangerous remnants of a primitive, cthonic, Chaotic world order, where men lived and died at the fluid and unfathomable whims of inhuman deities and there was no Salvation. It's an explicitly Christian take on fantasy metaphysics but it could be made to work.

Besides, with single-axis Law/Chaos alignment, Lawful does not necessarily mean Lawful Good...

Quote from: The Butcher;789078Christianity started off as an insular, sectarian, politically charged Jewish heresy;

The early Church was evangelistic from the beginning (which was in fact part of the problem) and if by 'politically charged' you mean wouldn't bow to the state religions, then that wa something they shared with the Jews.

Quotegot reworked into a fashionably Neoplatonic religion

A) St. Paul was a Stoic, not a Neoplatonist.
B) In the west at least, the major philosophical system that was prefered was Aristotle, later matured by St. Thomas Aquinas into Thomism.

Quotefor the Ancient Mediterranean rich and famous (think Scientology) by a wily former tax collector called Saul (or Paul) of Tarsus;

St. Paul was a Pharisee, not a tax collector (That was St. Matthew) and your implication that Paul's conversion was monetarily motivated falls flat on his and the other disciples' lives of hardship ending with every one of them aside from St. John the Beloved being executed despite being given chances to recant.

Quoteand picked up some serious Mithraic syncretism along the way.

...Not really. Cumont was the one who really posited that and his work is considered out-dated now. Mithraic scholars don't consider Christianity to have borrowed anything other than some art.

QuoteAnd of course it was all fairly haphazard and all over the place, until Constantine converted and convened all those Councils to get all (or most) priests to agree on just what was and wasn't, uh, kosher. Including giving the Bishop of Rome (or, as we call him today, the Pope) primacy over all other bishops and dioceses.

St. Constantine called the council of Nicea, but he didn't determine doctrine at it (since he seemed to have favoured Arianism, which was declared heresy at the council) and he didn't give primacy to the Pope. Papal primacy was claimed for earlier than that, by such as Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian.

Not surprisingly I've taken a stab at it.  Inspired perhaps by Chivalry and Sorcery or Lands of Adventure with its Piety stat.  These are a little more generic, than what Daztur suggests but the results and concept come from the same desire to separate magic from miracles.

Faith and Miracles
   The gods are beings of immense power that dwell in the higher and lower realms.  They are ancient and said to have had a hand in the creation of the world.  They are much concerned with matters in the mundane realm but are seldom willing to take direct action.  Instead they court mortal servants in the form of worshipers.  It has been put forward that the gods are parasitic in nature and draw their power from their followers.  However, it is not unheard of for the forgotten gods of long dead peoples to still wield incredible power.  In a similar vein there is speculation that the gods are held in check by some unknown higher power and thus limited to working their will through mortal agents but exceptions can be found.  Whatever the truth may be, gods are powerful beyond all measure, immortal, able to recover from total dismemberment lasting millennia, and limited in their ability to directly take a hand in events occurring in the mundane realm.
   As far as these rules go, most of the benefits of worshiping a god are reflected by a character’s Fortune characteristic.  This can be improved temporarily by acts which please the character’s deity and reduced by proscribed activities.  Most gods permit their followers to learn some magic which is specifically related to their own nature while forbidding all other arts and aspects, as this permits their priests to work wonders without actually requiring input or communication on their part.  Direct divine influence can be divided into minor and greater miracles.

Fortune and Favor
   The deeds and lifestyle of a worshiper will directly influence their access to divine power.  These modifiers should not be considered permanent but high and low points in the individual’s relation to deity.  As such it is possible to regain lost favor or lose favor over time, with the rates shown assuming strong and steady effort to regain or reject the divine.  Deliberately turning from one god to another will have an influence dependant on the relationship of the gods in question.  Turning from Apollo to Athena is a matter of mere sibling rivalry but going from Hades to Zeus would be a great betrayal of Hades and only a significant service to Zeus.

Fortune and Favor

Great Sin / Betrayal   - 5
Blasphemy      - 4
Significant Sin   - 3
Lip Service      - 2
Expressing Doubt   - 1
Steady Course   0
Expressing Faith   + 1
Consistent Devotion   + 2
Significant Service   + 3
Suffering Persecution   + 4
Great Sacrifice / Risk   + 5

Modifier Atrophy / Accumulation
   Day      +/- 1
   Week      +/- 2
   Month      +/- 3
   Year      +/- 4

   Minor miracles are hard to separate from coincidences or dumb luck.  A successful Fortune check allows those involved to interpret it as something more and reap the benefits.  Long lost lore or items might suddenly be found, the weather might prove favorable, the night might be brighter than normal or minor epidemics run their course in short order.  Their nature should reflect the nature of the deity working them and never provide more than a small modifier to the chances of success.

   
   Greater miracles have direct and obvious physical effects and should always reflect the nature of the god being invoked.  They should only occur when that god’s interests are at stake and there is absolutely no hope of a favorable outcome.  Even then, such occurrences should not directly attack the worshipers of other gods as this will result in strife in the heavens themselves and must also overcome the protection provided by faith in the other guy.  In a Christian milieu where one supreme God is opposed by a fallen servant, greater miracles might be expected to be more commonplace, but in practice they aren’t as Satan is seldom able to present a major threat to God’s interests.

   These matters are left almost entirely to the referee’s discretion as they are potentially controversial and very dependant on the nature of the setting.  By allowing priests to learn some magic provides them some dependable and direct power which is not so fickle.  However, if a player is not rewarded for following the dictates of their faith they are unlikely to bother doing so in the future.  Minor miracles are an easy way to provide this reward without breaking the balance of the game.

   All miracles require a successful Fortune test on the part of the person invoking the god’s power and on the part of the person who is to benefit from the miracle.  If either is wanting, the effects are so ephemeral as to be easily ignored if they were ever there at all.  The truly faithful and the completely deceitful will of course, be grateful and rationalize the event into a miracle regardless of any supernatural events or their absence.

   The Religious Doctrine skill is a vital tool for the faithful.  It is used to determine whether their request is in keeping with the desires of their god and whether they are indeed worthy to receive such divine aid.  For the referee, having the player make a Religious Doctrine test gives them the opportunity to say no before the question of the results of the miracle itself arises.

   In any case these bonuses only last until the character manages to violate the spirit of their faith’s myriad commandments.  A number of minutes equal to their Willpower score is generally appropriate.  A full sermon, rituals, and such would double the bonuses and duration

Invoke Minor Miracle
   Fortune + 40
   Willpower Minutes

Divine Blessing
   Provides a +10 bonus to a single ongoing activity in the service of the cause of the deity.  For instance, proselyting speeches, building churches, or fighting holy wars.

Overcome All
   The subject recovers from any curse, disease, or poison quickly with no lingering side effects.


Righteous Vigor
   Instantly heals all Stun damage suffered by the subject.
   
Major Miracles
   Major miracles should never be used lightly.  These are earth shaking, and ground breaking events.  Even requesting one when it is not due or properly deserved is highly offensive to the deity being petitioned.  In all cases these are requests for a personal favor from a higher power, who is decidedly a non-player character and wholly under the referee’s control.  Even with a successful skill roll, the results are completely out of the player’s control.

Invoke Major Miracle
   Fortune
   Must be in god’s interests.
   Own Religion’s Doctrine -60

By Faith Made Whole
Fire From The Heavens
Hold The Heavens Fast
Mighty Waters Part
Taken Up Into Heaven
The Earth Trembles

By Faith Made Whole
   The subjects are healed of all damage, cured of any diseases, and have any crippling injuries mended instantly.

Fire From The Heavens

   A pillar of fire rends the clouds and touches down in an inferno of destruction.  Those who can make a Major Miracle test are unharmed by the flames but everything else is consumed.  Note that the test need not be for the same god as the one sending down the fires, but only as long as they are allied or at least as powerful.

Hold The Heavens Fast
   The sun, moon and stars stop in their course for up to three days and nights.  When the task requiring the miracle is complete, the stars move in their course.

Mighty Waters Part
   A large body of water, be it an ocean, river, or lake is divided in a wide course with a flat, dry sandy bottom from one side to the other until all who can make a minor miracle test have crossed.

Taken Up Into Heaven
   All those who can make a major miracle test are removed to the deities own plane, permanently.  This is effectively a one way trip and arguably equivalent to dying but is generally seen as a great triumph of spirit.

The Earth Trembles
   A great earthquake rocks the area.  Cities are particularly vulnerable.  A successful minor miracle test will allow the faithful to survive the cataclysm.  If the deity is particularly offended by the target, it will be overthrown entirely with the entire area being sucked under the earth’s crust.  If it seems appropriate, a great chasm dividing two armies or nations may be left as a permanent reminder of the event.

Hmm. Does anyone know if someone adapted the saintly invocations from the old CRPG Darklands? I remember that being a pretty neat divine magic system.

I'm all for a good rollicking stroll down the history (both revealed and hidden) of Christianity as much as the next person, but there's a million threads on a million forums to do that, and the Pundit might like that in his forum.

Here we have a much rarer topic, Explicitly Christian Clerics in gaming, let's not derail it before it begins.

I like the idea of the Christian Cleric not having "spells" but god-granted abilities based on a mechanism of Faith.  LibraryLass lived up to her moniker by pulling The Friar out of FH&W.  If you start the Christian Cleric with something like Friar as a base, reworking the Faith system if you want, then I think you could meld some of the Paladin in there, Detect Evil, Protection from Evil, etc.

An idea you could steal from...Hackmaster I think it is, where healing spells are more effective on the faithful, you could institute either by giving a bonus to protecting, healing, inspiring Christians, or even have the power be based on the Faith of the individual.

Archaeopteryx has most right, except that back in days of Constantine, the concept of Pentarchy was actually  well and alive, since 3 out of five Pentarchies weren't yet conquered by Arabs. In fact, Constantine's move of capitol to Constantinople did everything but strengthen the Pope's position as head of the Church/First among Equal of Pentarchs, since due to the importance of bishopric of capitol of Roman Empire,  the Bishop of Constantinople had grounds to refute the authority of Bishop of Rome (it's a bit more complicated than that, but I'm writing this quick), setting the founding stone for Great Schism.

Stand corrected. Like I said, not a scholar.