So I'm setting up for D&D with my hippy-story-gamer crowd, and one of them is all eager to play the cleric.

On its own, cool!  I think clerics are nicely beefed up in the 3.5 rules over my old AD&D days ... I think, particularly, the ability to change in a memorized spell for Cure-whatever is a huge tool added to their arsenal, meaning that they don't have to memorize up a bunch of healing, they can memorize the funky, assertive stuff and then toss whatever's not working for them in order to staunch loss of HPs.  I'm stoked to have the first person to declare a class declare cleric.  I take it as a good sign.

But, he wants to design his own deity and that deity's system of beliefs.  He's not being a twink about it, he's just a world-builder himself, and has this whole beautiful and dark pantheon, with its classically murderous and incestuous creation myth (the young god killing the old and making the world from his body, and like that) and he'd like to play that rather than jump on board with someone else's pantheon.

I don't know though.  I'm hesitant, and not just because that's a huge swath of authority to cede to a player right out the gate.

I'm hesitant because I don't know that a pantheon patterned on human creation myths is going to hold together as well in a world with many sentient species.  Where would Asorian, the Unconquerable Sun, slain god of creation stand relative to (say) Corollon Larethian?  Especially with these gods having tangible, measurable impacts on the world, would a set of pantheons that contradict each other in their most basic tenets drag me into trouble?  I note with great interest that the D&D gods are gods of the NOW ... not creators or aspects of the universe, but more like extremely bumped up patron saints.

On the other hand ... I mean, he's the one who's going to have to do 99%+ of the talking about gods and miracles and the wonders of creation.  If I immediately shoot down his first idea, that's a major burden on his ability to get stoked for the role.

I'll probably go through much of this reasoning with the player as well, but before I jump into that I'd love some feedback from folks with more recent D&D experience under their belts.  Have you encountered this issue?

Quotewould a set of pantheons that contradict each other in their most basic tenets drag me into trouble?

I think it's probably a non-issue.  I find that inconsistent and incompatible mythologies work just fine in D&D.  Nothing else makes much sense!

As an alternative, lob this ball back into the player's court and ask him his church's opinion of clerics of other gods.

Quote from: TonyLBI'll probably go through much of this reasoning with the player as well, but before I jump into that I'd love some feedback from folks with more recent D&D experience under their belts.  Have you encountered this issue?

All the time. I play a lot of D&D and when the world is not defined (which happens fairly often) and I play a cleric, I ask if I couldn't get involved with religion. As a DM, I like if my players help with that stuff as well.

If I want to play in a super-deep and consistent setting of my creation, I don't use D&D. We use it to kick down doors and manage ressources. But that's just me.

Here are a few things to consider that might help you make a decision one way or another:

-Consider the length of the campaign. In my case, I just can't imagine running a four year, 200-session of D&D. We play it for some time until we've killed enough monsters and reached some level and we move on. Since it's relatively short, I don't really have any masterplan as far as the world is concerned.

-Keep in mind that clerics in D&D can be effective without worshipping an actual God. It's a game about bashing things and taking their stuff. Everything else is really secondary.

-Keeping the item above in mind, nothing prevents you from letting the character design a religion or God and then later "reveal" that this part of the myth is false. Maybe the cleric was fueled by a false faith. Or maybe he was fueled by another God in disguise. Basically a mythic plot twist *if needs be* in your campaign.

But really, the best solution is probably as follow: Agree to him designing myths/religions in writing before the campaign begins. Be rigorous on the deadline. Tell him the stuff will be subject to approval, go through it and make necessary adjustments. That's what I do as a DM and player and it works. I don't really seek for everything to make sense in a D&D world because that's been a losing proposition for me. I use other games for that.

Clerics are easily the most powerful class in modern D&D*.

I don't think there would be any problem with the player making up the pantheon or new deity. It's essentially a non-issue, unless you have some kind of content issue with allowing a new deity in your campaign or you want to have more control over the world-building content.

The main thing mechanically about this, is that the player gets to choose the two domains he's going to use for spells, and probably invent the deities favored weapon (which matters if he happens to take the War domain since he will get proficiency plus a free weapon focus feat). And then for color purposes, it might matter with certain spells like Spiritual Weapon.

As for the fluff (or "color") of introducing entirely new deities or pantheons-- there's a number of ways to work this out. You can't really expect players to want to learn all about whatever cleric-guy invented all at once, but there are ways you can introduce bits at a time. One trick I've relied on is to introduce holidays, festivals and pageants that take place during the game (maybe as a backdrop to the real important events).

In a pageant, some villagers or whatever might re-enact a myth or story related to the deity as the players watch. If a crime occurs during the pageant- perhaps one of the villagers is mysteriously killed or disappears-- sometimes the clues to solving the mystery can be built into learning the myth itself.

This is sort of like "The actor playing Balder was killed! And here's a mysterious dart made of mistletoe.. whats the connection?"

Also you can use the Knowledge Religion skill to impart knowledge to players, but don't feel constrained if nobody takes it.  




(* this is fun in light of that "awesomeify the cleric" thread you guys did on Story-Games a while back. Half the ideas people came up with were just purely fluff, and the other half had already been part of the rules system for nearly a decade. Nobody points that out until about 27 posts in.)

Cool.  So far the overall message seems to be "You're worrying too much," which is obviously a freeing thing to hear.

Who even says your clerics have to be religious?  I like the idea that the god has picked them to be there representative, not the other way around.  The worshipers and the clerics could be working to different ends.  Clerics are always touchy because your creating an uber NPC, a god.  I usually try to seperate clerics from gods in my settings for that reason.

I agree with jrients:  even real world cultures and religions don't always make a lot of sense.  The only real issue is that you've got to account for how elves etc fit into the religions.  If there's just a humanocentric religion with no mention at all of the elves and the dwarves, then you've got problem.  But as long as they're accounted for somehow, even if it doesn't make sense, you're good.    

So just tell your player that he's got to figure out how to manage that, and let _him_ work it out.

D&D has had racially divided pantheons for a long time. I think your campaign will survive it.

Oddly enough, most clerics in my games always ended up Protestants.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Mythologies have never been consistent--even internally consistent--in the "really real world," and nevertheless people have always held that their various divinities have had very real and immediate effects on their lives, so why should a fantasy world be any different? Heck, billions of people today believe in mutually contradictory stuff while still claiming to interact in a direct way with divine forces. Not to mention that in ancient religions, mutually contradictory myths coexisted happily within the very same tradition. It's only in bad fantasy fiction that you get a single, universal vision of how the heavens work. Put 13 "real" people in a room with a turd, and you'll hear them describe 13 different colors of shit.

And since it's D&D, it fits with the general characterization of humans as embodying diversity. Let the elves have their Corellon Larethian--while the humans have 10,000 gods for the same thing. Indeed, perhaps it's in humanity's nature to split off into different viewpoints, so that it's impossible for a concrete pantheon to cover all nations.

And don't worry if the human character's mythology doesn't account for the elves' gods. Mythology tends to be a localized phenomenon, anyway. Japanese mythology, for example, describes the creation of "the world" with the two primeval gods stirring the sea to form the islands of Japan. Where did the rest of the world come from? Who knows, who cares? Cultures don't create mythology to account for other people's gods. It's all very particular to the culture in question.

Quote from: jgantsOddly enough, most clerics in my games always ended up Protestants.

Eep...

If it matters, I read through your post and mostly though, "Cool, I love it when players get involved like that!"

-O

The greatest part about the Cleric class, the one that sets apart perhaps more than any other, is the level of personalization allowed with the domain system and it's surprising agnosticism regarding the actual gods themselves.  You don't even really need to be a Cleric of a specific God, you can just as well be a Cleric of a Generic Concept.  And you can get all kinds of creative making up your own wierd little cults and things too.  

There's a lot of latitude.  The Isle of Evenmorn, my beginner's attempt at a D&D setting doesn't even have gods per se, they all left the island in a great clash with the mages ceturies ago, so religion and the clerical profession is a sort of odd, scattered collection of cults, ancestor and spirit worship, philosophies, basically whatever the players come up with, there's room for it there.  No real organized religion is present.