Stop me if this question seems obvious or dumb, but...Has a Cleric's code of conduct ever mattered? Like, I've played in a lot of games, but I genuinely cannot remember any one where a Cleric ever fell from grace.It just seems a lot simpler for a Cleric to obey his God's will than whatever a Paladin has to do on top of that.
>>98858482Yes.In AD&D clerics could gain 1st and 2nd level spells easily enough, but from 3rd to 5th they had to specifically go through their deity's intermediaries to gain those spells, and only the deity itself could grant 6th and 7th level spells. In other words, you had to beg the DM to grant those higher level spells, and if you did not perform well as a cleric of your faith and duty, he could just say "nope." The GM was told that if the cleric failed his duties, the GM was allowed to strip them of powers, spells, abilities, and turn his church against them.
>>98858482Your question is obvious and dumb, but I couldn't stop you.Sorry.
>>98858513Sure but I mean more like, I don't think there's ever been a tendency to have Clerics falling. The choice seems a lot simpler:>"Do I do what my God wants me to do?">"Yes."
>>98858540You don't hear stories about clerics falling because there are less shit GMs who say, "huh, the game wants me to give this particular class moral quandraries, so I should do that". Clerics usually want to actually play the role they choose, while paladins either want to play murderhobo with smite, or they have shit GMs who try to make them fall. That said, clerics CAN fall, but most players who play a cleric are going to play the cleric they planned for, and GMs don't single them out.It is worth noting that paladins in AD&D were FUCKING POWERFUL compared to other fightery types.
>>98858540Then as they gain in power have the god take a bigger interest in them. Bigger demands, more strict oversight.
>>98858482It's because DMs usually aren't interested in researching and RPing a cleric's god enough to fuck with them, but a paladin's oath is very plain text that they can easily abuse.
>>98858513I've occasionally indulged in a thought experiment of telling a cleric player what spells they have that day, rather than letting them choose, and let them try to figure out what on earth God has planned for them, with some sort of "appeal" system if they really wanted a particular spell, to be judged by how much of a good boy/girl they'd been. But it's always felt like it'd be more of a hassle on me than it's worth for the payoff.
>>98858482Yes. Not a dumb question, very broad but you basically have it with >It just seems a lot simpler for a Cleric to obey his God's will than whatever a Paladin has to do on top of that.Overall the tropes in typical dnd people lean into when making a cleric are a lot different than a paladin. The cleric is devoted to a specific god with clear goals and guidlines where as the Paladin is usually oriented around an ideal or alignment which are a lot more nebulous and open to play/gm interpretation and conflict there. Some of that is by design, the conflicted warrior of light and goodness can be a fun character archetype if that's a thing you're into. So the player and the gm usually have a lot easier times with clerics from their initial point, the rules of that religion and that the player is purposefully playing a class that obeys rather than a class that is outside most structures in many ways. This means the way the cleric's code of conduct matters is different than how it matters for a paladin character rather than not mattering at all. Its part of how they roleplay, likely some resource drain, a few benefits and gm hooks for getting the party to do things. So it matters as game building elements rater than as conflict elements like with a paladin.
>>98858604I feel like that could work in a generally low magic game where cleric spells are disproportionally powerful and the other players are either non or half-casters or have similar harsh limitations as full casters.
>>98858482Paladin falling is not really a thing anymore either, repeated breach of oath should get punished "at the GM’s discretion", aka you can homebrew it, but by strict RAW it does nothing.Same for warlock acting against the creed of their patron, there's no real consequence.If you'd like to see a game where upholding personal creed matters, try World of Darkness: Vampire. Preferably Dark Age.
>>98858604Could do randomly generated spells for the day and give them X choices to replace the set based on their level. Make a week or so at a time and run with that. Might get annoying at higher levels when there's a lot more spells but its honestly not that much prep if you use a dice generator and make a list.
>>98858795nta, but I feel like the more interesting part of such a setup would be having the deity really influence the spells along the lines of their genereal creed or maybe even use it as an opportunity for an insight into what might be in the area or what the deity might specifically want to happen. Like the deity giving the cleric anti-poison spells as hint that there are are poisonous monsters or poison using foes in the area, or anti-undead stuff to warn about the presence of necromancers or evil undead.
>>98858857Lads, the good news is that the Lord has answered my prayers.The bad news is they're all Cure Serious Wounds.
>>98858857That would for sure work if you're doing a well controlled encounter design sort of game. You'd be able to tie in oracular visions or other mysterious messaging from their god. Might be able to do it with poetic allusions to the next dungeon or other area if you're quick witted and random generating it. >>98858877kek
>>98858482>Stop me if this question seems obvious or dumb, but...Has a Cleric's code of conduct ever mattered?The operant issue is that the deities' tenants are rarely specified in anywhere near enough detail, and when they are it's tucked away in lore-based supplements without anything like the Paladin or Druid getting an explicit list.>whatever a Paladin has to do on top of that.Paladins are only god-based in 4e, every edition prior has them be Alignment-driven while 5e and totally-not-a-revision "One D&D" is Oath-specified. Even in Faerun the deity tie is secondary to the Alignment one.>>98858655>Same for warlock acting against the creed of their patron, there's no real consequence.>the class named by a term for deal-breaking powered by a one-time deal for a source of power is not intrinsically punished for breaking said dealThis is a feature, not a bug.
>>98858482Why would you pick a priest class in a game of pretend if you weren't intetested in pretending to be a priest? Do you people just not do anything that isn't mandated by the rules? My friends will make up in setting theological disputes just to have something to argue about.
>>98858482Just listen to Jesus anon. The kingdom is in you. You have all the info locked in your soul.
>>98858857There is ultra-light narrative game Usurper which I think has a pretty fun religion/magic system, where all magic comes only from magic items or directly from deities. Even clerical character's can't cast spells if their God isn't paying direct attention to them, and having or keeping that attention can't be taken for granted.
Clerics are more inclined to follow their code of conduct.
>>98858604I'd first present it as an option with some extra benefit to entice the player. Say, your deity chooses your spells, but you get more spell casting per day than normal (or hell, if your god really wants you to use these spells, then just make them all at will). The player can then make the choice themself every morning whether they want to play normally, or whether they want to gamble.
>>98858482Yeah, I agree. When you live in a world where the Gods are Real, and their Avatars walk amongst Mortals, the Vows they take and the Efficacy of Prayer are an integral part of The Milieu.
>>98860024>and when they are it's tucked away in lore-based supplementsAll of the bog standard dndieties are right there on google.
>>98864548Even setting aside unreliability in secondary onward sources, this just makes the lack of listing even worse. The information for it may exist in a decent chunk of cases, but is not actually compiled into an overt Code of Conduct in almost any of them, so the vast majority of DMs not trudging through the lore-oriented sources to assemble it themselves do not have the in-your-face nature of the Paladin or Druid Code of Conduct to lean on Clerics with.
>>98864837>having a literal source for the thing I said was impossible being a tap and two word google search away makes it even worse! mans you are hopelessly set on a trivial problem to solve being insurmountable.
>>98864855What two-word Google search gives you the Cleric code of conduct for Ghaunadau in formatting remotely approaching the clarity of the Druid or Paladin codes of conduct? You have not presented a source, merely declared Google good-enough, presumably because you are a retarded playoid with no consideration for why primary sources are important to adjudicating rules.
>>98865021>Ghaunadau+dndYou didn't even spell it right and it directly took me to that nigger's page. If you're a gm and can't turn that into something functional there's no amount of help you can be given you'll still choke to death on your own tongue.
>>98865057>You didn't even spell it rightOh no, I missed one character in copy-paste, what ever shall I do...>If you're a gm and can't turn that into something functional"Something functional" in code-of-conduct terms is a specific list of "Thou Shalt" and "Thou Shalt Not" statements to present to a player and expect them to understand that you can support with PRIMARY SOURCES to demonstrate it is in fact accurately portraying the tenants of the deity in question and so you are in fact neutrally enforcing game rules instead of just dropping an anvil on most of a player's character in a retarded "gotcha". Contrast that work with Paladin and Druid having theirs bullet-pointed right in the class entry.I am not saying it is some spectacularly onerous task, merely that it being a significant task at all utterly guts the rate of DMs doing it because it's "non-essential" and so they'd have to consciously choose to go significantly out of their way to fill this gap in the core rules.
>>98858482They are as beholden to a code of conduct as a wizard would be. Which is to say none at all. Then again, their mechanics are made as such to prevent having any hard association with any one established god in setting so there isn't a need to act in a way that is pleasing to them unless the GM goes out of their way to make it a thing.It would be interesting if there was some option to have the established gods actually matter like having a feat where you get unique spells or some modification to your abilities if you take them for the flavor of it.
>>98865156Not everything needs to be an academic paper about the 7 Grains of Ghaunadadu, son of Ghaunadadur but that you're unable to make your own material to play with from a wikipedia is pretty sad.
What kind of cleric comes to mind when you listen to this song, anons?https://voca.ro/14EFRQwn1CvB
>>98865591>Not everything needs to be an academic paper about the 7 Grains of Ghaunadadu, son of GhaunadadurThe point is literally the opposite. It's shit like this that's in the official materials, "properly" getting the short-form bullet-point tenants of a code of conduct requires combing through that with the PROPER cross-referencing of primary sources, and because Cleric works "fine" without that effort in the normal campaign routines the vast majority of DMs don't. This is not about at-my-table, this is answering OP's question in the broader community context.>but that you're unable to make your own material to play with from a wikipedia is pretty sad.A wiki is insufficiently authoritative for clear rules arbitration purposes, and the subject is a product we are expected to pay for. It is in fact a non-trivial problem that the Druid and Paladin have clear and explicit codes of conduct while the Cleric vaguely motions toward other sources that do not natively offer such concision and dry up the moment you leave the "primary" pantheons' big players, especially in 3e when they kept printing weird little domains for weird fringe gods that got maybe ten paragraphs total roughly summarizing the entirety of their being.This is not a homebrew subject where "make your own material" is the point, this is a hole-in-the-rules subject where there really should have been material in the first place for DMs to merely make calls on.
>>98860488
>>98858482It's been a long time since I've seen a Cleric have to deal with the consequences of ideological drift from their patron deity or faith, especially since they're reasonably well codified into TTRPG communities such that most players go into the game knowing a Cleric's deal and keeping to it; they aren't often challenged to keep to the faith because they're aiming for that from day 1.Or because said Cleric's faith is so vague as to work fine with broad generalizations. "Sun deity wants me to spread light, so I light candles, tend to fires, try to keep spirits bright, and purge creatures of darkness with laser beams."I have seen ONE instance in an old Hackmaster game where...I think it was a multi-class Cleric or Paladin with some kind of Fighter, not a lot of spells, but they got a pretty clear warning about acting dishonorably and dispatching surrendering combatants when the DM asked for their character sheet, then returned it with all of their spells for the next day as either Cure/Healing spells or Darkness spells at every slot above first.Basically "Get it right next time because there's only one way this goes if you don't."
>>98858482In other systems besides D&D yeah
>>98866004>This is not a homebrew subject where "make your own material" is the point,It actually was. You're just incompetent and long winded about it. That its an alien concept for a gm to read a bit and make their own decisions is telling enough but its good you go on diatribes that further highlight how nogames you are.
>>98868909>It actually was.No, it was not. OP's question is of the present trends of the hobby, my answer is explanatory to that.>That its an alien concept for a gm to read a bit and make their own decisionsIt is not an alien concept. I am simply saying that it is a layer of effort not essential for the "stock" round-by-round gameplay, because few playgroups are going to tour the entire deity list and we've long since passed the days of Clerics being the only viable healer. You are insisting that anyone interested in DMing look at the Cleric's Code of Conduct being incompletely defined compared to the Druid or Paladin should IMMEDIATELY respond by taking on the work of deriving this from sources external to their rulebooks for every deity the players express interest in, despite the absence of such only affecting the campaign upon multiple conditions aligning.This material was written with the expectation of being payed for, with the primary value-proposition of no few official setting sourcebooks explicitly being to take time-consuming drudge-work off the DM. Pinning down bullet-pointed Codes of Conduct to provide general rails for players of one under-defined class is exactly such drudge-work, even if it turns out not that hard.
>>98869834One of the primary issues that seems to come up in regards to the fantasy Cleric, is that they haven't read the books & tales of mythology from which these Archetypes were pulled from for the game.
>>98860488>puckee aka redditor pucke℮21 spamming his commission againhttps://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1j5ot3r/artcomm_sister_althea_human_cleric_by_dennis/https://desuarchive.org/_/search/image/nJCQeA9MiQuu2AvMvA_6Gw/>posted 47 times since March 2025
>>98858530lmao
>>98866763All this pain and violence. How about we get Mr. Haystack to love her and start a family?
>>98858513The old Sphere system was far better than how WotC handled the changes to divine magic.
>>98858604I feel like this could be interesting if you as the GM select the spells according to what you plan for the players to encounter
