Clerics in Begone, FOE!

A few days ago Prismatic Wasteland put out a call for posts about about Clerics. I'm going to talk about Clerics in my personal fantasy heartbreaker Begone, FOE! I've been workshopping alternate names like Loot Bastards or Slop and Splendor but nothing has emerged as a frontrunner. This post serves as an important reminder that I should get back to work on Revision 15. 

Clerics in RPGs

I think the way polytheism works in RPGs is fine. The basic paradigm of acknowledging the existence of many Gods but having a specific one as a patron whose rites you perform and who you call upon for divine intervention is more or less how things worked in the ancient world. The City of Tenochtitlan worshiped the same pantheon of Gods as the other Nahuas and had temples to all of them, but elevated Huitzilopochtli to the top spot. The Greeks had regional cults with priests and priestesses who revered a particular deity. The Temple of Athena in Athens. Apollo at Delphi. Cybele on Mount Ida.

 

Many historical people had the same mercenary attitude toward religion as RPG players. If the Gods were like people they could be bargained with. If they were like natural forces they could be harnessed. Xerxes sacrificed a thousand cows in the ruins of Troy before crossing the Hellespont, essentially bribing the Greek pantheon to let him invade Greece. Constantine converted to Christianity because priests of the traditional Roman religion wouldn't forecast the omens he wanted. Viking merchants repeatedly "converted" to Christianity, Islam or whatever the local religion was. They believed it was important to propitiate the Gods of the lands they visited, and they also got gifts from the locals every time they adopted a new faith. The belief that historical people had an incomprehensible and ineffable attitude toward faith that we moderns can't understand is, ironically, a product of modernity.

 

Clerics broadly reflect the types of stories that are at the top of my mind when I write and run dungeon crawls. My adventures are strongly influenced by Gene Wolfe's Solar Cycle, a science fantasy epic about wandering miracle-workers who use divine power to heal injuries, raise the dead, rebuke evil... My other favorite source is Dungeon by Sfar/Trondheim et al, where magic casting is divided into two flavors: 

1. scholastic magic as taught in universities, based on storing and manipulating demonic energy
2. shamanism, a catch-all for tribal/religious traditions that grant powers beyond arcane casting
   

I also really enjoyed playing Clerics in Pathfinder and what little I played of 5e. I don't love either of those games mechanically but I loved the Domain abilities and spells. They added both flavor and mechanical benefit and helped the class break out of the dreaded "healbot" role. 

 

Divine Casting in Begone, FOE

Begone FOE originally didn't have Clerics. The three stats were for Fighters (Body), Magical casters (Mind) and Thieves (Skill). Casters could cast off the Cleric or MU list. In a way it was like His Majesty The Worm, where if you want to be a cleric you make a Magic User and spec into the Divine spell list.

 

All that changed after a playtest game resulted in a party wipe to Ghouls. I was using the OSE list for monsters since I didn't want to build a dedicated Monster Manual to a game that I wasn't even sure would be fun. I immediately understood why the early editions had a dedicated anti-undead class. In a way the addition of the Cleric to Begone FOE was a reactive measure similar to the introduction of the Cleric to the original D&D game, brought to the table as a hard counter to an obnoxious Vampire PC. With the Cleric came a fourth stat, Heart. This gave me a four stat array similar to the one in Disco Elysium: basic archetypes of STR, DEX, INT and CHA, with the stuff formerly done by CON and WIS folded into the others. I think this is the optimal stat spread and I hope more games adopt it.

 

"Clerics" in Begone FOE use a simplified system called Soul Dice, a pool of fast-replenishing D8s that can be used to turn undead, recover HP, improve AC and saves, clear debuffs, and do various other things depending on the user's alignment. Multiple dice can do the high level Cleric stuff like cure disease, mend mangled limbs and remove curses. They're called Soul Dice but the flavor text says they can represent force of personality rather than divine power. Some uses of Soul Dice are reactive, like damage mitigation and saving throw boosts. You can use them even if it isn't your turn after seeing your friend get hit.

 

I later learned that the Monster Overhaul dev did something similar a few years ago, and I doubt he's the only one. I did it like this because I wanted to give the Cleric a flexible generic system for Cleric stuff and not just duplicate the Magic User's casting system with a handful of flavor changes. Everything else that normally differentiates the Cleric from the Magic User (can fight and wear armor and etc etc) isn't as salient in Begone FOE due to the GLOGlike pick-and-mix class system.

How Has It Worked So Far?

In practice, Soul Dice are only used to heal or mitigate damage when a blow would otherwise inflict instant death on a player, cutting the damage down to unconsciousness or a missing limb. The action that recovers Soul Dice (taking a short rest) also recovers all HP, so healing just isn't that valuable short of stopping an instakill. In a way it's like Healing in 5e. You're never going to outheal incoming damage entirely, so you take Healing Word because it's the bare minimum necessary to get a downed character off Death's Door and it can be cast without spending your action. Massed Soul Dice have saved characters from instant beheading, fatal poison, disintegration...

The primary use of Soul Dice has been to clear debuffs and conditions. Remove Paralysis, remove Confusion, remove Charm, remove Fear, un-Hold a Person... I'm still using the OSE monster manual and spell list for non-Divine casters, both of which are full of nasty "I win" buttons that can completely cripple the players. Soul Dice keep the group in the fight. In-setting we flavor this as either a God intervening to save the faithful from destruction, or a charismatic leader shouting at a downed character to get the fuck up.

 

Turning Undead has negated several nasty encounters with Ghouls, Wights and Wraiths. The Turn Undead roll is just checked against monster morale rather than using a matrix of HD vs Level. Monsters can't guaranteed no-sell the Turn roll, nor can they instantly be destroyed - though cornered undead who fail morale can be trivially dispatched without needing to simulate an entire combat encounter.

 

Soul Dice replenishing on a short rest has made Halflings the most religiously inclined playable fantasy creature, by virtue of their bonus Short Rest from consuming an additional ration. Rather than just being "lucky" as in DCC, 5e etc, their niche is "loved by the Gods". This explains how they're able to build prosperous shires filled with delicious food while somehow doing minimal work and rarely being enslaved or massacred by the murderous mass civilizations that tile the planet.

 

Some alignment specific uses of Soul Dice have created balance problems that I'm trying to sort out in the next build of the rules. The ability to add your Soul Dice to your to-hit roll makes a single Soul Die more useful for fighting than a single point of Body, which only adds +1 to your chance to hit to all rolls. It's part of a general trend of Body being the weakest and least interesting of the four stats, something I really want to avoid and will be addressed in the next iteration.

 

 
What's Next?

I don't think it'll go in the main body of the rules, but I'm thinking about adding mechanical benefits to each patron God. I've created two religion posts but so far it's just been flavor. I've given especially religious characters (lots of Soul Dice and demonstrated commitment to one or more Gods) theophanies and special powers from their favorite deities, but always on a handmade one-off basis. I think if you really want divine magic to "feel magical" this is the only way to do it. Anything systemized just becomes another feature on the character sheet. It's no longer magic, it's science or engineering. But handcrafting evocative one-off mechanics is not a scalable solution, and it can lead to "protagonist syndrome" where the player with the character that interests me most gets slathered in additional superpowers and divine attention.

 

Adding special powers to each God fills a hole in my personal setting. Soul Dice in Begone FOE can't Create Food or Water, but in the world I created the Clerics of the Grain Cult feed the world by doing just that. Partly this is because I write all my dungeons for rough compatibility with OSE, since I doubt anyone running my stuff will use my personal unfinished heartbreaker. But I can easily paper over the gap by just making food/water creation the signature Soul Die ability of Grain Clerics. It'll also recreate my favorite part of the Cleric Domains from 3.PF and 5e.

If I go down this route, I'm going to give each God three properties.

1. General Boon: Something given to all worshipers regardless of character build, to make the system fun to use for characters with no Heart. Lets you have Fighter and Magic User Gods. A small mechanical benefit provided you stick to the Conduct.
2. Soul Dice Ability: A special thing that you can do if you have at least one Soul Die. Either a new use for your Dice or something that modifies existing uses. Also requires you to stick to the Conduct.
3. Conduct: Something you must or cannot do as a worshiper of X God. One or two rules at the most. The more mechanically benefit you get out of bullets 1 and 2, the more strict the conduct. Orbital Crypt had an idea like this a while back, based on Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. I was dismissive at the time but they were on to something.

What happens if you break the conduct? How do you get your powers back? Crawl had lots of creative ways each God could punish you for pissing them off, with divine wrath for each one. Loss of powers might be bad enough, plus it spares me from thinking up a whole bunch of microdetailed punishments I'll never use. Under the current paradigm a couple players have pissed off the Hammerer, Dwarven God of the Underworld. Rather than shooting lightning bolts at them in real life, he just sends them visions of what waits for them after they die. The Red Hot Room. A pair of tongs. No one shall receive more than a hundred blows, but he's going to make them count.