(A) What Ceremony spell spells about Clerics?
This is archival material from previous blog
When I was working on my petty witch magic for Halloween I recalled one another resource I thought was relevant but wasn’t in the end. Yet when I checked it out I thought of another thing, and it became fuel for this post of the Clerics/Alignments cycle. And this resource is Ceremony spell from DnD 5e.
It’s really funny how Clerics, and by extension Paladins, in fantasy rpgs tend to work. Mostly as healers and spellcasters with some flavour domain. I mean, without the class name you could basically be just another mage with specific domain spells and better healing capabilities. I think White Mage from Final Fantasy series?
Due to the nature of gods – because every setting has different – clerics class is usually rather vague. You get information “yeah, you have to follow gods virtues or whatever” and I’m not sure it’s enforced enough due to this vagueness. 5e paladins have more flavour because they are based on ideas rather than specific gods. I mean, even alignment is vague enough to make people confused. Turn Undead and Spells are not going to convince me you are a cleric and instead of some kind of magical van Helsing.
So what about that Ceremony then? Well, it is a spell that takes an hour of casting – performing a ceremony – being more like a ritual or something. This spell comes with few variations and they are basically what cleric should do in general! Let me tell you: Atonement – willing creature restores its original alignment Bless Water – take one vial of regular water to make it holy water Coming of Age – one person coming of age gets better chances at anything for one day Dedication – person becomes dedicated to your god and has slightly better chance at survival Funeral Rite – corpse becomes resistant to becoming undead for 7 days Investiture – provide someone your spell for them to use later Wedding – join two people in marriage, they get bonus to defence for a week as long as they’re close to each other
This spell is basically cleric’s job description. Funerals, weddings, coming of age, blessing water and dealing with oaths. These are more clericky than all those turn undeads, spells and magical stuff. What I’m trying to say is that every cleric class should have something like this. Instead of barely described “you can do priest stuff” you should get a list of ceremonies and their advantages. Like blessings for your comrades and regular stuff for common folk instead of magical spells. Of course those ceremonies should be more relevant than it is with 5e Ceremony – I mean alignment is basically useless, I’m not sure if holy water has any usage, the rest provides some minor things – I’d go either for more impactful thing or longer lasting minor elements.
So based on the god, religion, cult or type of cleric you could have different ceremonies. Maybe there are no weddings in this cult. Or you focus on death and undeath – so more rituals for dead, dying and sick. Or some fertility cult would be focused around weddings, children, and maybe even crops. If you follow something like cult of Khaine (Warhammer) or Crouching One (Zweihander) there may be sacrificial ceremonies. On the other hand undead cults may allow other things – like become undead if you die in next 24 hours or something.
Even if the advantage is small I bet most players would go for it. From my experience players usually like gathering these small perks and bonuses, just +1 here, +1 there, I will go search for those rage berries, could be useful at some point, and I will go contemplate dying nature to get some bonus to my necromancy or whatever. So they’d interact with priestness of their priest colleague. And it wouldn’t be just another spellcaster or another fanatic. They’d just do their thing on the road or between adventures.
This could also work with regular holidays. PCs walk through some villages or something and there is a holiday of your god? Join the festival, perform the holiday ceremony, every participant gets +1 HP (even if they have maximum already) and heals lasting conditions or something. Possibilities are endless!
I feel this would have an impact on worship-based classes. And could be really flavourful way to include it in the game. And is my another rant on clerics, I guess.