are 'agnostic' clerics/paladins intended?

Mesh

Verily
Case in point. You're insisting on what you think the class should be rather than using any objective measurement.

The term, "Cleric" simply means a religious leader. It isn't specific to theism. Buddhism has a clergy and is a nontheistic religion.

Many precedents exist in reality and fiction.

Verily

Mesh The objective measure is the meaning of words. A buddhist cleric is certainly not agnostic.

Mesh

Verily
Whether Buddhists are agnostic is a subject for debate.

My point was the term cleric isn't limited to theism either in reality or fantasy so you're creating your own problem by insisting it should be.

Verily

Mesh I dont think I insisted that at all. Although I dont see how you claim otherwise. The buddhism example falls flat imo because they have divine beings. The fantasy examples are all recent developments by large corpo interests whose only aim is to reach into an ever expanding amount of wallets, so you might say theres a vested intrest in eliminating barriers or friction as its referred to round these parts. In this case that friction is caused by grinding up against the meaning of a word.

A word that, as it pertains to this fantasy world, is free to be defined as its antonym. Like said the writers of this lore are the ones who will need to deal with that, I hope they dream up something satisfying. Just seems like a tall order from where I sit.

Briggs

I like the concept of disconnecting paladins and clerics from gods. Discipline, codes, and faith give power in the real world, even without direct intervention of deities.

To bring up wizards and why they can't heal, I think a strict adherence to either oaths, or some code, and faith in themselves or said codes, give them the mojo to do so. Wizards may be mightily intelligent and very disciplined, yadda yadda and all... but it takes a certain mindset and mental state, and maybe even some sacrifice to gain "divine" magic. That sacrifice may block them off from arcane magics in favor of the divine. The world in MnM is sentient, so who knows in lore where their magic comes from.

Mesh

Verily

Not sure about that one. There are examples of agnostic or even atheist clerics in 2E. The Dark Sun Clerics and Planescape's Athar come to mind.

Even if you ignore the literal definition of the term cleric, fantasy examples have been around for a while.

Verily

Mesh I havent played any edition prior to 3.5. Did these "athiest clerics" maintain access to their spell casting features as such?

Even if so I do understand that it can potentially be explained away with lore excuses, I continue to acknowledge that, but I do think it requires good explanation thats hard to achieve, unnecessarily so imo given theres a way more logical alternative. That being priests arent agnostics.

Raybane

Verily Some versions of Buddhism have divine beings, but not all and those that do not still have clergy.

merchant

Clerics in Dark Sun still follow the theme of borrowing power from a higher power, it's just not a traditional god. Doesn't really apply to the discussion unless we're implicitly reframing "agnostic" as following a lesser god or other demigod-like being not mentioned by name.

Verily

Raybane Ok, allegedly.. do these "versions" describe those people as clergy? Do they also classify them as agnostics? I doubt this.

Mesh

Verily
The Athar are probably the best example.

They actually lose their unique faction mechanic (immunity to divine magic) if they appeal to any deity.

The Athar are a faction in the Planescape setting. The foundation of their philosophy is that the beings called gods -- Zeus and Thor and Pelor and Mystra and Bahamut and all those entities worshipped all over the planes -- are not worthy of worship.

Divine power, the Athar believe, comes from faith and conviction, and one need not worship a god to cultivate it - one can simply believe in one's self, and power all the divine miracles of any cleric. The gods falsely claim monopoly over this power, and act like petty tyrants, with holy wars and fragile egoes and totalitarian attitudes toward their worshipers.
https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Athar

Verily

Mesh Fair nuff. Good example, thats a nice little bit of lore. Its kinda close to the head-canon I expressed on my first post here. But it does start to nudge on the thematic dissonance I referred to also, at least potentially. If we give that lore a MM coat of paint and say the Athar are the classes who choose agnostic they still wont have access to the magic or other rewards that the devotion system intends to offer. Meaning the claim of monopoly of power would still be factual.

Raybane

Verily I think they would classify themself as Atheist, but I think that is close enough.

Mesh

Verily
Will be interesting to see the different ways that the religion choice affects things in-game.

It makes sense that an agnostic Cleric would have different perks and disadvantages compared to those who dedicate themselves to a god. Though I guess there'll be differences between all of the choices so kind of just another option.

I remember hearing somewhere that we'll have the option to forsake the god we choose at creation and dedicate ourselves to a different (or no) god in-game as well. I imagine it'll involve having to build up faction again and losing access to any of the unique perks that god was giving you.

Verily

Raybane Well at that point the claim over the title of clergy member crumbles entirely. I mean you must admit that, conceptually, atheist priest is nonsense... cmon

Raybane

Verily Buddhism is a religion, a very large one even, that originally does not have any deities. They still have priests and monks, lots of those. They also clearly believe in the supernatural, rules to live by and an answer to what happens after death. There is just no God, it's just how the universe works.

Mesh

Raybane
Jainism is probably an even better example of an atheistic religion with a structured clergy.

Verily

@Mesh @Raybane I think youre really grasping to leverage actual belief, in those last comments, to make a point about a video game and both doing so erroneously. Those real religions, according to a cursory glance at widely known info, have concepts of god and supernatural deity beings. To me it seems disingenuous and pretty ridiculous to call them atheist religions.

Mesh

Verily
Gotta do more than glance. Jains don't believe in gods in the sense you're describing.

The closest they come would be "devas" who are just people who managed to clear away all their karma and earn paradise after many lifetimes doing good deeds and causing no harm.

Definitely supernatural but not divine.

Verily

Mesh Gotta do more than glance. Jains don't believe in gods in the sense you're describing.

I dont though, and I have avoided describing gods aside from my original post here. That was in a context that Im not gonna deviate from.

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