Clerics? lore question

[Traveler]

Way way back when I played pnp the rules for clerics were that they got their power (spells) from their deity. If your character crossed purposes with the God you lost some of them if you stopped believing/serving you lost all of them. But in BG3, and other recent D&D games, it doesn't have the slightest effect.

Why id they change it so that clerics are now just one more magic user?

[Metallicus]

If you are alluding to Shadowheart specifically then she was always a latent follower of Selune and when she decided to forsake Shar her latent powers became reconnected. I am not sure what other situations you are speaking on...are you thinking of Ketheric?

[Popsicles]

Are you talking about Shadowheart? Or another cleric? SH loses one deity but gains another.

In 5e D&D there is nothing RAW that specifies what happens when a cleric loses their faith. It's up to DM discression. Most DMs would impose they lose their spellcasting ability is my guess. It would be different for every table.

[Canadian_Zac]

For BG3, its for game balance purposes

Paladins can lose their oaths, but will get Oathbreaker instead

Cleric would have to switch Gods, which Shadowheart does, going from Shar to Selune depending on what happens
You can RP switching your God by Re-speccing with Withers

But in tabletop DnD, that can fully happen where you lose your powers from drifting from or pissing off, your god
How exactly it works is up to the GM though

[[TG] zac]

5th edition simplified & streamlined things so they could appeal to the widest audience possible.

It came at the cost of character building choice, rewarding smart teamwork and consequences for actions. (advantage/disadvantage and having one cancel out any number of others was a big step down vs solid numerical bonuses/penalties)

As far as simplifying to the point anyone could understand it it goes they succeeded.
There is a reason a lot of old school vets call this edition "babies first DND".
And they aren't wrong, even my 5 year old can build a character and understand it.

Problem is if you played the older systems or have played any of the systems that came out of them (pathfinder 1-2, the new DC 20 system etc..) you really feel constrained by what was lost and most characters of the same class feel very samy after a little bit.

5th edition is also among the most rules light versions they have ever made & the lightest when it comes to guidance for the game master running things compared to older editions and their spin offs.

At the same time they also changed a lot concerning how the gods interact with the world and the clerics.
You can literally have a "good deity" keep empowering a homicidal maniac so long as that person has faith in them and believes they are doing it for reasons the god would like because the rules for it are now bare bones compared to what they used to be.

As a result what one table rules will likely vary wildly from another when it comes to a lot of things & GM's have to home brew/house rule a ton of things.

[♂Warrior of Gachi♂]

Because there's no alignment system and without it, they would've had to implement "oathbreaking" for Clerics with different rules for each god. So they decided to just ignore it and leave clerics as divine mages. That's my guess.

In Pathfinder Kingmaker\WotR you can still lose your powers if you change alignment too much as a Cleric\Paladin or Monk. Maybe some other classes too.

Also, what other recent DnD games? Solasta?

[TaKo]

unlike paladins, clerics and warlocks have no official provisions for what happens if they lose favour with their deity/patron/whatever in 5e

fully up to DM and players to figure it out together, as Popsicles said this usually entails loss of spellcasting or some other limitations upon it and other class features or not being able to gain fruther levels in the class(es) until resolving it all but again, no official rules dictating what should happen

for BG3, larian, as the "DMs", made it so SH gets picked up by another deity and for the player they didnt bother implementing anything, go nuts

personally i prefer it this way, makes dealing with divine casters across the canon of the setting a bit messy but gives players and their DMs a good deal of freedom, and i also prefer the idea of classes like clerics and warlocks simply keeping whatever they already got, no take backsies

[seeker1]

If a warlock loses their patron, they lose their powers. That happens to Wyll.
If a paladin betrays their Oath, they go Oathbreaker, or restore it.
A cleric needs *a* deity to grant their spells, but they can switch deities, like Ketheric did. (as well as SH).

The thing is, that switch might also require them changing their alignment (not used in BG3) and changing their domain (not really implemented in BG3, which doesn't even have most of the 5E domains without mods).

But if they piss off their deity, they might start withholding spells or not granting divine intervention - as said, it's up to their DM - but they can't go totally faithless. If they give up one god, they have to find another.

[TaKo]

Originally posted by seeker1:

If a warlock loses their patron, they lose their powers.

officially, not really, they do not, nothing is supposed to happen RAW, larian just decided on this themselves for wyll, which is fine, but again RAW? nothing happens, up to player and DM to figure it out, this is where the role palying part of RPG is supposed to come in for TT

could justify it as since wyll's patron is a devil and gave him powers via a contract that him losing powers was part of the contract and it would not happen normally to most other warlocks, least not in the same way

Originally posted by seeker1:

If a paladin betrays their Oath, they go Oathbreaker, or restore it.

correct

Originally posted by seeker1:

A cleric needs *a* deity to grant their spells, but they can switch deities, like Ketheric did. (as well as SH).

again, not really, least not officially

there are simply no official provisions for losing levels or whole ass class features tho i imagine most people who bother to RP a cleric/warlock who lost favor with their deity/patron did so with the intention of getting some sort of penalty for it which they figure out with their DMs how to apply it

[GriffinPilgrim]

Other than Shadowheart, who has already been covered, there's not really anything you can do in the game that any of the available gods for player clerics would be offended enough by to reject them, at least now straightaway.
You can't pick any of the Dead Three or Umberlee at character creation and you can only be a Shar cleric if you are playing Shadowheart and those are the only gods you can directly oppose.
Other gods might not be entirely happy with some of your actions but given the threat of the Absolute they are reserving judgement until that matter is resolved.
What Laran does kinda skirt over is the point that in the Forgotten Realms (unlike some other D&D settings) druids, paladins and rangers all need a deity for their magic as well, since in Toril divine magic must be channelled through a deity. I mean, nothing in the game contradicts this (and the Emerald Grove druids talk about Silvanus a lot) but it doesn't make you pick a patron deity during character creation for those classes. Which is a shame I think.

Originally posted by TaKo:

Originally posted by seeker1:

If a warlock loses their patron, they lose their powers.

officially, not really, they do not, nothing is supposed to happen RAW, larian just decided on this themselves for wyll, which is fine, but again RAW? nothing happens, up to player and DM to figure it out, this is where the role palying part of RPG is supposed to come in for TT

could justify it as since wyll's patron is a devil and gave him powers via a contract that him losing powers was part of the contract and it would not happen normally to most other warlocks, least not in the same way

Exactly that. A warlock doesn't lose their powers if they break with their patron by default but a patron certainly could work that into the contract if they are so minded and devils would be likely to do so.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Warlock/patron relations are specifically called out in the PHB as "work with your DM" re: whether they will play a significant (or, any) impact in the campaign. When I played one in tabletop, I specifically chose the GOOlock because it was very explicitly called out that the Great Old One in question doesn't even necessarily know that the warlock exists and that there need be no formal pact -- I did not want to have signfiicant arcs or subplots focused on my character and wanted to flavor him as somebody who stumbled onto the existence of occult horrors and feared their existence, but was willing to make some practical usage of such awful knowledgde. Wyll, OTOH, was written by Larian with a very direct relationship.

For clerics, it's certainly implied that they're expected to behave in accordance with their deity's precepts; but unlike, say, Paladins, there's no formal rules for removing class abilities or changing subclass. There *used* to be formal rules (and, say, an "Atonement" spell with vague guidelines about what might be required) about such things in earlier editions, but 5E dropped those.