Many fantasy settings have deities that take an active role in events. One common way they do this is through the sponsoring of agents to carry out their agenda in detail. These agents can take many forms, but the most common are Clerics. Clerics are responsible for spreading the influence of their patrons, and are imbued with incredible power to do so. Clerics are one of the most versatile classes in Realm of Runes. With twenty deities included, and guidelines for creating new ones in the rules, the potential for diversity within the class is staggering. The deity that a cleric follows has a profound influence on the options available, and how those options function.
CHOOSING YOUR DEITY
As a cleric, your choice of patron is the most important choice you can make, but not all deities sponsor all followers. Each divine being in Realm of Runes has an alignment and an ethos, and they only grant power to those that are aligned with similar goals. Each deity specifies which alignments they choose to grant power to. Some are particularly choosy, only sponsoring a narrow spectrum of like-minded followers. Others are less picky, and some don't care at all, accepting devotees from any and all walks of life.
Once you have pledged yourself to a deity, that deity's preferences inform many of your class abilities and narrow down your options to a reasonable size. All deities have skills important to them, and clerics of a deity begin as an expert in one of these skills. Deities also have a favored weapon, and clerics of a deity not only treat their deity's weapon as simple and common, but can also always ignore the exotic and non-lethal traits if it has them. If a favored weapon is already simple, it instead deals more damage than usual when wielded by a cleric.
In addition to granting benefits, each deity also enforces restrictions on behavior that are anathema to its ethos. Some deities are stricter than others, and some do not impose any restrictions at all. Intentionally violating your deity's anathema causes your deity to sever your connection with its power until you make amends.
DOMAINS
Each deity has domain over several aspects of reality, and they extend a fraction of this dominion to their agents in the form of Domain Powers. Most deities have five domains that they can grant, although more or less powerful beings might offer a different number, and each cleric chooses one of these domains to be its primary domain. Each domain has four special powers that clerics can use, and a cleric automatically learns all Domain Powers from its chosen primary domain. Clerics also have the option of expanding into other domains offered by their deity through the use of class feats, and can potentially gain mastery over each one of them without restriction, but connecting with other domains will never be as efficient as with the domain chosen as the primary domain. With many different domains offered by each deity, even clerics with the same patron have the potential to be very different from each other in practice.
Domain Powers are special divine spells cast through the use of Spell Points instead of through spell slots like normal divine spells. This provides clerics with separate pools of spellcasting potential, and each class option that uses Spell Points also increases the size of the cleric's available pool. The more powers you have that use Spell Points, the more points you have to go around.
CHANNEL ENERGY
In addition to spells and Domain Powers, deities also provide their clerics with a direct conduit to divine energy. Channeled energy is raw life or death energy, and which a cleric gets access to is typically determined by the deity, though some leave the choice up to their clerics instead. Channel Energy grants a bonus pool that clerics can use to cast heal spells, for positive energy, or harm spells, for negative energy.
Channel Energy represents a third separate pool of spellcasting potential, and this pool helps clerics fuel the ability to restore vitality to allies, or destroy it in enemies, without taking away from the versatility of their spell slots and Domain Powers. Some cleric class feats add more spells to those that can be cast using the cleric's channel pool, allowing a focused cleric to act as a more potent conduit for restorative or destructive energy on their deity's behalf.
SIGNATURE SPELLS
All clerics gain access to a pool of divine spells that they can prepare in their spell slots, and while the overwhelming majority of these divine spells are common to all clerics, each deity has a number of signature spells as well. These spells are spells that strongly align with a deity's personality or portfolio, but are not usually divine spells, or are divine spells that are not commonly available. Clerics of a deity can freely prepare these spells in their spell slots, making clerics of each deity uniquely able to tackle problems with magic that clerics of other deities can't.
CLERIC CLASS FEATS
A cleric's class feats deepen its connection with its deity in one or more of these areas, increasing the power and versatility of a cleric's spells, Domain Powers or channel pool. Signature Spellcaster makes your deity's signature spells available to cast with both your Domain Powers and your Channel Pool as well as your spell slots, making sure you always have access to the spells most important to your deity. Turn Undead and Command Undead add new ways to use channeled positive or negative energy against undead. If you have Divine Protection, each time you use a Domain Power your deity grants you a burst of additional resilience for a short time as a reward to help you continue using its power.
In addition to class feats which directly alter a cleric's focus, a large number of class feats are special metamagic only available to clerics. Metamagic alters a spell as it is cast, and as primary spellcasters clerics tend to cast a lot of spells. Many of these exclusive metamagic feats specifically alter heal or harm spells, providing additional utility for a cleric's channel pool beyond just inflicting damage or restoring Hit Points.
No two clerics are quite alike, even if they follow the same deity. With three separate pools of spellcasting potential, even more traditional party-healing-focused clerics still have enormous freedom to be a useful and imposing force in other areas. Next time we'll complete our exploration of skills with the Wisdom skills, a set that clerics tend to be particularly excellent at using.
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