Clerical Errors

Tony DiTerlizzi

“Fixing the cleric” is about as common in OSR circles as “fixing the thief”. The cleric is also frequently cut from campaigns, houserules, and heartbreakers, usually because it doesn’t really fit well outside of a eurofantasy setting with a big church or something post-apocalyptic like Canticle of Leibowitz. Many fixes say that they want the cleric to feel more distinct and not just a different type of wizard. I think this is a very Game Designer opinion, in the sense that I don’t think the experience of playing a cleric feels like playing a wizard, but I do take the point. What usually follows, however, is a system of piety points or tracking deity disfavor with a high degree of either tracking stuff, “the DM will decide how this works exactly”, or both, neither of which I’m that crazy about in a class.

Assuming you haven’t found the perfect alternative system to meet your preferences, I think there are several easier options to fit the cleric into an OSE game without overhauling the system. You can mix and match most of these as desired.

1) Clerics can use swords

The ban on edged weapons is a weird D&D-ism that doesn’t port well to many settings (arguably including a eurofantasy one with a big church, funnily enough). If you keep everything else the same and change this, you no longer need a separate paladin class and the cleric fits a more recognizable fantasy archetype. The BX cleric’s missing spell at 1st level now fills the role of the paladin “proving their faith” before getting spells, but you only have to wait one level instead of four.

2) Spontaneous Spellcasting

Clerics don’t memorize their spells. Instead, they can use a spell slot to cast any spell from the cleric spell list. Now it feels like praying for a miracle in response to a specific situation, cleanly differentiating it from the wizard's prepared spells without needing to do a lot of work.

The OSE cleric’s spell list is tiny, which makes it easy to keep track of. You could probably fit the whole thing comfortably onto a little player handout, and the spells largely do what they say on the tin (in the sense that a player probably doesn’t need to know the full text of Remove Fear in advance to figure out what it does). You can easily vary it up for different gods by swapping out a couple of spells, and clerics won’t be punished for preparing the more interesting spells over Cure Light Wounds.

Rebecca Guay

3) Open the Schools

Why shouldn’t the cleric just be another kind of wizard? Merge the spell lists (with 12 MU spells and 8 cleric spells per level, they fit comfortably onto a d20 list for determining random spells, although the occasional repeated spell may break this pleasant symmetry). You can give Magic-Users turn undead too if you like, either as a 1st-level spell or as a class ability. It’s certainly genre-appropriate – for Gandalf and Ged of Earthsea, banishing evil spirits comes right after the Light spell in a wizard’s bag of tricks. The school on Roke has a whole section devoted to healing magic, and Ged can cast Raise Dead. Witches are magic-users, and they love cooking up healing potions in their big soup pots. D&D might be the only time where A) healing magic exists, but B) wizards can't use it, so removing this strange distinction is a slam dunk. Fill in any repeat spells with your favorites from the Druid and Illusionist spell lists and you're off to the races.

If you’d like to draw a distinction between scholarly wizards and spell-casting fighters, the OSE Half-Elf provides a good template (base 3,000 XP, HD, attacks, and spell-progression as Clerics).

If you use this variant where the d4 HD Mage gets the full range of spells and you drop the cleric, I’d recommend giving the now-absent d6 HD to the Thief. You are in absolutely no danger of making the Thief too strong.

Angus McBride

4) Clerics are Elves

In Tolkien, anyway. Elrond can cast Remove Curse and is a master of healing – he’s even able to produce healing potions (or possibly it’s a member of his household who makes the miruvor, but either way the point stands). Glorfindel can turn away undead and evil spirits with the power that is in him. Carcass Crawler Issue 2 has a nice implementation of this (basically mash the base OSE Halfling and Elf classes together, use the Cleric or Druid spell list, 3,000 XP to reach level 2). I’ve been playing with a slight variant of this class and I like it a lot, but if I was removing the cleric class I’d add turn undead and use the elf’s normal XP track.