Cleric
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the terms used for individual clergy are clergyman, clergywoman, and churchman. However, the more common term for anyone associated with the clergy of religion regardless of experience is a cleric.
Clerics are intermediaries between the mortal world and the distant planes of the gods. As varied as the gods they serve, clerics strive to embody the handiwork of their deities. No ordinary priest, a cleric is imbued with divine magic.
Culture
Religion is deeply important to the majority of people on Mondum and the Prime Material Plane, who feel that the gods are a very real and active presence in their lives, something that is not very far from the truth. For this reason, serving the gods is something that most people do as just a regular part of their lives. Clerics are elite agents of gods, empowered beyond the capabilities of regular priests and sworn to follow and obey the tenets of their religion in ways that the average mortal can't. Some clerics serve primordials or even fiends, offering foul sacrifices in exchange for a portion of the fiend's might, but the majority remain servants of the truly divine. Gods are as varying as people and, as a result, so are their divine agents, such as clerics, who might be good or evil, lawful or chaotic, dependent on who they worship and why. Good clerics heal and protect, helping those in need while evil clerics terrorise and destroy, increasing the power of their deity and themselves. Generally, non-evil clerics are more common, since good or neutral deities tend to attract more worshipers than evil ones do. However, some evil gods, such as Obscurus or Asmodeus, are popular in their own right, with a large legion of followers and clerics willing to do their bidding. Similarly, though many clerics belong to orderly and structured churches, chaotic gods have clerical servants as well. Relatively few priests become wandering clerics, leaving for adventure only if they feel compelled to do so for their god, perhaps out of a desire to spread their deity's works or by order of their superiors and the church hierarchy. A few clerics take on the adventuring lifestyle for more mundane reasons. Regardless of motivation, clerics are highly valued companions, serving as healers and occasional leaders to their compatriots. Additionally, clerics may be specialised in ways, based on the deity they worship, that put them on agreeable terms with other adventurers. The most active clerics are typically humans or dwarves, though half-elven, elven, and tiefling clerics are also relatively common. Nearly all clerics are ordained members of a religious organisation of some kind, though a few operate more independently and even those who are bound to a hierarchy do not necessarily answer to a direct superior. Most clerics make their career choice relatively early in life, though some are compelled to service unwillingly by their god. Churches are often, but not always, tied to a specific god, though few gods preside over more than one church at once.Abilities
Clerics commonly use light or medium armour, shields, simple weapons, and divine magic as their chief tools while adventuring. Many clerics are also skilled in the use of heavy armour. Clerics augment these spells, also known as "prayers," through holy symbols of their deity that they wear or carry with them. Clerics are also experts in casting rituals, enhanced spells that require an incredible amount of time and preparation to use but which often have dramatic effects. Others might instead choose to be trained in preparing alchemical recipes. Clerics can also learn to directly access the channel the divinity of their deity through their body. This power manifests itself in several ways, the most common of which is the ability to turn undead, repelling or even destroying the undead. A few clerics learn instead to control the undead, particularly those of an evil nature. Some clerics may learn to channel divinity based on their domain or the nature of the deity they worshipped. Clerics of Talos and Selene for example, have access to wildly different ways to channel their deity's divinity. Sufficiently experienced clerics can even invoke their deity's intervention directly, without using Channel Divinity. If successfully petitioned, the deity's aid can come in one of several forms, from a spell to something more unusual. Such calls for aid, however, are difficult to make and the gods are disinclined to respond much more often than once a week. Some clerics are powerful healers thanks to special training and the blessings of their gods, both of which increase the potency of the curative prayers available to them. Many clerics are capable of casting the Healing Word prayer, while more experienced clerics are often capable of much more. Some clerics are also trained in transforming other prayers into powers of healing or, if the cleric worships a non-good god, into spells of necrotic power. Some clerics have additional abilities less common among their compatriots. Several clerics learn, in addition to the Gentle Repose ritual known to many of them, the ritual of Simbul's Conversion, which allowed a cleric to convert their prayers into healing energy. A fewer number of clerics, generally evil in alignment, learn instead to convert this stored energy into negative energy for the purpose of harming enemies. Many clerics are also fluent in Celestial or Abyssal, as well as their related dialects.
Type
Religious
Famous in the Field
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