# Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny: Cleric tags: #articles #game/rpg/dnd #game/rpg/ironsworn In our last episode (*[[Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny - The Wizard|Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny: The Wizard]]*) we tackled the challenging question of how to handle the **[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D]]** magic user in **[[Ironsworn]]**. Today we pick up with a careful consideration of – the Cleric! --- ![[Cleric Enters the Dungeon.png]] You're probably wondering, "why another magic using class? Couldn't you technically just do that using the Magic User template?" To which I would reply, "yes, yes I could. But the Cleric is a classic **D&D** trope and one that it would be foolish of me not to take up." And also because Clerics are cool. I know, I know, it's a little bit out of character for me to lavish praise on a priest considering my personal inclinations, but one of my favorite characters that I ever played in **D&D**, being a vast rarity, was a Priest of Set with a focus on controlling the undead.^[I know, I know, "don't tell me about your character."] Let's take it up. ## What Is a Cleric? *HLZ PLZ*, I believe is the modern nomenclature to describe a Cleric. "Heal bot" also comes up a lot. Sometimes you hear "I wish we had a Cleric" just before the party is overrun with undead that might have been otherwise turned or controlled. Effectively, the old school Cleric is a bit of a second rate spell caster, one that can swing a weapon – usually a mace – but not quite as good as a fighting man, and generally is mostly there to lay on hands and occasionally thump things in the second line. Later versions of the Cleric amp up his ability to throw spells with a particular focus on defensive magic. Of course with the split and specialization, you find Clerics who are warriors for their God first and foremost and who occasionally have a few healing spells here and there. If you want to do a truly classic old-school Cleric, just take the Magic User template, swap around iron, heart, and wits such that you have a character who is somewhat more physically resistant, connects with people a little better, and maybe isn't quite as quick-witted, then take Devotant as your third asset, and you're good to go. Classic Cleric. We are going to take the other path for this template, the more militant Cleric. ## Break Out the Canticle Back to page 31 with us! Again we will take a leisurely but abbreviated pass-through character generation just so we can nail down not just what we're doing but why we're doing it. ### Name "Cleric." Template. ### Stats "Only the penitent man shall pass."  *(You didn't think we'd get through this without some sort of movie reference, did you? Foolish human!)* Conceptually, the Cleric is very different from the Magic User in terms of what they can and should prioritize when it comes to their stats. A glance over the description immediately has heart and iron, courage and willpower alongside endurance and prowess in close combat, as things that should be fairly prioritized. Shadow is not usually thought of as a Cleric stat, though if you envision yourself as the priest of the *God of Thievery*, maybe you want to play with that. But let's just cover the basics: - **Heart:** 3 - **Iron:** 2 - **Wits**: 2 - **Edge:** 1 - **Shadow:** 1 What you have here is a man known for his steadfast courage and devotion, his connection with the people around him, and his loyalty. Plus he can swing a weapon pretty darn well; certainly better than that squishy Magic User. He's probably not going to be picking up a bow or swiftly stepping out of the way, and he's definitely not going to be sneaking around. Sneaking is not his way. This is a pretty good setup for a Cleric. No question at all. ### Health, Spirit, Supply, Momentum Just as with the MU, this is just initializing the trackers. Everything starts at +5 except for momentum which starts at +10 and resets to +2. ### Vows While as a template, technically I don't need to give you any vows – they should be pretty specific to your character, playing out your responsibilities rather than what I tell you should be your responsibilities – thinking about what your long-term and short-term situations really are should be a big deal. That massive background vow? Definitely something religious. - *Raise a new temple in the northern wastelands.* - *Purge the city of Caliban of heretics and unbelievers.* - *Take an epic journey, visiting all of the major temples of your religion on the continent.* - *Find a new Supreme Leader for your religion in the aftermath of the possible assassination of the previous one.*^[No, no reason. Why do you ask?] Big, important projects which will keep you busy figuring out bit by bit what needs to happen over the course of an entire career, potentially. Smaller, more immediate inciting incident vows don't sprawl quite as much. - *Journey with a group of penitents from your home temple to one in the same region but not necessarily nearby.* - *Gather together a group of free wardens^[Murder-hobo adventurers.] to go into an ancient ruin and retrieve a holy text which was lost there.* - *Proceed to the war front to the south and strike down the enemies of the holy Church.* A surprising amount of violence for such holy people but – there you go. ### Bonds Unlike the Magic User, we don't necessarily have a bond that must be taken as a side effect of any out-of-the-box assets. That said, you really should create a bond to your religious order, religious group, or specific temple, and possibly even to someone else in the religious hierarchy whom you have a relationship with of some sort. It's a good way to make sure that there's a reason to bring in your religious connections as a Cleric on a regular basis. ### Debilities, Conditions, Banes, Burdens Again, you start with none of them, but **tormented** remains a really good thing on the horizon to keep your eye on, because if having your mind broken by exposure to the gods isn't perfectly appropriate, what is? ### Assets Here we go again. This is the good stuff. This is where we start pulling together the things that make you an actual Cleric. ![[Ironsworn - Assets - Devotant.png]] Devotant is the obvious big take away here. It really grounds your character in the role of being a religious functionary or at least someone devoted to a godly worship. Just like Ritualist is key to being a Magic User, Devotant is key to being a Cleric.^[Of course, if you're playing one of the more magically active versions of Cleric and using the Magic User template, adding Devotant as your third asset takes care of that neatly.] Do not overlook the fact that there are slots on the asset to define both the god's name and the stat connected to that god. The stat is fairly important because that is the hook that you will be rolling to get that extra +2 momentum from your daily prayers. Believe me, I could have used +2 momentum at several points in the Magic User write up. Picking heart as your god's stat is a little bit of a no-brainer but might not be the right choice given the fiction for your character. Are you the Cleric of a God of War? Iron might be the better choice. How about being the Cleric of a God of Theft? Then it probably should be shadow. It goes almost without saying that your natural inclinations/stats should accord with those of your god – though the narrative potential if they don't is pretty significant. Frustrating, perhaps, but significant. Looking at the abilities after the first on Devotant, you can see how they play together to encourage more priestly behavior. You're going to want to swear iron vows to serve your god on quests because that will increase your experience and let you grow faster. You're going to want to stop by villages and tell them about your god, which will both give you weak hits and introduce complications along the way while giving you +1 momentum to encourage it. Then there's the second asset, which is much harder to pin down. In truth, you probably don't need any more than just Devotant and the other two could be almost anything that you can think of that would fit into your concept, but for the sake of having two slots filled on the template, we'll go for… ![[Ironsworn - Assets - Shield-Bearer.png]] For some reason I always imagine a proper front-line cleric carrying a blessed mace in one hand and a heavy shield on the opposite arm. They may or may not be wearing heavy plate armor but that shield and its iconic markings which recall the Templars is always part of the imagery. The abilities on Shield-Bearer are excellent for someone who expects to get into close quarters combat. Particularly the one that comes active by default effectively has you getting a bonus to *Face Danger* (which can be very useful for reestablishing control of initiative) and a maneuver bonus on Clash (which you'll do when you're not holding initiative). It's surprisingly an extremely protective ability in bad situations. It is the opportunity to turn the tables and take initiative in combat which makes this a really good option for Clerics. #### Different Orders As for the third asset, now we're back to talking about possible variations which represent different ways you might manifest the classic **D&D** Cleric. - You can always swap out Shield-Bearer for Thunder-Bringer if you would prefer to go the route of the sturdy priest who carries a great hammer – though that may be leaning more into **[[Warhammer 40k]]** in a very literal sense. - Should you have the inclination to do things like raise the dead to serve your dark god of death, the Ritual: Awakening is something you're going to want to put in your back pocket. Or your front pocket. - Ironclad is great if you're leaning into the heavy armor unshakable, unmovable servant of god thing. Any advantage in combat is a good advantage and a big suit of armor is a great advantage. - Empowered is one you might otherwise overlook, but taking *"Priest"* as your title, assuming that your version of the world makes mendicant priests and traveling Clerics people whom others wish to offer hospitality – which is usually the case – lets you use that fact. Unfortunately or fortunately, the way that **D&D** presents the Cleric is a bit scattershot. As such, it's difficult to focus down on exactly what they do or can do other than pray, heal people, and take a little bit of a beating.. If you want to lean more into the *healing people*, swap out Shield-Bearer for Herbalist (which literally and directly gives you a bonus to the Heal move). Of all the classes, I think it's hardest to create a fully fledged Cleric in **Ironsworn** compared to **D&D** because they just do so many different things but I think the results of doing so in **Ironsworn** are generally more successful, more focused, and give you more room to express yourself and what you want within the context of the template. Plus the opportunities for growth as you gain experience and accumulate assets is, frankly, a lot more interesting. ### Equipment Just as when dealing with the MU, this is a matter of expressing the fiction in your choices. Who do you want to appear to be? What does the stuff you carry say about who you are? Not just as a person but as the priest of a god, the manifest representation of a divine being. What does it say about the god? Same drill, different day. ## Play It Out Are you ready for this? I'm not sure *I'm* ready for this. Again, we're just taking the template design with two assets and of the stats set as previously discussed. Our God is *Solar, Lord of the Sun*.^["Ra, Ra, he is the sun god; Ra, Ra, he is a fun god!"] Just keep things simple, his stat is heart. If nothing else, hopefully we don't end up destroying the bloody inn again. Luckily for us, the smoking crater where the inn used to be no longer hosts any rats. This makes it considerably easier to deal with the situation in town. Unfortunately it also means that there is no brewer, and if there's any truth in the world it's that people get restive without their beer. Without a question, there *is* a monk at the local monastery who knows how to make beer. The local vicar has designated us as the appropriate choice to make the trip out to the monastery, ask the abbot if he would mind sparing a monk and the goods to set up a small brewing shack in town, and bring the lot back. Fair enough! It's dawn, the cocks are crowing, the weather is – decent, and the farmers have been in their fields for an hour now. It's time to set out on the road. The weather has been particularly bad recently, washing out roads and flooding low areas, so what would normally just be a few days travel with no particular challenge becomes a real journey. A Troublesome journey in this case, but we start the situation with full supply, full momentum, in good health and good cheer. I'm pretty sure this won't last long. That is, the good cheer. *Undertake a Journey* is a wits check which we don't have any advantages on but at least we don't suck! - *Weak Hit:* 5 + 2 + 0 = 7 vs 10 | 1 Right. 10s again. I can't even use full momentum to turn that into a strong hit. Fine, fine… I can see where this is going… We have reached a waypoint, however, though along the way we've consumed some of our supply as meals. Sometimes you don't get to make the kind of time that you want and being on foot, going hungry is never a good idea. Luckily we have good supply from setting out from the village. But what's the waypoint? Let's go to the oracles and see what we can figure out. Let's see… 63 which gives us a "river ford" with a descriptor of 98 "desolate." We come to a bend in the river which, apparently, up until just a few days ago was very much running wild and flooded. The waters have receded, leaving the ford itself relatively passable but trees along the river have been stripped by the current and as the water was high, rushed down and over the shallows, leaving shockingly large areas on either side stripped of vegetation. With nothing to hold the banks together it's hard to say if this will remain a ford in the months to come. Not the most scenic place for a meal nor the most exciting, but it's not the worst. We push across the river in the shallows and decide to call it a night, setting up camp and cooking a small but filling meal. We've traveled far enough for this day; we're going to actually *Make Camp* and settle in for some sleep. - *Weak Hit:* 4 + 4 + 0 = 8 vs 7 | 8 While we could burn momentum on making that into a strong hit, we don't really need to. We are in decent supply, healthy, the only thing we really need is to prepare which gives us a +1 if we *Undertake a Journey* next which is exactly what we plan to do. The next morning we wash ourselves in the river and break camp, feeling refreshed and ready to take on the next leg of the trip. We'll roll on the *Oracle* for *Theme* just to get a general idea of the situation. Sometimes you just want a little flavor. What we get is "Loss." As we shoulder our pack and get our shield into place over it, the morning sun is hidden by heavy clouds and we lose the good weather. Time to get away from the river and up toward the monastery if at all possible. Again, we *Undertake a Journey* and see what shakes out. - *Weak Hit:* 3 + 2 + 0 = 5 vs 1 | 6 Another weak hit but I am extremely hesitant to spend my momentum because we all remember how that turned out last time. It's okay, we still made progress, bringing that particular progress track to 6 blocks full, though I am not really ready to resolve that one. I think we can make another shot at the journey and push on. But we did reach a waypoint so let's find out what that looks like 90, so we are up in the mountains. That's good to know. 20, so it's contested… I don't think I like the way that sounds. We move up from the river side, making our way into the foothills beneath the monastery. The rolling terrain doesn't make the hiking easier, nor does the rain, though it does make us glad for what tree cover we can find. As the hills become steeper and rockier, that cover becomes less frequent and the small streams that come from higher up have begun washing away what otherwise might have been solid footing. With a heavy sigh, we look at what lies before and decided to push on across the treacherous terrain. It's far too risky to turn back and we don't have the time. Besides, faith in Solar trumps all opposition – but it would be easier to sustain that faith if the sun were out. Making our way forward seems dangerous so rather than *Undertake a Journey*, we are going to *Face Danger* to make it across the rushing streams so we can continue without a problem. It's more an issue of being brave enough to wade into the waters and hold on than any direct physical threat so we will roll +heart and like it. - *Weak Hit:* 3 + 3 + 0 = 6 vs 5 | 10 Have I mentioned how much I hate rolling 10s and how often they've been coming up for us? I really should stop using Iron Journal because it clearly hates me. We carefully work our way across several treacherous moments of footing without a problem but when moving across what appears to be one of the safer spots, the rocks underfoot are more slippery than they seemed, we lose our footing, and only regain it a dozen feet down the slope. Not long – only long enough for some of our supplies to become wet and unusable (-1 supply). That could have been worse. We still have 3 supply and we are nearly there. We'll give Undertake a Journey one more push and that should see us through. - *Strong Hit:* 5 + 2 + 0 = 7 vs 5 | 3 My mind! Did we actually just pull off a *strong hit* on something that actually mattered? I'm going to take it. We are lower on supply than I would like to be and we are full on momentum so there's no reason for me to choose to move at speed, so instead we are just going to mark progress and consume no supply at all! But let's figure out where we've made it to. 34: *Pond*. Given the weather lately that makes sense. 14: *Rough*. A rough pond. Let me think about that… With the rain still pissing down and a sense of annoyance about losing our footing and ruining some of our supply, the frustration apparently quickens our footsteps and we make excellent time before evening, stumbling into what was probably a gouge in the side of the mountain where an ancient boulder came crashing across and left a scar. Now that scar is full of water, fresh and cold from higher in the mountains, and pleasant enough to help lighten the mood despite the rain. The progress bar on making it to the monastery is at nine blocks so I think it's worth taking the risk and seeing if we can't pull off a miracle of actually arriving in one piece. - *Progress Roll: Fetch A Brewer Monk from the Monastery : Strong Hit* = 9 vs 8 | 5 I don't believe it. Another strong hit. Complete madness. We come up the road that leads to the monastery with a spring in our step, refreshed by the pond, smiles and good news. Monks going in and out tending to their fields smile and wave but make no shouts as most have taken a vow of silence. Things seem to be going well here and there are clear signs of the inhabitants having cleaned up extremely proficiently from fallen trees and broken limbs. Rather than dally, we make our greetings and head straight to the abbot's office to meet with him regarding the lending of his monk. Things are actually pretty glorious. Let's have a lovely chat with the local abbot with a *Compel* using +heart. We have full momentum, things are going well, it's a reasonable request… How could things possibly go wrong? - *Weak Hit:* 1 + 3 + 0 = 4 vs 9 | 3 You know what? That's all right. On a weak hit, the subject will do what we want or tell us what they know, but ask something of us in return. Nobody thought we would get out of this scot-free, did we? I'm okay with that. The problem is that I'm not exactly sure what kind of problem they may be having, but we have a solution for that. *Oracle 9: Settlement Trouble*. 46: **Corrupted by Dark Magic**. Well. Fuck. That's just what you want to find, the local monastery has a problem with being corrupted by dark magic.  I think that's where we will let things lie for the moment, having made our way across treacherous terrain, taken a journey, and been well received… Only to find ourselves in a nest of intrigue, corruption, and diabolic intent. And nobody needed healing. Yet.