Clerical Splash Zone

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We were chatting on Discord about resurrection across different editions of D&D. I said that instead of there being any major consequences in Fourth Edition, you should just be able to respawn like in a typical MMO. My friend Ty of mindstorm (link) said, “4e should just be sprinkling residuum on the body like salt bae.” It’s a really fun idea that, if you’re in the middle of a fight and you die, your cleric friend just needs to head right over and sprinkle green cocaine or whatever on your body. Maybe then you resurrect in the next round?

Anyway, then my friend Ava of Permanent Cranial Damage (link) said “I feel like resurrection is one of those things where if u want it in your game tie it meaningfully to the core loop.” So, here’s my attempt to make resurrection a central feature of the clerical class or equivalent because it'd be fun.

Clerics don’t need spell books. They need water, and they need to carry it inside silly little jars in their backpack (probably also stuffed with ye old bubblewrap or packaging peanuts). Obviously, it’s not your typical tap water. The water has been sanctified by the blessing of a village priest(ess), i.e. a third level cleric if you’re nasty. Maybe it takes one hour per bottle [1]. It just needs to be kind of a pain.

Holy water is a conduit for miracles. It evaporates very quickly, and so it needs to either stay in its little container or be mixed with mud. How can you use it?

  • Turn Undead: Water gun. Put the holy water in a water gun and squirt it at individual monsters. Or, splash it on all of them. You figure it out.
  • Resurrect: Your friend is dead? Make sure you have all the pieces, and splash some water on them. Let sit for 1 minute.
  • Cure Disease: Drink. Sluuuurp. Mmmmmmmmmmm. It tastes like hand sanitizer.
  • Cure Wounds: Mix with mud and apply over affected area.

I think you'd want to be pretty reasonable about the above. Like, for turning undead, you might want the same rate of access as per usual. For curing wounds, you might heal like 1-6 hit points or whatever is the typical hit die. For resurrection, you might require near-instant treatment, and the 1 minute timer means that anyone who wants to prevent it from happening can attempt to do so.

This isn't really meant to be a rigid system, but a way to ad-lib the sort of functions we usually assign to clerics. Changing the weather or talking to animals can similarly be improvised; for example, the weather can be rerolled with a bias (if you have a linear table, +1 or -1), and one animal can speak to you for 10 minutes. Stuff like that.

That's all! :)


[1] 1-in-6 chance of making holy water in a 10 minute turn, while saying all the prayers etc.?

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