I have the beginnings of an idea for a campaign set in a world without gods. My intention is to get rid of the cleric class, but I don't want to cut off access to healing magic etc. My initial thought is to have the option for sorcerers to choose either the sorcerer/wizard list or the cleric list at creation.
My question is do you think that having a sorcerer who casts cleric spells in some way break the game? I can't imagine that it would cause major issues - I just thought I'd submit the question to the collective wisdom of the community.
Thanks!
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Divine Magic can easily be reflavored as coming from the individual and community faith in philosophies, laws, societal norms, and spirituality in general.
I can't say I really understand yet why you want Clerics in general to get the AXE here but as Grailknight asked, where do you draw the line for the whole "No Gods/Clerics" shtick?
Is there a specific reason why you're removing them instead of just requiring a Cleric to instead choose their Domains independent of a Deity?
There's no technical reason that I can think of that Wizards, at least, shouldn't have access to healing magic simply via the Positive Energy Plane (just as Necromancers can access the Negative Energy Plane and all Wizards can generally uses every other Inner Plane). Similarly with Sorcerers - and possibly even more so if some are descended from angels or other Celestial Outsiders.
Like Themetricsystem, though, I wonder why you want to remove them as well as what you're planning to do with other Divine Magic classes as Grailknight mentioned.
Also - just because there are no real deities doesn't mean there's not going to still be priests of some kind. On our own world there's no proof of divine beings running around, but that's never stopped folks from believing in them.
A sorcerer with the cleric list would basically be a nerfed Oracle, since Oracles have much better class abilities.
This whole exercise is pretty nascent at this point. I had forgotten that oracles are basically divine sorcerers, so I will definitely take a serious look at them.
As for Paladins, Inquisitors, Warpriests, etc - my intention with this would be to severely limit options to races and classes that fit into the concept of the world I'm building. More than likely, these things would just not exist.
At this point, the idea I have bubbling around is there is a strict divide between the human and non-human races. Non-human races are inherently magical and can access "true magic" - the divine selection of spells. Humans developed wizardry which uses parts of magically infused plants and animals to power their spells. This led to the rapacious harvesting of magical creatures and plants and resulted in a massive war between humans and the rest of the intelligent races (whichever ones I decide to keep). That's why I'm trying to draw a line between divine and arcane magic.
As for the no gods thing, it's not that they don't have religions, it's that active gods granting spells are not a thing.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback. This has definitely given me food for thought.
@OP: It's generally a good idea to acquire basic system mastery before attempting complicated homebrew. Some people equate 'cleric' with 'healbot'. Healbot is generally the least effective way to play a cleric, yet it's the only way a lot of players know. What's your purpose?
For the record I've been playing Pathfinder pretty exclusively since it was released, and 3.0/3.5 for years before that. I have system mastery.
My purpose is purely getting away from active deities in the world as a flavor thing. This was really just some random musings the other night, and I thought about re-skinning "divine" spells as magic that is more "pure" than "arcane" spells; and I tied that to a fundamental difference between humans and the non-human races. But I also didn't want to throw the balance too much by eliminating a core class. Most of the other divine casters I could repurpose fluff-wise as being more like wizards or sorcerers, but the whole clerical shtick is their connection to a god (or at the very least a defined philosophy/church) as the source of their magic. That is pretty much counter to the whole idea of what I'm going for.
You could change Oracles to be arcane or psychic casters instead of divine.
Also remember that Alchemist, Investigator, Witch (may or may not work depending on how you flavour Patrons, same with Oracle Mysteries), Shaman, Bard, Skald, Spiritualist, Occultist, Druid, Hunter, and Ranger all have healing magic without requiring a deity, so it's not like there's a horrible lack if you cut out Cleric, Oracle, Warpriest, Inquisitor, and Paladin.
Actually clerics are not required to have a god. A cleric can worship a philosophy instead of a deity. The campaign setting of Golarion does have a restriction that all divine casters must have a deity, but nothing in the rules require a divine caster to have a deity. Since this is in the homebrew section you are obviously not using the setting, so are not bound by its rules.
If your monsters include Lamias, maybe they performed a ritual that caused this situation.
All my leveled mutations can be used as bloodlines.
Healing Touch
They heal 1 point per level to anyone they touch with their bare skin. Any item that extends touch attacks also works with this. They also heal themselves automatically.
3rd level: Negate Deathblow. It erases the wound that was going to kill the person. They touch the location. Will wound undead like a longsword and can crit.
5th level: Channel energy as a -4 level Cleric.
10th level: Breath of life. Corporal undead reflex saves or becomes a normal, old corpse.
Class Skill: Heal
Bonus feat: Turn Undead (When channel energy is available)
Sorc. Bonus spells: Sorc. Bonus spells 3rd-aid, 5th-Remove disease, 7th-Restoration, 9th-Raise Dead, 11th-Heal, 13th-Resurrection, 15th-Regenerate, 17th-Heal Mass, 19th-True Resurrection
Special:Harming touch is a defect.
Bard and Witch have healing magic. Bard's missing a couple of spells I'd rather it had, and Witch has a level penalty on some important spells, but they're both perfectly adequate healers until 10th.