Are all Clerics priests?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


This was something that came up during the session 0 for my group's upcoming 1st Pathfinder campaign. On Golarion, is a Cleric always going to be an ordained priest, officially trained in the ways of their deity's church, or can they be self-taught, gifted by their deity simply because of their intense devotion and prayer?


This is surely what Backgrounds are for, no?


keftiu wrote:
This is surely what Backgrounds are for, no?

That's what I thought, but another, more experienced player, and the GM to some extent, held to the idea that Clerics had to have been ordained at some point.

I couldn't really prove otherwise, especially when the Cleric archetype explicitly says that you are an ordained priest of your deity.


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Religion is always a deeply personalized thing - you can be part of "the church" without being like, ordained or even part of an actual organization. Like, Rovagug's got some dangerous clerics, but he certainly doesn't have a "church" as one would think of it.

What matters is how your character relates to their god, and any kind of worship should be good enough to get empowered. Hell, in Shattered Star one of the minor NPCs is a cleric of DOU-BRAL. As in, pre-ZK Zon-Kuthon. There's certainly no organization there, and he would have to be self-taught.


Grankless wrote:

Religion is always a deeply personalized thing - you can be part of "the church" without being like, ordained or even part of an actual organization. Like, Rovagug's got some dangerous clerics, but he certainly doesn't have a "church" as one would think of it.

What matters is how your character relates to their god, and any kind of worship should be good enough to get empowered. Hell, in Shattered Star one of the minor NPCs is a cleric of DOU-BRAL. As in, pre-ZK Zon-Kuthon. There's certainly no organization there, and he would have to be self-taught.

Do they still receive spells? That’s wild.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Clerics can be self-taught. You can learn to worship a deity on your own, and doing so gives you some fun ways to work with your GM on HOW you learned to be a cleric. You could have had visions, or learned from a ghost, or studied an old holy text you found under mysterious conditions, or have no memories of how you came to be a cleric but know intrinsically how to worship your deity, etc.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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keftiu wrote:
Grankless wrote:

Religion is always a deeply personalized thing - you can be part of "the church" without being like, ordained or even part of an actual organization. Like, Rovagug's got some dangerous clerics, but he certainly doesn't have a "church" as one would think of it.

What matters is how your character relates to their god, and any kind of worship should be good enough to get empowered. Hell, in Shattered Star one of the minor NPCs is a cleric of DOU-BRAL. As in, pre-ZK Zon-Kuthon. There's certainly no organization there, and he would have to be self-taught.

Do they still receive spells? That’s wild.

That's not quite how it worked in that adventure.

Spoiler:
Assuming you're talking about Gein Kafog in "Beyond the Doomsday Door," he still worshiped Zon-Kuthon, but did so as a lawful neutral cleric. Which is a legal choice in both editions, but not a common one in-world. He views Zon-Kuthon as the "ultimate martyr" and not a force for evil, but he doesn't worship him as Dou-Bral. In fact, the word "Dou-Bral" doesn't appear in that volume at all.

And it's also worth noting that while he's not a part of the standard church of Zon-Kuthon, he's still VERY much a part of a specific organized group of clerics—those who serve at Windsong Abbey. He learned most of what he knows about his class and faith and deity as a result of being a part of the Abbey.

You can for sure still be a self-taught cleric, but this guy's not a great example of it.


James Jacobs wrote:
keftiu wrote:
Grankless wrote:

Religion is always a deeply personalized thing - you can be part of "the church" without being like, ordained or even part of an actual organization. Like, Rovagug's got some dangerous clerics, but he certainly doesn't have a "church" as one would think of it.

What matters is how your character relates to their god, and any kind of worship should be good enough to get empowered. Hell, in Shattered Star one of the minor NPCs is a cleric of DOU-BRAL. As in, pre-ZK Zon-Kuthon. There's certainly no organization there, and he would have to be self-taught.

Do they still receive spells? That’s wild.

That's not quite how it worked in that adventure.

** spoiler omitted **

You can for sure still be a self-taught cleric, but this guy's not a great example of it.

Sorry. I last read that book ages ago and asked someone else to corroborate a thing I'd read and they were also incorrect. (Sad trombone)

Silver Crusade

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Still, an awesome character.

As to the OP, Clerics are a question of faith, not schooling or rank ^w^


Although not the Golarion setting, Erevis Cale of the Forgotten Realms setting comes to my mind as a cleric that is not a priest.


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There are deities that don't really have organized churches that operate in the open, and yet you can still be a cleric of those deities.

Not just the really squicky evil ones,there's a bunch of non-evil (but generally chaotic) deities whose whole deal tends to not be accepted by polite society.

Like who would tolerate a "Church of the Lantern King" in their community, even if you could find enough devotees of the Lantern King who can get along with each other for an extended period of time.

Liberty's Edge

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Ordained is by your deity.


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PossibleCabbage wrote:

There are deities that don't really have organized churches that operate in the open, and yet you can still be a cleric of those deities.

Not just the really squicky evil ones,there's a bunch of non-evil (but generally chaotic) deities whose whole deal tends to not be accepted by polite society.

Like who would tolerate a "Church of the Lantern King" in their community, even if you could find enough devotees of the Lantern King who can get along with each other for an extended period of time.

On the subject of The Eldest, some of their faiths are also just too loose-nit and spread out to really have a clergy or priestly group in the traditional sense. Ng comes to mind, and it's entirely possible that any given cleric of Shyka is, well, Shyka, instead.

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