i should clarify in all fairness that it's technically only 46 pages of Actual Class and the rest is magic items, NPC retainers, play advice, etc. but most of the core Heroes book classes are like 10-15 pages each, so it's still A Lot

now wondering if james introcaso is evil me or i'm evil james introcaso

reading through it always gives me extremely weird deja vu-adjacent feelings, anamnesis-like, as it feels like it was written by Evil Me. like a me from an alternate timeline.

61 pages of Class is definitely about 31 pages more than i'd normally have patience for, but i guess i've just found my new outer limit on bullshit i'm willing to take from a tac trpg class

*yet another vector

i get deep in the paint on this stuff sometimes and flat text fails to convey tone often, so tbc i don't think there's anything good or bad abt this, or abt how clerics work in newer games. just something i keep thinking abt cuz it's much more interesting than the game text seems to think.

yeah absolutely. or if not actively per se, they have done what they need to to structure their faiths—their teachings or the organization of their followings—such that they appeal to Very Particular Types of People. receptive to their way of thinking (and thus their magic). systemic cleric farming.

i see further evidence for this idea in the mechanical difference btwn say warlock in d&d or witch in pf, vs clerics. game text still always claims that the cleric's magic "comes from" the cleric's god, but mechanically this is not supported. magic "coming from" something else looks like a warlock.

a cleric of the Light domain, e.g., is a "Light Human" in a not dissimilar way to how Borsalino is in One Piece.

a low level cleric and a high level cleric differ not just in numbers on a sheet or even, like, time spent on the path, but in how fully "terraformed" they've been by their god. a high level cleric spell slot is a scar left in the malleable human soul, bent out of shape to accept a Divine Vision

the cleric player can still choose whatever spells they want from the large and often contradictory cleric/divine magic spell list, but if they're conforming to their faith (in pf2e this is like, picking fitting cleric feats) their best choices will usually conform to their god's vision of reality.

as faith deepens, connection deepens, and the cleric continues walking the path laid out by their faith, they start to see the world more and more selectively, only through the lens of their god's connection to reality. this gets them stronger magic, higher-lvl class features, w/e, but narrows them.

their god's domains, and their faith in that god's vision of reality (how a god of nature sees the world vs how a god of laws & culture sees the world—i.e., their domains) are channels. they're the starting line and a path laid out before the sorcerer-priest. a blueprint to follow, not a battery.

building off of the differences btwn miracles & sorcery in dark souls (and especially how it's explicitly discussed in demons' souls) i feel like a cleric *is* a sorcerer (not in the literal d&d sense of the word), a person with magical talent built over time that works "their own" magic, but...

traditionally (and even textually) the magic 'comes from their god' but i feel like that's one of those
"oversimplification to the point of being misleading" moments.

in modern games, cleric players choose their own spells. they may get *bonus* shit from the domains they can access, but that's it.