Re-Examining the Cleric's Healing Spells

This post originally appeared on September 16, 2017.

Miraculous spells should look miraculous. They ought to require the utmost faith from their practitioners. They ought to reside half the distance between God and Death.

 

I'm no James Raggi, but the miracles in my imagination look way cooler than the generic ones in the several spell lists of D&D. Maybe you will like them and pick them up for your weird game (or normal game for that matter!)

Cure Light Wounds by Dabrood Thompson

Cure Spells

When the Cleric casts a spell from the Cure Light Wounds family, he speaks the name of the deity and asks for succor holding his holy symbol fast in his right hand. Then he jams the symbol right into this left wrist, and rends his own flesh down the inside of his arm!

Cure Disease and Restoration

The Cleric removes his armor and if possible his garments underneath. He places the recipient of the spell on her back, stands astride her, and falls to his knees. The holy man speaks the name of the deity and begs for protection while holding his holy symbol forth to the sky in both hands. Then he jams the holy symbol right into his own heart!

     The Cleric then pulls the holy symbol down his chest, forming a crease.  He sticks his hands inside and pulls apart his mantle, spilling vital organs over the recipient. It hurts him just as it would if he were not a holy man. When the recipient is so doused in blood and gristle, the Cleric pulls his vital organs back within his chest, and the deity heals him. The spell's target is whole once again.

Raise Dead and Resurrection

The big ones. The Cleric and the dead man are dressed in fine gold-embroidered white vestments. The Cleric lays down on a pallet or straw placed upon the ground and his charge placed next to him, against his body. When their temperatures have equalized, the Cleric grasps the hand of the dead man.  He prays for a few minutes, and then an assistant jams a golden awl into this neck, severing his carotid artery in a messy deluge.

     The Cleric breathes out his last. He is dead in minutes. Then, upon reaching the Realm of the Dead, he begins the search for the soul of the recipient of the spell. Should he find this soul and convince it to return to the Mortal Realm, the two souls will return and be placed again in their fragile vessels by the deity. If the Cleric cannot, he will return alone.

      Even though only a day passes here in our world, 100 years pass in the Realm of the Dead. Time passes differently there, and in 700 years' time, the departed soul surely has come to terms with its own death and has acclimated to the afterlife. This is why it is impossible to Raise someone gone for more than a few days' time.

Cause Wounds Spells

On the other hand, Cause Wounds is a lot like Anakin Skywalker doing a creepy Force Choke. The anti-Cleric calls out to his Dark God with his unholy dagger in his left hand, and grasps out with infernal Force at the vitals and wind pipe of his victim! The victim gags and feels the cold fingers of death around his neck, brain or heart.

     Cause Wounds spells operate at a distance and they are much cleaner and more clinical than their holy counterparts. When used on the restless dead, the disembodied force hand bolsters the undead, and knits together that which has been torn asunder by age, magic, and weapons. Neither version makes a sound or leaves a mark upon its target.

The Finger of Death

 

The accursed Finger of Death is performed when the anti-Cleric calls upon his Dark God and offers his own eternal servitude (for his soul is almost always owned by his God or another outsider already) in exchange for the chance to give his master the gift of another's.

     Dark energy courses into the body of the anti-Cleric as he recites litanies, backwards, in a loud voice.  These energies form up upon the left fist of the foul fiend. Then, as if throwing a black fire ball, the dark metropolitan casts forth this ball of pure evil toward the body of his victim. The ball cleaves the pale yellow-white soul from the victim's body, and then the anti-Cleric summons the soul to him with a beckoning finger. 

     After savoring this soul for just a moment, the anti-Cleric releases it into the Earth with a splash of dark eldritch power, where it is devoured by his dark master for all eternity. All that is left of the victim's life energy is a smoldering blue ember on the ground.