And many people find the excitement of world travel to be pleasurable.
So obviously you can all agree with me that money, travel, and excitement are generally ”good things.”
And since IRL Mercenaries get paid to travel to “exciting” destinations.
Why isn’t everyone lining up to get jobs as mercenaries?!?
Only Adventurers and Vilains typically get spells of 2nd-level or higher. If an NPC has access to those spells, it's usually because they are either active, or retired Adventurers/Villains. Both of those career paths generally have a high mortality rate. So what could possibly be the reason the vast majority of people don't become mercenaries IRL, or adventurers/villains in D&D...? 🤔
Both of those career paths generally have a high mortality rate. So what could possibly be the reason the vast majority of people don't become mercenaries IRL, or adventurers/villains in D&D...? 🤔
After adding italics to your words, I can only think you just demonstrated my point.
Also, why would killiing or routing monsters be the only way to get XP to become a better Cleric? Do doctors IRL become better doctors by going out and hunting bears and wolves or by becoming assassins? No. So logically, there should be ways for someone who wants to make it to 3rd level Cleric without having to go adventuring all the time. I'm not saying it should be easy, but it should certainly be possible to do so. The fact that you are asserting that most NPCs are incapable of getting 2nd level spells is a game world question based on meta-gaming reason. Why are you using meta-gaming to try to explain stuff that happens in the game universe? Could it be maybe because the game logic doesn't line up at all with real world skills and consequences in a believable way once enough people stop to think about it?
I think the disconnect is coming from your equating “enrolling your child into clericship” with sending them to Med School. First off, how many parents can actually send their kids to Med School? Second, what if the child chooses not to go? Third, sending them to the priesthood is one thing. But a Cleric isn’t just a priest. A Cleric is an individual chosen by their god to be their emissary. Neither the parents, nor the child really have much to say about it if a divinity decides not to choose them. 🤷♂️
The traditional experience system is flawed in that it seemingly rewards players for being murderous hobos. This is why AL did away with it. However, we are getting off topic.
I bring up again that most commoner characters don't qualify for class levels. Clerics are chosen by their gods; not just anyone can become a cleric. An acolyte, possibly if they've been faithful for most of their life and are maintaining a church; maybe a priest if in service for longer and they've been particularly virtuous. Almost never a cleric, though.
You also have to factor in lifestyle and background. Farmer Brown was helping his pappy tend to the crops and animals since he was a boy, and as such he has no training for battle and is quite illiterate. He can use a pitchfork and shovel and maybe a crossbow for hunting groundhogs, though, so he *can* defend himself if need be. He's still a commoner, though.
The only class I can imagine just happening at random is a sorcerer, as the potential can be gained way before birth. Even so, most such individuals won't be Divine Souls, so most likely lesser restoration won't be available to them.
But just because common NPCs aren't 'extraordinary' from an ability perspective, doesn't mean they don't have purpose or meaning, except to 'serve or punish' the PCs. They flesh out the world, they help breathe life into the story, they're part of the fabric of the narrative.
Yes, I agree with you there. I am extending the logic that they have purpose and motivation to the supposition that many would have enough brains to figure out that if there is this obviously life-saving magic that you don't have to be Elminster-level adventurer to get, it would follow that any family with multiple children and a steady income would at least want one of those children to go into a profession - like being a Cleric - that would get their family access to some of that awesome.
(Of course, becoming a Druid, Bard, or Paladin would also work. I'm just using Cleric as an example since it's the class most analogous to the medical profession in the D&D universe.)
But that's the issue - it's simply not a choice that one 'makes'. The deity chooses the cleric. Hey, there's nothing wrong with you having NPC families wanting their children to be specifically chosen by the gods to receive divine powers and a direct connection with unfathomable powers. Or even resenting it. Or even holding them in absolute reverence. But it's just not an option for most.
1.2 billion Roman Catholics hold the Pope in such regard; but I think most probably acknowledge that they'll never hold that position. 266 people have ever had the title - and I'm sure the vast majority would say that it was not a life they chose, but were called to.
You can say the same about any of the magic classes. A Paladin makes a choice - but more than that - an oath with such conviction, that it grants power. Again, you might think families would encourage children to have such conviction in something, to get a slice of that divine pie. But it's more than just an oath, it's a way of life that's so committed to a cause, that burns so strongly within the soul of a paladin, that it is the very essence of their reason for living. If a family could push a child to such an oath, they're probably in your party.
If there are multiple deities and all those deities want worshipers, what is their incentive to only confer divine magic powers only to a very tiny fraction of their faithful? If the gods are at all competitive - and I've read nothing in the official lore would be counter to such an idea - and all clerics of all gods all get access to the core Cleric spells, then wouldn't God Epsilon who only names 1 cleric out of 10,000 faithful be at a distinct disadvantage to God Zeta, who is willing to name 1 cleric per 1,000 faithful? If the rumor was that God Zeta is far more likely to allow their acolytes to learn real divine magic, wouldn't God Zeta get more worshipers in the long run?
I'm not arguing that every deity would want to grant magic power to every acolyte in their temple, but assuming that gods want worshipers and worshipers are people who want to help their families, friends and neighbors, and LR is a reliable spell all the time, it would seem that there should not be a shortage of magic-users who can utilize 2nd level healing and restorative magic if you are in a city with a positive reputation and a few temples.
On a related note, the PHB says that Holy water is made with a 1 hour ritual and uses a 1st level spell slot. It costs 25 gp while a potion of Healing costs 50 gp. The material components of Holy water include 25 gp worth of powdered silver. I'm not a mathematician, but from this information, I'm going to assume several things. 1) At any temple that sells Holy water at that price, there are at least 3 clerics per temple, and at least one of them is tasked with making several flasks of Holy water per day as part of their regular duties. 2) Considering the cost of materials and amount of time that it takes just to make a single flask of Holy water, most temples are actually losing money by making and selling it at 25 gp. 3) The fact that a temple will make something at net cost to themselves means that their god probably has a significant incentive to prevent a plague of undead from emerging. Are we in agreement on these points?
Now in comparison, Lesser Restoration is a 2nd level spell that costs nothing to cast. If most families are poor and have no means of sending any of their multiple children to apprentice at a temple, and are indeed illiterate, it's not too far off the mark to assume that sickness and disease are fairly common conditions for a sizable percentage of those poor people. (As it was during the actual Middle Ages.) So comparing the effort it takes to cast LR and the resources of time, money, and raw materials it takes to create a flask of holy water, it sounds like most of you are telling me that the supposedly Good and Neutral gods would much rather that the communities around their temples get sick and die of diseases easily prevented by casting a 2nd level spell here and there (probably not for free but still) rather than to incentivize people to join their holy order and grant healing powers equivalent to a 3rd level cleric in such quantities to their faithful so as to prevent a plague from being caused by non-undead disease. Am I getting that right?
You bring up some interesting points, if a bit off topic. However, there are some flaws in these arguments.
1) Gods have strict rules to follow. In the Forgotten Realms, most deities that interact with mortals (and that mortals are even aware of) are lesser deities. Greater deities are ones like Ao, the Overgod, who enforce these cosmic rules, and even THEY have bosses to answer to (one is referred to as The Luminescent Being). Ao doesn't have any clerics; he has no use for them, for his job is above and beyond mortal comprehension and capabilities. It's safe to assume that a god can maintain only a limited number of clerics at a time, in proportion to how much divine power said god has.
2) I believe how much divine power a god has is proportional not only to how many followers it has, but also how much influence their portfolio has on the planes of existence. A world untouched by civilization will likely grant a nature god a lot more leeway in what it can do than one that's covered in a metallic casing of technology and hollowed out by industry.
3) The production of holy water is described in the PHB as a method done by clerics and paladins for the sake of players making it. That's not to say that an acolyte or a priest cannot also make holy water. It's a lot like brewing a potion of healing; it has a requirement for a player character to meet for its production. NPCs aren't player characters. As for the pricing, that's a good topic for debate, though I doubt the clergy of Vecna are making holy water for any reason.
4) The cost for casting lesser restoration is the time and effort spent on becoming magically powerful enough to use level 2 spell slots. For most priests, that's quite a sizable investment. I'd assume most acolytes don't get to that point, either by succumbing to said diseases themselves, getting slaughtered in orc raids or being led off the straight-and-narrow virtuous path.
If there are multiple deities and all those deities want worshipers, what is their incentive to only confer divine magic powers only to a very tiny fraction of their faithful? If the gods are at all competitive - and I've read nothing in the official lore would be counter to such an idea - and all clerics of all gods all get access to the core Cleric spells, then wouldn't God Epsilon who only names 1 cleric out of 10,000 faithful be at a distinct disadvantage to God Zeta, who is willing to name 1 cleric per 1,000 faithful? If the rumor was that God Zeta is far more likely to allow their acolytes to learn real divine magic, wouldn't God Zeta get more worshipers in the long run?
I'm not arguing that every deity would want to grant magic power to every acolyte in their temple, but assuming that gods want worshipers and worshipers are people who want to help their families, friends and neighbors, and LR is a reliable spell all the time, it would seem that there should not be a shortage of magic-users who can utilize 2nd level healing and restorative magic if you are in a city with a positive reputation and a few temples.
On a related note, the PHB says that Holy water is made with a 1 hour ritual and uses a 1st level spell slot. It costs 25 gp while a potion of Healing costs 50 gp. The material components of Holy water include 25 gp worth of powdered silver. I'm not a mathematician, but from this information, I'm going to assume several things. 1) At any temple that sells Holy water at that price, there are at least 3 clerics per temple, and at least one of them is tasked with making several flasks of Holy water per day as part of their regular duties. 2) Considering the cost of materials and amount of time that it takes just to make a single flask of Holy water, most temples are actually losing money by making and selling it at 25 gp. 3) The fact that a temple will make something at net cost to themselves means that their god probably has a significant incentive to prevent a plague of undead from emerging. Are we in agreement on these points?
Now in comparison, Lesser Restoration is a 2nd level spell that costs nothing to cast. If most families are poor and have no means of sending any of their multiple children to apprentice at a temple, and are indeed illiterate, it's not too far off the mark to assume that sickness and disease are fairly common conditions for a sizable percentage of those poor people. (As it was during the actual Middle Ages.) So comparing the effort it takes to cast LR and the resources of time, money, and raw materials it takes to create a flask of holy water, it sounds like most of you are telling me that the supposedly Good and Neutral gods would much rather that the communities around their temples get sick and die of diseases easily prevented by casting a 2nd level spell here and there (probably not for free but still) rather than to incentivize people to join their holy order and grant healing powers equivalent to a 3rd level cleric in such quantities to their faithful so as to prevent a plague from being caused by non-undead disease. Am I getting that right?
Although this is a pretty good argument, I counter you with this: Undeath IS a bigger threat to Gods, Demons, Devils and other powerful beings with followers, than actual death is. Because if followers live, they serve their patrons. If they die, they go to the afterlife, and serve their patrons. If the undead rise in numbers, very FEW powerful beings are happy about this. So yeah, holy water sold at cost is a more reasonable priority than training up followers to cast Lesto Resto.
The issue I'm talking about is not only involving major PC plothooks, but also that it makes creating variables for NPC encounters also less interesting without going to extremes. Would anybody believe that a city of size of Baldur's Gate would be seriously threatened by a plague? If you have a half dozen temples stocked with level 3 and up Clerics, that gets rid of the threat fairly easily right?
Not really. Baldur's Gate is a city of 120,000+ people. A half-dozen temples with even a couple dozen 3rd+ clerics could only manage to cure a tiny fraction on any given day, and that assumes all of those clerics would be willing and not concerned with using those spells for something else. Evil temples/clerics might still agree but charge exorbitant prices or place other unsavory demands on those petitioning for aid, which may even suggest a reasoning for them to be the culprits behind disease outbreaks.
2) I believe how much divine power a god has is proportional not only to how many followers it has, but also how much influence their portfolio has on the planes of existence. A world untouched by civilization will likely grant a nature god a lot more leeway in what it can do than one that's covered in a metallic casing of technology and hollowed out by industry.
3) The production of holy water is described in the PHB as a method done by clerics and paladins for the sake of players making it. That's not to say that an acolyte or a priest cannot also make holy water. It's a lot like brewing a potion of healing; it has a requirement for a player character to meet for its production. NPCs aren't player characters. As for the pricing, that's a good topic for debate, though I doubt the clergy of Vecna are making holy water for any reason.
Not that these are not plausible, but I'm pretty sure these are very dependent on how the DM sees the role of gods and healing magicks in the world/universe. They are not supported by any rules as written that I know of. I'm not arguing here based on individual DM table lore. Obvs., I could nerf LR at my table if I wanted to, but that's not the point of the discussion is it?
If there are multiple deities and all those deities want worshipers, what is their incentive to only confer divine magic powers only to a very tiny fraction of their faithful? If the gods are at all competitive - and I've read nothing in the official lore would be counter to such an idea - and all clerics of all gods all get access to the core Cleric spells, then wouldn't God Epsilon who only names 1 cleric out of 10,000 faithful be at a distinct disadvantage to God Zeta, who is willing to name 1 cleric per 1,000 faithful? If the rumor was that God Zeta is far more likely to allow their acolytes to learn real divine magic, wouldn't God Zeta get more worshipers in the long run?
I'm not arguing that every deity would want to grant magic power to every acolyte in their temple, but assuming that gods want worshipers and worshipers are people who want to help their families, friends and neighbors, and LR is a reliable spell all the time, it would seem that there should not be a shortage of magic-users who can utilize 2nd level healing and restorative magic if you are in a city with a positive reputation and a few temples.
On a related note, the PHB says that Holy water is made with a 1 hour ritual and uses a 1st level spell slot. It costs 25 gp while a potion of Healing costs 50 gp. The material components of Holy water include 25 gp worth of powdered silver. I'm not a mathematician, but from this information, I'm going to assume several things. 1) At any temple that sells Holy water at that price, there are at least 3 clerics per temple, and at least one of them is tasked with making several flasks of Holy water per day as part of their regular duties. 2) Considering the cost of materials and amount of time that it takes just to make a single flask of Holy water, most temples are actually losing money by making and selling it at 25 gp. 3) The fact that a temple will make something at net cost to themselves means that their god probably has a significant incentive to prevent a plague of undead from emerging. Are we in agreement on these points?
Now in comparison, Lesser Restoration is a 2nd level spell that costs nothing to cast. If most families are poor and have no means of sending any of their multiple children to apprentice at a temple, and are indeed illiterate, it's not too far off the mark to assume that sickness and disease are fairly common conditions for a sizable percentage of those poor people. (As it was during the actual Middle Ages.) So comparing the effort it takes to cast LR and the resources of time, money, and raw materials it takes to create a flask of holy water, it sounds like most of you are telling me that the supposedly Good and Neutral gods would much rather that the communities around their temples get sick and die of diseases easily prevented by casting a 2nd level spell here and there (probably not for free but still) rather than to incentivize people to join their holy order and grant healing powers equivalent to a 3rd level cleric in such quantities to their faithful so as to prevent a plague from being caused by non-undead disease. Am I getting that right?
Although this is a pretty good argument, I counter you with this: Undeath IS a bigger threat to Gods, Demons, Devils and other powerful beings with followers, than actual death is. Because if followers live, they serve their patrons. If they die, they go to the afterlife, and serve their patrons. If the undead rise in numbers, very FEW powerful beings are happy about this. So yeah, holy water sold at cost is a more reasonable priority than training up followers to cast Lesto Resto.
I can see the sweep of your argument, and it makes sense to a point. Most diseases that kill people won't turn them into undead and the bodies of the dead essentially become fertilizer (eventually) for plants, which get eaten by animals, etc. The circle of life. <Cue "Lion King" music.> So, yes, I can see a deity saying to other deities: "Hey, let's not uplift too many acolytes to the level of actual clerics. We still want the humanoid-influenced ecosystem to be functional in the long run. " Maybe. There would probably still be some underlying tension, though, between the somewhat divergent goals of attracting new worshipers, keeping worshipers satisfied, and concerns over ecological imbalance due to giving too many worshipers access to healing and restorative magic. And what I mean by "keeping worshipers satisfied" would probably include something like enabling a sufficient # of them to access "the good stuff" that they know is accessible to some of the faithful so as to prevent the people they know from dying at a young age of diseases easily curable with LR. People who go into religious service are still people after all. Most still have relationships to people outside of their temple. Not just family members, but also friends they know from other activities. And quite a few acolytes would likely be very disappointed in their god if their god clearly did nothing while their best friends and family members died of a disease easily done away with using a spell that has no resource cost other than a spell slot. One of the frequent criticisms leveled at religion IRL is that "well, if your god is so wonderful and Good, then why did you allow my _______ to die???" Now I'm not trying to debate the merits of real life religion here, but you can probably see where A) knowing that heal disease magic exists, B) knowing that heal disease magic works 100% without fail and C) knowing that the deities in the D&D-universe are the ones who grant such power would create a very strong incentive for people to expect their deity that they are ever-so-faithful-to to help them out if their family member or close friend is dying of an easily (by PC standards) curable sickness. And if the gods allowed a city to be decimated by a plague? Well, you can expect the surviving populace of that city to largely abandon their former gods in favor of whatever gods the party divine spellcasters worship when they ride in to save the day.
I play a Grave Cleric of Kelemvor and when you look up the god, it pretty much informed my post and addressed your questions. Not that every Deity would see things the same way though. Here's the text.
Kelemvor
The Lord of the Dead, the Judge of the Damned
Kelemvor is seen as a just, fair, and comforting god of death. Death comes to all, and when it occurs Kelemvor is there to take each soul by the hand and lead it to the proper afterlife. Kelemvor’s priests teach that those who revere the gods according to the rites of their religion have done their proper service and will be offered the afterlife they seek.
The faithful of Kelemvor provide people with peaceful transitions into the care of the Lord of the Dead. They help the dying put their affairs in order, and they officiate at funeral rites for those who can’t afford the lavish ceremonies of their faith. The tenets of Kelemvor’s faithful compel them to forestall or prevent untimely deaths whenever possible. Different sects and worshipers define “untimely” in different ways. One group might concentrate on stopping the spread of disease, another on the prevention of murder, and yet another on eliminating the scourge of the undead. In fact, all the faithful of Kelemvor despise the undead and work to some degree to eliminate them, for undead of any sort are seen as an abomination of the natural order. This belief obviously puts Kelemvor’s faithful at odds with necromancers, priests of Myrkul, and others who promote the creation of the undead, and it also causes conflict from unexpected sources. For instance, priests of Kelemvor routinely destroy any writings about the creation of the undead that they find — an act that offends those who value knowledge for its own sake, such as the faithful of Oghma and Deneir. And there also exist undead that aren’t evil, such as the baelnorn, which the elves consider holy. Kelemvor’s devotees seek the end of such beings regardless of that fact.
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That’s metaphorically akin saying this:
Only Adventurers and Vilains typically get spells of 2nd-level or higher. If an NPC has access to those spells, it's usually because they are either active, or retired Adventurers/Villains. Both of those career paths generally have a high mortality rate. So what could possibly be the reason the vast majority of people don't become mercenaries IRL, or adventurers/villains in D&D...? 🤔
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After adding italics to your words, I can only think you just demonstrated my point.
Also, why would killiing or routing monsters be the only way to get XP to become a better Cleric? Do doctors IRL become better doctors by going out and hunting bears and wolves or by becoming assassins? No. So logically, there should be ways for someone who wants to make it to 3rd level Cleric without having to go adventuring all the time. I'm not saying it should be easy, but it should certainly be possible to do so. The fact that you are asserting that most NPCs are incapable of getting 2nd level spells is a game world question based on meta-gaming reason. Why are you using meta-gaming to try to explain stuff that happens in the game universe? Could it be maybe because the game logic doesn't line up at all with real world skills and consequences in a believable way once enough people stop to think about it?
I think the disconnect is coming from your equating “enrolling your child into clericship” with sending them to Med School. First off, how many parents can actually send their kids to Med School? Second, what if the child chooses not to go? Third, sending them to the priesthood is one thing. But a Cleric isn’t just a priest. A Cleric is an individual chosen by their god to be their emissary. Neither the parents, nor the child really have much to say about it if a divinity decides not to choose them. 🤷♂️
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The traditional experience system is flawed in that it seemingly rewards players for being murderous hobos. This is why AL did away with it. However, we are getting off topic.
I bring up again that most commoner characters don't qualify for class levels. Clerics are chosen by their gods; not just anyone can become a cleric. An acolyte, possibly if they've been faithful for most of their life and are maintaining a church; maybe a priest if in service for longer and they've been particularly virtuous. Almost never a cleric, though.
You also have to factor in lifestyle and background. Farmer Brown was helping his pappy tend to the crops and animals since he was a boy, and as such he has no training for battle and is quite illiterate. He can use a pitchfork and shovel and maybe a crossbow for hunting groundhogs, though, so he *can* defend himself if need be. He's still a commoner, though.
The only class I can imagine just happening at random is a sorcerer, as the potential can be gained way before birth. Even so, most such individuals won't be Divine Souls, so most likely lesser restoration won't be available to them.
But that's the issue - it's simply not a choice that one 'makes'. The deity chooses the cleric. Hey, there's nothing wrong with you having NPC families wanting their children to be specifically chosen by the gods to receive divine powers and a direct connection with unfathomable powers. Or even resenting it. Or even holding them in absolute reverence. But it's just not an option for most.
1.2 billion Roman Catholics hold the Pope in such regard; but I think most probably acknowledge that they'll never hold that position. 266 people have ever had the title - and I'm sure the vast majority would say that it was not a life they chose, but were called to.
You can say the same about any of the magic classes. A Paladin makes a choice - but more than that - an oath with such conviction, that it grants power. Again, you might think families would encourage children to have such conviction in something, to get a slice of that divine pie. But it's more than just an oath, it's a way of life that's so committed to a cause, that burns so strongly within the soul of a paladin, that it is the very essence of their reason for living. If a family could push a child to such an oath, they're probably in your party.
If there are multiple deities and all those deities want worshipers, what is their incentive to only confer divine magic powers only to a very tiny fraction of their faithful? If the gods are at all competitive - and I've read nothing in the official lore would be counter to such an idea - and all clerics of all gods all get access to the core Cleric spells, then wouldn't God Epsilon who only names 1 cleric out of 10,000 faithful be at a distinct disadvantage to God Zeta, who is willing to name 1 cleric per 1,000 faithful? If the rumor was that God Zeta is far more likely to allow their acolytes to learn real divine magic, wouldn't God Zeta get more worshipers in the long run?
I'm not arguing that every deity would want to grant magic power to every acolyte in their temple, but assuming that gods want worshipers and worshipers are people who want to help their families, friends and neighbors, and LR is a reliable spell all the time, it would seem that there should not be a shortage of magic-users who can utilize 2nd level healing and restorative magic if you are in a city with a positive reputation and a few temples.
On a related note, the PHB says that Holy water is made with a 1 hour ritual and uses a 1st level spell slot. It costs 25 gp while a potion of Healing costs 50 gp. The material components of Holy water include 25 gp worth of powdered silver. I'm not a mathematician, but from this information, I'm going to assume several things. 1) At any temple that sells Holy water at that price, there are at least 3 clerics per temple, and at least one of them is tasked with making several flasks of Holy water per day as part of their regular duties. 2) Considering the cost of materials and amount of time that it takes just to make a single flask of Holy water, most temples are actually losing money by making and selling it at 25 gp. 3) The fact that a temple will make something at net cost to themselves means that their god probably has a significant incentive to prevent a plague of undead from emerging. Are we in agreement on these points?
Now in comparison, Lesser Restoration is a 2nd level spell that costs nothing to cast. If most families are poor and have no means of sending any of their multiple children to apprentice at a temple, and are indeed illiterate, it's not too far off the mark to assume that sickness and disease are fairly common conditions for a sizable percentage of those poor people. (As it was during the actual Middle Ages.) So comparing the effort it takes to cast LR and the resources of time, money, and raw materials it takes to create a flask of holy water, it sounds like most of you are telling me that the supposedly Good and Neutral gods would much rather that the communities around their temples get sick and die of diseases easily prevented by casting a 2nd level spell here and there (probably not for free but still) rather than to incentivize people to join their holy order and grant healing powers equivalent to a 3rd level cleric in such quantities to their faithful so as to prevent a plague from being caused by non-undead disease. Am I getting that right?
You bring up some interesting points, if a bit off topic. However, there are some flaws in these arguments.
1) Gods have strict rules to follow. In the Forgotten Realms, most deities that interact with mortals (and that mortals are even aware of) are lesser deities. Greater deities are ones like Ao, the Overgod, who enforce these cosmic rules, and even THEY have bosses to answer to (one is referred to as The Luminescent Being). Ao doesn't have any clerics; he has no use for them, for his job is above and beyond mortal comprehension and capabilities. It's safe to assume that a god can maintain only a limited number of clerics at a time, in proportion to how much divine power said god has.
2) I believe how much divine power a god has is proportional not only to how many followers it has, but also how much influence their portfolio has on the planes of existence. A world untouched by civilization will likely grant a nature god a lot more leeway in what it can do than one that's covered in a metallic casing of technology and hollowed out by industry.
3) The production of holy water is described in the PHB as a method done by clerics and paladins for the sake of players making it. That's not to say that an acolyte or a priest cannot also make holy water. It's a lot like brewing a potion of healing; it has a requirement for a player character to meet for its production. NPCs aren't player characters. As for the pricing, that's a good topic for debate, though I doubt the clergy of Vecna are making holy water for any reason.
4) The cost for casting lesser restoration is the time and effort spent on becoming magically powerful enough to use level 2 spell slots. For most priests, that's quite a sizable investment. I'd assume most acolytes don't get to that point, either by succumbing to said diseases themselves, getting slaughtered in orc raids or being led off the straight-and-narrow virtuous path.
Although this is a pretty good argument, I counter you with this: Undeath IS a bigger threat to Gods, Demons, Devils and other powerful beings with followers, than actual death is. Because if followers live, they serve their patrons. If they die, they go to the afterlife, and serve their patrons. If the undead rise in numbers, very FEW powerful beings are happy about this. So yeah, holy water sold at cost is a more reasonable priority than training up followers to cast Lesto Resto.
Not really. Baldur's Gate is a city of 120,000+ people. A half-dozen temples with even a couple dozen 3rd+ clerics could only manage to cure a tiny fraction on any given day, and that assumes all of those clerics would be willing and not concerned with using those spells for something else. Evil temples/clerics might still agree but charge exorbitant prices or place other unsavory demands on those petitioning for aid, which may even suggest a reasoning for them to be the culprits behind disease outbreaks.
Not that these are not plausible, but I'm pretty sure these are very dependent on how the DM sees the role of gods and healing magicks in the world/universe. They are not supported by any rules as written that I know of. I'm not arguing here based on individual DM table lore. Obvs., I could nerf LR at my table if I wanted to, but that's not the point of the discussion is it?
I can see the sweep of your argument, and it makes sense to a point. Most diseases that kill people won't turn them into undead and the bodies of the dead essentially become fertilizer (eventually) for plants, which get eaten by animals, etc. The circle of life. <Cue "Lion King" music.> So, yes, I can see a deity saying to other deities: "Hey, let's not uplift too many acolytes to the level of actual clerics. We still want the humanoid-influenced ecosystem to be functional in the long run. " Maybe. There would probably still be some underlying tension, though, between the somewhat divergent goals of attracting new worshipers, keeping worshipers satisfied, and concerns over ecological imbalance due to giving too many worshipers access to healing and restorative magic. And what I mean by "keeping worshipers satisfied" would probably include something like enabling a sufficient # of them to access "the good stuff" that they know is accessible to some of the faithful so as to prevent the people they know from dying at a young age of diseases easily curable with LR. People who go into religious service are still people after all. Most still have relationships to people outside of their temple. Not just family members, but also friends they know from other activities. And quite a few acolytes would likely be very disappointed in their god if their god clearly did nothing while their best friends and family members died of a disease easily done away with using a spell that has no resource cost other than a spell slot. One of the frequent criticisms leveled at religion IRL is that "well, if your god is so wonderful and Good, then why did you allow my _______ to die???" Now I'm not trying to debate the merits of real life religion here, but you can probably see where A) knowing that heal disease magic exists, B) knowing that heal disease magic works 100% without fail and C) knowing that the deities in the D&D-universe are the ones who grant such power would create a very strong incentive for people to expect their deity that they are ever-so-faithful-to to help them out if their family member or close friend is dying of an easily (by PC standards) curable sickness. And if the gods allowed a city to be decimated by a plague? Well, you can expect the surviving populace of that city to largely abandon their former gods in favor of whatever gods the party divine spellcasters worship when they ride in to save the day.
I play a Grave Cleric of Kelemvor and when you look up the god, it pretty much informed my post and addressed your questions. Not that every Deity would see things the same way though. Here's the text.
Kelemvor
Kelemvor is seen as a just, fair, and comforting god of death. Death comes to all, and when it occurs Kelemvor is there to take each soul by the hand and lead it to the proper afterlife. Kelemvor’s priests teach that those who revere the gods according to the rites of their religion have done their proper service and will be offered the afterlife they seek.
The faithful of Kelemvor provide people with peaceful transitions into the care of the Lord of the Dead. They help the dying put their affairs in order, and they officiate at funeral rites for those who can’t afford the lavish ceremonies of their faith. The tenets of Kelemvor’s faithful compel them to forestall or prevent untimely deaths whenever possible. Different sects and worshipers define “untimely” in different ways. One group might concentrate on stopping the spread of disease, another on the prevention of murder, and yet another on eliminating the scourge of the undead. In fact, all the faithful of Kelemvor despise the undead and work to some degree to eliminate them, for undead of any sort are seen as an abomination of the natural order. This belief obviously puts Kelemvor’s faithful at odds with necromancers, priests of Myrkul, and others who promote the creation of the undead, and it also causes conflict from unexpected sources. For instance, priests of Kelemvor routinely destroy any writings about the creation of the undead that they find — an act that offends those who value knowledge for its own sake, such as the faithful of Oghma and Deneir. And there also exist undead that aren’t evil, such as the baelnorn, which the elves consider holy. Kelemvor’s devotees seek the end of such beings regardless of that fact.