Kicking the Cleric to the Curb, Pathfinder Style

Okay, so I was just reading an interesting ramble free-form essay over at Rachel Bonuses on her dissatisfaction with the D&D style cleric and whether you could just get rid of it.  I don't often hear people wanting to get rid of the class altogether.  More often it's a question of how to fix it.  I've never been happy with D&D style clerics because even with the addition of domain spells they are much too generic.  I like playing the class, but I want holy priestly types to be more focused on their deity's portfolio.

An obvious retort to eliminating the class is who's going to do the healing then?  Well, without a cleric it's down to the paladin, ranger, and druid for heals. Fine, but for me the paladin class is really a companion to the pseudo-Christian cleric so it would seem odd to have paladins if there were no clerics.  And what if you're doing an urban campaign?  Rangers and druids are an awkward fit.  And anyway the limited healing from these three classes will alter play in ways which might not suit you.

I think that if you're getting rid of the classic cleric class (and maybe classic paladin as well) then you should look at the oracle and witch classes as in Pathfinder.  In my buddy Steve's game I'm playing a healy witch (which I've blogged about here and here) and my friend Kirk is playing a healy type oracle.  And that's actually working out quite well.  Okay, we do have a cleric in the party but she's lawful evil and doesn't do healing.

But healing aside there is the wider question of being a holy type person for various deity-like entities, large or small, in a polytheistic setting.  The witch and oracle classes address than quite weill.  The Pathfinder witch class has "patrons" which are essentially single-domain deities; there are a lot of them:
Agility
Ancestors
Animals
Boundaries
Death
Deception
Devotion
Elements
Enchantment
Endurance
Healing
Insanity
Light
Moon
Occult
Peace
Plague
Portents
Shadow
Spirits
Stars
Strength
Time
Transformation
Trickery
Vengeance
Water
Winter
Wisdom

At every even level the witch learns an extra spell from the patron's themed list.  You could give the patron deities wider portfolios by giving deities several patron "domains" and then the player selects one spell from the multiple "domains" available--a sort of hybrid gestalt class.  In addition, the DM could declare certain arcane spells and/or hexes to be mandatory or off-limits based on the patron theme.  A witch with a Shadow patron must take any darkness-associated spells or hexes and may not take any light-associated ones.

Pathfinder oracles choose a "mystery" from a listing which presents natural "domains"; and these could be doubled-up as for the witch to make for more multi-faceted deities.  There are plenty to choose from:
Ancestor
Battle
Bones
Dark Tapestry
Flame
Heavens
Juju
Life
Lore
Lunar
Metal
Nature
Occult
Outer Rifts
Spellscar
Stone
Time
Waves
Wind
Winter
Wood


So right there you have an easy way to replace the classic way-too-generic cleric with very non-generic holy types.  To that I'd add Pathfinder druids but make them take a domain for their "nature bond" rather than an animal companion.

Another option is to consider the summoner class as a clerical type.  The class description notes: "This practitioner of the arcane arts forms a close bond with one particular outsider, known as an eidolon...Over time, the two become linked, eventually even sharing a shard of the same soul."  Yeah, I'm pretty sure that "eidolon" is actually some sort of demon.  So that would make summoners actually demon-worshippers who've sold their souls!  Nice.