Cleric (DSC)

Cleric
Ability Requirements:	Wisdom 11
Prime Requisite: 	Wisdom
Allowed Races: 	All except pterran
Outside the city-states, away from the bureaucracy of the sorcerer-kings and their templars, the most common type of priest is the cleric. All clerics worship the elemental planes and draw their magical energies directly from them. However, the backgrounds and motivations for clerics may be vastly different—the shamans of the halflings, the elemental singers of the elf tribes, and the healers among the herding communities are all dissimilar, but they're all still clerics.
Every cleric must choose one elemental plane as his focus of worship. This choice dictates what spells he can call upon and what types of weapons he prefers to use. A cleric has major access to the sphere of his element of worship and minor access to the Sphere of the Cosmos.
Clerics concentrate their efforts on magical and spiritual pursuits, generally leaving combat to others. However, Athas is a violent world, and practicality dictates that they train in combat as well. Clerics aren't restricted with regard to the armor they may wear. Their weapons of choice are related to their particular elemental plane of worship, as in the following:
* Elemental Plane of Earth. Clerics of the earth are usually the best armed since they can use stone and metal in their weapons. Wood is also acceptable to them since it originally grew in the ground. They may use any weapons made of these materials that are listed in this book or the Player's Handbook.
* Elemental Plane of Air. Since the air doesn't easily lend itself to being made into an offensive weapon, clerics of the air rely instead on weapons that are guided by the air. They may use any sort of bow, blowgun, or sling, regardless of the material used to construct it. Spears are also acceptable and are used as either melee or missile weapons.
* Elemental Plane of Fire. Clerics who worship this plane rely on flaming weapons. Favored weapons include flaming arrows, burning oil, and magical weapons enchanted to somehow burn or scald. Heating metal weapons (when they're available) to cause searing damage is another acceptable practice among fire clerics. Because it was once fused under great pressure and heat, weapons made from obsidian are also acceptable.
* Elemental Plane of Water. Clerics who draw power from this plane recognize water as the bringer of life to the wastes, the originator of all that grows. Therefore, elemental water clerics may use any weapon that is organic in origin, usually wood or bone. They may use bows, clubs, maces, javelins, quarterstaves, spears, and warhammers made from these substances.
Athasian clerics aren't strictly forbidden from using weapons that don't conform to those listed above. However, clerics don't gain their share of group experience awards for creatures they helped defeat using weapons outside those noted in this scheme.
Clerics in the DARK SUN world who have a Wisdom of 16 or more gain a 10% bonus to the experience points they earn. Likewise, clerics conform to many other rules in the Player's Handbook. For instance, elemental clerics have power over undead, just as described in the Player's Handbook. In a DARK SUN campaign, however, undead are classified as either controlled or free-willed, but the cleric's ability to turn or dispel them is the same unless stated differently in an undead monster's description. As undead are outside the natural cycle of life and death, elemental clerics consider them to be abominations (though evil clerics can control them, as stated in the Player's Handbook).
Unlike warriors, Athasian clerics never gain followers simply as a reward for advancing in levels, nor do they ever gain official approval to establish a stronghold. If the DM wishes, however, any of these things may come about as a result of good role-playing. Fortunately, clerics do gain certain powers with regard to their elemental planes of worship as they advance in level, as follows:
* Elemental clerics can ignore the physical effects of the element they worship upon reaching 5th level. The duration of this power is a number of rounds equal to the cleric's level, and it can only be used once per day. Thus, a water cleric may move through water freely, and an earth cleric may pass through stone walls as if they weren't there. Force exerted on the cleric by the element may also be ignored—a great wind won't affect an air cleric, for example, nor would flames burn a fire cleric. This protection extends to everything that the cleric carries on his person at the time.
* A cleric can gate material directly from his elemental plane upon reaching 7th level. The amount of material gated is one cubic foot per level above 6th. The material is a pure specimen from the plane in question: earth, air, fire, or water. The exact nature of the material is in its purest, most basic form. Earth arrives as dense stone, water as pure liquid, fire as cleansing flame, and air in the form of a tremendous cyclonic wind that's capable of knocking down all huge or smaller creatures and lasts one round. The shape of this gated material may be dictated by the cleric (a stone wall one inch thick, a sheet of flame surrounding an altar, etc.), but it can't be gated to a distance more than 50 feet from the cleric. Material may be gated only once per day.
* Though not a granted power, a cleric can conjure elementals from his elemental plane when he reaches 9th level, since conjure elemental is a 5th-level spell in the DARK SUN campaign. The 6th-level spell conjure fire elemental and the 7th-level spell conjure earth elemental have been removed from the DARK SUN priest spell lists.
In all cases where the rules here don't contradict them, the rules for clerics in the Player's Handbook apply.