Githzerai Faith

I think a githzerai cleric dedicated to the Source or the Cadence of the Planes or the Great Unknown would be fun.

Normally, I get the impression that zerths fill the role of clerics in githzerai society, and they don't actually have the cleric class, seeking as they do to emulate Zerthimon.

Which kind of got me thinking. The source of magic or divination. i have heard magic described in technical terms as various combinations of symbols, positive and negative energy. When you think of rituals they are a combination of symbols. I used to think that the difference between wizard and a cleric was the source of their magic. The cleric came from a Deity while the wizard's came from the elements and through careful study of dusty tomes and scrolls.

Can you be a cleric a worship an idea?

Well, when one thinks of a druid or shaman that is pretty much what you have. If you have read anything on Gaia, it describes a set of processes which make up what we think of as the Earth or to be more exact nature. The idea that everything is interconnected.

So could you have a cleric that worships what the Jedi might call "The Force". The tree, the rock, the river, the Force flows through all things. It doesn't have a plane or a castle per say, other than the prime material, but it does have "Servents". In this sense faith could be reaching out with the mind beyond what your senses can touch, feel, see, smell, or taste.

If you brought back to our plane because after all I am clueless. Is the Dalai Lama any less of a Holy Man because he may not believe in a Deity?

Living should be perpetual and universal benediction. - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei

The unbroken circle, yes I have read it many times. Githzerai are quite interesting. They are an extremely orderly (Lawful) race and yet they make their home in pure chaos. Was that so they flayers would not follow? Does anyone know the reason behind mentioning the "poison stemmed grasses"? Also in the story they did the opposite of the riddle of steel.

One would think they would be a little upset. They were basically fed upon by an alien race and no one came to save them. I would be interested to hear how the Flayers did it. You get the feeling that they were conquered.

While individual githzerai are usually CN, their society and habitations are typically described in more of a LN fashion (bastions of contemplative order in Limbo's chaotic maelstrom).

Githzerai are paradoxical enough that depending on which traits you emphasize, they're chaotic and orderly simultaneously. They've been described as "monastic" since 1st edition, and their anarchs create zones of comparative order within Limbo's bedlam (the "calm within the storm"). At the same time, they're fanatically devoted to maintaining their freedom at all costs, letting no law stand in their way of preserving their personal and collective independence. They can be intensely disciplined and focused, but they're just as intensely passionate; the Expanded Psionics Handbook suggests wilder as their favored psionic class for a reason. Many become Xaositects and wild mages, embracing the chaos of their home plane, while others become monks and psions, looking toward the calm and stability within themselves.

"Unaligned" in 4e replaces the old chaotic neutral and lawful neutral alignments, as well as the old neutral alignment. Depending on the context, it can mean any of these, or refer to characters who lean toward good or evil but not too hard.

Well, many githzerai have belonged to the monk class since Charles Stross invented them for 1st edition; they simply broke the rules and were permitted to be chaotic monks at the time. I think githzerai culture is clear and consistent; it's just something that is chaotic from some perspectives and lawful from others. The fact that it doesn't match the stereotypes of others of what the chaotic alignment means doesn't mean they aren't internally consistent.

Nah, I don't agree. There were many reasons why githzerai were seen as an orderly race; their monkishness was just one of them. A lot of it is just the fact that anything short of a chaos beast is going to seem orderly compared to Limbo, but there's a lot of other stuff - their despotic god-king, the rigid circles of Shr'akt'lor, the fact that they need to bring order and social cohesion to the anarchy of Limbo in order to even survive on that plane. Even if someone invented a "chaotic monk" class, they would still seem like an orderly race in many respects.

I think, rather, the problem (if there is one, and I don't agree that there is) is the ambiguity inherent in the alignment system itself. Just as orcs could be redefined from lawful evil in 2nd edition to chaotic evil in 3rd edition without really changing anything about them, and just as drow could be redefined from chaotic evil to neutral evil without any of the lore surrounding them being touched, githzerai could be reinterpreted as "any neutral" without any violence being done to their culture as it was established in the game. Alignment is open enough to interpretation that the exact same fluff description can apply equally to several different alignments. And I don't think that's a bad thing at all, at least when we're not talking about demons and guardinals and the like. Mortal races shouldn't fit alignment stereotypes exactly.

There's actually a much more rigid line between inner planes and outer planes in 4th edition than there was in 3rd edition. In 3rd edition, both the inner planes and outer planes were equally accessible to the Astral, making the difference between them essentially a matter of opinion. If both are accessed through color pools, who's to say they're not in the same place? Both kinds of the planes could be accessed through Ethereal curtains, too. In 4th edition, the elemental realms are on one side of the mortal world and the astral realms are on the other side, and they don't blur together at all. The difference, as it was in 2e, is clear. The change is that two planes (Limbo and the Abyss) that were formerly considered outer planes are now considered part of the Elemental Chaos instead; the problem isn't that the line between elemental and astral has been erased, but that the line has shifted, and things that were formerly on one side are now on the other.

Normally I don't like the idea of clerics following philosophies, because it does not match with my idea of a 'cleric'. On the other hand the game-mechanic of the cleric class offers the easiest way to give the githzerai access to divine magic and basically just needs a bit refluffing to work for them.

I've discussed the topic some time ago here: /forum/zerthimon-a-god.

Maybe that's of any use for you.