Can Clerics Reverse Spells?

[MajorLeeAwesome]

The title says it all. I know Wizards can do it. How about Clerics?

[GnomeBoy]

The philosophy is different -- Wizard spells are stolen, eked out of ancient fragments of lore, learned through difficult trial and error, so Wizards have insight into how those spells might be shaped differently; Cleric spells are powers granted by a deity.

Creating a 'reverse' spell because it's appropriate for the deity to bestow would be in the hands of the Judge. But a Cleric twisting the power given to them feels slightly ...off. Divine Aid would be the effect to fill in for effects for Clerics that aren't covered by the spells they are given. A Judge could easily reduce the Disapproval if it seemed appropriate as a variant of a power already gained.

But I've never had a player with a Cleric ask for this, so this is all musing about how I might handle it if it came up... Take it for what it's worth.

[BanjoJohn]

If you want to do it at your table, yes!

[CapnZapp]

The rulebook says (page 106):

Reversing spells: Some spells can be reversed to perform the opposite function for which they were intended.

So the general answer would be: no, unless the spell specifically says it can be reversed. Note: this applies to wizards and clerics alike - there is no notion of wizards generally being able to reverse spells any easier than clerics. Yes, page 106 talks about Wizards, but we already know the rules are generally inexact and often talks about wizards when they mean either all spellcasters or "wizards and elves".

So, Turn to Stone (a Wizard spell) and Detect Evil (a Cleric spell) can be reversed, not because of any inherent class abilities, but because those spells say they can.

[herecomethejudge]

As always, it's up to you, and the rulebook provides some guidelines for this, but one thing I want to add for your consideration is the old D&D way of doing it, which is that for chaotic clerics (anti-clerics), some of the spells were reversed by default, and they could only learn the "evil" version of the spell.

[CapnZapp]

but one thing I want to add for your consideration is the old D&D way of doing it, which is that for chaotic clerics (anti-clerics), some of the spells were reversed by default, and they could only learn the "evil" version of the spell.

If you're running a game where Chaos basically means "evil non-player characters," much like in regular D&D, then yeah, go for it!