Can a Cleric lose their magic if they disobey their god/temple? Need advice for a ruling.

I am a DM for a D&D 5.5e. I want to guide my party to a new location. I don't want to make it feel like railroading, so I decided to send an order to our Cleric: "Your temple commands you to go here."

However, another player (a Sorcerer) said: "The Cleric doesn't have to follow this order."

I told them that if a Cleric ignores a direct holy order, their deity can stop giving them magic. In my understanding:

* Clerics are channels for divine power. They pray during a long rest to prepare spells, asking their god for magic. If they disobey or make their god angry, they lose that connection.
* Warlocks are different. Their patron gives them knowledge/secrets, so even if they break their pact, they keep the powers they already learned.

My player strongly disagrees. They say Clerics never lose their powers once they get them, even if their god dies or abandons them.

I don't want to spend 10 hours reading wikis and forums, so I am asking here: How does this actually work in the 5.5e rules and lore? Can a Cleric lose their powers, or is it completely up to the DM?

Thanks for your help!

If the player is up for it and can turn into a quest for them, sure, if not, no. There are no mecanical rules stripping clerics of their power if they disobbey their clergy

Doesn't wanna railroad. Immediately railroads a player, otherwise they will lose their class abilities/spells.

In theory, yes. It can depend on specific settings or types of power, but in theory the power does come from the gods, so the gods can take it away.

At the end of the day, this sort of thing is narrative rather than mechanical. So its up to the DM.

That said, what you're effectively talking about it telling a player that they will lose the mechanical abilities of their character class if they don't jump onto the rails you've put in front of them. Not only is it railroading, but its also a harsh punishment for a minor piece of narrative. If my DM told me that my character lost their abilities just because I didn't or wasn't able to do something, I'd be pretty annoyed with that DM.

RAW, no. You can't take away a cleric's powers like this. But you're also approaching this wrong.

Taking away a cleric's (or any character's) powers should be a narrative decision, agreed between the DM and player. It should not be a punishment for not acting the way you want them to.

By threatening to take away powers, you are railroading. The cleric isn't realistically going to accept their powers being taken away, so will do what you want. But they'll feel frustrated and antagonistic towards you, and rightly so.

Why do you want the party to go to this new location? Why don't they want to go there? Solve that disconnect, and you'll find you can get them to that location without railroading them.

Rules wise no. In fact it was explicitly changed cause it was such a problem.

Lore wise setting dependent

Why would you do that in the first place? If it's just to force your players into taking some quest, then no, don't do that.

1.

Your table your rules

2.

They don't get power from the holy order they get power froma higher deity.
If gods are proven to exist in your world and sees this action as treason they could take away their powers.

3.

Clerics draw power from the realms of the gods and harness it to work miracles. Blessed by a deity, a pantheon, or another immortal entity, a Cleric can reach out to the divine magic of the Outer Planes—where gods dwell—and channel that energy to bolster people and to battle foes.

This is the first few lines from the 5.5 description of the cleric class.
So I would say they, just like a warlock require a higher power

Is the Cleric changing alignment?

No? Then don't fuck with their magic.

RAW (and RAI) No.

You could run a CE cleric of a LG God, who interprets his Gods dogma very differently from the rest of his faith, and goes completely rogue from his Church still cast spells.

Personally I think its far more interesting to have PCs like LE Inquisitors of LG faiths, murdering infidels and apostates for their faith and retaining spellcasting (and thus the mistaken belief they have the favor of their God, but are instead actually headed to the Nine Hells on Death) than having the God intervene to say 'Nope' but maybe that's me.

It’s entirely up to you as the DM, but be VERY CAREFUL how you do this, because it’s not just their deity punishing the pc, it’s you punishing the player

This shouldn’t just be some “stick to keep them on the rails”

And that’s not fun, so make sure there’s a plan for how it gets fixed, or how they get new powers.

No, but there are so many other ways for the temple to punish a cleric who disobeys orders. Fines, inquisitors, penance, flame strike, etc.

As with most things in D&D it should be malleable to what works best for your campaign and table. So it can be ruled either way. But no default rules exist to support it mechanically.

The one thing I would point out however is that a cleric gets their power from their connection to the divine. Not their temple. So disobeying a temples orders due to your own judgement might not have any effect either way.

Determine whether it would be interesting for your players and campaign to incorperate an event like this. Then think about the specific feeling that God in question would have towards the situation.

I don't know the specifics, but their are many circumstances where i would expect a God with a higher level of awareness to side with the player over a Temples orders, if the player was making the choice for a good reason.

I think the problem is conflating "temple" and "god."

Compare the Christian god telling you to do something vs. the medieval church. Whether those are always one and the same is a legitimate theological debate.

If the cleric's god tells them directly to do something in a dream and the cleric refuses to do it for no good reason, you bet they're losing their powers.

If the cleric gets an order on their temple's stationary and they refuse to do it, their god's reaction depends upon the reason for their refusal. If they serve Selune and their local temple of Selune tells them, "Go assassinate a local Ilmatari monk who does nothing but heal sick people and raise money for the poor", Selune might understand their refusal, even if the order is justifiable (secretly a devil in disguise or whatever).

But if the order is something like, "Selune told us to tell you to do X" and it's an authentic order, then it has the same authority as Selune herself, and she would probably revoke powers appropriately if it's refused without a good reason.

I personally would agree with your understanding of what being a Cleric is. The powers of a Cleric is a gift of their deity or whoever they sever. If they disobey the person they serve enough, then they should lose that power. Whether the clergy has the ability to strip the Clerics power would depend on the deity, as would how much you can disobey direct commands from the deity if they were to talk to the Cleric, which means you also need to factor in the overall consequences of obeying the clergy and/or deity.