Cleric Class Modification [Archive] - Wizards Community

Cleric Class Modification [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
General Felire
06-02-07, 01:52 AM In the homebrew section of this forums a conversation led me to this concept. After talking about it for a little while I realize that it probably fits better in the Class thread than it does in the homebrew rules thread.

The concept of this is that I think something needs to be done to the rules of the Cleric class.

See, I think that a big difference needs to be maintained between divine casters and arcane casters. I don't mean arcane magic and divine magic, but the people who use them. I think that if you are a cleric of a certain god you should only get powers based on what fits the god.

So, maybe have the Gods grant spells in a number of categories - General, Battle, Civic, etc. This would stop a cleric of a god of trickery from having a spell that helps people make water, for example. It would also differentiate the difference between wizards and clerics - wizards have any spell they want from a general list, clerics have only those spells that their god allows.

Actually, this could make having a party of 4 clerics from four different gods an interesting thing. If each cleric has entirely different spells than the others (except for some General spells) then they would be able to be individual rather than overlap.

Using this system the differences would be much much greater than simply 18 spells from the Domain that clerics have.

Also in the thread I came up with these two other sections that I post here.

1) First, I think we need to differentiate arcane casters from divine casters in a big way. Right now it is only the fluff that separates divine casters from arcane, in that they both use the same spell system. Its the power of the gods that are granting them their power, not their own personal ability. Second, I think we need to limit what clerics can cast to only what their gods would give them. This gives much greater differences between clerics - some clerics do battle very very well, some clerics heal very very well, some clerics are good talkers, some clerics are good at providing things to the poor, etc.

1) I will say this, its the DM that makes the clerical spell list for that deity, not the player. This means that the player won't truly have a say in it, though if they find a spell that completely fits in the concept of the god, well, they should get the spell. Number wise, I figure that it will be balanced around a particular number of spells that all get. For example, (and I am throwing this out through randomness) I could say that all clerical spell lists have 50 spells. That means all clerics have that many spells, now which 50 spells each cleric gets is different depending on the concept of the gods. Thus there won't be a single Divine List of spells rather there will be a [insert god's name here] List (such as Boccob's List) for every single god.

I understand that this might be a lot of work, but just think. The spells are the same, I'm not rewriting spell rules I'm just modifying what spells clerics get. Some clerics get Heal, some get fireball, some get make grass greener, some get trip spells, etc.

What do you guys think. Constructive criticism and thoughts only please. Also, if you have any ideas that could make this better or smoother post it here.
gullas
06-02-07, 06:48 AM why?

I might be one of those who want no changes for the 3.5 cleric cause its good as it is. though there are some blurglagar in their spell list , still the spell list is good and because a cleric knows all the spell , he can optimize his own spell list for each and every day:) .

I personally think that you are trying to do some good work with that and I think that your idea is good for a cleric variant but I'll just go with the phb cleric. :)
Razorstorm
06-02-07, 11:57 AM I like the idea, it does require a lot of work. When I play clerics I try to do this very thing by choice, I try to only prepare spells that fit the style. It would be interesting to try it out and present it. Why not pick a few gods from a pantheon, (D&D core, or FR, etc), and present the lists, and lets look at the balance. I think what you will find is that many clerics of god X never go adventuring because their gods spells simply don't give them the right abilities. This is not neccessarily a bad thing. I find it very unlikely that a Cleric of Sune (FR goddess of hotness and beauty) would go dungeon crawling, very likely to be a force in the NPC community. I do feel the same thing applies to the Turn Undead ability. Anywho, good thought. I might even play with it a bit. I would definitely include the possibility of spells from other lists, if they really fit the bill.
Razorstorm
General Felire
06-02-07, 05:19 PM why?

I might be one of those who want no changes for the 3.5 cleric cause its good as it is. though there are some blurglagar in their spell list , still the spell list is good and because a cleric knows all the spell , he can optimize his own spell list for each and every day:) .

I personally think that you are trying to do some good work with that and I think that your idea is good for a cleric variant but I'll just go with the phb cleric. :)

Thanks for the kind words, even if you don't think this is needed, it is appreciated.

I just think its not the responsibility of the cleric (as in in-universe character) to decide the spells he gets, rather its the job of his god (even if the player assists in coming up with the list of spells for the god). It allows for more in-game sense and makes choosing particular god or concept more important.

If you want to be a warrior cleric then choose a god that likes battle, don't choose the god of wine and dance. The god of wine and dance will have a lot of spells relating to dancing and liquids, but not many spells related to sending up a fireball or healing.

So I can understand where your coming from, even though I think more variance needs to be made between clerics that worship different gods.

I like the idea, it does require a lot of work. When I play clerics I try to do this very thing by choice, I try to only prepare spells that fit the style. It would be interesting to try it out and present it. Why not pick a few gods from a pantheon, (D&D core, or FR, etc), and present the lists, and lets look at the balance. I think what you will find is that many clerics of god X never go adventuring because their gods spells simply don't give them the right abilities. This is not neccessarily a bad thing. I find it very unlikely that a Cleric of Sune (FR goddess of hotness and beauty) would go dungeon crawling, very likely to be a force in the NPC community. I do feel the same thing applies to the Turn Undead ability. Anywho, good thought. I might even play with it a bit. I would definitely include the possibility of spells from other lists, if they really fit the bill.
Razorstorm

I'm glad that you like it Razorstorm, maybe you could provide some more assistance on coming up with this so that it works better. :)

Its good that you choose your spells with the concept of 'what would fit my god and what he would allow.' This shows proper roleplaying and it shows that you are paying attention to in-game setting. Sadly, not all players do that when making a character and I think that by modifying what spells a particular cleric of a god gets one can make sure that those players that choose spells based on interest and not god-connection (like a god of wine getting fireball, absolutely no connection) will not be able to screw the system.

I think I am going to have to do that, that is pick some gods and make a spell list for them. What I plan on doing is going through the current spell list and count the number of spells clerics get. Then trying to get the same number of spells per list, but make sure only those spells that make sense are on the new god's list.

Honestly, I think that makes perfect sense and has nothing to do with balance but rather good old common sense. Some gods will have clerics that don't really adventure while other gods will have clerics that best fit the concept of wondering.

The cleric of a god of home and hearth is not somebody that is going to go out hunting demons, but he would have a lot of spells that tend to homes, structures and such like that.

A cleric of a god of wine and parties is not going to go on that many adventurers, but he will have a lot of spells that work great in communities and noble courts.

A god of warfare will have a lot of spells that deal with battle, strategy and tactics, but outside of battle he will probably be very ineffective. In fact many won't even have healing spells, especially f the god the cleric worships seems to not care about fixing people. It all depends.

Clerics of a god of Magic will probably travel a lot seeking lost lore and trying to understand the universe.

So, to repeat, some gods will have clerics more inclined to go on adventuring while others will be very much more interested in staying home. And if you worship a god so much that you are divinely inspired by him then you should probably take on his interests. A god of battle will probably not grant his clerics a spell that allow people to calm emotions or to sanctify oaths. Neither ability fits in the battle motifs. And honestly, I think a player of a cleric should choose what god he worships based on what he wants to be able to do, not just because playing a cleric is cool.

About what spells to do, the way I figure how I will do it is like this. Take a god and research all I can about his motives, his profolio, his nature, his abilities, his domains, etc. Then, using that collected knowledge, go through the chapter of spells in the Player's Handbook (and maybe Spell Compendium if I feel so inclined) and choose ANY spell that fits the concept of the god. This is irrespective of level, class, type, whatever. If a spell fits what the god is trying to do then the cleric should get it. Well, I guess I would make sure that the alignment of the spell fits the god in question (despite the fact that I hate alignments, that is a battle that I am not trying to fight right now, :)).

Thus a cleric might have spells that are a mix of arcane, divine, bardic, nature, special and whatever. The nature of his spellcasting is such that no matter who else can cast a spell the spell is divine in this case because it directly comes from a god.

I think this could work. It will, of course, mean that some clerics will get spells that are 'traditionally' arcane and banned to clerics. But honestly, I don't care. If a spell makes sense for a cleric then a cleric should get it.

This system won't change the rules of character creation, magic, spellcasting, level adjustment or whatever. All that will change is the spell list that a cleric will get access to. It will change from a generic 'divine' list to a list based entirely on the name of the cleric. So a cleric of Boccob will no longer have access to the divine spell list, he will now have access to Boccob's Spell List.

Again, I want to thank you for providing input, suggesstions and thoughts on this. If you have the time and the interest maybe we could work on creating a spell list based on the various core deities.
General Felire
06-02-07, 11:21 PM I just discovered something. After going through the spell list in the core book of the Cleric I discovered that they have 218 spells divided these levels:

Category Spells
Domain 18
0-Level 12
1st Level 26
2nd Level 30
3rd Level 33
4th Level 24
5th Level 22
6th Level 18
7th Level 13
8th Level 13
9th Level 9

Only 18 is unique from cleric to cleric.

This is a lot of spells per cleric and would be very hard to fill an entire pantheon's worth of individual spell lists. Despite that I still think it is necessary to truly separate one from another.
legowarrior
06-02-07, 11:22 PM ah, to have 2nd edition priests back, with Spheres. That is one thing that I think 2nd did right.
General Felire
06-02-07, 11:48 PM ah, to have 2nd edition priests back, with Spheres. That is one thing that I think 2nd did right.

A friend of mind made the same suggestion (about using some ideas from 2nd edition) and I think that might have. I have the old books and plan on going through then looking for some information.

In the mean time do you have any suggesstions that could make this easier to accomplish.

+++

Some of the things I would have to change are:

Spell list.

Domain spells. Since each cleric has there own spell list there would be nothing special about Domain spells. I plan on leaving domain abilities alone.

Spontaneous Casting - Not all clerics would be able to heal; a cleric of a god of wine should not have healing.

Turn or Rebuke Undead - Same as above, not all clerics should be able to effect undead. A cleric of a god of agriculture is not going to have the ability to effect undead.

Extra Turning - As with the two above.

This means, for balances sake, I am going to have to find some features to give to clerics who no longer have the three above.
blowfish
06-03-07, 08:22 PM Something I've thought of was expanding all the domains to have a complete(many spells per level) list. That way the cleric's 2 domains make up their whole repertoire of spells, making clerics unique to their god. Maybe keep a small list of cleric spells, like create water and read magic, that are known to all clerics.
General Felire
06-04-07, 12:25 AM Something I've thought of was expanding all the domains to have a complete(many spells per level) list. That way the cleric's 2 domains make up their whole repertoire of spells, making clerics unique to their god. Maybe keep a small list of cleric spells, like create water and read magic, that are known to all clerics.

First, thanks for the suggestion and thoughts, it helps.

Second, I agree that a small group of general spells should exist. Any spell that should reasonably be available to all clerics definitely will be on it. This includes such things as the talking to divinity spells, the blessing/cursing spells and other such divine oriented spells.

Third, the idea of expanding the spells in a domain makes sense. What I was planning on doing was keeping those 18 spells untouched and then going through the general spell list and see what fits. Indeed, I would be using the domains available to a god as a starting off point on what sort of spells the god would reasonably grant. So, its definetly expanding the spell list from only 9 spells to untold numbers of spells.

Again thanks for the top it is quite useful.

++

On a related note, I looked through my old old copy of second edition and all I can say is WOW. The spheres are EXACTLY what I wanted, the types of spells already listed. Indeed the special abilities that 2nd priests possessed is also available for me to look at and use.

Which means that while a lot of second edition is not for me, the 2nd ed priest is exactly what I want a priest to be. It makes me both happy that it already existed and sad to know that they had the system already in place and then had to remove it for a general spell list. Well, if you ask me, that was one of the worst changes they could have made.

So now I have the fun job of going through the 2nd ed material and seeing which I could use and convert to 3rd ed. It should be one heck of a fun project that will probably take a lot of time.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
General Felire 06-02-07, 01:52 AM	In the homebrew section of this forums a conversation led me to this concept. After talking about it for a little while I realize that it probably fits better in the Class thread than it does in the homebrew rules thread. The concept of this is that I think something needs to be done to the rules of the Cleric class. See, I think that a big difference needs to be maintained between divine casters and arcane casters. I don't mean arcane magic and divine magic, but the people who use them. I think that if you are a cleric of a certain god you should only get powers based on what fits the god. So, maybe have the Gods grant spells in a number of categories - General, Battle, Civic, etc. This would stop a cleric of a god of trickery from having a spell that helps people make water, for example. It would also differentiate the difference between wizards and clerics - wizards have any spell they want from a general list, clerics have only those spells that their god allows. Actually, this could make having a party of 4 clerics from four different gods an interesting thing. If each cleric has entirely different spells than the others (except for some General spells) then they would be able to be individual rather than overlap. Using this system the differences would be much much greater than simply 18 spells from the Domain that clerics have. Also in the thread I came up with these two other sections that I post here. 1) First, I think we need to differentiate arcane casters from divine casters in a big way. Right now it is only the fluff that separates divine casters from arcane, in that they both use the same spell system. Its the power of the gods that are granting them their power, not their own personal ability. Second, I think we need to limit what clerics can cast to only what their gods would give them. This gives much greater differences between clerics - some clerics do battle very very well, some clerics heal very very well, some clerics are good talkers, some clerics are good at providing things to the poor, etc. 1) I will say this, its the DM that makes the clerical spell list for that deity, not the player. This means that the player won't truly have a say in it, though if they find a spell that completely fits in the concept of the god, well, they should get the spell. Number wise, I figure that it will be balanced around a particular number of spells that all get. For example, (and I am throwing this out through randomness) I could say that all clerical spell lists have 50 spells. That means all clerics have that many spells, now which 50 spells each cleric gets is different depending on the concept of the gods. Thus there won't be a single Divine List of spells rather there will be a [insert god's name here] List (such as Boccob's List) for every single god. I understand that this might be a lot of work, but just think. The spells are the same, I'm not rewriting spell rules I'm just modifying what spells clerics get. Some clerics get Heal, some get fireball, some get make grass greener, some get trip spells, etc. What do you guys think. Constructive criticism and thoughts only please. Also, if you have any ideas that could make this better or smoother post it here.
gullas 06-02-07, 06:48 AM	why? I might be one of those who want no changes for the 3.5 cleric cause its good as it is. though there are some blurglagar in their spell list , still the spell list is good and because a cleric knows all the spell , he can optimize his own spell list for each and every day:) . I personally think that you are trying to do some good work with that and I think that your idea is good for a cleric variant but I'll just go with the phb cleric. :)
Razorstorm 06-02-07, 11:57 AM	I like the idea, it does require a lot of work. When I play clerics I try to do this very thing by choice, I try to only prepare spells that fit the style. It would be interesting to try it out and present it. Why not pick a few gods from a pantheon, (D&D core, or FR, etc), and present the lists, and lets look at the balance. I think what you will find is that many clerics of god X never go adventuring because their gods spells simply don't give them the right abilities. This is not neccessarily a bad thing. I find it very unlikely that a Cleric of Sune (FR goddess of hotness and beauty) would go dungeon crawling, very likely to be a force in the NPC community. I do feel the same thing applies to the Turn Undead ability. Anywho, good thought. I might even play with it a bit. I would definitely include the possibility of spells from other lists, if they really fit the bill. Razorstorm
General Felire 06-02-07, 05:19 PM	why? I might be one of those who want no changes for the 3.5 cleric cause its good as it is. though there are some blurglagar in their spell list , still the spell list is good and because a cleric knows all the spell , he can optimize his own spell list for each and every day:) . I personally think that you are trying to do some good work with that and I think that your idea is good for a cleric variant but I'll just go with the phb cleric. :) Thanks for the kind words, even if you don't think this is needed, it is appreciated. I just think its not the responsibility of the cleric (as in in-universe character) to decide the spells he gets, rather its the job of his god (even if the player assists in coming up with the list of spells for the god). It allows for more in-game sense and makes choosing particular god or concept more important. If you want to be a warrior cleric then choose a god that likes battle, don't choose the god of wine and dance. The god of wine and dance will have a lot of spells relating to dancing and liquids, but not many spells related to sending up a fireball or healing. So I can understand where your coming from, even though I think more variance needs to be made between clerics that worship different gods. I like the idea, it does require a lot of work. When I play clerics I try to do this very thing by choice, I try to only prepare spells that fit the style. It would be interesting to try it out and present it. Why not pick a few gods from a pantheon, (D&D core, or FR, etc), and present the lists, and lets look at the balance. I think what you will find is that many clerics of god X never go adventuring because their gods spells simply don't give them the right abilities. This is not neccessarily a bad thing. I find it very unlikely that a Cleric of Sune (FR goddess of hotness and beauty) would go dungeon crawling, very likely to be a force in the NPC community. I do feel the same thing applies to the Turn Undead ability. Anywho, good thought. I might even play with it a bit. I would definitely include the possibility of spells from other lists, if they really fit the bill. Razorstorm I'm glad that you like it Razorstorm, maybe you could provide some more assistance on coming up with this so that it works better. :) Its good that you choose your spells with the concept of 'what would fit my god and what he would allow.' This shows proper roleplaying and it shows that you are paying attention to in-game setting. Sadly, not all players do that when making a character and I think that by modifying what spells a particular cleric of a god gets one can make sure that those players that choose spells based on interest and not god-connection (like a god of wine getting fireball, absolutely no connection) will not be able to screw the system. I think I am going to have to do that, that is pick some gods and make a spell list for them. What I plan on doing is going through the current spell list and count the number of spells clerics get. Then trying to get the same number of spells per list, but make sure only those spells that make sense are on the new god's list. Honestly, I think that makes perfect sense and has nothing to do with balance but rather good old common sense. Some gods will have clerics that don't really adventure while other gods will have clerics that best fit the concept of wondering. The cleric of a god of home and hearth is not somebody that is going to go out hunting demons, but he would have a lot of spells that tend to homes, structures and such like that. A cleric of a god of wine and parties is not going to go on that many adventurers, but he will have a lot of spells that work great in communities and noble courts. A god of warfare will have a lot of spells that deal with battle, strategy and tactics, but outside of battle he will probably be very ineffective. In fact many won't even have healing spells, especially f the god the cleric worships seems to not care about fixing people. It all depends. Clerics of a god of Magic will probably travel a lot seeking lost lore and trying to understand the universe. So, to repeat, some gods will have clerics more inclined to go on adventuring while others will be very much more interested in staying home. And if you worship a god so much that you are divinely inspired by him then you should probably take on his interests. A god of battle will probably not grant his clerics a spell that allow people to calm emotions or to sanctify oaths. Neither ability fits in the battle motifs. And honestly, I think a player of a cleric should choose what god he worships based on what he wants to be able to do, not just because playing a cleric is cool. About what spells to do, the way I figure how I will do it is like this. Take a god and research all I can about his motives, his profolio, his nature, his abilities, his domains, etc. Then, using that collected knowledge, go through the chapter of spells in the Player's Handbook (and maybe Spell Compendium if I feel so inclined) and choose ANY spell that fits the concept of the god. This is irrespective of level, class, type, whatever. If a spell fits what the god is trying to do then the cleric should get it. Well, I guess I would make sure that the alignment of the spell fits the god in question (despite the fact that I hate alignments, that is a battle that I am not trying to fight right now, :)). Thus a cleric might have spells that are a mix of arcane, divine, bardic, nature, special and whatever. The nature of his spellcasting is such that no matter who else can cast a spell the spell is divine in this case because it directly comes from a god. I think this could work. It will, of course, mean that some clerics will get spells that are 'traditionally' arcane and banned to clerics. But honestly, I don't care. If a spell makes sense for a cleric then a cleric should get it. This system won't change the rules of character creation, magic, spellcasting, level adjustment or whatever. All that will change is the spell list that a cleric will get access to. It will change from a generic 'divine' list to a list based entirely on the name of the cleric. So a cleric of Boccob will no longer have access to the divine spell list, he will now have access to Boccob's Spell List. Again, I want to thank you for providing input, suggesstions and thoughts on this. If you have the time and the interest maybe we could work on creating a spell list based on the various core deities.
General Felire 06-02-07, 11:21 PM	I just discovered something. After going through the spell list in the core book of the Cleric I discovered that they have 218 spells divided these levels: Category Spells Domain 18 0-Level 12 1st Level 26 2nd Level 30 3rd Level 33 4th Level 24 5th Level 22 6th Level 18 7th Level 13 8th Level 13 9th Level 9 Only 18 is unique from cleric to cleric. This is a lot of spells per cleric and would be very hard to fill an entire pantheon's worth of individual spell lists. Despite that I still think it is necessary to truly separate one from another.
legowarrior 06-02-07, 11:22 PM	ah, to have 2nd edition priests back, with Spheres. That is one thing that I think 2nd did right.
General Felire 06-02-07, 11:48 PM	ah, to have 2nd edition priests back, with Spheres. That is one thing that I think 2nd did right. A friend of mind made the same suggestion (about using some ideas from 2nd edition) and I think that might have. I have the old books and plan on going through then looking for some information. In the mean time do you have any suggesstions that could make this easier to accomplish. +++ Some of the things I would have to change are: Spell list. Domain spells. Since each cleric has there own spell list there would be nothing special about Domain spells. I plan on leaving domain abilities alone. Spontaneous Casting - Not all clerics would be able to heal; a cleric of a god of wine should not have healing. Turn or Rebuke Undead - Same as above, not all clerics should be able to effect undead. A cleric of a god of agriculture is not going to have the ability to effect undead. Extra Turning - As with the two above. This means, for balances sake, I am going to have to find some features to give to clerics who no longer have the three above.
blowfish 06-03-07, 08:22 PM	Something I've thought of was expanding all the domains to have a complete(many spells per level) list. That way the cleric's 2 domains make up their whole repertoire of spells, making clerics unique to their god. Maybe keep a small list of cleric spells, like create water and read magic, that are known to all clerics.
General Felire 06-04-07, 12:25 AM	Something I've thought of was expanding all the domains to have a complete(many spells per level) list. That way the cleric's 2 domains make up their whole repertoire of spells, making clerics unique to their god. Maybe keep a small list of cleric spells, like create water and read magic, that are known to all clerics. First, thanks for the suggestion and thoughts, it helps. Second, I agree that a small group of general spells should exist. Any spell that should reasonably be available to all clerics definitely will be on it. This includes such things as the talking to divinity spells, the blessing/cursing spells and other such divine oriented spells. Third, the idea of expanding the spells in a domain makes sense. What I was planning on doing was keeping those 18 spells untouched and then going through the general spell list and see what fits. Indeed, I would be using the domains available to a god as a starting off point on what sort of spells the god would reasonably grant. So, its definetly expanding the spell list from only 9 spells to untold numbers of spells. Again thanks for the top it is quite useful. ++ On a related note, I looked through my old old copy of second edition and all I can say is WOW. The spheres are EXACTLY what I wanted, the types of spells already listed. Indeed the special abilities that 2nd priests possessed is also available for me to look at and use. Which means that while a lot of second edition is not for me, the 2nd ed priest is exactly what I want a priest to be. It makes me both happy that it already existed and sad to know that they had the system already in place and then had to remove it for a general spell list. Well, if you ask me, that was one of the worst changes they could have made. So now I have the fun job of going through the 2nd ed material and seeing which I could use and convert to 3rd ed. It should be one heck of a fun project that will probably take a lot of time.