Cleric spell access on other Prime Material planes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Cleric spell access on other Prime Material planes [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Matulik
05-17-04, 07:12 AM My players play on the forgotten realms and was toying with the idea of sending them to another prime material plane, either Greyhawk or Krynn. The parties cleric worships Kelemvor, any suggestions on what would happen to his spells when he left Fearun. Trying to work out a way he could keep them. Is this covered in any book and if so which one.

Many thanks
Seeker95
05-17-04, 11:51 AM No book guidance. Consider the following possibilities:

1. No difference. A deity is a deity across all the planes.

2. No access. Deities are plane / world specific.

3. Limited access. Spells acn be granted, but none that require "intervention".

4. Loss of domain. The deity cannot grant spells belonging to a specific domain.

5. Domain spells only.

6. No difference, but... the deities are universal, but travel by new names and slightly different domains. A cleric cannot gain access until s/he recognizes his/her deity by its new incarnation.
Bifford
05-17-04, 12:17 PM What if a cleric of Lolth travels to Greyhawk and tries to pray to her deity, when Greyhawk has a Lolth of its own?
Romothecus
05-17-04, 12:28 PM Actually, the Manual of the Planes addresses this exact issue on page 44 (at the bottom, in the sidebar entitled "Divine Spellcasting and Alternate Material Planes.") This is what I can gather from it.

It's possible that the Alternate Material Plane you're visiting has your diety anyway - as noted, some planes share gods.

If you're travelling through a Gate or some controlled means of planar travel, then you can still gain your spells (although this would seem to mean that you have to some form of dimensional travel to your home plane open when you're doing your daily prayers.)

However, the sidebar also says that the connection can be "severed" if you're travelling by means of some "accident." At this point, you can lose your spells. According to the sidebar, your options then are to A) find a new deity with a matching alignment and try to convert or to B) change your religion to a more general faith relating to your domains. According to the PHB, cleric's don't -necessarily- have a diety. You can be a cleric devoted to Law or Good, which would still allow you to have divine spells and access to compatible domains. The source of your divine spells isn't any specific deity, so dimensional travel isn't an issue.
Krelios
05-17-04, 12:36 PM Having done this to my players in a game near the beginning of 3.0, we used that bit of text describing a cleric that doesn't worship any specific deity to justify it as follows:

A cleric of a god that does not exist on the new material plane/multiverse/cosmology cannot receive spells from that god. However, as long as he remains faithful to the ideals and philosophies of his religion, he can receive spells from faith alone--just as a cleric of no particular god.

This means, that in the notable exception of Faerun, a cleric of an "outside" god loses all spellcasting ability, since deity-less clerics cannot cast spells in Faerun.

However, it is important to distinguish between alternate material planes and alternate universes, as it could be possible have more than one seperate material plane (read: planet) in a single cosmology. You have to decide if those universes are tied together at all, and it gets really interesting if you view the elemental planes as a multiverse constant (i.e. clerics of Greyhawk gods of Faerun gods could both pray for spells on the plane of air, since that's shared by both planes). This sort of situation needs direction DM judgement--and it's never clear-cut.
Seeker95
05-17-04, 01:14 PM Originally posted by Bifford
What if a cleric of Lolth travels to Greyhawk and tries to pray to her deity, when Greyhawk has a Lolth of its own? It's up to your DM.

In my campaign, there is nely one set of gods, and they have many manifestations. I have a cleric right now who traveled to Greyhawk from the lands of Al-Qadim. He worships Ali-Akbar, and has yet to discover that Heironeous *is* Ali-Akbar. Heironeous has not let on, continuing to grant the spells requested by his fish-out-of-water cleric.

Should the characters find a portal to the lands of Faerun, he will find new gods again, and may or may not recognize them as merely facets of the eities he knows from home and from Greyhawk.

So in my campaign, Lolth is Lloth.
Eldren
05-17-04, 02:52 PM The Forgotten Realms Campaign Sourcebook, as well as the FR book for the Faerunian Pantheon, entitled "Faiths & Avatars", addresses this issue nicely. It recognizes that there are certain Powers who have influence in more than one Material Plane, such as Tyr, Tiamat and Lolth (who frequently, thanks to Bob Salvatore's books, is referenced as "Lloth" in the Realms, although variant explanations have indicated that this is only the way she's acknowledged in Menzoberranzan). In such cases, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch for the Power to access their Clerics in another Material Plane.

Otherwise, they are divine entities, and aren't always going to be hindered by mere planar boundaries. If they were, then they wouldn't be able to live in the Outer Planes and get spells to their Clerics in the Material Plane in the first place. However, depending on how a world is constructed by a given Dungeon Master, the local pantheon on a Prime world might be insular enough to mandate that foreign Powers don't have any authority in their sphere, and might seal off access from any Power that isn't already part of their pantheon. In such cases, if a Cleric of a foreign Power were to somehow come to that Material Plane, then they'd likely lose their spells and divine abilities until such time as they either left that plane, or somehow managed to open up a conduit through which their Power could bestow their abilities on them again. Such an arrangement from local pantheons is often done to prevent "poaching" on their planar territory by foreign Powers, as the Powers in a given pantheon most often depend directly on the worship of their churches for their continued existence (i.e., their Divine Ranks, which separate them from "merely powerful" characters who are otherwise mortal).

But for the most part, while the Faerunian pantheon is quite meddlesome (some say even more than the Olympian pantheon is...), they don't seem intent on sealing Toril off from the divine presence of other Powers whose Clerics come to the world. Thing about it is, Clerics from foreign lands who come to Toril have to realize that they're going to be subject to local magical conditions; Mystra, the Power of Magic in the Realms, embodies the Weave, the ability to use magic at all, whether it's divine or arcane. Any Cleric of a foreign Power accessing their magic still has to draw it from the Weave, and if that Cleric does something to really tick Mystra or her church off, he could suddenly find himself without his spells and abilities entirely; chances are, even if his Power got angry with Mystra, the de-facto "divine compact" the Powers seem to have with one another would likely mandate the Power simply removing the offensive Cleric from Mystra's sphere of influence, to avoid a divine war that would rage across the planes. More often than not, the last thing any of the Powers want with each other is open war.

Subservive war, on the other hand... :devil:

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Matulik 05-17-04, 07:12 AM	My players play on the forgotten realms and was toying with the idea of sending them to another prime material plane, either Greyhawk or Krynn. The parties cleric worships Kelemvor, any suggestions on what would happen to his spells when he left Fearun. Trying to work out a way he could keep them. Is this covered in any book and if so which one. Many thanks
Seeker95 05-17-04, 11:51 AM	No book guidance. Consider the following possibilities: 1. No difference. A deity is a deity across all the planes. 2. No access. Deities are plane / world specific. 3. Limited access. Spells acn be granted, but none that require "intervention". 4. Loss of domain. The deity cannot grant spells belonging to a specific domain. 5. Domain spells only. 6. No difference, but... the deities are universal, but travel by new names and slightly different domains. A cleric cannot gain access until s/he recognizes his/her deity by its new incarnation.
Bifford 05-17-04, 12:17 PM	What if a cleric of Lolth travels to Greyhawk and tries to pray to her deity, when Greyhawk has a Lolth of its own?
Romothecus 05-17-04, 12:28 PM	Actually, the Manual of the Planes addresses this exact issue on page 44 (at the bottom, in the sidebar entitled "Divine Spellcasting and Alternate Material Planes.") This is what I can gather from it. It's possible that the Alternate Material Plane you're visiting has your diety anyway - as noted, some planes share gods. If you're travelling through a Gate or some controlled means of planar travel, then you can still gain your spells (although this would seem to mean that you have to some form of dimensional travel to your home plane open when you're doing your daily prayers.) However, the sidebar also says that the connection can be "severed" if you're travelling by means of some "accident." At this point, you can lose your spells. According to the sidebar, your options then are to A) find a new deity with a matching alignment and try to convert or to B) change your religion to a more general faith relating to your domains. According to the PHB, cleric's don't -necessarily- have a diety. You can be a cleric devoted to Law or Good, which would still allow you to have divine spells and access to compatible domains. The source of your divine spells isn't any specific deity, so dimensional travel isn't an issue.
Krelios 05-17-04, 12:36 PM	Having done this to my players in a game near the beginning of 3.0, we used that bit of text describing a cleric that doesn't worship any specific deity to justify it as follows: A cleric of a god that does not exist on the new material plane/multiverse/cosmology cannot receive spells from that god. However, as long as he remains faithful to the ideals and philosophies of his religion, he can receive spells from faith alone--just as a cleric of no particular god. This means, that in the notable exception of Faerun, a cleric of an "outside" god loses all spellcasting ability, since deity-less clerics cannot cast spells in Faerun. However, it is important to distinguish between alternate material planes and alternate universes, as it could be possible have more than one seperate material plane (read: planet) in a single cosmology. You have to decide if those universes are tied together at all, and it gets really interesting if you view the elemental planes as a multiverse constant (i.e. clerics of Greyhawk gods of Faerun gods could both pray for spells on the plane of air, since that's shared by both planes). This sort of situation needs direction DM judgement--and it's never clear-cut.
Seeker95 05-17-04, 01:14 PM	Originally posted by Bifford What if a cleric of Lolth travels to Greyhawk and tries to pray to her deity, when Greyhawk has a Lolth of its own? It's up to your DM. In my campaign, there is nely one set of gods, and they have many manifestations. I have a cleric right now who traveled to Greyhawk from the lands of Al-Qadim. He worships Ali-Akbar, and has yet to discover that Heironeous is Ali-Akbar. Heironeous has not let on, continuing to grant the spells requested by his fish-out-of-water cleric. Should the characters find a portal to the lands of Faerun, he will find new gods again, and may or may not recognize them as merely facets of the eities he knows from home and from Greyhawk. So in my campaign, Lolth is Lloth.
Eldren 05-17-04, 02:52 PM	The Forgotten Realms Campaign Sourcebook, as well as the FR book for the Faerunian Pantheon, entitled "Faiths & Avatars", addresses this issue nicely. It recognizes that there are certain Powers who have influence in more than one Material Plane, such as Tyr, Tiamat and Lolth (who frequently, thanks to Bob Salvatore's books, is referenced as "Lloth" in the Realms, although variant explanations have indicated that this is only the way she's acknowledged in Menzoberranzan). In such cases, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch for the Power to access their Clerics in another Material Plane. Otherwise, they are divine entities, and aren't always going to be hindered by mere planar boundaries. If they were, then they wouldn't be able to live in the Outer Planes and get spells to their Clerics in the Material Plane in the first place. However, depending on how a world is constructed by a given Dungeon Master, the local pantheon on a Prime world might be insular enough to mandate that foreign Powers don't have any authority in their sphere, and might seal off access from any Power that isn't already part of their pantheon. In such cases, if a Cleric of a foreign Power were to somehow come to that Material Plane, then they'd likely lose their spells and divine abilities until such time as they either left that plane, or somehow managed to open up a conduit through which their Power could bestow their abilities on them again. Such an arrangement from local pantheons is often done to prevent "poaching" on their planar territory by foreign Powers, as the Powers in a given pantheon most often depend directly on the worship of their churches for their continued existence (i.e., their Divine Ranks, which separate them from "merely powerful" characters who are otherwise mortal). But for the most part, while the Faerunian pantheon is quite meddlesome (some say even more than the Olympian pantheon is...), they don't seem intent on sealing Toril off from the divine presence of other Powers whose Clerics come to the world. Thing about it is, Clerics from foreign lands who come to Toril have to realize that they're going to be subject to local magical conditions; Mystra, the Power of Magic in the Realms, embodies the Weave, the ability to use magic at all, whether it's divine or arcane. Any Cleric of a foreign Power accessing their magic still has to draw it from the Weave, and if that Cleric does something to really tick Mystra or her church off, he could suddenly find himself without his spells and abilities entirely; chances are, even if his Power got angry with Mystra, the de-facto "divine compact" the Powers seem to have with one another would likely mandate the Power simply removing the offensive Cleric from Mystra's sphere of influence, to avoid a divine war that would rage across the planes. More often than not, the last thing any of the Powers want with each other is open war. Subservive war, on the other hand... :devil: