How do you guys introduce material from the class books?

With Masters of the Wild seemingly coming out soon, all of the class books will be available for the core classes. I had previously decided not to allow any class book material into the campaign until all the books were available. That time is rapidly approaching. I am fairly sure that I will want to allow at least some of this material into my existing campaign.

I am comfortable with how I'll introduce the feats, prestige classes and magic items. The arcane spells shouldn't pose much problem either as only a few will be introduced at a time.

My main question is how other GM's have dealt with the divine spells. Do you just let the divine casters have access to all the new spells? That seems to give them a rather sudden boost in power and versatility (compared to the arcane casters especially).

I have considered letting them swap spells from their current list for the new ones on a one-for-one basis. This seems like they will just throw out the "dead wood" on their existing lists and add in the best of the new spells to create a sort of uber-list.

Another idea I had was to allow them to take on certain quests or perform rituals to "unlock" a few of the new spells at a time. This seems more in keeping with the rate at which new spells will become available to the arcane casters.

Your thoughts?

i like the idea of rituals, quests, or serious communion with their gods for the new spells. perhaps they don't even know the new spells exist at first, and are given visions during their spell selection/meditation period. perhaps they don't find out about the new spells until they actually attend devotions/services, or report to their superior (my my, mr devout cleric of so and so, you haven't been to church in some time. see what you missed out on?). on the other hand, are any of the new divine spells going to unbalance your current campaign, or seriously affect the power level of your clerics? if not, just introduce them retroactively, state they were always there, and be done with it.

Personally, I have just allowed access to most of the stuff in the class books as each book came out, and so have most other DMs I know.

You do raise a valid point, though. If you wanted a way for Divine to come in one or two at a time, a couple quests might be good. The Divine casters in the party could find a couple very very very old scrolls that explain some of the spells from olden times, and once this information is transferred to the lesser adherents of the Divine caster's god, it can be used by most Divine casters. You could also do little mini-adventures for this... tests from the gods to see if they are worthy of the new powers.

ALternately, after some earth-shaking adventure, more power could be unleashed into the world, and the effect of it could be to gradually bring new insight into spellcasting to Divine casters, thus causing them to realize the possibility of using one of the new spells every couple days or so.

My suggestion would be to introduce it slowly, over several weeks or even months. If you start bringing in dozens of new feats/spells/prestige classes/skills/organizations all at once, it's going to seriously put stress on the cohesiveness of your setting. You might also want to limit the number of new (major) things, at least at first.

Just my 2 coppers.

My main question is how other GM's have dealt with the divine spells. Do you just let the divine casters have access to all the new spells? That seems to give them a rather sudden boost in power and versatility (compared to the arcane casters especially).

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In the case of all spells, I require my permission before using any spells from supplements... WotC or otherwise.

I have considered letting them swap spells from their current list for the new ones on a one-for-one basis. This seems like they will just throw out the "dead wood" on their existing lists and add in the best of the new spells to create a sort of uber-list.

Click to expand...

I considered doing something like that, except I was considering giving them some overhead so they don't have to cut into their existing spell list right away. I do have some concerns about throwing the gate wide, but I am not really concerned about the character getting access to an "uber list" as you call it. The primary factor is going to be the individual spells. So long as the individual spells seem to be working well, I don't think jimmying the list around is going to give the character an unwelcome amount of power.

I haven't had much problem with the new divine spells but divine casters are very thin on the group in my group (1 Ftr12/Pal4 and a Wiz11/Clr6 in a group of 7 pcs.) When (if) someone finally plays a single-class cleric, I'll probably go with the idea of quests or other special requirements for the new spells, though I'm toying with the idea of individualising the cleric spell-list some more and allocating the new spells as specific to one or two deities only.

IMC Clerics have to perform various sacraments (ie show deveotion) before they can use spells - the spells are granted as a boon from their god (ie they choose from the GM supplied list)

thus any new spell can be introduced by their god or by the visitation and grant of an angel or such....

Rel said:

My main question is how other GM's have dealt with the divine spells. Do you just let the divine casters have access to all the new spells? That seems to give them a rather sudden boost in power and versatility (compared to the arcane casters especially).

I have considered letting them swap spells from their current list for the new ones on a one-for-one basis. This seems like they will just throw out the "dead wood" on their existing lists and add in the best of the new spells to create a sort of uber-list.

Another idea I had was to allow them to take on certain quests or perform rituals to "unlock" a few of the new spells at a time. This seems more in keeping with the rate at which new spells will become available to the arcane casters.

Your thoughts?

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I let them learn these spells just like wizards learn new spells - i.e., from scrolls and clericeal "spellbooks."

For new divine spells, I let the players gain the ones from new splatbooks when they go up a level- not perfect, but it makes the same amount of sense as learning all 4th level spells when you go up a level.

As I put in another thread, though, I only have one cleric in my campaign right now, and he's a multiclass, so it's not really been a concern.

And any non-PHB feat/spell/PrC, I have to give my okay on(even though I do just rubberstamp it, for the most part)

Cullain

I allow them quite freely. The boost in power or versatility isn't that big, since they don't use all the spells from PHB in the first place. There are spells in the PHB they haven't used before, and it isn't a big deal when a cleric uses one. It's about same when he casts a spell from MaoF.