Allow Divine Casters...

...to spontaneously cast any spell in their list (not just Cure x/Inflict x). Of course still subject to their maximum slots per day.

I treated the "spell" as more of a "prayer" that would be uttered to address a specific need. To me this brought more immediate connection to the character's deity, it was great for role-playing, and this method just seemed more intuitive to me.

We tried this and it was fantastic in our campaign.

Your thoughts?

Way, way too powerful. Ridiculolusly strong. Mind-bogglingly unbalanced.

You're combining a class with full spell knowledge (not even with the Wizard-like need to find scrolls), medium BAB, good HP, and heavy armor with full spontaneous casting? Sheesh.

I have been allowing this type of Divine spell casting for a long time, and have no problems with it. Still don't get a lot of players wishing to play clerics, except once.
However, with the switch to 3E, I changed it to allow spontaneous spell casting for divine spell casters to be limited by the wisdom modifier in such a way that say a 9th cleric that has an 18 wisdom can spontaneous cast any spell up to 4th level from their list, but must prepare their 5th level slots.
As some will point out doing this can be unbalancing and makes the cleric class extremely powerful and open to abuse as your players will have access to the spells they need in most situations within a moment's notice instead of having to wait a day, borrowing they haven't cast all of their slots for the day of that level. But it depends on your play still and campaign as to how this will work. Personally I also customize each cleric class for the deity in question, as it makes even more since for my campaign which is high magic, high level and highly divinely connected.

RD

Too powerful

Spatzimaus said:

Way, way too powerful. Ridiculolusly strong. Mind-bogglingly unbalanced.

You're combining a class with full spell knowledge (not even with the Wizard-like need to find scrolls), medium BAB, good HP, and heavy armor with full spontaneous casting? Sheesh.

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I agree. That's exactly why Game Designers do playtesting.

I'm doing this in my low-magic experimental campaign, but I've tweaked all the classes a lot and reduced the spell lists to a handful of spells at each level.

It always seemed to me that spontaneous divine casting makes more sense than prepared casting. After all, a cleric is asking his or her god to intervene when casting a spell; why should he or she need to specify at the start of the day what kind of interventions might be required?

Aside from game balance, of course.

Spatzimaus said:

Way, way too powerful. Ridiculolusly strong. Mind-bogglingly unbalanced.

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That's essentially what one of my players said at first. I told him "prove it, play a cleric and show me how god-awful unbalancing you can be." In play, what actually happened was that he was alot more useful, because he could do things spontaniously like throw an Augury when the party faced a tough decision. Or cast Find Traps if the rouge was out of commission. or Delay Poison , or any number of other useful yet not often prepared spells from the clerics list.
Clerics were so often one dimensional. Before this they were party "buffer" or "medic". So much so that the players seldom chose that class to play. My new ruling allowed me as DM to present new challenges to the players and keep the flow of the game going without the response - "well we should rest so i can pick new spells - i chose all the wrong ones today."

the Jester said:

It always seemed to me that spontaneous divine casting makes more sense than prepared casting. After all, a cleric is asking his or her god to intervene when casting a spell; why should he or she need to specify at the start of the day what kind of interventions might be required?

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My thoughts exactly.

The secret to this working might be providing multiple challenges to the players aside from those just combat related.

Oh- and if the new cleric rules made them so powerful, i might have expected to have a party full of priests. I was prepared for this - but it dint happen.

The main point of my post was not to see if people thought it should be done, but rather to see if people actually ran or played in a group that did this. I'm trying to learn what specific problems they experienced and if it - for some reason - broke down at high levels. Because so far, i've not seen the extreme lack of balance that some have warned against.

All spellcasting should be spontaneous. Fortunately, now that we have the warlock, we can just replace the sorcerer entirely and get on with our lives.

The only reason people wouldn't jump at playing clerics is because they still believe in old misconceptions about the cleric and what it can/should do.

After all, if everyone played a cleric, each of them would only really have to bother with a healing spell once in a while, and they'd spend most of their time blasting, buffing themselves up with spells, smashing baddies with ease, and still having enough magic left afterward to solve some of the town's problems and mysteries, like some kind of troubleshooting handyman/detective/exorcist/jack-of-nearly-all-trades.



Anyway, this really would make wizards weep. Suddenly they're the only people who have to prepare their spells, and on top of that they have to purchase most of their new spells just to be useful for more than just one or two things (i.e. blasting with fire and detecting hidden stuff; if they want more than just 2 spells per level, they have to pay through the nose to get it).

Not only does the wizard have no significant mundane combat ability (unlike the cleric, who surpasses the bard and rogue in most situations; although rogues can do better if they get to flank enemies; of course, several kinds of enemy are immune to sneak attack anyway), but the wizard also has almost zero survivability and only marginally better spell variety (IF he pays through the nose to get it, that is).



Divine casters are already the most powerful and versatile characters around. Versatility does count for something. Anyone who whines about playing a cleric in 3rd Edition is a fool. The best characters I've seen have been clerics and druids (whether playing them, playing beside them, or DMing for them; I've done all three). Making the divine casters even more versatile just hurts the arcane casters more, and, while it may not impact the warriors that much, it will still make the divine casters outshine them more often.

Divine casters have plenty of spells to buff up their own combat ability or that of allies (but especially their own!), plus they have all kinds of utility spells. The cleric or druid will be doing all kinds of neat and useful stuff outside of combat, and even if they expend all of their spells on such activities, they'll still be a solid support warrior if a battle crops up. The fighter, barbarian, or paladin, meanwhile, will be lucky if they can find much to do outside of combat, because they have piddly skill points and class skill selection, and because they lack the caster's general utility spells.

With a Bear's Endurance the cleric can fight alongside the party's fighter without dropping first, and with a combination of Divine Favor, Bull's Strength, and Greater Magic Weapon, the cleric will be hitting stuff just as often and just as hard, if not moreso. With Entropic Shield, Shield of Faith, Protection From Evil, and Magic Vestment, the cleric will have better AC than the fighter, too. And much better Will saves. What the cleric lacks in bonus feats, he or she makes up for with Turning/Rebuking ability and with their many spells.


Basically, what it comes down to is that you should either beef up other characters to compensate for this added flexibility of divine casters, or you should weaken divine casters in some other way to compensate. I know that spontaneous casting makes sense for divine casters, but that doesn't mean it's fair to everyone else; the divine casters are only undesirable to play if the player is a fool or just has a strong preference for arcane or roguish characters. Divine casters are strong enough as it is, no need to hedge out other character archetypes even more. I'd suggest either giving other classes 2 more skill points per level (except for rangers and barbarians perhaps, as they're already fairly strong and versatile compared to similar classes), or reducing the cleric and druid to d6 hit dice and poor Fortitude saves. Paladins already have such limited and focused spellcasting ability, that the change to spontaneous casting would hardly affect them one bit; so if the first option were taken, it would be good to give them the extra skill points too.

Arkhandus: then give the wizard spontaneous casting (from what they know in their spellbook) and a d6 HD. In my experience, spontaneous casting balances them out without the d6 HD -- but they could use it, anyway. That's what Monte Cook thought; Arcana Evolved has no d4 HD at all.

I'm just saying that the wizard is most impacted. Mundane characters find themselves being outshined more often outside of combat when the cleric gets full spontaneous casting. Thus they (that is, mundanes) need something to help them feel more useful and less like clerics-with-bashing-only-and-no-utility.