Nifft said:
Er... scrolls of those spells. Only those spells.
If those spells are removed from the cleric's spell list, then according to the RAW on scrolls, they couldn't use them anyway. So it all works out
If you go the way of removing those spells, I would remove them
all, not just let the characters pick a couple, cuz they'll probably just select the lower level ones, anyway.
One thing I would comment on this variant - move the Brew Potion feat to 2nd level (at least) to keep them from being too front loaded (spells, turning, domain abilities, brew potion - all at 1st level!) In fact, IMC, I'm using variant turning rules which spread out the number of turn attempts per day across several levels.
One thing I've also done is removed Heavy Armor prof. from clerics - this at least scales back their Tank replacement role a bit, without removing the self-buff spells mentioned.
I would definitely add the Divine Feats from the
Complete ... books to the list of bonus feats they can choose from.
And just as a personal thing, I would make the first bonus feat
Scribe Scroll, since the copying of holy texts is a common practice associated with religious persons.
Brew Potion is something I would probably give a sorcerer or warlock (or witch, if one used any of the third party takes on this class.)
Whatever you do, you do need to remove something to balance this variant out. Your own opinion states that they're already at least as good as other classes - so giving them these bonus feats will definitely make them better.