Multiclassed cleric/cleric?

[Li Shenron]

Yesh, definitely not possible to be a Clr/Clr. A Cleric of two gods (if allowed by the DM), will just be a straight Cleric with access to the domains of both, and with the alignment restrictions of both (tho it would be insane to allow it to serve gods of opposing alignments).

 

[Agback]

Yesh, definitely not possible to be a Clr/Clr. A Cleric of two gods (if allowed by the DM), will just be a straight Cleric with access to the domains of both, and with the alignment restrictions of both (tho it would be insane to allow it to serve gods of opposing alignments).

Fair enough.

So tell me: suppose a cleric somehow offends his or her god, or his or her alignment changes, so that the cleric loses all class abilities. For whatever reason (perhaps the god has been petty or unfair) the cleric obtains an Atonement from a cleric of a different god and professes an interest in converting. There is probably some pretty serious divine resentment at this point, but let's suppose that the new god wins out in the heavenly bickering. Or suppose that a cleric of an impersonal divine principle submits to the obedience of a suitably-aligned god. Would you rule that the newly-ordained convert had theclass abilities of his or her total cleric level, or of a level-one cleric?

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Fair enough.

So tell me: suppose a cleric somehow offends his or her god, or his or her alignment changes, so that the cleric loses all class abilities. For whatever reason (perhaps the god has been petty or unfair) the cleric obtains an Atonement from a cleric of a different god and professes an interest in converting. There is probably some pretty serious divine resentment at this point, but let's suppose that the new god wins out in the heavenly bickering. Or suppose that a cleric of an impersonal divine principle submits to the obedience of a suitably-aligned god. Would you rule that the newly-ordained convert had theclass abilities of his or her total cleric level, or of a level-one cleric?

well, this is deep deep house rule territory, but personally, I would probably have the cleric spend at least one level without domain spells or abilities. When he next leveled up, after spending time faithfully serving and living his new faith, he would gain those features back, changed to reflect the new faith if appropriate. If the change also included a radical allignment switch, I might also forbid him from using any allignment based spells or abilities for the 'trial' level. If there was any backsliding during the trial level (but overall faith was maintained) he might gain only one domain or only part of the allignment based abilities and have another trial level before reaching full synchronicity with his new faith.

 

[Li Shenron]

Would you rule that the newly-ordained convert had theclass abilities of his or her total cleric level, or of a level-one cleric?

It's an interesting question which brings me back to very early days of gaming in 3ed.

First, I'll let you know that clerics changing god is something I really dislike. There are some exceptions (fallen Paladins, good clerics shifting to evil cults, evil clerics moving to a more powerful evil god), but at least good and neutral clerics should not easily forsake their religion. When they do, most of the time the character should be doomed forever and prevented from being a cleric of anyone else. In fact, these exceptions are for NPC, and how the DM deals with them it's not players' business.

Then if the rules allow cleric to switch side as easy as a politician switching to another party for personal advantage, I reserve the right to call that a "bad RP" by the player.

In your specific case, if I allowed the PC to become cleric of another god, my preference would be to restore his clerical power (with appropriate domain/spell changes if necessary) gradually.
However I also always see the powers of the cleric class as not only dependent on the god, but also on the cleric himself (the god grants them, but it's the cleric growing his inner power and levelling up*), so that it would make sense for a powerful cleric to immediately regain all his power as soon as the new god says "ok", because his level was due to himself and not the god.

*I tell my player that if it was only god's will, there would often be clerics granted higher-level spells than normal or otherwise prevented from casting spells which they should by their class level

In any case, that's my own way to do that, in case it happens it would be an exceptional situation and I can handle it freely as I see fit the campaign. If if fitted the campaign, I could strip him all class features and force him to start from level 1 as cleric of the new god, but in that case I'd probably rather apply a true "level drain" on him than mess up with having the cleric class twice. Would it be unplayable? Yes, and I'm glad it would.

But if you play by the official rules, there is only one way of doing that: one cleric class only, stripping all class features either forever or until he finds another sponsor and then back to full power.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Take the FRCS rules as your baseline, as they actually address this.

Once you receive an Atonement from the new deity, you are considered a full cleric of that deity: full spells, full turning, full domain abilities, etc. If you were a 19th-level Cleric before you lost faith, you're still a 19th-level Cleric when you have no class abilities, and you're a 19th-level Cleric once you get them back.

 

[daBooj]

hrm... Kinda going to come up to this soon in the current evil campaign I'm in. My Cleric was sent by Lolth (her goddess) to a city of underground elves (not quite drow). The city served Correllon (sp) at one point, while it was above ground. But sank underground and started worshiping Lolth (we're still working out all this history, so some of this may be wrong). Somewhere along the line (I think it was like 1000 years back) they started worshiping Atzanteotl. Religion is now stricktly inforced by the high priest.

Lolth wanted the city back under her sway or destroyed. The party (who doesn't care much for Lolth, but is somewhat indebted to her (hehe, trickery on my part) for saving their arses.) was all for taking the city out, but I'm simply trying to bring it back to Lolth (using drugs and implanting suggestions among the people, strategic assinations and such). And we're just about to take out the high priest.

In the end I imagine a lot of the upper clerics will die as well. But hopefully some will switch over to serving Lolth. At which point... My cleric has a city under her sway and a church full of clerics who are how powerful?

Should be fun to see how the DM rules this one. Do they simply change the god worshiped and retain their levels, or do they start over from scratch? Eventually we're going up top, I have a bone to pick with some elves.

 

[glass]

Here we are, in the PHB on page 59, under the heading Adding a Second Class: "(A character can't gain 1st level in the same class more than once, even if this would allow him or her to select different class features, such as a different set of domains for a cleric)." So, by RAW, the concept of this thread is not possible. Of course, as usual your DM can always choose to allow it as a house rule.

In the section on variant classes in AU, it says that it's DM's discretion whether variant classes count as the same class or different for multiclassing purposes. So that's one possible avenue...


glass.