D&D 2E 2E Priests Vs 5E Domains

DammitVictor · Jul 1, 2019

Clerics should work the way Clerics work in 5e, maybe with a little tweaking. (I like giving them Warmage casting on a drastically-reduced list.)

Specialty Priests should each be individual classes, designed to fill their own niches.

Tales and Chronicles · Jul 2, 2019

I believe ''spheres'' can be brought back to 5e using the now defunct UA Mystic. Change the disciplines to spheres and keep the cleric cantrips. At first level the cleric choose from a list of gods which give them a starting major sphere and a minor sphere, and a list of spheres to choose from at higher level.

Psi points can be Faith or whatever. You invest Faith in your spheres to create effects. You can only invest a maximum of 3 Faith for minor spheres and up to 7 with major spheres.

Archetypes (level 1? 2?) can be variant of the cleric: warpriest (heavy armor, extra attack at 6), avenger (sneaky cleric) or oracle (4e invoker).

Zardnaar · Jul 2, 2019

Blue said:
I find that 5e priests tent to play the same from game to game, so something that encourages more differentiation would be welcome. That said, I would be wary of ending up with something like: "3 of these 5 'best' domains are the only ones picked, so now clerics have a narrower list in actual play so there's even less variation. Oh, and only have the deity list gives access to them so there's less variation in who you worship as well - your RP choice of another god can hamstring you mechanically".

An issue is that there really are some stand-out cleric spells so you see them over and over. If there were more spells of that very high caliber we'd see more variation, even without enforcement. But I haven't seen a cleric without most of spirit guardians, spiritual weapon, guidance, bless, and a few other staples basically ever in 5e.

This you either use the same spells over and over or kinda suck. You don't get extra spells like older editions, less healing in effect (relative to what's in the game) and can't farm out healing as much.

And the Druid seems better at healing now via healing spirit.

aco175 · Jul 2, 2019

I like the way 5e gives some wizard spells where appropriate, or we can even make up some new spells, or find 2e versions of spells not updated.

What about taking the specialty priest and make that the 3rd level path. 1st and 2nd level is the same for all clerics and at 3rd level is where you can branch out. It may make more sense to pick at 1st level and have a couple splits in the faith at 3rd level. This may make more sense since you kind of pick a god before first level unless you change the way gods interact with clerics and have the gods fight for 2nd level clerics to pick them.

At 3rd level you can have a more combat cleric and a more spell cleric or healer cleric. Some of the generic cleric powers could be changed a bit for specialty priests.

Zardnaar · Jul 2, 2019

Some 2E priests had access to wizard spells. I think that's where it first happened. Getting invocation or transmutation was very good.

Tony Vargas · Jul 2, 2019

Zardnaar said:
Some 2E priests had access to wizard spells. I think that's where it first happened.

Clerics & Magic-Users shared some spells from the very beginning, as well as the same 'Vancian' system of memorization, same casting mechanics - "samey?" maybe, but efficient.
They still do, for the same reason, and then there's the arcana cleric.

Differentiating some clerics by giving them more spells just doesn't do the trick like spheres did...
...the spheres just have to be reasonably balanced for it to work well.

Yaarel · Jul 2, 2019

All spells can be organized into domains.

Then the Cleric (also Wizard) picks two domains, to build a thematic spellcaster concept.

To pick a spell outside ones domains, can happen if it is one or two lower levels than the highest spell level.

Zardnaar · Jul 2, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Clerics & Magic-Users shared some spells from the very beginning, as well as the same 'Vancian' system of memorization, same casting mechanics - "samey?" maybe, but efficient.
They still do, for the same reason, and then there's the arcana cleric.

Differentiating some clerics by giving them more spells just doesn't do the trick like spheres did...
...the spells just have to be reasonably balanced for it to work well.

I know but I'm talking about explicit wizard spells. Clerics lobbing fire ball for example.

cbwjm · Jul 2, 2019

gyor said:
The Speciality Priests of Faiths and Avatars, Demihumsn Deities, and Powers and Pantheons in 2e were awesome, but it's unlikely anything like speciality priests will be in 5e, unless they make it an alternate class feature for clerics like the alternate features we know the Ranger is going to get.

For now the closest we get to a speciality Priest is the Divine Soul, which is a mix of 2e Mystic (a class related to Speciality Priests) and 3e Favoured Soul.

This is why I like to customise my cleric domains for specific gods. Sometimes it's as simple as swapping out divine strike and martial weapons/heavy armour for potent cantrip and a free cantrip, other times it's adjusting domain spells to fit the deity. I'm also playing around with giving clerics small bonuses which are more like boons since they make no specific adjustments to domains. Things like the cleric of the god of magic able to make use of wizard spell scrolls or bonus proficiencies like the Lady of Poisons granting proficiency with the poisoners and herbalism kits. The Corruptor is essentially my Orcus and I've given his clerics the ability to not be attacked by unintelligent undead unless they attack the undead first. I'm not too worried about trying to achieve balance, more I just want something flavourful for my gods to grant their priests.

R_Chance · Jul 3, 2019

Several of you have nibbled around a problem I found when I considered Spheres for 5E. When I did look at them, the major problem was a lack of spells for many spheres. The 5E spell list is a lot more limited than 2E (or 3E for that matter). The first thing I would have needed to do was add / rework a lot of missing spells. That really ramped up the amount of work needed and my time is, during the school year, too limited to undertake it.

The fact that some deities / priesthoods are better / worse for adventuring doesn't bother me. The range available is about world building. The fact that players are going to pick the best for an adventurer is pretty much a no brainer. If they don't for RP purposes, well good on them. Different weapons, spells, classes / etc. have always been favored by players. Not a big deal to me. Back in the dark ages of the original game the go to magic user spell was "Sleep". If you were a magic user and you memorized any other spell at first level (you only got one then) or, gods forbid didn't have it in your book, it sucked to be you. That type of thing hasn't gone away.

I think the different spheres for different deities / priesthoods (and gods could have multiple priesthoods imho) is logical and helps with world building. Why should a god of agriculture and a god of war offer there Clerics the same spells?

*sigh* I can see a lot of my summer time disappearing (I teach). Might be fun to get back to it. An expanded spell list might address some of the balance problems between spheres… different granted abilities and weapon / armor limits help further differentiate and define priesthoods. As long as you're not slavishly devoted to balance or the idea that every priesthood needs to be an adventuring bunch it could be fun... or a tremendous time sink

*edit* For coherence, I was rambling a bit. Well, a lot. Less now I hope...