Scribble
First Post
Ah I didn't actually have the Complete Priest. I had the Forgotten Realms Adventures book, and those Specialty priests seemed to be a case of "here's a bunch of new cool stuff you can do... Drawbacks... oh umm..."
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D&D 2E 2E specialty clerics
- Thread starter Savage Wombat
- Start date
Ah I didn't actually have the Complete Priest. I had the Forgotten Realms Adventures book, and those Specialty priests seemed to be a case of "here's a bunch of new cool stuff you can do... Drawbacks... oh umm..."
Aenghus
Explorer
The balance of 2e speciality priests was awful, even for 2e. Most of the kits were crippled, a few were overpowered
We have announcements of two priest-type classes - a fairly conventional armoured cleric and a more pure-caster unarmoured priest class. These two different classes are good bases for a lot of the speciality priest concepts, but not all of them.
I think there are two cases - concepts close enough that a cleric or priest can serve for them and concepts that are much closer to completely different classes, like ranger, paladin or wizard, which IMO are better served by that class along with themes, feats and other such customisation to add some priest flavour.
The latter idea goes right back to 1e Forgotten Realms, where wizards and rangers could be "priests" of appropriate gods, and the excellent flavour writeups in the 2e Faiths and Avatars book.
But the further a concept is from the cleric or priest class, the more reasonable it is to represent it by the closest class to the concept, which doesn't have to be cleric or priest.
We have announcements of two priest-type classes - a fairly conventional armoured cleric and a more pure-caster unarmoured priest class. These two different classes are good bases for a lot of the speciality priest concepts, but not all of them.
I think there are two cases - concepts close enough that a cleric or priest can serve for them and concepts that are much closer to completely different classes, like ranger, paladin or wizard, which IMO are better served by that class along with themes, feats and other such customisation to add some priest flavour.
The latter idea goes right back to 1e Forgotten Realms, where wizards and rangers could be "priests" of appropriate gods, and the excellent flavour writeups in the 2e Faiths and Avatars book.
But the further a concept is from the cleric or priest class, the more reasonable it is to represent it by the closest class to the concept, which doesn't have to be cleric or priest.
grimslade
Krampus ate my d20s
The customization of the cleric class to tailor the priesthood to emulate the deity was a great idea to incorporate into 2E. The domains and domain were a refinement but the domains were not equal and led to many abuses. My beloved halfling cleric of Brandobaris cohort with Travel and Trickery was a blast in 3e but seemed a little unbalanced even 2 levels below the rest of the table.
There needs to be differentiation between faiths. The god of Thieves and goddess of war should not be the same. Different powers, swap out turn undead for a better application of the faiths purpose, open spell lists to switch out flavor appropriate themed spells. Why would a Lord of Shadows and Secrets grant a Flame Strike?
Also, please dump healing as spell choice. Priests and Clerics can all channel holy energies to mend wounds and restore spirit. Maybe that would be the base application of 'turn undead'?
There needs to be differentiation between faiths. The god of Thieves and goddess of war should not be the same. Different powers, swap out turn undead for a better application of the faiths purpose, open spell lists to switch out flavor appropriate themed spells. Why would a Lord of Shadows and Secrets grant a Flame Strike?
Also, please dump healing as spell choice. Priests and Clerics can all channel holy energies to mend wounds and restore spirit. Maybe that would be the base application of 'turn undead'?
Personally, I loved specialty priests in 2e. They were the only kind that existed in my homebrew.
The pantheon was called The Seventeen. In theory, I had 17 mechanically-different cleric classes. Several were more-or-less useless as adventurers, and several more were completely broken, thanks to the spells and granted powers I assigned
. They were great! In my defense, I was a kid back then and had a *lot* more free time on my hands... and I recall doing full mechanical write-ups on less than half of them.
Grazzt
Demon Lord
Yep. And this is why we adopted the cleric rules from 2e and basically did away with the generic cleric. 2e specialty clerics really made the class feel different depending on what patron was worshipped.
In a lot of ways... most of the Divine classes don't even really need to exist, because they basically replicate what the specialty priest should be doing for a certain god.
If you think about it... a specialty priest for the 4E god of justice and protection, Bahamut, is a paladin. A specialty priest for the god of magic, Corellon, would basically fulfill the class of invoker. The avenger could really just be a specialty priest for the god of trickery and shadow, Sehanine.
If the schticks of the specialty priests are different enough and flavorful enough, then new Divine classes don't really need to exist per se.
If you think about it... a specialty priest for the 4E god of justice and protection, Bahamut, is a paladin. A specialty priest for the god of magic, Corellon, would basically fulfill the class of invoker. The avenger could really just be a specialty priest for the god of trickery and shadow, Sehanine.
If the schticks of the specialty priests are different enough and flavorful enough, then new Divine classes don't really need to exist per se.
Ratskinner
Adventurer
I cannot argue with that sentiment.
Li Shenron
Legend
Well... I really like the idea of clerics of different deities having different spells and abilities, but I wouldn't really replicate 2e specialty priests. IMHO they really take the idea a bit too far, and it may become really hard to balance them against each other.
3ed clerics had a fairly neat and simple mechanic, but IMHO it didn't go far enough! Clerics of the different deities weren't much different, only domains were a neat difference but those were more or less equivalent to 2-3 feats approx. The real problem was domain spells... if domains use mostly spells that are already on the cleric's list, then domain spells don't really make a difference, and if instead some spells are indeed uniquely available to one domain, you can still only prepare each 1/day! And OTOH, clerics of the same deities could be as different as clerics of two different deities if they didn't choose the same domains.
I would like a cleric class which makes any two clerics of the same deities have more in common, than what they have with clerics of other deities.
Maybe starting from 3ed, I would actually try the following:
- remove the choice of domains, i.e. make it so that each deity has e.g. 2 or 3 domains, and all her clerics get all those domains (I believe for most deities this amount of domains is enough to define their portfolio)
- make it possible to prepare domain spells in normal slots, but not viceversa
- drastically shorten the list of generic clerical spells available to anyone (clerics know way too many spells anyway, but if believed to need more, then just let a domain grant more spells) by moving many spells into domains
Incidentally... I'd love to move "critical" spells such as Harm into one domain so that only clerics of a couple of deities (maybe Bane and Cyric, or Tharizdun and Gruumsh) get such spells. Makes them more scary, and moves a problematic spell away from the PC...
3ed clerics had a fairly neat and simple mechanic, but IMHO it didn't go far enough! Clerics of the different deities weren't much different, only domains were a neat difference but those were more or less equivalent to 2-3 feats approx. The real problem was domain spells... if domains use mostly spells that are already on the cleric's list, then domain spells don't really make a difference, and if instead some spells are indeed uniquely available to one domain, you can still only prepare each 1/day! And OTOH, clerics of the same deities could be as different as clerics of two different deities if they didn't choose the same domains.
I would like a cleric class which makes any two clerics of the same deities have more in common, than what they have with clerics of other deities.
Maybe starting from 3ed, I would actually try the following:
- remove the choice of domains, i.e. make it so that each deity has e.g. 2 or 3 domains, and all her clerics get all those domains (I believe for most deities this amount of domains is enough to define their portfolio)
- make it possible to prepare domain spells in normal slots, but not viceversa
- drastically shorten the list of generic clerical spells available to anyone (clerics know way too many spells anyway, but if believed to need more, then just let a domain grant more spells) by moving many spells into domains
Incidentally... I'd love to move "critical" spells such as Harm into one domain so that only clerics of a couple of deities (maybe Bane and Cyric, or Tharizdun and Gruumsh) get such spells. Makes them more scary, and moves a problematic spell away from the PC...
