4E Gods - Where's the crunch?

[Staffan]

That said 4e is more than a little lacking in god stuff. Complete Description of gods in a paragraph or two and that's it with "for the DM to fill in the blanks".

Kord
Kord, the god of strength, is chaotic good. He is known as the Brawler. Kord is the patron of athletes, especially wrestlers. His worshippers include good fighters, barbarians, and rogues. The domains he is associated with are Chaos, Good, Luck, and Strength. Kord's favored weapon is the greatsword.

Kord
Unaligned
Kord is the storm god and the lord of battle. He revels in strength, battlefield prowess, and thunder. Fighters and athletes revere him. He is a mercurial god, unbridled and wild, who summons storms over land and sea; those who hope for better weather appease him with prayers and spirited toasts. He gives few commands:

• Be strong, but do not use your strength for wanton destruction.
• Be brave and scorn cowardice in any form.
• Prove your might in battle to win glory and renown.

Gotta say, 4e seems to win this one.

 

[Jack99]

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@ Jack99: Sorry if I have caused offense. If you would like to discuss the opinions expressed on my personal blog, you are always welcome to discuss it with me there, not in this forum. It's probably a better place to discuss my sincerity and choice of birthday gifts, as well.

The reason I started this thread after having given my books away is, I am still working on a pantheon for a Fire Islands campaign. While I won't be playing 4E, I know a lot of people will be...I would like to make a product that everyone can enjoy.

Nah, no offense at all. I read your two posts within a minute of each other, and recalled your blog, which made me wonder even more.

About the topic at hand, which I totally forgot to address earlier, I would have to say that I agree with you. As in there isn't enough diversification amongst the different clerics. One solution might be to create two new Channel Divinity abilities that are unique to each god (much like those you can acquire via a feat) and then give it to clerics, instead of turn undead and Divine Fortune. For further differentiation, one might make god-specific rituals as well.

My first campaign is by the book, but this is how I will do it (unless I see a better suggestion first ofc). And yes, 2e clerics > 3e clerics as far as how different they felt. I am striving for balance this time around though, since I want to avoid my players always picking cleric of Mystra or the like, simply because the bonuses was too good to pass up.

Cheers

 

[I'm A Banana]

@ Kamakazi Midget: Man, this is awesome stuff! Thank you for the feedback (and for "accidental suck," which made me laugh out loud.)

Glad you like it! I hope it helps. I don't like everything about 4e, but I think a lot of what I don't like is fix-able...some stuff is just going to require abusing the system a bit more than others. Custom clerics shouldn't be too hard in comparison to, say, abstract combat or additional resource management systems or a few other things.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I envision some "multi-class" like feats that let you replace your regular powers with god-specific ones. The trick is keeping the roles "intact". Maybe the feats should really be multi-class feats, in as you can take only one multi-class.

And the feat might be available for non-clerics, too. Anyone that wants to be a "Divine Champion" could pick up these feats. But it would be easiest for Clerics (and Paladins?) to qualify for it, maybe by requiring a wisdom of 13+ and Skill Training (Religion).

Okay, the idea sounds simple, but the question is how to create some flavorful powers.

 

[Obryn]

I'd say, out of the box, a good minor house rule is to give clerics (and maybe paladins) of different gods their deity-specific channeling power instead of one of the pre-set options. Then, the other one could be picked up as a feat later.

It's not much, I know, but it's something.

Out of the box, I'd also recommend picking specific prayers based on the cleric's theme... For instance, Cause Fear is very appropriate to a cleric of the Raven Queen, whereas the other Encounter powers are all very ... shiny ... in comparison. I'd suggest this as something you'd have to rely on the player to do; otherwise, gods become more of a straight-jacket than a benefit.

Since there are no feats specific to evil gods as of yet, I would expect to see more evil-cleric-oriented powers later on.

-O

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

@ Plane Sailing: true, the "three commandments" are great plot hooks and seeds for character development, but that seems like the sort of thing that would be very specific to a campaign. I like world-building, and fluff usually gets in the way of that.

But aren't your goals at odds - "differentiated Clerics" vs "generic enough to fit into my homebrew"?

 

[CleverNickName]

But aren't your goals at odds - "differentiated Clerics" vs "generic enough to fit into my homebrew"?

I suppose that is one way to look at it. Really, I would like gods to matter more. You can accomplish this through the story and character backstory, or you can do it through mechanics, or both. "Both" is what I would prefer.

 

[hamishspence]

Frcs

That was the first time we really saw deities with commandments in 3rd ed. Deities and Demigods didn't really do it, nor did complete Divine, only FRCS and Faiths & Pantheons.

So its nice to see 4th ed do it, albiet not in as much detail.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I think deity-specific at-wills plus getting the deity specific Channel Divinity as class feature instead of a feat would go a long way to fix that - the pact plus at-will combo works well for the warlock.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Henry]

I'd ideally like to have seen something along the line of 'spheres' or 'domains' for cleric spells, but that would have needed an entirely different setup, so it wasn't really likely to happen with the current set of powers.

Actually, I'm thinking it might be pretty easy to make 4e powers thematic to clerics -- take a look at that they did with Star, Fey, and Infernal Pact Warlocks, for example. Those three subsets of powers look very different from one another - and from what I saw in play recently, they feel very different too. It would be a good bit of work, of course, but cleric powers differentiated by "sphere" in similar way that pact warlocks were differentiated would be very cool, balanced, and flavorful.

Only problem is -- the work for that many powers, but if Gygax and crew could do it for spells, so can we.