4E Gods - Where's the crunch?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Those feats stink speaking in general terms and I believe there is only one for each god so I suspect this doesn't really address the OP's concern IMHO.

When Divine Power drops in 2009, I suspect we will have a whole bunch of feats tailored to each core god. That's the best way to differentiate them, IMO.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Me, I'm honestly not seeing all this "diversity" among clerics in 3E -- in fact, one of the complaints frequently against 3E by people who played 2nd edition a lot was that even with domains, A cleric of Sune and a Cleric of Bane played almost the same, leaving differentiation to nothing but roleplay. In the end, in 3E it's up to Prestige Classes and Feats to make clerics "feel" different mechanically.

It depends on the domain. Once my Story Hour gets to that point, there's a fight with a kobold cleric with the Trickery domain and, let me tell you, an invisible cleric who can bless her companions and unleash the spiritual weapon pain, all the while moving around to keep anyone from finding her is a HUGE pain in the butt and not at all comparable to the evil cleric of the god of secrets the other fork in the campaign was dealing with at roughly the same time.

 

[Henry]

It depends on the domain. Once my Story Hour gets to that point, there's a fight with a kobold cleric with the Trickery domain and, let me tell you, an invisible cleric who can bless her companions and unleash the spiritual weapon pain, all the while moving around to keep anyone from finding her is a HUGE pain in the butt and not at all comparable to the evil cleric of the god of secrets the other fork in the campaign was dealing with at roughly the same time.

True, but when I see that said cleric can turn invisible exactly once a day for a couple of minutes at most, and that all the other things you mentioned are basic to every cleric from Shar to Torm, it doesn't feel very different -- only like a cleric with a potion of invisibility. The domains help, don't get me wrong, but compared to the glaring difference between clerics under the old spheres system, the domains really didn't mean much.

Now, the Spheres mind you had another problem -- it was all too easy to make a deity with a useless collection of spheres, and no reason to play them. The 2nd Edition Legends and Lore book did a lot to make them varied, as did the old Faiths and Pantheons book, but there were still specialty clerics who were vastly better than other ones.

 

[stonegod]

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

Ah, but too many powers spoil the pot, in my mind. I think more Channel Divinity feats + a unique paragon path or two (one leader-y, one defender-y) for each deity would go a long way to add some crunch to that fluff. This localizes the powers that any one sort needs to sort through, and allows them for all divine followers (cleric + paladins for now).

 

[MerricB]

The way I would differentiate clerics? Multiclass them!

Even create a "cleric of Kord" as a fighter with the cleric multiclass feat.

I detested the 2e (Complete Priest) method of speciality priests, but such deserves a separate entry so I can properly elucidate upon the matter.

Cheers!

 

[Plane Sailing]

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.

I like this idea best of all of them so far. I could see myself creating a flavourful at-will power for each of the gods in a new pantheon (I'd like to create a pantheon based on 1e Empire of the Petal Throne, FWIW).

 

[thatdarnedbob]

I prefer 4E minor mechanical differences to 3.5, where many clerics chose their deity and alignment based solely on domain choices and favored weapons.

 

[MerricB]

More thoughts on why I hate 2e speciality priests here.

I think 4e can do lots of interesting things to make speciality priests even within the tools we have now. Looking at it one way, even the powers you choose, despite not being actually limited by your god, might be what every priest of your religion chooses!

I am very, very glad that we won't have the situation where the "cleric" isn't actually a cleric but some other class. (If you want that, create a new class!)

However, I'm very much looking forward to the Divine Power book.

Cheers!

 

[Imperialus]

One thing that I like about the more generic dieties is that it opens up the possibility of having a single diety feel different in different cultures.

Think of it as being along the lines of how whenever the Romans conquered someone they would look at their pantheon and say stuff like "Hey you know your Wodan, he's a lot like our Jupiter. Thor... hrm... seems a lot like Vulcan, or maybe Mars to us. So whevever we put up a temple to Jupiter you can just assume that it's also a temple to Wodan."

This means that the various gods could be worshiped across cultures, just keep the names the same for simplicities sake. If you feel like making up entire pantheons for every different culture that works too but really a lot of the concepts of the gods in the PHB and DMG are pretty cross cultural.

For example, among a tribe of barbarians Kord might be the father of the gods, but that doesn't mean he's the only one worshiped. Maybe they worship Meloria as Kords wife, the Raven Queen is the goddess of winter, Pelor the god of summer, Gruumsh is the god of war, Veccna is the god of magic and witchcraft, Moradin is Kords smith, ect.

By contrast a civilized country might worship Pelor as the leader of the gods, Kord as the god of war, ect ect..

 

[hamishspence]

Dmg

DMG did stress that different temples might worship their own mini pantheons focussing on aspects of the gods, so that does fit. The aspects might go be different names too: "The Three Fates" for Avandra, Ioun, the Raven Queen"