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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Set" data-source="post: 4361371" data-attributes="member: 41584">To a certain point, more information on fantasy gods tends to limit them more than expand them, IMO. Once they get big multi-page write-ups, with variant sects and the like, they get a little 'roomier' and become useful for more than a single limited role, but the Domains & Favored Weapons approach of 3.X felt a little restrictive to me, particularly in light of real-world faiths, where a diety like Shiva 'the Destroyer' also has associations with fertility, rulership, fire, and pretty much everything else his faithful want to associate him with! (And I specifically chose Shiva as an example, because he's part of a pantheon of hundreds of dieties, which would be far more likely to have limited roles, compared to monotheistic dieties.) Using the core dieties, for example, I might want to work up a priest from a farming community who is very concerned with natural laws and seasonal cycles and the whole life-and-death cycle, believing that magic should be used to both raise up what must be raised up, and put down that which should accept it's time in the sun has past. But instead of making a priest of Obad-Hai, I could go with a priest of Wee Jas. He's still a priest of a goddess of law, magic and death, but he's got a different focus, because of his farm-community roots. It might be neat to have him armed with a scythe, but the Favored Weapon of Wee Jas is a dagger. It might be neat to have him know spells of the Plant Domain, etc., but Wee Jas doesn't grant those spells, even if it would be in theme for this particular character. A more open and freeform system for Clerics, IMO, is better, as the diety choice all-too-often is limiting. Alignment is a particular stickler for me, as the tiny sub-set of gods included in core books tends to lack certain roles, such as a good or chaotic god of magic. (Once larger pantheons, such as the ones in the LGG or FRCS are included, there's more likely to be 'something for everyone,' obviously, but when there are only a dozen dieties in a core book, choices get much more restricted.) On the other other hand, I loved Specialty Priests and Spheres back in 2nd Edition, but I think that the game has moved very far away from that approach.  Domains were a *much* smaller subset of those rules, and it looks like 4E is working to make Clerics even less distinctive than that.</blockquote>

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