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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dykstrav" data-source="post: 5779213" data-attributes="member: 40522">This is part of the cognitive dissonance I experience with the cleric's perceived function in the game versus their perceived function in the narrative structure of the setting. Many players want a healer when their hit point totals start dropping and many players don't want to play clerics... So one player takes it for the team and plays a cleric as a straight heal-bot. It's sort of a self-perpetuating thing once you've been through a campaign or two with this attitude in place.During the 3E/3.5 era, I remember getting strange looks when I actually role-played a cleric, or simply played a cleric as something beyond a straight healer. An elf cleric is actually quite satisfying (mechanically) because their racial weapon proficiencies give you some options beyond simple weapons. For whatever reason, players assume that my elf wasn't a cleric because I'm using a longbow and a longsword. (Such players were absolutely gob-smacked when they discovered that I didn't take the Augment Healing feat at first level.)I once played a cleric of Kord that was all about honorable competition, he was an athlete that sought to prove himself through athleticism. He'd often wrestle and subdue monsters because he thought that it was more glorious to win with his bare hands than with weapons. He'd also recite his full name and latest victory to every intelligent foe that he engaged. He wanted the foe to be able to talk about who slew them in the afterlife. In-game, the party's rogue was a bit on the obnoxious side, he'd give my cleric smart-ass comments about his notions of honor and frequently insulted his intelligence. Whenever he'd be low on hit points, the player had a problem with the idea that my cleric didn't respect his rogue, and considered healing him to be a dishonorable squandering of a divine gift on a coward that insulted Kord's glory on repeated occasions.Admittedly, that was an issue with roots in that player's expectations and behavior... But it really stuck with me how players expect to have their characters be obnoxious jerks to the cleric and still expect the cleric to heal them without batting an eyelash.I can respect 4E for trying to spread out the expectation of healing, even if it's not my game of choice.If I were to try to "Pathfinderize" the old-school spheres, I'd use it as a guide for flavor and not try to update the system exactly from 2E. I think a good way to get the flavor of sphere access would be to treat it in a similar way to school specialization for wizards. For example, a cleric can freely prepare and cast any spell that appears on the domain list for any domain granted by the deity. Those spells represent fundamental areas of concern and influence. For other cleric spells, you could require the cleric to expend an additional slot to prepare the spell.Or you could require them to make a caster check (DC 10 + spell level) to prepare or cast a spell that doesn't appear in one of the deity's domains.Or another method that strikes me as perhaps the coolest... Simply reduce the cleric's effective caster level by 3 for spells that don't appear on their domain lists. A cleric of a deity that doesn't grant access to the Healing domain couldn't cast cure light wounds until they reach 4th level (and then, would do so as a 1st-level caster).I'd do something about spontaneous cure spells... Probably take them away as a cleric class feature. After all, clerics can channel energy to represent a baseline talent for healing as a class.</blockquote>

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