Cleric powers speculation. No more domains?

[Kzach]

From the cleric preview it seems as if there will be some sort of Godly flavour similar to domains but without spells, at least in the traditional sense, and with no schools per se in the system, what influence do you think God selection will have over a cleric's power and progression?

If it follows a model that entails individual power assignment, ala "Power of Amaunator", then I can see a lot of work ahead for DM's. I suppose simply renaming some powers is fine and all but there was a certain simplicity in domain assignment that counters the complexity of having to create something new for every God, not to mention for levels 1-30.

I can see it, however, having some sort of list of powers with various monikers assigned to them such as, "Radiant, Shadow, Primal," etc. And each god is given a list from which their followers can choose powers from, much like the way domains and spell schools work.

Then of course, that means domain powers are gone I guess. Probably a good thing given how broken they were any way

 

[ferratus]

I think it might all depend on how much the DM goes from the standard when designing religions. I am willing to bet that if you have a portfolio based, congregational polytheism you'll be able to do just fine without much work. Monotheism will probably be a little more work, while not going with religions that don't have any gods at all will probably be masochistic.

 

[Henry]

...Monotheism will probably be a little more work, while not going with religions that don't have any gods at all will probably be masochistic.

In the case of that last one, even if a DM dropped clerics altogether, it doesn't sound like the party would suffer.

 

[ferratus]

True, true. Let me edit that.

If you have a religion that does not worship gods at all, and you still want to use the cleric class, then you are probably being masochistic.

 

[Henry]

True, true. Let me edit that.

If you have a religion that does not worship gods at all, and you still want to use the cleric class, then you are probably being masochistic.

The old Complete Cleric's Handbook from 2e is actually an excellent resource for that kind of thing, and really clerics of a philosophy or force (or Force) would still probably follow the same lines are someone picking stuff for a buncha gods. So a cleric of, say, "Truth", will probably wind up picking some of the same things a cleric of Amaunator or Bahamut would pick. Leastways, that's what I'm hoping.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

In one of the 6 billion interviews last week (maybe even the podcast), somebody from WotC said that clerics aren't getting much deity-specific stuff in the PHB, because they didn't want to stress the core pantheon too much. It sounded like they were ruling out 3e-style domains to some degree. They said that stuff would be easy to add through powers and feats, though.

 

[Voss]

Which makes it somewhat odd that a specific god was referenced by a feat. Rather annoying as its yet more setting information to rip out of the crunch. Would Power of the Sun been that hard? (And yes, for people that will inevitably chime in, I can do it myself. But, again its a barrier to communication- referencing something shouldn't involve translating it from your setting, to another setting, to the actual rule).

As for domains, eh. They were just a clumsy way for clerics to get powers that were supposedly feat equivalent, front loaded for easy min/maxing. Good riddance.

 

[Darth Cyric]

The DDXP game is also apparently in the Forgotten Realms, so that feat may have been campaign-specific.

The thing that made Clerics so cheesy in 3e was the fact that they could access every spell on the Cleric list. Domains, rather than adding any of the flavor they should've by perhaps restricting the Clerics' spell choices a la 2e Spheres, tacked on a few superfluous spells, often arcane in nature, and a few powers that tended to be out-of-whack in balance.

In 4e, the system of powers itself looks to take care of the 3e "I can cast anything on any given day" Clerics.

So as long as we have enough diversity in the flavor of the powers themselves (sun, nature, necrotic, the four elements, combat, etc.), hopefully, we can make different-flavored Clerics. If that's the case, Domains, or even Spheres, aren't necessary.

 

[Kzach]

One thing that occurred to me also was the fact that if powers are somehow reflective of the cleric's god, and you get more and more powers as you level, then the flavour of the cleric is far greater.

Let's say you have several lists of powers, ie. Radiant, Shadow, Life, Death. And gods are listed with what power lists their clerics can choose from, then that defines the role of the cleric far greater than any edition previously since that defines *all* of the abilities the cleric can take for 30 levels.

I actually hope this is the case as clerics were severely lacking in flavour. it'd be nice if paladins had a similar flavour boost.

 

[hong]

The flavoursomeness of clerics is always going to be heavily influenced by their primary function in play, namely as party medics. It'll be interesting to see how 4E addresses this issue, at the least.