Cleric powers speculation. No more domains?

[Incendax]

I'm willing to bet the Gods only have two major influences on a cleric's choices.

1) Gods will probably come with a specific Trained Skill they place emphasis on.
2) Your choice of god will probably influence the type of damage you deal. (Radiant, Psychic, Physical, Ect).

Turning and Rebuking will, just as 3rd Edition, be based upon a power choice and alignment restriction.

 

[Aenghus]

Given the space constraints I hear they are suffering from I am unsurprised they are going for a "generic" cleric in the initial PHB. I would forsee some power variance based on deity choice - radiant, necrotic or elemental energies etc.

Thing is there is no way they could adequately cover customised powers for specific cleric concepts in the PHB1. A lot of players aren't interested in cleric fluff and devoting a lot of pages to it in the core product doesn't make sense.

I am absolutely sure there will be more products in the future to allow for some customisation. The trick here will be to maintain the cleric focus and avoid power inflation while doing this.

Similarly I expect there to be new divine class options that are not clerics to address calls for unarmoured and/or non-melee focused divine casters. Well, I hope so, I know some people want options to allow the cleric to be unarmoured and use magic rather than weapons, but I don't think this suits the 4e design methodology - a new class or classes with appropriately designed powers is called for, especially as they may end up in a different role.

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

If clerics of different deities do lack any real distinct flavour in terms of actual abilities (powers, prayers, rituals, dodads, whatever) then I'm going to be very disappointed. Real differentiation between characters that should be as different as chalk and cheese is something I think is really important to the game. But then I also wanted Complete Mage to have each of the specialist wizards as different classes, so I can't say that I was truly expecting this differentiation.

But WOTC if you're listening - I'm one of those that would definitely pay for the book that gives me this very tangible distinction. A priest of the god of Death and Decay should have VERY different abilities from priests of the gods of Righteous Duty, The Sun, or Fluffy Bunnies.

For clerics this doesn't need separate classes, just separate trees of powers - like Kzach mentioned. As long as there is a broad enough array of powers to support this I'm happy - and if need be I can then rule that players of god X can only take specific powers. But if the only difference between Morgroth of Bane and Kylie of Fluffylepus is the way they dress, I may have to go all emo

For specialist mages I'm not sure, maybe it could also be done that way or maybe it requires separate powers - but I want the Necromancer to feel dramatically different from the Enchanter and the Evoker. Maybe this can just be done by careful selection of the available powers - I'll wait for the books to see if that's the case.

In either case if the core doesn't offer it, I'd certainly buy the supplement that gave me the options.

 

[Kzach]

Well, it got partially answered in the podcast. It's basically up to player choice. There will be "Torm-y" feats that a cleric can take if they want to be more "Torm-y" but they don't have to.

This does, however, leave the flexibility to the DM to enforce certain feat lists appropriate to certain gods if they wish to.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I would suspect chose of god somewhat like the rogue path:

cleric of generic war god:

Suggested Feat: weapon training xxx
Suggested skills: ...
Suggested daily powers: ...
Suggested encounter powers: ...
suggested at will powers: ...

Maybe some kind of guidelines on a sidebar!