Clerics as Spontaneous Casters?

[Thia Halmades]

It was actually a friend of mine who talked me out of making this adjustment when I had considered something similar, and (remarkably, along the same lines) considered doing a dump of Spon. Cure & implementing an improved Domain function. Instead of Cure, you get domain spells. The advantage of course being that the Heal domain promptly gave this ability back to Clerics, but I hadn't gone so far as to alter the spells known list. Merely buffed up their spontaneous casting and granted them new domains (5, 10, 15, 20).

Insofar as whether the class is weak; I'll yield the argument that they are naturally generic, and the only thing that really starts breaking them out of that mold is their domain abilities which are, as noted, a direct reflection of their chosen Deity. This (like y'all) is something I'd wanted to fix. First, by granting Clerics automatic proficiency in their Deities' chosen weapon. If they went Caitiff, they would choose a weapon that represented their own history. I had a lady playing a Caitiff Cleric in my Ravenloft campaign (where you don't want to worship those Gods ANYWAY) and her weapon was the axe she used to put her family down after they were turned into Zombies. That worked nicely. The gent who replaced her uses a Long Rifle as his weapon of choice, and took the same domains she had; Fire & Healing. Because he loves the burning.

Somewhere else around here I'd posted a Shaman variant which included the ability to cough up multiple domains and then select among those domains for chosen abilities per day. I see RaZZer99's point, in that dumping them would balance them out and keep them from having 6 granted powers, which would (similar to what Nifft & Korimyr the Rat are saying) end up acting as 'Class Features,' which I think would be tres nifty.

On top of that, as far as cutting down their HP, that I don't agree with. Part of the balance of the Cleric is their ability to stand in melee and toss heals, or at least be in the fray using Divine Reach which is just as good, but on the field, healing party members without running the immediate risk of being melted into gravy. Mmm... Holy Gravy. If we scare the Clerics into not being able to heal on the field, we're hurting everyone in the long run, and you also limit your ability to run proper boss fights, where the boss & minions can do 50 - 75% of total party resources in damage.

3/ individually selected spells known. you get as many of these as a Battle Sorcerer gets (so not that many), and you choose them from the normal Cleric spell list.

Which makes them more like Wizards & Sorcerers, and gimps their overall flexibility (domain granting notwithstanding). It also substantially alters their flavor (yes, even with the gravy). My problem is a flavor issue; I don't like the idea of the most flexible of all the casters having the very thing that lets them operate as effectively as they do completely removed from them. This is the fatal flaw in my thinking; while what I want to do would make them much cooler, most people are going to take the Heal domain outright to maintain their spontaneous curative ability, thus only adding one stack of domain spells which they can cast spontaneously.

Finding the happy medium of balance between more effective spontaneous casting, without removing their primary strength, is the thing I'm looking for. When 3E fixed the Cleric, they removed all of the insane extra WIS spells, but gave them the ability to pray for any spell in the book, knowing instead of consuming a ton of slots with heals, they would finally be able to do something different. I don't want to make them so different that you end up with Clerics who never heal.

LCpt. Thia Halmades

 

[Henry]

Back in Ye Olden Dayes when ye firste edition ruled ye Aerthe, our group used to allow clerics to spontaneously cast, both to cure the "Walking Medic" syndrome, and because their spells were not very strong compared to magic-users. It worked because they didn't have strong defense spells, or spells that laid waste to vast swathes, and it actually served to power up the clerics a bit and make people more interested in playing them.

In 2E, with Spheres, we went back to memorization, because the flavor of the spheres, and special abilities they were given by the DM often in lieu of undead turning, made people want to play them more.

Giving a 3E Cleric spontaneous to all spells is sick and wrong. Seriously, it strikes me as being SO powerful that most players couldn't help NOT to play a cleric, unless it were for sheer roleplaying reasons. It's VERY powerful.

 

[Thia Halmades]

And that's what I'm trying to avoid; turning them into the next Ub3r C45t0rzz, b1zz1tch!!!!~ That's so not the effect I think anyone wants; the debate is how to remove that generic, "my food is from McDonald's and somehow tastes EXACTLY like everything else from McDonald's" feeling that people get from Clerics. Wizards, it's easy. Pick a specialization and run with it. Sorcerers, even easier (especially if you're using the Composite Sorcerer Fix on the WotC boards as we are) and they're suddenly balanced and fully operational (and blasting everything in sight).

Clerics don't get a ton of feats, their spells aren't the most powerful (although they tend to be the most necessary) so they're left to focus on getting better equipment and healing everything in sight. One of my players got in the grill of the Ravenloft Cleric, bitterly proclaiming he should sit there, be quiet, and heal the party when necessary. That didn't go over so well, as you might imagine. But his point -- I feel generic and you should too -- was an interesting one, if poorly delivered.

So to break away from that, the obvious solution is grant them a couple of extra In-Faith domains and abilities. If I were to remove anything from Clerics, it would be the innate ability to Turn or Rebuke undead. I mean... what does a Cleric of War have to do with Turning Undead? Tossing Bless on an Army, heck yeah. But Turning? Unless he's a Necromantic Cleric of War and wants to Rebuke (who thought up that word??) them into serving him, meh, sure. But that's a pretty specific niche.

LCpt. Thia Halmades

 

[Henry]

Clerics don't get a ton of feats, their spells aren't the most powerful (although they tend to be the most necessary) so they're left to focus on getting better equipment and healing everything in sight. One of my players got in the grill of the Ravenloft Cleric, bitterly proclaiming he should sit there, be quiet, and heal the party when necessary. That didn't go over so well, as you might imagine. But his point -- I feel generic and you should too -- was an interesting one, if poorly delivered.

From my perspective, they don't even need this much, because the domains give quite a serious boost to individuality - it's just that some people don't seem to remember their domains! A cleric with War, Strength, or Destruction can in a limited run bust rump just like a Wizard - dashing out Power Words, disintegrations, and the Freakin' Bigby's Hands which no clerics had no hope of before now. I've never had a cleric look similar in any way to the other clerics in my adventuring parties, because of these.

If you take away turn undead, you may want to think about altering spontaneous casting, as well - perhaps make it "convert any spell to a domain spell"?

 

[Nifft]

IMC, I address both of Henry's issues -- Clerics spontaneously convert into Domain spells, BUT each gets only one Domain to start, AND I re-did the Domains to draw from the Cleric & Druid spell lists more than the Arcane spell list... IMC, a Wizard isn't as likely to be annoyed that a Cleric can steal his thunder.

-- N

 

[Spatzimaus]

IMC, we just change Clerics like this:

At the start of each day, the Cleric picks one Domain spell for each spell level. (By default, this gives two choices per "slot"; if you find a way to add additional domains, it just increases the number of choices.) Instead of filling a bonus casting slot, however, that spell is what you can swap for (instead of cures/inflicts). Metamagic applies as usual.

(Note: if you allow casters to de-memorize spells, this should also allow the Cleric to change which domain spell he has allocated to each spell level.)

There. Now, every Cleric is far more focused on his domains, instead of being a walking healing battery. And if you pick the Healing domain, this means you can swap 6th- (or higher) level spells for Heal and 9th-level for Mass Heal, assuming you select those as the domain spells for those levels. The spontaneity becomes more useful, but without really impinging on the Sorcerer's flexibility (since you can only swap for one spell per spell level).

We had one Cleric go Water+Travel with this setup. He loved it. If you want a Cleric that has more individuality, but don't want to go the full spontaneity route, I'd highly suggest something like this.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I think that your solution (small list + Domains) is interesting, but gives little incentive to stay in Cleric over moving to a PrC -- after all, there are lots of PrCs which grant bonus Domains and more.

True, but the only one I can think of that gives two Domains across ten levels is the Contemplative, which has a clearly different flavor than the Cleric-- and forces the Cleric to sacrifice HD, BAB, and Fortitude save.

I don't want to make them so different that you end up with Clerics who never heal.

Me either-- and I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for Clerics to get at least some of those cure spells. I was more worried about restoration and raise dead, since there's little incentive to burn Spells Known for them. Most Bards and Favored Souls I've seen in play picked up at least cure light wounds, if they didn't pick up the whole set.

Never seen a Favored Soul choose restoration, though.

 

[Thia Halmades]

Originally Posted by Spatzimaus

At the start of each day, the Cleric picks one Domain spell for each spell level. (By default, this gives two choices per "slot"; if you find a way to add additional domains, it just increases the number of choices.) Instead of filling a bonus casting slot, however, that spell is what you can swap for (instead of cures/inflicts). Metamagic applies as usual.

So my current thought goes like this: We remove the Positive/Negative modifier, and add in Domain based casting as Spontaneous instead.

Advantage: Clerics are now punched up in the flavor category.
Cleric: "Burning Hands!"
Wizard: "What the... That's my line!"

Disad: Clerics without the Healing domain now must mem their Cures in advance. Personally? I like this. If you've got the Healing domain, you are covered. Like an insurance policy. Bickity Bam. If you don't? You go back to memming those bad boys until you take the Feat: Extra Domain or we build in a Domain progression, such as 6/12/18.

So in that case, do they get EVERY domain ability? Because each one is like its own Feat. Some aren't all that, others are extremely potent. This would also go well with the argument that Clerics are unbalanced against Wizards (*cough*Nonsense*cough*) but would add a lot of flavor without reinventing the wheel. If they take the Air domain, they can Fly and Air Walk and what have you. Earth domain I think gives them a summon or two.

Insofar as then limiting their total spells? Eeh. The big solution is, of course, Clerics can only learn spells from their Deities domains, who should have a total of X domains minimum to avoid totally sucking for the Cleric. Or, you allow the Cleric to select a pool of domains to choose from, of which two are elected at character creation as "Domains Bound" - a bound domain is one the Cleric is tied to and can cast from Spontaneously. All Clerics (regardless of Faith) have access to the Healing domain off the bat.

LCpt. Thia Halmades

 

[Spatzimaus]

Advantage: Clerics are now punched up in the flavor category.
Cleric: "Burning Hands!"
Wizard: "What the... That's my line!"

And yet, this isn't that big of a problem, because a Cleric who took the Fire domain can really ONLY do that with Fire spells. The Wizard still has a huge edge in flexibility. It's a bigger problem when compared to Sorcerers, but they at least have a large edge in spells/day.
The flavor boost is HUGE. In 3E, a priest with the Fire domain would have only a small fraction of his spells be fire-based. With this change, he'd really FEEL like a link to a fire god.

Disad: Clerics without the Healing domain now must mem their Cures in advance.

This really hasn't been a problem for us. Think of it this way; how many of your current spells were you swapping for Cures? Half? Okay, now fill half your slots with Cures, and swap them for Domain spells if need be. Same end result, but it FEELS different. In core 3E, Clerics always felt a bit "off" to me, simply because I could fill up all my slots with useful spells, but just knew that most of them wouldn't last. Under this system, you just feel more flexible, even if there's no effective change for a healer.

Also, we altered the deities' domain lists a bit, sticking Healing on a few more of them, including a couple evil deities. And note that swapping for the Healing domain is far superior to the old Cure swapping, since you could now swap high-end stuff for Heal. So it's still a popular choice.

One thing is that if you want to keep the balance the same, you can't let them swap for ANY domain spell, just a selected one per spell level. Otherwise, PrCs that give extra domains, or the Extra Domain feat, become much, much stronger. Without this limit, a character with three domains is effectively like a Sorcerer who knows at least four spells per spell level; he fills all his level 1 slots with spell A, then can swap for B, C, and D as needed. This is just too much, IMO, which is why we did it the way we did. And really, it's worked well in practice. The player can customize which swap spells he uses for each day, mixing and matching his domains.

We added a "Domain Preparation" feat that lets you put domain spells in your normal slots. Since these spells were already possibilities for swapping, it's not nearly as strong as it would be in a core 3E setup, but it adds some nice flexibility. We also allow Domain spells to violate any alignment limitations (an evil Cleric can cast a spell with a [Good] modifier if it's part of his domain), which helps since we added the [Good] tag to Heal and an [Evil] tag to Harm, but removed the casting alignment issues from Druids entirely (so they can cast both Heal and Harm).

So in that case, do they get EVERY domain ability? Because each one is like its own Feat. Some aren't all that, others are extremely potent.

I'm not sure what the question is. How is this any different than what's already happening in the game? Some domains have better domain abilities, while others have better spells. Overall, it's still balanced, as long as you don't change the system to make domain spells much more or much less valuable.

 

[Thia Halmades]

The question is: If using this fix, how many domains do they end up with? What's the final progression?

LCpt. Thia Halmades