Complete Divine - Designer Interview posted

[MerricB]

Wizards have just posted an interview with the designers of Complete Divine on their website:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ps/20040501a

A bunch of interesting quotes.

"Relics are new. They're a set of faith-powered magic items that fall somewhere between standard magic items and full-on artifacts. Steadfast allegiance to your deity gives you access to relics -- you can't just find them in a treasure chest somewhere."

"The spirit shaman is a new druidlike base class with a whole new way of choosing spells -- the shaman's spells come off of the druid list, and every morning he or she contacts the spirits that the shaman will need during the day. After that, the character can spontaneously cast the spells that he or she chose during that daily contact."

"[There are] seven distinctive parts to the book -- The Devoted, Prestige Classes, Supplemental Rules, Magic Items, Deities, The Divine World, and Domains and Spells"

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

"we do offer more options for PCs who don't want to worship a god. You can be a cleric of an entire pantheon or a cleric devoted to abstract principles rather than a specific supernatural entity"

So, Complete Divine will offer a spontaneously casting cleric (Favoured Soul), a spontaneously casting druid (Spirit Shaman - and that sounds really cool!), and a bunch of other stuff.

I've got to say, what I'm hearing is really, really good.

It also seems that Greyhawk fans will be getting a few nice inclusions in the deities section. I'm very happy about that.

Cheers!

 

[Thanee]

Yeah, sounds quite interesting.

Can't wait until Complete Arcane comes along... I just like arcane magic better than divine.

Bye
Thanee

 

[drunkmoogle]

I hope Complete Divine gives me more evil toys to play with . Just the BoVD isn't enough.

"There's your problem, you had your Cleric set to evil!"

Ditto with the Complete Arcane. Hopefully Complete Arcane and Complete Divine will have a little more about Divine/Arcane centric worlds, just like complete Warrior discussed Warrior/Mercenary themed campaigns (though in far less detail than I hoped).

 

[Derulbaskul]

Dave: I'm fond of the relics, and of the new 'worshiper-focused' write-ups for the core D&D deities. If you gave me another 100 pages, I'd probably split it equally among prestige classes, spells, magic items, and all-new deities.

Is this a tacit admission that the stats for deities in both Deities & Demigods and Faiths & Pantheons was a stupid idea?

Admission or not, it was a stupid idea: worshipper-focused write-ups are actually useful and thus are a much better design decision. I'm looking forward to this book.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Cool, this book sounds like it will be a lot more useful than Deities & Demigods. I hope it includes many of the cleric domains that should be core, but have been ghettoized into Forgotten Realms products.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Is this a tacit admission that the stats for deities in both Deities & Demigods and Faiths & Pantheons was a stupid idea?

Admission or not, it was a stupid idea: worshipper-focused write-ups are actually useful and thus are a much better design decision. I'm looking forward to this book.

I'm not sure how big a section that's going to be... it is under the question about what they had to cut or wished to explore further, meaning they didn't have enough pages for it all.

 

[JoeBlank]

"The spirit shaman is a new druidlike base class with a whole new way of choosing spells -- the shaman's spells come off of the druid list, and every morning he or she contacts the spirits that the shaman will need during the day. After that, the character can spontaneously cast the spells that he or she chose during that daily contact."

Having only read, but never actually played, Arcana Unearthed, this sounds very familiar. Seems like this is the way most, if not all, of the spellcasters in AU work, although they don't have to "prepare" on a daily basis, just when they want to change the spells to which they have access for spontaneous casting.

Am I right?

And, as usual, thanks for the scoop, Merric.

 

[Nightfall]

Even though I got stuff for the Scarred Lands deities that I like (Divine and the Defeated, Player's Guide to Clerics and Druids. Hell the entire Player's Guide series PERIOD!), I'm sure this book will help get my other players settled into how to use deities more. Besides, relics are nice too.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm not sure if the designers meant they were including new deities, or using the new format for previous deities from Greyhawk that hadn't gotten coverage yet.