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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 8172321" data-attributes="member: 8461">I remember having mixed, but generally positive, feelings toward <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16888/PHBR3-The-Complete-Priests-Handbook-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">PHBR3 The Complete Priest's Handbook</a>.This particular supplement has since gone down in history as "the book that tried to make the cleric even weaker." That idea (a reference to the "Toning Down the Cleric" section on page 122) never really stuck with me, largely because it was very clearly optional (or at least I thought so; the part where it said "Naturally, you should only do this if you personally feel the cleric class is too powerful in your campaign. If you don't, don't change him" seemed pretty clear on that point to me). Certainly, the reductions in power that section suggested were, insofar as I can tell, never seen again.Rather, what made the strongest impression on me was the instance of the "generic pantheon" presented in this book. I'd been looking for a pre-made pantheon for some time, but one that didn't come with what I felt was a lot of "baggage" from a campaign setting. Unfortunately, the closest I could find were transplanted mythological pantheons in the 2E <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/116010/Legends--Lore-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">Legends & Lore</a> (which had too much cultural baggage for me) and monstrous gods in <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16895/DMGR4-Monster-Mythology-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">DMGR4 Monster Mythology</a> (which I'll talk about more later; for now it's enough to say that I wanted a human version of that book).Instead, this book had "placeholder" deities, described so generically that they were essentially templates of religions rather than actual religions. In hindsight I can understand why they presented them like that - it was essentially a how-to guide for making fantasy pantheons rather than a finished product - but at the time I found it very frustrating.Even then, I couldn't be too upset with the book for giving what seemed like a half-measure, simply because how awesome a lot of the other ideas were. For instance, this is the first time I can recall explicitly seeing reference to clerics being able to gain spells and powers from a faith (i.e. a god), a force, or a philosophy. That certainly got my imagination up! We'd see these later, with things like the clerics in Dark Sun worshiping elemental forces, but for me the best use of this idea was the personified forces of Day, Night, and Twilight (along with the idea that Death was also out there) in the truly excellent <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17358/S5-The-Dancing-Hut-of-Baba-Yaga-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">S5 The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga</a> (a book that forever enshrined Lisa Smedman among my personal favorite RPG writers).But more notable was that this book really put forward the idea of what would later be called "specialty priests." That is, religion-specific classes (albeit under 2E's "priest" meta-class group) that had varying weapon and armor allowances, access (both major and minor) to different priest spheres, and special powers. I mean, sure, the 2E <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/16868/Players-Handbook-Revised-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">Player's Handbook</a> would put forth the idea of "Priests of Specific Mythoi," but this book is where it really made good on that idea...even if later books such as the aforementioned Legends & Lore, as well as <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17569/Faiths--Avatars-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">Faiths & Avatars</a>, would carry it forward.Also, looking back I'm a bit impressed at what this book didn't do, which was add more priest spheres to the game. Spheres (if you don't remember them, those were essentially an alternate categorization of spells, in a manner similar to schools of magic) were an excellent idea in terms of differentiating what spellcasters of different religions could do, especially since you could have either minor access (i.e. spells of up to 3rd level) or major access (i.e. spells all the way up to 7th level, the maximum at the time for divine spells) to them. Sure, it wasn't "balanced" as we'd think of it today, but it was evocative as anything!But I digress. After what we saw in the PHB, there was really only one major expansion of priest spheres, in the <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17391/Tome-of-Magic-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">Tome of Magic</a>. After that, new spheres in AD&D 2E were incredibly rare, such as the Ritual sphere in <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17364/Jakandor-Island-of-War-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">Jakandor, Island of War</a>. For PHBR3 not to go that route has always seemed to be to be, for lack of a better word, disciplined. There's no basis for it, but years of watching escalating power levels in D&D has me assuming that there must have been a lot of pushes to create new spheres all over the place, and that there must have been some directive inside of TSR refusing to do so. In actuality, I suspect that it was just because the designers didn't want to have to go back and retroactively add more spheres to the deity listings for all the gods they'd already put out clerical stats for.It's not perfect, but this book is far from being one that I regret picking up either.Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.</blockquote>

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