Woas
First Post
Hi everyone. I was musing over the idea earlier today that when boiled down, a cleric of any deity is in essence the same. Using a generic pantheon for example, why would a cleric of Pelor have the same saves, weapon and armor proficiencies, hit points, skills, spells and unique abilities than say a cleric of Corellon Larethian or cleric of Obad-Hai has? It seemed odd to me after thinking about it even though I have seen clerics of a number of different deities but never gave it any thought.
Now I realize that clerics of different deities do get slightly different abilities via the domains they are open to take. And that is a start but what I am thinking of is on a fundamental level of the cleric class. A cleric of Hextor I could see wearing heavy armor and wielding a martial weapon while calling down spells of damage. But what about a cleric of Olidammara? Now granted I've never seen someone play a cleric of Olidammara (or even an NPC) but I've always thought the idea of playing a cleric of "Lady Luck" would be interesting. But I would not find it appropriate for that kind of cleric to be wearing heavy armor and shield, a mace and be calling down holy firestorms. Yet it would seem to me at least that I would be shooting my character in his own foot (and only giving half effort to the party) to choose sub-optimal equipment and spells just in the name to role-play such a character.
Traveling down the road of my musing I came to the conclusion that it would be interesting to just say that a cleric of Obad-Hai = the druid class. Or that a cleric of Boccob = the sorcerer class. But in the end I felt that was too drastic of a change. But think it would make for an interesting house rule at best.
Which led me to my next thought. I wondered if it would be possible to construct a relatively painless way to create a unique cleric for each deity in a game. Creating a separate cleric class for each deity would be too much paper work and time and thus something I would want to avoid. The next best thing and probably my best and only plausible idea would be to make a 'base' cleric class much weaker than the current one (start at a d4 hit die, no or just light armor proficiencies, and so forth) and create a template for the needed deities that would adjust BAB, saves, proficiencies and so forth. But even that seems time consuming and about as much work as creating a unique cleric class for each deity in itself.
So I was wondering if anyone has ever tried this before? I'm a big fan of Arcana Evolved and naturally thought of something like how the Totem Warrior class works if you are familiar with it. And also wondered if by some strange occurrence that a miscellaneous .pdf or other source book may have covered this (I own Complete Divine although I try not to admit it. Never got the second one, Complete Champion was it?) already that I should look to? Does anyone have other suggestions on making this quick and easy or just other thoughts on it in general?
Now I realize that clerics of different deities do get slightly different abilities via the domains they are open to take. And that is a start but what I am thinking of is on a fundamental level of the cleric class. A cleric of Hextor I could see wearing heavy armor and wielding a martial weapon while calling down spells of damage. But what about a cleric of Olidammara? Now granted I've never seen someone play a cleric of Olidammara (or even an NPC) but I've always thought the idea of playing a cleric of "Lady Luck" would be interesting. But I would not find it appropriate for that kind of cleric to be wearing heavy armor and shield, a mace and be calling down holy firestorms. Yet it would seem to me at least that I would be shooting my character in his own foot (and only giving half effort to the party) to choose sub-optimal equipment and spells just in the name to role-play such a character.
Traveling down the road of my musing I came to the conclusion that it would be interesting to just say that a cleric of Obad-Hai = the druid class. Or that a cleric of Boccob = the sorcerer class. But in the end I felt that was too drastic of a change. But think it would make for an interesting house rule at best.
Which led me to my next thought. I wondered if it would be possible to construct a relatively painless way to create a unique cleric for each deity in a game. Creating a separate cleric class for each deity would be too much paper work and time and thus something I would want to avoid. The next best thing and probably my best and only plausible idea would be to make a 'base' cleric class much weaker than the current one (start at a d4 hit die, no or just light armor proficiencies, and so forth) and create a template for the needed deities that would adjust BAB, saves, proficiencies and so forth. But even that seems time consuming and about as much work as creating a unique cleric class for each deity in itself.
So I was wondering if anyone has ever tried this before? I'm a big fan of Arcana Evolved and naturally thought of something like how the Totem Warrior class works if you are familiar with it. And also wondered if by some strange occurrence that a miscellaneous .pdf or other source book may have covered this (I own Complete Divine although I try not to admit it. Never got the second one, Complete Champion was it?) already that I should look to? Does anyone have other suggestions on making this quick and easy or just other thoughts on it in general?
