How do you guys introduce material from the class books?

[JoeGKushner]

With the complete warrior now out, it's time to bring this thread back from the dead. Besides, Exalted Deeds has a lot of clerical material as do a few other new books.

When introducing this material, the first thing to ask is how do players normally receive their spells? As a GM, for clerics, do you ever have the divine servants give the players any hints of spells that might be wise to take? It's been years, but I remember in the first ed DMG that the gods actually didn't grant low level spells and these were granted by other powers under the gods with the gods granting only the highest level. Made for some interesting prayers.

In such cases, these patrons can provide vision quests for players to dig up old scrolls and lore. Perhaps the material in the PHB is only common knowledge of what the clerics can do and to find other information, they need to seek out other sources of knowledge.

If the GM uses a multi-world setting like Oathbound, Planescape, Ravenloft or other, then perhaps those other gods simply don't grant those spells to the worshippers.

Perhaps there is a little evolution in the campaign going on that forces new spells to rise to the top in order to overcome the challenges being faced. After all, cleric spells may be researched and created too no?

 

[The Spectrum Rider]

IMC, all spells for all classes must be learned, one at a time. When a character - even a cleric - levels up, he gets a number of "free shots" at learning spells. (For classesthat memorize spells, the number of free shots of each level is equal to the number of new spell slots of that level that the character gets. For classes with a fixed number of spells known, the free shots correspond to the new number of spells known for each level.)

After they have used up their free shots at spell learning, the characters have to start paying XP to attempt to learn a spell. Not much XP, but enough.

In case you're interested, the spell learning roll is: d20 + 1/2 caster level + key ability modifier vs. DC 7 + spell level.

I have no doubt that some folks, upon reading this, will be shouting "no fair to spellcasters! Unbalanced!" Well, every campaign has its own idea about how common magic is - to find, to learn, to use. None of my characters have ever complained, and no one thinks spellcasters are underpowered.

One of the advantages of this system is that it helps me control what spells - and, in most particular - what cleric spells - come into the game. If a character wants to learn a spell from outside the PHB (heck, sometimes even inside the PHB), it's not automatic. The player and I can discuss it, consider what we know about the deity and the religion, and decide whether it's even possible.

This works both ways. If a player comes to me with an arcane spell that's not on any cleric list and says "surely my deity would provide this spell to her clerics," sometimes I'll say yes. This allows us to customize spell lists by deity without doing all the work in advance.

The Spectrum Rider

 

[Nightfall]

So far I don't really work that far ahead BECAUSE with most of my campaigns being Scarred Lands campaigns, there's plenty of stuff already out there.