Idea for Domains/Specialty Priests

[Dannyalcatraz]

I actually played a barbarian priest in 2Ed who inspired berserker furies as opposed to Turning Undead. I didn't tell anyone when I designed him...and when they found out?

HOO-HAAAAAH!!!

 

[GX.Sigma]

These are interesting ideas, and this itself is an interesting topic.

However I would like to see some of the Old School ideas about special priesthoods: oftentimes Magic Users were the priests of gods of magic, and certainly Druids were considered the priests of gods of nature. For example Drow priestesses were Cleric-Magic Users, so that Clerics did themselves need Magic User spells.

If Clerics are always the class for the servants of every god, then they will poach on the powers and class features of other classes better associated with such fields, especially domains of Magic, Nature et cetera.

I forgot to mention: A major benefit of my proposed system is that setting products can introduce unique domains (with unique spell lists) for all their gods. So there could be a "Mystra" domain that has healing spells and mage spells, and a "Talos" domain that has fire spells and storm spells. So it's not like gods have a bunch of generic domains and you pick one or two; in this system, each god has one domain that includes all of their shticks.

I don't think it means the Cleric is "poaching on" other classes, it's more that clerics are very diverse--some of them are more like healers, some of them are more like fighters, some of them are more like spellcasters; depending on their deity or ethos. I think that's a natural and reasonable place for the Cleric to be.

Of course, it affects and is affected by the fiction: Are Drow priestesses granted some divine power and then have to study arcane magic on their own? etc.

 

[KidSnide]

Personally I'd do more than just Channel Divinity. I'd add proficiencies, skills, and items to the domains.

War
Gain Heavy armor prof.
Gain prof. with one Martial Weapon

Sun
Gain Radiant lance as a orison

As far as we know, this is exactly how domains work. There is every indication that domains involve some armor/weapon proficiencies (for war, at least) and some extra prisons. An orison like Radiant Lance might even be a special benefit of the Sun domain. We'll learn more when char gen rules come out.

-KS

 

[Aenghus]

I think priest concepts which wander too far from the cleric archetype are better implemented as other classes that have the desired flavour and abilities, and perhaps a little reskinning. Priests of the war god that happen to be fighters and priests of the god of magic that happen to be wizards just make sense to me. Obviously these priests don't serve the function of standard clerics, but I like more focused classes and would prefer this to smearing out the cleric concept to do almost anything.

A priest theme and/or background would provide more options for fleshing out priests of other classes.

The OP's domains are an interesting idea that's hard to implement evenly. In previous versions of the game some domains were arbitrarily much better than others from a optimisation point of view. Domains need a lot of balancing, and I find some priest concepts are very far away from "standard" clerics and really bloat the cleric class when there's an attempt to cram every possible priest concept into one class.