Limited Clerical/Druidic Spell Lists?

[Jeremy]

Simple rule that helps keep this in check.

You take your vanilla cleric. He's got a lot of spells that he can't/won't cast due to alignment or character concept.

You take all your supplements. There are a few spells in each that really interest the player of the cleric.

You swap spells from the supplement for core spells on a 1 for 1 basis.

It'll be a long time before the choices start getting difficult, but it keeps the cleric at roughly the same level of versatility as always no matter how many supplements come out.

There are quite a few groups that use this house rule.

My group is big into knowing all the 1's and 0's behind our world so we have the divine rank of our dieties worked out and you get a number of spells known per spell level based off of the granting deities' power and spheres of influence to grant spells from.

It works pretty well too, though we are still playtesting it.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

It's a little weird having the cleric wake up one morning and go "Guess what? I just got a memo from the Big Cheese that he's releasing 25 more spells into circulation! Cool!"

That's the Granted Power of the Bureaucracy Domain. Of course, you get those spells three years after other spellcasters are circulating them-- or later, if the Big Cheese forgot he authorized them.

 

[Chacal]

We use the "swap core spells for non-core spells on a 1-1 basis" rule and it seems to work for us.
As a DM, I also limit some spells accessibility based on the divinity.
It tends to add some "theme" and differenciation between divine casters.


Chacal

 

[Henry]

It's not as it it adds legitimacy or anything, but Piratecat uses the "Swap out core rules spells for supplement spells" rule himself. For every spell you pick out of a supplement, you must remove one spell off of the core rules list that you can pick.

Our group doesn't do that, but I'm thinking about bringing it up, just as a balance toward arcane casters.

 

[The Sigil]

I have found the "one in, one out" rule very effective.

Interestingly enough, one of the PDF paladin books (either Call of Duty or Forgotten Heroes: Paladin) - can't remember which one off-hand - makes it a point to note that doing so is a good idea.

Wizards' spells known are limited by gold and XP.
Sorcerers' and bards' spells known are limited by - well - Spells Known. LOL.

Divine casters must have some sort of limiting factor - otherwise their Spells Known list becomes potentially infinite and thereby unbalancing.

--The Sigil