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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8991720" data-attributes="member: 907">That's pretty much the vibe I'm getting as well. The section on priests of specific mythoi starts by saying, paraphrased: &quot;You can use the cleric if you don't want to do too much world design, but the REAL DMs who build PROPER settings will use different priests with different powers.&quot;The Forgotten Realms setup, with both Clerics and Specialty Priests does not seem to have been the original intent. It says &quot;If your character follows a particular mythos, expect him to have abilities, spells, and restrictions different from the generic cleric.&quot;That said, I think the Complete Priest's Handbook was perhaps a little overly conservative, not recognizing how few spells some priests would have. Part of that is because the Spheres are pretty darn narrow – particularly in areas that aren't the expertise of the classic cleric or druid (since the priest spell list was basically made by mashing the two together). In addition, some spheres should probably be folded into the All sphere, such as the Astral sphere (traveling the planes should be something any high-level priest could do).Another issue is that while POSMs are great from a world-building perspective, they kind of suck from a game balance/design POV. The job of the cleric is to heal and protect, and fight a little bit. Many POSMs can't do that. In that respect, 5e's clerics work better, as they have the core cleric functions as part of the base class, and then a domain on top of that adding additional abilities. I'd probably prefer to move some more abilities to the domains or some other optional part (there's really no reason for control water to be a regular cleric spell, for example), but it's fine as written.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 8991720, member: 907"] That's pretty much the vibe I'm getting as well. The section on priests of specific mythoi starts by saying, paraphrased: "You can use the cleric if you don't want to do too much world design, but the REAL DMs who build PROPER settings will use different priests with different powers." The Forgotten Realms setup, with both Clerics and Specialty Priests does not seem to have been the original intent. It says "If your character follows a particular mythos, expect him to have abilities, spells, and restrictions different from the generic cleric." That said, I think the Complete Priest's Handbook was perhaps a little overly conservative, not recognizing how few spells some priests would have. Part of that is because the Spheres are pretty darn narrow – particularly in areas that aren't the expertise of the classic cleric or druid (since the priest spell list was basically made by mashing the two together). In addition, some spheres should probably be folded into the All sphere, such as the Astral sphere (traveling the planes should be something any high-level priest could do). Another issue is that while POSMs are great from a world-building perspective, they kind of suck from a game balance/design POV. The job of the cleric is to heal and protect, and fight a little bit. Many POSMs [B]can't do that[/B]. In that respect, 5e's clerics work better, as they have the core cleric functions as part of the base class, and then a domain on top of that adding additional abilities. I'd probably prefer to move some more abilities to the domains or some other optional part (there's really no reason for [I]control water[/I] to be a regular cleric spell, for example), but it's fine as written. [/QUOTE]

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