[PHB] Divine Favor and Righteous Might Official Spell Changes

[Lonely Tylenol]

Form-altering spells should be form-specific. You could get Orcform at low levels, Ogreform at midlevels and finally, Dragonform somewhere around level 20. You want to pop into a Solar, then? Tough luck, research it yourself, munchikin.

How about something like this? It splits up polymorph into various creature type-specific spells.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Kneeling / Sitting has a game effect on AC, but the action type is not defined anywhere. Is it free, MEA,

I found this in th PBH a few sessions ago, kneeling is a free action standing up is a MEA.

I think the nerfing is fine, Its really a stacking thing as that +8 str stacked with everything. My party is just reaching 9th-10th and this spell lured the cleric designed not to be non-melee character into combat.

And size changing spells have always been odd,
Enlarge person + 2 str, -2dex
Righteous Might +8 str, +4 con
Psionic Expansion +2 str, -2 dex if large, +4 str, -4 dex huge

 

[THEBIGLOU]

IMHO the real problem was then a cleric used a Quickened Divine Favor and Righteous Might in the same round. He then was better at fighting than the melee characters and could also heal themselves.

We have a cleric in our party who is built around the healing and attacking using Karmic Strike, Combat Reflexes, and the Power Critical Feat. He was attacking at +45 when using Divine Favor & Righteous Might. He would then heal himself on his turn and whoop ass if the opponent decides to hit him.

Divine Favor was stupid at +6. How many other 1st level spells inprove all the way to 18th level.

BIGLOU

 

[Ogre Mage]

The change to divine favor was a good one. At high levels, it was too good for a 1st level spell.

The change to righteous might is more controversial, because it was kneecapped more significantly and it is a 5th level spell. It is now a weak spell for its level. When compared with animal growth, it is a joke. However, one must look at the change in context--it does still stack with divine power, which has not been nerfed. But they may have gone too far with this one.

 

[danielinthewolvesden]

Here's the point. Clerics are supposed to be healers and support PC, and a second -class melee character. With several personal buffs, clerics were better than the Fighter. This was just plain wrong.

Now, I believe in the cleric casting buff spells, mind you- but on the whole party. Then fighting a bit, then healing.

And the point is that cleric really is the "jack-of all trades- master of a couple (turning, healing)". He is darn good in combat, he has fair offensive spells, and of course he can heal & support better than any.

 

[Ogre Mage]

Nice change. I haven't had a cleric use the horrendous combination of Divine Power Divine Favor and Righteous Might because they have been too busy healing. I have seen 15th level Righteous Might in action, and it is sickeningly powerful. I gave out a pair or gauntlets that allowed a Paladin character to cast Righteous Might one time a day as a 15th level caster, he was nigh undefeatable against any foe without an evil-aligned weapon. He tore through hordes of monsters only rarely in danger from parties with an evil weapon or outsiders with evil equivalent weapons. 15/evil DR is definitely too powerful.

I would submit that has more to do with the fact the item you gave out was broken rather than the spell. As tuff as clerics are with righteous might, a paladin would be way more sick because they have full BAB and d10 HD to the cleric's 3/4th BAB and d8 HD. This is why RM has a range of "personal" -- the cleric was meant to cast it on himself and no one else.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I have to say I like the change on paper, but will have to see how it plays out in my group. Unlike some of you lucky people, I have a cleric in my group who does use Divine Favor, Divine Power & Righteous Might (and his feat of strength from the Strength domain) and it is (IMO) totally overpowered. Sure he could be healing the party but he prefers to buff while the rest of the party gets their butts kicked. Once buffed though, he is a monster and there is very little that can threaten him (especially with the DR). The fighter and paladin in the group have definately lost their "areas of expertise" to the cleric. Hopefully this change will still make the cleric effective, but not constantly outshining the other characters.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Clerics in our campaign do tend to find use mostly as healers. Alot of the cleric spells that provide Deflection and Resistance bonuses are fairly usesless at high level like Shield of Faith, Magic Circle from Evil and even Holy Aura and similar spells at time.

I can see this. Once the party have the funds to pick up +4 Rings of Protection and such, a lot of the deflection bonus spells are going to be unnecessary. Still, there are so many cleric spells, including spells from the Complete Divine that I find it hard to believe there's nothing left to cast besides healing and Death Ward.

Cleric is kind of a thankless job. I keep hearing how powerful the cleric is, but we have three now in our party and they spend most of their time trying to keep people alive at high level. High level monsters do so much damage they whittle my 200 plus hit point fighter down to nothing every other round.

A part of this is playstyle. The cleric could heal you after one round of whoopin' from the monster, or he could spend his round, as Nyarlathotep's cleric does, casting a Quickened Divine Favor and Righteous Might, and fight the monster more effectively than your piddling fighter ever will. Or at least he could. Now, we'll have to see. Divine Favor, Divine Power, and Righteous Might are still potent spells, but this nerf may be enough to prevent the fighter from being made into a delaying tactic until the real melee combatant is finished buffing.

I don't know if we play differently from other people, but it seems like once we reached around 12th level the cleric spends more and more spell slots on healing, Death ward and Resist Energy. They rarely get a chance to unleash any divine magic offensively. Cleric is a boring job that takes a certain type of player mentality to play well.

Strange. You need to be 9+ level to see this problem show up in the first place.

 

[Philip]

A part of this is playstyle. The cleric could heal you after one round of whoopin' from the monster, or he could spend his round, as Nyarlathotep's cleric does, casting a Quickened Divine Favor and Righteous Might, and fight the monster more effectively than your piddling fighter ever will. Or at least he could. Now, we'll have to see. Divine Favor, Divine Power, and Righteous Might are still potent spells, but this nerf may be enough to prevent the fighter from being made into a delaying tactic until the real melee combatant is finished buffing.

I have seen it as well. And as for playstyle, if the cleric is a team player, then he will often be busy helping others. For that is often the most effective use of his powers. If the cleric is an individualist focusing on his own glory, he will have his moments where he can outshine the fighter in combat, but at the cost of lowering the overall effectiveness of the party

The (team-player) cleric in my campaign rarely gets the time to cast his offensive spells, he is often busy removing the hold person spell cast on the fighter, countering the fear cast by the enemy wizard, curing the wizard that was sneak attack by the enemy rogue, casting air walk on the ranger to help him fight the flying dragon, etc. etc.

Even though he is a pretty decent combatant without his buff spells, he rarely finds an opportunity to engage in melee. Unless they clearly outclass their opponents, but in such cases the casting of the powerful buffing spells is also unnecessary.

I tend to think clerics were made relatively powerful in 3rd edition because most players don't like playing a support role. Now at least some players will be attracted to the class because of its power.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I tend to think clerics were made relatively powerful in 3rd edition because most players don't like playing a support role. Now at least some players will be attracted to the class because of its power.

It seems increasingly clear that there are two ways to play the cleric. If one plays the cleric as a support character, then these changes are relatively meaningless. Your cleric probably never used this combo to begin with, so it doesn't matter that the spells are being reduced in effectiveness. However there's a second way to play a cleric, and this is the way that players attracted to the class because of its power are going to wind up playing it. For these players, the spell combo was far too strong. Now it's being brought down a peg.