Planescape Planescape Clerics

[Valetudo]

I would fluff it.

 

[Rils]

Thanks all fort he great input!

I would simplify it to you have advantage on rolls when casting on the deities' plane, no effect if you are on a plane that has one or more of the descriptors of the deities' plane (lawful, chaos, good, evil, neutral), and disadvantage if you are on an outer plane with none of the descriptors of the deities' plane.

That's kind of the direction I was leaning, tying it to alignment rather than geography - since the two are connected anyhow, but with alignment the distance is a little more forgiving. That helps play up the alignment theme of the setting as well, with only minor bookkeeping required.

I unequivocally recommend throwing out that bit about "clerics and magic distant from their home-plane suffer drawbacks." Terrible design for a setting all about exploring the planes. Never played with it in AD&D, didn't play with in in 5e.

OTOH, what I *do* recommend paying attention to are spell changes on the planes, spell keys, and the cleric version "power keys" (in my version spell keys & power keys are just different terminology to describe the same thing). Rather than going strictly by what the boxed sets say, I recommend using the boxed sets (Planes of Law, Planes of Chaos, Planes of Conflict) as inspiration for your own adventures & specific planar sites.

I'd just gotten one of the box set pdfs, and found the plane-specific magic info WAY more in depth than the simple chart in the campaign guide! Fantastic stuff, its detailed enough to be evocative, keeps the DM on their toes, but shouldn't be too hard to put into practice. Definitely will be using that.

I'd also considered equating spell and power keys, which helps keep the mechanics the same, since divine spells still have schools noted in their descriptions. The flip side of that though is that arcane and divine magic might end up "feeling" the same, and I kind of wanted to keep them distinct. [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], have you run into that particular issue?

 

[Quickleaf]

I'd also considered equating spell and power keys, which helps keep the mechanics the same, since divine spells still have schools noted in their descriptions. The flip side of that though is that arcane and divine magic might end up "feeling" the same, and I kind of wanted to keep them distinct. [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION], have you run into that particular issue?

Not at all. I just made a margin note to myself to flavor / re-skin any spell keys the druid in the party towards their deity (in this case an archfey). I also had spell keys traded robustly, but power keys much more closely guarded secrets (imagine a black market with proxies hunting down those who have a power key they shouldn't have). Worked just fine.

 

[gyor]

Something simpler, an enchanted holy symbol that allows divine spell casters ignore the restrictions.

 

[Staffan]

I would just ignore it. It was, in my opinion, a poor rule that encouraged priests to choose a deity based on location rather than areas of influence or personality. The books even point out that planars often turn to deities based on the Outlands (aka Concordant Opposition), because those don't get any reduction in power on any outer plane.

At first, I thought it was a rule that had carried over from 1e - it's a rule that's kind of cool on a one-off planar jaunt as an additional obstacle to deal with, but not as fun on an ongoing basis. But looking at the 1e MOTP, it would appear that the rules then were even harsher. If you're on an outer plane that's not your deity's home plane, you can only regain 1st and 2nd level spells under 1e MOTP rules.