Redefining the cleric

[ardentmoth]

Based on the deities who offer certain domains, you may want to:
~put Sun under Healer
~Add Protection to Healer
also....

Can't an evil cleric can heal his undead minions using inflicts, and therefore have a healer focus? He would then not be able to use many of the domains allowed to himin the Focus he chose, which is simply silly. Similarly, a good cleric could use a combat focus and cure spells to destroy undead, but with a fomcbat focus, he is unable to have the benefit of stronger healing spells, which are his primary weapon.

Because of this, perhaps the domains should be left to the deity, and the foci should be altogether seperate, granting a bonus to actions of the type they refer to (rather than bonuses to domains)? Just a thought....

 

[LittleRush]

Spheres eh....

Greetings,

First let me say this, I have been playing second edition since 1989, yup year one. while I recognize that there are a lot of whatevers right now the dating of myself is intended to emphasize the following line.

"I Really Love the Spheres System, and have loved it from the start!"

Having said that, one of the reasons that third edition will grate against the Idea of spheres is "Game Balance". Someone somewhere decided at some point along the 3e creation line that things will be balanced.... all domains will grant one ability, and contain 9 thematically linked spells, ect...

well the writers of second edition didn't give a damn about game balance, that is why the two editions feel so very different, and why 3e feels so very glossy and soft pseudo-super-heroic for us older players.

The sphere system is not balanced.(full stop) trying to balance it will drastically alter the feel that you are going for. My suggestion, forget the balancing.

Drop the major,lesser, minor stuff. go back to the beginning to the spheres themselves. Organize the spells. Name the spheres. Don't be afraid that people will ignore the spheres with less spells, their loss. Group the spheres according to portfolio of the deity just like the old days, some get more some get less. Really powerful gods with big portfolios have clerics with more spells and spheres.... (go figure). It is ok that some priests have no access at all to some spells, if they wanted them that bad they could always change faiths....

Sorry I ranted a little there.

As for the abilities. Spontaneous conversion to healing.... Lame
Turn / Command undead....some do one, some the other, some do neither and some can do either.

Balance be damned, build for role playing opportunities not power(not to imply that you are building for power, you seem quite adept at resisting the s on chest syndrome)

 

[Kerrick]

The sphere system is not balanced.(full stop) trying to balance it will drastically alter the feel that you are going for. My suggestion, forget the balancing.

To be honest, a friend of mine said he was using a modified sphere system in one of his games (3.5) and it worked well... but he plays fast and loose with the rules, so his version of "it works well" doesn't mean a whole lot.

I actually have done the sphere system for d20... you can find it here. I might just do some kind of combination of that and this system... I've been too busy to do any work on the cleric lately, so it's just been sitting around. I don't want to toss game balance out the window, though - the cleric being overpowered is a large reason I'm redoing it in the first place. I do want to keep RP opportunity, though; that's why I had the Healer type (which is fairly suboptimal and designed mostly for NPCs).

 

[Kerrick]

I was thinking about this at work today... I decided to come at the problem from a different direction. Instead of defining a cleric's spells based on his role, have them based on his god's portfolios. All clerics, therefore, could choose from a base list of spells (healing, up to a point, some buffs, some utility, combat, divinations, etc.), but certain spells would be held back and divvied out to certain domains (I'd probably have to add some spells to make this work properly). So, for example, a cleric of Pelor could gain access to the highest-level healing spells and stuff like sunray.

Each domain would also have a few (2-3) scaling abilities that the cleric could choose from as he gained levels. For example, the Elemental domains would grant summon elemental (same type as the domain) 1/day (size depends on level), and turn elemental 3 + Cha times/day. Obviously, you wouldn't gain the abilities at 1st level; it'd be something like I did with the sorcerer - 3rd/8th/13th/18th, or something. You can choose the same ability again and gain extra uses, which is good for clerics of god with only 1-2 domains.