Should Clerics Have Access to all Cleric Spells?

[Geron Raveneye]

Definitely. The "gotta have 'em all" attitude of 3.X cleric spell lists was really overpowering that class at some point. Creating a list of spheres with fitting spells, and granting specialty divine casters access to several of them along with weapon restrictions, armor restrictions and granted powers, could even recreate the "generic cleric" again, with a practically oriented spell list.

 

[Jhaelen]

What does everyone else think?

I think they'll do away with any open-ended abilities. They're impossible to balance and make it difficult to play a character with access to them. My druid player is regularly completely overwhelmed by the available choices and incapable of choosing what spells to memorize.

For me as a DM selecting spells for npcs is similarly tedious. It's why I prefer using sorcerers over wizards and dread necromancers or beguilers over sorcerers
As long as a class has a way to get a couple of spells that are not on it's (short!) standard list or gets to swap known spells once in a while, it's infinitely better than a class with unlimited access to spells.

 

[GreatLemur]

I'm firmly in the "not all Clerics should even get cure light wounds" camp. I don't see any (in character) sense in healing being an inherent or exclusive property of divine power.

Personally, I'm all for turning Clerics into spontaneous casters, and having them pick their spells from the list (the whole list) like Sorcerers, but with an eye towards appropriateness to their religion or patron deity. For that matter, I'd stop giving 'em 3/4 BAB and free armor proficiency.

Rules-wise, 2nd edition excelled in only one area imho: specialty priests.

God, yes. That literally is the one thing I miss about 2E. Clerical domains are nice, but they really don't go nearly far enough. 2E's specialty priests were Clerics done right.

 

[schporto]

From looking (not in depth) at SWSE I'd guess they would make spell casting part of trees. Heck I'd think they combine druid, cleric, and paladin into the divine caster. With trees like:
Wildshape Tree:
Wildshape Medium Animal Ability - change into 1 animal (may be taken multiple times)
Natural Spellcasting - ability to cast spells while in animal form (requires wildshape and spell casting)
(etc)

Spell Casting Tree:
Domain: Select a domain. You can cast spells from that domain. The domain must be one of your deity's or a universal domain. (OK that's probably confusing domain and spell list a bit).
Spell Level X: You know Y number of X level spells. Multiple times. Each stack. Prerequisite for one spell level is the previous. (maybe? Or they could not make that a requirement thus allowing multiclassed characters to still have high level spells. Just not so many as a 'full caster').

Fighting Tree:
Increase combat bonus
Holy smite

Holy Abilities:
Turn Undead
Turn Animals - must have nature as a spell domain?
Lay on Hands - must have healing domain?

I think something like that could work for the clerics.
-cpd

 

[Anthraxus]

I'd like to see something like the 2E "spheres" system, as well.

In my experience almost every cleric has the same spells as the next cleric, with only slight variation. I'd like to see a bigger difference between a cleric of Pelor, Heironeous, and Boccob, fer cryin' out loud.

Schporto has some good ideas, in that last post. I'd like to see this "Tree" system(Haven't seen SWSE, myself).

It'd be nice to see some dedicated healing clerics, clerics of war(more paladin-like), and clerics of knowledge and trickery... with COMPLETELY different abilities!

 

[Jer]

One of the things that I disliked about 3.xE Clerics is that all Clerics had access to all Clerical spells.

...

What does everyone else think?

I really hope that they finally divorce the idea that all priests are "clerics" from the core rules. There should be priests - who have access to divine power and operate the churches doing priestly things - and "clerics" who are martial champions of their respective deities. Taking that step makes the internal logic of clerics having the same types of spells make more sense.

I'd rather not see clerics get too wildly divergent from each other. If the cleric is supposed to fulfil a certain role (the "leader" role as I've read elsewhere), they should be able to access the abilities suited to that role. One or two different "divine powers" or power trees to differentiate clerics of two different deities is one thing, but radically different power lists for different clerics would seem to defeat the whole idea of "roles".

 

[Celebrim]

One of the things that I disliked about 3.xE Clerics is that all Clerics had access to all Clerical spells. I personally would like to see a system similar to specialist Wizards, where Cleric spells are divided into various domains...What does everyone else think?

Olaf the Stout

I think that Clerical magic is about to change so radically that the question doesn't even make much sense in a 4th edition context.

But for what its worth, I would expect your cleric to have a more limited spell selection than in 3rd edtion.

 

[Odysseus]

Who said they we're going to get any spells?

 

[GreatLemur]

Who said they we're going to get any spells?

Man, don't get my hopes up.

 

[Celebrim]

Who said they we're going to get any spells?

To be honest, I think that's closer to where 4E is taking the game than the original question.

If spellcasters are getting, 'at will' magical powers as part of the design goal of always letting a character class do the thing it does, then no class has a more problimatic set of spells than a cleric. At will cantrips are for the most part no big deal, but even at will 'cure minor wounds' means that every character gets all thier hit points back every 10 minute rest. Casting cure/healing spells is probably only 20% of what a cleric will be doing in 4E. The whole concept of how a cleric fulfills his support role is going to change.