Speciality Priests for Swords and Wizardry

[Sitara]

AD&D2e had spheres to differentiate priests, while 3e/Pathfinder have domains. 5e has subclasses. My problem is there is no way to differentiate clerics in swords and wizardry. I don't need anything as detailed as specific spell lists, as the spells available are already so few. But special abilities for a priest of a specific deity would be cool. For instance, a deity of war like tempus or muir would grant bonus to hit and damage with a a favored weapon, while a deity of animals might grant speak with animals as a power usable a couple of times per day. And so on. Paladins could also be granted such abilities, especially considering how pathetic paladins are in most OSR games.

Any resources for handling this?

 

[Psikerlord#]

I can think of any resources as such, but it would be very easy to make up a list of abilities yourself. On the other hand, if you do that, do you then need to add an ability to the other classes, for balance reasons?

 

[Bera]

There's a lot of variant classes out there, but something simple is often good: https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/zerobarrier/magical-theorems-dark-pacts/

If one or two variant cleric classes doesn't do float your boat, why not bring back domains? It would be pretty simple to concoct a few domains based on third or 5th edition ones, just add one spell per spell level to the cleric (or other "clericy" classes) and you've got a unique order with a specialized kind of magic. No need for a granted power, flame clerics being able to cast burning hands would pretty much do the trick. You might consider taking away 1 or two spells from each level of the cleric list to keep the core cleric list generic and re-add miracles appropriate to any domain, that way spiritual hammer or blade barrier might be restricted to a war domain.