Specialty Priest Creation: Spontaneous Casting?

[OmegaMan950]

A player and I were discussing the creation of a specialty priest for the church of Telchur (Chaotic Neutral God of Frost, found in Frostburn and Greyhawk Gazetteer). One of the drawbacks of this class was the loss of spontaneous casting of healing/inflict spells. I haven't had enough experience with 3rd edition rules, but I thought this would have been an acceptable loss. The player disagrees and states that the benefits do not compensate for the loss. I've been thinking over it and cannot come to a reasonable outcome. Another problem is that I haven't been able to find any specialty priests in any product I have access to, and so have no comparison to be able to judge by.

The class is based off of the normal cleric class with respect to BA, saves, and spells per level. I altered the class based on 2nd edition material.
The drawbacks were: Loss of turn undead, and Loss of spontaneous casting
The benefits were: immune to normal cold, +2 bonus vs magical cold attacks, bonus Endurance feat, and access to another domain available to Telchur.

I was thinking of allowing spontaneous casting of spells in a chosen domain, to reflect the outlook of Telchur. I was also thinking about adding weapon focus for the deities chosen weapon. Can anyone suggest any alterations? I am open to any options. (BTW, I think a lot of the newer classes released by WOTC are overpowered. In the campaign, most players are playing core classes with the exception of a multiclassed warlock.)

 

[Li Shenron]

The drawbacks were: Loss of turn undead, and Loss of spontaneous casting
The benefits were: immune to normal cold, +2 bonus vs magical cold attacks, bonus Endurance feat, and access to another domain available to Telchur.

These changes sound to me enough balanced.

The third domain means one (potentially good) extra ability, and a few more spells known (tho limited to domain slots).

Maybe I'd consider upgrading the ST bonus vs cold effects to +4, or otherwise granting cold resistance 5.

Nothing more. If it isn't enough for the player, he can still play a regular cleric of the same god.

 

[OmegaMan950]

Thanks for the reply, I completely forgot about the possibility of cold damage reduction. I resolved the issue by allowing spontaneous casting from a chosen domain, but may include additions to the class for later levels.

I am still curious, are specialty priest classes available in 3rd edition? Are prestige classes expected to cover this specialization?

 

[Li Shenron]

There a few PrCls, and they usually are considered more powerful than they should be (e.g. Radiant Servant of Pelor).

In FR there are quite many (Faith & Pantheons) and albeit some are irky, they are typically done well enough IMO.

That said, the core way in 3ed to make specialty priest is by chosing your domains, and selecting your spells (although I think that it could have been much better if the "generic cleric spells" were much less, and domains would have instead given more known spells).

 

[Phlebas]

Allowing spontatneous casting of some or all domain spells seems to be a relatively common house rule. I play it and it doesn't seem to unbalance play, and involves a little less work than rewriting the basic cleric spell list...

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

...
I am still curious, are specialty priest classes available in 3rd edition? Are prestige classes expected to cover this specialization?

Yes, prestige classes pretty much do just that. Nothing stops you from writing your own specialty priest base class though.

There are plenty of Prestige Classes out there, and its pretty easy to convert one to suit your needs if you don't want to make a whole new base class.

 

[jaker2003]

You could always just use the Hierophant in the DMG.
Just make up some special abilities that are tailored to their patron diety, like one that grants them an additional use of a domain granted power, or something like that.