Trying to do a little class balance.

[Gort]

What effect d'you think removing ALL the cleric and druid armour proficiencies and giving them spell failure would have?

IMO it would still leave them more powerful than wizards and sorcerers. Of course, I'll probably get jumped on by cleric/druid-ophiles for this, but if we're actually trying to BALANCE the game, wizards and sorcerers are not in the same league as the divine casters.

 

[S'mon]

I am not sure what you mean by this. The 3.0 and 3.5 Cleric both allow the character 2 Domains from which to choose his domain spells each day.

See the 3.0 PH, pages 30-31.

Oh ok (just checked - pg 32, actually), I sit corrected.

Anyway, my house ruled approach of limiting cleric spells & making them spontaneous seems to help. I do allow Quickened spontaneous castings as a free action, which helps Sorcs a lot, Clerics rarely do it though.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I agree that the cleric is too powerful but I think you're trying to fix the problem in the wrong way.

 

[Li Shenron]

I don't think the Cleric was give d8 and the Rogue was given d6 for balance reasons but instead for flavor reasons, or cliche' that the Cleric must be "a good combatant as well" and the Rogue must be avoiding physical contact at any cost. I am sure that when they wrote down the 3e classes they choose the HD before many other things, and THEN they balanced those others eventually.

That said, I don't really think they need a balance adjustment, although at the same time I don't think it would be much of a boost or a penalty at the end to cause problems if you do this changes.
OTOH I may agree for such a change for flavor reason, if you would prefer a physically weaker cleric or stronger rogue.

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We used for a while an option - which started as for clerics only but was extended to every class - to increase/decrease by 1 step your HD in exchange for 2 less/more skill points per day.

You probably don't want to go that far, or extend to other classes, but it's just to say that we allowed Clerics with d6 but gave them 4 skill points per level, and Rogue with d8 but gave them 6 skill points per level.

 

[Synchronicity]

These days, Clerics certainly seem less overpowered, both with the buff duration decrease and the fact that Persistant Spell is now a 6 level hit. No more Persistant Divine Power for you! (Yes, Divine Favour's still viable and very good, as is Magic Vestment. But overall, things are better.) I'm playing a straight Cleric at the moment, and while I would say he's a useful character, he's not the 'uber-swiss army knife leet death machine thing' that Clerics were in 3.0. And frankly, that can only be a good thing. Though some of the new Cleric feats are dangerous things..Divine Metamagic springs to mind. It's true that Clerics can still be broken more easily than many other classes, but I wouldn't say they're intrinsically overpowered anymore. YMMV, naturally; I'm just working from my experiences.

 

[reanjr]

Great idea. I never though it was necessary to beef up the rogue, but I don't see it as very unbalancing either.

Dropping the cleric a hit die brings them well into line with the other classes, I think.

From what I have gleaned from designer's articles, etc., I have come to the conclusion that the cleric is intentionally overpowered because they were though to be necessary to the party, but people didn't like playing them.

 

[reanjr]

Hitpoints based on race sounds like it would completely and utterly screw the halfling.`

Not so. (if I understand him correctly)

Halflings are humanoid, just like humans, so they would get a d8.

 

[reanjr]

Clerics in 3.5 seem a bit less overpowered than in 3.0 anyway, though, due to nerfing of the Buff spells they no longer outshine Fighters in combat. I also use 3.0 rule for Domain spells (you get 1 per spell level, you don't get to pick between 2 domain spells/level every day as in 3.5).

They only do not outshine fighters if you play the traditional room-to-room monster hunt or something equivilent where you fight many weak encounters. My campaigns stress single difficult encounters. It is very rare for the party to get into two battles in the same day. So the cleric's buff spell duration spell didn't do a whit for my game. They still kick more ass and take more punishment than fighters, hands down. No one will even play a fighter in my campaign anymore. It's alright, cause we get Rangers, Barbarians, and the Kingdoms of Kalamar Fighter-variant Gladiator. But there is definitely something seriously wrong with the cleric class.

 

[reanjr]

What effect d'you think removing ALL the cleric and druid armour proficiencies and giving them spell failure would have?

IMO it would still leave them more powerful than wizards and sorcerers. Of course, I'll probably get jumped on by cleric/druid-ophiles for this, but if we're actually trying to BALANCE the game, wizards and sorcerers are not in the same league as the divine casters.

Don't do both. I've done both of those (separately), and they work out well. Together they would seriously kill the class. Although, when I did spell failure, it was pretty harsh. Taking away the armor proficiency and shield proficiency totally refocuses how most clerics are played (correctly, IMO).

 

[Merlion]

The Cleric is greatly overpowered, and a reduce in hit die would be a step in the right direction.

If you just want to reduce the Cleric in power a bit, drop the HD and probably the armor a bit, remove or nerf Divine Power and Righteous Might, and alter the Domains so they dont get access to half the best Mage type spells.


Clerics really recivied no nerf at all from 3.5...the only buffs that got reduced were the basic stat ones, which was never really the problem. Divine Power and Righteous Might are unchanged. And yes Persistent Spell is no longer viable but 1) it was never core and 2) it was often banned by DMs due to its brokeness anyway.

Also you might want to take a look at my Priest class here in this forum. Its still a bit of a work in progress, but I believe its more balanced than the Cleric, and it actually allows a priest's abilities to be far more attuned to their religion.

I also have a Mystic class thats basically a healing/defense/divination primary caster.


I agree that Clerics having more HP than Rogues is odd, but I think reducing the Cleric will fix it rather than increasing the Rogue, although I doubt giving the Rogue a d8 would hurt anything.