Wolfen Priest said:
I am saying get rid of the favored classes. If you want to play a dwarven druid, go ahead. If you want to play an elven ranger with a few druid levels, go ahead. And, I believe, if you want to play a half-elf with any combination of levels in any base class, go ahead (that's what half-elves are good for, circa Second Edition or earlier).
I like the idea of favored classes, but I don't like the mechanic. Any xp penalty at all would seem too high, and there are a lot of valid character concepts that don't make it through the filter. If it's scrapped, though, you need to give a little bonus to the humans and half-elves who are losing their advantage. But only a very minor bonus.
As it stands, I could argue that humans are broken, since almost everyone plays one almost all the time (getting a free feat and +4 skill points at first level *is* a big deal). I think that since 3e, the half-elf has officially become the least played race of all time.
Boy, I remember when
no one played humans at all because their only advantage never came into play in most campaigns. But I agree that most campaign worlds should be humanocentric, simply because players like to identify with their characters and I think they enjoy the world more when it's at least vaguely familiar.
I should have been more clear; I meant that I think a druid should get choice of two of those domains, just like clerics. I mean let's face it: druids' spells are weaker than clerics (especially when you take into account spontaneous casting), their weapons and armor are obviously way worse, and their special abilities don't make up for it, IMO. they need to be made stronger, probably by ditching their weapon restrictions (or just giving them a better, broader list), and giving them access to two domains. If clerics can have it without breaking them, why in the world would it break druids?
I also remember when no one played clerics unless they were forced to--now it seems that everyone plays clerics (although to be fair, this trend started with FR's Faiths and Avatars, which effectively introduced a couple of dozen new character classes which were like clerics but better). For clerics, at least, the pendulum has now swung too far I think--many of the most potent wizard spells have found their way into cleric domains, and the extra special abilities that the domains grant are often very powerful (but cool).
I think druids are fine, actually. It's true that they suffer when compared against the cleric, but so does everyone else.
Here's what I would do for the cleric:
The Basic Cleric would have d6 HD, medium armor prof., shields, simple weapons, and 4 skill points per level. They would still channel +/- energy and spontaneously cast healing/inflicting. I wholly agree with WotC's rationale that this brings more clerical spells into play, and is a very good thing. The basic clerical spell list, however, would get only the spells that are really common--mostly healing, divination,and protection spells with a smattering of traditional favorites like Command and Flame Strike.
The domains would often contain more than one spell per level, and would also expand the basic functionality. So a cleric of the War domain would get d8 HD, heavy armor and martial weapons as their domain power, for example. The healing domain could also bump up the HD to a d8 in addition to granting bonuses to healing spells. All domain spells would be added to the cleric's list, and could be prepared multiple times as normal. Rather than filling out the domains with powerful wizard spells like Power Word Kill and Chain Lightning, new and useful spells would be created which really match the domain well. The occasional wizard spell in a domain list is OK, but it should be at least one level higher for clerics if it's a good spell.
--Ben
