I think you're mistaking Complete Priest's Handbook for Faiths & Avatars. The CPHB is one of the few splatbooks ever published that actually reduces the power of the splat it is meant for.an_idol_mind said:The problem with 2nd edition was that the core books mentioned priests of specific mythos, but provided no useful guidelines to build them. When they did introduce specific priests in the Complete Priest's Handbook, most of the new classes made the cleric irrelevant.
Here's an example of a priesthood from CPHB, with the flavor text and stuff removed:
Community
God of a specific city.
Alignment: Most are TN, but they can be any alignment. Ditto for the priests.
Minimum Ability Scores: Wisdom 10, Charisma 12. Wisdom or Charisma 16 means +5% experience: Wisdom and Charisma 16 means +10% experience.
Races Allowed: All. Might be limited based on the community (e.g. a primarily dwarven city might only allow dwarven priests.)
Nonweapon and Weapon Proficiencies: Nonweapon Proficiencies Required: Local Hisrory, Nonweapon Proficiencies Recommended: Etiquette, Heraldry, Ancient History, Reading/Writing, Religion. Weapon Proficiencies Required: None. Nonweapon Proficiency Group Crossovers: priest, General.
Weapon and Armor Restrictions: Weapons Permitted: Dagger/dirk, knife, and any two from the following list (the DM decides based on which weapons are most representative of the city in question: at least one weapon should be in the 1d8 or greater damage range): Battle axe, bows (all), crossbow, flails (both), harpoon, lance, mace, morning star, net, polearm, quarterstaff, spear, sword/bastard, sword/cutlass, sword/long, sword/rapier, sword/sabre, sword/short, sword/twohanded, trident, warhammer, Armor Permitted: All armor and shields. Oriental Campaigns: Also added to choices list: Bo stick, daikyu, katana. All together, these constitute Good combat abilities.
Other Limitations: Priests of a civic deity must always wear clothing indicating their priestly status when appearing in public.
Spheres of Influence: Major Access to All, Creation, Healing. Minor Access to Combat, Protection. These choices don't give the priest access to very many spells, so this priesthood will have good Granted Powers.
Note that the DM may wish to substitute some other choice for the Major Access to Creation and the Minor Access to Combat if the civic deity that he has created has secondary attributes not reflected in this listing.
Powers: Incite Berserker Rage (as per the Designing Faiths chapter), Soothing Word (as per the Designing Faiths chapter). Turn Undead (the Community is a gathering of the living, and so priests of this sect are no friends to the undead).
I especially draw your attention to the anemic spell selection this priesthood has. A first level priest of a city god has 10 spells to choose from: Bless, Combine, Detect Evil, Purify Food & Drink, Magical Stone, Shillelagh, Cure Light Wounds, Endure Cold/Heat, Protection from Evil, and Sanctuary. A regular cleric would have 19 (with reservations for some spells that might be in more than one sphere). This deficiency gets bigger at higher levels: A city priest has access to exactly two spells at 4th level (Cure Serious Wounds and Neutralize Poison), while the cleric has 16.
Heck, the CPHB even had a section dedicated to explaining that in the context of the book, the generic cleric class was overpowered and should have its spell selection cut back severely.
Now, other books (notably the F&A series) had priesthoods that were a lot more powerful than this, but the CPHB is one of the "tamest" splatbooks ever.