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D&D 5E Why are we still stuck with divine casters knowing all spells?

I think the best solution is to give all clerics access to a small list of "universal" spells that would include necessities like the spells you mentioned. The rest of their spell list should be limited by spheres or domains that vary from one god/ethos to another. I'd also like to see clerics get only certain spells known for free. The rest they should have to learn on their own. That way, they don't automatically multiply their capabilities each time a new book is introduced.

Indeed, if supplemental books would publish only spells belonging to new deities/spheres (OR requiring to give up spells known by default on a one-on-one basis), that would work for me.

The universal cleric list could then be shortened further so that it would really only contain a minimum of spells for protection and healing:

Bless
[remove]Cause Fear[/remove]
[remove]Command[/remove]
[remove]Create Water[/remove]
Cure Wounds
[remove]Detect Magic[/remove]
[remove]Detect Poison[/remove]
Detect Undead
Divine Favor
[remove]Inflict Wounds[/remove]
[remove]Locate Animals and Plants[/remove]
Protection from Evil
Purify Food and Drink
Sanctuary
Shield of Faith
 

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I think its only a glaring issue for those games that 1) use splats 2) have cleric players who scour multiple books and 3) DMs whose feathers are ruffled by the variety available [i.e., it's a playstyle thing].

Though it's something that bothers me from past experience I think the base game can handle it the way it's always been. Rules modules or a paragraph in splatbooks mentioning the issue ought to be good enough way to handle it for most.

If it is built into the core game, I'd like to see it go in the most unobtrusive fashion. Probably a small core of spells all divine casters can use, and then a speciality or domain that adds one or two spells per spell level. Those who want to play at the most basic level without specialities/domains can just ignore that requirement (i.e., all divine spells are available to all divine casters).
 

Spheres would be fine.

But I'd rather clerics act like sorcerers. You determine what "gifts" you deity has bestowed upon you, and that's it for spontaneous spellcasting. Everything else is a ritual in which you are asking your god for a particular favor. There could appropriate retraining rules, of course, but those would follow gaining levels.

Let memorization be a wizard schtick.
 

It's a relic from the days of 1e, when a cleric's spell list was very short and contained few attack spells (really, check out the 1e Character Sheets... there were 10 or less spells of each level). IMHO, cleric's should have "Known Spells", just like wizards.
 

Sounds good in principle, but for my personal taste it's far from the best. Sometimes you should be boned. Because if you have no Remove Curse, this forces both the players and the DM to be more creative. If you have no "reset" button to easily remove the penalty on next morning, you have to find another way to remove it, it's the same principle as not having a Rogue able to pick a lock, if at this kind of difficulty the group's reaction is "let's give someone else lockpicking for free" then it yields a low-creativity game.

I basically agree, but I think that shows how you find a solution.

If you don't have anyone on hand to pick a lock, you pass by the door, maybe beat it down, maybe cast a spell like knock, maybe beat up some guards and take their keys. There's more than one way to get through a locked door.

If you don't have anyone on hand to remove your curse...historically, in D&D, that has meant that you're just cursed and it sucks to be you (NPC spellcasters can maybe help). But if there's multiple ways to deal with curses -- kill the critter that gave it to you? Make a few saving throws? Fullfill some requirement of it? -- if the curse isn't instantly utterly debilitating, that's gonna be a world where you don't have to have Remove Curse to function, but it can still be useful.
 

If you don't have anyone on hand to remove your curse...historically, in D&D, that has meant that you're just cursed and it sucks to be you (NPC spellcasters can maybe help). But if there's multiple ways to deal with curses -- kill the critter that gave it to you? Make a few saving throws? Fullfill some requirement of it? -- if the curse isn't instantly utterly debilitating, that's gonna be a world where you don't have to have Remove Curse to function, but it can still be useful.

Yes, this is why I admitted that the players may not be able to find alternatives against a curse like they do against a locked door, because the latter is something realistic while the former is made-up, and you have little way around a made-up thing when the rules codify it, because you have little to base your reasoning upon except the RAW (while instead, a locked door isn't just a line in the rulesbook, it corresponds to something belonging to reality, so the players have all their experience in reality to help them). But this is also why I said it will then be up to the DM to be creative, and receptive of player's attempts, i.e. if the players start discussing at the table whether e.g. the ranger's Herbalism could help, then a receptive DM can steal the hint and compensate the unavailability of Remove Curse with ruling that against this particular curse it is said that herbs X and Y mixed together... you get the point! The DM can spawn a mini-quest which takes a week of action instead of a night of inaction to lift the curse.

Such ideas of course can also be used in a game where clerics have all the spells they ever need, in which case the DM will make an exception to actually prevent using the same Remove Curse spell for the 342nd time.

My point is that having all remove-condition spells is not the major issue here, but neither is the best reason for giving all spells to clerics by default. It is indeed a gamestyle issue... in a game totally focused on combats after combats, long-lasting conditions are usually hated by players who just want to get rid of them asap so in this gamestyle serve only the purpose of giving a short-term penalty (possibly already over before next combat). If the gamestyle also enjoys resource management, then having them as daily spells is fine, but it is also possible that instead their style focuses on combat but dislikes resource management, in which case it would be better to just expire all those curses and conditions with a short rest and forget about them (spells would then remain only to be able to anticipate the expiration to when the combat is still ongoing). There are other gamestyles however, and I just know that for my own tastes there is few things more boring than "automatic reset" spells, so I would actually want that those came at a price i.e. for each spell of that kind you know, there is another spell you could have known but you don't. After all, the Wizard is limited in this way, would if be better then to just let Wizards also know all spells in their list?

BTW, the ritual suggestion was quite interesting. 5e rituals are a different thing however, so they are not going to help. 4e rituals IIRC are available to everyone but have to be learned (i.e. you don't know them automatically) so they could definitely be an example of how to deal against not having the right spell for the job. This made me think of a middle ground, which is scrolls. They could serve exactly the same purpose, without needing a completely separate set of rules like rituals. The DM has total control over how easily scrolls can be acquired in the game, so in a gaming group which does want easy "condition resets", the Cleric doesn't even need to learn all those spells if the DM wisely has plenty of those scrolls for sales, while another gaming group which prefers the challenges will have their DM make scrolls unavailable.

Thus maybe a reasonable compromise for my issue would be this: limit the number of divine spells known but suggest the availability of divine scrolls if needed.
 

I think we can change that. Bring back ritual scroll use from 4e, or just rule that possessing the ritual is enough to perform it.

It's also worth noting that the standard recovery spells should probably be less "essential" in 5e than they were in 3e. If no one in the party knows Remove Curse, you shouldn't be 100% boned.
And now we’re changing an entire subsystem of the game, either changing rituals for the wizard or making divine rituals different, because theoretical bloat is bad and it might be hard for new players.


I don’t buy either reason.

First, balancing the entire game around new players is silly. There aren’t that many and they’re not new for long. After a few months of playing the same character they’re no longer a new player, they’re just a player. Keep options simple at low levels and you’re fine. Plus, as mentioned, new players don’t live in a vacuum. They have other players and the DM who are able to help, plus the internet.
And the new players coming into the game are coming from gaming backgrounds of video games and much more complicated board games. Picking from a short list of spells is easy.

Additionally, making them permanently pick a power is actually harder. If they have access to the full list they skim names and pick a couple spells to read that sound interesting and pick from those, knowing they can read the rest later. They’re not locked in.
But, making them choose pushes them to make a permanent decision, which encourages reading all the spells to avoid making a poor decision. And there will always be inoptimal choices. The game should try and avoid trap spells but sometimes they happen.

Second, pulling out those spells to become rituals just means you need to make more spells to maintain the requisite amount of choice (otherwise most clerics look pretty identical aside from domain). So its adding bloat to the base game. It also makes cleric spellcasting strictly offensive as much of their utility is now ritual based.
This has the double effect of changing the tone & feel of the class while also making their spells are more samey, which requires more reading to distinguish between spells.

But what if we don’t add new spells? Well, that really cuts down on options. For example, at level 3 we have Create Food and Water, Daylight, Dispel Magic, Meld into Stone, Prayer, Protection from Energy, and Speak with Dead. Remove Curse should likely be there as well. If we take out the rituals we’re left with Daylight, Dispel Magic, Meld into Stone, and Prayer. Take away one as a domain spell and you’re left with three spells. If you learn spells at the same rate as the wizard you automatically know 2/3rds of the spells that level.
Which really isn’t that much different from having access to all the spells on the cleric list, as the difference is one to three spells.

And as I said before, this is a pretty big change to the class(es) that is only needed if:
a) we get endless splatbooks of new spells
b) DMs don’t restrict said spells
WotC has said they want to get away from a) and you’ll certainly have table variation on b).

 

Indeed, if supplemental books would publish only spells belonging to new deities/spheres (OR requiring to give up spells known by default on a one-on-one basis), that would work for me.

The universal cleric list could then be shortened further so that it would really only contain a minimum of spells for protection and healing:

Bless
[remove]Cause Fear[/remove]
[remove]Command[/remove]
[remove]Create Water[/remove]
Cure Wounds
[remove]Detect Magic[/remove]
[remove]Detect Poison[/remove]
Detect Undead
Divine Favor
[remove]Inflict Wounds[/remove]
[remove]Locate Animals and Plants[/remove]
Protection from Evil
Purify Food and Drink
Sanctuary
Shield of Faith

And if this theoretical cleric starts with two spells plus a domain spell (for a total equal to the wizard) they know half the total spells. At 2nd level they know more than half.
And certain spells are so very situational (detect undead, purify food) those will very seldom be learned.
So clerics end up choosing four out of their list of five viable spells and most clerics are functionally identical spell-wise at all times.

This is very much like 4e's Essentials classes where you make one choice at first level (domain) and after that most of the choices are already made. Unless you want to dump sanctuary or bless to clean drinking water.
 

I basically agree, but I think that shows how you find a solution.

If you don't have anyone on hand to pick a lock, you pass by the door, maybe beat it down, maybe cast a spell like knock, maybe beat up some guards and take their keys. There's more than one way to get through a locked door.

If you don't have anyone on hand to remove your curse...historically, in D&D, that has meant that you're just cursed and it sucks to be you (NPC spellcasters can maybe help). But if there's multiple ways to deal with curses -- kill the critter that gave it to you? Make a few saving throws? Fullfill some requirement of it? -- if the curse isn't instantly utterly debilitating, that's gonna be a world where you don't have to have Remove Curse to function, but it can still be useful.

If you have a locked door, there are ways around it besides picking the lock: bashing in the door, using the knock spell, teleporting, getting the key, and so on.

If you have a curse and the only way to remove it is to have the remove curse spell it's just bad design in my opinion. You are assuming the party has a cleric of at least level x. As you note, it's much better if they in the curse codify other ways of handling it. Remove curse should be the easiest way, just like picking the lock is to the door, but there should be other ways.

Btw, my reason for not liking the cleric-has-access-to-all-cleric-spells is partially because I don't like there to be a toolbox character that steps on just about every toe when it comes to role, it also springs from the similarity between two clerics and the roles they take in a party.

My previous 3.x campaign had two clerics, my own and one played by another player. We usually had 90% of the same spells which is kind of boring. I think it would add a bit to the diversity of clerics if they had access to different spheres of cleric spells.
 

What a horrible night to have a curse.

But seriously, overcoming supernatural or magic ailments when you don't have the spell prepared is a good way to see what the curse does!! And without cure poison, well, you'll learn next time to prepare it when you go hunting poisonous frogs or into that noxious swamp. Characters die. Whoops. Too bad, so sad! For the 99 times when it doesn't benefit you to have Remove Poison prepared, you'll be greatful to have it that one time you do need it. That's part of the fun in playing the game. In essence it teaches you in a brutal way not to min-max your spell selection to favor offense / defense buffs or straight healing only.
 

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