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

[Falling Icicle]

I think clerics should have prayer books for their rituals. They shouldn't need books for their normal spells, but rituals are a different story. It also fits. Religious rites are often written down in sacred texts.

 

[Sadrik]

I agree clerics should be limited in their spell selection to differentiate clerics of a different diety and to simplify the class.

That said, clerics should not have a set list and barred from others spells. I think this treads into the same area as the warlock and the sorcerer. When those were released they had their own detailed system and those systems were perhaps a bit much. I think that a simple system and then optional spell systems added on top would be good.

I think setting them up as sorcerer style casters is the best option. It is extremely simple to have a spells known list and then cast at will off of it. Make this the default of the game. Make wizards the exception by using the vancian system. All other casters utilize the 3e sorcerer style. Then add on more detailed systems like the warlock one and so on.

So how does the sorcerer style magic work for the divine casters? I think picking 3 per level of any and 1 or 2 from a list based on the diety is perfect. Let the player pick. Make sure there is enough to choose from. Why 4/5 spells per level. I think the versatility needs to be there.

One other point the spell restoration encapsulates several condition removing spells. I think this could be a trend and capture several under one spell and you deal with the problem of not having the right one by not knowing it. Essentially it would be auto selected. Another strategy could be make it a single spell: restoration. Then as you memorize it in higher level slots it adds more an more condition removing effects. In this way it does not affect the known spell list.

 

[kerleth]

The cleric definitely needs some brake put on opening of a full spell list. Otherwise, his spellcasting is more versatile than the wizard's, who's schtick is knowledge of the secrets of magic. If you say that the cleric doesn't get "attacking" spells, then that's all well and good for the mace wielding party buffing cleric. But what about a cleric of the firelord, or destruction, or blah blah blah. The core game needs to be able to support those styles of character. So you put a few of those kinds of spells on the spell list. Now the cleric has access to almost every kind of spell. Well lets give him a spells known. Then people say "but he prayers for his spells, he doesn't have to KNOW any of them. That just doesn't seem right." It's a tricky situation.

My suggestion: Decouple basic healing, remove curse, etc, from the spell list. Put those into a Lay on Hands or Channeling Divine energy, or other ability. Then give the cleric a smaller spell list based on domain/sphere/deity. There can even be options for more exotic styles of healing (heal and buff, heal party and damage enemies, etc). Note that though there may not seem to be enough spells for that right now, this is just a playtest and more spells are undoubtedly coming. Not to mention that a cleric of, say the firelord, could pick up a couple of more wizardy blasty spells, and I think there is plenty of room for variation. Since any any individual cleric character will still have a limited spell list, this means that they won't be devalueing other spellcasting classes.

Either that or give other spellcasting classes special abilities independent of their spells. Perhaps the wizard is the only one who gets metamagic, as he has mastered the arcane theory of his spells. This subsystem would be made for the wizard specifically and need only be balanced in that context, rather than made generic.

That's my two cents.

 

[billd91]

That proverb doesn't really fit the 3e cleric now does it? It's broken as hell from a balance point of view which probably why we got this discussion.

The way it got done in AD&D (2nd edition?) where you get access to two spheres* and the all sphere worked out pretty well. It also makes it a bit less daunting for a new player and a bit less over powered for a seasoned player.

My last 3.5e character was a character with 17 casting levels of cleric spells. Together with his good melee combat abilities, he had a biiiiiig toolbox of spells for just about every occation. Easily the most verstatile class in the party and at the same time one of the most powerful ones. I don't think we need a repeat of this broken version of the cleric.

I think you're dancing around the problem of how clerics and druids were overpowered in 3e. It's not merely that they had a big toolbox of spells - it was that there wasn't enough of a limit put on the nature of the tools going into that toolbox. Divine power and righteous might were two very dangerous spells with respect to overcharging the cleric's combat capabilities. Add to it divine favor and shield of faith and that cleric is hell on wheels. Sure, it took 4 standard actions to get to that point... but it only took 2 with a bit of quickening via metamatic rods or divine metamagic. If the toolbox is smaller and the PC gets to choose, he'll probably still choose those overpowering options. Controlling the nature of the options is, I think, a better plan that allows the cleric to do the things the cleric is expected to be able to do - fix a busted up character - without being slaved to that task.

And for jeebus's sake, why did anyone decide that a cleric needed the flipping sound lance spell?!?

 

[Tortoise]

A house rule I used that seemed to help with Clerics was to allow them to prepare some spells if they wished to at start of the day and leave slots open for later. Those open slots could later be activated by a 10 minute prayer ritual for each slot.

While that doesn't solve the issue of knowing all the cleric spells, it does help with the overwhelming need players feel to prepare nothing but healing.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I think you're dancing around the problem of how clerics and druids were overpowered in 3e. It's not merely that they had a big toolbox of spells - it was that there wasn't enough of a limit put on the nature of the tools going into that toolbox. Divine power and righteous might were two very dangerous spells with respect to overcharging the cleric's combat capabilities. Add to it divine favor and shield of faith and that cleric is hell on wheels. Sure, it took 4 standard actions to get to that point... but it only took 2 with a bit of quickening via metamatic rods or divine metamagic. If the toolbox is smaller and the PC gets to choose, he'll probably still choose those overpowering options. Controlling the nature of the options is, I think, a better plan that allows the cleric to do the things the cleric is expected to be able to do - fix a busted up character - without being slaved to that task.

And for jeebus's sake, why did anyone decide that a cleric needed the flipping sound lance spell?!?

Actually, I don't think I am dancing around the point here.

My on experience is from a campaign that got up to level 18. We had a fighter in our party and even all buffed up he was better at damage dealing than my Divine Power/Favour-Rightous Might Cleric. Partially the two party clerics used party buffs, not just the personal ones.

The thing that made it overpowered was that I could choose each encounter what role I wanted to take. I could buff up and take the fighter-role, I could buff the whole party and heal them. I could blast away like a blaster-wizard. At the start of the day I could buff the whole party with whatever-feast, greater magic weapon/armor and after each combat I could heal us up.

It was great fun playing that cleric and he really did an awesome job for the party, but I do think the party fighter did feel a bit useless except when it came to swinging his sword - which was partially enabled by the cleric due to buffing!

So, no I don't think those personal buff spells were the problem, but rather that the cleric with his massive amount of spells for every occation was quite indespensable to the party unlike many of the other character classes.

Limiting the spell selection would be a good way to let clerics be just as powerful, but in a more limited range of uses, instead of being a all-in-one character.

 

[Blackbrrd]

A house rule I used that seemed to help with Clerics was to allow them to prepare some spells if they wished to at start of the day and leave slots open for later. Those open slots could later be activated by a 10 minute prayer ritual for each slot.

While that doesn't solve the issue of knowing all the cleric spells, it does help with the overwhelming need players feel to prepare nothing but healing.

In 3e you could just spontanous convert a spell slot into a cure spell of the same spell slot. The level 6 slots usually all got taken by heal.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

That proverb doesn't really fit the 3e cleric now does it? It's broken as hell from a balance point of view which probably why we got this discussion.

The way it got done in AD&D (2nd edition?) where you get access to two spheres* and the all sphere worked out pretty well. It also makes it a bit less daunting for a new player and a bit less over powered for a seasoned player.

My last 3.5e character was a character with 17 casting levels of cleric spells. Together with his good melee combat abilities, he had a biiiiiig toolbox of spells for just about every occation. Easily the most verstatile class in the party and at the same time one of the most powerful ones. I don't think we need a repeat of this broken version of the cleric.

*Ok, not really right, it's some mix of minor/major access to different spheres, I read up on the rules now, but it still wasn't entirely clear to me.

2E clerics are not really any more restricted than 1E. In 1E, clerics and druids had separate spells lists with a bit of overlap. In 2E they combined the lists into one big list then divvied access up with "spheres," with clerics and druids getting about the same spells they had previously; this also gave them a mechanism for easily creating spells lists for the optional specialty priests, which worked pretty well.

So if clerics in 1E, 2E, and 3E all had unlimited spell lists, and only 3E had a problem with overpowered clerics and druids, that suggests that the problem was not the unlimited spell lists.

I've no objection to restricting spells to create specialty clerics akin to 2E's. They're a whole lot more interesting than generic clerics. But it hardly seems like a high-priority issue.

 

[variant]

I think each deity should have specific spell lists.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

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.

For curses, I think it would be neat if each curse or other long-term harmful magic had a particular ritual to fix it. Not a "RITUAL" ritual, real magic, but just something you can have the bard or sage research and do on your own. Frex, if you're cursed with blindness, you can climb an oak tree at midnight with an owl in a silk bag and release him from the highest point in the tree that you can reach, and this stops the magic. This type of approach won't work for everything, but I think it would be fun where it does apply.