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

[Ratskinner]

"Spheres."

Seconded...although they were a bit fiddly.

 

[Ratskinner]

That said, I do like the idea of differentiating clerics of various gods with spell choice. Each god should have sets of spells that are forbidden, weakened, normal, and augmented.

ugh...If you're doing that, just give each deity a different spell list and alter spells levels appropriately. If a deity has unique spells, so be it.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

ugh...If you're doing that, just give each deity a different spell list and alter spells levels appropriately. If a deity has unique spells, so be it.

I think the approach I described works better. It's easy to do.

First divvy up spells into spheres like 2E. Each cleric has a set of spheres that are normal and denied. Simple so far. Each deity has some spheres that are augmented, which can be like one or more metamagic feats from 3E, or they might be considered a level lower for memorization purposes. Lots of options here and it doesn't have to be complicated. The weakened spheres are just the inverse, use inverse metamagic feats, or consider 1 level higher for casting.

With separate spell lists for each deity, you have to individually consider each spell on the list for each deity, then do the same when spell supplements come out. That's a much less maintainable approach.

 

[timASW]

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.

Theres also "go to temple and have it removed"

 

[Orius]

I think it's a relic of the game's past.

Clerics weren't seen as powerful as the wizard until 3e. And before that, there simply weren't as many divine spells in the game, most of the new stuff went to wizards. As the introduction to 2e's Priest's Spell Compendium states, cleric spells were added to the game at a far slower rate than wizard spells, with a sigificant number of new spells coming into the game through FR books like Faiths & Avatars.

If anything, the game slowly made the cleric stronger until all of a sudden we had CoDzilla rampaging through campagins in 3e. I think this is partially because the cleric was long an unpopular class, people played the healbot only because they were newbies and got stuck with the class no one else wanted, because they were the last person at the table to come up with a character concept and everyone else pressured them into playing the cleric, or because the only thing good they rolled was Wisdom. The spheres in 2e were probably an attempt to rectify it and it had some mixed success, particularly with some very interesting specialty priests. But then 3e comes along and makes the cleric idiotically overpowered to the point where it's challenging the wizard for supremacy of Tier 1. I blame 3e's OP problems largely on the combat buffs introduced in 3e that can make the cleric an equal if not greater than the party fighter though.

I've long considered the idea of prayer books as a way of trimming down the big cleric list, but I also don't want them to turn the cleric into the divine wizard. Prayer books or whatever shouldn't be as restrictive as a spellbook. I also like the idea of non-core spells being part of various clerical orders within a particular faith, requiring the cleric to travel to particular temples or monasteries or conducting pilgrimages to learn the new spell.

 

[Blackbrrd]

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.

My point is that the 3e cleric removed restrictions that were there in 2e. This allowed access to a much wider range of spells, for all clerics that previously.

I have noe idea why you are saying that "So if clerics in 1E, 2E, and 3E all had unlimited spell lists" when you know that wasn't the case. It was limited by spheres in 2e (which is in the post you quoted) and the spell selection in 1e was much much smaller. There are other issues too, like what kind of spells the cleric had access to in 3e. They added blast spells like the level 2 sound burst (stuns) and iconic wizard spells like Fireball through domains.

Regarding priority I don't really disagree with you. I played 3e with a wide variety of characters and below level 10, the cleric isn't that much of a power house, and it's what I played most of the time. If I did play a lot at level 10 and above, I would say it's a priority - depending on the spell list of course.

 

[Bagpuss]

I have noe idea why you are saying that "So if clerics in 1E, 2E, and 3E all had unlimited spell lists" when you know that wasn't the case. It was limited by spheres in 2e (which is in the post you quoted)

To be fair the Cleric wasn't particularly limited by sphere (he only didn't have access to some spheres that were traditionally druid spells). The Cleric had all the armour, decent weapons and virtually all the Spheres, it was only the Priests of particular gods that were introduced in the Priest Handbook that were more balanced and had a more limited sphere selection based on what weapons and armour they had access to.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Spheres weren't implemented in the best way in 2e, but it's a solid basic idea.

We could take each "god" in 5e and turn them into a sphere. With these, plus a prayer book of "universal" rituals, we'd give each cleric a unique list of spells.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I wonder if we could manipulate the current spellcasting model. At the moment you select a number of spells to prepare at the start of the day (or pray for I suppose), and then you can cast those as you please, even at various levels.

If spells were somehow classified, into exclusive spheres, or non-exclusive domains, or using keywords, then for each deity we just need to know how they feel about each of those categories. I imagine that one or more might be favoured, some disfavoured and perhaps others are even forbidden. Spells from disfavoured spheres could cost two of your preparation slots, compared to one for favoured spheres. Obviously forbidden spheres would be unpreparable. You might even (for very magical deities) have a sphere that's always prepared for free.

This way, your standard deity of fire can be unconcerned with the removal of disease, but one of their clerics can still prepare it by expending an extra slot. Said cleric probably never gets to prepare create water, however.

 

[SkidAce]

I wonder if we could manipulate the current spellcasting model. At the moment you select a number of spells to prepare at the start of the day (or pray for I suppose), and then you can cast those as you please, even at various levels.

If spells were somehow classified, into exclusive spheres, or non-exclusive domains, or using keywords, then for each deity we just need to know how they feel about each of those categories. I imagine that one or more might be favoured, some disfavoured and perhaps others are even forbidden. Spells from disfavoured spheres could cost two of your preparation slots, compared to one for favoured spheres. Obviously forbidden spheres would be unpreparable. You might even (for very magical deities) have a sphere that's always prepared for free.

This way, your standard deity of fire can be unconcerned with the removal of disease, but one of their clerics can still prepare it by expending an extra slot. Said cleric probably never gets to prepare create water, however.

Fascinating...(must spread xp around etc etc...)