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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greg K" data-source="post: 7669542" data-attributes="member: 5038">That it is worse for PCs is just that-- your opinion.For you, that might be true. For myself and people I know, it is not true.  However, it is possible to give the tools for and to support differentiation. The nice thing about 2e Priests of specific mythoi (which was in the 2e PHB so not all PHB classes were covered in the 5e PHB, imo) was that clerics did not have access to all spells. Their spell list consisted of only a small selection of shared spells plus spells from their deity's major and minor spheres (spheres are similar in to 3e domains).  Plus other class abilities differed by deity. It allowed for a lot more differentiation between clerics of deities. My preferred edition of D&D as a DM is 3e with the caveat that it is based upon the inclusion of several DMG options, Unearthed Arcana options, and third party support (out of the box, I think 5e is a better base and I would, probably, have fewer house rules as a whole). However, in my opinion, 3e' cleric class sucked in comparison 2e priests of specific mythoi/ Complete Priest's Handbook specialty priests Part of the problem is access to all (or nearly all cleric spells) on the class list.  Balance issues with the 3e cleric aside, 5e's cleric with its broad domains and who spells are handled sucks even worse, in my opinion .  The saving grace for 3e's clerics were UA's Spontaneous Divine casting variant, the DMG variant: tailored spell list (in theory), and the UA cloistered cleric variant. Spontaneous Divine  severely cut back on spells known by the cleric. The DMG variant: tailored spell lists by deity.  The problem with the 3e tailored spell list is that, unlike 2e's cleric spells which were broken down by spheres, 3e places the burden on the DMG and, really, offers no starting point beyond tailor the list to domains. The easiest application is to use the domain spells  granted by the deity and come up with a handful of shared cleric spells regardless of deity. The tailored spell list also works great for determining which spells the Spontaneous Divine caster knows.  Finally, the cloistered cleric was also helpful as a means for building non-martial clerics.As for players cherry picking individual parts, the solution is not to let them do it.  In my opinion, players should not be choosing the abilities granted by the deities. The deities of the setting are a setting/campaign level decision and, as such, so are the class abilities and spells of their clerics. Therefore, they should be part of the campaign designed by DMs or, for published campaigns, the designers.  As such, I want more flexibility in the class and DM tools to help build and tailor class the cleric class to mechanically differentiate clerics of deities.   A good supplement Deities and Demigods supplement focused upon deities from both popular real world pantheons and published settings (possibly a separate one for the Realms) and the abilities and priesthoods of their clerics could, potentiallly, fix your issue with clerics being to samey while at the same time providing homebrew DMs more tools and flexibility (including less broad domains).</blockquote>

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