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Hague
2010-06-11, 12:32 AM
I'm toying with the idea of making clerics and druids required to learn their spells much in the same way a wizard does. While the title of this thread is misleading, I'm not actually suggesting they use spellbooks. Rather, the cleric must learn specific new prayers or personal rituals to be performed daily from other clerics and scrolls and succeed on a Spellcraft check to learn how to properly perform these devotions. In performing the rituals or prayers they are granted prepared spells from their deity or other divine power-source. This can allow the DM to control the flow of certain divine spells. The cleric always has access to the prayers that he knows and has no limit on the number known, but he does not gain immediate knowledge of how to perform every spell in the cleric spell list. Good and evil descriptors still apply, also, ritual information can vary based on the pantheon. A good deity's prayers are significantly different than an evil one's.

Anyone seen anything like this before or tried it? I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it.

Optimystik
2010-06-11, 12:36 AM
Hai2u, Heroes of Horror! (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20051007a&page=3)

And no, it's not a spellbook, it's a prayerbook. :smalltongue:

Shadowleaf
2010-06-11, 12:38 AM
This might discourage players from playing the classes - not because of the bump in power, but because of the book-keeping.


Untintended pun.

cZak
2010-06-11, 12:46 PM
I did this as a house rule in my game; with inspiration from another DM. Seems to work pretty well. It seems implausible that a cleric has nigh infinite availability to spell selection.

The only concern is the cost.
Let's face it, the only real costs a wizard has are paying for doodling in his spell book. Near all other classes pretty much require costly items whether they be better armor/ weapons or magic items. Yea, the wizard is better with those things, too. But, his bread and butter are spells.
This adds the prayerbook costs to the need for better equipment for the cleric, and some what the druid. And that gets pretty expensive at 100gp per level, not counting the expense of getting the spell.

Personally, I would think the party would contribute funds for the cleric for this, as better spells for the cleric is almost always better spells for the party.

Hague
2010-06-11, 08:45 PM
Well, the idea is that the cleric doesn't have a spellbook. They inherently 'know' the prayers they need. They just have to make a spellcraft check to actually learn the spell. If they don't then they can't learn it until they gain a rank of spellcraft. This takes away part of the sting, but still allows a DM to control which spells to which a cleric has access. It also presents another rub, since cleric devotions aren't required to be written down in spellbook, they are less likely to be found and can't be looted off dead clerics (not that you could use one from that Orcus cleric anyway...) It forces the PC to interact with other clerics in a more direct fashion and become a part of their church if only to get access to better devotions. Of course, the DM can feel free to give divine inspiration to clerics, allowing them specific spells. (if anything, this makes more sense than the random nature of wizard insta-spell progression since DM fiat fits in better with a divine figure) After all, someone had to learn the first Miracle devotion, right?

Lin Bayaseda
2010-06-11, 08:56 PM
If they ever make a cleric with a spellbook, someone will invariably find a way to get arcane spells into his spellbook, thus creating the scariest cleric/wizard hybrid possible.

Oh, wait, it already happened.

Hague
2010-06-11, 09:40 PM
Doesn't the *shudder* Shugenja already do that? I seem to recall their spell list being a smattering of Druid, Cleric, and Wiz/Sor.

Anyway, it wouldn't work that way. You might be able to start utter arcane spells as a devotion to a god, but the god might only regard that as a bit of interesting trivia (lightly) or total heresy (roughly) Either way, it's not gonna result in the divine power filling your spell slots with arcane spells. :smallbiggrin:

Set
2010-06-11, 09:55 PM
Anyone seen anything like this before or tried it? I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it.

A house rule we used at the end of 3.5 was to have *all* spellcasters make a choice at 1st level, to be a prepared caster or a spontaneous caster.

Spontaneous casters (whether Cleric, Druid, Bard, Wizard, Adept, Paladin or Ranger) used a Sorcerer-like small list of spells known, from which they could cast flexibly, and got some extra spell slots per day.

Prepared casters (again, whether Cleric, Druid, Bard, Wizard, Adept, Paladin or Ranger) started with a 'prayerbook' or spellbook or rune-inscribed tablet or whatever with a number of spells similar to how a Wizard works, and gained an additional 2 spells / level 'free,' and the ability to 'scribe' and acquire new spells like a Wizard.

As a result, Clerics and Druids (and Paladins and Rangers and Adepts) no longer knew every single spell on their list, but either cast spontaneously, from a small Spells Known list (but more frequently, which ended up being a popular choice for the Ranger players, who rarely made use of any but a tiny selection of frequently used spells anyway) or from a 'prayerbook' or series of holy texts or whatever, and only were able to use whatever rituals and sacrements they had managed to uncover or acquire.

Bards, on the other hand, gained the option of being prepared casters, and having a few less spells / day, but a much larger potential spell-list, as they could collect sheafs of notes of arcane lore, and prepare different spells on different days, adding to their adaptability / versatility, if they have time to prepare.

[Sorcerers, in 3.5, lacking any class abilities other than spellcasting, ceased to exist as a core class, and became a name for a spontaneous Wizard (and, as spontaneous Wizards, gained access to the wizard bonus feats, and could even be specialists). They still called themselves Sorcerers, just as illusion Specialists still call themselves Illusionists, despite no longer being a unique class.]

Nobody ever wanted to play a Favored Soul or Spirit Shaman anyway, so I didn't have to bother offering a prepared option for those classes.

The arcane / divine distinction and class list features remained intact, so it didn't matter if a Cleric found a Druid's prayerbook with Entangle in it, he couldn't attempt to scribe it into his own prayerbook. The scribing costs and times used by wizards might be RPed in priestly orders by translating and adapting rituals discovered in some evil priests profane texts to reflect the nature and themes of your own diety.

Prepared divine casters did gain the advantage of adding spells from their Domains to their holy canon automatically, as well, as well as whatever spells they can cast spontaneously (cures for good clerics, inflicts for evil clerics, summon nature's ally for druids), but it was still quite the 'nerf' compared to just allowing a 3rd level Cleric to auto-magically learn the sixty-nine 2nd level Cleric spells in the PHB and SpC by dint of surviving that Owlbear encounter and 'leveling up.'

Quietus
2010-06-11, 10:03 PM
@Set - I'm wondering, how did you handle the spontaneous version's spells known aspect? And were they still keyed off the same ability? For "sorcerers", I'd imagine a new spells known list where they'd get the automatic wizard-spells-known, and that's it... but how would you go about doing Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger spellcasting? And if they went spontaneous, did they still key off the normal stat, or did it change to Charisma?

Set
2010-06-11, 10:15 PM
@Set - I'm wondering, how did you handle the spontaneous version's spells known aspect? And were they still keyed off the same ability? For "sorcerers", I'd imagine a new spells known list where they'd get the automatic wizard-spells-known, and that's it... but how would you go about doing Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger spellcasting? And if they went spontaneous, did they still key off the normal stat, or did it change to Charisma?

I didn't change the attributes from what they normally were. I kept it Wisdom based for the divine casters, whether they were spontaneous or prepared, but kept the 'spontaneous Wizard' based on Charisma, just as a sop to 'the way it was.'

In retrospect, I probably should have switched it to Intelligence for all prepared casters, but I was already 'nerfing' Clerics and Druids, in particular, quite a bit, and didn't want to be doused in oil and set on fire by rioting players. :)

Even in that case, I probably would have kept the Wisdom stat for spontaneous Clerics, Druids, Adepts, etc. or mixed stuff up a bit and had Charisma for Clerics and Paladins and Wisdom for Druids and Rangers (and Adepts), but that way led to a bit more tweaking than I was ready to go into. (I prefer to only make one significant change at a time, to sort of see the incremental effects in play.)

Talking it over with the one player who wanted a 'prepared Bard' (which he defined as a nobleman's son, who had studied swordsmanship, history, statescraft, tactics, leadership and inspiring rhetoric / speechifying and a smattering of arcane lore from tutors hired by his dad), I let him base his prepared Bardic spellcasting off of Intelligence (making him a bit more MAD, since his still needed Charisma for Perform/Inspiration stuff, but that was his design choice). So that was an exception to my 'minimal change' idea, but that was the player's own idea.

For the Cleric and Druid, I just used the Sorcerer progression for spells / day and for Spells known. The Druid added SNA spells to the 'Spells Known' for free, and the Cleric added cure/inflict and their two Domain spells for each level to their Spells Known for free as well (giving them quite a bit more versatility than an actual Sorcerer, but it's not as if the Cleric and Druid weren't *always* a vastly better choice than the Sorcerer, and these tweaks seriously cut down Cleric/Druid versatility, while also tossing the Wizard bonus feats to the Sorcerer, so I didn't feel too guilty about the remaining imbalance).

I had all the charts saved somewhere, but then this thing called VirusRemover2009 ruined my day. Too much surfing wombat porn, I guess.

Quietus
2010-06-12, 09:19 AM
Interesting; So spontaneous casters remained a level behind in picking up their new spell levels, as the sorcerer does, then?

Set
2010-06-12, 09:26 AM
Interesting; So spontaneous casters remained a level behind in picking up their new spell levels, as the sorcerer does, then?

Out of my being too lazy to change the chart, pretty much.

I never really liked the Sorcerer falling behind anyway, and I don't think it was a balance necessity (obviously I didn't think giving the Sorcerer no bonus feats was a balance necessity either, since I did away with that).

Were I to start at the ground up, I'd give the spontaneous casters the same spell level access as the prepared casters, so 2nd level spells at 3rd, etc.

Karoht
2010-06-18, 12:26 PM
I'm toying with the idea of making clerics and druids required to learn their spells much in the same way a wizard does. While the title of this thread is misleading, I'm not actually suggesting they use spellbooks. Rather, the cleric must learn specific new prayers or personal rituals to be performed daily from other clerics and scrolls and succeed on a Spellcraft check to learn how to properly perform these devotions. In performing the rituals or prayers they are granted prepared spells from their deity or other divine power-source. This can allow the DM to control the flow of certain divine spells. The cleric always has access to the prayers that he knows and has no limit on the number known, but he does not gain immediate knowledge of how to perform every spell in the cleric spell list. Good and evil descriptors still apply, also, ritual information can vary based on the pantheon. A good deity's prayers are significantly different than an evil one's.

Anyone seen anything like this before or tried it? I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it.

Lets talk fluff or a second.

So Druids and Clerics have their God or Nature or whatever 'grant its blessing' and give them the spells for that day. In return for prayer, ritual, sacrifices (not really), and other things.

If you were to have them no longer accessing their God/dess but were instead accessing another source for the spell power, that would at least explain it in game, and you could give that source all kinds of funky properties. Could be a great plot point as well. And having to learn as they go, or try and research a spell, or have another higher level clerid/druid teach you a spell, could be a very fun bit of fluff as well. Mentors are almost always really cool like that in games.

I'd like to stress though, that gold should never enter the equasion if they can perhaps learn different spells from others. Otherwise it turns it from a really cool mentor into a trainer from an MMO. Not as fun.

As for alternate sources (again, fluff), the Druids draw on the moon, the Clerics draw on the sun. Since both are relatively inert or non-communicative (maybe dormant, maybe just doesn't want to talk to anyone), it doesn't teach spells, but it supplies the power source.
Or you could have the power source be a mystery, with all kinds of factions having different ideas about that source, and maybe even reveal that source to perhaps be a non-positive force/entity in your game world.

Just some thoughts.

Curmudgeon
2010-06-18, 01:22 PM
Well, the idea is that the cleric doesn't have a spellbook. They inherently 'know' the prayers they need. They just have to make a spellcraft check to actually learn the spell. If they don't then they can't learn it until they gain a rank of spellcraft.
So now you've changed Spellcraft from a useful skill to something that's essential for Clerics, yet is dependent on a stat they normally don't need to boost. Remember, they still only get (2 + INT mod) skill points, and INT isn't their primary casting stat.

I suggest you give this a trial run, first. You run the trial by switching Wizards to (2 + WIS mod) skill points, and make their Spellcraft checks based on Wisdom also. Let us know how that works out.