Help making two cleric domains viable?

[TheMutant]

Hey. Hopefully this is the right sort of question to put here; I'm new to this homebrewing stuff. X)

I'm cobbling together notes for a campaign I may try to run (my first! augh!) and some of it's homebrew. Most is going to be standard core stuff, but I made up my own Material Plane rather than use and existing one (drew a map and all that good stuff), and more importantly, I homebrewed a god because the loose campaign concept is that the party are faithful to the god (it's going to be a quasi-evil campaign), and there weren't any already in existence that suited my rather picky needs.

ANYWAYS. My latest stumbling block is that I need to make a couple of cleric domains not suck horribly. The domains I picked for the god are Death, Darkness, Cold and Winter. I could be wrong- I'm far from a game expert- but the abilities of the Darkness and Winter ones seem kinda eh. This isn't going to be a high powered game, but I don't want the players to think they shouldn't pick some of the domains because they're total ass.

I've copied the domains in question here to save anyone having to reach for their books or Google.

Darkness domain:
Granted power: You gain Blind-Fight as a bonus feat.
Darkness domain spells:
1. Obscuring Mist
2. Blindness/Deafness
3. Blacklight
4. Armor of Darkness
5. Darkbolt
6. Prying Eyes
7. Nightmare
8. Power Word Blind
9. Power Word Kill



Winter domain:
Granted power: During the winter season, you gain a +2 sacred bonus on all Wisdom-based skill checks.
Winter domain spells:
1. Snowsight
2. Snow Walk
3. Winter's Embrace
4. Ice Storm
5. Blizzard
6. Death Hail
7. Control Weather
8. Summon Giants (frost only)
9. Fimbulwinter


My idea for Darkness was that, instead of Blind-Fight being the only benefit, make it give some options- either A) you get Blind-Fight, B) the character gets low-light vision or C) the character gets darkvision out to 30 feet. I'm not sure if that's too powerful.

I'm stumped on Winter, though. While some of the campaign will take place during the winter season, far from all of it will be so- and heck, I dunno if the ability is that great even when it IS winter. I mean, what- yay, my cleric gets a +2 on Spot and Listen and Survival checks, but only when it's winter? Shouldn't the party ranger or druid be doing those, anyways?

Any advice or ideas would be gratefully welcomed. I really do want to make this setting and campaign awesome.

[Yitzi]

Note that in addition to a bonus feat, the darkness domain also gets access to a very useful spell (blacklight) that is normally arcane-only, and an incredibly useful (especially for a quasi-evil campaign) spell (armor of darkness) that is totally unavailable any other way. Some of the others are very good as well.
So no, Darkness domain is not in the least underpowered.

I don't have access to most of the winter domain spells, so I couldn't tell if that's true for it too, but look at any that are not normal cleric spells and decide whether they're good enough to balance it on their own.

By the way, any god with a non-neutral component to his alignment should get the associated alignment domains.

[NeoSeraphi]

Don't forget Sense Motive and Heal. Those are both important Wisdom-based skill checks too. (And the ranger can't Heal)

Darkvision out to 30 feet isn't really worth Blind-Fight. I would say instead that the character gains darkvision 60', and the ability to see in magical darkness, but only if that darkness was created by a spell that you cast yourself. (That's actually quite a huge boon and makes the darkness spell really powerful for you, essentially becoming a greater invisibility spell for only 2nd level)


For the Winter Domain, I say, if you want something really powerful, the cleric has the option of gaining a breath weapon that deals cold damage. The damage is 1d8, plus 1d8 per 3 caster levels (max your HD). So 1d8 at 1st, 2d8 at 3rd, 3d8 at 6th, etc

The breath weapon has a range of 5' per caster level to a max of your HD (max 100' at CL 20) and is a line, not a cone. It allows a Reflex save (DC 10+1/2 Caster level Max HD+Con modifier) and requires a recharge time of 1d4 rounds, but is otherwise usable at will.

[Set]

Random ideas for Winter;

Cold Resistance 5

The ability to Cold Substitute any clerical energy/elemental spells (so cold-Flame Strike or cold-Sound Burst or cold-Searing Light or cold-Fire Storm) *and* +1 CL to those that are already cold (appropriate Glyphs of Warding, for instance). Since there are so terribly few elemental/energy based core clerical spells, this might be pretty crappy.

The ability to curse another to suffer the effects of Extreme Cold with a melee touch or via a melee attack (1d6 cold damage + save or suffer 1d4 nonlethal damage and be fatigued until this nonlethal damage is healed). Can use this touch attack a number of times per day equal to 3 + your wisdom bonus. Best used as a means of snapping someone out of a rage, or something, via the fatigue side-effect. See PHB 302 for mechanics.

Add some sort of template to summoned creatures that causes them to have the Cold subtype, +2 natural armor from a coating of ice and to inflict +1d6 cold damage on their attacks. Frostburn might have something similar.

[ZardozSpeaks]

I'd just add a few new domains for the Deity. Lots of Core deities have 4-8 domains given all splat books and Dragon Magazine. This is probably a better way to approach it, as there may be feats/prcs/items that require little portions of the domains as is. I don't know of any off the top of my head, but I'm thinking of the way The Contendor of Kord requires the strength domain, and adjusts the granted ability.

Also consider adding Domain feats (Complete Champion) or prcs related to the deity instead.

In general, this is my attitude towards homebrew, unless its really broken, don't fix it, as you might mess something else up. Domains are an important feature of the cleric class, but not the most important which might include full spellcasting progression and full access the cleric spell list.

So while I might encourage a monk or diplomacy rewrite, instead of just adding new feats/prcs related to those things, I would not suggest rewriting domains unless serious problems were found within them.

Cool domain suggestions
Blindness
Night
Freezing
Isolation
Snow
Ice
Tundra
Glacier

[Andorax]

Depending on frequency of such encounters, you could always give the Winter domain the same benefit as the Water domain (turn fire/rebuke water cold creatures).

Or they could always take the Planar Domain ACF from the Planar Handbook if they're not happy with the available choices.