Priest Spheres for 3rd Edition

[ngilop]

Hello all, this is going to be my biggest ontake of work for homebewing Ive done so far. One thing that limited the power of clerics and to a lesser extent druids in 2nd ed was they only had access to certain 'spheres' of magic. think of spheres a expanded Domains. So my goal is to take the druid and cleric spell lists (maybe even some bard spells too?)from the PHB and Spell Compendium and break them all down into a number of spheres. Instead of just auto knowing every single one of their spells.

The spheres I am going to use are as follows

All - Needed spells to perfrom priestly functions and general divine spells. SO bless, create holy/unholy water as well as spells such as Visage of the diety, miralce, or dieific vengeance will go here
Animal - Seplls dealing with animals, such as gaining a aspect of one summoning an animal or changing into an animal. SO bear's endurance, Claws of the Bear, and EMbrace the wild go here.
Astral - Spells dealing with planar movement and planar things in a generic snese belong here SO plane ****, astral projection and planar bubble belong here
Balance - Spell about being neutral SO Word of Balance and the like belong here
Chaos - Spells about being chatoic are found here so word of chaos andwall of chaos are here.
Charm - Spells about controlling others mind, personality , and will are here, SO Command, Geas, confusion, and Cloak of bravery go here
Combat - SPells about fighting are found here, SO magic stone, SHield of faith,Prayer, Stalwart Pact, and Aura of Vitality go here
Creation - About making things, SO heroe's feast, Create food/water and Awaken X are found here.
Darkness - Spells about shadows and darkness are found here. So Darkness, Slashing Darkness, Nigthshield, and Dark way are here.
Divination - spells about knowing the future, what is around the corner or what is in your hand is here, SO legend lore, Contact other plane and Know Opponent are found here
Elemental (Air, Earth, Fire, Water) about the 4 elements SO flame blade, stone shape, Air walk, and Obscurring mist are found here
Evil - Spells about being evil, SO Unholy word, Unholy storm, and desecrate are here
Good - spells about beind good SO Holy Aura, Dispel Evil, and Holy Transformation are here
Guardian - spells about physical object that protect you, SO silence, blade barrier, and ring of blades belong here
Healing - spells about curative, restorative and healing are here, SO cure X wounds, Heal, Dance of the unicorn, and Panacea belong here
Law - Spells about being lawful so Dictum, Mantle of Law, and checkmates light are found here
Love - spells about love.. really can't find any and i think this prob could be combined with Charm, but im not sure
Moon - spells about the moon and moon related things SO faerie fire, moon bolt, and moon lust are found here
Necromantic - dealing with life, death, and, undeath are here as well as soul related spells, SO animate dead, Soul Bind, Resurection are found here.
Numbers - Dealing with money, probability change, and the like, SO guidance,
Plant - about plants SO entangle, Barkskin, Wood rot, and deadfall are found here
Protection - spells dealing with direct protection, SO protection from evil, energy resistance, dispel magic, and resistance are found here
Summoning - spell s about summoning, SO summon natures ally, Gate, call Zelekhut, banishment are found here
Sun - seplls about the sun, SO Light, Daylight, Lucent Light and anger of the noonday sun are found here
Thought - spells about the mind, SO modify memory, mind fog, and the like are found here
Trickery - spells about deciet SO hallucionary terrain, mislead and the like are found here
Time - spells about time, SO well i can't really think of any off the top of my head, LOL
Travelers - spells about traveling SO Word of Recall, Knights move, and Burrow are found here
War - Spells about War that you only find on a mass battlefield are here, SO Abyssal army, , Mass Aid, , and the like are here
Wards - Symbols and proitective as well as offsive wards go here, SO glyph of Warding, Symbol of insanity, Zone of Respite.
Weather - spells about weather, so Control Weather, Call Lightning, and Cold Snap all belong here

Of course some spells are going to be in multiple spheres, for example Magic stone will be combat as well as Elemental (Earth), and Protection from Evil will be in Good as well as Protection.

I have to get to work acutally in a bit. But I know this would take me probably months if my Soul Knife fix took me a week. So I will appreciate and welcome if any of you do wish to assist me in this.

[Blueiji]

I'm not sure what sort of response you were seeking so I'm just going to list some categories/themes not really covered by your existing list of spheres.

- Creation, Crafting, Artifice, and Building.

- Positive Energy, Life (could be tied into the Healing or Good spheres).

- Negative Energy, Entropy, Death (could be tied into the Necromantic or Evil spheres).

- Neutrality and Balance.

- Cities, Urbanization, Community, and Industry.

- Cold, Ice, and Winter (could just be part of the water sphere).

- Moon, Nighttime, and Shadow (as an inverse so the Sun sphere).

- Trade, Money, and Wealth (perhaps the Numbers sphere could be part of this?).

- Athletics, Courage, Glory, and Competition.

- Disease, Vermin, Decay, Rot, Slime (some of these might be part of the Necromantic sphere).

- Destiny, Luck, Fate, and Chance.

- Harvest, Farm, Feast, Food, and Hearth.

- Magic (as in a sphere containing spells that deal with, identify, or counter other magic).

- Metal.

- Love, Passion, Fertility, Family.

- Trickery, Deception, Lying, Cheating, and Stealing.
Some of your spheres could also be condensed.

- Guardian, Protection, and Wards all seem really similar.

- Combat and War could also be made into one sphere (perhaps "conflict"?).

- The Numbers sphere seems very out of place, what spells would go in that one? Could those spells just as easily go in Thought?

- Summoning seems like a sphere that would just be borrowing from other spheres; summoning Outsiders would be borrowing from alignment spheres, summoning elementals would be borrowing from Elemental spheres, and summoning mundane creatures would be borrowing from the Animal sphere. Would the point of the Summoning sphere be that you could ALL of those things or that it would be capable of summoning something else entirely?

[ngilop]

You are rigth about adding in a darkness sphere and probably a moon sphere as well. back in earlier editions Spells were reversible so it was light/darkness not 2 seperate spells, so there was no need to have more than just Sun. Now with the spell being disticnt and different spells a darkness sphere is needed, and with the addition of Bit of were X spells there actuallt is a pretty decent number of moon spells.

also balance.. that a mental derp for me, LOL I thought I added it in.

Ive decided to include a little description of what the spheres represnet so the one sliek combat and war, or guardian, protection and wards are explained how they differentiate.

Love and trickery will also be added

[Eldan]

So, want help sorting the spells? Because I started this once, ages ago. Unlikely there's any notes left.

[Yitzi]

Feel free to borrow ideas from here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222271).

[drack]

Hello all, this is going to be my biggest ontake of work for homebewing Ive done so far. One thing that limited the power of clerics and to a lesser extent druids in 2nd ed was they only had access to certain 'spheres' of magic. think of spheres a expanded Domains. So my goal is to take the druid and cleric spell lists (maybe even some bard spells too?)from the PHB and Spell Compendium and break them all down into a number of spheres. Instead of just auto knowing every single one of their spells.


Would these then be grouped by deity? :smalltongue:

[erikun]

I'd like to note that this wasn't how priests worked in AD&D1e or before; this is distinctly a 2nd edition concept. AD&D1e clerics and druids had their own distinct spell lists. It also wasn't always a popular mechanic, for reasons I'll mention a bit later.

Now the point of priest spheres was to easily sort out magic spells to divine characters, much like spell schools for mages. You could have the standard cleric with access to healing, necromantic, protection, good, guardian, etc... while a paladin would only have access to healing, good, guardian, and war, and while some sort of evil cultist death-knight might have access to necromantic, evil, death, and darkness.

The problem, of course, is that all clerics are going to want a basic set of similar powers, and so you end up giving all "cleric" a very similar set of spheres. Also, you have situations where very thematic spells (Regeneration and Reincarnate for druids) being handed out to everyone because they end up in the Healing and Necromantic spheres. Even stranger, you'd have death-cultists who don't know any healing spells but can still Raise Dead (because it is in the Necromantic sphere) or Paladins getting access to the spell Animate Dead (same reason).

Or, just general strangeness like Barkskin being a "Plant" spell and Bear Endurance being an "Animal" spell just so that druids can cast them without access to Protection or War. It's the Orb of Conjuration problem you see with the D&D3e wizard spell list.


If you are planning on going with this idea, I'd recommend at least rethinking the organization of the different spheres. All, Miracle, and Life spheres would probably be common for all priestly spellcasters, although the rest can probably be put together into more thematic domain-ish spheres or something similar.

[ngilop]

well Im not planning on giving every cleric the same exact slecetion of spheres.

each cleric is limited in spheres by what his diety has governance over.

But, since you are allowed to do a 'i no worhsip dieties but some grand unammble cocnept thingy' i will have to say 'this is what non diety cleric get'

I know somebody want theri clerics to have access to every spell ever, and if some want that they have the right to completely ignore this. to people who want a little bit of a dent in the power of clerics and who appreciate spells that make more sense in regards to the diety they worship then this will maybe be up your alley.

but seriously saying barkskin being in the plant sphere as strange to me is akin to saying that holy word beind in Good is strange. but as asid in teh description of All, every cleric would have access to it.

[erikun]

but seriously saying barkskin being in the plant sphere as strange to me is akin to saying that holy word beind in Good is strange. but as asid in teh description of All, every cleric would have access to it.
The problem is that it is clearly a Protection spell (it grants AC) but it is put into the Plant sphere just so druids would have access to it. There is no mechanical reason why "manipulates and works with plants" should be giving out AC bonuses, and it only does so by "refluffing" it into having some vague plant-y aspects.

I mean, we could rewrite Animate Dead to fit into the Elemental Earth sphere (because it is working with solid objects), we can stick Shadow Conjuration into the Darkness sphere (solid darkness), and we could shove Holy Word into the Combat and Creation spheres (obvious for the first, divine words of creation for the second). And given the spell creation rules, it would be pretty easy for a PC to create their own spells that do so if they are so inclined.

[TKXapathy]

The problem is that it is clearly a Protection spell (it grants AC) but it is put into the Plant sphere just so druids would have access to it. There is no mechanical reason why "manipulates and works with plants" should be giving out AC bonuses, and it only does so by "refluffing" it into having some vague plant-y aspects.

I don't see what's so wrong about this. After all, isn't the classification of spells into spheres more about theme rather than purpose?

Also, I can't possibly be the only one who thinks a cleric of a death god shouldn't be able to cast healing spells. IMO, giving different clerics of different gods more distinct spell lists without the generic Cures and Inflicts present in all of them seems like a plus to me.

[erikun]

There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just pointing out what it tends to lead towards. If that's what you want, then go for it! I'm certainly not going to stop you, and just want you to be aware of what you're getting into. :smallsmile:

A divine class of a death god who doesn't have healing spells works fine I.M.H.O., but isn't going to be what most people assume when you say "Cleric". A Priest of Nerull would probably work very well with Necromantic, Death, Evil, Darkness, Divination, etc. spells, and would be very thematically appropriate. However, such a character would behave a lot more like a Dread Necromancer than any of the current Clerics in 3e.


One other thing I should note is that 2e Priests weren't necessarily limited to just behaving as Clerics. In the PHB along with the sphere set was a table for making your own classes with any features available. That means you could have a Warrior with Fighter-like stats and THAC0, with only Healing and Combat spheres. You could also have a Mage character who had access to Divination and Thought spheres alongside full Wizard spellcasting. The divine spheres weren't limited to just "Clerics".

[drack]

But, since you are allowed to do a 'i no worhsip dieties but some grand unammble cocnept thingy' i will have to say 'this is what non diety cleric get'


So if I worship love and harmony or I worship hate and vengeance I get the same spells? :smallconfused:

(Yes, that's what I take from this while exchange :smalltongue:)
No, but seriously, 2e was pretty heavily DM fait in most things like this. Not a bad thing, but it is extra work for them, and no generic list will cover it all. :smallsmile:

[Debihuman]

This might be helpful: http://web.mit.edu/benmv/dnd/spheres.html

Debby