Disappearance of Lolth

[Frostfel Wizard]

Me and my friends were starting a game in the Forgotten Realms. He's reading The War of the Spider Queen, and he wanted to make a Drow priestess of Lolth during her absence. We were going to have her absence up until 5th level, and then have Lolth return however it works in the books, (haven't finished them yet, so no spoilers please. :P ) So the question is how do we play/balance a cleric who can't cast spells by herself? He didn't want to use a work around like going to another god during it and then switching back (Lolth would be mad if I did that), so I've been trying to work out what abilities he should get (does channeling require a diety?) and how to make them not a useless lump until 5th level.

[Yajirobe]

Grab the Trickery domain. Max CHA, Bluff and Diplomacy. Be the party face and pray that the huge amount of False Bravado and empty threats that you will use holds tight until you are 5th level. If you can get a couple of Eternal Wands of CLW, you may help with the healing "I won't expend the Spider Queen' blessings on some wound made by a weakling's foolish mistake!"

Try to keep the act until lv 5 undetected. Drow are drawn to weakness like sharks are to blood on the water. A powerless priestess of Lolth is a tasty target for some male drow mage with grudge.

[Skysaber]

A cleric without spells is still a heavy plate wearing 3/4 BAB class with two good saves. If you're going to restore her spell ability as early as 5th, she won't miss much (although I hope you have arranged for a substitute party healer - or at least a few wands of Cure Light).

Let her command a skeleton or two and she won't have any problem keeping up with the melee classes. Heck, she doesn't even really need the skeletons, they are just there to keep the 'cleric flavor' fresh.

Items: scrolls, wands, staffs, etc, still work just fine. You could load her down with some of those, or just include enough in the general loot found to keep her going.

You could even go so far as to grab a leaf out of the sorcerer book, and say "Yes, you receive no spells in Lolth's absence, but you still have the capacity to cast spells per day" basically, no spells KNOWN, but still spells PER DAY, and then just hand her a Runestaff slightly tweaked to run off divine energy, and you're golden. She can throw every spell she's got, just somewhat limited in selection.

Although, I think it's a bad idea to let the player decide when their crisis of faith ends. Lolth's absence HURT her priesthood, and saying "Yeah, I'm fine for now, and I'll have her back as soon as I need her" robs the situation of essentially all of its impact.

I'd tweak it. Give the player a 5% chance for Lolth to return every time her character goes up a level, and you don't start rolling until 5th level. So there is a 25% chance for her to return then, and a 30% chance at the next level, and so on up to 20th where there is a 100% chance.

Practically speaking, odds are great that Lolth will be back before the character hits 9th level, or about even for 7th, but the uncertainty gives her a chance to sweat it out a bit - which was exactly what that crisis was about.

Give her an item of continuous Divine Favor as compensation for having her god gone, and you've got a full BAB character with an 18 Str. She'll wade in with the melee types and not have any trouble.

Actually, that might be going too far. At those levels (1-4) melees types are generally stronger than casting classes, just cause the fighter can swing his sword as often as he wants, but the wizard/cleric/whatever still has to ration their one to three 'pop the enemy' spells.

So give the player an option. Take the item of continuous Divine Favor and your chance for Lolth to return goes down by 20% permanently, whether she keeps the item or not. And if she reaches 20th without Lolth returning, she is Not. Going. To.

Actually, I like that option better, as that concern was very real to her priesthood at the time.

[Karnith]

You could do what Triel Baenre did to help compensate for Quenthel Baenre's loss of clerical power - give the character a cohort/thrall until Lolth's Silence is broken.

[Frostfel Wizard]

Those are all great ideas, especially the percentage one, which I am now definitely using. But I was thinking of doing something with an item to kind of balance things out. Also I like the cohort idea, although with the LA on a Draegloth I might use it only if I have to, if I didn't compensate enough at the beginning, throw it in later. Or use something that isn't necessarily a Draegloth. What about PrC's that reference being favor's from the deity? I was thinking using a high level Outsider under Lolth instead.

[zlefin]

How about just letting them cast spells? I'm not familiar with the setting details, but clerics can normally function without a deity, they just have spiritual inclinations and still pick domains.

Or the spells could be granted by someone other than Lolth, like lieutenants of hers or somesuch.

I'm vaguely recalling something from earlier editions where different spell levels had different requirements: level 1-2 spells could be gotten by simple praying and didn't require special connection. level 3-5 were granted by agents of the deity, like solars or angels or something; and levels 6-7 were granted by the deity directly. Under a system like that, a missing deity would prevent use of the higher level magics, but would allow some lower level magics to work fine.

[Mnemnosyne]

Feat: Servant of the Fallen. Lost Empires of Faerun, page 9. Allows a cleric to gain spells even if they serve a dead or vanished deity.

Fluff: When Lolth vanished, this particular priestess was faithful enough to continue pulling her spells from the remnant of divine power that was left in her wake.

[Asteron]

How about just letting them cast spells? I'm not familiar with the setting details, but clerics can normally function without a deity, they just have spiritual inclinations and still pick domains.

Or the spells could be granted by someone other than Lolth, like lieutenants of hers or somesuch.

The first idea doesn't work. I do believe that if you want to do such a thing, you have to pick that and stick with it (afb right now, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.) Besides, the biggest problem with her Silence was that it weakened her people. Her lieutenants were similarly affected...

[Darth Stabber]

Feat: Servant of the Fallen. Lost Empires of Faerun, page 9. Allows a cleric to gain spells even if they serve a dead or vanished deity.

Fluff: When Lolth vanished, this particular priestess was faithful enough to continue pulling her spells from the remnant of divine power that was left in her wake.

This is the best/easiest way, though once lolth is back it's a dead feat, you may consider letting her retrain it as "lolth's reward for her continued faithfulness", you could even swap it out by fiat as it's the deity's reward.


How about just letting them cast spells? I'm not familiar with the setting details, but clerics can normally function without a deity, they just have spiritual inclinations and still pick domains.

Or the spells could be granted by someone other than Lolth, like lieutenants of hers or somesuch.

I'm vaguely recalling something from earlier editions where different spell levels had different requirements: level 1-2 spells could be gotten by simple praying and didn't require special connection. level 3-5 were granted by agents of the deity, like solars or angels or something; and levels 6-7 were granted by the deity directly. Under a system like that, a missing deity would prevent use of the higher level magics, but would allow some lower level magics to work fine.

Doesn't work that way in forgotten realms. Clerics in that setting absolutely require a deity, or a dead deity and the aforementioned feat.

[Alex Xeno]

The first idea doesn't work. I do believe that if you want to do such a thing, you have to pick that and stick with it (afb right now, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.) Besides, the biggest problem with her Silence was that it weakened her people. Her lieutenants were similarly affected...

You are correct, Fearun(sp?) was different that you did need a god to give you powers, in fact, not praying to a god was a one way ticket to being a soul-brick in a soul-wall (no, really).

Besides the disappearance of Lolth example, there is in fact a clergy that prays to a god who cares not for the mortal realm, and doesn't bless them with spells at all, making a group of clerics who never cast spells.

The disappearance of Lolth as I remember even had permanent spells that were already cast and set (like that lovely fairy fire's everywhere that they like to decorate with) failing and falling apart.

[Karnith]

The disappearance of Lolth as I remember even had permanent spells that were already cast and set (like that lovely fairy fire's everywhere that they like to decorate with) failing and falling apart.
Nah, permanent magical effects stayed in place after Lolth's Silence began. In fact, Lolth's faithful were able to maintain the illusion that Lolth was still granting spells for quite a while before anyone noticed - they hid it for weeks, if not for months, without the majority of the Menzoberranzyr suspecting.

[kardar233]

Keep in mind that according to the book series, the priestesses could still cast spells, they just couldn't replenish them. If you start him off with a full load of spells he'll have to find excuses to be miserly with the spells he has.

[Humble Master]

Feat: Servant of the Fallen. Lost Empires of Faerun, page 9. Allows a cleric to gain spells even if they serve a dead or vanished deity.

Fluff: When Lolth vanished, this particular priestess was faithful enough to continue pulling her spells from the remnant of divine power that was left in her wake. Seems like a good idea to me. Once Lolth returns at 5th level maybe let the player retrain the feat as a reward for staying faithful and also give the player some cool unique ability, like rebuking spider or something.

[eviljav]

Somewhere, in one of the older editions of DnD, clerics could still cast 1st and 2nd level spells without a diety. (They were granted by the higher level servants of the god - solars or whatever the equiv. would be).

[avr]

In the first edition of AD&D, 1st-2nd level spells were gained by the characters own will and faith, 3rd-5th were granted by servants of the deity, and 6th-7th (there were no 8th+ cleric spells) by the deity directly. Deities and Demigods then complicated matters by making the highest level spells available only to followers of deities which had lesser god or intermediate god status IIRC.

You could easily use this to let a low level cleric keep her powers.

[ArcturusV]

Not RAW beyond some vague mentions I recall, but could be interesting:

During the Silence have Lolth's Handmaidens do a bit of Spell/power granting, but make them require a lot more faith and service than clerics are normally required to maintain. They don't have divinity, so they don't have the oomph to grant spells to everyone who wants it.

I SEEM to recall at least BoVD/BoED had a similar ruleset going on. Where it mentioned something like the Celestial Paragons and Archdevils/Demon Princes didn't actually grant divine power themselves. But they worked as a broker between true sources of Power and their followers/cultists. Thus I may pray to Feirna (Archdevil ruling one of the layers of hell), but am actually getting power through her from a God or one of those vague nebulous philosophical forces mentioned from time to time, which she grants me on their behalf.

So there's some slight RAWness to it. But I think it could be fun. The Handmaidens only have the capability to say, replenish 100 Drow Clerics a day. There's stiff competition to be in the top 100, among those ambitious enough to believe they can. Others give up, figure they'll never break that top 100 and miser their power instead and hedge bets. Some go for broke figuring Lolth favors the bold and if they use their power as she'd want somehow it'll work out, etc.

... It's not canon to the Faerun situation. But it might be an idea.