Clerics (outdated concept)

[kreso]

Disadvantages:

- When using Spiritual Weapon, Crusader cannot cast spells.

That's how Helm Sword works...that's an othright horrible implementation. Why would one want a weapon which prohibits usage of spells?

Off-topic.

[yarpen]

On the other hand we are talking about wielding toned-down replica of god's avatar weapons.

[kreso]

If it's gonna keep a spellcasting class away from spellcasting, and keep him away from +5 in-game weapons, it better be a damn, damn good weapon.

[yarpen]

Helm's weapon is supposed to dispel magic on-hit and give you True Seeing when wielding it. Optionally give you immunity to mind-affecting spells and/or Gaze attacks.

 

Talon's staff grants immunity to Electricity and has a chance to cast Chain Lightning on-hit.

 

Those effects should be somehow balanced of course, but you should feel that you are using absurdly strong weapons as Crusader has really limited access to magic.

 

 

Major: all, combat, guardian, healing, war and wards

Minor: protection, necromantic, law, chaos.

I'd probably buff them up a bit by moving Protection into Major as it's no fun to have 2-3 spells per level. As overall, I'd be all for removing Guardian and Wards spheres. They are cool, but they can easily be shifted into Protection and Divination. Same goes for War and Combat. War spells in PnP were theoretically the long-lasting buffs with massive AoE (you were using those on goddamn armies). Or you were summoning catapult.

 

Another cool Cleric kit would be Mystic. Can only use the same items as Mage, has access to some innate charms, gains access to divination and charm spells through his divine scroll and has access to all the weirdest spheres.

[Demivrgvs]

Everything I said here is still valid for me.

 

The base True Cleric will be able to fit your common cleric of every deity (multi and dual easily allow to create almost any variant such as fighter/cleric performing as battlepriests of deity x, mage/cleric working as a mystic of Mystra or deity y, etc.) while kits provide the more specialized elite priests, with unique powers and abilities.

 

The three vanilla's kits need their names to be changed into the more appropriate ones:

- Pries of Lathander --> Morninglord of Lathander

- Pries of Helm --> Watcher of Helm

- Pries of Talos --> Stormlord of Talos

Then we may add a few more if really necessary (e.g. for NPC reasons or because doing so provides a really unique variant), but do keep in mind that as I said in the above link, Viconia isn't a Nightcloak, she's just a priest of Shar, Anomen isn't a Watcher of Helm (I'm not even sure this has ever been a real full class/kit in any edition), he's a warrior-priest of Helm, etc.

 

While the idea has some merit, replacing the current kits with crusader/pilgrim/scholar templates isn't the best way to proceed imo (not to mention it could cause a mess with in-game priests). A Morninglord isn't just a battlepriest of Lathander, he gets unique light-based powers. The Stormlord would probably fir your pilgrim template (light or medium armor?) but is kinda unique too, because he gets up to full immunity to electricity and can imbue his weapons with electrical energy.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Everything I said here is still valid for me.

There's bunch of cleric kit mods that have small to no relation to this... Have you considered that you could make this with more of a lesser kits ? Yes, not removing the original kits, but making the sub-kits their own selection. AKA, instead of overwriting everything currently in game(with templates), you just add in the templates to the combination of kits and give each of them all the specialization(template) and (deity)feature bonus and restrictions, it should make the entire system compatible with all the other mods.

 

Anomen isn't a Watcher of Helm (I'm not even sure this has ever been a real full class/kit in any edition), he's a warrior-priest of Helm, etc.

Incorrect... you can't dual naturally to a kit... I would make him just a fighter->cleric and then after the quest event, make him to gain a kit depending on the outcome... there's already a mod for this... you just have to make this mod compatible with it.

 

Or you could make the clerics have additional HLAs that turn them into a set sort of a specialist at a particular level.

[yarpen]

(I'm not even sure this has ever been a real full class/kit in any edition),

Yes it was, in Faiths and Avatars for AD&D2. That's actually a good source of informations about gods and priests. That's where the kits I am talking about come from.

Well, good thing you understand that True Cleric is not deity-less cleric. I think we have even discussed that before.

Do you want to implement spheres system? Without that, it's actually going to be pretty hard to find disadvantages for Cleric kits.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Do you want to implement spheres system? Without that, it's actually going to be pretty hard to find disadvantages for Cleric kits.

If that's done, let's hope there's not a single cleric that lacks healing, restoration or damage spells ... I can live with a set elemental deficiency-and-proficiency and one of each of these sides: good-vs.-evil spells, blessing-vs.-curse, banishing-vs.-charming and law-vs.-chaos, but not without half of the usual spells I always carry the cleric for.

So no sphere system, more like intentionally removed couple of spells ... so the actual reason should be to increase the specialists spell books, not reduce it.

[yarpen]

Fits the idea of Kit Revision a lot. Slightly touched divine scrolls with little adjustments here and there.

 

Morninglord of Lathander shouldn't use most of undead-based and offensive spells.

Stormlord of Talos shouldn't get restoration spells. I mean Lesser/Greater Restoration, Wondrous Recall and stuff like that. Some protections could be removed as well.

I don't know what to do with Watcher of Helm. All the priest spells fit him.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Stormlord of Talos shouldn't get restoration spells. I mean Lesser/Greater Restoration,

F that ! The vampires gonna kill the whole party ! In one freaking quest... and then we have no party ... or people that cheese the vampires with invisible clerics and turn ability etc cheesed shit !

 

Instead of that ! Let's look at Talos:

Chaos, Destruction, Evil, Fire and Storm

Let's remove the cold and earth elemental spells, and give special lightning spells, and a few fire spells. Give Smite Good -spell and Smite Law -spell, we can give it Earthquake spell as well, as that's actually a negative spell to what comes of it.

Then we can interpret the rest categories. Give Doom, Curse etc spells....

 

I get that the Greater Restoration spell is very powerful and it might be restricted from a kit, but not the lesser version in the light that there's vampires and other level-and-stat drainers in the game.

[Demivrgvs]

I think I'm closer to Jarno's position on this matter, AD&D sphere system a la Divine Remix looks cool on paper but within BG it creates very restricted unappealing spellbooks imo. I prefer to handle things similarly to what I've done with paladins and rangers if we need to remove certain spells.

 

Keeping in mind that KR's True Cleric will not be restricted to blunt weapons anymore, and that I wanted to add something similar to D&D Next's Channel Divinity (which is clearly inspired by Pathfinder imo) it's relatively easy to find drawbacks more similar to what other BG kits get, such as more limited armor and/or weapon restriction, lower spell slots in case of a "battlepriest" concept, customized Channel Divinity option, no Turn Undead, and so on.

 

Btw, the spell lists on the first post of this topic could still be valid imo, I've just been persuaded that it would be better to add those spells to the base spellbook (similarly to vanilla's Avenger) instead of getting tons of single use abilities. Not to mention some of those spells could fit the eventual Channel Divinity feature.

[Ardanis]

Speaking of Channel Divinity, the more I think of it, the more I like the idea of Spontaneous Conversion over it - which, as I've noted earlier, can be made to fully match the PnP version.

[yarpen]

Keeping in mind that KR's True Cleric will not be restricted to blunt weapons anymore, and that I wanted to add something similar to D&D Next's Channel Divinity (which is clearly inspired by Pathfinder imo) it's relatively easy to find drawbacks more similar to what other BG kits get, such as more limited armor and/or weapon restriction, lower spell slots in case of a "battlepriest" concept, customized Channel Divinity option, no Turn Undead, and so on.

I do like that idea as long as you screw their ThaC0 completely.

Fighter: all weapons/armors, ThaC0 0 at 20.

Thief: light weapons and armors, ThaC0 5 at 20.

Cleric: all weapons and armors, ThaC0 10 at 20.

Mage: no weapons and armors, ThaC0 10 at 20.

 

Clerics should be strong in defense and they have enough of buffing spells to actually be good in offense. Thiefs with their light armors should still be far more potent in offense as they suck in defense (having ThaC0 5 means they do have ThaC0 1 when striking from shadows). And Clerics always seemed to be the kind of guys who even if know how to handle all weapons, they are not very good at it.

 

I like the whole idea of screw PnP more and more - especially since lots of good ideas are coming out of it.

 

I also hope you'll let Druids use more weapons and medium armors (Chainmails). The whole non-metal restriction is hurting them too much.

[Ardanis]

Speaking of Channel Divinity, the more I think of it, the more I like the idea of Spontaneous Conversion over it - which, as I've noted earlier, can be made to fully match the PnP version.

We can also use spontaneous domain casting. Generic priests are stuck with cure/harm, kitted ones instead convert into their domain spells.

 

 

I also hope you'll let Druids use more weapons and medium armors (Chainmails). The whole non-metal restriction is hurting them too much.

I would have agreed at first, but after playing with Jaheira for a while I no longer think so. Ankheg plate is quite easy to obtain in either game, and later in BG2 you get dragon armor.

As for weapons, spear and club still have their uses.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I also hope you'll let Druids use more weapons and medium armors (Chainmails). The whole non-metal restriction is hurting them too much.

I would have agreed at first, but after playing with Jaheira for a while I no longer think so. Ankheg plate is quite easy to obtain in either game, and later in BG2 you get dragon armor.

As for weapons, spear and club still have their uses.

Erhm, Jaheira is a fighter/druid, even if we go and restrict her to a druid only armors... she will be better melee fighter than the usual druid... now I would like to see the druids be able to use the Elven chains, not the heavy normal chains. I would put this under the fact that the elven chains can be made from nature magic substances, not irons. Well, the Elven Chain mail's weight tells a lots... 7 ( lbs???):