A discussion: New spells as innates vs. spellbook

[SimDing0]

No, sorry. Let me try to describe clearly. I seem to be messing up explanations a lot these days.

 

If you want to be a speciality priest, you pick the kit. That's it. You wouldn't need to use Prayer to gain your spells, and no priest would be worshipping two separate gods. You could potentially abandon that deity via the Prayer ability, and pick another to switch to, in which case you'd lose your kit and become a pure class cleric who would have to use Prayer to gain spells. You would never be able to regain Specialist Priest status of any god from then on.

If you want to be a multi- or dual-class priest, you cannot be a Specialist Priest. You must choose a deity via the Prayer ability, and can swap as described above. You can never gain a kit.

Unkitted clerics would not be able to gain spells without the Prayer ability, and using it would give them the sphere restrictions of the god they were worshipping. They would not receive the additional penalties or bonuses such as divine weapons and innates.

 

Under any circumstances, upon swapping deity or your alignment shifting outside the bounds of your deity, you would immediately lose all your spells. Selecting a new deity would allow you to regain them level by level over time. However, beyond level 4 spells, you would be required to gain special guidance from a member of your new church's clergy. (This would mean that in BG2 you'd have to go to a temple to gain more powerful spells, while in Tutu there'd be no need, since you don't reach any levels higher than that.) Once you'd visited the temple, you would continue regaining your higher level spells as you had previous levels.

[Fallen_Demon]

Isn't there support for gods that don't have temples in BGII though? (not to mention the fact that there's only one or two temples in TOB)

[Galactygon]

What would be the (dis)advantages of choosing a diety via Prayer ability rather than being an unkitted cleric?

 

-Galactygon

[NiGHTMARE]

The idea is that unkitted clerics HAVE to chose a deity via the Prayer ability, otherwise they won't be able to cast any spells.

[Andyr]

A note to the casual observer: It seems there are several different proposals flying around at the moment so we will see what happens. People are divided on various issues.

[NiGHTMARE]

Back on the first page, Sim said that if an item which granted extra spell slots would work, then a spell would work... But I was just realized this doesn't seem to be true. Spells which affect clerical slots clearly don't work properly, yet there are already items in the game which add extra clerical spell slots (e.g. the Ring of Holiness), and I've never heard of this bug occuring with them.

 

It could be that after resting, effects applied via CLAB are handled in a slightly different manner than those granted by items. This may even explain why the scripting method I used appears to work okay as well.

[Grim Squeaker]

However the issue is with removing slots. Adding slots should be bug free, but the game has problems when you are reducing to 0 etc.

[NiGHTMARE]

So why don't we make it so speciality priests gain the first spell of each level the same as a cleric, but don't gain their second spell until the level clerics gain their third?

[SnowKing]

Are we continuing work on this at some stage? Have we decided what to do? The prayer system sounds pretty good. Giving un-kitted clerics innate is ok. Accept for alignment I can see it changing somewhat. Healing for good, reverse for evil etc.

And have you considered releasing a pack so people can add the spells you've got into the game without having upgraded kits?

 

SK

[Andyr]

It's on my list of things to do when I have free time.

 

I don't think we'll release the spells separately; I personally don't see much of a point. Plus we might have to rename the files to get them into the game without Cleric Remix, which might cause issues with some other mods and stuff.

[Drew]

If you are going to require all priests to choose a deity in order to cast spells I request you also add concepts to the list of deities from which to choose. According to the 2e priest book (can't remember what it was called) it was stated that you can also be a priest of "good", "evil", "balance", or any other particularly powerful and widespread belief and would in fact not draw powers from a deity at all.

[NiGHTMARE]

Various source books suggest that the Forgotten Realms are slightly different to general D&D, in that philosophies and forces don't exist, only gods. For instance, it's explicity stated in at least two 2E source books that FR druids and rangers must worship a god rather than nature as a whole (even though BG2 ignores this in the case of Valygar).

 

Besides, priests of philosophies have extremely limited spheres of access (three major and two minor), so I'm not sure anyone would want to play one within BG2 anyway .

[Drew]

Specialty priests of philosophies have extremely limited sphere access. You can also have a standard cleric of "Good" who would have a more standard sphere access. On the other hand, I know where you're going with having to worship someone in FR. Technically Valygar shouldn't be ressurectable since he doesn't follow any gods, but I've never seen any indication that you absolutely can't be a priest of a philosophy or force. It simply doesn't happen or happens rarely. I also find the Idea of an evil Bhaalspawn priest who plans on becoming the new lord of murder having to worship Cyric or something. (Would Cyric even grant such an individual spells?) I much prefer the "Avowed" back story used for priest characters in BG1.

 

EDIT: Pikel bouldershoulder is a druid who worships the dwarven pantheon. I doubt Moradin or any other dwarven god whould grant him druidic abilities. It's heavilly implied that Pikel rips his powers from nature the same way a proper 3e druid would in the Cleric quintet novels and Salvatores most recent Drizzit books.