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Sphere Mixup?


Corradun

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WATCHER OF HELM: The god of guardians and protectors, Helm is the epitome of the guardian, the watcher, the guard, and has in years past been greatly venerated by those who need to remain watchful for evil at their doorsteps. Helm is ever-vigilant, and embodies the spirit of lawful neutrality. Helm makes his home on the clockwork plane of Nirvana, in a region separate from Mystra. Helm's Symbol is an open eye painted onto a gauntlet.

 

 

Advantages:

- Spiritual Weapon: Bastard Sword - 'Ever Watchful' once per day

The bastard sword is the spiritual weapon of Watchers of Helm, and is wielded as if the caster had grand mastery in the weapon. The bastard sword is a regular weapon at levels 1-5, +1 at levels 6-10, +2 at 11-15, +3 at 16-20, +4 at 21-25, and +5 at levels 26 and above. The spiritual weapon lasts for one round per level of the caster, up to 20 rounds.

- Glyph of Warding once per day, as third level cleric spell of the same name

- Armor once per day, as first level mage spell of the same name

- From level 3 can cast Detect Invisibility once per day, as second level mage spell of the same name

- From level 5 can cast Ghost Armor once per day, as third level mage spell of the same name

- From level 7 can cast Farsight once per day, as fourth level cleric spell of the same name

- From level 9 can cast Protection From Normal Weapons once per day, as fifth level mage spell of the same name

- From level 11 can cast True Seeing once per day, as fifth level cleric spell of the same name

- From level 14 can cast Mantle once per day, as seventh level mage spell of the same name

 

Sphere Access:

- Major access to the spheres of all, animal, astral, combat, divination, guardian, healing, necromantic, numbers, summoning, sun, travelers, weather

- Minor access to the spheres of charm, elemental, plant, wards

- No access to the spheres of chaos, creation, law, protection, thought, time, war

 

:) I have a gripe about the sphere access you have for Watcher's of Helm. Helm is Lawful Neutral and the Great guardian and Protector. It doesn't make any sense to me that he has no access to the spere of protection or law. My suggestion is to move protection to major access and law to minor access and move animal to no access and either plant or charm to no access. That should keep the spheres balanced.

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I raised the lack of access to Law while we were in the planning stages, but several sources revealed the spheres above to be the 'proper' spheres - so no Law and Protection. :)

 

I certainly have no objection to allowing those two and getting rid of something else, but you'd need to speak to CamDawg and NiGHTMARE and see what they think. :)

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I'll add my voice here. According to Faiths and Pantheons (yes, I know, 3E), Helm's portfolio is guardians, protectors and protection. His domains are law, planning, protection and strength. So I agree that protection and law should be included in the spheres that his clerics have access to. I must have been napping when this came up. :)

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This was a point raised in the workroom; those are correct PnP 2e sphere restrictions. It's not the first set of contradictions between a god and its clerical sphere list, i.e. Silverstars get Free Action (PnP) as an innate despite being restricted from having it in their spell selection.

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The sphere of Law is to do with obedience and strength, while the Lawful alignment is to do with order and rules - so just because a deity is Lawful, it doesn't automatically mean they grant their priests Law spells. Similarly, the sphere of Protection is obviously about magical protection, whereas Helm's portfolio of Protection is more concerned with the phyiscal side (i.e. guardianship).

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Faiths and Avatars (which is for second edition), page 70 for the Watchers of Helm:

 

Major Spheres: All, astral, combat, divination, guardian, protection, sun, wards

Minor spheres: Creation, elemental, healing, war

 

Alightnment itself is only Lawful Neutral.

 

Regular clergy (like Anomen) can be Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, and Neutral.

 

And a Helmit is known for their duty, so if you expand the spheres to include Law, then it would make sense.

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The sphere of Law is to do with obedience and strength, while the Lawful alignment is to do with order and rules - so just because a deity is Lawful, it doesn't automatically mean they grant their priests Law spells.  Similarly, the sphere of Protection is obviously about magical protection, whereas Helm's portfolio of Protection is more concerned with the phyiscal side (i.e. guardianship).

^^ I think that pretty much sums it up. The concept of law and protection as clerical spheres are different than they are as a concept in a god's portfolio. As NiGHTMARE mentions in the workroom, law as a clerical sphere is better represented by Tyr or Torm, not Helm.

 

It's instances like these where I think following the "official" isn't the always logical path.

 

-Galactygon

 

Except when implementing PnP spheres is an explicitly stated goal of the mod. :)

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^^ I think that pretty much sums it up. The concept of law and protection as clerical spheres are different than they are as a concept in a god's portfolio. As NiGHTMARE mentions in the workroom, law as a clerical sphere is better represented by Tyr or Torm, not Helm.

[rant] Torm and Tyr both also have law in their domain, what I don't understand is why this disallows Helmite clerics from having law spells. It seems the rules here haven't changed from 2E. And domain is different from portfolio. Helmites should, at the very least, have protection spells, if not also law spells. [/rant]

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Uh, I just checked, and the list of spheres Bri posted above is what Watchers of Helm are supposed to have. I'm not sure how we came up with the list we're using in this mod, but it's wrong. Oops! :)

 

Still, I don't think changing spheres (other than correcting mistakes :)) is a good idea. Once we decide to allow one kit to deviate from pnp, we open the way for arguments on what spheres all the other kits should have too.

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NiGHTMARE's PnP knowledge has failed!

 

*watches a pig fly idly by*

 

The protection sphere access will be added. Thanks Bri!

 

[rant] Torm and Tyr both also have law in their domain, what I don't understand is why this disallows Helmite clerics from having law spells.  It seems the rules here haven't changed from 2E.  And domain is different from portfolio.  Helmites should, at the very least, have protection spells, if not also law spells. [/rant]

But it still does not address NiGHTMARE's point that the meaning of 'law' in the two cases is different. The clerical spell sphere of law is about obedience and strength, whereas law embodied by Helm is more order and rules.

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The protection sphere access will be added. Thanks Bri!

There's several other differences there too. I'm not even sure where our list came from, certainly not any of the other specialty priests in F&A.

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Well, I did think it was a little weird that the God whose portfolio includes Protection wouldn't have that as a sphere ;-)

 

However, I could see where allowing the sphere of Law could work, but I also agree with your reasoning for not allowing it. I think this is one of those decisions that you will have to go with "just because."

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