Houserule idea: Cleric prepared spells chosen by GM each day?

I think it would be really unique and flavorful if the GM prepared a cleric's spells every day instead of the player, representing the god deciding what spells to grant that day. Maybe the cleric would have a "standard" loadout that the player could help choose and would have some variations based on the deity's predictions for the day, for example if a fight was likely to break out, the cleric would receive mostly combat oriented spells. It might also be possible for the player to make a knowledge (religion) check to pray for a specific spell of their choice.

This is obviously a bit of a nerf for the cleric, but it's already considered one of the most powerful classes, so I think it could work in either a more roleplay-oriented campaign or a campaign with beginning players, where no one is too concerned with optimization. I think that it could be a great way for the cleric to stay true to their domain (no fire clerics casting create water) and actually feel like some higher being is granting their spells. What do you think of the idea?

I dislike it on the premise that you are essentially taking away the primary feature of a class away. I like it from a fluff perspective, but from an actual players perspective I would hate to have any GM decide what I get to do, and how I must approach a certain situation. Why am I playing the character and not him?

It also rubs me the wrong way because it sounds much more appropriate for a favored soul. Being a chosen of the gods, not a devoted follower like a cleric, it makes more sense to leave things in the gods' hands. I cleric has earned their place and power through a life of devotion and piety, taking all that away seems bad except for maybe for some weird tyrannical diety. A clerics devotion allows them to call upon various powers from their deity, to assist as needed. Domains are a great example of this, and do it already. You get certain spells regardless and must prep one of your domain spells per spell level, so that much is granted to you by your god. The rest is your choice. You worship fire and destruction? You get a destructive or a fire spell already because your god knows whats up and hooks you up.

Favored souls kind of luck into all their power. There is no formal training, hours of ritual, etc. I think it makes more sense to give the deity more control in what they grant those they favor because it is another sort of blessing they just grant, as opposed to requesting a specific blessing. A cleric will pray for an end to drought and his god will grant him that because it is what he asked for. A favored soul will just walk into town and it rains.

Hm... It's an interesting idea, but I think it has some flaws.

As a GM, I'm not keen on taking on the prep required to make this idea work. A 10th level cleric has ~25 spell slots and a spell list that encompasses hundreds of spells, having to prepare a new list for him when the party rests is an extra bit of work I don't need.

As a player, I'd be extremely reluctant to give up control of something as integral to the cleric as what spells I have prepared. The cleric's spell list and spell slots are 80% of what the class brings to the table, after all. If a GM proposed this houserule I'd switch to a druid, a shaman or an Oracle.

Do you envision anyone having more fun with this change than without it?

I mean it isn't crazy from a flavor standpoint, but it seems frustrating for the player and it seems like just one more task for the DM to track, unless they go out of their way to be annoying about it, in which case it just sounds bad.

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Originally Posted by Pluto!

I mean it isn't crazy from a flavor standpoint, but it seems frustrating for the player and it seems like just one more task for the DM to track, unless they go out of their way to be annoying about it, in which case it just sounds bad.

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This summarizes my thought of it quite nicely.

Remember, clerics pray to be granted their spells, specifically for each one. Now, a GM COULD micromanage it by saying 'no, your deity grants you these spells per day', but normally it's something submitted to the God for approval.

I would go the way of worshipping a concept, Individuality seems appropriate, and tell the DM to suck it. In less obnoxious terms, I would never play a cleric under this ruling. So many cleric spells are extremely situational. So I'd either never have those spells when I need them, or I'd have some major hints to the future when things like Downdraft pop up.

I think it's a neat idea. It could work as a variant rule for domain spell slots. Let the player prepare their normal domain spell as if it were on their standard spell list, and the 'domain slot' is actually chosen for them by their deity.

It could actually be considered a buff, depending on how reliable your god's choice is as a prediction for what the day's adventuring holds. "Alright guys, so I just got neutralize poison from my deity. I want to see everybody drinking antitoxins while we finish exploring this dungeon, and if you've got any kind of fort buffs be sure to use them."

As a GM, I wouldn't be crazy about this due to the prep time required.

As a player, this would make me choose pretty much any not-cleric class. There are plenty of options if I want a full caster after all.

Clerics do need nerfing due to power levels, but it needs to be a nerf on full casters generally, not just one class, and not a nerf that gives the GM more work to do.

I could see doing this in a very extreme scenario, like the deity essentially saying "Hey, we need to talk, step into my office" by replacing all their 5th-level and higher spells with Commune or something one day. But as a regular thing, absolutely not. Not only is it extra work for the GM in a metagame sense, in-universe it undermines the entire point of clerics, that they are divine agents who are expected (and empowered) to have autonomy in fulfilling their gods' directives.

If you want to get technical though, this approach could be taken with a wide variety of casters. You could pick the spells for druids, sorcerers, oracles, paladins and rangers too. Pretty much everybody that doesn't use a spellbook could have their ability to choose their spells subverted in this manner. But it's still not a great idea.

In one of my games, the GM was considering doing this on an occasional cast-by-cast basis, as Cyric had killed the cleric's god and hijacked their worshippers. It was an entertaining idea, but didn't eventuate.

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Originally Posted by Pluto!
Do you envision anyone having more fun with this change than without it?

I mean it isn't crazy from a flavor standpoint, but it seems frustrating for the player and it seems like just one more task for the DM to track, unless they go out of their way to be annoying about it, in which case it just sounds bad.

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Originally Posted by Ashtagon
As a GM, I wouldn't be crazy about this due to the prep time required.

As a player, this would make me choose pretty much any not-cleric class. There are plenty of options if I want a full caster after all.

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These comments nicely summarize how I'd feel about it.

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Originally Posted by Sayt
In one of my games, the GM was considering doing this on an occasional cast-by-cast basis, as Cyric had killed the cleric's god and hijacked their worshippers.

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This could be interesting if done once, and briefly, as part of an ongoing plot, with the understanding that this was a radical departure from how clerics ordinarily operate and wouldn't be the norm.

But as a default house rule…no. Part of the strategy of playing a divine caster is working out what spells you'll need each day. Take that away and you're more of a mindless drone on the spell front.

I could see an extremely LN God of Bureaucracy. It takes so much red tape to get specific spells that you just relent and take the pre-assembled spell package. Besides, everyone loves working with bureaucracy in our tabletop games!

Part of the danger is that, as DM, you're getting into controlling player action territory. It's one of the yellow flags associated with playing a DMPC caster - if you prepare all of the "right spells" for that day's encounters, you're basically setting up this caster to win at everything. If you prepare all of the "wrong spells" for the day, you're setting him up for failure. And if you prepare a mix, you could get accused of either.

It's a no-win situation, is the point. Non-casters will either get mad because they believe, not unreasonably, that you're deliberately giving one character an advantage, or because they believe, not unreasonably, that your choices were designed to torpedo them. And if you're making the decisions randomly, then why are you making them at all - why not just have the Cleric player roll for random spells? When the DM makes the decision, an active decision-making process will be ascribed to those choices. It will be assumed - again, not unreasonably - that you chose them in light of what the party would be facing.

My point is, it's not a fun position to be in, as DM.

I have to agree with what some others have said, but I'll say it again anyway :smallwink:

So, as a DM, I've had to play with some inexperienced players as of late, and you really don't appreciate experienced players till you play with inexperienced ones. I've had to basically run a couple PCs for the players as of late, and it was terrible. I think that implementing this change would be a major headache.

However, if you changed how domain spells worked I would be fine with that. It sounds interesting at least. You open the domain slot to be potentially any spell available to you, but the deity picks it. This of course, as said before, give you a hint of what is in store.

I would not want this to be a regular thing, but it would be cool in some situations.

Say your party is planning to go to a negotiation, so the cleric prays for a bunch of social buffs. But his deity gives him a bunch of flamestrikes and holy words. A bit of foreshadowing. Will they be double-crossed? Or maybe there is an ambush coming.

Generally, speaking, I would not like this, for reasons outlined above, and also because our DM is not the type to have an encyclopedic knowledge of spells (in our group, that is my job, more or less).

If you wanted to introduce a group to new material, you could do this. For example, if you have a healbot cleric, you can grant them flame strike a few times, and see how they like it.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

I could see doing this in a very extreme scenario, like the deity essentially saying "Hey, we need to talk, step into my office" by replacing all their 5th-level and higher spells with Commune or something one day.

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I like this.

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Originally Posted by MesiDoomstalker

I could see an extremely LN God of Bureaucracy. It takes so much red tape to get specific spells that you just relent and take the pre-assembled spell package.

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This, too, as long as it came with some well-defined rules (e.g. bonus Planning domain, in exchange for getting the same spells each day, except with one per level changed).

You can offer a minor alteration to your cleric player's playstyle. Double check with the P L A Y E R first though.

1) You can decide to not grant a casting of a spell if the deity deems it unnecessary in situations non critical to someone's survival or combat. A good fire deity could cancel your fire ball if you use it to light an orphanage.

But in turn

2) You can use an action in combat (out of combat should be covered by open spell slots) to try and persuade your deity to "work a miracle". This plea substitutes any spell of an appropriate spell level to be exchanged by a spell that fits the situation. You face a Red Dragon so you NEED immunity vs. fear and resistance from fire.

You could take inspiration (see what I did there? Divine inspiration? eh? eh? ..nevermind) from the Crusader's mechanics to prepare/renew maneuvers. Allow the cleric to pray for an array of spells to "prepare" (those would be the maneuvers known), and then determine (randomly) at the beginning of an encounter/scene a subset of those prepared spell which are available to be cast for that encounter.

However you decide to deal with it, I would heartily suggest to make it into a mini-game of sorts and allow the player to deal with a fair and clear set of game mechanics rather than picking his spell at your GM whim, since I assume your goal is not to micromanage your player, or transform dnd 3.5 into "mother may I". As a GM you can obviously always interfere in those moments that you feel the need to, but that works better, ihmo, if it's the exception and it's done to heighten the drama or tension of a moment, not the rule.

No I can't get behind this idea you're taking away one of the crucial parts of the class that gives the player interaction with Adventure there's plenty of things with a GM gets to involve himself with it when it comes to a cleric commune augury and so on.

This is a bad idea. There is a huge disconnect between what one person thinks and what another thinks, and it's only ten times worse when it's a DM and player. The DM has a play style and so does the player, and they won't always match. The DM might think more like a defensive background type and pick spells of that type, but the player might be more a front line combatant. And even if the DM tries to give a good ''mix'', it's still the ''mix the DM likes'', not the player.

Though I do love adding fluff and making clerics unique. And the way I do it in my game is the god can alter the spells cast by the cleric. The idea is simply the god watches any use of divine power, and judges. If the god agrees, the spell works and if not, the spell fails. Even more so if the spell is cast following the gods ethos, it will get some sort of boost, and if it goes against their ethos it will get a penalty. It's a great way to get a player to role play being a cleric of a unique god, and not a boring copy cleric that just does whatever.

It's a great idea from a writer perspective, but from a player perspective, I already don't like clerics, and if DM chooses my spells is on the table, you couldn't pay me actual money to play it. I would not want to do it as the DM either, since that's just extra work and probably a player getting crabby about losing their player agency.

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Originally Posted by MesiDoomstalker

I could see an extremely LN God of Bureaucracy. It takes so much red tape to get specific spells that you just relent and take the pre-assembled spell package. Besides, everyone loves working with bureaucracy in our tabletop games!

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Interestingly the CN God of Random could just hand out a randomised list of spells - so these two opposites could work, though that could mean that this is just very mutable fluff.

I would not like to do this as a DM for several reasons

• It dis-empowers the players and denies player - agency
• It increases the DM's workload
• It also puts the DM in a difficult position: does the DM choose the appropriate spells for that days encounters; or does he take the blame for choosing the wrong spells even though he knew what was coming and thus stitched up the party ?

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Originally Posted by Red Fel

Part of the danger is that, as DM, you're getting into controlling player action territory. It's one of the yellow flags associated with playing a DMPC caster - if you prepare all of the "right spells" for that day's encounters, you're basically setting up this caster to win at everything. If you prepare all of the "wrong spells" for the day, you're setting him up for failure. And if you prepare a mix, you could get accused of either.

It's a no-win situation, is the point. Non-casters will either get mad because they believe, not unreasonably, that you're deliberately giving one character an advantage, or because they believe, not unreasonably, that your choices were designed to torpedo them. And if you're making the decisions randomly, then why are you making them at all - why not just have the Cleric player roll for random spells? When the DM makes the decision, an active decision-making process will be ascribed to those choices. It will be assumed - again, not unreasonably - that you chose them in light of what the party would be facing.

My point is, it's not a fun position to be in, as DM.

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Overall I agreed with Red Fel.

Doing this every day is a horrible trap and even worse, a time sink that is likely to be unappreciated by the players. Do you, as the DM, really have that much spare time? I can barely keep up with my campaign between prepping adventures, constantly tweaking stuff that the powergamer tries to break, plotting loot so I can keep the party fairly close to the expected gold progression, and keeping the world around the party alive and moving and sometimes even being impacted by the party.

However...

As someone playing a cleric I would be ok if once in a while my deity replaced a spell I wanted to prepare with something that the deity knows I will need today. In my opinion, as a player that would actually be pretty cool because it reinforces the role of the gods in the world, it reinforces that the cleric is a servant of the god, and it reinforces that the gods do sometimes provide guidance to their followers. Once in a while it could be cool, focusing on the cleric as a character with a direct line to a powerful being, instead of just being the combat medic of the group.

If you go this route, just be sure that you talk with the player ahead of time about the possibility and make certain that the cleric will recognize why the deity made the substitution and when to take advantage of it. For example, if the party is nowhere near a large lake or the sea and the deity insists on the cleric preparing water breathing one morning, make sure that an event happens where the ability to cast that spell will serve the cleric and her deity well.

Feldar

I like the fluff. But I would need to trust my dm greatly before I played a cleric with those rules.

I like the idea, but I'd have the player choose which spells the deity grants their character rather than the DM. Same fluff, but logistically much better.

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Originally Posted by Urpriest

I like the idea, but I'd have the player choose which spells the deity grants their character rather than the DM. Same fluff, but logistically much better.

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The thing is that both the gods and the DM are in a position to know what the cleric is going to run into, whereas the player is not, so choice by the DM represents this more faithfully