[Core Class Variant]Taking down CoDzilla, Part 1: Cleric [PEACH]

[That Lanky Bugger]

I made a couple tweaks to Druids and Clerics which has, I've found, toned them down considerably in combat and allowed the melee types to do their melee thing. It even keeps the crunchy flavor of CoDzilla alive and instead just tones it down a wee bit. Clerics are still armored spellcasters flinging spells and Druids are still shape-shifting spellcasters with a bit of hippy in them.

For the first one, I'm posting the Cleric variant.

Cleric
Hit Die: d8

Cleric
{table]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|
1|+0|+0|+0|+2|
2|+1|+0|+0|+3|
3|+2|+1|+1|+3|
4|+3|+1|+1|+4|
5|+3|+1|+1|+4|Divine Fortitude +1
6|+4|+2|+2|+5|
7|+5|+2|+2|+5|
8|+6|+2|+2|+6|
9|+6|+3|+3|+6|
10|+7|+3|+3|+7|
11|+8|+3|+3|+7|Divine Fortitude +2
12|+9|+4|+4|+8|
13|+9|+4|+4|+8|
14|+10|+4|+4|+9|
15|+11|+5|+5|+9|
16|+12|+5|+5|+10|
17|+12|+5|+5|+10|Divine Fortitude +3
18|+13|+6|+6|+11|
19|+14|+6|+6|+11|
20|+15|+6|+6|+12|[/table]

Class Features
Weapon and Armor proficiency: Clerics are proficient with all simple weapons, Light and Medium armor, and with shields (except Tower shields).

A cleric who chooses the War domain receives the Weapon Focus feat related to his deity’s weapon as a bonus feat and becomes proficient with Heavy armor. He also receives the appropriate Martial Weapon Proficiency feat as a bonus feat, if the weapon falls into that category.

Spells: The Cleric casts spells as normal.

Divine Fortitude: Beginning at Level 5, the Cleric gains a +1 bonus to their Fortitude Save due to the faith of their convictions. At Level 11 this increases to a +2 bonus and at Level 17 this increases to a +3.

Spell Changes

Divine Favor
Level: Cleric 1, Paladin 1
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: Touch
Target: 1 Creature
Duration: 3 rounds/level to a maximum of 10 rounds
Calling upon the strength and wisdom of your deity, the target gains a +1 luck bonus on attack and weapon damage rolls for every three caster levels you have (at least +1, maximum +3). The bonus doesn’t apply to spell damage. To recieve the benefit from this spell, the target creature must be within one step of your deity's alignment.

Divine Power
Level: Cleric 4, War 4
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round/level
Calling upon the divine power of your patron, you imbue yourself with strength and skill in combat. You gain a +5 enhancement bonus to your attack rolls, a +6 enhancement bonus to strength, and you gain 1 temporary hit point per caster level.

Righteous Might
Level: Cleric 5, War 5
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 Standard Action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round/level
This spell causes you to grow, doubling your height and multiplying your weight by 8. This increase changes your size category to the next larger one, and you gain a +4 size bonus to Strength and a +2 size bonus to Constitution. You gain a +2 enhancement bonus to your natural armor. You gain damage reduction 2/evil (if you normally channel positive energy) or damage reduction 2/good (if you normally channel negative energy). At 12th level this damage reduction becomes 4/evil or 4/good, and at 15th level it becomes 6/evil or 6/good (the maximum). Your size modifier for AC and attacks changes as appropriate to your new size category. This spell doesn’t change your speed. Determine space and reach as appropriate to your new size. If this spell is combined with Divine Power, the rapture of channeling so much of your God's power is such that you are unable to cast spells until one spell's duration ends.

Summary of Changes: The Cleric is still strong and good in a melee fight, but he no longer outshines the party's straight melee combatants. If he's forced to step up and be a front line fighter he does possess the capability to do so, but now there's a clear deliniation of who belongs where and the Cleric no longer suffers the identity crisis of being a front-line fighter and a primary spellcaster.

The lack of Heavy Armor means that if the Cleric wants to get the absolute best armor money can buy, he now has to burn a feat to use it, a feat he could probably better use to bolster his spellcasting or undead turning. Similarily, the Cleric no longer has a Good Fortitude save. If I were using variant rules I might have implemented the one which allows for three tiers of Save Progression, but I'm not so I didn't.

The big change is, of course, to the "Big Three" Cleric spells: Divine Favor, Divine Power, and Righteous Might.

○ Divine Favor I liked enough to allow it to stay, but decided it'd be more useful if the Cleric had the option of blessing other party members his diety might approve of. It's technically more powerful than Bless, but lacks the area of effect and can't be used on everyone. A Chaotic Good character couldn't recieve the Divine Favor of a Lawful Good diety, for example.

○ Divine Power needed a change quite badly. the degree to which it outshone the Wizard's thematically similar spell Transformation was a little too much. Essentially it lost a bit on the Ability Score enhancement, but added HP and the ability to still cast spells on top of a class that's already combat oriented to begin with. Oh, and it was two levels lower so that the Cleric could begin to use it four levels before the Wizard. Thematically, it's similar to it's base idea but doesn't allow the Cleric to outshine the melee-types with a single spell.

○ Righteous Might didn't necessarily need to be toned down by itself, but when combined with the original Divine Power it was a little too broken. I just reduced the DR a bit and gave Clerics the choice of using both personal buffs or being able to cast spells in combat, an idea I gleefully swiped from the arcane Transformation spell.

Next up is the Druid variant, which is a bit more of a radical departure than the Cleric variant I've got here. Feedback is appreciated, guys. I've gotten a good response from the group I've run this variant with, including the guy who usually runs Clerics.

Edit: I've added in Divine Fortitude (leaving the Cleric's effective Fortitude at +9 instead of +6) and granted Heavy Armor proficiency to the War domain. Makes sense that the most war-like Clerics would get the training in the heaviest armor.

[magic8BALL]

Until recently, I never realised that clerics had a good fort save: its a silly idea to start with.

Pulling the heavy armor makes sence too. When I first started playing D&D, I heard of a class called 'Cleric' and I imidiatly though of a guy in orange robes praying at an alter... not a melee combatant with full plate, a shield and the ability to cast spells similar to a wizard (boy, was I wrong...).

Nice simple changes. Easy. Well done.

[Raistlin1040]

I'd change the poor fort save to an avarage fort save. I think, while clerics are overpowered it doesn't change the game that much. My opinion? Change the monk. 3 good saves, WIS bonus to AC and good unarmed damage? Too much.

[magic8BALL]

...average save...?

There's only good and poor saves...

unless I'm unaware of some varient wich complicates saves beyond reasoning...

[Raistlin1040]

< is stupid. I dug out my PHB and saw avarage so I assumed it meant saves. It was BAB. Although it would be possible to make a variant like that.

[Helgraf]

...average save...?

There's only good and poor saves...

unless I'm unaware of some varient wich complicates saves beyond reasoning...

d20 modern introduces the 'average' save progression.

And they're right buggers about it too - all the base classes have average and poor saves - no good saves.

[Closet_Skeleton]

d20 modern introduces the 'average' save progression.

And they're right buggers about it too - all the base classes have average and poor saves - no good saves.

It's not so much of a good, medium and poor save, it's more of a poor, good and excelant save,

[Khantalas]

I'd change the poor fort save to an avarage fort save. I think, while clerics are overpowered it doesn't change the game that much. My opinion? Change the monk. 3 good saves, WIS bonus to AC and good unarmed damage? Too much.

Of course, the fact that you cannot bypass more than half of the monsters' DRs', the fact that you cannot deal good damage and the fact that your AC is so limited (compared to, say, swordsage who gets his Wisdom bonus to AC) and that you're only good at remaining alive because most monsters ignore you as a non-threat... Yeah, that is too much.

NOTE: This post doesn't include any opinions of my own, but opinions of people from GitP that I believe know what they're talking about.

[Roderick_BR]

I like. Righteous Might was a bit too powerful on 3.5 (it was just a bit stronger than Enlarge Person in 3.0).
I sincerely haven't read Divine Power untill now, but it's really a buffed up version of Transformation (old Tenser's Transformation).
Toning it down a bit works.
I didn't knew that Divine Favor was broken. But thinking again, it's like Greater Magic Weapon, but can be cast from 1st level. It does need a lower cap.
Taking out an armor feat works good too, I think.
I disagree on the Fort Save, though. Cleric is not a pure caster. He's a front line warrior too, he should have a good Fort.

[Khantalas]

Bah! I replaced all my divine spellcasters with Archivists and gave paladin and ranger those abilities from CW in my post-divine-apocalyptic world.

Not that it didn't cause more trouble than it fixed.

[Glooble Glistencrist]

Once I used Righteous Might and Divine Power to take down a Young Green Dragon by myself - at level 9. As much fun as that was, it probably shouldn't have been possible.

[That Lanky Bugger]

The average save I referred to was actually the one located in the Wheel of Time d20 game. If I recall correctly, the progression of the saving throws was such that you could finish at +6, +9, or +12 instead of just +6 or +12. I could see giving the Cleric the +9 at 20, to be honest, but I didn't want to introduce a save progression which was "wonky".

Roderick, the Cleric I'm presenting here is still a front line fighter if he NEEDs to be, but against truly heinous opponents he's better off leaving the fighting to the Fighter, Paladin, and even the Ranger. Which is just as it should be. He's still got his armor and his d8 HD, but he doesn't have the Fort save to risk the Massive Damage rules and he's got no way of actually buffing himself up to the level of a Fighter any more.

Oh, and Raistlin1040? I've got you covered on the Monk rewrite. It's still capable of being a combat freak if it wants to be, but it takes out some of the wierder Monk abilities (like being able to teleport because you're really good at punching things) and adds in some more Asian flavor.

[Yakk]

If you want medium saves, try the following:
Divine Protection:
A +1/+2/+3 Divine bonus to saves at 2/10/16.

The end progression is a bit wonkey, but it does end up with a +9. (edit: +9 not +10)

So +6/+9/+12

Save progressions:
12345678901234567890
00111222333444555666
01222333455666788999
23344556677889900112

[Matthew]

I dunno, I like Clerics having a high Fortitude and proficiency in Heavy Armour. These guys aren't cloistered Clerics, they are the warrior type. Bringing their Spell casting under control is the most important thing.

[That Lanky Bugger]

If you want medium saves, try the following:
Divine Protection:
A +1/+2/+3 Divine bonus to saves at 2/10/16.

The end progression is a bit wonkey, but it does end up with a +10.

So +6/+9/+12

Save progressions:
12345678901234567890
00111222333444555666
01222333455666788999
23344556677889900112

I like this, so consider it yanked.

[TO_Incognito]

Completely obliterating Turn Undead from the class seems a bit drastic: It's a classic, and it isn't that powerful anyway.

Does this Cleric still have spontaneous casting? If I can't take hits very well or compete in melee outside of giving the Fighter Divine Favor and helping him flank, it would be nice to still be effective as a healbot.

I'm also worried about the War domain. If it gives martial weapon proficiency, weapon focus, and heavy armor proficiency, that's three feats from a single domain. A Cleric who didn't take it would be gimping himself automatically.

[That Lanky Bugger]

Completely obliterating Turn Undead from the class seems a bit drastic: It's a classic, and it isn't that powerful anyway.

Does this Cleric still have spontaneous casting? If I can't take hits very well or compete in melee outside of giving the Fighter Divine Favor and helping him flank, it would be nice to still be effective as a healbot.

I'm also worried about the War domain. If it gives martial weapon proficiency, weapon focus, and heavy armor proficiency, that's three feats from a single domain. A Cleric who didn't take it would be gimping himself automatically.

Sorry, I should have specified... A Cleric still retains all of his normal Undead Turning and Spontaneous Casting. I just didn't transcribe it because I'm lazy.

As for the War Domain. Yeah, it's a little more powerful here. I was actually thinking about making it a choice of Weapon Focus OR Heavy Armor.

[Rama_Lei]

I dunno, I like Clerics having a high Fortitude and proficiency in Heavy Armour. These guys aren't cloistered Clerics, they are the warrior type. Bringing their Spell casting under control is the most important thing.

But the warrior of the gods is a paladin, not a cleric. They are primary casters, and melee combatants second.

[Matthew]

I am not having this discussion again (oh yes I am ). Clerics are the Warrior arm of the Church. Cloistered Clerics are the non Warrior arm of the Church. Paladins are pious secular knights who often in play (but not as a requirement of the class, indeed the fluff says the majority do not) serve a church, deity or whatever.

Seriously, though, nerfing Clerics with regard to Heavy Armour Proficiency just means that many more wearing Mithral Full Plate anyway.