Cleric Domain/Path Feedback Thread

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Kenji
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Cleric Domain/Path Feedback Thread

Post by Kenji » Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:48 am

Hello all, please feel free to share your thoughts or concerns about the current domain spell list and interactions provided by the first phase of the domain overhaul.

Keep in mind that there are more phases to come that will remove, change, or add more of the following (order indeterminate):
Domain Turning
Domain Powers
Domain Actives
Domain Passives
Cleric Path interaction

This is not an inquiry about your suggestions on what future changes should be, but what is currently available. Please keep your feedback and suggestions to the domain spell list, description, and certain available spell/domain interactions that are on live servers.

When we first approached the domain overhaul, we have looked at a great many aspects of the domains first such as balance, theme, builds, and general "feel" of the domains. We initially planned to give Incendiary Cloud to Fire, Acid Fog to Water, Cloudkill to Destruction, IGMS/Greater Breach to Magic, Iceberg to Cold, and etc. but decided to remove these "meta-defining" spells in the end for balance purposes as well as discouraging shoehorning picks into certain domains.

We have also looked at the available builds (Str/Dex Battle Clerics, Caster Wis/Cha Clerics, Zen Archery Healer/Monk Combo, etc) and determine what could benefit the most from the domain spell list without pushing the builds over the top. In the end, we added many spells that cater to Battle Clerics and only flavor spells to the Caster Clerics for balancing concerns all the while attempt to keep or define the flavor of certain domains.

With this in mind and to reiterate, I'm looking for feedback regarding our current direction of the spell list and interactions such as Sun/Moon domain getting their flavor Bless Weapon, Death/Undeath domain with scaling death armor, empowered healing/inflict spells from select domains, and etc.

Perhaps a spell can be added to the current spell list for better flavor without making it too much of a meta-pick, perhaps a spell is counter to what a domain actually should represent given the name or description. Maybe there's a PnP spell that will be a great addition to the list for a certain domain to reinforce the flavor, which domain feels redundant and not distinct enough both spell list and flavor-wise. Any of this feedback would help shape the direction of the domain overhaul.

Alright, go wild

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Hazard » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:55 am

I like that undeath domain is a thing. Probably the one I'm most excited about, and I really like that create undead line spells are granted by it. It fits. It works. It's great.

But, given Arelith's mechanics-heavy atmosphere and the way meta evolves here, I can see it being a weaker choice that gets left behind as it is. One could simply take scribe scroll (or buy scrolls) and have all the create undead spells p/day they want. Also, once you get EMD it's pretty much all you use, and if those summons fail you'd just rest and try again, or use your ESF: Necro Create Greater Undead ability which most undeath clerics will probably have.

I'm struggling to understand what is and isn't okay for me to suggest. Domain powers and spells were mentioned so I'm just going to go for it.

I think some of the negative energy stuff from Death could be moved to Undeath, while Death could be granted some more undead-killing spells like Sunburst/Sunbeam.

I think Undeath Domain could benefit from some kind of boon to the strength of the summons, akin to animal domain for conjurations or wizard specialists.

I think death domain could, instead of death armor scaling and empowered harm, benefit thematically from improved turning and bless weapon with + vs undead, and undeath be given the death armor scaling and empowered harm instead.

Nothing really new, just moving the spells/boons around a bit from each domain.

Sorry if I misunderstood and this is not the kind of feedback you wanted.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Duchess Says » Wed Jun 30, 2021 5:14 am

Don't underestimate how good negative energy burst is for a necromancer as it heals your undead while damaging and weakening your enemy. Being able to spam that spell alone might be worth taking the domain.

Having access to the create undead spells earlier would be nice though Arelith's custom undead tiers make me wonder if that's actually the case. I can't do the math on that in my head.

I might like to see access to control undead at an earlier level?

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Exordius » Wed Jun 30, 2021 5:19 am

Adding some at will powers to certain domains would be nice... currently only wizards get at will stuff and it would be awesome for clerics to get too. Does not have to be anything op, even a simple lv 1 spell would at least give caster clerics something to do other then just sit there and wait for their summon to win once they run out of spells. As an example, perhaps give the fire domain unlimited burning hands... its no better then what transmutation wizards already have and i think a cleric with that domain would be able to create relatively weak flames at will given his connection to the element?

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Hazard » Wed Jun 30, 2021 5:27 am

Duchess Says wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 5:14 am
Don't underestimate how good negative energy burst is for a necromancer as it heals your undead while damaging and weakening your enemy. Being able to spam that spell alone might be worth taking the domain.

Having access to the create undead spells earlier would be nice though Arelith's custom undead tiers make me wonder if that's actually the case. I can't do the math on that in my head.

I might like to see access to control undead at an earlier level?
The undead spells would be nice for leveling but after that it would stop being a boon.

And yeah, negative energy burst is great to spam but even a full 30 level caster cleric isn't going to have enough spell slots to spare for that, if they want to be buffing their undead.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by -slave » Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:51 am

Sorry. Haven't had time to try and break some of this yet but asking because its a hitch I ran into elsewhere.

With some of the spells that can now be cast at lower levels than normal (gate). Are you also able to apply metamagic to them now? I think the spells normally need it coded in for it to function as expected.

This was the only real 'question' I had with it.

Everything looks quite powerful otherwise.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Deryliss » Wed Jun 30, 2021 3:00 pm

Yea, if a spell is normally of too high level to have certain metamagic applied to it, then it still won't be usable unless specifically coded to do so. As an example, current Storm Domain gives Storm of Vengeance at 8, but doesn't allow it to be Extended on 9.

As for feedback, I have played with three of the domains so far, Storm, Healing and Travel. For the sake of context, I play a straight up Healer-Path cleric. No shenanigans like monk or trying to abuse charisma-prot-domain stuff.

Travel
Post-Haste-Change, the Travel domain feels a bit neutered, but not so much that it's in a bad place (Haste on 4 will NEVER be a bad thing). Maze is a humorous spell but I quickly stopped using it as it's hard enough to get things to fail will saves, but to then just remove from combat for 4 rounds and potentially ruin placed aoes (like acid fog) isn't really that exciting compared to instant death, paralyzing in place for rounds/level while they can still be targeted and hurt, and the other similar effects that would come out of a level 8 spell slot.
I think Haste's spell list doesn't need to change overly much. It probably just needs a sexy domain power of some kind to make it pop.
I eventually subbed out Travel for Storm.

Bonus: You mentioned the possibility of maybe possibly adding a new spell to make things feel 'more thematic for the domain, but without making it a meta pick'. I'm looking sideways at Astral Projection in the pnp Travel spell list and thinking if it might be a cool addition for planar travel, such as mimicking the effects of a potion of attunement.

Healing
The Healing domain is amazing. Yea, empowered healing is nice, but even before the domain change we used to say 'it's not THAT great, best take Death or something to actually be offensive'. What Healing does now is enable massive amounts of spell slot manipulation by giving you Healing Circle on 3 and Regeneration on 6. Everything else is just gravy. and I now love the domain to bits. With all this spell slot manipulation, the Healing Domain IS an offensive domain by proxy. It allows you to juggle in powerful spells on the higher slots that before would have overwhelmed your spell slot availability (8 especially, where a Healer-Path cleric would normally slot a bunch of Extended Regenerates). 10/10 would pick again.

Storm
The Storm domain is odd. Most of it is a collection of *thematic* spells that categorically underperform, being largely reflex-save-for-half-damage evocations that aren't worth the spell slot, culminating in Chain Lightning which also does half on secondary targets.
But then you get Storm of Vengeance on 8. That means you can load up something like 10-12 SoVs between 8 and 9. That alone makes the domain so mechanically strong that it's kind of okay the rest of the spells are largely underperformers. A fellow player with a more battlecleric-focused build is totally in love with Lightning Shield as well, which is a spell I can't make use of very easily for build reasons but I can see how its totally a build-enabler for a tougher frontline cleric. No complaints, especially assuming there's gonna be some kind of thematic domain power that interacts with weather or sailing or something like that.
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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by MRFTW » Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:12 pm

Deryliss wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 3:00 pm
Storm
The Storm domain is odd. Most of it is a collection of *thematic* spells that categorically underperform, being largely reflex-save-for-half-damage evocations that aren't worth the spell slot, culminating in Chain Lightning which also does half on secondary targets.
But then you get Storm of Vengeance on 8. That means you can load up something like 10-12 SoVs between 8 and 9. That alone makes the domain so mechanically strong that it's kind of okay the rest of the spells are largely underperformers. A fellow player with a more battlecleric-focused build is totally in love with Lightning Shield as well, which is a spell I can't make use of very easily for build reasons but I can see how its totally a build-enabler for a tougher frontline cleric. No complaints, especially assuming there's gonna be some kind of thematic domain power that interacts with weather or sailing or something like that.
I'd echo exactly this. The only disappointing thing is that all of the spells are evocation besides the real cookie, level 8 SoV. I don't see it to be optimal speccing into evocation to use all the other domain spells because they're save-for-half in a save/evasion meta. That said, level 8 SoV. The strengths outweigh the weaknesses in my eyes, and I suspect the disappointment I mentioned earlier is the munchkin in me wanting all the cookies and no vegetables. :lol:

I'd like to applaud the synergy between plant and animal domains, Conj/Trans summoner builds write themselves with these two domains, and there's any number of viable deities that can use them thematically. Bravo.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Kenji » Wed Jun 30, 2021 10:57 pm

-slave wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 6:51 am
With some of the spells that can now be cast at lower levels than normal (gate). Are you also able to apply metamagic to them now? I think the spells normally need it coded in for it to function as expected.
Gate, yes. SoV will be extendable in the coming update. It was intended for SoV to be able to be extended but I forgot to change it in the .2da settings.
Deryliss wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 3:00 pm
Travel
Post-Haste-Change, the Travel domain feels a bit neutered, but not so much that it's in a bad place (Haste on 4 will NEVER be a bad thing). Maze is a humorous spell but I quickly stopped using it as it's hard enough to get things to fail will saves, but to then just remove from combat for 4 rounds and potentially ruin placed aoes (like acid fog) isn't really that exciting compared to instant death, paralyzing in place for rounds/level while they can still be targeted and hurt, and the other similar effects that would come out of a level 8 spell slot.
I think Haste's spell list doesn't need to change overly much. It probably just needs a sexy domain power of some kind to make it pop.
I eventually subbed out Travel for Storm.

Bonus: You mentioned the possibility of maybe possibly adding a new spell to make things feel 'more thematic for the domain, but without making it a meta pick'. I'm looking sideways at Astral Projection in the pnp Travel spell list and thinking if it might be a cool addition for planar travel, such as mimicking the effects of a potion of attunement.
Travel domain is one of those domains that I was concerned about being underwhelming with the new domain spell list. We considered adding Mass Haste and/or Time Stop (PnP) to Travel domain but that will just revert the domains to being Travel meta all over again. The approach here might be offering a minor mass haste (not comparable to a cast mass haste, of course) in the form of the domain power on cooldown and some passives that grants a bonus to climb and sail (tells the whole party that the climb is easier or the sail is smoother to indicate that someone is a Travel domain cleric in the party).
Deryliss wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 3:00 pm
Healing
The Healing domain is amazing. Yea, empowered healing is nice, but even before the domain change we used to say 'it's not THAT great, best take Death or something to actually be offensive'. What Healing does now is enable massive amounts of spell slot manipulation by giving you Healing Circle on 3 and Regeneration on 6. Everything else is just gravy. and I now love the domain to bits. With all this spell slot manipulation, the Healing Domain IS an offensive domain by proxy. It allows you to juggle in powerful spells on the higher slots that before would have overwhelmed your spell slot availability (8 especially, where a Healer-Path cleric would normally slot a bunch of Extended Regenerates). 10/10 would pick again.
This is an interesting take on the Healing domain. Making Healing domain an adequate pick for easier offensive spell slotting certainly wasn't the intention. Seeing as it's competing with other domains like Acid for casters or War for battle clerics, Healing Domain seems like it's in a good place mechanically, but it's still not thematic enough where people will immediately recognize that a cleric is a "healer" (not the mechanical path) that took healing domain.
Deryliss wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 3:00 pm
Storm
The Storm domain is odd. Most of it is a collection of *thematic* spells that categorically underperform, being largely reflex-save-for-half-damage evocations that aren't worth the spell slot, culminating in Chain Lightning which also does half on secondary targets.
But then you get Storm of Vengeance on 8. That means you can load up something like 10-12 SoVs between 8 and 9. That alone makes the domain so mechanically strong that it's kind of okay the rest of the spells are largely underperformers. A fellow player with a more battlecleric-focused build is totally in love with Lightning Shield as well, which is a spell I can't make use of very easily for build reasons but I can see how its totally a build-enabler for a tougher frontline cleric. No complaints, especially assuming there's gonna be some kind of thematic domain power that interacts with weather or sailing or something like that.
I'll admit, the evocation spells are really just there for filler and, at most, PvE purposes. I didn't expect them to anything beyond adding flavor to the domains. Storm Clerics can certainly slot 1 or 2 of those lightning spells for flavor and people will go "Oh, a cleric casting a lightning spell, he must be Storm domain!" in their minds. But I have more in mind for the Storm domain (and all of the other "elemental" domains) coming Soon™.

I think as these feedbacks come in, my vision for domain overhaul is slowly coming together: trying not to push one domain over the top where it becomes the meta-pick all the while there are subtle (or obvious) indicators of what your cleric's domains are. Will it cause metagaming? Maybe, but it's no more metagaming than seeing a spellcaster casts arcane spells and both players and characters assume it's a wizard or a sorcerer in my eyes.

Keep it coming, I appreciate these feedbacks.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by magistrasa » Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:07 am

The name and descriptions of the domains deserve another look over. They really lack character.

The best solution to this would be to wrangle it all with an abstract map of core divine aspects & motifs. This way everything can be represented, but without a ton of bloat or endlessly redundant mechanics. It would also inform the relationship between characters, gods, and the universe as a whole. It would create the narrative foundation that's really lacking in the current climate. We're a roleplay server! Yet there's little to no narrative in the domains as they're currently described.

My personal take is that less is more, and that every domain should be paired with some kind of contrary philosophy or opposite in some sense. Just as fire stands apart from ice, and light apart from darkness. Always with accompanying metaphysical traits. Just enough to paint a direction - a landscape - a framework - all upon which countless stories will be told.

As some folks have already pointed out, here's some noteworthy mentions:

Death & Undeath. The way they exist presently, these domains really step on each other's toes. No comment here even about what deity is supposed to do what, blah blah blah. A well designed set of domains is going to be widely applicable. It has to be. Because we don't want to have an ungodly (pun intended) number of domains to contend with. That would just be tedious. So by the very nature of having a limited number of domains, each one is going to be generally applicable to multiple deities. The key here becomes making sure that our domains hit their metaphysical niche. They don't have to be true to a particular deity. They just need to be true to themselves. I don't think wholesale lifting content from pen & paper is useful or helpful. Many of these core problems are inherent to source materials. They should offer guidance and inspiration. They shouldn't be our copy-pasted afterthoughts. Narrative is priority number one.

Commerce. Collective effort. Civilization. A lot of deities are strongly associated with the foundations of society. So, why aren't they represented by the domains? The closest concepts that come to it are Travel and Forge, but those are sort of a stretch.

Beauty, Love, Lust, and Desire, all probably have even more deities associated with them, and it's all the more difficult to find appropriate domains. The Healing domain is about as close as you can get, if you look at these things as a nurturing force. But that feels so flavorless. Forge maybe, if you see these as creationary forces? But again, it's a shame that we don't have something more fitting for these concepts. I can easily imagine a Desire domain including enchantment spells and various buffs to supplement the support-caster playstyle.

The Travel domain is egregiously lacking in flavor, which is already presenting itself as a problem in another ongoing thread. And that problem is honestly something shared by almost all of the domains. They don't stand for anything. They have no substance. Their philosophical implications are nonexistent, and so when trying to decide which deities should ban certain domains, it's impossible to say that a domain contradicts a deity's philosophical profile. Because the domains have no established philosophical profile themselves.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Spriggan Bride » Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:20 am

magistrasa wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:07 am
The Travel domain is egregiously lacking in flavor, which is already presenting itself as a problem in another ongoing thread. And that problem is honestly something shared by almost all of the domains. They don't stand for anything. They have no substance. Their philosophical implications are nonexistent, and so when trying to decide which deities should ban certain domains, it's impossible to say that a domain contradicts a deity's philosophical profile. Because the domains have no established philosophical profile themselves.
Could look at it a little differently. Maybe some domains are simply meant to be about utility rather than (or at least, as well as) divine ideals. Clerics are workers in their religious organization whatever that might be and some may be traveling missionaries and others may be temple healers and others may be guardians or support warriors or whatever else. Focusing on travel may just mean that's the cleric's role within the church and where they focus their divine magic studies. As with anything it's all in the RP and whether the player can sell it or not but I like the idea of different flavors of cleric even within the same religion.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Kenji » Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:20 am

Hazard wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:55 am
I like that undeath domain is a thing. Probably the one I'm most excited about, and I really like that create undead line spells are granted by it. It fits. It works. It's great.

But, given Arelith's mechanics-heavy atmosphere and the way meta evolves here, I can see it being a weaker choice that gets left behind as it is. One could simply take scribe scroll (or buy scrolls) and have all the create undead spells p/day they want. Also, once you get EMD it's pretty much all you use, and if those summons fail you'd just rest and try again, or use your ESF: Necro Create Greater Undead ability which most undeath clerics will probably have.

I'm struggling to understand what is and isn't okay for me to suggest. Domain powers and spells were mentioned so I'm just going to go for it.

I think some of the negative energy stuff from Death could be moved to Undeath, while Death could be granted some more undead-killing spells like Sunburst/Sunbeam.

I think Undeath Domain could benefit from some kind of boon to the strength of the summons, akin to animal domain for conjurations or wizard specialists.

I think death domain could, instead of death armor scaling and empowered harm, benefit thematically from improved turning and bless weapon with + vs undead, and undeath be given the death armor scaling and empowered harm instead.

Nothing really new, just moving the spells/boons around a bit from each domain.

Sorry if I misunderstood and this is not the kind of feedback you wanted.
Not trying to ignore this on purpose as I've been meaning to reply to this for a while now but hadn't been able to think of a proper response.

Thank you for your feedback, firstly. I only put up the disclaimer to discourage long posts about what unreleased domain changes should be that will turn this feedback thread into a pseudo-suggestion thread. While I welcome some suggestions, I'd like those to be limited to what is already completed. You're okay.

When we first looked at the Death domain, it had two spells: Phantasmal Killer and Enervation, along with an active ability that summons an avatar from the Negative Plane. So the next step to do seemed like it should be putting in some Save-or-Die spells and maybe some undead summoning/buffing spells since death is involved, right? Well, we then looked at some "Death Domain" deities, namely Kelemvor, Velsharoon, Shar, Myrkul, Jergal, and even Amaunator, etc. These are all very distinct deities that, while having the same death domain overtone, each had a very different (or indifferent) stance towards Undeath.

It was clear then that the Undeath and Death domains are two very different aspects of deities but with a few overlaps. So our design now made the Death domain focus on both the eradication of undeath (make sure things stay dead) and the cause of death (hence the negative damage spells). Undeath domain will be focusing on creating/boosting Undead. The Undeath domain is admittedly underwhelming for now because the best we can do for an Undead-based spell list is really just giving earlier access to create undead spells.

Edited for a further addendum:
We want both Death and Undeath domain to have an association to the negative plane, but their "offensive" spells will be different in the sense that Death will use negative energy to cause direct harm that results in death (negative damage) whereas Undeath will use negative energy to sap the strength of enemies rather than outright kill them - leaving them vulnerable and perhaps later to be reused for undeath purposes. Of course, this doesn't translate that well in NWN, let alone phase 1 of the domain overhaul.

We have plans to give both domains more abilities, spell interactions, and even feat/foci interactions on top of shamelessly ripping some of the Palemaster abilities for the two domains (of course, stuffs from PM will have to be largely flavor and toned down mechanically seeing as Palemaster is a Prestige Class and domains are, well, domains that are gained upon cleric selection).

Remember, this is only phase 1 of the domain overhaul with only an updated spell list and a few spell interactions with the domains to test out the waters.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Kenji » Thu Jul 01, 2021 11:55 am

magistrasa wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:07 am
<snipped>
Your subjective view of the domain update is noted. While I disagree with almost every point you're trying to make and would like to point out that there are some things you mentioned just aren't true, I'd rather utilize my time to focus on the Team's vision for the Domain Overhaul than yours.

I am supported by a team consisting of brilliant people who can grasp the complex mechanics of NWN, creative artists who can create high standard content at a moment's notice, and knowledgeable minds that understand the intricacies of the FR setting and lore. To be frank, I would take their ideas and vision over yours any day.

You can continue to use that tone to address me or the rest of the team to your own disadvantage of not being heard, or you can actually provide constructive feedback that will help the rest of the server enjoy the domain changes that are to come and become a part of our vision.

The choice is yours.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by preggy » Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:34 pm

I love the expansion of domains, I love trying to move away from the "travel/trickery" meta and the push to make domains a little more accurate to the associated dieties being worshipped and while theres an arguement to be made as to their viability I greatly appreciate the implimentation of more evocation spells via domains. During the Protection domain changes recently it was quite rightly brought up that there are not a lot of DC's you're really hurting by just dumping everything into charisma and I think this goes a good way to helping make that less of a problem.

I do have one comment to be made on the Acid domain however but its more of a personal nitpick than anything. While I am sure the boat has probably sailed on this, I'd personally consider renaming Acid to "Ooze" domain which is probably the closest substitute in established domains. While distinct things they are thematically very similar but I do feel that Ooze has stronger ties to the source material as well as stronger associated themes (Endless Consumption rather than simply corrosion)

Its possible this choice was a very intentional one where the intent was to allow the domain to be more accessible - and if this is the case, it is unlikely I can change minds on it, but that would be my two cents.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by MRFTW » Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:41 pm

Kanji, what are your thoughts on domain selection from a character rather than a deity standpoint?

For example, a travelling cleric of Baervan Wildwanderer choosing travel domain instead of the more thematic plant/animal/healing or whatever the stereotypical choices would be.

I personally like the idea but I dont know how this alleyway of thought interacts with the staff vision for how players should select their domains.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Deryliss » Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:59 pm

MRFTW wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:41 pm
Kanji, what are your thoughts on domain selection from a character rather than a deity standpoint?

For example, a travelling cleric of Baervan Wildwanderer choosing travel domain instead of the more thematic plant/animal/healing or whatever the stereotypical choices would be.

I personally like the idea but I dont know how this alleyway of thought interacts with the staff vision for how players should select their domains.
I'm a bit confused by this. Perhaps the example is a bit misleading but..

Baervan Wildwanderer has the Travel domain in source material. It's not even in question that it should not be a banned domain for a deity whose portfolio and dogma specifically tell gnomes to "get out of their burrows" and "go search for excitement and places of great beauty". A cleric of Baervan picking Travel is actually playing by the far more restrictive rule of 'pick domains that are aligned with your deity' rather than what the Arelith staff are trying to accomplish here.

On a more general note, it's important to remember that the whole effort Kenji, RedRopes and others are going through here is specifically to focus on 'domains your deity would never give you access to for specific reasons' rather than narrowing down choice to a tiny list of approved domains per the source material, meaning:

If you want to play a cleric of the Red Knight with the Plant/Animal domains, that's fine, even though those aren't the Red Knight's core domains. You can justify that however way you wish RP-wise.
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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Hazard » Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:07 pm

Kenji wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:20 am
Hazard wrote:
Wed Jun 30, 2021 4:55 am
I like that undeath domain is a thing. Probably the one I'm most excited about, and I really like that create undead line spells are granted by it. It fits. It works. It's great.

But, given Arelith's mechanics-heavy atmosphere and the way meta evolves here, I can see it being a weaker choice that gets left behind as it is. One could simply take scribe scroll (or buy scrolls) and have all the create undead spells p/day they want. Also, once you get EMD it's pretty much all you use, and if those summons fail you'd just rest and try again, or use your ESF: Necro Create Greater Undead ability which most undeath clerics will probably have.

I'm struggling to understand what is and isn't okay for me to suggest. Domain powers and spells were mentioned so I'm just going to go for it.

I think some of the negative energy stuff from Death could be moved to Undeath, while Death could be granted some more undead-killing spells like Sunburst/Sunbeam.

I think Undeath Domain could benefit from some kind of boon to the strength of the summons, akin to animal domain for conjurations or wizard specialists.

I think death domain could, instead of death armor scaling and empowered harm, benefit thematically from improved turning and bless weapon with + vs undead, and undeath be given the death armor scaling and empowered harm instead.

Nothing really new, just moving the spells/boons around a bit from each domain.

Sorry if I misunderstood and this is not the kind of feedback you wanted.
Not trying to ignore this on purpose as I've been meaning to reply to this for a while now but hadn't been able to think of a proper response.

Thank you for your feedback, firstly. I only put up the disclaimer to discourage long posts about what unreleased domain changes should be that will turn this feedback thread into a pseudo-suggestion thread. While I welcome some suggestions, I'd like those to be limited to what is already completed. You're okay.

When we first looked at the Death domain, it had two spells: Phantasmal Killer and Enervation, along with an active ability that summons an avatar from the Negative Plane. So the next step to do seemed like it should be putting in some Save-or-Die spells and maybe some undead summoning/buffing spells since death is involved, right? Well, we then looked at some "Death Domain" deities, namely Kelemvor, Velsharoon, Shar, Myrkul, Jergal, and even Amaunator, etc. These are all very distinct deities that, while having the same death domain overtone, each had a very different (or indifferent) stance towards Undeath.

It was clear then that the Undeath and Death domains are two very different aspects of deities but with a few overlaps. So our design now made the Death domain focus on both the eradication of undeath (make sure things stay dead) and the cause of death (hence the negative damage spells). Undeath domain will be focusing on creating/boosting Undead. The Undeath domain is admittedly underwhelming for now because the best we can do for an Undead-based spell list is really just giving earlier access to create undead spells.

Edited for a further addendum:
We want both Death and Undeath domain to have an association to the negative plane, but their "offensive" spells will be different in the sense that Death will use negative energy to cause direct harm that results in death (negative damage) whereas Undeath will use negative energy to sap the strength of enemies rather than outright kill them - leaving them vulnerable and perhaps later to be reused for undeath purposes. Of course, this doesn't translate that well in NWN, let alone phase 1 of the domain overhaul.

We have plans to give both domains more abilities, spell interactions, and even feat/foci interactions on top of shamelessly ripping some of the Palemaster abilities for the two domains (of course, stuffs from PM will have to be largely flavor and toned down mechanically seeing as Palemaster is a Prestige Class and domains are, well, domains that are gained upon cleric selection).

Remember, this is only phase 1 of the domain overhaul with only an updated spell list and a few spell interactions with the domains to test out the waters.
I'm so hyped for undeath and death domains future phases.
Aaauurgghhh!

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by MRFTW » Thu Jul 01, 2021 3:52 pm

Deryliss wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:59 pm
Baervan Wildwanderer has the Travel domain in source material.
I didn't know that, replace travel with some generic domain that Baervan doesn't have, then.

Apologies for the bad example.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Kenji » Fri Jul 02, 2021 9:21 am

preggy wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:34 pm
I love the expansion of domains, I love trying to move away from the "travel/trickery" meta and the push to make domains a little more accurate to the associated dieties being worshipped and while theres an arguement to be made as to their viability I greatly appreciate the implimentation of more evocation spells via domains. During the Protection domain changes recently it was quite rightly brought up that there are not a lot of DC's you're really hurting by just dumping everything into charisma and I think this goes a good way to helping make that less of a problem.

I do have one comment to be made on the Acid domain however but its more of a personal nitpick than anything. While I am sure the boat has probably sailed on this, I'd personally consider renaming Acid to "Ooze" domain which is probably the closest substitute in established domains. While distinct things they are thematically very similar but I do feel that Ooze has stronger ties to the source material as well as stronger associated themes (Endless Consumption rather than simply corrosion)

Its possible this choice was a very intentional one where the intent was to allow the domain to be more accessible - and if this is the case, it is unlikely I can change minds on it, but that would be my two cents.
I think there's a certain dilemma here where we wanted to offer a pseudo-PnP (theme/lore-wise) experience for the players, thus staying away from homebrew contents as much as possible (but our deity aspects are technically homebrew), all the while having limited domain slots (may be solved one day) and not wanting to make a domain sound so niche that players would shy away from it if they don't find it fitting for their cleric.

In this case, the Acid domain is homebrew. We have looked at the names such as Slime and Ooze domain, but the association of those domains to a neutral dark-dwelling creature, while very thematic for UD clerics, could also make our surface clerics shy away from them.

The Acid domain was introduced to allow players to more freely interpret it as they can. Somewhere down the line, we want to include Slime and Ooze domain stuffs in the Acid domain such as turning or rebuking oozes and getting Grease or Evard's Black Tentacle spells. All the while allowing destruction or corrosion-themed clerics to take this without thinking that it has to have something to do with oozes or slime, now, it could be elemental, too.

The current concern (and why I didn't include those spells in the first phase) was how it could make Acid Domain too powerful of a mechanical pick - we either include those two spells and remove Acid Sheath or Acid Fog, or include Acid Sheath and Acid Fog and see how a high-performance damage shield/non-save slow for clerics plays out in the meta.

I personally also wanted to see Evard's changed to being able to affect small/tiny sized PCs and Acid Sheathe damage toned down (to Lightning Shield levels and provide maybe 10% Acid DI instead of 25%) before adding those spells to the Acid domain. ← To those reading this particular statement, this is not an invitation to discuss these potential spell changes, this is not the place for that nor are those changes in progress or finalized.

I am on the fence about renaming the domain from Acid to Ooze/Slime domain, however, and might make further internal discussion and initiate a poll to get feedback from the player base. I do want players to pick the Acid/Ooze/Slime domain out of it fitting their character theme (especially UD clerics) rather than it being purely mechanical (still a valid reason). I absolutely abhorred the travel/trickery cleric meta.
MRFTW wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:41 pm
Kanji, what are your thoughts on domain selection from a character rather than a deity standpoint?

For example, a travelling cleric of Baervan Wildwanderer choosing travel domain instead of the more thematic plant/animal/healing or whatever the stereotypical choices would be.

I personally like the idea but I dont know how this alleyway of thought interacts with the staff vision for how players should select their domains.
We have taken the stance of no obvious/selected opposing domains for deities based on their themes and/or lore. So while we don't want to see Kossuthan clerics running around with water or cold domain, Aurilites taking Fire domain, etc, we certainly aren't going to bar Ilmatari or Tormites from taking Plant or Sun domain even if those aren't explicitly the domains of the aforementioned latter deities. The same would apply here for whichever deity you're looking at.

Before the first phase of the domain overhaul, I knew a player who took the cleric's domains fairly seriously. Instead of following the usual travel/trickery domain meta, water and air domains were taken due to the cleric being an Umberlant. To that end, the cleric was also built into auto-quicken with only two foci lines - feels bad.

Ultimately the decision is yours to make: whether it is based on lore, theme, mechanics, or even aesthetics - what we want out of the player experience is whatever your reasoning may be, you won't feel robbed of your cleric's viability.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by MRFTW » Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:23 pm

Kenji wrote:
Fri Jul 02, 2021 9:21 am
MRFTW wrote:
Thu Jul 01, 2021 1:41 pm
some garbage
We have taken the stance of no obvious/selected opposing domains for deities based on their themes and/or lore. So while we don't want to see Kossuthan clerics running around with water or cold domain, Aurilites taking Fire domain, etc, we certainly aren't going to bar Ilmatari or Tormites from taking Plant or Sun domain even if those aren't explicitly the domains of the aforementioned latter deities. The same would apply here for whichever deity you're looking at.
Thank you, that's exactly the sort of info I was looking for.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Scylon » Sun Jul 04, 2021 7:33 am

There is much focus on the Sun/Moon.

I'll reframe from many of the other domains as it wanders into the lands of that might come next. That said, on the topics on domains that are mutually exclusive or something, It might be good to see 2 separate clerics "proc" something when they combine 2 abilities they can't stack themselves. EG, you have 2 different bless spells, Sun and moon: combines creates a new effect like Eclipse Blessing.

Would promote people to work together and add more depth to this idea.

On a side note might be a good test bed for "higher magic" ritual spells that requires 2 or more casters to perform.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by mash » Tue Jul 20, 2021 7:27 pm

I would like to cautiously point out (somewhat selfishly as a crafting paladin), provided Sun/Moon's Bless Weapon is scribable/wandable, that clerics would get access to a highly valuable crafting market. I don't know whether the crafted item would be the paladin or cleric version - it would matter for scrolls, but not for wands, since the appeal of BW wands is the damage vs. undead, not the enhancement bonus.

Bless Weapon is currently a paladin monopoly, but is also a very hefty feat investment as paladins generally suffer from severe feat deprivation. Of the paladin specific spells, it is arguably the only one which is sold regularly as a consumable (Holy Sword is often held back from the open market for RP reasons). This exclusivity makes for high prices, which balances out the sacrifice of a feat on a class starving for feats. Clerics can afford these feats more easily and already dominate the divine consumable market. Giving them these exclusive crafting opportunities could become the meta similarly to Travel/Trickery, especially when other domains receive mostly evocation pve spells which, in the mind of most players, will provide less lasting mechanical value than access to a unique crafting market.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Kenji » Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:53 am

Scylon wrote:
Sun Jul 04, 2021 7:33 am
There is much focus on the Sun/Moon.

I'll reframe from many of the other domains as it wanders into the lands of that might come next. That said, on the topics on domains that are mutually exclusive or something, It might be good to see 2 separate clerics "proc" something when they combine 2 abilities they can't stack themselves. EG, you have 2 different bless spells, Sun and moon: combines creates a new effect like Eclipse Blessing.

Would promote people to work together and add more depth to this idea.

On a side note might be a good test bed for "higher magic" ritual spells that requires 2 or more casters to perform.
Script-wise, my approach to something like this would be setting the localint on relevant PC hides/Creature hides involved in the vicinity to something to do with the script that's currently running. Another detection script should another spell that can combo fires off will read aforementioned localint to see if the conditions are true, then the combo effect would fire off.

In essence, it translates to more script load and bloat (uncertain to what degree) and I believe it is in our best interest to avoid anything beyond simple interaction of "two domains with the same spells could stack certain effects".
mash wrote:
Tue Jul 20, 2021 7:27 pm
I would like to cautiously point out (somewhat selfishly as a crafting paladin), provided Sun/Moon's Bless Weapon is scribable/wandable, that clerics would get access to a highly valuable crafting market. I don't know whether the crafted item would be the paladin or cleric version - it would matter for scrolls, but not for wands, since the appeal of BW wands is the damage vs. undead, not the enhancement bonus.

Bless Weapon is currently a paladin monopoly, but is also a very hefty feat investment as paladins generally suffer from severe feat deprivation. Of the paladin specific spells, it is arguably the only one which is sold regularly as a consumable (Holy Sword is often held back from the open market for RP reasons). This exclusivity makes for high prices, which balances out the sacrifice of a feat on a class starving for feats. Clerics can afford these feats more easily and already dominate the divine consumable market. Giving them these exclusive crafting opportunities could become the meta similarly to Travel/Trickery, especially when other domains receive mostly evocation pve spells which, in the mind of most players, will provide less lasting mechanical value than access to a unique crafting market.
I appreciate your candor on the personal bias. Clerics can indeed make Bless Weapon scrolls and I won't be taking that away any time soon. Personally, I would prefer to see if Bless Weapon scrolls aren't sold at an exorbitant price of 1000 gold pieces per scroll. And Sun/Moon clerics being able to join in on the market to adjust the prices just happened to be an unintentional but adequate side effect.

As for the concern with this one singular change would revert the domain selection back to how it was with travel/trickery meta is, to be frank, a stretch of a statement that is geared towards an agenda.

A cleric will still have to sacrifice something in order to take scribe scroll, much like any paladin builds. They're actually just as feat-starved.

If we see a sudden influx of bless weapon scrolls and a market crash for said economy, then adjustments such as gold and/or xp cost per scroll can be made to slightly curb the market supply.

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Scylon » Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:22 pm

Kenji wrote:
Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:53 am
Script-wise... bla bl bla
Ah, that is a shame but I get it.
Kenji wrote:
Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:53 am

Clerics can indeed make Bless Weapon scrolls and I won't be taking that away any time soon.
So, if I am understanding this correctly, clerics making bless scrolls and they function just like the paladin ones when from a scroll? or do they function like the domain of the cleric who made it?

I consider them totally different spells.

Holy - divine vs undead, outsiders and dragons
Moon - magic vs undead
Sun - Fire vs all and positive vs undead

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Re: Cleric Domain Overhaul

Post by Kenji » Thu Jul 22, 2021 12:37 am

Those scribed Bless Weapon scrolls are the same.

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