Divine casters, and why they're a rare breed

As Eve and I discussed in Ada's recruitment thread, it seems that there's a few rules in place that are turning people (Sorry pun) away from clerics and druids and paladins.

Now I don't know the exact rules and regulations governing them, since I've never tried myself, but I have heard the rare PC cleric talk about how much of a pain it is just to cast spells. Normally I wouldn't pay much mind to this, but it seems that the divine casting system is so much of a hassle, it's reduced the effective number of divine characters on the server. I mean I think I've seen a total of three so far, with one being the one ODA made just for the quest to cure Kross of lycanthropy, since even Eri couldn't get together -any- PC clerics within a reasonable amount of time.

So that raises some questions for me. Is the divine system really that much of a pain? And if it is difficult to deal with, could it be revamped to less difficult? Granted there should still be a system of faithful clerics being rewarded, since it is the gods themselves giving you the power to cast spells, but maybe a little less intense? Maybe the gods are a bit more forgiving of those that worship them? Maybe it can work like the lycan system, where praying at an altar or donating money to a church raises divine favor, and it slowly falls day by day. The bar itself could be just as long as the character has levels of divine casting, so if the cleric wanted to cast a 5th level spell, he had to donate or pray his faith bar up to at least five bars full. And to avoid spamming praying, maybe we could make it a once a day affair?

It just seems to me that a hardcore server like Argentum should have more healers, de-cursers, cure disease-ers, raise from the dead-ers, and so on than it actually has. I mean there were times when I would have killed someone for a simple Remove Curse spell. Sure, divine scrolls can help, but even with a reasonable Use Magic Device skill it has a substantial chance of failure.

So, enlighten myself and everyone else. Air your grievances about divine casting here. I know Eve has a few. Tell us more about the system, so we can see if that's the reason we're so lacking.

where praying at an altar or donating money to a church raises divine favor, and it slowly falls day by day

Thats how it works, unless do something really bad which takes it down faster...


Clerics tend to be rare because the class is so heavily based on the Deities. Now ODA has a lot of information laying around about them but hasn't managed to dig it all up yet. This I understand as I have been know to loose notes in minutes let alone over a period of years.

Until we sit down and go thru the list of deities and flesh them out the Deity system is of extremely limited help and even a problem for the Clerics since no solid information is available other than the single paragraph about the specific deity they can get by reading the signs in start area...

Some Deities are more 'fleshed out' than others and this makes a vast improvement to the class. For example -

Deity Specific:-

• Divine Gifts,
• Holy Symbol
• Holy Words/Phrase (dose some powerful stuff)
• Boosts
• XP and Divine Favor based awards for Deity aligned deeds

Right now there are some generic things like emotes to worship deity will increase Divine Favor.

Animal Domain - Most Animals behave neutrally to you (although appear hostile do not attack unless provoked), Get XP and Divine Favor for healing injured animals... Loose DF for injuring/killing animals... (Herbivores for food don't count), Diagnosis gets bonus when targeting Animal races.

Water Domain - Holding your Holy Symbol you can breath underwater as if under effect of a permanent Water Breathing spell.

Healing Domain - Powerful boosts to healing spells and Diagnosis.


Divine Favor boosts Turn Undead (uses it up in process but since most will get DF for slaying undead it should balance well)

That's how it works? Haha, you read my mind again Eri. This time before I even knew you.
...Just how long have you been in my head? This is concerning.

What about divine favor as a reward for actions? Clerics of good deities helping people could get more favor that way. (This will probably involve a DM wand of some sort) Clerics of an evil god of slaughter might give favor to a priest who runs around killing townsfolk. Clerics serving nature might get a bit of favor for helping animals or saving a tree from certain doom. Clerics who serve lolth might appreciate a nice NPC (Or PC!) sacrifice. Clerics of a merchant god might get double the favor for their donations. Things of that nature. Any way you can give divine favor other than running back to that one altar every few days. I realize there will be more altars once things are fleshed out, but maybe using your holy symbol as a surrogate altar to your god gives you an amount of favor, but reduced? That way clerics can still be handy even if a plot takes several in game days, or an altar doesn't actually exist in the game yet.

Currently there is simply zero need for clerics to take the role of healers since its very easy to make a wizard and then make a wand and then put a scroll of greater restoration on it. Then make a wand again and put mass heal on that one. Then make another wand with heal on it. Etc. Wands made by a good wand-crafter can get as many as 5 uses a day. That's more than you would normally memorise on a cleric focused on healing. On top of that there is this huge hassle for clerics to even begin to try and cast their hard-earned spells. Because they are not as well off as the other casters that may rest to regain all their powers; clerics have to spend hours praying to gain the divine favor they need to cast even the spells they have memorised. Thing is that divine favor is capped around 100 and then it seems all spells cast from this 100 lowers that number while praying in itself it seems, gives 10 DF. Five spells cast of high level might lower it by 20. This is all just my guesswork now since I can't see the actual numbers, though.

I have some horror examples about things I would call DF-failure. Like when I was sitting outside my deity's temple trying to gain DF by waiting for my 3 hours rest period to drop so I could pray at the altar and donate more money and all that. A DM spawned some undead who came to eat me and the other pc who was there to keep me company. So I step up, holy symbol and all and bar the way into the temple while these zombies nears us. When they come closer I cast burning light on one, burning it to cinders. Just as I cast my second spell on the next zombie my god decides I have used up too much Divine favor and curses me! All stats drop by 5, making me ultimately a slow-moving platter of brains for the zombies to feast on. I just kept thinking: Why would my god curse me for protecting her temple?

You would change religion for less, wouldn't you?

That incident made me stop playing that character. Clerics in their current state are virtually unplayable. Its like they are the only true "roleplay-only, don't ever cast or fight monsters" characters. Having said this, I do think Naithra is one of my favourite characters and she is a drow cleric that I decided would simply be disfavored by Lolth as an explanation for her unability to cast even the simplest cantrip. I've had alot of fun rp with her but she is ultimately useless for anything but rp. I don't WANT to sit for hours and wait for my rest to kick in so I can pray again. Its just a huge waste of time. It doesn't add to the rp of my character in the least at that point. And when you do get cursed you need to have either a wand with greater restoration that a nice mage made for you, or carry a scroll that you can activate to cure yourself so you can pray some more. This is the harsh reality of clerics.

Suggestion wise I would say that maybe a system like the current soul runes wouldn't be such a bad idea until the details have been worked out? Lock the custom deity powers, then lock divine favor at max on the clerics so they can cast their spells. Test your future changes one day of the week on cleric volunteers. That way people can play and enjoy the clerics and you will get them tested in the mean time. Cuz right now there's hardly anyone playing them for you to test your scripts with.

Another thing that is glitchy is that the clerics are forced to have the domains of their deitys. Nothing wrong with that except if you want to change your deity. A normal character (one without cleric levels) would just go up to an altar, click it and pick a deity. They might get a negative DF for their troubles though but they arn't really using it anyways so it doesn't matter. A cleric would go up and attempt to change deity but as they pick the new deity they are already locked on the two domains they picked so they can't levelup under the new deity. So switching deities means you have to make a new character and alter the name slightly, having a dm give you back the levels and so on...

There's not much to go on when making a cleric because the information on the different deities is very meager currently. Some deities have no real information and other deities have a small text dexcribing something about it. I get that the server has made their own deities to have more control about what they stand for and such, but wouldn't it be better to have deities where you can actually read up on how they work and add that to your characters role? There's PLENTY of information online about the major DnD deities. It just feels very unnecessary to make new ones when you can instead use these vast writings that already exist. Not to mention that new players to the server would more easily orient themselves around known functions and behavior of the deities not to mention the game-world as a whole.

Khaos1987 wrote:That's how it works? Haha, you read my mind again Eri. This time before I even knew you.
...Just how long have you been in my head? This is concerning.

What about divine favor as a reward for actions? Clerics of good deities helping people could get more favor that way. (This will probably involve a DM wand of some sort) Clerics of an evil god of slaughter might give favor to a priest who runs around killing townsfolk. Clerics serving nature might get a bit of favor for helping animals or saving a tree from certain doom. Clerics who serve lolth might appreciate a nice NPC (Or PC!) sacrifice. Clerics of a merchant god might get double the favor for their donations. Things of that nature. Any way you can give divine favor other than running back to that one altar every few days. I realize there will be more altars once things are fleshed out, but maybe using your holy symbol as a surrogate altar to your god gives you an amount of favor, but reduced? That way clerics can still be handy even if a plot takes several in game days, or an altar doesn't actually exist in the game yet.

That's already in there. You can ask a dm to give you a figurine that sits in your inventory. It raises DF by 10 when used. But the problem isn't that DF runs out through time passing, it's that DF runs out through the casting of spells and the cleric has no way of knowing what level her DF is at currently (except if they pray at the altar which they need to treck back to). I would consider playing a caster cleric if I also had 13 wizard levels so I could have the teleportation spell and teleport to the altar. But currently some deities don't even have altars. I love playing clerics and just feel really sad and disappointed that its so hard to do that here.

So casting any divine spells also drains favor? Yikes! The favor bar would be going down so fast you'd think you were seeing things! Imagine how many spells a cleric has to use in one battle, and to cure and heal up their comrades afterwards. They'd be running back to altars after five minutes of adventuring! That's no fun, the cleric is one of the most important members of the team, and they seem to be getting a raw deal since getting divine favor is so time consuming/tedious. I'd say that just the reduction of DF by the day is fast enough, if you lose some for casting your spells, you'll be out of gas in no time. For the record, I love clerics myself. I find them to be better than those snooty mages, but... I'd rather play a mage on this server, even if I don't like them as much, because they're so much better.

And arcane casters can craft wands with divine spells on them? That have "per day" effects instead of charges?! Wooooow. No one is going to want to play a cleric when you can have a wizard running around with a bag of wands that only need a resting to recharge and have no divine favor requirement to worry over. I'm glad there's a lot of crafting going on, since it adds to characters, but that's just a little over the top for me. It makes clerics and druids a complete joke when they have to work so hard to get those precious spells, and then along comes a sorcerer with a wand that does the same thing. Twice a day. That they made themselves. No wonder no one's playing a cleric, no one NEEDS one with a mage around!

Maybe we could restrict arcane casters to only making wands with arcane effects? Or at least makes the divine wands have charges that get used up. Greater Restoration 3/day, and Resurrection 2/day is really powerful, almost powergaming level. Those kind of items should only be given out by DM plot.

Khaos1987 wrote:So casting any divine spells also drains favor? Yikes! The favor bar would be going down so fast you'd think you were seeing things! Imagine how many spells a cleric has to use in one battle, and to cure and heal up their comrades afterwards. They'd be running back to altars after five minutes of adventuring! That's no fun, the cleric is one of the most important members of the team, and they seem to be getting a raw deal since getting divine favor is so time consuming/tedious. I'd say that just the reduction of DF by the day is fast enough, if you lose some for casting your spells, you'll be out of gas in no time. For the record, I love clerics myself. I find them to be better than those snooty mages, but... I'd rather play a mage on this server, even if I don't like them as much, because they're so much better.

And arcane casters can craft wands with divine spells on them? That have "per day" effects instead of charges?! Wooooow. No one is going to want to play a cleric when you can have a wizard running around with a bag of wands that only need a resting to recharge and have no divine favor requirement to worry over. I'm glad there's a lot of crafting going on, since it adds to characters, but that's just a little over the top for me. It makes clerics and druids a complete joke when they have to work so hard to get those precious spells, and then along comes a sorcerer with a wand that does the same thing. Twice a day. That they made themselves. No wonder no one's playing a cleric, no one NEEDS one with a mage around!

Maybe we could restrict arcane casters to only making wands with arcane effects? Or at least makes the divine wands have charges that get used up. Greater Restoration 3/day, and Resurrection 2/day is really powerful, almost powergaming level. Those kind of items should only be given out by DM plot.

Yush, but before removing that from wizards it could be useful to do something to help them poor clerics along, don't you think?

I don't know... This removing that from wizards would help a bunch. I mean the main reason anyone plays a divine caster is because they're the only classes that can heal/raise/cure as their main ability. You don't see many arcane spells like that, for good reason... if you took away heal/cure/raise as divine only abilities... divine casters would be useless. What else would they fall back on? Turn undead?

But yes, other classes got an upgrade, let's power up divine clasters. Do they have a bunch of new and useful spells like arcane casters get? Do their gods sometimes intervene and save them from death by teleporting them back to a temple when they're almost dead? Maybe clerics should gain a soul rune once a week, showing that their god wants them to keep championing for them. Maybe when their divine favor is high they don't need to eat and drink as much. Just perks like that.

Khaos1987 wrote:I don't know... This removing that from wizards would help a bunch. I mean the main reason anyone plays a divine caster is because they're the only classes that can heal/raise/cure as their main ability. You don't see many arcane spells like that, for good reason... if you took away heal/cure/raise as divine only abilities... divine casters would be useless. What else would they fall back on? Turn undead?

But yes, other classes got an upgrade, let's power up divine clasters. Do they have a bunch of new and useful spells like arcane casters get? Do their gods sometimes intervene and save them from death by teleporting them back to a temple when they're almost dead? Maybe clerics should gain a soul rune once a week, showing that their god wants them to keep championing for them. Maybe when their divine favor is high they don't need to eat and drink as much. Just perks like that.

How about a DC 47 potential on Implosion? Or what about their sun-light spells that destroys vampires, Word of Faith that banishes/kills/blinds without a save, Harm that lowers hitpoints to 1 without a save, a multitude of buffing spells and that umm sword-wall spell that does like 25d8's and you can maximise it. Not to mention they get a bunch of other offensive and defensive spells and they can cast in armor and use weapons almost as well as a fighter. Clerics are good in more than one area! They arn't the best in any one area like arcane casters or fighters, they just get good at both those areas.

All classes still retain all their abilities to do their thing without any penalty or hassle to it except clerics who have this wall they have to go through before they can do what their levels says they can do.

You try playing a cleric, Krossy, then tell me I'm wrong.

eve_of_disaster wrote:
All classes still retain all their abilities to do their thing without any penalty or hassle to it except clerics who have this wall they have to go through before they can do what their levels says they can do.

This! This is the point we're been dancing around Eve. Divine casters are handicapped before leaving the gate. They have to do all this other stuff just to keep up with other classes, while everyone else avoids all that.

And yes, the cleric does have some winning spells, and the potential to do heavy damage. But arcane casters win. They have more damaging spells at lower levels, and while they don't have a lot of buffs, the ones they do get (Stoneskin and mantles) are all you need, baby. Who cares if you get a plus one to AB and fear when you're (temporarily) immune to both magic and physical damage at the same time? All those rip up spells you mentioned are high level, but an arcane caster can rip up with a third level fireball. And when you try to compare high level arcane spells to high level divine spells, nothing will beat time stop. Nothing in the world. Mages are offense, priests are defense, with slight exceptions of course.

And the cleric is not a fighter. He may run around in armor and carry a tower shield, but at best he's second class. He doesn't have the weapon proficiencies of a fighter, he gains AB at a slower rate than a fighter, and he doesn't have all the neat feats of a fighter. He's basically an AC meat shield that tries to pull off mass heal in the middle of a melee. That's not a bad thing, but that's not a fighter. And what about druids? They don't even get metal armor and shields!

eve_of_disaster wrote:I get that the server has made their own deities to have more control about what they stand for and such, but wouldn't it be better to have deities where you can actually read up on how they work and add that to your characters role? There's PLENTY of information online about the major DnD deities. It just feels very unnecessary to make new ones when you can instead use these vast writings that already exist.

That is part of the reason I do not use the stock FR deities, nor any other stock deities from D&D, there is a HOARD of material available on them, I don't have that material, and won't be held to material I am unaware of... using it would set myself and my DMs up for a series of PLAYERS to come in and say "diety x did y and z in the chronicals of abc so my cleric should be able to h, i and j here." The deities are original here so we can totally control what they are or are not, right down to their history (which is very complicated for most FR gods).

Be well. Game on.
GM_ODA

But, at the moment, there is no history or details for these deities, which is part of the problem

That's part of being a beta tester, only having partial or wholly incorrect information and going from there. At the moment, if I was going to play a cleric, I'd grab Eri and we'd have a long talk about what gods like what, divine favor wise. Eve has reported to me that she's playing a cleric that worships the god of healing, and since clerics should be healing anyway, her divine favor seems to be under control because she gains DF whenever she heals. If a cleric of a certain god gained DF from something like eating uncooked meat, I'd want to know that before choosing that god.

I know I do not play on the server yet so cant comment on how the clerics work. I do however know I play a cleric on another server and love it. No I cant melee as good as a fighter but between my spells and my fighting abilities I do rather well. I was looking forward to playing another cleric and already made one on the server to start playing soon but after reading this I am not sure I want to play a cleric anymore. I will probably just stick to rogue. I do however have a list of deities that might come in handy if you need help with that. I hope something can be worked out to help clerics as I would like to play one again. Hope to see you all IG soon. If anyone is intrested in some of the things I have on deities let me know and I can email it to you thanks.

Alistair. Erin informed me that the clerics don't lose DF from casting spells unless its a custom spell you're casting or its Turn Undead or like a spell that gets buffed by a high divine favor. I would personally very much apreciate a short list on those Deities that have been worked on more. Maybe you could write one of those here Erin? Like Amaner the god of healing seems like 50% scripted.

All loose Divine Favor (Abbreviated as DF) in small amounts over time or in proportional amounts for use of Miricals, Turn Undead (Power is syphoned from DF to boost strenght of Spell), and Holy Symbol spells and various custom spells requiring DF (states in descriptions of Requirements)
Since all Cleric spells are granted by the deity loosing favor too much will result in them not working.
Trying to cast outside your domain will also anger them. (This will not be a worry for those who pick right domains when creating cleric, only those with more than two have to be careful of that rule).
The Holy symbol column only those with red X actually not made, the empty ones are not sure yet but there is a temporary item in place.

Deity	Temple	Favored Offering	Blessing Item (High DF on Pray)	Blessing Effect (High DF on Pray)	Holy Symbol	Ability	Auto DF Dec	Auto DF Inc	Holy Phrase	Holy Text	DF Bonus
Sorton	Eastern Citadel		Potion StoneSkin		Hammer	X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Rhenallathan	Fey View		?		Candle	Sunburst	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Sark	?		Potion of Treasure Finding			? Mass Camouflage ?	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Finshi	N. Algrada		Potion of Protection +1			Mass Bull Strength	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Gameter	Tivook SouthWest					?Mass Charm?	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Lutia	?					?	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Amaner	N. Chonda		Healing Potion			Mass Heal	-	Healing	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Shadranzi	S. Donnel		Scroll Putrify/Purify Food and Drink			X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Goodaloop	M. Egbort		Potion of Water Breathing		Gold Trident	Breath Underwater (Auto)	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Faylyna	N. Egbort					Mass Distruction	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Numahl	North of N. Bolovin				Skull on a Stick	Mass Undeath to Death	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Deeproot	North of N. Chonda				Ironwood Staff	Mass Barkskin	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Cherol	?					X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES, Animal Passivness
Lytigus	?				Book	Confusion	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
tGoT	Various		Potion of Haste			Mass Haste	-	Traveling	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Eavee	Tivook SouthWest					Mass Greater Sanctuary	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Gressles	S. Algrada		Potion of Crafting Bonus	+10 Craft Skills	Crafting Hammer		Bad Quality	Crafting	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Chitai	?				X	X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Godiva	?				X	X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
DARKLORD	S. Egbort/Tivook Depths				Flaming Skull	Mass Harm	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Lolth	Drow Area				Purple claw staff?	Coccoon the Target creature in web	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Ogbarad	Tivook SouthWest				X	X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES, Animal Passivness
Meztin	?				X	X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Silurban	?				X	X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Zhadoon	?				X	X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Droaghuhl	?				X	X	-	NONE	TEMP	FIND NOTES	NEED NOTES
Nagealai	There but not Connected	Meat	Potion of Greater Magic Fang	Summons one of her Animals	Moon	Mass Greater Magic Fang/Boost	Animal Murder	Healing Animals	TEMP	PARTIAL	Animals become passive

Ooops Eri, that kinda got cut off at the end, but nice job anyway!

Also I'm relieved to hear casting only specific spells will deplete DF. That makes a little more sense to me, and it seems to balance out well. Even Eve is happy, and that's rare.