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I've been turning this around a bit and Clerics really don't fit the style of my world. Now, I am giving turn undead to druids but I can't figure out what to do with the spells and how to adjust for no clerics.

Any hints.
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Merge the cleric spell list, including healing spells, with the wizard spell list. That gives wizards some more diversity - you could have wizards that specialise in healing spells, those that specialise in zapping spells and so forth.

I completely agree ... Magic just happens to be one source... all Divine or Arcane.

Moriarty the Red
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I looked into that but there are many spells that are shared by both classes that have differing levels. So how would you resolve that?
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Instead of turning undead, a druid can hinder them, as they are aspects of nature gone awry... this manifests by slowly whittling them to nothing, rather than completely destroying them outright. For starters, a druid that makes his turn check (same rules as a cleric) immobilizes the undead affected; each round, if the druid does nothing but maintain the turn, the undead suffers some amount of damage, say, 2d8, and starts to disintegrate slowly, the realms of naure reclaiming their rightful ownership over it.

In a world of no clerics, I strongly suggest using Banes and Balms, from Keeper #1 *shameless self-plug.* Beyond that, allowing a wizard limited access to healing spells, say, they are treated 2-3 levels higher for access purposes is good, but should not be given straight out, or you get "weak healers" (ie, poorly armored, low HP heal batteries.)

Alternatively, you can keep the term cleric, and make them NPCs, who stay at things called temples and hospitals, and charge ungodly amounts of gp for basic services, and never, ever, use the life restore spells.

Julian Grimm wrote:
I looked into that but there are many spells that are shared by both classes that have differing levels. So how would you resolve that?

If I were to do it this way I believe I would have the wizard's list take precedence for the shared spells.

I like the idea of limiting wizards healing abilities, say nothing past cure serious wounds perhaps? That would make them useful but healing magic will really eat up spell slots. Wow. That's going to make choosing spells for the day really nerve-wracking.

Interesting.

I had given this a fleeting thought a while back for a fantasy Europe dark ages game.

Are druids in your game going to be more widespread? Will they take the place of the clerics since the druids do have healing magic on their lists or do you plan on taking that away from them?

They would appear to be the ones to go to now if you have disease or

Very interesting.

dave
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Druidism will be more prevailent. Since they draw their power from the energy of nature itself. Though my world has an established religion it is also very rooted in animism. I'm going to be looking at Arcana Unearthed closer since it was done with no clerics at all.
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It would be a bit easier for me to make a suggestion if I knew what the style of your world is. So I'll toss out this idea...

Druids would wind up having their spell list filled out with spells from the cleric list, taking those spells across that seemed related to nature. They get the ability to deal with undead, although they might not be as effective as the cleric is currently. Depends on how prevalent undead are, and how much you want to give the druid. I've thought of making the new druid (or remade cleric depending on your point of view) be a sub-class/specialist of the regular Druid class, kinda like the Illusionist is.

Anything related to healing is stripped out entirely, and replaced with a Healer class. The Healer class performs healing in the style that's sometimes known as "empath" healing. The healer literally takes the wound from a person, and transfers it to themselves. And exchange of life essences if you will. The Healer is then able to stimulate accelerated healing within themselves.

Spells to bring back someone from the dead are a bit of a tricky thing. Really dependent on you. Myself, I don't have them around really, except as exceptions.

The current mechanism I've got in place is that a quest can be undertaken in order to request that a person be returned to life, but generally it's not something that happens. The exception being Reincarnate, which has to be done before 24 hours has passed for the body. After 24 hours, the connections between the spirit and the world (the body provides the anchor to the world) are severed and the spirit moves on to the realm of the dead. Moving onto the realm of the dead doesn't mean the spirit won't become some sort of Ghost, undead, or whatever, simply that it's severed it ties to the living world.

If Reincarnate is cast within the alloted time, the spirit has the option of manifesting or not. If it refuses, nothing happens. If it accepts, well it comes back, but it's luck of the draw as to what it comes back as. Of course, further questing in the world to return the reincarnated person to their original form is possible.

People coming back from the dead isn't something I like as a general rule. I don't mind having a mechanism in place to allow for a character to be brought back if the player wants to, but it's not the sort of thing that's going to be happening much in the world at large, no matter how rich a person happens to be.

Bumping the nature related stuff of the "cleric" stuff over to the Druid (or possibly making a Druid specialist/subclass), allows for their to be an option to deal with undead in the world.

Shifting healing over to a specific class and one that doesn't get to heal for free means that healing is still available, but isn't as common as implied by many of the default assumptions of a typical D&D game. This is a good or bad thing, depending on the kind of game you like to run.

Resurrection is one of those other touchy things in a game, much like the issue of how much magic is present. Personally, I think that if you've got the usual trope of gods wanting worshippers, and empowering clerics, they're going to be pissed if somebody rips a soul that they've collected, and puts it back into play. Souls are one of those things that gods and demons like (for whatever reason), and they aren't going to take to kindly to people stealing what's become theirs. Now, if you don't have gods in play in your world, or they're under some sort of "no direct interference" then the above reasoning obviously isn't as applicable.

I'd recommend my conversion of the Spritual Channeler. Their spell list has both divine and arcane spells, the spell list for the 3.5 spells is linked in the thread. I also have a C&C specific spell list done up in Excel format.

Julian Grimm wrote:
I've been turning this around a bit and Clerics really don't fit the style of my world. Now, I am giving turn undead to druids but I can't figure out what to do with the spells and how to adjust for no clerics.

Any hints.

I would simply drop clerics, period.

Since you already gave the druid, the cleric's turn undead ability, allow the druid access to any clerical spell you feel they must have, but I would keep the number very low. If they get everything a cleric had, then there is no sense in dropping clerics at all.
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You could just change feel of the cleric, keeping the rules for the most part. For a homebrew I made magic from one source, kinda like Willow, and made each spell caster race specific:

druid= elven practice, using the power of their evironment

illusionist= gnome & hobbit practice, using their knowledge of staying out of the lime light.

crystal mage (cleric)= dwarven practice, using the power found in crystals in fused with magic from the formation of the world of Elderth found deep in the earth.

wizard= human practice, using the ancient knowledge left over by demons after the coming of light.

You can be a human and still be a crystal mage, but the dwarves have to trust you first (alot), then teach you. I feel it's easier to change the fluff (especially on the fly), than the crunch.

Thanks for the suggestions all! And I think I have found my answer. I am going to merge all spellcasting classes into one class. They will have a certain number of weapons and armor a D6 HD and use the wizard XP progression. As for spells I am going to adopt that the list that that has a spell on it the earliest will have the spell. For example a Cleric gets Animate Dead as a 3rd level spell and a wizard gets it as a 5th level spell. Thus the new class gets it as a third level spell. I'll hope to have the mechanics done soon so you can look over them.
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Julian Grimm wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions all! And I think I have found my answer. I am going to merge all spellcasting classes into one class. They will have a certain number of weapons and armor a D6 HD and use the wizard XP progression. As for spells I am going to adopt that the list that that has a spell on it the earliest will have the spell. For example a Cleric gets Animate Dead as a 3rd level spell and a wizard gets it as a 5th level spell. Thus the new class gets it as a third level spell. I'll hope to have the mechanics done soon so you can look over them.

I've considered this at one point also. I'm interested in see what you come up with.

R-
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bulletmeat wrote:
You could just change feel of the cleric, keeping the rules for the most part. For a homebrew I made magic from one source, kinda like Willow, and made each spell caster race specific:

druid= elven practice, using the power of their evironment

illusionist= gnome & hobbit practice, using their knowledge of staying out of the lime light.

crystal mage (cleric)= dwarven practice, using the power found in crystals in fused with magic from the formation of the world of Elderth found deep in the earth.

wizard= human practice, using the ancient knowledge left over by demons after the coming of light.

You can be a human and still be a crystal mage, but the dwarves have to trust you first (alot), then teach you. I feel it's easier to change the fluff (especially on the fly), than the crunch.

Really interesting. Myself I did something in the same spirit, where clerics are not the default priests (as the latter are commoners without spellcasting abilities), but a rare few inquisitors trained into their own magic as wizards are. Fluff to say there is no divine magic per se, but keep the cleric class as is. But now, reading your idea, I may be tempted to borrow it as follows: cleric magic as you says, coming from the dwarves etc. However, I would add that dwarven spellcasters are called "Dwarnoi" (not "cleric"), and instead of the Turn Undead ability, they choose an element (Air, Earth, Fire, or Water) and get the special abilities of the Dark Sun cleric (gate element, etc.).

Julian Grimm wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions all! And I think I have found my answer. I am going to merge all spellcasting classes into one class. They will have a certain number of weapons and armor a D6 HD and use the wizard XP progression. As for spells I am going to adopt that the list that that has a spell on it the earliest will have the spell. For example a Cleric gets Animate Dead as a 3rd level spell and a wizard gets it as a 5th level spell. Thus the new class gets it as a third level spell. I'll hope to have the mechanics done soon so you can look over them.

Doing that you will get more powerful wizards (cast fireball and cure light wounds, and gets d6 HD), but that may be okay in your own campaign after all. Now, for variety, this will limit things, and how about special abilities of druids, clerics, illusionists, with a single class?

Maliki wrote:
I would simply drop clerics, period.

Since you already gave the druid, the cleric's turn undead ability, allow the druid access to any clerical spell you feel they must have, but I would keep the number very low. If they get everything a cleric had, then there is no sense in dropping clerics at all.

That's what I did. The Druid class picks up some of the Cleric healing spells, and will get the Turn Undead ability at a later level. Other than that - all the Cleric stuff is just gone.
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Turanil wrote:
Doing that you will get more powerful wizards (cast fireball and cure light wounds, and gets d6 HD), but that may be okay in your own campaign after all. Now, for variety, this will limit things, and how about special abilities of druids, clerics, illusionists, with a single class?

All special abilities will be dropped. As for spells I have a Houserule that's places limits on the number of spells known (Equal to INT score) and I actually have a limit on levels knowable (1/2 the INT score). The HD is a fix for something I always hated about wizards and as for variety, spells can be mixed and matched easy enough.

Mainly I have alway had a pet peeve with the way myth and fantasy has few distinctions between the two classes but the game insists on them. I will also be using a system reminicent of the 3e sorceror for casting since I strongly dislike the vancian system for wizards.
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Julian Grimm wrote:
Mainly I have alway had a pet peeve with the way myth and fantasy has few distinctions between the two classes but the game insists on them.

I agree. I prefer the magic used by both to be similar, the difference is more a matter of style and appearance. Most likely with regional/cultural differences in the cosmetics and mindset.

One society's witch is another's priestess.

DangerDwarf wrote:
I agree. I prefer the magic used by both to be similar, the difference is more a matter of style and appearance. Most likely with regional/cultural differences in the cosmetics and mindset.

One society's witch is another's priestess.

Bingo. I see the 'wizard' as a channeler of powers, be it nature, other worldly beings or the use of formulae and symbols. In my Campaign religion is a highly personal thing and does not involve many organized practices. There are 'patrons' which act as intercessors to a higher God that has not revealed himself much. Patrons are not worshiped and act as guides and messangers. The idea of the adventureing cleric is moot at this and it gives me a way to make the adjustments I have always wanted to magic in general.
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In my own campaign setting, I've tried various methods of having spell casters more resemble those of myth and legend. In the Kingdom of Ritona, male and female spell casters are largely completely different orders.

Both have extremely similar mechanics and spell lists, but "fluff" wise are very different styles. The females have a religious overtone while the men are more occultist type. Their spell lists are pretty much identical, with each type having their own "signature spells". But, this is due to them being very possessive of their order secrets, not because of lack of compatibility.

Even a hermetic/occultist type caster could utilize a spell of the more religious female order should he discover the invocations.

When I ran D&D for kids, and trying not to get parents upset for teaching their kids about religon [especially pagan religion] I opted not to have clerics as well. I called them "white mages", while the wizards were black, blue, or red mages [depending on alignment. Blue was good, Red neutral, and black was evil].

This worked rather well. This explained spell lists being different well enough.
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I let Wizards cast the Cure spells IMC; doesn't raise any balance issues and means Clerics aren't vital.

You could also increase the heal rate to eg 1 hp/level overnight and 2 hp/level per day if still above 0 hp, with that you don't really need healing magic at all.

simontmn wrote:
I let Wizards cast the Cure spells IMC; doesn't raise any balance issues and means Clerics aren't vital.

You could also increase the heal rate to eg 1 hp/level overnight and 2 hp/level per day if still above 0 hp, with that you don't really need healing magic at all.

My cure rate is 1hp+con bonus/level/rest period.
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