I just realized something about the multiclasses options
Gotural
Member Posts: 1,229
If i'm not mistaking, a Ranger/Cleric multiclass is an improved Fighter/Cleric ?
The only benefice of playing a Fighter is the Grandmastery, but a Fighter/Cleric can't reach it.
The only benefice of playing a Fighter is the Grandmastery, but a Fighter/Cleric can't reach it.
Post edited by Gotural on
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So for a Ranger/Cleric, it's not that unreasonable to just say they have access to whatever spheres they had as a cleric, plus those they gained as a Ranger.
In fact, I'll take it a step further, in every PNP game I've run, I would only allow a cleric/ranger to follow the same religion for both classes (you can't follow a different religion for your two professions!). So both classes would have access to the same spheres of influence from the start. BG comes at it a little sideways because it only allows generic clerics and rangers, so the spheres of influence for the two classes are slightly different, and the multi-class character can benefit from that inconsistency. But in a well run PNP setting, that disconnect would never have happened.
But it strikes me as a reasonable sort of compromise to keep things from being too complex. A really thorough implementation would have had each priesthood with its own spell list. Imagine if all those evil clerics had no access to healing magic! That would have been awesome, and more like PNP. But they simplify a lot, and that's fine. This remains the most complete AD&D implementation we'll ever see!
Wait a minute... Evil Clerics in ADnD could not cast any healing spells, period?
I know that this is not true in 3.5E. There Clerics just have to prepare healing spells like normal spells instead of converting them.
How did Evil Clerics evil survive basic adventuring in ADnD? Drinking healing potions like water?
Of course it also says pretty clearly that players are not allowed to play evil characters. So it really isn't a problem for any party. As a DM you have to figure out how evil cleric characters will sustain themselves; I figure they do a lot of running away and make extensive use of meat shields.
Players do need to look at what spells are available to the different priesthoods too! I'm not sure about the Realms, but in the setting I use there are even some good aligned priesthoods that don't have access to healing spells.
Cure Light Wounds (Necromancy) Reversible
Sphere: Healing
Range: Touch
Duration: Permanent
Area of Effect: Creature touched
Components: V, S Casting Time: 5 Saving Throw: None
When casting this spell and laying his hand upon a creature, the priest causes 1d8 points of wound or other injury damage to the creature's body to be healed. This healing cannot affect creatures without corporeal bodies, nor can it cure wounds of creatures not living or of extraplanar origin.
The reverse of the spell, cause light wounds, operates in the same manner, inflicting 1d8 points of damage. If a creature is avoiding this touch, an attack roll is needed to determine if the priest's hand strikes the opponent and causes such a wound.
Curing is permanent only insofar as the creature does not sustain further damage; caused wounds will heal--or can be cured--just as any normal injury.
So if you have the spell, no restrictions.
Bog standard 2nd edition PHB Cleric:
Cleric
Ability Requirement: Prime Requisite: Races Allowed:
Wisdom 9 Wisdom All
The most common type of priest is the cleric. The cleric may be an adherent of any religion (though if the DM designs a specific mythos, the cleric's abilities and spells may be changed--see following). Clerics are generally good, but are not restricted to good; they can have any alignment acceptable to their order.
...
A cleric has major access to every sphere of influence except the plant, animal, weather, and elemental spheres (he has minor access to the elemental sphere and cannot cast spells of the other three spheres).
So a normal cleric who could be of any approriate alignement had access to healing sphere.
Now if you introduce specialty priests they usually have a much more restricted selection of Spheres (sometimes but not always compensated by some special powers) and certainly there were some which didn't have healing - but I wouldn't generalize it and as far as I remember most had at least minor healing.
One possible problem though is the comment about "any allowed alignment". Remember 2E core rules discouraged evil aligned PCs entirely, so info on evil characters and classes may be more in the DMG. Again, I'll have to do some research to see where I got that recollection from.
But I know I've seen it writing too. Finding it now may be a challenge!
another thing touched upon is that pre time of troubles, gods weren't even really obligated to give a damn about their followers and afterward the pantheons were restructured in a way that gods' powers were derived from the number of followers.
But keep in mind: even an evil priest will want to keep his followers in line and unless the deity is totally CE letting them die from minor wounds that could easily be healed is a waste.
That's certainly how we always ran it, doesn't really matter how much it might help the cause, a cleric of say Hades or Ares simply has no ability to heal.
And yeah I'm in exactly the same place with house rules. I have my own Player's Handbook and DMG, hundreds of pages of house rules that have developed over many years. More than 30 years now since 1E came out! It is often very difficult to track down the history of something.
Same for using poison, opinions were not as clear on that one but we kept to it nevertheless.
Evil characters were not forbidden, but some advice to the reader bits sort of gently discouraged them.
As for R/C getting high level druid spells with his cleric spell progression... I'd say both sides of the argument are right. In AD&D2, Druids were just a particularly well-defined specialty priest (whereas in AD&D1 they were a distinct class altogether). A hypothetical Ranger/Specialty (Nature) Priest could have all (or most) of the usual Druid spells, in PnP. In BG(2) there are only two priest spell lists: Druid and Cleric, so it's not unreasonable to think that a R/C's cleric spells shouldn't have access to the Druid spell list.
Could it feel balanced If the amounts of the cure and inflict spells were halved, for example? Druids could use this kind of spell to have some more offensive edge - or then some of their spells might be improved by giving them a "drain life" -effect (if anyone has ever felt what it is to be swarmed by mosquitoes in the summer, it feels logical that the blood they drain would nourish the caster).