Cleric and Crafting Musings

I love Aenea's custom deity system and the pc enchantment system. The domain powers were often sucktastic, didn't line up with the deities of any world's pantheon right, and I never understood why clerics of a goddess of life and healing would go around imploding or why clerics of a god of death and destruction would go around hitting mass heal for their party. NWN's default crafting system was incredibly useless and way too complicated, so I'm glad that it's being replaced.

That said, I do have a fair number of tweaks to suggest. Please forgive me in advance if anything I'm suggesting is incredibly complicated or annoying to do or bad for the server load. I'm naught but a humble player and I don't know anything about scripting or changing 2da's or anything like that.

1) I'd like to see PCs able to make more stuff that is not readily available in-game. Most of the stuff is not terrifically hard to find in a shop. I was kinda disappointed when I realized that. I would absolutely love to see a player-based economy happen in Aenea but it won't happen if the crafting system is stuff mostly available anyway. The less PITA way to make this happen would I guess be to thin out what's in shops, but probably the more fun way on the player end would just be crafting more or different stuff. I tend to think that this would be a huge pain for that nice purple lizard though.

2) Granted spells, very interesting concept, esp with them being harder to resist. But for things like keen edge, granded to clerics of Ralth for example, or expeditious retreat for Gort followers... well... what resistance is there to have? Could things like that just be added to their spell lists? I find it hard to believe that clerics of the god of travel don't know how to channel the favor of their deity into getting the heck out of the way or that clerics of the forge god don't know how to make their weapon work better than usually more than 1/x a day anyway. So yeah, I'd love to see little things like that just added to the normal spell list. Little things like that can help a lot.

3) A LOT of the spells are deity restricted 6th level and up. While there are some new cleric spells, only a handful of deities give new spells at high levels, which is rather not so fun when you are not a cleric of those deities, because the restricted ones are the "good" ones generally. Could clerics maybe get some lovin' with the new and tweaked spells here? Possibly:
-tweaking sunbeam so that it's useful against more than undead
-raising the damage cap on earthquake so it's actually useful
-making storm of vengeance not have pitiful damage or give it a more useful duration
-perhaps greater variants of hammer of the gods (...one that also isn't pitiful) and/or a greater spiritual weapon or hey, I'm biased, maybe Ralthites can get forge god hit you with his anvil now
-next round of new spells is for clerics and other divine casters maybe plz?

I thought I had more, but I suddenly can't remember it. Oh well, I probably wrote enough anyway.

I agree clerics could use a spellcasting buff. They need a little more oomph.... but I do advocate caution, as clerics should not be able to "out-kaboom" arcane casters... ever.

Right now, its no contest, I will admit. So clerics could definitely use some love.

True. I don't want to out-kaboom arcane casters, but a couple high-level kabooms for those who are not clerics of Ragnor would be nice. Or even just one. Sunbeam is still for everyone and generally works great on undead w/o serious SR but clerics don't have anything particuary good offensively at high spell levels for general enemies.
Maybe that's intentional? If so... Perhaps some good buffs for high level clerics other than the one for clerics of Prizimal (heart of the beast)? Some sort of temporary but powerful bludg/pierce/slash damage resistance, perhaps, or straight DR? The ability to temporarily add divine damage to a weapon, maybe something like 1pt per 4 caster levels? Something that temporarily grants a nice hefty attack bonus with a deity's preferred weapon?
Okay, so that last sounds probably more complicated than it's worth. Most of my first suggestions were alterations to existing spells or variations of current spells because I assumed those would be easier to implement. I get the impression that brand new spells are a PITA to create, esp if they need a new graphic.

Just to interject here...storm of vengeance is actually my favorite spell...not for dmg output..but because the bolts stun targets in the area of effect. I also wanted to suggest....wizzys get the weeny blast...why not give clerics a heal of similar bent?

weeny blast... lol


i assume you mean the arcane elemental attacks?

because those are powered by sacrificing a small amount of health, it wouldnt make much sense to have them heal for clerics....

perhaps clerics should geta divine damage attack that scales with level, and costs health like the arcane attacks do?

and never forget about "firestorm" as a nice kaboom.... it does 20d6 dmg, hald fire and half divine.... and it is available to all clerics if I am not mistaken, with area radius equal to meteor shower, and nod retarded deadzone. Thats probably a clerics best kaboom, and it really does rock.

Firestorm is a nice one. With the few blast-em-dead spells though, I've always found clerics are more adept at buffing up and going melee than kabooming.

Word of Faith is probably my favorite cleric boom spell. It doesn't damage, but it can kill, stun, or blind depending on the target's HD, no spell resistance, no save.

An old topic, but the point still does stand at the moment...

there are almost no spells (aside from the two or three aforementioned) for non-Ragnor clerics to dish out punishment.. I releveled and took some proper weapons focuses and such to help with her combat abilities because I was expecting some sort of spells tha I could at least semi-caster type the class with... not this... well... lack of caster power aside from buffing spells (which are in short supply on higher level spells) Storm of Veangence would be great if it pulsed every round as it's supposed to, but as it is currently, the one or two pulses isnt worth the level nine spell slot (Though there isn't much else to choose from)


As for crafted items....

Maybe we could allow Clerics of Zolaras to make Bone Rings as well? (as per their description)