Domain Brainstorming thread

[One Two Three Five]

So as not to clog up the other (battle-centric-y) cleric thread.. A lot of domains need help. What can be done with them to make them less terribad/an option other than the current slot of four-or-so?

My gut tells me an expanded spell list similar to the tabletop versions, but everyone else's mileage on that may vary. Disclaimer: For the love of god don't assume my numbers are anything but placeholders.

A couple to get started, mostly culled from elsewhere or the pen and paper domains:

Air Domain- great caster fodder imo
Add Greater Thunderclap, Gust of Wind to the spell list.
Possible capstone: Elemental swarm, but- it summons air elementals only, one after another, instead of four at once.
Possible addition of a small amount of electrical damage to a held weapon? (1d4+ (cleric level/6 for instance.)

Animal Domain: actually pretty decent?
Speaking animal would be a nice rp nod though.

Death Domain
Make the death summon something alignment/morality agnostic (ho ho ho). Like a deathless warrior or something, so that non-evil deities with death domain aren't left out. Also, good lord this could use a rebalance.
Add destruction at 1 level lower than normal
Wail of the banshee at 9th circle

etc, etc. Thoughts?

[flower]

Question is, if they arent hardcoded?

Another option is to add secondary effects to selected spells different on domains.

[One Two Three Five]

Radial spells (and thus I guess spontaneous domain spells which, oh well) would fix the hardcoding technically. But additional riders on domain spells might be cool.

[Wytchee]

You can't add spells to spell lists without adding it as an innate ability, afaik.

I listed my own suggestions months ago here:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=13655

Most of it is outdated though/I would change some things. I think I posted this before the PDK changes too. Mostly just like the elementals becoming monoliths bit.

[One Two Three Five]

That's a damn shame, those look real good.

[Wytchee]

That's a damn shame, those look real good.

Thanks. I like brainstorming these things, even if there's no chance of them being implemented.

Might work on those suggestions a bit later.

[pigman]

Personally, if it was possible to do I think domains should be deity locked for the most part.

[flower]

Personally, if it was possible to do I think domains should be deity locked for the most part.

You would need over tens of domains. Majority of deities lack their domains represented in NWN.

[Xerah]

Personally, if it was possible to do I think domains should be deity locked for the most part.

You would need over tens of domains. Majority of deities lack their domains represented in NWN.

Not really. Most RP servers have enforced this in the past. The team just has to be slightly more open when selecting from the list to allow for each one.

[cptcuddlepants]

If domains were locked to deities, there would need to be the ability to change domains, because deity changes do happen. However, I'm not sure if it's possible to switch a domain without remaking.

[flower]

The domains have very huge impact on spell selection right now. To have or not have haste or barskin is a big. It would need total overhaul of domains and balance them against each other.

Edit: otherwise it would be a big nerf

[One Two Three Five]

Most rp servers are gone, too. Doing that wont stop anyone from taking travel/trickery/war/plant, you realize? You'll just end up with a lot of people worshipping Akadi, Mask, Waukeen, etc unless domains had some sort of blanket buff to make more than four of them worth taking. It'd be an overall nerf not just to the cleric class itself but to rp diversity.

Edit: HOWEVER. I can see the way this thread might go, so please, from here on: Let's stick to mechanical considerations only. Domain connections to deities or whatever can be their own thread. If it turns into an RP debate (we all know this is a roleplay server, don't worry) I'll ask for a lock.

[Wytchee]

Clerics are already locked by alignment and are required to take domains reflective of their deity, with some leeway. They don't need any more restrictions.

[Baron Saturday]

Ability to add custom domains would be pretty cool. Something to bug Beamdog about? I could see domains getting a lot of improvements if some of the technical limitations were lifted.

[Sockss]

You can add custom domains, it just needs haks!

[JediMindTrix]

Deity domain locking will result in a decrease in deity variety.

[Mithreas]

Deity domain locking will result in a decrease in deity variety.

That might not be a bad thing. Having fewer, larger/more active deity cults could be a net plus, especially since the option to take a minority deity would still be there.

I like many things about the 'new' deity system, but the original one that used presence and power (where donations from any PC would improve the presence of that deity for all worshippers) was a nice feature that encouraged people to have worship in common.

[Scurvy Cur]

My memory was that, post level 15 or so, the phenomenon was exactly the opposite.

Sure, you'd want to hitch hike on a popular deity when you were poor, but you bailed for an obscure one as soon as you could afford to do it, because nothing sucked quite as hard as losing access to your level 7 through 9 spells because your faith's evo cleric was farming, and cratering the power/presence scores.

I have 'nam flashbacks of watching Ilmater's Power/Presence going from full to basically nil in the space of a couple of IG hours because it was Triad farm time.

[Hunter548]

Yeah, my recollection is identical to Scurvy's -- Belduil went Sharran entirely because Nives kept spending six hours imploding her way through the Vault every day and I wanted to be able to actually cast spells.

[JediMindTrix]

That might not be a bad thing. Having fewer, larger/more active deity cults could be a net plus, especially since the option to take a minority deity would still be there.

Long term the risk for staleness is pretty high.

And we already have larger/more active deity cults.

[Nitro]

I remember going Red Knight because there was someone or a group of someones really devoted to keeping the Red Knight stats high. Boy were they probably pissed at my liberal usage of it.

[Hunter548]

That might not be a bad thing. Having fewer, larger/more active deity cults could be a net plus, especially since the option to take a minority deity would still be there.

Actually, going through the list, this would be a terrible idea without expanding the list of domains (IE, without haks). There's a few deities that don't have two choosable domains: Gond, Tymnora, Hoar, Jergal, Red Knight. You just straight up would never be allowed to have clerics of these.

I'd expect to see a massive influx of Akadians, Maskites, Waukeenar, and the like. Or, in essence, instead of people picking deities they think are cool, we'd end up with every cleric worshipping one of the deities who has access to decent domains. The vast majority of evil clerics would have to settle for Evil and Destruction otherwise, while good aligned ones would have to settle for Protection and Good.

That sounds really boring and not at all conducive to deity roleplay.

[Improv]

I played on a server with enforced domains. Both of them. You met an awful lot of Akadi clerics. Not that there's anything wrong with playing an Akadi clerics, I'm sure the church of the goddess of air elementals had good reason to send all of her worshippers to one place, but...

Piety and aspects are more problematic to me than domains here, though. Clerics are strong, even two lame domains isn't going to make the character unplayable. Playing a cleric of a Trickery-only aspect deity though-- if you don't dip bard early for disguise and if you don't plan on being in disguise all the time for purely mechanical reasons, what are you supposed to do? It's not completely unplayable but it's almost there.

[One Two Three Five]

Man, again? Just. Lock it, I guess. Wytchee's already done the bulk of the work on a suggestion like this anyway.