Regarding the arcane backgrounds in other Savage Settings, it's pretty clear when you compare books that those were the template for the Pathfinder class edges.

I am less negative about Savage Pathfinder than I think either of you are, but I do share the overall sentiment. The PFSW line focuses too heavily on trying to recreate every mechanical detail of Pathfinder without asking whether Savage Worlds needs it. This is painfully obvious in the Advanced Player's Guide 2. They wrote an overtuned magus class edge when the eldritch knight prestige edges already gave you what you needed. This leads to players who think they need certain class edges rather than building with the tools they already have.

Quote from: tenbones on March 25, 2025, 12:25:07 PMThis is almost exactly what I'm doing. Healing as a specific power is nested within specific Domains (Sun, Nature, Glory and Protection), so if a deity doesn't have those Domains, his Clerics don't have access to it. And it becomes a choice even within those Domains as well.

I think you should consider whether you want to dispense with domains altogether. They were an interesting idea for 3rd edition D&D to bring a lot of different flavors of cleric together under one mechanical umbrella, but you don't need to make this compatible with Dark Sun, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk. It sounds like more work, but maybe it's not. You wouldn't be juggling the association of deities and spells through the intermediary layer of domains. Sundered Skies handles clerics this way.

If you did that, it would effectively make each priesthood its own arcane background, which is what it sounds like you want when you talk about making every cleric a specialty priest. Another thing to consider is prestige edges for the specialty priests. Give destroy undead a little more competition, and suddenly it becomes a lot less common.

Quote from: tenbones on March 25, 2025, 12:46:54 PMWhen I'm done with my Savage Forgotten Realms project, I'm going to have my layout person pretty it up, and we'll hand it out for freeeeeee. This will be a warmup for things to come. We're just going through the production ropes now and figuring out what works best for us before we start doing kickstarters and the rest. We plan on doing some adventures and stuff once we move on to our own property which is in the works now. I figured since I run a lot of Realms, this would be a good place to start for my own personal use as well as fun "practice" run for our production line, while giving people out there some benefit too.

I actually backed Talislanta hoping they'd hit enough funding to add your Savage Worlds conversion as a stretch goal.

Quote from: Corolinth on March 25, 2025, 09:15:34 PMRegarding the arcane backgrounds in other Savage Settings, it's pretty clear when you compare books that those were the template for the Pathfinder class edges.

I am less negative about Savage Pathfinder than I think either of you are, but I do share the overall sentiment. The PFSW line focuses too heavily on trying to recreate every mechanical detail of Pathfinder without asking whether Savage Worlds needs it. This is painfully obvious in the Advanced Player's Guide 2. They wrote an overtuned magus class edge when the eldritch knight prestige edges already gave you what you needed. This leads to players who think they need certain class edges rather than building with the tools they already have.

You are hitting the big ones. The class edges have problems in that they are better than normal edges, thus encouraging multiclasssing.  Why wouldn't your sorcerer take the wizard edge?  No AB should also grant d4 in the skill, either, that's too much for an edge.  Edge chains are too long, reminiscent of 3.5/Pathfinder feat chains.  That's not, and shouldn't be, Savage Worlds in my opinion.  I also intensely hate Wayne Reynolds art so there is a little bias.  The bestiaries are great resources, though. 

Quote from: tenbones on March 25, 2025, 12:46:54 PMWhen I'm done with my Savage Forgotten Realms project, I'm going to have my layout person pretty it up, and we'll hand it out for freeeeeee. This will be a warmup for things to come. We're just going through the production ropes now and figuring out what works best for us before we start doing kickstarters and the rest. We plan on doing some adventures and stuff once we move on to our own property which is in the works now. I figured since I run a lot of Realms, this would be a good place to start for my own personal use as well as fun "practice" run for our production line, while giving people out there some benefit too.

I, for one, will definitely be looking forward to it!  I tried to do a conversion of 3.5 Forgotten Realms a while ago using Savage Rifts iconic frameworks as a base.  It failed miserably as I didn't really know what I was doing.  I went back and paired down the frameworks significantly to run Ravenloft - mainly just gave them the equivalent of 4 advances with some special perks per class.  My cleric was a shit simple priest of light, though, so it was easy as I didn't mess with what is a larger FR pantheon. My players say it was one of the best campaigns we ever did.  Savage Pathfinder came out right as we were ending and I have to give it credit for having the wish spell as I needed it when the players used a luck sword they found to save their asses. 

You are 100% correct on tradeoffs.  The lesson I learned was that an edge isn't always the best answer.  A character only gets so many advances - unless you want to run way past Legendary. Corolinth is right about domains and powers for the same reason.  AB users only get so many of those as well.  You sound like you have that in hand with what you are doing with specialty priests.  If you are going with frameworks for classes, setting rules that only apply to specific frameworks work well -- Fighter gets born a hero for combat edges, for example, turns out to be pretty good. That doesn't help much with clerics, however.   

Quote from: Chainsaw Surgeon on March 26, 2025, 10:57:20 AMYou are hitting the big ones. The class edges have problems in that they are better than normal edges, thus encouraging multiclasssing.  Why wouldn't your sorcerer take the wizard edge?  No AB should also grant d4 in the skill, either, that's too much for an edge.  Edge chains are too long, reminiscent of 3.5/Pathfinder feat chains.  That's not, and shouldn't be, Savage Worlds in my opinion.  I also intensely hate Wayne Reynolds art so there is a little bias.  The bestiaries are great resources, though.

I'm on the fence about arcane backgrounds granting a d4 in the skill. This is in the Fantasy Companion as well. If a new arcane background doesn't give you a d4 in the arcane skill, you're effectively locking characters out of acquiring them later on. I also share your aversion to it, for the reason you stated. It just seems like too much.

At first blush, I agree with you on class edges encouraging multi-classing and I have a player who focuses on exactly what you outline. At the same time, I haven't noticed the rest of my players doing that. I've concluded that the class edges are not as good as they first appear, in part because of opportunity cost. Since switching to Savage Worlds as my primary system, rather than a neat system to play once in a while, I've noticed that opportunity cost plays a big role in balancing the game.

Heh while I wasn't trying to make this specifically about Savage Worlds - so all you OSR nerds feel free to jump in - Savage Worlds is a superb method of discussing the abstractions that come from D&D Fantasy and providing good discussion in how to solve possible perceived "problems".

OSR/d20 as a system makes it difficult to do within the core task resolution mechanic *because* of class. That doesn't mean it can't be done. Savage Worlds is much more modular and it can solve nearly any issue in multiple ways.

So I think a huge factor here is we're talking about the "Cleric class" as a free-standing thing outside of a setting. I think this has been an issue with D&D for one big reason for me - it removes the players from the conceits I want in the setting. And it's the GM's job to enforce those conceits.

If the Cleric class is written as a "healbot" then ultimately the GM has to wrestle with supplements that have temples full of clerics and wandering clerics, and PC clerics, and NPC clerics without any context to the setting other than the rules themselves. Same with Wizards. If the assumptions of the mechanics are the defining capacity of the game, then the setting wouldn't look like how it's presented.

It becomes the GM's job to enforce that. Normally in D&D I do the following (specifically for the Realms, but I do it in other settings too) - as a medieval society with many cultural analogs represented, magic is *rare* and *powerful*. Yes your Cleric is capable of MIRACULOUS healing potential. But not all priests or members of the faith are Clerics (the class), but do contribute to the "faith" writ-large. Clerics are those special people chosen by their Gods as agents of their power to exact their goals on the material world. Wizards aren't *everywhere* - they're cloistered, almost fraternal, they keep each other in check, because the reality is the multiverse is fucked up and dabbling with arcane powers is dangerous, not just because of its capacity to do harm but because *normal people FEAR IT*.

This is not universally true, of course, but it sets the tone that doesn't remove the assumptions of what the class can do mechanically, but it puts the onus on the GM to enforce the reality of the setting by any means necessary on why despite these elements existing, the world operates as its supposed to.

This only really matters when you're running large open-world sandbox games. <--- this is the big dividing line.

Without setting context - it's just sub-systems designed to do combat with itself in varying ways (class differentiation) completely without setting reality. Much in the same way if you play an FPS game like Battlefield - you have role-based classes for specific modes of engaging in combat (Medic, Assault, Support, Engineering, Recon) at no point do I need to discuss theater of operation, gear scarcity, or anything else that would exist in the world in which these characters operate.

So back to the fundamentals - specifically, the Cleric. Are these things necessary as an assumption for the core class? Or should they be specific along the lines of their assumed faith?

Savage Worlds can parse this a number of different ways. But for D&D purists, is this desirable? It is for me because I run the sandiest of sandboxes.

Just wanted to say I like specialty priests too. This is the norm for current D&D, more or less.

One of the coolest ideas I've heard about clerics is making them sorcerers in the S&S style, but most their spells had to be reversed.

Or turn them into snake cultists, with several snake themed spells (sticks to snakes, neutralize poison etc.)

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 26, 2025, 08:16:31 PMJust wanted to say I like specialty priests too. This is the norm for current D&D, more or less.

Eh, I'm not keen on the 5e approach - it's more like "extra-specialty priests".

A typical 5th-level cleric in 5e is going to have access to 14 spells, of which 6 come from their domain and the other 8 are chosen from more than 50 options. Plus cantrips. Add the channeled spell-like powers.

I'm increasingly sold on not just limiting class choice for campaigns I run, but heavily reworking some. My one current wizard has gotten used to having to spend time reading found spellbooks & hoping there's an interesting spell there, as well as a non-standard list of schools to choose from; in the campaign I just started prepping, I'm hoping I can make time for narrower & more tailored spell lists for clerics. I'd like that 5th level cleric to have the 6 domain spells, and then take choices from perhaps half as many options, if it can work out playable.

Quote from: tenbones on March 26, 2025, 08:00:44 PMSo back to the fundamentals - specifically, the Cleric. Are these things necessary as an assumption for the core class? Or should they be specific along the lines of their assumed faith?

First, sorry for veering off topic.

For me, I do not like the assumption that the cleric is a healbot or needs to have any healing ability whatsoever. I don't have a lot of experience prior to 3rd edition DnD but I envision a cleric to be more like a third edition bard.  One that inspires or, depending on the deity, invokes fear or awe.   

If I were to design one now, they might be able to mitigate damage or provide protection, but true healing should really be a miracle.  This is tough to do in HP systems, so I do see how the class evolved to be what it is currently. As I said, I did not really 'get' the cleric prior to third because we were young and nobody played one.  Looking back, I think it was a bit more in line with how I envision things.