Small, practical question, from a long-time lurker who is finally leading his primes to the planes.
If a cleric is worshipping a neutral god, from the Outlands, and he is located in any of the other Outer Planes, how well does he cast his spells? I know that when a cleric worshipping a god from Arcadia, he's at -1 level to cast on Mechanus, and -2 on Baator, etc...
But how is this when we are talking about a neutral deity?
Thank you, that answers my question. However, it does give rise to another one: Why was the rule taken out for the 3e+ rules? Of course, it's an unbalancing rule, I assume, but wasn't a different option considered, such as a weakened casting?
Taking away or weakening class abilities in such a manner was determined to be an "un-fun" thing by the 3e designers, and it lead to too much work for the DM to keep. Especially when they tried so hard to make the cleric an appealing class.
Also in MotP 3e they wanted to emphasize the fact that there could be different cosmologies, and didn't want to get too bogged done with having to explain the interactions with a deities homeplane and how it would affect only 1 and half classes out of 11.
As for why the PSCS doesn't have it (at the moment) - it's a courtesy to DMs and new blood players to not be required to pick up a whole new mechanical system on top of the existing. The planes can be complex enough as it is for the new DM, and since the PSCS is meant to lure newblood and old alike - we wanted to make sure it was an easy transition for them.
I am however working on creating an appendix with the keys and modifications to go either at the end of the PSCS release or into the Magic chapter so all the players who liked the 2nd ed system in their games can opt to use the rules.
Alright, very logical.
Then I have one more request in this same vein. I agree with that these rules have disappeared for 3e+ mostly, but for my own campaign, I'd like to have a reduced ('lite') version of these rules. I still want to reflect that priests have a harder time in planes different from their power, but I do not want to use the rules as they existed in the old 2e rules.
Can anyone help me with a good, balanced rule? I want to reflect the fact that it's harder, but only to a noticable extent, not to severely weaken their use altogether.
Well - look at the affects that a plane counter to a PCs alignment has on the PC. I think it's a -2 to -4 modifier on charisma and wisdom? Those are the major stats for clerics - so their save DCs and number of spells a day take a hit with that. Perhaps the negatives can be increased to get the feel you're aiming for?
I actually reverted to the older "no contact, no spells higher than 2nd level" clause originally introduced in 1st edition for my 2nd edition games. But one thing I did at one point when I was running a 2nd Edition adventure was to allow priests to borrow spell-casting from another god within the Pantheon, so that he could regain some of his spells.
In this case, I had a priest of Apollo venturing into the Gray Waste. He was 8th level at the time. As a priest of Apollo he had access to certain spheres (like Healing, Sun, Necromantic, etc). But Apollo couldn't contact him in the Gray Waste. Instead, Hades would be able to grant certain spells in Apollo's stead (e.g., Necromantic), but not others (Sun wasn't one of the spheres he typically grants), so the priest could regain 3rd and 4th level spells from the Necromantic sphere, but only 1st or 2nd level spells from the Sun sphere. I figured somewhere there was a priest of Hades in Arborea who received the same benefit to balance things on a cosmic scale. This idea makes pantheons a little more attractive.
For 3rd edition, since the cleric spell lists have been reunified, this doesn't work. So what I'd do is have the cleric cast spells as if he were a lower effective level, but still be able to cast the spells. In this case, the 8th level cleric might cast spells as a lower-level caster. You could use the great-wheel-path level deduction, which would make the effective level that of a 2nd level caster, or you could be nicer and have the path go through the Outlands, reducing the level by 2. The effective spell level would either be the lowest possible level for a particular spell, or the calculated level (so 4th level spells would be cast as a 7th level caster, while 1st level spells would be cast at either 6th or 2nd level, depending).
I've never tried it, but off the top of my head I'd say maybe some spellcraft checks (or a caster level check if you think it's more appropriate)? Perhaps a DC 10 + spell level + 1 per plane away from their Deity's realm to cast a spell. That's not going to be too hard for most casters, but it still reminds them that they are not at their peak power. Then Power Keys (if you decide to use them) could either reduce the DC by some amount or bypass the checks altogether on the target Plane.
I usually go with the alignment-based penalty being a penalty to divine caster level. So a chaotic priest on a lawful plane is going to have less powerful magic.
If it's 3e+ absolutely nothing. Clerics don't lose spell levels when casting on different planes.
If it's 2e, well they only lose 1 spell level casting on different outer planes. Because well, they're neutral and don't have many disadvantages because of that.