Does the cleric spell list suck?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Is it true?


What are you using it for?

Because while I admit that levels 3 and 7 are pretty light on day-to-day goodies, the class is still extremely powerful.


So I'm not the only one who feels that 7th level spells are mostly "meh". Yes, you do get summon monster, but a fair number are things like resurrection, which, although powerful, are not spells you normally carry.


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....no? It's not as proactive as the wizard one, but it's full of solid reactive and buffing capabilities. It's different, but clerics are just fine in the spell list division.

Druids on the other hand get a ton of goodies to make up for their rather lackluster spell list that's mostly niche spells.


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The Cleric/Oracle list is not as good as the Wizard/Sorcerer list, but having the best spell list is kinda the whole point of Wizard/Sorcerer. Of course you're not going to compare favorably against classes whose entire reason for existing is having the best spells.

Shadow Lodge

darkwarriorkarg wrote:
So I'm not the only one who feels that 7th level spells are mostly "meh". Yes, you do get summon monster, but a fair number are things like resurrection, which, although powerful, are not spells you normally carry.

I'm a fan of Bestow Grace of the Champion and Waves of Ecstasy myself. But there are a fair number of 7th level spells that aren't exactly practical for your average adventuring day.


xavier c wrote:
Is it true?

Clerics have such a wide variety of spells it's a bit difficult to define things they aren't good at.

Clerics don't have the greatest defensive spells (eg Mirror Image), but then they don't need it, due to good armor proficiency and good hit points. Clerics don't get Spell Turning or Protection from Spells, for instance, but get Protection from Alignment and Spell Immunity, plus they get two good saves and are guaranteed a high Will save.

Clerics aren't so great at dishing out damage via spells. Flame Strike is cool, but wizards were hitting larger areas early on.

Clerics get great control spells. Blindness is a 2nd-level spell that inflicts permanent blindness. It takes magic (eg Dispel Magic, a higher-level spell) to eliminate it. Hold Person is a lower level spell for clerics than for wizards for some reason.

Clerics are more than decent at buffing-and-bashing. Not as ridiculously overpowered as in 3.0 (Righteous Might got hit with the nerf stick, for instance, and clerics lose a category of armor) but they're still pretty potent.


The cleric list is weak for a 9 level list. It lacks good non-mind-effecting offensive spells, good battlefield control, and good focus spells. This is appropriate because clerics are 3/4 BAB, but I consider the druid list better post-UM.

P.S. You can happily fill all your 3rd level slots with dispel magic if you have no better ideas.


Pick up a metamagic feat.


The list isn't as good as others are in a vacuum or in normal gameplay. That said, a cleric or oracle has great advantage in using their class features to maximize the desired strength or minimize the weakness of the list. I dare say that oracles and clerics have THE best class features in the game, and far better than their arcane brothers, so it is reasonable for their list to be lesser than wizard/sorcerer.


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From experience at high levels, the cleric list has plenty of reactive spells. Spells to cure damage or status effects, for example. That clogs up that level three spell list a bit. At higher levels, many spells are situational or possibly alignment restricted. This makes level seven weaker. But it's a class whose spell list was stretched from seven levels to nine (not counting orisons). I admit I've spent my share of time looking for good bread and butter spells for some of those levels.


The reactive spells are a necessary evil, but they aren't really a credit to the cleric. The Paladin got a lot of them as a tacked on class feature in the 3.5-PF conversion.

Having the ability to fix things that should never have been put in the game in the first place is not a positive good.


I honestly wish that the spell list for clerics had a few more decent proactive spells. A bit more battlefield control beyond wall of stone and summon monster, for example. A couple more general purpose blasting spells. I've never understood why the cleric gets hold person a level ahead of the wizard but never gets hold monster for that matter. The spell list of the cleric is IMHO the reason why it's hard to build a decent man-of-the-cloth type cleric. I've seen some of the 3rd party options, but without spells to keep you productive round by round, it gets fairly boring just waiting for something to fix to come up or to spam the same few spells because that's all you've got.


Yeah the Cleric list is rather dull. You'd think being a servant of the gods would atleast let you call down some lightning to smite a heretic.


I think part of it is that the sorcerer/wizard list is just too damn strong. It does seem like a cop-out answer, but I honestly feel like the cleric list is pretty spot-on balance-wise, for the most part. What makes the cleric strong is the class itself. Domain choice can help out with being more proactive, having access to armor and 3/4 BAB provides room for flexibility in builds, and along with the wizard clerics (to the best of my knowledge) are the only class that can leave empty spell slots and fill them later in the day as the need arises. So their list is built around this and balanced well, while the wizard list is built to be strong and then, oops, they can also leave slots open.

I had a player who had this same question about how niche and specific some cleric spells are, but once I told him that they can leave slots open he made me find the exact text in the book and slapped his forehead. The fact that, with 15 minutes of down time, a cleric can cast literally any spell on the cleric list that isn't an opposing alignment so long as they left a slot open means that those specific spells are a lot more powerful. But I will agree that the cleric needs some more fun blasty/destruction spells without needing the right domain. It's a subtle spell list, and it seems a lot weaker than wizard because Paizo seems to love theyselves some arcane caster...


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xavier c wrote:
Is it true?

No.


The cleric list by itself? Yeah kinda. It's balanced around being attached to a Cleric who has full access to choose from it with 3/4ths BAB and good armor proficiencies.

A Wizard's spell list for example, is balanced more around not having all the spells on hand from day to day(Till super high levels) and they lack class features besides their spell casting. Thus their list is stronger to compensate.


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Clerics are literally the best how dare you suggest otherwise I oughta smack the taste out of your mouth

Like everyone else has been saying, the cleric spell list only seems weak because it's subtle. The little pluses stack up, if you need healing, it's there, and if you don't, you get more spells. With the right domains, they can be front-liners, controllers, faces, anything. It's a good spell list backed up by great class abilities.


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What are you comparing it to? A cleric's spell list may not allow access to as much raw power as a wizard's spell list, but it's way better than a fighter's spell list.


JoeJ wrote:

What are you comparing it to? A cleric's spell list may not allow access to as much raw power as a wizard's spell list, but it's way better than a fighter's spell list.

Actually with the fighter archetype and the feat that gives 3 extra uses of martial flexibility, the fighter could have what amounts to a spell list.

Still think the clerics is better though.


i was comparing to the wizard's spell list

I just want a cleric that can blast stuff.

And have more flavorful spells like a cleric's version of Mage's Magnificent Mansion that creates a planar temple.


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Clerics have decent BAB and HD, good saves, channel energy, cool domain powers, spontaneous healing spells, and free access to every spell on their list. If their spells were as good as the wizard's as well, it would be hard to justify playing anything that wasn't a cleric.


xavier c wrote:
I just want a cleric that can blast stuff.

It can be done.


Well, Divine Casters are not very good blasters by tradition. Not much to be done about that.

You have a lot of flavor spells though. Bestow Grace of the Champion lets you make people into paladins. You can't build a temple by snapping your fingers, but Forbiddance makes any place into (un)holy ground: no planar travel, period. Differing alignments get blasted, and it's permanent. You can even set up a password for your less pious party members to go in. Banishment tells people from other planes to gtfo your god's turf. Mark of Justice let's you brand people to discourage sinning anymore, and Reprobation is specifically for permanently marking heretics of your own faith.


Matthew Downie wrote:
xavier c wrote:
I just want a cleric that can blast stuff.
It can be done.

I cant open the link but I second this. If other pantheons are allowed a theologian cleric of Ra can single handedly destroy average difficulty modules. Dazing and intensified fireballs as a level 4 spell is beyond ridiculous. furthermore that same cleric without much effort has access to arguably the best variant channel in the game of rulership. That allows an option to simply daze lock whole mobs through your channeling. Finally, how about when you get level 5 spells you cast a quickened/intensified fireball and then cast a empowered/intensified fireball as a level 3 spell in ONE round? that should come to about 25D6 area damage without further improvements (which can be done) that enough blasting for ya sir?


xavier c wrote:
I just want a cleric that can blast stuff.
Link fixed.


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You do your blasting with the help of a middleman, everyone else. Every time a wizard drops a fireball, it is a fireball delivered from that battery of hitpoints you keep mostly full (through use of proactiv methods before and during combat, then burning through sticks of CLW afterwards). When your fighter wades into combat, he swings a sword backed by your prayer. When the rogue stabs the tarrasque and survives to see another day, it was a rapid retreat into a handy sanctuary that saved him. To blast as a cleric is to blast vicariously through your allies, it's not a great class for the character that wants a spotlight, it's better for the guy who wants to win the war first, by rigging the combat in favor of his allies, then maybe take a swing at the dying bbeg to see if he can steal the glory (but sadly probably never the Sorcerer's numerous boy/girlfriends, Wisdom is not as attractive as Charisma, sadly). A Cleric will never be as good a blaster in the conventional sense (unless the ACG did something nuts to it).


KuntaSS wrote:
You do your blasting with the help of a middleman, everyone else. Every time a wizard drops a fireball, it is a fireball delivered from that battery of hitpoints you keep mostly full (through use of proactiv methods before and during combat, then burning through sticks of CLW afterwards). When your fighter wades into combat, he swings a sword backed by your prayer. When the rogue stabs the tarrasque and survives to see another day, it was a rapid retreat into a handy sanctuary that saved him. To blast as a cleric is to blast vicariously through your allies, it's not a great class for the character that wants a spotlight, it's better for the guy who wants to win the war first, by rigging the combat in favor of his allies, then maybe take a swing at the dying bbeg to see if he can steal the glory (but sadly probably never the Sorcerer's numerous boy/girlfriends, Wisdom is not as attractive as Charisma, sadly). A Cleric will never be as good a blaster in the conventional sense (unless the ACG did something nuts to it).

I can see what your saying but frankly I think a cleric with his list plus features means that he can be as good at anything as any other class because he can change tactics as needed. I think with archetypes and other material that has been added over the years the cleric/oracle is FAR from a support guy, he is likely the leading man. Heck people on these forums even joke that 4 man cleric party is the best party.

An evangelist summoning cleric is VERY comparable to the master summoner. The fire based theologian cleric is arguably better than the sorcerer in the role of blasting as the cleric doesn't have the metamagic drawbacks (or at least the feat tax). And so on.

I admit im a bit biased but the cleric and oracle classes are the gatekeepers of min-max PCs. Meaning you are almost certainly comparing your effectiveness of your idea to either a cleric or an oracle. If you cant do it better than they can then its time to go back to the drawing boards.


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Renegadeshepherd wrote:
Heck people on these forums even joke that 4 man cleric party is the best party.

"joke"

It can be a tall order to find a situation where 4 clerics can't operate effectively.

inb4 dead magic plane

Dark Archive

The cleric spell list is pretty powerful and versatile, however as others have said, it is much more subtle.

Furthermore, many more spells on the cleric list require forethought in their use and planning whereas the wizard list has a plethora of readily apparent go-to options. The cleric list is smaller and possessed of far more reactive spells. Most optimizers argue that kill first and deal with the consequences later is the way to go. It's a live fast die hard sort of approach. However, being able to recover from effects both in an optimized consideration and in a realistic one makes the cleric list every bit as potent. Also, if you pay attention, there are quite a few general go-to spells for a cleric of almost any build. You just have to take a bit of time to think about it.

But yes, it will feel rather lackluster when you consider what the sorc/wiz list looks like.


xavier c wrote:
Is it true?

If you just want to play it as a caster the list not very exciting.

Spells don't scale well and high level list is kind of meh


DominusMegadeus wrote:

Well, Divine Casters are not very good blasters by tradition. Not much to be done about that.

You have a lot of flavor spells though. Bestow Grace of the Champion lets you make people into paladins. You can't build a temple by snapping your fingers, but Forbiddance makes any place into (un)holy ground: no planar travel, period. Differing alignments get blasted, and it's permanent. You can even set up a password for your less pious party members to go in. Banishment tells people from other planes to gtfo your god's turf. Mark of Justice let's you brand people to discourage sinning anymore, and Reprobation is specifically for permanently marking heretics of your own faith.

OK, let's get a few things straight:

First, we're talking about adventuring-type spells.

Bestow Grace of the Champion only works on Lawful Good recipients. Other tables may differ, but the only time I've seen LG was for playing a paladin. It's a useless spell otherwise.

Bestow grace of the Champion:

Spoiler:

School transmutation [good, law]; Level cleric/oracle 7, paladin 4
CASTING

Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, DF
EFFECT

Range touch
Target lawful good creature touched
Duration 1 round/level (see text)
Saving Throw yes (harmless); Spell resistance yes (harmless)

Forbiddance: 6 rounds to cast, expensive to use. Might be our GM, but even at high-level, we're cash-starved. In any case, useless unless you have time to either set up a trap or you need to enhance a camp/headquarters.

Forbiddance:

Spoiler:
School abjuration; Level cleric/oracle 6, inquisitor 6
CASTING

Casting Time 6 rounds
Components V, S, M (holy water and incense worth 1,500 gp, plus 1,500 gp per 60-foot cube), DF
EFFECT

Range medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Area 60-ft. cube/level (S)
Duration permanent
Saving Throw see text; Spell Resistance yes

Mark of Justice: 10 minutes to cast, must be a willing or restrained creature because you need to write all over it.

Mostly useless, except for post-battle mop up. If there are any survivors.

And reprobation? Useless. It's a story point/character background spell.


One word to use when discussing the cleric spell list... FUNCTIONAL

You wont find many snazzy spells but they get the job done. I think the PF cleric spell list is about right.

Level 1-3... Pretty boring

Level 4.... Things start to warm up

Level 5-9.... Some excellent spells but again pretty functional

What you have to do is really look into the fine print with cleric spells to get the most from them and think ahead as to when they'd be best to use.

Spells like Grace, Spiritual weapon, instant armour, spiritual ally.. etc can be incredibly effective if utilised properly. Clerics can make some of the best anti-caster builds with things like spell immunity, spell resistance, silence and plane shift

At higher levels cleric gets some very good single target SOS spells and the odd good single target blasty...... but it is blasting and in particular AOE blasting that has ALWAYS been the absence and I think that is thematically relevant.

If you do want to flesh things out a bit I can heartily recommend going Samsaran..... and pinching 6 spells of your choice from the druid list.... you can really find some great spells to fill in your gaps (eg explosion of rot, barkskin)


Levels 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, are all great.
Levels 3, 7, and to a lesser extent 9 are all mediocre to bad. Fortunately extended 2nd level resist energies fill that spell slot.

Shadow Lodge

Undone wrote:

Levels 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, are all great.

Levels 3, 7, and to a lesser extent 9 are all mediocre to bad. Fortunately extended 2nd level resist energies fill that spell slot.

I dunno, dispel magic and magic vestiments are pretty nice 3rd level spells.


Zark wrote:
xavier c wrote:
Is it true?

If you just want to play it as a caster the list not very exciting.

Spells don't scale well and high level list is kind of meh

In a nutshell Clerics have the spell list of a martial. They get the stuff a good GM would have to drop scrolls or potions of if you weren't there and they have mostly selfish combat buffs.

It's almost impossible to make a caster cleric that isn't summon focused, but it's easy to make a cleric that does a fighter's job and not all that hard to do the basic front line two hander shtick better than the fighter. (having a strong will save covers a multitude of sins)

The wizard is the other way around. It's easy to be a caster but very hard to build for combat and requires carrying a badly written legacy prestige class.

The druid has a casting list on a natively combat capable chassis. With the advent of dazing spell the druid's DoT blasting focus turns into powerful control and lockdown capability. It's not the wizard list, but it's workable.

Sovereign Court

Frankly as a cleric with 7th level spell and soon to have 8th level spell, I mostly focus on buffing myself and the party with some summoning (got the feats summon good and sacred summon), combined with planar allies and the best buff spell ever made Blessing of Fervor...I'm doing fine. It's just like people said, very subtle.


HAs anyone even looked at the new spells clerics get in the acg?


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TarkXT wrote:

HAs anyone even looked at the new spells clerics get in the acg?

It's not out for the general public yet. Only subscribers. I'll see the contents when they get to pfsrd. I think quite a few are like me...


The PDF is freely available for anyone to purchase right now, actually.

I skimmed the ACG spell list and nothing really "grabbed me", but since I'm not playing a divine caster at the moment I wasn't paying particular attention to the cleric spells.

I do quite like "Refine Improvised Weapon", which lets you treat improvised weapons as actual masterwork weapons - ie beat people up with a chair leg that's treated as a masterwork club. Unfortunately the duration is limited to 1 hour/level. I really wish it had an option to be made permanent.


The biggest problem I have with the cleric spell list is that that most every cleric I've seen ends up using the same spells, regardless of deity or alignment, because so much of the list is heavily situational in it's effectiveness. Carry over the fact that oracles, with a wide variety of mysteries available to them, also rely on this one list that is very clearly oriented toward a single focus, and I just don't care for it. It is probably the first thing I would rewrite if given the chance, going back to the spheres idea from earlier editions, using domains as the guiding focus for the cleric class and access to spells, not a generic spell list that doesn't work for a great many cleric concepts. In the end, to me at least, it's not that it's weak, but rather that it's so hyper focused on the support/buff role that it only barely works for more martial type clerics and is completely inappropriate for many, if not most, oracles. On the whole, the druid spell list is far better built in my opinion; the power level is not insane, like the wizard's list, but it's versatile enough to cover a variety of concepts.


I kinda liked the Holy Ice Weapon spell that got added in. Gives another use for Holy Water besides as a splash weapon. Yeah, it's more of a personal use spell. Still fun.


darkwarriorkarg wrote:
DominusMegadeus wrote:

Well, Divine Casters are not very good blasters by tradition. Not much to be done about that.

You have a lot of flavor spells though. Bestow Grace of the Champion lets you make people into paladins. You can't build a temple by snapping your fingers, but Forbiddance makes any place into (un)holy ground: no planar travel, period. Differing alignments get blasted, and it's permanent. You can even set up a password for your less pious party members to go in. Banishment tells people from other planes to gtfo your god's turf. Mark of Justice let's you brand people to discourage sinning anymore, and Reprobation is specifically for permanently marking heretics of your own faith.

OK, let's get a few things straight:

First, we're talking about adventuring-type spells.

Bestow Grace of the Champion only works on Lawful Good recipients. Other tables may differ, but the only time I've seen LG was for playing a paladin. It's a useless spell otherwise.

Bestow grace of the Champion:** spoiler omitted **

Forbiddance: 6 rounds to cast, expensive to use. Might be our GM, but even at high-level, we're cash-starved. In any case, useless unless you have time to either set up a trap or you need to enhance a camp/headquarters.

Forbiddance:** spoiler omitted **

Mark of Justice: 10 minutes to cast, must be a willing or restrained creature because you need to write all over...

He said his problem was a lack of flavorful spells. I wasn't suggesting a typical adventuring day spell list, I was posting flavor.


DominusMegadeus wrote:
He said his problem was a lack of flavorful spells.

That right there is my biggest qualm with the list. Too many flavorful spells are absolutely not worth bothering with ever for a wide variety of reasons, and everyone ends up using the same mostly boring spells despite supposedly following different gods and beliefs. Power isn't an issue with a cleric, supporting any kind of rp or fluff through actual spells or class abilities is. Tack on the use of this same list for oracles, and the problem is amplified even more.


sunshadow21 wrote:
DominusMegadeus wrote:
He said his problem was a lack of flavorful spells.
That right there is my biggest qualm with the list. Too many flavorful spells are absolutely not worth bothering with ever for a wide variety of reasons, and everyone ends up using the same mostly boring spells despite supposedly following different gods and beliefs. Power isn't an issue with a cleric, supporting any kind of rp or fluff through actual spells or class abilities is. Tack on the use of this same list for oracles, and the problem is amplified even more.

Which spells are both flavorful and good on the Wizard list? I mean, off the top of my head the most weird or flavorful spells are generally pretty bad in terms of usefulness.

Moving on, there have been plenty of times my wizard wished he had access to those charming little cleric spells that do things my wizard list just can't. Of course that's because I'm a transmuter and I focus on support casting, and when you're doing good-touch casting it's often about what stacks and what doesn't. Really, 'splodey-caster is more of a Sorceror Idiom anyway, even if they only get 1 more spell per day. But let's not get TOO tangential. I was looking at mythic spells recently and discovered quite a few that were very interesting and NOT available to wizard.

For *interesting* spells, wizard (and I think witch, though I haven't played one yet) has more weird stuff that ended up crawling into the lore and list over the decades of D&D magic. Of course most of that junk is USELESS or also available to other classes. Create demiplane, for example. Miracle, as another example, is both better and worse than Wish, since it costs nothing, has less solid limitations, but can be nixed at any time by the DMyour diety.

Then there's bad touch. A Cleric has a LOT of nasty "hurt you" spells that are touch-range. Many of them are NOT on the Wizard list and really nasty, but they are single-target bad-touches instead of ranged and/or multi-target.

And then there's commune. Contact other Plane basically eats a wizard's brain in exchange for unreliable information, Commune costs a little upfront cash and is as solid and reliable as a divination gets.

Basically, do you like apples or oranges?


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I think the best part about Miracle as opposed to Wish is that if you're really RPing well, your DM is almost forced to go along with your desires or he's just crapping all over the only player who's actually in-character.


DominusMegadeus wrote:
I think the best part about Miracle as opposed to Wish is that if you're really RPing well, your DM is almost forced to go along with your desires or he's just crapping all over the only player who's actually in-character.

I plead for Torag to slay this chaotic evil balor. If anyone said torag would inflict penalties for slaying a CE balor I think the entire table would pull a Wut? moment.


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I wouldn't say the cleric list sucks, but I think it was written by a writer who was very aware of the knowledge that the cleric gets access to every spell on his list automatically. That means there's a lot more room to design "narrow" spells or divide spell effects up between different spells.

Which in turn is kind of frustrating when you're trying to make the Oracle's limited spells known cover everything a cleric is expected to handle.


Kudaku wrote:

I wouldn't say the cleric list sucks, but I think it was written by a writer who was very aware of the knowledge that the cleric gets access to every spell on his list automatically. That means there's a lot more room to design "narrow" spells or divide spell effects up between different spells.

Which in turn is kind of frustrating when you're trying to make the Oracle's limited spells known cover everything a cleric is expected to handle.

I admit that kind of pidgeonholes oracles into taking a race that has a favored class bonus for extra spells known. You can just feel so limited without it, even if you still effectively adventure. Might be a problem with me though, I'm sure there's plenty of people who are fine with fewer spells known on those sorts of classes.


boring7 wrote:
sunshadow21 wrote:
DominusMegadeus wrote:
He said his problem was a lack of flavorful spells.
That right there is my biggest qualm with the list. Too many flavorful spells are absolutely not worth bothering with ever for a wide variety of reasons, and everyone ends up using the same mostly boring spells despite supposedly following different gods and beliefs. Power isn't an issue with a cleric, supporting any kind of rp or fluff through actual spells or class abilities is. Tack on the use of this same list for oracles, and the problem is amplified even more.

Which spells are both flavorful and good on the Wizard list? I mean, off the top of my head the most weird or flavorful spells are generally pretty bad in terms of usefulness.

Moving on, there have been plenty of times my wizard wished he had access to those charming little cleric spells that do things my wizard list just can't. Of course that's because I'm a transmuter and I focus on support casting, and when you're doing good-touch casting it's often about what stacks and what doesn't. Really, 'splodey-caster is more of a Sorceror Idiom anyway, even if they only get 1 more spell per day. But let's not get TOO tangential. I was looking at mythic spells recently and discovered quite a few that were very interesting and NOT available to wizard.

For *interesting* spells, wizard (and I think witch, though I haven't played one yet) has more weird stuff that ended up crawling into the lore and list over the decades of D&D magic. Of course most of that junk is USELESS or also available to other classes. Create demiplane, for example. Miracle, as another example, is both better and worse than Wish, since it costs nothing, has less solid limitations, but can be nixed at any time by the DMyour diety.

Then there's bad touch. A Cleric has a LOT of nasty "hurt you" spells that are touch-range. Many of them are NOT on the Wizard list and really nasty, but they are single-target bad-touches instead of...

The key to me is that not all wizards end up choosing the same spells all the time. A transmuter is going to pick largely different spells than an evoker. Sure, there are a few basics everyone grabs, but for the most part, the spells cast varies from wizard to wizard. You cannot say that about the cleric spell list. Every level has at most half a dozen spells that make up 90% of the spell actually cast, regardless of deity, alignment, or however the player chooses to rp the character. The list is great if you like playing healing/support/buff, but for everything else it sucks. Even counting noncore spells, very few spells target anything but wisdom; almost everything is a range of touch (not optimal for most potential cleric concepts), and there are very few proactive spells that aren't buffs. And because of the power that that the list provides, they can't strengthen domains anymore than they already have to give some customization.

In the end, power isn't everything; the cleric has bunches of power, but it still usually feels very bland. Deity, domain, and other rp choices are rarely supported by the spell list, and it's an even bigger problem when it's used by the oracle class. Clerics need a way to customize their spell list the same way wizards do; earlier editions had that with the concept of sphere. If they brought that back and tied it into the domain system, than you would get stronger mechanical support for more character concepts while keeping domains and the spell list in general more meaningful to the individual character concept while still being easy to understand.

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