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I am considering switching my cleric to the Words of Power system. (I know that this is a choice that normally needs to be made at 1st level, but in our campaign, when the APG came out we were allowed to "retcon" our characters if there was something that fit our character concept better.)

I have a question about spontaneous casting of healing wordspells. Page 162 of UM says that clerics can spontaneously cast a healing wordspell by burning off a prepared wordspell of equal or higher level, but the healing wordspell can't contain any other effect words.

My question is: can such a healing wordspell contain meta words that my cleric would be able to pick on the fly, as the situation dictates? For example, picking Selected vs. Selected (boost), or adding Distant to heal someone across the battlefield.

My instinct says yes, because the rules specifically say that the healing wordspell can't contain other effect words, but are silent as to meta words.

So, our brave heroes found a couple of unholy and keen weapons. We (including our GM) are all wondering whether it is possible to remove the unholy enchantment so we can wield them. Would enchanting the weapons with holiness cancel out the unholy enchantment? If so, would the weapons be holy and keen, or just keen?

Or would the weapons now be both holy and unholy, and thus somehow both good- and evil-aligned? Or would it simply not work, as the weapons are already evil-aligned (just like Align Weapon can't align weapons that are already aligned)?

Thanks for your insights.

I play in a group that uses the Earthdawn campaign setting with (essentially) D&D 4/e cosmology. It has been ruled that Horrors come from the Far Realm. And, as some of you may know, D&D 4/e does not have the Ethereal Plane in its cosmology.

My character has a Ring of Blinking. Mechanically, we're treating it just as it's written up, but saying that blinking works via some plane other than the Ethereal. We figured we'd handwave it for the last session, but make a ruling in time for the next session.

Our question is, for those of you who are familiar with either Earthdawn or (probably more importantly) D&D 4/e cosmology, what would be a good plane to stand in for the Ethereal in this setting? The question came up because we were trying to figure out how Horrors would interact with my character while he is blinking, i.e., could they perceive and/or hurt him. It was established that they could perceive our Wizard character who was perceiving them astrally.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

My character is a half-orc 4th level Cleric -- mostly focused on healing and buffing. Most of his attacks are ranged, with very occasional melee.

I'm leveling up and taking my next level in Inquisitor and am wondering how I might best allocate my new Inquisitor spells, 5th level feat, and skills. Right now I'm thinking of focusing my Inquisitor spells on what would otherwise be Wizard/Sorcerer spells (because I can cast the rest as a Cleric), taking a bunch of Knowledge skills to take advantage of Monster Lore, and taking Extra Channeling as my feat so that I can somewhat make up for the "lost" extra die of channeling that I would've gotten if I took my 5th level in Cleric instead.

Has anyone played a Cleric who has gone on to take levels in Inquisitor, and how have your builds gone?

Thanks for any advice.

I'm wondering if my character, who has the Birthmark trait, can use his Birthmark as a holy symbol for channeling. The description of the trait states that it can be used as a divine focus for spellcasting, but is silent as to whether it can be used for channeling. The description of the channeling class feature says that the cleric must be able to present his holy symbol in order to channel. Page 213 of the rules says that "the divine focus for a cleric or paladin is a holy symbol appropriate to the character's faith."

Does this mean that a divine focus is equivalent to a holy symbol for all purposes (e.g., channeling) or just for spellcasting?

This issue came up because we (my GM and I) are trying to reason out whether there would be an unbalancing advantage to a holy symbol that essentially can't be lost or stolen. I suspect the ramifications of a cleric losing his holy symbol are not as significant as the ramifications of a wizard losing his spellbook.

The issue of the holy symbol is coming up because, in our campaign world, clerics of the deity in question have to keep a low profile or risk being found out by clerics of a rival deity or by certain political forces, so there is an in-game reason why such clerics would not want to carry around holy symbols. So we came up with the idea of a normally-invisible divine seal that would be bestowed upon such clerics via a spell cast during an initiation ritual.

This weekend my new cleric character cast Enlarge Person for the first time, and I'm not sure I'm seeing the net benefit of the spell -- wondering if I'm missing something. Here's what our group figured out:

+2 STR bonus means +1 to attack rolls with melee weapons, but there's a -1 penalty for size, so no net change to attack rolls with melee weapons, and actually a -1 penalty to attack rolls with projectile weapons.

Granted, the +2 STR bonus means a +1 bonus to damage rolls, and melee weapons do more damage due to increased size. For example, my enlarged greataxe does 3d6.

-2 DEX penalty effectively means a -1 penalty to AC, combined with the -1 penalty due to size means a -2 net penalty to AC.

10' reach.

It seemed to us that the only thing that the spell really accomplished during this particular battle was making my character easier to hit, and a more attractive target. Thus, we renamed it the "Decoy" spell.

Are there other implications of Enlarge Person that we're missing here?