I've always liked the Greyhawk setting and, after a hiatus of about ten years from gaming where I basically fleshed out world history and made a billion NPC's, have been running a campaign for a couple of years.
Somewhere during that hiatus, before third addition, 2nd addition Greyhawk stuff modified clerics in Greyhawk (Greyhawk Adventures maybe?). Now in 3rd and 3.5 they seem to be platemail wearing medics again.
Has anyone taken a shot at modifying clerics based on their main diety?
I've been working on it for clerics of Ehlonna and Trithereon and seem to be coming up w/ some themes. For instance, Clerics of some dieties, like Ehlonna, Olidamarra and some others, should not be proficient w/ Heavy Armor, but should have an expanded skill list and slightly higher skill point accrual.
This just makes more sense to me. Thoughts?
It surely makes sense to vary clerics based on the tenets of their religion. This was in 1e (the World of Greyhawk boxed set from 1983) and in 2e (From the Ashes boxed set) the case.
I did like the idea behind the spheres in 2e, which became the domains in 3e. But basically all priests in 3e look alike, differing only in weapons used (ok, that is overly simplified...).
If you take away the use of heavy armor, which is available as a feat to classes not owning them (like Thief), give them back a feat, say skill focus on fitting class skills.
Some of the domains in 3e give the cleric additional class skills (Trickery, Knowledge, Plant at least), so have a look into these.
You could always try and develop a prestige class based on the priests in 2e. Some years ago, I developed a Earth Dragon PrC, based on the speciality priest presented in Slavers (TSR 11621, from Sean K Reynolds and Chris Pramas, 2000). My party is just going through the old slavers series, and I need that some time in the future for Stalman Klim, the High Priest.
Stefan
In one of my campaigns (not Greyhawk unfortunately) I give clerics the option of getting rid of domains in exchange for other special powers. This tends to make clerics a little bit more different from one another, but a lot of players don't like giving up domains to give it a try.
Clerics are free to do what they want. What god they follow ultimately determines what sort of cleric they are, as does the composition of the party, and what other classes the player has (a fighter/cleric of St. Cuthbert would look and sound a lot different to a cleric/rogue of Olidammara). Really, even in 2nd Ed. clerics were still the main healers. Who actually played one of the variant clerics without healing ability unless the party already had enough healing? Probably not many.
I miss the specialty priests of 2E as well. I've done some work on creating specialized priest classes, though not everything is complete. This takes quite a bit of work, & game balance is a constant worry.
Priest Spheres for 3.5: http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk/PriestSpheres3E.html (I created this mainly to help me in designing my own classes, but you may find it of use as well)
The priest classes for Pelor & Kord are pretty much ready to go. The others are in various stages of development.
Boccob: http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk/Boccob.html
Corellon Larethian: http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk/Corellon.html
Kord: http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk/Kord.html
Olidammara: http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk/Olidammara.html
Pelor: http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk/Pelor.html
Tharizdun: http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk/Tharizdun.html