Playtesting the Alpha 2 rules by converting an 11th-level party and continuing the adventure (in this case, "Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk"). Everyone is quite happy with their "new" (converted) characters except the cleric (domains: Sun and War), who feels like he's been shafted seven ways 'til Sunday. With the War domain power changed to casting magic weapon a whole lot (which does him absolutely no good, because his weapon is already +1), he loses Weapon Focus. With the changes to the Sun domain, he loses Greater Turning. The change of the spell table to the wizard's one was no big deal, but by eliminating domain bonus spells, his primary firepower spells (flame strike and fire seeds) have both disappeared as well. The other domain powers more or less match domain spells, so he gains nothing from them. So, from his standpoint, he has gained one (1) feat by the conversion (because of the faster feat progression in Pathdfinder), and lost his best spells and an important class ability.
From a GM standpoint, the cleric now seems more balanced with the other classes. Still, we'll have to see how it plays out. It might be that the strategy for playing a cleric successfully will require a totally new approach. In the meantime, we have 2 PCs who are clearly more powerful (the paladin and the sorcerer), 1 who's about equal (an Unfettered, re-created using a fighter/thief), and 1 clearly inferior to before (the cleric).
Has anyone else had this experience with the cleric? What were your observations?
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hrm, oops. We've just been adding the domain stuff IN ADDITION to the old abilities/powers gained by clerics for domains, not as a replacement. We've never had CoDzilla issues in our games though. Personally I'm very disappointed to find out that domain spells and powers would be leaving, the Domain powers are nifty but hardly ample replacement.
Yeah, I've run into that problem, too. You lose some sweet abilities, and your best spells for....not much. And that's a problem for me. In addition to the fact that I like to use a lot of non-standard domains from the Spell Compendium, for me the cool domain powers are THE reason why I play a cleric instead of a favored soul. I love the changes to turning, but the domains are not cool.
Having introduced a lot of homebrew cleric domains (and relying on numerous from various 3e and 3.5e from "official" and third party publishers), I'm not real fond of the change to cleric domains.
Maybe in time with continued play, I might be able to get used to it. However, I don't think I want to and will probably just house rule in the old domain powers stuff.