Domain 2nd level overlap

[JoelF847]

My biggest problem with the specific domains are that 4 have the same 2nd level power.

Air
Darkness
Water
Weather

All have obscuring mist as their power. Not only would it be better to make the domains more distinct by limiting duplicate powers, but 3 of these 4 are thematically close and a cleric of a nature, weather, sea, etc. deity would normally want to take two of them, and would have way more obscuring mist spells per day than they'd know what to do with. On top of this, the weather domain then grants fog cloud at 4th level, which adds yet another fog or mist power in the mix.

I know that there are a limited number of 1st level spell effects that tie into these themes, but how about these alternatives:

Air - 2nd level grant wind shield, which acts in all ways as entropic shield, but manifests as a gust of wind that deflects ranged attacks instead of a multi-colored shield.

Darkness - 2nd level grant cloak of darkness, that works like jump, but instead grants bonuses to stealth

Water - 2nd level since this domain mainly grants cold powers, have it grant frozen fingers which acts just like burning hands, but does cold damage

Weather - 2nd level, keep obscuring mist

Weather - 4th level - grant gust of wind (yes this duplicates the air domain 4th level power, but at least these are 1/day, and not multiple times per day like the 2nd level power.)

[Arnim Thayer]

I agree that the domains still need some more tweaking to make them unique from each other.

The revamping of Domains has been the hardest thing to convert since I run an ongoing FR campaign. Some prestige classes can't be accessed with the new domain system, the confusion over whether diety specific spells from domains are still available, etc.

Don't get me wrong; I like the new Domain powers. They just push the envelope were backwards compatibility is concerned.

[Robert G. McCreary]

I'd also like obscuring mist to be removed from so many domain lists (although I think it's like that because it showed up on so many 3.5 domain spell lists). I'm playtesting a cleric of Gozreh now, and wanted Water and Weather domains for a complementary concept, but did not choose both specifically because of the 2nd-level domain power overlap.

Joel's replacement ideas sound mostly good to me, although Water's proposed "frozen fingers" ability is a little too similar to, and is in fact weaker than, the 1st-level icicle ability, so maybe something else?