Question on clerics switching deities and alignments

[Paul Winters]

If a cleric worships a new deity whose alignment causes the cleric to be an ex-cleric of its original patron deity. Can the cleric exchange those levels of clerics for ones of its new deity? If the cleric went from the worship an evil to a good deity, does the cleric still have spontaneous inflict and channel negative energy? Can it re-choose those class options to mimic the new deity?

[udalrich]

I think this is moving into fairly unusual waters, so the player and GM need to work together. How the change is happened could also be important.

From a playability point of view, I don't think it's feasible to not allow the cleric to apply those new levels to the new deity. An Ex-cleric of Good 9/Cleric of Evil 1 in a tenth level party might not die quickly (he'll have the saves and hit points of a 10th level character), but he's not going to contribute much to the fight for a long time.

If the the change was the result of the player making poor choices and ignoring warnings that this might happen, I might make the transition happen over several sessions. (Interacting with a different god requires new methods, and the god might not want to grant the strongest spells until he's certain that his new cleric will be using them "appropriately".)

If the change was externally imposed (Deck of Many Things, Helm of Opposite Alignment were they made a good effort to determine what it was), I'd be much more forgiving. I'd immediately switch over the cleric levels and allow the player to change his class options if he wanted.