| ParagonDireRaccoon |
This may get moved to homebrew, but I'm looking for feedback/troubleshooting for custom domain spell lists. I'm sure it could cause problems, and I'm sure there are things I'm not thinking of that would be issues.
I'm writing up Native American mythology spirits/gods, and considering slightly customizable domain spell lists. The Four Sisters (one four each of north, east, south, and west) grant spells as a collective- there is a primary domain spell list, but each of the four sisters has a domain. A cleric or druid worshipping the four sisters receives spells from the collective, but has a particular sister/cardinal direction they venerate first. A cleric or druid getting a domain from the four sisters can swap out one spell from the primary domain spell list for one spell of the same (or lower) level from the signature domain of the primary sister they worship.
There will be other pairs of spirits/gods/heroes of myth with the same setup.
So this gives a little more flexibility in domain spells than is typical. A druid taking a domain instead of an animal companion can customize the one domain. This is partly offset by losing the animal companion feature, and imo a lot of the best spells to swap in are already druid spells. For clerics, there could be more potentially game-breaking issues- with two domains, and one of those domain with a spell normally not part of that domain, there could be combos that would be problematic.
The primary domain spell list hasn't been written up, it will already draw on spells in other domain lists. The four signature domains available to swap with are Sun (south/summer), Travel (west/spring), Community (north/winter), and War (east/fall).
For now, this is a purely intellectual exercise. Native American mythology doesn't get written up much in RPGs, there are cultural property and intellectual property rights associated with a lot of the folklore and mythology, and RPG developers have a lot of respect for intellectual property rights. Arcana Unearthed did some cool stuff with a few Native American mythology style classes, but I'm trying to play around with domain and sub-mechanics of existing classes. Of course, tinkering with mechanics of domains can cause balance issues, hence the thread.