Ceremony works with druids, nature wedding. Paladins and spirit guardians i agree with, they should not be getting that unless with a subclass.
Druids aren't priests of any deity. Nature weddings would be nature domain clerics. Not druids.
Certainly you can make any PC a follower of any deity (even if their alignments are somewhat dissimilar, you could make it work), and there is no priest class even though clerics are priestly in ways. Druids can get their druidic powers from nature deities or directly from nature itself. The short description of the druid class even calls it a priest:
A priest of the Old Faith, wielding the powers of nature — moonlight and plant growth, fire and lightning — and adopting animal forms
I wouldn't say that a druid is non-religious, but liken it more to real world religions of natural spirits vs real world mono- or polytheism.
You don't need to follow a deity to do a wedding (or coming-of-age , baptism etc.) ceremony. You don't even need to be religious. Not in the real world and not in D&D. Officiating a wedding is also done by government officials.
My GOO Warlock was already legally able to take Ceremony with the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation. Marriage is a contract. Who better to deal with contracts than a Warlock? ;P
In the current world, aye. However the ceremony related to it is still very much religious, or is it only traditional weddings that are such?
And the Dedication from Ceremony states "you god's service." The spell is far too tailored to clerics to be handed out, at least in my opinion. Of course I can see it done by non clerics who are still part of some religious group such as the acolyte background will provide (I will include cults here as a faith).
Hm, now I ponder what the difference between druids and nature clerics is.
Power Word Heal is a worse spell than Mass Heal anyways. Duplicate spells lead to bloat, bloat leads to overwhelming content, overwhelming content leads to exploitation, exploitation leads to imbalance, imbalance leads to audience shrinkage, audience shrinkage leads to the end of an edition.
Power Word Heal is a worse spell than Mass Heal anyways. Duplicate spells lead to bloat, bloat leads to overwhelming content, overwhelming content leads to exploitation, exploitation leads to imbalance, imbalance leads to audience shrinkage, audience shrinkage leads to the end of an edition.
Duplicate Spells is the path to the dark side. The end of am edition leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
But in seriousness, I think you made a couple of leaps in the middle. Fewer spells than the Wizard is overwhelming? How does overwhelm lead straight to exploitation? I would say it can be caused by bloat, but still requires specific circumstances. Imbalance does not necessarily cause audience shrinkage. The ranger is the mechanically weakest class, but it is far from the least played.
5e was designed with the strict goal of being as deeply oversimplified as WotC could make it. To whatever extent they are able without enraging the fanbase, Reuse Reduce and Recycle is the name of the game. Reuse assets, reduce design overhead and complexity, and recycle game elements wherever possible.
The idea of designing new not-Smite Smite spells for rangers, then a different set of note-Smite not-Rangersmite Smite spells for clerics, then a different different set of not-smite-not-Rangersmite-not-Clericsmite Smite spells for, say, Bard? it's not only ridiculous when those spells already exist, it's anathema to the core design goal of 5e.
That and Bards can already take every single spell in the game as it is. All this "class unique spells are class features and nobody should ever have a spell that's the same as another class EVER!" hornswoggle is already bunk, because Magical Secrets exists. Bards can take Smites, or Spirit Guardians, or Counterspell, or Swift Quiver, or Find (Greater) Steed, or Wish, or True Polymorph, or anything-the-hell-else they want from every single spell list in the entire game because bard. Nobody's upset about that. Nobody's saying that bards destroy the identity of clerics because they can opt into Mass Heal as an 18th-level Secret, or that bards are destroying the identity of palladalladingdongs because they can grab Banishing Smite and Greater Steed, like, seven levels before the palladalladingdong itself could do so.
So why [redacted] about this expanded spell list on the basis of class identity alone, without any other justification for why certain classes shouldn't obtain certain spells? It's already a moot point - that ship has sailed, with Captain Dandyman the Lute Boi at the helm.
Notes: Please refrain from assigning character to other users' responses or opinions.
The only one spell that should not be there is Spirit Guardians for paladin (large aoe spells for the paladin should be treated like a healing spell on a wizard, it should be very rare if ever), and animate dead for warlocks (do i even need to begin to describe how giving animate deads back on a short rest is a bad idea?).
Certainly you can make any PC a follower of any deity (even if their alignments are somewhat dissimilar, you could make it work), and there is no priest class even though clerics are priestly in ways. Druids can get their druidic powers from nature deities or directly from nature itself. The short description of the druid class even calls it a priest:
I wouldn't say that a druid is non-religious, but liken it more to real world religions of natural spirits vs real world mono- or polytheism.
You don't need to follow a deity to do a wedding (or coming-of-age , baptism etc.) ceremony. You don't even need to be religious. Not in the real world and not in D&D. Officiating a wedding is also done by government officials.
My GOO Warlock was already legally able to take Ceremony with the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation. Marriage is a contract. Who better to deal with contracts than a Warlock? ;P
In the current world, aye. However the ceremony related to it is still very much religious, or is it only traditional weddings that are such?
And the Dedication from Ceremony states "you god's service." The spell is far too tailored to clerics to be handed out, at least in my opinion. Of course I can see it done by non clerics who are still part of some religious group such as the acolyte background will provide (I will include cults here as a faith).
Hm, now I ponder what the difference between druids and nature clerics is.
I’ll also point out that clerics aren’t required to be priests of any deity either. There’s absolutely nothing weird about giving druids Ceremony.
Power Word Heal is a worse spell than Mass Heal anyways. Duplicate spells lead to bloat, bloat leads to overwhelming content, overwhelming content leads to exploitation, exploitation leads to imbalance, imbalance leads to audience shrinkage, audience shrinkage leads to the end of an edition.
Duplicate Spells is the path to the dark side. The end of am edition leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
But in seriousness, I think you made a couple of leaps in the middle. Fewer spells than the Wizard is overwhelming? How does overwhelm lead straight to exploitation? I would say it can be caused by bloat, but still requires specific circumstances. Imbalance does not necessarily cause audience shrinkage. The ranger is the mechanically weakest class, but it is far from the least played.
Wizard should not be your go-to for how many spells are "too much" for a class, wizard is a lot by design.
Remember, DHV.
5e was designed with the strict goal of being as deeply oversimplified as WotC could make it. To whatever extent they are able without enraging the fanbase, Reuse Reduce and Recycle is the name of the game. Reuse assets, reduce design overhead and complexity, and recycle game elements wherever possible.
The idea of designing new not-Smite Smite spells for rangers, then a different set of note-Smite not-Rangersmite Smite spells for clerics, then a different different set of not-smite-not-Rangersmite-not-Clericsmite Smite spells for, say, Bard? it's not only ridiculous when those spells already exist, it's anathema to the core design goal of 5e.
That and Bards can already take every single spell in the game as it is. All this "class unique spells are class features and nobody should ever have a spell that's the same as another class EVER!" hornswoggle is already bunk, because Magical Secrets exists. Bards can take Smites, or Spirit Guardians, or Counterspell, or Swift Quiver, or Find (Greater) Steed, or Wish, or True Polymorph, or anything-the-hell-else they want from every single spell list in the entire game because bard. Nobody's upset about that. Nobody's saying that bards destroy the identity of clerics because they can opt into Mass Heal as an 18th-level Secret, or that bards are destroying the identity of palladalladingdongs because they can grab Banishing Smite and Greater Steed, like, seven levels before the palladalladingdong itself could do so.
So why [redacted] about this expanded spell list on the basis of class identity alone, without any other justification for why certain classes shouldn't obtain certain spells? It's already a moot point - that ship has sailed, with Captain Dandyman the Lute Boi at the helm.
Please do not contact or message me.
The only one spell that should not be there is Spirit Guardians for paladin (large aoe spells for the paladin should be treated like a healing spell on a wizard, it should be very rare if ever), and animate dead for warlocks (do i even need to begin to describe how giving animate deads back on a short rest is a bad idea?).
Yeah, I would be good with that. Still, danse macabre pretty much only exists to give warlocks a corpse animating spell.
Tbf there should be some extra weapon damage spells other than smites, smites are more restrictive in theme then id like.
Yeah paladins get smite spells and rangers get fewer strike spells. Both are mostly exclusive to their respective half caster.
There is really no sense in making brand new spells that do roughly the same thing to give to other classes, so a little bleed over is fine.
Nah. More variety in smite spells. Like, yes, thunderous smite is good. But what about ice smite? or acid smite? or maybe a petrifying smite?
A poison smite sounds like it would fit rangers. Or acid.
Petrifying Strike would be the direct upgrade to Ensnaring Strike. That'd be neat.