#ClericWeek Since we are in the throes of Cleric Week, I’d like to offer up a review I did of the alternate Cleric…

21 thoughts on “#ClericWeek Since we are in the throes of Cleric Week, I’d like to offer up a review I did of the alternate Cleric…”

1. “You’ll probably throw away the cleric and wizard play books because of it.”

   Those are pretty harsh words…

2. While I love the work that Adam and Sage did on all the classes, I’ve yet to meet anyone who has played the Mage or Priest and say, “I think I’ll go back to the Wizard/Cleric.” There might be people out there that like dealing with spell lists in Dungeon World, but I haven’t met any in my games. I think all of the core classes are well done, but in a game that focuses on story and less on rules, having a spell list just seemed very constricting. 

3. I think Spell List create interesting choices and gameplay. One could maybe tweak their math a little but all in all they are pretty cool. 

4. Why’s that David Guyll?

5. The problem I had with spell lists was that there was no room for creativity or improv when it came to spell casting. The spell did XYZ and it couldn’t be used outside of that scope. Of course this is from a purely mechanical standpoint, I’ve seen GMs allow for unconventional uses of spells, but there was no support for that from the system itself.

6. Can you give me an example? 

7. Say you want to play a cleric in a desert who worships the god of fire. As a Cleric the spell list doesn’t offer any fire based spells.

   Maybe you want to play a wizard that is all about ice magic. The spell list doesn’t support that.

   I think I should have reworded my previous statement as “The problem I had with spell lists is that there is no room for making a unique spell caster because you are limited to the couple of things that are on the list.”

8. Bless their inner fire for the battle. 

   Cure Light Wounds by burning them out. 

   Grant your allies a burning Magic Weapon.

   There is a lot of stuff you can do there i think with minimal impact. 

9. Well you need to cast the spell to “confront a problem” (or something like that). You can’t trigger the move when there is no problem. 

   When you want to transform into a Dragon to fix the problem and you don’t take the time problem thing then it lasts until the problem is solved. 

   My main problem is that you can fix “every” problem through a Cast roll. You have little actual limitations. This leads to repetitive gameplay because you basically only need 1 move. 

   (Also i think that Black Magic does too much damage). 

10. Tim Franzke You bring up a great point about reskinning spells. That’s something I hadn’t considered to be honest and is making me reconsider my position on Clerics/Wizards. Though I do enjoy GMing Priests since the GM gets to decide what blessing come to the priest in question, which is how I feel it should be when it comes to a mortal/god relationship. You can ask for help but it’s up the god what you get. That doesn’t fit everyones style and I understand that.

    David Guyll You bring up some great points and thanks Tim Franzke for heading off the big one of, “You have to have a problem to trigger the move.” I will agree that the author should have explained the tags somewhere. I didn’t have problems with them since I just gave them meaning as they came up. I think the general vagueness comes up since the mage class is trying to cover just about all forms of wizardry that has come up in fiction over the years. The author of the Mage/Priest has also started making individual play books for each type of mage and they are much more focused and and precise on the wording of how things work, but I think he can do that since he only focused on dragon/ice/time/etc magic for each class and not all possible magic for one class.

    I’m curious about your idea for Counterspell and Defy Danger. Did you have a mechanic in mind?

11. With the Priest it puts you into another uncomfortable position since the big thing of the Priest is now entirely in my hands. How do i know how much i should give them each time? Should i make the action of the god predictable? When is it okay to give them only a little althought they rolled a 10+?

    It makes you do a lot more calls for a Playbook mechanic then i am comfortable making.  

12. Oh and as to the “Fix all problems with magic” problem, remember that all spells (until high level with a 12+ roll) always have something wrong with them. The caster never get’s a perfect spell until level 6+ on a roll of 12+. 

    Tim Franzke That’s understandable. The priests I’ve GMed for were pretty mellow on the number of times they prayed for a miracle so maybe to me it seemed like not that big of a deal. I’m pretty good at being able to come up with stuff like this on the fly so it was never an issue for me but I could see it becoming a problem.

13. Damian Jankowski  

14. Thank you, I’ve been following along. :T

15. David Guyll I saw in the other thread that you had made a mage/wizard play book. Have anything you can share?

16. I think that the openness of a playbook needs to be counter-balanced with strict mechanics. Leave a move open to be able to provide plenty of improvization while at the same time giving the GM easy ways to react. This gives both parties a fair chance to impact the game in the way they want. I’m going to take a closer look at the Priest’s book when I get a chance today.

17. Thanks David Guyll I’ll take a look probably tomorrow. Also thanks to you and Tim Franzke for the lively discussion.

18. ’twas a pleasure 

19. David Guyll Ok I lied and I looked at it now. I like the fatigue mechanic. It’s a good way to show a wizard burning himself out, though I don’t know if going unconscious when maxed is the way to go. Maybe a penalty that keeps stacking up until you just can’t cast anymore. Overall I think you have a great general direction. I’ll go through in detail later this week and take a close look at everything. Thanks again for sharing. 

20. “You can always” is a dangerous line of text to use. 

    “You are bound, submerged in acid and you are getting poked at by sharks, the evil Wizard casts a Meteor at you”

    “I counterspell!” 

21. I’d rather make it an explicit thing (When you counter a spell aimed at you) or an replacement effect (When you … do … instead)

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