Tome 3.0 compatibility?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm also kind of curious about MMII. I've always found MMII to be a near-unusable book full of oops-you-all-died monsters,

It's relative. I'd feel bad about not including a monster-heavy manual somewhere but I already used up BoVD/MH/OA and the future monster manuals/FF/EEs are just that much worse. Libris Mortis does have some usable monsters but not enough to save the book.

Seriously, a Monster manual that only has a 1/3rd of the entire book any good like living graveyards and yakfolk is still considered a good Monster Manual.

chonjurer and Frank really like the MM2 so you'll have to ask them for more details.

[Kaelik]

WHAT SHIT??

Well, the Hospitaler, maybe, but I don't consider making the PrC unusable an improvement. But other than that, Complete Divine didn't get a single goddamn thing right over 3.0E! They nerfed things that were just fine and saw fit to reprint a bunch of overpowered bullshit like Brambles.

WTF! What is so hard to understand about "IT DOES NOT FUCKING MATTER WHAT THEY WERE LIKE IN 3.0!" If a PrC is useful, it is useful. It has a use value that is non negative and is included in the 3.5 book Complete Divine. The book Complete Divine is a real book, which when you buy it, gives you many options you did not have prior to buying the book. These include: Church Inquisitor/Contemplative/Divine Feats/Some metamagic/Divine Oracle/ect. Before book, don't have those. After book. Do. Not rocket Science.

Second of all, what's your problem with this? Yes, even though the bar I have for 3.5E (the amount of good to bad material has to be marginally positive) is higher than your own bar (it just has to have anything good), this bar is still lower than the bar I have for 3.0E material (the amount of good to bad material has to be substantially positive). I'm holding a double standard, yes, but it's in your own goddamn favor. Are you seriously whining that I'm not giving you enough favoritism?

No you lying retard. You can't possibly be so retarded that you can't see this, what is your fucking problem.

Complete Divine has tons of useful good PRCs, feats, Domains, and spells. The double standard is this:

1) Deities and Demigods is a good book because it has Contemplative, Divine Oracle, and Church Inquisitor.
2) Complete Divine is a shitty book because it has Contemplative, Divine Oracle, and Church Inquisitor!

That's literally what you are saying. What I am saying is that it's a retarded ass double standard to say that a book is 100% worthless when it has worthwhile material in it which you just fucking counted in favor of your stupid ass other book.

What two identical books? As people besides me have told you repeatedly, the Planar Handbook is similar to the MoTP but different enough so we can excise different amounts of judgment on it. The FRPG flat-out has less material than the FRCS.

You are claiming that Complete Divine doesn't include any worthwhile material. You are then claiming that Deities and Demigods does. Some of your example material is in both books nearly identical. You claim that it's worthwhile in your 3.0 book, but it doesn't count because you don't feel like counting it when it's in a 3.5 book. If it is in fact exactly the same, you still don't give credit to the 3.5 for having material that you do in fact consider good, just because you personally wish it didn't exist in 3.5 books so you could bitch more.

Oh yes I can. I don't have to buy every 3.5E book. I don't have to use any 3.5E books at all. I only have to look at the good ones. 3.0E can print two-hundred books with only twenty good ones while 3.5E can print a hundred books with fifteen good ones--guess what? 3.0E still comes out fucking ahead because when Magic of Faerun or Quintessential Rogue comes by I can just put the books back onto the shelf and buy Oriental adventures.

This is so many kinds of fucking retarded I am legitimately confused by your stupidity.

3.5 has 200 books, 25 of which are good. 3.0 has 100 books, 10 of which are good.

The amount of good material in those 10 books is the same as the amount of good material in 20 3.5 books.

3.5 books still have more absolute good shit than 3.0.

Why the fuck you would claim that 3.0 has more good books when I fucking called out like 20 3.5 books that are good is beyond me.

The 3.5E Church Inquisitor is an awful piece of trash. With the change, you easily can take the PrC by level 4, which means that almost every fucking cleric in existence is going to have it since most PrCs aren't available until level 6. It's not a bad PrC if you ignore the meta-effect, but with that subtle change it means that every fucking Cleric in existence unless stopped by the DM or trying to qualify for some crazy PrC is going to be a Cleric 3 / Church Inquisitor 2 / Whatever X.

WTF. So a class that is useful and good, and does not break the game in any way... is terrible for the game because it adds some minor abilities to Clerics?

The Contemplative change also sucks. It doesn't suck nearly as much as the Church Inquisitor change, but I don't know why you would include it as a positive. You used to be able to take that PrC as an anything, which was helpful for arcane Spellcasters. Now you can't. Sucks to be you, fucker! But then they introduced the Arcane Disciple feat in this very book, so in case you were going to try to tell me that the change of barring arcane spellcasters from grabbing divine spells was good (ProTip: It wasn't) your argument gets instantly negated.

You are fucking crazy. These are your words: "There's just no excuse for the Hospitaler and the Contemplative even though it made the paladin/LG multiclass playable." (Speaking of the 3.0 Contemplative)

Now you are telling me the class you just said five seconds ago sucks, is now great? Fuck you. Either it sucks or it doesn't.

If the only change is it was open to Arcanes, then it's a good fucking class and you were totally wrong. But in either case, the Complete Divine Contemplative is a good fucking class. It is not magically shitty because it also happens to exist in nearly identical form in another book where it's good because that book has 3.0 written on the cover, and all things with 3.0 are automatically good.

I really can't believe you said that the non-DMM Divine feats were good. What was so good about them? Was it the feat that granted fast healing 3 for a short period of time? Or the one where you get to heal elementals? Or on the other end of the scale, did you like the Divine feat that let you add your fucking turning check modifier as a caster level bonus? Or let you spontaneously cast Anyspell or Polymorph Any Object?

Um...Are you smoking crack? I mean, I guess you don't know what a turning check modifier is? That's the only reason I could see you posting that like it's somehow a super big deal, instead of a perfect example of a good Divine Feat. And I like how you bitch about the one that gives spontaneous casting by bringing up two spells, one of which it doesn't even matter, and the other of which is perfectly fucking fine.

Yes, the ability to spend a turn undead attempt to spontaneously cast a Domain spell is a good fucking idea. It's a great fucking idea. It's fucking wonderful.

But if I go by your standard of a good book is, I'd have to include Complete Divine. And only dumbshits--such as yourself--think that book is any good.

You yourself think that Complete Divine is a good book, you are just too retarded to see it.

If you literally timetraveled, changed the names, and published the books in a different order, you would be defending Complete Divine material against Evil Changes.

You would say:

"Sure they minorly improved Contemplative, and set Church Inquisitor to a reasonable entry, but they nerfed Divine Oracle, Hospitalar and Knight of the Chalice."

Blah blah.

That's what you refuse to get.

It doesn't matter what order they were published. It does not fucking matter. It's a question of, tomorrow, not owning either book, and walking into a store to buy one of them, how much good material does each one give you.

And the answer is: Both of them give about the same amount of good stuff.

The difference is that you then declare from this observation that Complete Divine is total shit, and Deities and Demigods is "mostly good" which you gather from... The fact that they are basically equal but one was published first.

[A Man In Black]

Seriously, a Monster manual that only has a 1/3rd of the entire book any good like living graveyards and yakfolk is still considered a good Monster Manual.

I'd argue that bad stuff in a Monster Manual is even more poisonous than bad stuff anywhere else. Once I've found one TPK-in-a-box, then the whole book is destroyed as a resource for random ideas for neat things to do tonight if I'm feeling lazy, because I need to test whatever I want to use first.

And I'd pick on the Corpse Gatherer (the only "living graveyard" I can find in the book) as a good example of the really bad high-level monster design. It's a level 19 monster that can't affect anyone who flies, has AC 12, and 250-ish HP. To whom, exactly, is that a threat at level 19? On top of that, it has an always-on aura that affects itself but this isn't included in its stat block. It's just a plain godawfully designed monster.

Man, I don't know why I'm rereading this book, it just makes me angry. I open the book randomly, I get half-fiend durzagon with its rousing description of "A devil had sex with a duergar" and turn the page to an immune-to-everything auto-dazing monstrosity.

[Username17]

I'm also kind of curious about MMII. I've always found MMII to be a near-unusable book full of oops-you-all-died monsters, with basic stats ranging all over the place without regard for CR.

Every monster book has a litany of CR abuses in both direction. Even the basic MM. From the Free-XP of the Shrieker to the OMGWTFBBQ of the Tendriculous, every Monster Book can keep you up late at night asking what the fuck is up with a CR here or there. And further, every monster book has shit you don't care about - monsters so uninteresting that you have probably ever fought them or at least cared that you did. All three categories (overpowered, underpowered, and retarded) are worth less than blank pages in a monster book. They can't all be gems, and we know for certain that most of them are not.

So when the Monster Manual 2 throws up some bullshit like the Orcwort or the Clockwork Horror, that's a point against it certainly. But it's not a unique or especially interesting point. The Monster Manual 3, in the entire book, gives us:

Kenku (reprint)
Goatfolk
Topiary Guardians
Canoloth (reprint)
Mezzoloth (reprint)
Battle Briar
Charnel Hound
Ultraloth (reprint)
Siegecrab

That's a really shitty record. Can I find 9 decent monsters in the Monster Manual 2? Hell yes! And to add insult to injury, none of them are reprints.

Moon Rat
Neogi
Corollax
Ash Rat
Myconid
Abyssal Maw
Fire Bat
Yak Folk
Stained Glass Golem

Oh look, I'm done. And I'm less than half-way through the book. I'm partway through CR5 and I have more and better iconic D&D monster shit than the entirety of the Monster Manual 3. And for bonus points, I wouldn't have half of it by just reading the Manual of the Planes (you know, the one that actually allows you to run a fucking game among the planes).

-Username17

[Username17]

Kaelik, this is the last time I'm going to respond to you on this subject, so listen up. You need to cut your bullshit double standard right fucking now.

WTF! What is so hard to understand about "IT DOES NOT FUCKING MATTER WHAT THEY WERE LIKE IN 3.0!"

OK? OK.

Planar Handbook. Pick it up. Now run a planar adventure out of it. Do not turn to the Manual of the Planes for help, because it "does not fucking matter what they were like in 3.0."

OK? You noticed how you fucking can't run a game with that book because it is fucking worthless!? Now, try again with the Manual of the Planes. You do not have this problem.

That is because Manual of the Planes is a good book, and the Planar Handbook is a worthless piece of shit.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

WTF! What is so hard to understand about "IT DOES NOT FUCKING MATTER WHAT THEY WERE LIKE IN 3.0!" If a PrC is useful, it is useful. It has a use value that is non negative and is included in the 3.5 book Complete Divine. The book Complete Divine is a real book, which when you buy it, gives you many options you did not have prior to buying the book. These include: Church Inquisitor/Contemplative/Divine Feats/Some metamagic/Divine Oracle/ect. Before book, don't have those. After book. Do. Not rocket Science.

But those things were in 3.0. If Complete Divine didn't exist it's not like we would have been deprived of most of those things anyway.

Complete Divine fucked up by shitting on previously good material and re/introducing more stupid shit. That's why it's an awful book.

No you lying retard. You can't possibly be so retarded that you can't see this, what is your fucking problem.

You know, I'm not even offended by Kaelik calling me a liar anymore. It's just some inevitable if annoying behavior you accept as the cost of interacting with him, like dogs humping pillows or pedos staring at your children. They can't help their nature and neither can this freaking guy.

You are claiming that Complete Divine doesn't include any worthwhile material. You are then claiming that Deities and Demigods does. Some of your example material is in both books nearly identical. You claim that it's worthwhile in your 3.0 book, but it doesn't count because you don't feel like counting it when it's in a 3.5 book. If it is in fact exactly the same, you still don't give credit to the 3.5 for having material that you do in fact consider good, just because you personally wish it didn't exist in 3.5 books so you could bitch more.

Huhhhh? I never said Deities and Demigods was any good. It's a fucking insult to gaming and mythology that Haephatetus can beat up Set in hand-to-hand combat. The Web enhancement where it details the story of some beggar becoming God of the beggars is damn fucking cool, but it's not worth paying real money for it.

And I still don't see your problem with this. 3.0E made a book and it was good. 3.5E came along, reprinted much of the same material but fucked up significant things in the process. Even if 3.5E didn't fuck up the book enough to make it unusable, why should this be a feather in the cap for 3.5E? I can still get and use the 3.0E books that don't have the fuckups in them.

Why the fuck you would claim that 3.0 has more good books when I fucking called out like 20 3.5 books that are good is beyond me.

Maybe your '20 good 3.5E books' would hold water if you didn't pad your total by claiming stupid shit like Complete Divine was any good. If Complete Divine is any good then you might as well say that Complete Warrior and the Book of Exalted Deeds rocked; because as much as those books sucked, they're still better than Complete Divine.

All you're doing at this point is just screaming at me 'nuh-uh! Complete Divine IS good you lying retard!' And that's just not going to hold water with me. Maybe you should start a thread on why Complete Divine is anything other than a sack of armadillo ass.

But maybe it's better that you didn't, because here's what happens when you actually start defending material from CD:

WTF. So a class that is useful and good, and does not break the game in any way... is terrible for the game because it adds some minor abilities to Clerics?

Yes. Because it's very easy for Clerics to get it at low level and clerical PrCs universally start at level 6, every cleric who starts in a game with that shit around is going to have a background of 'I was a cleric but discovered some corruption in the church of Pelor then after fixing it I blah blah blah'.

If you could get into the PrC at a higher level, it'd be perfectly fine. But no, as it is it railroads every cleric into taking this shit regardless of goals, background, or alignment because it's just free power for no reason.

You are fucking crazy. These are your words: "There's just no excuse for the Hospitaler and the Contemplative even though it made the paladin/LG multiclass playable." (Speaking of the 3.0 Contemplative)

The Hospitaler gives the cleric full BAB (meaningless) and two extra feats for no reason while being easy to qualify for if you planned your character out in advance or start at higher level. That's very bad, but it's nowhere near as bad for the game as the new Church Inquisitor or the reprint of the Ur-Priest or that godawful Pelor PrC.

The Contemplative is fine when used by Arcane characters. Prestige domains generally don't do a whole lot for wizards and sorcerers because the whole point of a domain is to let Divine spellcasters (with a theoretically inferior spellcasting list but better class abilities) snag arcane spells. It's, ironically, a pile of crazy when used by Divine characters.

So the 3.5E kept the parts in it that were crazy while reducing the functionality of the class. That's bad, by the way.

Um...Are you smoking crack? I mean, I guess you don't know what a turning check modifier is? That's the only reason I could see you posting that like it's somehow a super big deal, instead of a perfect example of a good Divine Feat. And I like how you bitch about the one that gives spontaneous casting by bringing up two spells, one of which it doesn't even matter, and the other of which is perfectly fucking fine.

Wait, you don't see a problem with letting clerics trade a turning attempt for another +4 to their caster level? I'm beginning to see why you're so in love with Complete Divine.

And yes, my example was intentionally extreme but that explains the bullshit of the Domain Spontaneity feat. Domains are 'balanced' by giving clerics the cream of the arcane spell crop but only once a day. Things that break this limit are bad. Savvy?

You yourself think that Complete Divine is a good book, you are just too retarded to see it.

Whut? There's nothing from Complete Divine that I want to use, except for the new Divine Oracle (because the 3.0E version can't be qualified for anymore). I'd much rather stick to Defenders of the Faith. I don't see how that equates to me having some secret liking of Complete Divine. I mean, I'll use it only because some DMs have such a hard-on for the 3.5E label that they'll approve explicitly inferior revisions just because of that but if I had my druthers Complete Divine and Warrior would go in the trash and we'd just use DotF/S&F and be happy.

The difference is that you then declare from this observation that Complete Divine is total shit, and Deities and Demigods is "mostly good" which you gather from... The fact that they are basically equal but one was published first.

What a moron. Between the PGFR and the MotP thing, do we need any proof that Kaelik doesn't fucking read posts?

[Lago PARANOIA]

And I'd pick on the Corpse Gatherer (the only "living graveyard" I can find in the book) as a good example of the really bad high-level monster design. It's a level 19 monster that can't affect anyone who flies, has AC 12, and 250-ish HP. To whom, exactly, is that a threat at level 19? On top of that, it has an always-on aura that affects itself but this isn't included in its stat block. It's just a plain godawfully designed monster.

File off the CR19 label and lower it to something between 10 and 14, depending on your player. It's way, waaay overvalued for its CR (considering that a giant scorpion has about the same level of whupass but lower level, more hit points, better saves, and more AC. But this does more closet-troll damage and spawns a bunch of medium zombies when it's killed. Except for that tragic CR hiccup it's a legit monster.

[Lago PARANOIA]

And just so that there's no ambiguity on how much Complete Divine sucks, here's a review of the thread:
http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=12 ... sc&start=0

[erik]

That spell that gives A WIZARD a fucking FIGHTER BONUS FEAT is one of the gravest insults to gaming ever.

I've considered that spell pretty bad ass because you can cast it on other people.

My spirited charger who did not have shock trooper yet *loved* getting that shit cast on him!

[Kaelik]

Planar Handbook. Pick it up. Now run a planar adventure out of it. Do not turn to the Manual of the Planes for help, because it "does not fucking matter what they were like in 3.0."

OK? You noticed how you fucking can't run a game with that book because it is fucking worthless!? Now, try again with the Manual of the Planes. You do not have this problem.

That is because Manual of the Planes is a good book, and the Planar Handbook is a worthless piece of shit.

Frank, I understand that you are fucking crazy and think everything is about you. That's fine, but this is ridiculous.

I am not talking about the PH and MOTP. I already told you that while the 3.0 books might have more and better fluff, that has absolutely nothing to do with the rules, which since we are talking about compatibility, is what I was talking about.

The actual fucking rules in the two books is what I am talking about. I don't give a flying fuck about books. Only rules. So the fact that one books has a bunch of fluff that is equally compatible has nothing to do with the actual rules presented in each edition.

Now that I have said 1000 times that I am not talking about which book is better, only the rules in the editions, can you please stop talking about how 3.0 books have more fluff? Please? It has nothing to do with the rules at all.



Lago. It's like you are genuinely trying to drive me insane.

I am not you. I do not own every fucking 3.0 book in existence. I assume that likewise, other people do not own every such book.

So if I walk into a fucking store tomorrow, and I have a choice between Complete Divine and Defenders of the Faith. (Fuck you asshole, you know what I meant, I was talking about your fucking 3.0 book and you know it. The fact that I don't know the name of it because you seriously post like 3 straight posts without mentioning the 3.0 book at all because you just rail about how Complete Divines changes are terrible is fucking stupid on your part.)

The point is that in this totally fucking neutral situation, in which someone owns neither book, Defenders of the Faith and Complete Divine have just about the same amount of useful material. That's all. It's just a simple comparison. Maybe Defenders of the Faith, on the whole, has slightly better material, a 7 out of 10, and Complete Divine is only a 6, but goddam it, they both have 90% the same shit.

The part where you start from the assumption that you own every 3.0 book in existence, and then say that everything in Complete Divine that is a reprint has literally zero value is a stupid fucking bullshit designed to skew judgments.

Walk into a store tomorrow, owning neither book, each one has good things to add, they approximate about the same.

As for your specific stupid:

1) Contemplative giving domains to Clerics is actually more limited than to Arcanes. Arcanes get to pick up spells and cast them, and they get Domain Powers. Clerics get domain powers, but they only get 1 domain spell. So even if they have four thousand fucking domains, they still only get one of those spells per level per day.

I'm not claiming that Arcanes having it is too powerful, I am saying that you bitching about Clerics having more domains is fucking retarded.

2) See, again with your bullshit. It's +4 to your CL for a turn attempt... sometimes. It can also be a penalty. It averages around to about +2.

But even still:

Domain Spontaneity. It's a feat. You spend a motherfucking feat, you should get something out of it.

Clerics can take feats that either A) Make them fight better or B) Make them cast better. I prefer for B feats to exist, since otherwise, Clerics get shafted in the feat game, or are forced to screw Fighters up the ass.

Getting about 3 times per day, the ability to spontaneously cast a Domain spell from another slot, that's pretty fucking balanced for a feat. That's a good interesting feat that actually makes them better casters. That's how it should be.

[Crissa]

I'm noticing that when I walk into a bookstore I can find 2e stuff and 4e stuff, but if anything, they might have a 3.5e thing sitting around.

It's really frustrating. I've never read the 3.5 books, I had no interest, and knew 3e books were already hard to find, but...

...Now I don't even have the option of buying them.

-Crissa

[Arijkos]

Hm, you guys managed to sell me on Sword&Fist, thank you. I bought Masters of the Wild and Defenders of the Faith some time ago, read them an was kind of "meh" - good ideas, but also stuff I will never use (I do not own Complete Warrior).

Regarding the Planar Handbook/Manual of the Planes: I own neither of them, but was looking to get at least one of them in the near future. As much as I know, the Planar Handbook contains Planescape stuff like Sigil, updated to 3.5 - which would be a huge selling point to me. Is something similar to be found in Manual of the Planes?

[Username17]

The Manual of the Planes is 221 pages long. It has a 3-6 page writeup of each plane in the wheel, in addition to the innr planes and transitive planes (as in: 6 pages for the plane of Shadow and 3 for Arcadia, not 3-6 pages for transitive or outer planes total). Sigil and the Planar Factions get like half a page each. Substantial discussion throughout the book on how planes connect to each other and why that's important, and that's all sort of Sigil information indirectly as well, so I can't really be sure how much of that is relevant. You're looking at maybe 113 pages of genuinely relevant campaign material, plus some monsters and spells and shit that you could seriously do without.

The Planar Handbook is 192 pages and has 5 pages devoted just to Sigil. But a good chunk of that is a description about how Kylie the tout is a useful NPC, so call it 4 pages including a rather perplexing map. There's more if you count the fact that there is an incredibly bad PrC written up for the Sensates, the Xaoisects, the Athar, the Sinkers, and the Fated. Really bad PrCs. Seriously, the ones in Dragon Magazine were better. But for all the extra Sigil information, it's all pretty much completely useless because "The Outer Planes" (collectively) get 1 paragraph on page 136. Seriously, if you can't run a planar adventure without this book, you can't run one with this book, because there is absolutely nothing in it about how Ysgard works. More page space is given to describing the Abyss Domain than the Abyss itself. All told, probably like 12 pages of useful campaign material. Not one hundred and twelve, just twelve. Maybe 17 if you intend to go to the City of Brass at some point.

-Username17

[Arijkos]

Hm, thanks for that.
Seems I want to have Manual of the Planes then, because fleshing out cities and whatnot is part of the DMing fun, and my players will likely have no clue about the planar cosmology whatsoever (aside from that there is something called Ethereal Plane).

[Lago PARANOIA]

The actual fucking rules in the two books is what I am talking about. I don't give a flying fuck about books. Only rules.

I'm not going to make a claim either way which version has better rules in it (though since you're still carrying water for Complete Divine I don't trust your judgement at all), but this statement is just false on the face of it. Then you shouldn't be buying Campaign Setting books and that includes MotP.

I own both Oriental Adventures and the Dragonlance Campaign Setting. The DLCS has better rules but the actual setting sucks balls. It's obviously put together by someone who has no clue as to what the rules do (you need to be level 11, minimum, before you can get a dragon) but there's nothing in there that actually hurts the game. OA has a lot of broke-ass stuff in it. Iajutsu Focus is laughable. Shaman, while it's okay now, was very overpowered if we restrict things to just 3.0E. But OA is just in aggregate better because while it has some stupid shit in there it also gives us the noble clans and some cool-ass monsters.

Yeah, if the fluff is good but the rules are awful, that's just not workable. But if the fluff is good but the rules are mediocre, that's still better than if the rules are good but the fluff is mediocre unless you're writing straight-up metagame crunch like Sword and Fist. I mean, I think that the fluff of Complete Warrior was better than in Sword and Fist but there's no way in hell that the book is ever going to match up.

But campaign settings get judged by a different standard. They need to clear both the 'usuable rules' and 'cool fluff' bars and the latter is more important. If you don't like it, you can go slam your dick in a Complete Divine book.

The point is that in this totally fucking neutral situation, in which someone owns neither book, Defenders of the Faith and Complete Divine have just about the same amount of useful material. That's all. It's just a simple comparison. Maybe Defenders of the Faith, on the whole, has slightly better material, a 7 out of 10, and Complete Divine is only a 6, but goddam it, they both have 90% the same shit.

Complete Divine costs more money. Like twice as much. Complete Divine is already operating at a deficit from that but then they give us shit like the Radiant Servant of Pelor, the Church Inquisitor, and the Ur-Priest on top of that.

Unless your DM fetishizes 3.5E books, there is absolutely no reason to get it.

1) Contemplative giving domains to Clerics is actually more limited than to Arcanes. Arcanes get to pick up spells and cast them, and they get Domain Powers. Clerics get domain powers, but they only get 1 domain spell. So even if they have four thousand fucking domains, they still only get one of those spells per level per day.

You don't know anything about prestige domains, do you?

Clerics don't pick bullshit domains like Earth. If they get a prestige domain it's to get some crazy domain ability (like Madness), it's to get a whole mess of good spells (like Travel or Trickery), or it's to snag one or two ridiculously overpowered spells (like Spell or Hero).

Clerics and druids are 'balanced' by having theoretically weaker spellcasting but better class features. When they get to cherry pick spells they want, that hurts balance. Now YMMV on whether extra domains hurt balance enough to actually hurt the game, but what's not disputable is this:

Yeah, some domains (like Mysticism) were crazy no matter who took it, but those are problems with specific domains. Divine Spellcasters still help themselves to the best parts of prestige domains, whom it was questionable for. Arcane spellcasters, for whom prestige domains were not overpowered, can't use it anymore.

That's why the Contemplate change sucks. It hurts diversity of the game while not helping overall balance. That's 4E game designer thinking thar.

2) See, again with your bullshit. It's +4 to your CL for a turn attempt... sometimes. It can also be a penalty. It averages around to about +2.

Gee, we better hope that no one prints any cheap charisma-check boosting items and that people ignore the section on the DMG on creating check boosting items!

Getting about 3 times per day, the ability to spontaneously cast a Domain spell from another slot, that's pretty fucking balanced for a feat. That's a good interesting feat that actually makes them better casters. That's how it should be.

Because clerics were so underpowered in the casting department, amirite?