Cure Paralysis Spell Overlaps with Lay on Hands?

[LotharTheFellhanded]

I was rereading the book, and was going through the Cleric spells as I've found the Wizard ones so much more fun to read, so I want to get to know them better. Something I like is the Lay on Hands ability, which removes a lot of book keeping for Clerics, as they just use their Lay on Hands for all hit point loss, ability damage and removing various conditions. No having Remove Disease and Cure Poison as well as Cure spells prepared!

But then I noticed Cure Paralysis is still a spell. I don't know why you would need it on top of having the ability to cure paralysis with Lay on Hands available to every Cleric, which can also do that.

I noted at higher levels it can be used to cure petrification, but that doesn't seem worth it for a spell. As a design philosophy it seems that DCC prefers to narrow down the spell list by using the more powerful spell check results to stack abilities. I really like that, overall. I'm not sure a Cure Petrification spell would fly on it's own, really. Limited utility. I think it comes down to a question that was raised in another recent thread about Cleric spells, which is how they should be determined. If you have to roll, then it's gonna be a crap spell you don't use, unless the Judge specifically puts paralyzing enemies in your path to justify it, or petrifying ones. If you get to pick, barring having no other options, I don't see many Cleric players picking it. I guess limited utility and random spell determination is a common part of the game, so it might just be an intentional partial "lemon". Well, a lemon until everybody gets petrified and needs the Cleric to turn them back.

A simple fix I thought would just be to assign a way to cure petrification with Lay on Hands, maybe 5 dice exchanged for it. Has anyone tried that house rule, or have a compelling reason to keep Cure Paralysis?

[cjoepar]

The cure paralysis spell seems quite a bit more versatile to me, as well as having the ability to free multiple characters with one cast of the die, as opposed to taking one round for each LoH. Yes, I could expand the LoH chart to include these effects, but I could also expand and define the Divine Aid ability to cover any of the existing spells.

As far as explaining the partial overlap to the characters, who knows why the gawds do the things they do? Their reasons and plans are beyond the ability of mere mortals to comprehend.

[Skyscraper]

I was rereading the book, and was going through the Cleric spells as I've found the Wizard ones so much more fun to read, so I want to get to know them better. Something I like is the Lay on Hands ability, which removes a lot of book keeping for Clerics, as they just use their Lay on Hands for all hit point loss, ability damage and removing various conditions. No having Remove Disease and Cure Poison as well as Cure spells prepared!

But then I noticed Cure Paralysis is still a spell. I don't know why you would need it on top of having the ability to cure paralysis with Lay on Hands available to every Cleric, which can also do that.

I noted at higher levels it can be used to cure petrification, but that doesn't seem worth it for a spell. As a design philosophy it seems that DCC prefers to narrow down the spell list by using the more powerful spell check results to stack abilities. I really like that, overall. I'm not sure a Cure Petrification spell would fly on it's own, really. Limited utility. I think it comes down to a question that was raised in another recent thread about Cleric spells, which is how they should be determined. If you have to roll, then it's gonna be a crap spell you don't use, unless the Judge specifically puts paralyzing enemies in your path to justify it, or petrifying ones. If you get to pick, barring having no other options, I don't see many Cleric players picking it. I guess limited utility and random spell determination is a common part of the game, so it might just be an intentional partial "lemon". Well, a lemon until everybody gets petrified and needs the Cleric to turn them back.

A simple fix I thought would just be to assign a way to cure petrification with Lay on Hands, maybe 5 dice exchanged for it. Has anyone tried that house rule, or have a compelling reason to keep Cure Paralysis?

I have not had to deal with this, but I agree with you that the spell is pretty underwhelming considering that it uses up a spell slot while Lay on Hands would allow the cleric to achieve essentially the same result, albeit with less efficiency and without allowing the cure for petrification or transformation into ice or the like. As a player, I'd much rather have another spell and rely on my Lay on Hands for those very rare times where I need to cure the paralysis of my comrades - if it ever happens a single time in the entire campaign.

As for petrification:

I think your idea of allowing Lay on Hands to also cure petrification, is interesting, however I would not use that solution myself, because I think it defeats the fearful aspect of petrifying attacks. I.e. petrification becomes curable by just about any cleric of a high enough level. Any cleric can retry until he succeeds. If you do allow it, I think that asking for 5 dice to cure petrification is a very strong limitation. I'd limit it to 4 dice if I were to allow Lay on Hands to remove the petrification.

My preferred solution, however, is none of the above. Unless your game or campaign is different than mine, petrification is such a rare occurence that I would simply not have a character spell be usable to remove it. If any player character is turned to stone, the other PCs could quest to find a way to remove the condition. The idea behind this is to position petrifying monsters as a very significant threat. If the PCs are going to battle the medusa (and not "a" medusa ), knowing that a spell to remove petrification does not exist, you can bet that they're going to plan their attack carefully. Otherwise, if they have the remove paralysis spell, or if Lay on Hands or another spell that they have allows it, then petrifying attacks are simply no more threatening than ordinary paralyzing attacks.

If the turn to stone spell is used by enemy casters or if petrification is a more common occurence in your campaign, then perhaps allowing an existing spell to cure this condition should be envisoned. Which would make sense... wizards or clerics would research or pray for a spell to handle something that is relatively frequent.

The spell "dispel magic" could be slightly modified to include the removal of petrification with a high enough spell check. This would probably my second option, behind "no spell to remove petrification".

Finally, on the matter of curing transformation into ice or other substances... Well, again I'd look at the story of my campaign and determine whether it's necessary to have a spell that cures that. If creatures that transform others into ice is frequent enough, presumably clerics and wizards would have found a way to remedy this problem. I'd consider allowing dispel magic to cure that, again.

[oncelor]

I've allowed clerics to use Divine Aid to break the effects of petrification and, one time, to raise someone from the dead (though I ruled that the gaping hole in the dead guy's abdomen would never properly heal.) I've been thinking of allowing Remove Paralysis to work at a range to try to make it a little more useful.