Goodman Games

Hmm. Are we not putting enough stock in the 'Sacrifices' option? It spends a lot of words on giving up treasure, but indicates there are other options "according to the nature of the deity"...

Harder to playtest without a number of deities to choose from, but it seems a good opportunity to recharge spell ability for Clerics. To me, it sounds much less mechanical, and thus harder to quantify than the growing penalty -- but seems like it could make for fun RP.

Why not make the cleric a subtype of the wizard? Gods are easily thought of as patrons. Have spells for healing and turning unholy. And have patron-specific taints for spell failure.

Has any thought about putting the "spell penalty" into the spell descriptions? This is just off the top of my head. Someone would have to test it to see how it plays. Similar "failure modes" could be added to lay on hands and turning checks.

Level 1 cleric spell
1-5 Failure, -1 cumulative penalty to further spellcasting, turning or lay on hands check.
6-11 Failure
12-15 Success effect.

Level 2 cleric spell
1-6 Failure, -2 cumulative penalty to further spellcasting, turning or lay on hands check.
7-11 Failure, -1 cumulative penalty to further spellcasting, turning or lay on hands check.
12-13 Failure
14-15 Success effect.

Level 3 cleric spell
1-7 Failure, -3 cumulative penalty to further spellcasting, turning or lay on hands check.
8-10 Failure, -2 cumulative penalty to further spellcasting, turning or lay on hands check.
11-13 Failure, -1 cumulative penalty to further spellcasting, turning or lay on hands check.
14-15 Failure
16-17 Success effect.

And so on

Very elegant solution.

(Unless we're misunderstanding/overemphasizing "the problem".)

This is basically the conclusion I came up with for my house rules (with a bit more to them than that).

I like Jmucchiello's solution, but since i don't wanna mess with my players' spell sheets, i will just playtest the following:

The Cleric has some free "uses", equal to his level + PER modifier. He can spend these daily uses for Lay-on-hands or turning Unholy ona 1-to-1 basis, or he can spend them for spells: in this last case, a spell consumes a number of uses equal to its level.
After these "free uses" have been spent, normal "-1 penalty" rules apply.

Any thoughts!?
Stay tuned, as i will report here how it went.

Well, my solution does require some testing. Those numbers are just pulled from thin air.