I just made a post in the paladin folder in reference to this issue and thought I'd migrate some of that discussion over here since it's a shared issue.

There's currently an imbalance within both the cleric and paladin classes in regards to deity-specific effects to spells. Some versions of the spells are completely gimp, some verge on being overpowered. Both results stem from GMs using various crit tables to replicate effects they perceive to be closely tied to the deity in question. This practice results in players either choosing their deity for mechanical advantages, or feeling like they've gimped their character by choosing a deity based on RP. Just fyi: The smite/bane discussion is another can of worms and you guys are on your own.

Some examples of the more comical combos
-Lorminstra cold flares + undead immunity to cold
-Grapple flares for your most powerful attack spell ...really?
-Steam

Given this imbalance I'd suggest the following as a more robust system for handling deity specific effects. Migrate all paladin and cleric spells to use the plasma table for crits, and create new deity-specific crit tables for messaging. It might sound like a lot of work, but doing that would allow the reuse of existing text anytime a new spell is added without having to write the messaging from scratch and it would equalize all members within the same class mechanically.

Dgry