Clerics: overpowered or overrated?

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Sat Jun 27, 2015 4:04 am

Really, Arioch, your horror gaming stories are so many and so horrific that I'm starting to think you're the Eddie Vedder of the hobby (i.e you have to be making it all up, Remi is NOT real).

And if you don't know who Remi was, add that up to your list of tragedies.

P.S: In México we have a saying: "No illness lasts a century... and no one could endure it that long anyway."

Count Arioch the 28th · Sat Jun 27, 2015 5:36 am

My experiences with gaming are probably similar to my experiences with dating: my experience is atypical because balanced, normal people don't like being around me.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sat Jun 27, 2015 1:24 pm

Chamomile wrote:
Absolutely. The idea that all priests of every god are Clerics needs to die. While domain-based casting is definitely an improvement over the current option-paralyzed absurdly hyper-flexible class, having one class who needs to be everything from a fire mage to a necromancer to a beguiler really should be replaced by an understanding that the priests of the gods of fire, death, and love are just actual fire mages, necromancers, and beguilers.

I don't know, I sort of like the idea of tying Cleric Level to rank in the church hierarchy, so that there can be more mileage from byzantine plots and office backstabbing to rise in the ranks.

I do remember in the Crusades era historical sourcebook, the Patriarch of Jerusalem was an absurdly high level cleric by virture of being the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and was one of the few people in the setting who could resurrect the dead.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Jun 27, 2015 2:31 pm

That is a terrible idea. Nobody else has to advance in their organization in order to level up, which means that setup is begging for either an atrociously unbalanced party makeup or else for the party Cleric to be arbitrarily promoted whenever the party dings, which totally annihilates any chance of office politics and backstabbing since the Cleric can and unless he takes pains to avoid doing so will get promoted to Pope by stabbing dragons in remote demi-planes. And if everybody else does have to advance in their organization to level up for whatever reason, then you're right back to the Church of Nerull granting levels in Necromancer and the Church of Heironeous granting levels in Paladin and the Church of Aphrodite granting levels in Beguiler.

AndreiChekov · Post by **AndreiChekov** » Sat Jun 27, 2015 9:19 pm

Chamomile wrote: Church of Aphrodite granting levels in Beguiler.

You mean hooker

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Jun 29, 2015 6:22 am

"favored by your god" feels more like PrC anyone can get than a base class, but I'm not sure exactly how D&D would look if you removed the idea of the cleric class and had Kord's clerics be Fighters and Goddess of Magic's clerics be wizards.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Mon Jun 29, 2015 6:11 pm

I think it'd work fine. You'd have to add the Cleric's spells to the list of some other classes, and wands would be even more superior as the healing choice, but it's not like that class is essential.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 9:27 am

Looking at the Strength and War domains for Cleric, if you just gave those abilities to a fighter but tagged them (ex) they'd feel thematic.

Combine any two Cleric Domains and you've basically got the theme for a standalone class. Like Trickery and Travel domain creates a Thief.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 5:32 pm

OgreBattle wrote:"favored by your god" feels more like PrC anyone can get than a base class

It's a feat, actually.

Anointed Hero
You have attracted the favor of a higher power, which has allocated to you a small measure of the power that is afforded by their divine portfolio.
Benefit: Select a domain. You gain its granted powers and add its spells to all of your lists of spells known. You also gain a special set of domain-only spell slots; you gain one 1st-level slot at character level 1, one 2nd-level slot at character level 3, and so on and so forth until you get a 9th level slot at character level 17.
Special: You may take this feat more than once, attaining a new domain's granted powers and spells known each time. You may not, however, gain additional domain spell slots beyond the first set.

but I'm not sure exactly how D&D would look if you removed the idea of the cleric class and had Kord's clerics be Fighters and Goddess of Magic's clerics be wizards.

It would look like the tens of thousands of games that already existed where nobody wanted to play a fucking cleric and everything went just fine because clerics are boring assholes that add nothing that Paladins and Dread Necromancers don't already.

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp · Wed Jul 01, 2015 4:33 pm

Clerics are fun Eikre.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Wed Jul 01, 2015 9:59 pm

Eikre wrote: It would look like the tens of thousands of games that already existed where nobody wanted to play a fucking cleric and everything went just fine because clerics are boring assholes that add nothing that Paladins and Dread Necromancers don't already.

I'm gonna call bullshit on this given that Paladins aren't level appropriate and lots of people don't play with Dread Necromancers. I'm not against having the priest caste be made up of a variety of classes but it's demonstrably the sort of change that leads to Mystra's priests being bad asses and Kord's congregation being made up of failure and tears.

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 3:06 pm

Whipstitch wrote:Kord's congregation being made up of failure and tears.

Isn't that why we have Races of War?

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 3:24 am

Whipstitch wrote:I'm gonna call bullshit on this given that Paladins aren't level appropriate and lots of people don't play with Dread Necromancers. I'm not against having the priest caste be made up of a variety of classes but it's demonstrably the sort of change that leads to Mystra's priests being bad asses and Kord's congregation being made up of failure and tears.

They add nothing thematically.

Guy was asking what "D&D" would look like without clerics, which I'm taking to be a grander inquiry about the health of the institution in an edition that didn't have a cleric class. And you can totally make one of those where the people who wanna just lead skeletons around with a scythe in hand are one class, and the people who want a gleaming sword and a white stead and healing hands to be a different one.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jul 04, 2015 7:38 am

The D&D Cleric and Paladin are wholly redundant conceptually. The Paladin is a caster/warrior who uses Cleric magic, but the Cleric is already a caster/warrior. In 4th edition, if you rubbed the names off and told me the Tronadin was a Cleric build or the Beatstick Cleric was a Paladin build, I think chances are pretty much 100% that I would be fooled.

From a mechanical standpoint, Clerics > Paladins in most editions. In AD&D the Paladin is ridiculously overpowered at low level but gets very close to nothing at high level while the Cleric starts out "kind of OK" and gradually acquires ridiculous high end powers. In 3rd edition, the Paladin is pretty much crap while the Cleric is a top three class at all levels. In 4th edition... shit's dumb, OK? Outside an unbeatable but pretty dull group build (Knights of the Round), Paladins are kind of a shit class. They specialize in extending combat in a game known for taking too fucking long. Clerics, otoh, are Leaders, which makes them overpowered pretty much by default in that game.

But there's no reason it has to be like that. If you were making a new edition, you could just make Paladins > Clerics. Or make them balanced. Whatever.

The real issue though is that there's no thematic reason to have both classes. When you explain the classes to a new player, they sound exactly the same. So if you're making a new edition, you should only have one. And Paladin is a class title that more easily conveys to players what the class actually does. Now, there are a lot of Cleric concepts that aren't basically Paladins, but that's part of the problem!

All of these assholes being one class severely undermines the purpose of having character classes in the first place.

These other kinds of priests should of course be other classes. Some of them can be other classes that have healing (like white mages or necromancers), but honestly priests of fire who run around setting shit on fire should just have the same spell set as whatever fire mages do.

-Username17

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Jul 05, 2015 2:07 am

In a system where each character has 1 character class, then you should axe the generic cleric and let priests of different religions be various different classes. In a Class/Subclass system I would be okay with a Priest subclass that gave the Berserker-Priests of Kord, the Assassin-Priests of Vecna, the Knight-Priests of Hieroneus and the Enchanter-Priests of Boccob a shared suite of healing, leadership, and utility powers.