Fighters Suck (2e)

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Sat May 30, 2009 1:58 pm

I was doing a little reading and stumbled across this:

"If the priest deliberately violates the goals of the god, then he's in real trouble ... The third time this happens, the god will immediately reduce the character to 1 hit point and change his character class. The priest will become an ordinary fighter at an experience level two lower than the priest's level (minimum first level); his normal hit point total and possessions will be unaffected. Until the character undergoes a severe ritual of atonement, the god will despise the character and plague him with little ills, diseases, and enemies. Once the character atones for the deed, the god forgives him . . . but the character will still be a fighter."

The Complete Priest's Handbook (1990).

Your punishment for RPing your cleric badly is to be a fighter. Really.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat May 30, 2009 2:24 pm

Yeah, I recall other classes with random restrictions (Paladin, maybe Ranger?) also having the "You have angered the gazebo! You turn into a fighter who can't specialise" penalty.

DeadlyReed · Post by **DeadlyReed** » Sat May 30, 2009 3:33 pm

Didn't the Complete Priest's Handbook propose changes that made the cleric class weaker?

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sat May 30, 2009 4:16 pm

DeadlyReed wrote:Didn't the Complete Priest's Handbook propose changes that made the cleric class weaker?

Yes. Normal Clerics get like... 12 domains or something. That book lists a bunch of options that basically amount to a sliding scale of martial ability and casting ability. Those with better weapon proficiencies get fewer domains. Well, spheres. Whatever. Point is they get to choose from a smaller list of spell categories.

This really shouldn't surprise you, as back in first edition Fighter was that class you play because your 3d6 in order didn't let you play a real class. In 2nd edition they pretended it was better but admitted in later books the casting classes owned their face. Though they were at least ok then.

3rd and 3.5 features fallen Paladins as Fighters sans bonus feats. Come to think of it all editions did something similar to that, and I think the earlier ones did the same thing for Rangers. Except it was 'no specializing' instead. Or something.

I think 4.0 is about the only edition that didn't do this (or at least hid it well enough so as to not be found right off). Presumably because the devs wanked over them long enough. Though this is the edition that brought us Lol Orbizards, so Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards is still strong.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Sun May 31, 2009 3:00 am

The reason they introduced the optional rules to make clerics weaker in the Priest's Handbook is that their system for generating specialty priests created classes with far fewer spells. They correctly deduced that most players would rather play a standard cleric than their flavorful but weak SPs (same XP table, after all), so they had to weaken the standard cleric.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun May 31, 2009 3:07 am

But I thought clerics were the booby prize class back then, the class nobody wanted to play in the first place?

Jacob_Orlove · Post by **Jacob_Orlove** » Sun May 31, 2009 3:41 am

Being an unspecialized fighter is the equivalent to being a Warrior in 3e--it's basically an NPC class. Weapon Specialization and the various improved versions were what made Fighters stand out at all.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Sun May 31, 2009 3:58 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:But I thought clerics were the booby prize class back then, the class nobody wanted to play in the first place?

That's mostly because they carried the baggage of being the party healer, not because the class itself was all that bad. Really, they had a ton of spells, some of which weren't bad. Mostly, they were missing the animal buffs (which were wizard-only back then), Miracle (which didn't exist then) and the wizard-list-ported domain spells. But they still had stuff like Hold Person and Heat Metal at low level and Flame Strike at higher levels. They also had all the divinations they had in 3.x. All-in-all, not a horrible spell selection for people who could wear heavy armor (when there were no touch ACs) and wield okay melee weapons like the flail (can't remember which was the good one) and the morningstar. I mean, you couldn't make a 2e cleric the best archer in the world, but the unspoken requirement to blow most of your spell slots on healing and dead-raising was the main obstacle to making it an interesting class.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun May 31, 2009 8:35 am

Oh, and being stuck with what's now the Monk's equipment list, AW.

-Crissa

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:23 pm

The Priest's Handbook and the Specialty Priests were teh awesome if you found the right god that let you use badass weapons and specialize.

Otherwise, meh. Casters but not SUPER DOMINATING casters.

Of course, a 2e Fighter with supreme STR (19+) and the right specializations could just kill anything, so there was that.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 1:48 pm

Oh, some of those priests were really powerful. And the 2E hold person... got my my entire party once.

Though in all my years of playing 2E, we almost never had a cleric that could heal...

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Tue Jun 02, 2009 2:13 pm

Most of the speciality priests dropped Healing or Turning or Both, so your experience is unsuprising.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Jun 03, 2009 12:30 am

Yeah, if you walked into the wrong adventure without Turning in your party, you were totally doomed.

And races were limited on whether they got Turning or not as priests.

-Crissa