Help me swing my players away from clerics

[Eldragon]

I DM for a whole bunch of rule-lawyers/munchkins. They tend to gravitate towards clerics... a lot. Mostly because they are considered the "best" class (understandibly). With the proper combination of buffs, these clerics easily surpass the party fighters and barbarians in damage delt.

Where are clerics weakest? What do they not handle well? I could page through the MM and find some creatures, but I don't want to have my anti-cleric scheme based a particular type of encounter. I would prefer some campaign wide ideas or specific tactics that can be used by a variety of creatures and NPCs.

In short, I need to give an incentive for 3/4 of the players to NOT be a cleric for once.

 

[Legend]

I DM for a whole bunch of rule-lawyers/munchkins. They tend to gravitate towards clerics... a lot. Mostly because they are considered the "best" class (understandibly). With the proper combination of buffs, these clerics easily surpass the party fighters and barbarians in damage delt.

Where are clerics weakest? What do they not handle well? I could page through the MM and find some creatures, but I don't want to have my anti-cleric scheme based a particular type of encounter. I would prefer some campaign wide ideas or specific tactics that can be used by a variety of creatures and NPCs.

In short, I need to give an incentive for 3/4 of the players to NOT be a cleric for once.

Nix the standard D&D pantheon, and develop your own in which all the gods are either pacifistic or evil. Make clerics receive some sort of distinctive and easily visible "mark" from their god, so the evil ones are immediately recognized and killed. Require the pacifistic, good clerics to follow a strict code of conduct (not dealing damage in battle, or somesuch), and immediately revoke their powers (requiring atonement) if they break it.

 

[ph34r]

Tell them they can't play clerics. Since they've proven they're doing it because it's the best class just don't allow them.

The best thing to do however would be to use the Cloistered Cleric varient from Unearthed Arcana. They get less hit points and less proficiencies. They are much like a divine casting bard except they don't have musical abilities.

 

[ph0rk]

Tell them they can't play clerics. Since they've proven they're doing it because it's the best class just don't allow them.

The best thing to do however would be to use the Cloistered Cleric varient from Unearthed Arcana. They get less hit points and less proficiencies and are more geared toward casting than casting then fighting.

You could a: have more encounters per day, but that makes life tough on all casters

b: make up specific gods (not all pacifists or evil, but restrict domains to specific gods)

Make their alignment more of an issue. A cleric is, after all a paragon of their alignment. positive energy channelers leave a trail just as negatives do, and can be detected by detect good, law, chaos, etc.


Few religions have tenets that cover the rampaging drunkard adventurer lifestyle and nothing else: give them some RP elements to adhere to.


Better yet, how about an organized church or two that wants to put the smack down on some heretics until they follow that specific church's teachings?


Or just whup em with a druid and they'll all switch

 

[Ao the Overkitty]

Wow. You actually have a problem with all your players wanting to be the cleric? We've got the exact opposite problem in any of our games.

In our current campaign (in which the only player who "likes" to play the cleric is the DM), we've resorted to cleric cohorts and lots of cure wands carried by the paladin and ranger. For anything else more serious, well... lets just say that when a character gets poisoned, there is lots of swearing at the table. It gets even louder and more adament if more then one person gets diseased or we run into something with energy drain effects.

For drawing them away from the clerics, well... if you're using 3.5, ambushes work. With a lot of the prep spells lasting minutes or rounds, they won't have the time to throw up their buffs.

Another way is to throw dispel magic on the characters and watch all those buffs go down.

You can also throw in some monsters that can only be harmed by magical effects (ie something you'd need a sorcerer or a wizard for).

Start throwing traps at them. Stuff they're going to want a rogue to disarm, instead of just casting protection from fire and sitting on the fire trap (yes, I've had a player do this).

Basically, throw situations at them that would not necessarily be impossible for them to deal with, but would be SO much easier with another class in the party.

I'm not saying this will make for happy players, but it should be effective.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

In short, I need to give an incentive for 3/4 of the players to NOT be a cleric for once.

Simple enough... Kill all the deities or simply kill all the good/neutral aligned ones.

 

[fba827]

enemies with lots and lots of dispels and antimagic zones ready... knocks away those buffs pretty quickly ...

or - play with it ... they have different churchs? Make their churches send them on conflicting (be it time or goal conflicting) things.

have lots of arcane magic items but few divine ones

Have all the Gods suddenly be cut off (if you go to epic levels) and they have to figure things out without their supernatual and spell like abilities. Though this would only work if they were _all_ clerics so that it is the same handicap to all the PCs and not just two or three.

(If they haven't made their PCs yet) Ask if the players are willing to experiment. Set it up like a "temporary thing" for a "couple of adventures" - make up their PCs, put them in the proverbial hat and everyone chooses their "start in life" at random -- they can later multiclass and what not... but they may end up sticking with a path already given to them by their lot in life...

 

[LGodamus]

You could Implement sacrifice rules , and rules for congregations...in other words...to receive spells the cleric has to pray and sacrifice valuables to get spells...plus the must actively maintain or recruit new followers for their god...

 

[Wycen]

I'm not sure about the true name, but how about an inverted undead cleric? Last night our group met this horrible being in Monte Cook's Banewarren's adventure. Basically it can "turn" the living, and do other nasty stuff to clerics. I'm not sure how much was from the monster itself and what might have been added or changed by our DM, but it was one of the most intense encounters we've had in some time.

 

[thullgrim]

in addition to the above, you could also enforcre the clerics role in the community. And certainly draw up a cannon of behavior for each priest. One on steps out of line, goes against the behavior the deity wants in his priest, then they get punished. Though I hesitate to use that word.

Also, roll with it. See if all the characters are priest, this might lend itself to a chruchy type political game, where all there uber-combat munchkinism, does not really count for much. Enemies would be other priesthoods who also have the ability to be uber-combat munchkins (with more numbers to boot). I think this type of campaign, where each player is a memeber of a priesthood, and you involve them in the politics and community roles of the priesthood might be interesting.

Thullgrim