What class has changed the least through the editions?

[Slife]

Clerics got shafted in 3E. Everybody else gets class features as they go up but not clerics, nooooo. People have always had a weird attitude about clerics. They may be the single most useful class, in concept and in practice, and yet I frequently default to playing them because other people won't. There's something about them that folks find inherently uncool, and I think the absence of class features in the revision stems from the designers accepting that perception as a reality. If I'd been doing that revision, I would have made sure clerics got some bells-and-whistles to encourage folks to play them and get to know their full potential.

Bah. Clerics are already the most powerful base class (although the druid is a very close second). What more do you want?

 

[Glyfair]

Bah. Clerics are already the most powerful base class (although the druid is a very close second). What more do you want?

Probably a class people are willing to play. I have the same experience, even power gamers don't gravitate towards the cleric. The cleric gets played by the person willing to put his personal choice below the needs of the team.

Is more power the answer? Probably not. However, moving towards making them attractive would be a good idea.

 

[Emirikol]

Bah. Clerics are already the most powerful base class (although the druid is a very close second). What more do you want?

Does that mean that all the other classes got weaker with the change?

jh

 

[Whimsical]

One answer is to do what Monte Cook did in his Arcana Evolved setting and have healing magic available to every spellcaster.

 

[Jer]

Probably a class people are willing to play. I have the same experience, even power gamers don't gravitate towards the cleric. The cleric gets played by the person willing to put his personal choice below the needs of the team.

QFT - it doesn't matter that "cleric is the most powerful base class in the game" when even power gamers don't want to play them. Clerics were made into the most powerful class specifically to encourage more people to play them, and they STILL are the class that the new guy always has to play because no one else wants to do it. (Or the class that I always have to play when I don't DM for my group).

In that way, I suppose, Clerics have changed the least from 1st edition to 3rd - I'm still the only one in my group who actually enjoys playing the cleric (And that's across multiple groups over the last 30 years).

My vote is actually for the Wizard, though, instead of the Cleric. While Clerics from OD&D to 1e and Basic/Expert aren't all that different, clerics from 1e to 2e were massively overhauled to allow for specialty priests and different spell lists for different portfolios. Then they got overhauled again to put them back into their "party healer" role while still trying to get some flavor of the multiple domains. And turning has changed quite a lot across the different editions. Even though wizards were once just "magic-users", the biggest mechanical change to the wizard class is the fact that magic item creation seems to be more important than it used to be. Even the specialists introduced in 2e and carried over into 3e feels like a minor change to me.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Illusionists. No wait ...

I'd say wizards. They are still no armor, spells, and a few weapons (feats being the significant change, plus familiar mechanics).

I diagree with clerics -- domains (and related special abilities) plus spontaneous casting have given clerics tremendous ability to customize and be flexible where 1E clerics were pretty similar across the board.

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

I'd agree that the Wizard has changed the least. While there are more specialization options, one already existed as the Illusionist class in 1st edition AD&D, and school specialization was available in 2nd edition AD&D.

I don't understand the problem with the Cleric. It's a spellcaster who can wear full plate and carry a large shield without penalty. It can eradicate most of the undead it meets. The Cleric is awesome.

 

[Jer]

I don't understand the problem with the Cleric. It's a spellcaster who can wear full plate and carry a large shield without penalty. It can eradicate most of the undead it meets. The Cleric is awesome.

I like playing clerics, but...

As a spellcaster, despite the large spell list that clerics get, in any group I've played in I end up only casting healing spells and buffs. Spontaneous casting means that I can select a bunch of spells that might be fun to cast, but I never get to cast them because "we might need a Cure later". The "domain spell" mechanic in 3e has made this a bit more interesting, as there's a single slot for every spell level where I can just say "I can't swap this out for a cure spell, so I'm casting my Wall of Fire domain spell", but you only get 1 one of those at each spell level, and you only get to choose between two different spells for that slot.

When you game with a bunch of tanks, they often don't "let" your cleric get into battle. No one in my group ever really says "don't melee", but they'll "protect" you because your healing and buffs are too good to lose. Half the time I have to stand back and bounce cure spells off of the barbarian and the fighter during the big smackdown instead of getting into the melee myself. (Yes, if we had fewer tanks this wouldn't be as much of a problem, but this particular group loves their tanks...)

As for undead destruction/turning ... the turn mechanism is pretty much too good. Clerics can make the undead run away so fast that it becomes an issue of the rest of the party "mopping up" while you maintain your turning. And since you can't get within 10' of the undead that you've turned, you can't jump into the melee and help out -- you're stuck standing back, making sure that the undead stay turned until they're either all dead or the turn duration runs out, at which point if there are still too many undead you do it again. I'd almost prefer something that does a bit of damage to undead or gives them a penalty but still lets you join in the melee ... or being able to spontaneously turn my turn undead attempts into cure spells so that I could cast some other spell instead.

Again, I like playing Clerics, but that's because I don't mind the traditional "support role" that the Cleric fits into. I can totally understand why when I DM most of my players would rather play a Druid or a Paladin if they have to play the healer instead of a Cleric.

 

[Razilin]

I'm going with wizard; not because the wizard itself is least changed, but because its close competitor, the cleric changed MORE.

The biggest (and best) change in the cleric class is not even on its special abilities column: spontaneous casting.

You ask your 2nd ed cleric what he prepared for the day: "Bless." "And what else?" "Oh, cure light wounds. A lot of them." The flexibility of spont. casting ramps up the cleric's niche as a buffer and the occasional crowd controller (druid still outdoes him in crowd control, I feel). Weapon selection is a minor change and the alteration some the weird spheres of influence network to two domains streamlines the choices a cleric needs to make.

But its the new status as buffer instead of healer that, I feel, makes the cleric a more changed class than the wizard.

 

[Glyfair]

I diagree with clerics -- domains (and related special abilities) plus spontaneous casting have given clerics tremendous ability to customize and be flexible where 1E clerics were pretty similar across the board.

Don't forget the sphere's of 2nd edition. I think the are the most changed class with each edition having significant changes. They are followed by thieves/rogues (given the evolution of the skills system).