Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
You're diluting your brand!
Oh cleric what are thou? When most classes can heal...
You're diluting your brand!
Raith5
Adventurer
Our cleric is basically a short Thor because he is a Dwarven tempest cleric. He leaves a lot healing to the wimpy bard because he is too busy zapping enemies.
I think the carry over of healing surges/hit dice from 4e has meant the cleric can be a great many things other than a healer. Which is obviously a good thing if you have other cool things to do, like zapping things.
I think the carry over of healing surges/hit dice from 4e has meant the cleric can be a great many things other than a healer. Which is obviously a good thing if you have other cool things to do, like zapping things.
L
lowkey13
Guest
*Deleted by user*
Tony Vargas
Legend
Just stop and think about that for a moment, folks. 5e has 'gone' a considerable way, but the edition immediately prior to it had gone further. So it has actually /not/ gone in that way, at all, it's merely backed off from it, just not all the way back. Once again, 5e gets credit for moving forward when it's been going backwards.
Even in 4e, you theoretically needed a 'leader' Role to restore hps & generally support the party, you were just free to fill that slot with a variety of concepts running the gamut of Sources. In 5e you can be a nature-oriented healer (Druid, maybe Ranger a bit), a divine healer (Cleric or Paladin), or an arcane healer (if you have a good singing voice: Bard). In 4e you could also be a psionic leader (Ardent) or martial leader (Warlord), and had more than one choice of primal (Shaman as well as Sentinel Druid) and even arcane (Artificer as well as Bard), oh, yeah, and Divine, again (RunePriests as well as Clerics & secondary-leader Paladins).
The Cleric's still the cleric - the armored pious glowy guy who heals and turns undead. I've been calling it 'support' because healer is too narrow, and leader is too 4e. ;P
The cleric was just standing too close to the paladin when you went off.
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Yaarel
He Mage
I appreciate the ‘secularization’ of D&D healing. More options are available for healer archetypes. It is healthier for the game.
I appreciate where Xanathars Guide has rules-as-written that allow the *player* to choose to play a nonpolytheistic cleric.
The sacred can be an abstract concept (love, ethics) or a cosmic force (energy, consciousness, life).
Xanathars Guide still assumes the cleric is ‘serving’ the abstract concept. This unconscious paradigm of ‘servitude’ is the whole problem with hierarchical, bureaucratic, polytheism in the first place.
But, when the devotion is abstract, it can be an aspect of ones own better nature, that the cleric is striving toward. So the wording in Xanathars remains problematic, but is good enough.
Ultimately, the D&D 5e cleric class is a character concept that struggles to physicalize valuable ideals into pragmatic actions, to benefit a community who share the same ideals.
The short version is, the cleric serves a ‘higher power’.
But the 5e player has alot of latitude to decide which power should be so high.
I appreciate where Xanathars Guide has rules-as-written that allow the *player* to choose to play a nonpolytheistic cleric.
The sacred can be an abstract concept (love, ethics) or a cosmic force (energy, consciousness, life).
Xanathars Guide still assumes the cleric is ‘serving’ the abstract concept. This unconscious paradigm of ‘servitude’ is the whole problem with hierarchical, bureaucratic, polytheism in the first place.
But, when the devotion is abstract, it can be an aspect of ones own better nature, that the cleric is striving toward. So the wording in Xanathars remains problematic, but is good enough.
Ultimately, the D&D 5e cleric class is a character concept that struggles to physicalize valuable ideals into pragmatic actions, to benefit a community who share the same ideals.
The short version is, the cleric serves a ‘higher power’.
But the 5e player has alot of latitude to decide which power should be so high.
Yaarel
He Mage
In terms of concept, the cleric describes community leaders of various kinds of spirituality.
In terms of mechanics, the cleric is one of the best gishes that D&D has to offer, marrying powerful magic with competent warcraft. Especially when the DM and the player assign relevant domain spells, the cleric can be almost any kind of gish.
In terms of mechanics, the cleric is one of the best gishes that D&D has to offer, marrying powerful magic with competent warcraft. Especially when the DM and the player assign relevant domain spells, the cleric can be almost any kind of gish.
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Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
Don't be too proud of this Bargle terror you've constructed
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
Remember, many of us haven't played 4e, or didn't like it and stopped quickly. It's in a way, like 4e didn't exist.
... that's not the meaning of the word leader... I mean maybe it's what some people came up with to make support characters feel better? (in 4e?)
Chaosmancer
Legend
In reading the OP I heard the question as this "If we take away healing from the Cleric is there anything left?"
Personally? Oh Yeah. One of my recent characters was a Gnome Life Cleric, I was actually building him to be a doctor and really wanted to focus on the healing aspect (even took the Healer Feat first thing). But, we didn't need healing, so I became an Avatar of Death and Destruction.
Seriously, the only guy in the party who could come close or beat me in how much I dished out and took was the multi-classed Aasimar Shadow Sorcerer Oathbreaker Paladin and I was playing an off-race healer who was switch hitting as a frontliner. I had insane armor class, and my bread and butter was spiritual weapon (1d8+4 or 2d8+4 as a bonus action) and Spirit Guardians (15 ft radius of 3d8 or even 5d8 when I felt punchy)
In addition, some really great divination features I never really got to use (did a lot of Communing, but the DM never seemed to have a solid plan I could latch onto for information so it was of minimal help).
Looking beyond my Gnome, now we have Xanathar's guide, giving us even more spells and options. I was so happy to have Toll of the Dead. And the Cleric in our current party, also a Life Cleric, also mainly a healer, also been up in the front with us, one of the highest ACs in the group, respectable damage output, and with things like Bless and Holy Weapon giving massive boosts to the parties effectiveness.
Honestly, I think you could readily make a case that the Cleric is still one of the most powerful classes in the game, and with the variety of domains they can usually find that niche that works for them. War Clerics can turn a miss into a hit with their +10, Light Clerics can turn hits into misses when the enemy has closed on you, Tempest Clerics bring the pain as evidenced by the number of them commenting in this thread, and I've found a lot of homebrewed stuff I found fascinating (though no one has wanted to try them out yet)
And, as a lot of people also mentioned. The role-play is strong here. I find myself fascinated by fictional belief systems, so I recognize my bias, but the pious character has a massive cultural pull, Clerics exemplify that in a very specific way that feels like it needs to be in the game.
Personally? Oh Yeah. One of my recent characters was a Gnome Life Cleric, I was actually building him to be a doctor and really wanted to focus on the healing aspect (even took the Healer Feat first thing). But, we didn't need healing, so I became an Avatar of Death and Destruction.
Seriously, the only guy in the party who could come close or beat me in how much I dished out and took was the multi-classed Aasimar Shadow Sorcerer Oathbreaker Paladin and I was playing an off-race healer who was switch hitting as a frontliner. I had insane armor class, and my bread and butter was spiritual weapon (1d8+4 or 2d8+4 as a bonus action) and Spirit Guardians (15 ft radius of 3d8 or even 5d8 when I felt punchy)
In addition, some really great divination features I never really got to use (did a lot of Communing, but the DM never seemed to have a solid plan I could latch onto for information so it was of minimal help).
Looking beyond my Gnome, now we have Xanathar's guide, giving us even more spells and options. I was so happy to have Toll of the Dead. And the Cleric in our current party, also a Life Cleric, also mainly a healer, also been up in the front with us, one of the highest ACs in the group, respectable damage output, and with things like Bless and Holy Weapon giving massive boosts to the parties effectiveness.
Honestly, I think you could readily make a case that the Cleric is still one of the most powerful classes in the game, and with the variety of domains they can usually find that niche that works for them. War Clerics can turn a miss into a hit with their +10, Light Clerics can turn hits into misses when the enemy has closed on you, Tempest Clerics bring the pain as evidenced by the number of them commenting in this thread, and I've found a lot of homebrewed stuff I found fascinating (though no one has wanted to try them out yet)
And, as a lot of people also mentioned. The role-play is strong here. I find myself fascinated by fictional belief systems, so I recognize my bias, but the pious character has a massive cultural pull, Clerics exemplify that in a very specific way that feels like it needs to be in the game.
