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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 6091585" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Well, it means you have a Cleric in the party, for good or ill. Having a cleric in the party has always been a big RP decision, from my experience, and greatly effect party choices outside of combat more than how combat works. Again, in my experience.You mean if you're trying to make the most "capable" party, right? Otherwise, this doesn't follow. What if I'm not concerned about that extra encounter each day? Or healing quickly? Or what if I'd like it, but I value other things more? Do you see what I mean?I wouldn't define "raw power" and "battlefield goal achievement" as the same thing at all, but they're often closely related. And, I believe the example being used is 5 encounters per day with a Cleric, as compared to 4 without it (not 8 as compared to 4). And again, what if I value something higher than "encounters per day"? That would make the Cleric sub-optimal....right? I covered that. I think we're agreeing here? Both the Fighter and the Cleric are now "required", right?Disagree. This is mostly edition-specific.Right, so... if you value social interaction and exploration, and don't value combat at all, then a Cleric is nice, but a Rogue is usually a lot better, right? The Cleric has his place in that scenario (some knowledge, healing after traps, or whatever), but the Rogue has a lot more he can contribute. He is now "required" for optimal play, while the Cleric is sub-optimal.The point is, basically, that you're setting things up in a light that makes the Cleric "required" when you don't need to. Is the ability to do 4 encounters in a day going to be more than enough for many groups? Probably. For them, the extra one encounter/day from a Cleric is wasted. It's sub-optimal. And this would be even more true in your example (where the Cleric adds 4 encounters per day on top of the normal 4).For other groups, the ability to go for 5 encounters (or 8, or whatever) instead is very valuable. It depends on what the table values. Which brings me to...Um, right? That's my point. Very rarely do I have more than two combats in a day, and rarely that in a short time period. In this, the extra one (or four) encounter(s) per day from the Cleric would be worthless. He could still heal the party, so they can get around while at full HP, which is just awesome still. So it's not like he's not useful.But, people saying that the Cleric is "required" because of that extra encounter per day are only saying that because they've defined "required" in a way that mandates that. It's not necessarily the case. So, like you pointed out, much like you can't design towards "Fun", since it varies from table to table, you can't really have a blanket "Cleric is required to play" statement without people like me going "wha--?" Because it just doesn't seem required to me.O....kay?But the Fighter is killing things so much faster than everything, so he's preventing damage you'd take; he's now "required", too. And the Rogue is so much better at dealing with noncombat situations than everyone else that he's now "required", too. And the Wizard has such varied and powerful spells that he's now "required", too. Each one has a niche that you can play without, there's just consequences for doing so. The Cleric, with healing, is no different in this respect. It's just a different aspect of "power" for the group. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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