Atypical Clerics and Wizards who like versatility

[I'm A Banana]

Monk, vow of poverty (let's pretend it's not horribly broken), vow of peace (ditto), always does non-lethal damage (barring undead and constructs, which I'm guessing a pacifist probably would have no problem dispatching, assuming there aren't good undead and the construct is destructive).

Ooo! Maybe ask for access to Wild Empathy and a few tweaks to support it! Wild animal? I will talk to it, soothe it, so we may pass...

...your epic destiny is DIRTY HIPPY, isn't it?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Eh, there's a difference between a well done anti-hero, who fully understands their means are harsh or evil, but feels that they need to uphold to a greater good, and a poorly done anti-hero, who smolders with generic angst over how nobody trusts them. I've had a lot of great and REALLY interesting parties with characters who fell into the former - those that believed just going around playing nice wasn't going to cut it when it came to changing the world.

I've ALSO had some interesting parties with mostly nonviolent characters who used primarily non-lethal damage. I'm wondering how they feel about the so far absence of this in 4e.

 

[Irda Ranger]

According to the 4e design ethos for combat roles, if you're not making an attack roll every round, you're not having fun contributing to the combat effectiveness of your party. Thus, clerics of all gods will unleash their divine powers by hitting things during combat. Sunday services in the Points of Light setting are...interesting involve sermons and/or Rituals.

I won't say "TFIFY", because that's rude and I wouldn't want to presume your opinions, but I have restated your contention in a way that I think is more fair to the 4E devs and accurate generally. IMO, of course.

Class Powers are Combat Powers. Therefore they're all about attacks and defenses. Is that really surprising? Perhaps you'd be more charitable to the Cleric class if they retained the Crusader name from Bo9S?

My point was, if the rules don't support clerics with different styles, it reduces the utility of the rules. About the only thing 2e ever did right was the cleric 'spheres', so that clerics of different gods could have REALLY different spell lists. 3e nerfed this to just domain spells, so that clerics shared 95% of their spells with each other, and it looks like in 4e, the only difference between a cleric of Luvvypeace, Goddess Of Fluffy Kittens and Bloodguzzler, God Of Eating Babies, will be that they *might* be able to pick a feat to give them a minor alternate power. Otherwise, same thing, stat wise.

2E Specialty Priests sure were ... unique. Many were brokenly better or worse than others though, similar to certain 3E PrC's.

All of the classes in 4E are more narrowly defined Archetypes. We can't say how flexible they are until we see the full Power and Feat lists, but we really can't expect the Cleric to be that much more flexible than the Fighter or Rogue. It's supposed to represent a particular concept.

There's probably no way to give you what you want though, because WotC explicitly does not want 4E class choices to have "wrong" answers. The class you're asking for is sub-optimal relative to all the others (in respect of combat/adventuring power; that's not a comment about how fun they may be to RP for you). The easiest way for you to do this is to simply ignore half your Class powers. WotC isn't going to waste its time publishing an obvious gimp (rollplay-wise, not roleplay-wise).

 

[drjones]

Actually, Gandhi-like character would be awesome.

Trying not to get pedantic but what you describe is not a practitioner of passive resistance. It might be an interesting character but it is not a reflection of the philosophy of conflict resolution Gandhi espoused. For that to work you need to assume your 'enemy' is a moral individual with a conscience. It works against a nation that wants to believe it is moral and good (see British occupation of India, US Civil Rights conflict). It does not work on an enemy that is truly evil or ruthless (nazis, the KKK, mindflayer elder brain) which is most of the enemies in a dnd campaign.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Or just playing a warlock and change the fluff around a bit.

I think Warlocks will make great Evil Cultists.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Actually, Gandhi-like character would be awesome.

Monk, vow of poverty (let's pretend it's not horribly broken), vow of peace (ditto), always does non-lethal damage (barring undead and constructs, which I'm guessing a pacifist probably would have no problem dispatching, assuming there aren't good undead and the construct is destructive).

Ooo! Maybe ask for access to Wild Empathy and a few tweaks to support it! Wild animal? I will talk to it, soothe it, so we may pass...

But Ghandi wouldn't even kick people for nonlethal damage. he would let himself beat down by them, and they would only "lose" due to their total moral failure in doing so. (So they might actually take hit point damage, after all - moral damage )

That might work in 20th to 21th century society, but in a medieval world, where some people might actually not see anything wrong in beating down a insubordinate peasant? Against a hungry Lion? A angry Dragon?

A true pacifist will not beat down anyone. His only hope to win is through his words and his exemplary deeds.

 

[Will]

I am taking a very liberal view of 'like' in this usage.

Actually, if 4e skill challenges pan out, it'd be VERY interesting to try a more truly Gandhi-like character -- one who does fight true evil (like undead, no reasoning there), but among sentient creatures is a true pacifist and persuades rather than fights.

Granted, you'd have to make sure your fellow players are on board with the idea.

But I've seen a few adventures recently where the paladin steps forward to parlay with horribly nasty creatures and we've actually managed to resolve matters with no bloodshed. One case involved an Ormyr which, despite the appearance, is LN.

Interestingly, if you look at the monster books, a lot of critters aren't actually evil. Granted, that doesn't guarantee they will listen, but it makes for a potentially interesting road for a less bloodthirsty group.

Heck, otyughs are neutral and sentient. Show up with rotting garbage to trade with and you might walk on by!

 

[Byronic]

The descriptions of the various tiers, IIRC, talked about SAVING the town/nation/world, not destroying it under a boot of EEEEEEEEEEEEvil.

Then...you make it so. I was referring to PCs as heroic. Y'know, the stars of the story, the ones who should be out there rescuing villages and vanquishing demons.

Hmm, I would like to say that you do not have to be good to save the world. There are plenty of other reasons to do it. Some might do it because they want fame, some because the world just happens to have all their stuff on it. Some might do it because their allies want to and they have nothing better to do. Some might even do it out of aesthetics.

Dr Doom is a good example of someone who would save the world simply because it's *his* world, and he's an arrogant evil character.

But in any case if the Eladrin are half as capricious as were written down in "races and classes" then I doubt it if their clerics will fit the mold we've seen so far.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Eh, there's a difference between a well done anti-hero, who fully understands their means are harsh or evil, but feels that they need to uphold to a greater good, and a poorly done anti-hero, who smolders with generic angst over how nobody trusts them. I've had a lot of great and REALLY interesting parties with characters who fell into the former - those that believed just going around playing nice wasn't going to cut it when it came to changing the world.

For sure.

One of my favorite PCs was a Lawful Evil assassin type, who just accidentally ended up helping to save the world several times over her career.

Evil characters can be fun, I just think that 4e is going to push more the good guy premise by default. As well it probably should.

 

[Jer]

Actually, I think a non-violent character in a violent world is a very interesting PC.

Eh - it depends on the game and the personality of the player. It can be awesome, it can also lead to people never wanting to play a game with that particular player ever ever again. IME it's kind of like playing with a paladin in the group - some players can pull it off and other players make you want to subtly encourage their paladin off into the great beyond so that they'll roll up something else.

About the only thing 2e ever did right was the cleric 'spheres', so that clerics of different gods could have REALLY different spell lists.

I disagree with this wholeheartedly - one of the biggest MISTAKES that 2e made was to introduce spheres and to rename the "cleric" as "priest". It reinforced this idea that "all priests are clerics". One of the things that 3e got right was to create the adept NPC class and to discourage the idea that the "militant priest" should be the model for ALL priests in the world. I'd like to see them take that a step farther in the future and create a PC priest class that was more like a wizard than a cleric - just to reinforce the idea that not all priests are Templars and Hospitallers.

Anyway, back to the OP - since I tend to always play the cleric when I actually play, I don't think I'm going to miss clerical spell selection at all. I know that I'm not going to miss it as a DM - the "camping" portion of the game is always the worst as the cleric player tries to figure out if he's just going to just prepare the same spells he already has on his list or if he's going to get all new ones. At least the wizard was restricted to the spells in his book to choose from.

And as far as being able to make different clerics -- I actually hope that they come out with some new classes for new priests instead. Clerics fill a leader role, why not some other type of priest to fill a controller role? Or a striker role? Going back to what I said above, not all priests need to be militant holy warriors who inspire/heal their comrades in battle. A new priest class that focuses on silver-tongued distractions and illusions would make a great fit for Trickster gods (like Loki) while a different one that centered on controlling weather and environmental effects could make for a great priest of a more elemental god. And what about priests of War Gods like Thor? Why shouldn't they be more like Defenders than Leaders? Perhaps the Paladin might be a good fit for those types of characters but if not then maybe a new class is in order.

But the first step is to stop insisting that all priests have to be clerics. Once you get past that the world is your mollusk.