Balancing the Cleric

[Creamsteak]

Here is what you would end up with:

Hit Dice: d4
Base Attack Bonus: 1/2
Fort: Low
Ref: Low
Will: High

Skills 2+int

Spells per day
1 - 3/1
2 - 4/2
3 - 4/2/1
4 - 5/3/2
5 - 5/3/2/1
6 - 5/3/3/2
7 - 6/4/3/2/1
8 - 6/4/3/3/2
9 - 6/4/4/3/2/1
10 - 6/4/4/3/3/2
11 - 6/5/4/4/3/2/1
12 - 6/5/4/4/3/3/2
13 - 6/5/5/4/4/3/2/1
14 - 6/5/5/4/4/3/3/2
15 - 6/5/5/5/4/4/3/2/1
16 - 6/5/5/5/4/4/3/3/2
17 - 6/5/5/5/5/4/4/3/2/1
18 - 6/5/5/5/5/4/4/3/3/2
19 - 6/5/5/5/5/5/4/4/3/3
20 - 6/5/5/5/5/5/4/4/4/4

If you took the magic and healing domains (very good choices using this), you could spontaneously cast spells form the domain lists, which include Heal, Dispel Magic, and Mordenkainen's disjunction. This is pretty powerful, but if you remove domain abilities and drop the 1hour/level to 10minutes/level you have a feasable Wizard-ish Cleric.

My players prefer this variant anyway, and it's actually Less balanced, but it does have a more interesting feal than the generic healer vs. generic necromancer vibe I get from the traditional cleric.

 

[Creamsteak]

Allright, here's a quick run-over of a that concept I posted about. It's really copy and pasted stuff from the Cleric, with the modifications made, a little picture, and a list of all the domains from the Player's Handbook, Dieties and Demigods, and I had to add (a not so good) turning domain so White Mages could take the ability to turn undead.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

You should probably think about this: any class whose primary purpose is combat healing needs more than a d4 hit points in order to stay alive--particularly if they don't get wizard spells.

In order to do their job (heal), they need to be up on the front lines which means they are quite vulnerable to attack. That's a location that spells instant death for most wizards. Admittedly, there are wizards who are designed to survive on the front lines however those wizards typically make heavy use of defensive wizard spells like Shield, Mage Armor, Mirror Image, Haste, and Blink--none of which are available to the proposed cleric variant. (And no, heavy armor won't help--wizard spells usually add up to 15 to 19 (Shield, Mage Armor, Protection From Evil, Haste, Cat's Grace) points of AC by level 5. At the same level, heavy armor plus shield usually adds up to 11 or 12 points of AC.

D4 hit points, no wizard defensive spells, and being the designated healer will very quickly result in dead alt.clerics.

 

[Creamsteak]

I agree. My variant isn't very good. I do think spontaneous domain casting does remove the "generic healer" aspect. That does make this more of a modifyable class, allowing your cleric to perhaps focus entirely on domain spells like burning hands and dispel magic. The lack of spontaneous healing spells (unless you take the healing domain) makes this character less of a cleric, and more of a mage. Hense the name. Though I personally could see it with a D6 like the adept...

 

[Destil]

Clerics IMC

In my game I've removed heavy armor proficency and I've replaced turn undead with something more relevent to the specific god in some cases.

I've tampered with domains a bit as well, just to smooth things over if, say, a cleric of a god that grants Turn fire creatures takes the water domain: if the cleric can turn a creature as your god-granted ability, then taking a domain that provides the same ability gives you the ability to either destory creatures that are natives of prime or banish creatures back to their home plane for at least 1 day per level if the're outsiders or elementals.

 

[Emongnome]

Although this is a minor effect, I've made a house rule for my campaign that states clerics that can channel positive energy cannot channel negative energy. I know good clerics can't cast evil spells, but some spells (like Inflict spells) don't have "Evil" as part of the school, but state that the caster channels negative energy as part of the spell. I don't have the errata in front of me, so that may be an error in the PHB.

[Edit: missing words, ect.]

 

[hong]

(And no, heavy armor won't help--wizard spells usually add up to 15 to 19 (Shield, Mage Armor, Protection From Evil, Haste, Cat's Grace) points of AC by level 5. At the same level, heavy armor plus shield usually adds up to 11 or 12 points of AC.

? Magic vestment, or a friendly item enchanter, should see most clerics in +5 plate and +5 shield. That's 20-odd points of AC right there. True, it takes a long time to get there, and costs a lot of money, and is useless against touch attacks, but clerics generally shouldn't be lacking for AC.

D4 hit points, no wizard defensive spells, and being the designated healer will very quickly result in dead alt.clerics.

A designated combat healer would probably be a multiclassed fighter/alt.cleric. This bumps up their durability, at the expense of higher-level magic.

 

[Nifft]

I like spontaneously casting Domain spells, droping spontaneously casting cure spells, getting rid of the bonus Domain spell per day,

I'm with you up to here. I also drop the Cleric's armor proficiency -- they only get Light armor and Shields free -- and most domain powers use up Turn Undead daily slots.

I let the Cleric keep her good saves, decent HP and decent BAB.

IMC, only Fighters and Paladins get Heavy Armor prof. for free.

Finally, I make sure that only a few gods grant the Healing domain -- it should be something fairly special -- and no-one grants insane non-core domains. I've made up a couple of domains (Music and Enslavement) but I try hard to ensure those spells being cast repeatedly in every battle won't unbalance that faith.

It's much more fun to have evil clerics spontaneously casting Cause Fear, Prot. from Good, Invisibility and Magic Weapon that it was having them just cast Inflict spells.

In general, for balancing Domain spell lists, I use these rules of thumb:
Weak Cleric spell: at level or one level earlier.
Normal or Strong Cleric spell: at level.
Weak Druid spell: at level or one level higher.
Strong Druid spell: two or more levels higher.
Weak Arcane spell: one or more levels higher.
Strong Arcane spell: avoid.

-- Nifft

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

This is true at level 15+ but until the cleric gets there, he's dire bear meat. Even at level 6, two castings of magic vestment (1/2 of the cleric's highest level spells) would only give the cleric AC 24. That's a decent AC but not good enough to be on the front line (either as fighter or medic) when you only have d4 hit points. By the time characters hit sixth through eigth level, they regularly go up against foes who will hit that AC quite regularly (hill giants, dire bears, 7th level barbarians, dire wolverines, wyverns, etc) and which do enough damage to wipe out a d4 hit point character in one or two hits.

Multiclassing with fighter in this case wouldn't really help the alt.cleric to fill the role of combat healer. It would either not grant enough hit points to make a difference or it would reduce the alt.cleric's spell ability enough that he is an insufficient combat healer. Cure light wounds spells and one Cure Moderate are not sufficient when facing dire bears or hill giants. Healing spells with a lot of kick are required if they are to be effective.

? Magic vestment, or a friendly item enchanter, should see most clerics in +5 plate and +5 shield. That's 20-odd points of AC right there. True, it takes a long time to get there, and costs a lot of money, and is useless against touch attacks, but clerics generally shouldn't be lacking for AC.

A designated combat healer would probably be a multiclassed fighter/alt.cleric. This bumps up their durability, at the expense of higher-level magic.

 

[Chacal]

I use the following house rules for all clerics :
spontaneously cast healings use D6, prepared ones D10
clerics must have a deity
Except for crusader-types, I make a variant class by altering the cleric with some of the following acording to the deity :

Removing Some armor/shield proficiency
Using Divine failure on certain types of armor/shield
Using turn undead only for activating special powers
Using D6 hit dice
Giving more domains
Giving more class skills
Giving more skill points
Giving 1 more spell/level from domain
Decreasing dices used for damaging spells
Allowing spontaneous casting of domain spells with a turn undead attempt
Giving anti-domains for deities : a list of disallowed spells

It's not really a lot of work, since we don't have dozens of clerics.
We might be a strange group because we never had problems with clerics being unattractive. In fact we loved the 2ed priests. We just get rid of the most powerfull ones , and had complete control over which deity were allowed.


Chacal