Can I do with out Cleric Class

[herald]

Here's what i might do, though i am just a tad intoxicated:

You want them in lighter armor? Take away heavy and medium armor profs.

Want them not to do cure spells much? Make them *stricly* domain spells. Or just not swappable like they are now.

Make clerics ultra-rare, with most people in the church being priests or what not. That way, the clerics in the game are really cool and you can demonstrate that there isn't much of this sort of magic.

Yes, it dramatically reduces the clerics overall power level. but i think it more or less fits what you want.

Whatcha'll think?

They would have to be rare in my opinion, But then again, all of the adventuring classes would have to be rare.

Only adventurers would have Action points. NPC classes don't get to use cards from the Dork 20 deck. NPC's with adventurer levels will be able to use them though.

 

[herald]

Though it sounds like you've about got things worked out, you may want to go down to your local store and flip through a copy of AEG's "Swashbuckling Adventures". It's got an inquisitor base class like you described, and also an alchemist base class for your science/magic (the other spellcaster is a witch, and could work as a sorcerer substitute). Might give you some ideas, even if you don't want to pick up the book.

I have the Swashbuckling Adventures book. (A truely well do book I might add.) And I might use the Inquisitor as a foundation, I will hae to tweek it. It's more of a tank combantant. I want something more mental than physical. Maybe I should just write up the class and post it here to let everyone to see.

Thanks to everyone!!!!

I'm much more encouraged.

 

[Li Shenron]

So I guess I want to tweak the cleric. I want him to not be a tank with spells, I want him to be more lightly armored, change the ability to heal (maybe change lethal to subdual for all casters) and bring him into line as a more focused character.

What about the following ideas:

- a cleric is an ordained member of a church: the choice of church dictates for alignment, dogma and code of conduct
- it is a charismatic person who tries to gather more faithful to his cult (cha-based special abilities to boost allies or weaken/convert enemies)
- it's got a lot of diplomatic and knowledge skills (4 or even 6 skill points / level, maybe special abilities)
- he is a low-fight type but can defend himself (HD d6, medium BAB, simple weapon & light armor prof)
- he has minor spellcasting abilities (few spells up to 4th-6th or otherwise spell-like ab.) to improve his goals, and by player's choice he can learn a limited amount of spells from a list which contains: summoning and exorcism/banning, minor abjurations or buffing, minor divinations, minor healing

Wait... this is a DIVINE BARD !


edit: take the Bard, add the Cleric focus in his religion (mostly RP, you can give him one domain if you wish in place of the Bardic knowledge), change spell list and skill list to match your concept, change Music into a speech-based ability and it's done

 

[herald]

What about the following ideas:

- a cleric is an ordained member of a church: the choice of church dictates for alignment, dogma and code of conduct
- it is a charismatic person who tries to gather more faithful to his cult (cha-based special abilities to boost allies or weaken/convert enemies)
- it's got a lot of diplomatic and knowledge skills (4 or even 6 skill points / level, maybe special abilities)
- he is a low-fight type but can defend himself (HD d6, medium BAB, simple weapon & light armor prof)
- he has minor spellcasting abilities (few spells up to 4th-6th or otherwise spell-like ab.) to improve his goals, and by player's choice he can learn a limited amount of spells from a list which contains: summoning and exorcism/banning, minor abjurations or buffing, minor divinations, minor healing

Wait... this is a DIVINE BARD !


edit: take the Bard, add the Cleric focus in his religion (mostly RP, you can give him one domain if you wish in place of the Bardic knowledge), change spell list and skill list to match your concept, change Music into a speech-based ability and it's done

Sort of what I'm thinking. But I think I want to keep him WIS based, and less of a leader of the masses. That's for the church to handle, he's more of person who weeds out undead, evil monsters and the like.


BTW, The man with two legs was a great episode.

 

[Spatzimaus]

This may seem a bit tangential, but trust me, it's not.

In the homebrew I use, there are six basic elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Life, Death), three Advanced elements (Force (Law), Nexus (Chaos), Light (Balance)), Time, Astral (Planar), Astral (Material), Psionic (Divination), and Psionic (Enchantment). Every spell is tied to one of these, explicitly. For some it's obvious (Fire Bolt is... oh yeah, Fire!). For others, not so much (the 3.5E Haste is Fire 3, while the 3E Haste is Time 4). Every spellcaster specializes in one of these elements/subschools, and has to give up something to specialize.

Anyway, point is, in my world there's no concrete definition of Good or Evil. "the Church" (most organized religions; it's mostly a monotheistic world) believes that all Death, Nexus, and Enchantment magic is inherently Evil, all Life, Force, and Divination magic is inherently Good, but that no one other than an ordained priest should perform the good magic and no one should be allowed to do the evil.

They wrap it all up in ceremony so that they can claim the power is divinely granted, and many of those ceremonies involve an item that can be enchanted to have the effect they want when wielded by a non-mage. As a result, most "priests" aren't actually spellcasters in their own right; the church quietly tries to recruit spellcasters who can do "Good" magic, but it openly persecutes those who use the "Evil" varieties. It's especially true when you consider the leaders of the church; most of those are political types, aristocrats who can run a good bureaucracy. The spellcasters within the church are basically kept at the lowest rungs (especially the Diviners). Officially, it's so they can be closest to the people they help. Unofficially...

Anyway, you can do something similar. You could just move the healing spells to the Wizard list, and then make sure that only "priests" can learn those spells.

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

Just as an aside, Druids seem like they would mostly be outside Europe (although the concept "druid" sorta originated in England, but that's another story). By this sort of era, with science on the march and Christianity everywhere, there wasn't much nature worship around. Maybe some- rural British isles and the Balkans seem like the right sort of places- but not much.

 

[Golem2176]

What about the Healer class from Warcraft?