Cleric - Holy Warrior or Healer?

[Remathilis]

Clerics I found were casters primarily, but because their spells serve better between fights, they find themselves secondary fighters.

Healer primary, warrior secondary.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Clerics are the line infantry; Paladins are Special Operations.

 

[gyor]

I'd also prefer "paladin" be the holy warrior class, but I'd like paladin to not mean dude in heavy armor wielding a giant sword. Every holy warrior should be the epitome of his faith, in terms of fighting, and I'd expect a holy warrior of the god of thieves to be different than that of forests.....so maybe holy warrior is actually a theme, and not a class.....

To me Paladins are religious knights, without knighthood its just a cleric. Religious Knighthood is the defining characterist of Paladins, Clerics are holy warrior chaplins, paladins are Knights of the faith, and Priest are the most devoted, they are holy people, not normally soldiers except for war gods, that try to embody the principles of the god.

 

[gyor]

Clerics are the line infantry; Paladins are Special Operations.

I like that, but to adjust that abit, clerics are the infantry with lots of medical training, Paladins Cavalary with a little medical training, and Priests the politicians that send them to war and the mission specialists and the training they get, you don't have the clearance to know about

 

[Lord Zack]

I voted healy cleric, because that has been a key trait of clerics since day 1, but I think thier plans are for a cleric the is both master of healy magic, shields, and maces.

I'm sorry, but that's wrong. The first version of clerics did not have any spells at first level, and didn't have enough spells overall to be a healbot. they did, however have fighting abilities nearly on par with the fighter. In many ways the cleric was the first "Gish". hence the desire to see them be a "holy warrior".

 

[wingsandsword]

My biggest problem with the Cleric class is that it's tried to make all fantasy priests (except nature priests included under the Druid class) into faux-Christian Knights Hospitaller.

From the pre-3e prohibition on use of edged weapons, to the entire model of a clergyman who wears heavy armor and a shield wading through foes smashing them with a mace, it was always clear that the Cleric was pretty blatantly modeled on a very idealized view of the Crusades-era clergy (much as the Druid class is modeled on a similarly idealized view of the Celtic priesthoods)

I'm generally a fan of the "sacred cows" of D&D, but personally I would prefer if the Cleric class was more of a general healer class that had customizable options that players could use to create the traditional D&D cleric, so the normal D&D cleric is still in the game but there are core-rules options for players that want a more healing oriented, less smiting-in-heavy-armor oriented priestly PC.

Paladins are the Holy Warriors, like the AD&D Paladins which were essentially Fighters but with bonus holy spells and abilities, or the 3.x Paladins which are Fighters (best attack ability, full weapon and armor selection, d10 HP, ect) that trade in all their fighter bonus abilities for spells and holy-warrior themed abilities.

If you are going to keep Clerics as heavily armored healbots (and Paladins as holy-themed fighters), there should also be a third option, the lightly armored and less melee-capable heavy healer with more spellcasting and skills. This would for a continuum of divine classes going from a focus on spellcasting, with only token physical combat ability on one end, to a physical combatant with only token spellcasting on the other end.

 

[Elf Witch]

Giving this more thought, I realized that we can frame the OP's premise in a different way that is perhaps more revealing for our discussion. We can say that the primary function of the cleric is to be a holy warrior. This vision of the cleric is certainly the ideal, but it rarely works out this way in practice. We see this by asking a different question: Why are people reluctant to play clerics? Are people reluctant to play a cleric because they do not want to play a holy warrior? Sometimes, this response would be true for those who don't want their characters serving gods or religions, but this response is not as common as others in discussions of clerics. Instead, the most frequent response to the question is a variation of "People do not want to play the healer." While we may envision the primary function of the cleric foremost as a holy warrior, as per the ideal, the frequent reluctance to play clerics* suggests that the healing metafunction takes precedent in practice.

* (I don't care about your exception to the greater observed and document trend. We get it. You and your group are a bunch of special snowflakes.)

My group must be a bunch of special snowflakes because we have had both types of clerics in game.

I think one reason people didn't want to play clerics is because they wanted to play the cleric as a holy warrior and didn't want to waste spells on healing or have to leave combat to heal. And were worried about the other players getting bent out of shape over it.

I have found that it works best if during character creation the player playing the cleric is upfront and lets everyone know that he is not going to be the healbot and the party and the DM need to come up with away to solve the healing issue.

When I DM I do it several ways I may put a lot of cure light potions and wands in the game especially if there are other classes who can also heal like druids and bards. The other thing I have been known to do is add an NPC healer to the party. It usually is a non combatant does not get involved in combat at all. The sole job is to provide healing and the party needs to protect this very valuable asset.

I also point to the other players that they don't have a right to be mad if the person playing the cleric sees himself as more of a warrior than a healer that everyone should have equal fun at the table.