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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6220060" data-attributes="member: 2067">Those all pretty much sound like kinds of spells to me...? An OD&D magic-user could do all of that. Reasonably confident an OD&D fighting-man with the right magic items could, even. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I think where this gets weird for me (and D&D itself for most of its history) is that none of these things are at all really related to what kind of character you are in the world, in the story, or in the fiction. To pick one, there's no reason that worshipping a god (cleric fluff) = healing and buffs (your ideal cleric mechanics). Those who worship gods might be mechanically more like damage-dealers calling down fire and plague and making the earth quake. Or they might mechanically be more like summoners, calling upon angels and divinities. Or they might mechanically be more like shifters, calling upon the deity to inhabit their body and work through them. Meanwhile, buffing and healing isn't necessarily linked to any particular character story. You can be a cloistered scholar who uses medicine and monster lore. You can be an inspiring warrior who keeps her allies fighting on. You can be a skulking thief who knows how to gang up and patch up. You can be a wilderness-dwelling hermit with knowledge of plants and herbs. You can be a powerful summoner who calls upon creatures that your allies use as mounts and tools and extra HP pools. D&D has loosely tied the two, but the former has proven much more enduring than the latter. Clerics in every edition are wielders of divine magic. They are only mechanical buffer/healers in some certain incarnations. So we're left with me wondering what the benefit of defining class by this narrow mechanical criteria really is, because it's not helping you choose a character whose story you like. If I want to be a healer/buffer without worshiping a god? Or to be a cleric without being a healer/buffer? Why isn't that OK?</blockquote>

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