Do You Feel The Cleric Is Balanced?

[Sir Whiskers]

Just a thought - if the mystic theurge survives as written, what would happen to the cleric with a party composed of a fighter, rogue, cleric, mystic theurge? Two possibilities come to mind:

1. If the MT takes over the healing role of the cleric, he'll be slightly weaker at it (I don't think MT levels add to healing spells the same way cleric levels do). On the other hand, most healing is done after combat, so the MT can be slinging arcane spells in battle and healing afterwards - he might actually have a chance to use up the huge number of spells he gets. This would free up the cleric to buff himself and others, cast damage spells in combat, etc. - the very situation that everyone seems to think most likely to make the cleric overpowered.

2. The cleric continues as now, spending a significant portion of her spells on healing, limiting her combat power. The MT spends most of her divine spells on buffing herself and others, reserving a few for special situations in combat (blade barrier, high-level summon monsters, harm, etc). The cleric is as limited (or not) as she is currently, but the MT becomes the utility caster in battle - always seems to have the right spell handy, albeit of a lower level than the pure cleric.

Any thoughts?

 

[Bendris Noulg]

Any thoughts?

What you have are two-sides of the same issue: The Cleric is balanced to be fairly good at both. True, it can focus on one really well, but at the sacrifice of the other. Now, it can do one really well while someone else is fairly good at the other (i.e., despite the perceived sacrifice of the individual PC, that sacrifice looses its signifigance at the party-level).

 

[Felon]

Clerics needed to have some fine-tuning done to them when 3e was designed. Unfortunately, WotC wanted so badly for 3e to gain widespread acceptance and to that ends they decided to only add to classes. Take nothing away. Gain, gain, gain. Nowhere was this more true than the cleric.

Suddenly, they obtain deadly offensive spells at a level that put them near-par with the wizard. Suddenly, the cleric could cast more spells per level than a wizard. Suddenly they had not one but TWO bonus domain powers, most of which are at least as good as a feat). Meanwhile, the wizard was off sitting in a corner trying to decide which schools of magic to eliminate so that he can specialize.

Yet, divine retained every advantage that it had over arcane magic. Spellcasting in armor, no need for a spellbook, and access to curative spells that the wizard would never be allowed to have --after all, that would step on the cleric's toes (rather than vice-versa).

Here are the tweaks that a cleric currently needs:

1) Then current rules for spell-activation items in conjunction with the Magic domain is OTT, it's all gotta go. Since a 1st-level wizard can use any arcane spell activation iteam without risk, so can the cleric with the Magic domain. That means you have clerics running around with wands of Fireball, Haste, Magic Missile, you name it. Nothing like seeing a cleric in full plate + large shield whipping out a wand and giving himself another +7 AC with a Shield wand.

2) All the fighter co-opt spells gotta go. Go away divine favor, divine power, and righteous might.

3) Turning should use a game mechanic that's consistend with the rest of 3e. There's no reason to preserve the current legacy system as far as I can tell. Just make it a supernatural ability that requires undead to make a Will save, DC = 10 + half cleric lvl + Cha bonus.

4) Something has to be done to keep a wand of 50 Cure Light Wounds from being available for a lousy 750 gp. Characters take betwee-battle healing completely for granted, iand it renders moot the "resource management" system that the Vancian "spells-per-day" mechanic is supposed to enforce.

5) Clerics should get one domain at first level, then gain more as they advance. This would resolve the front-loading issues, where clerics can potentially net two fighter feats at first level, and conversely give a cleric more to look forward to as he levels.

6) The domains that currently make a skill into a class-skill for the cleric (e.g. Trickery) are lame choices. Clerics don't really have skill points anyway. They should actually provide the cleric with one rank in the skill each level.