Do You Feel The Cleric Is Balanced?

[Plane Sailing]

Re: Clerics

I did a poll over at The 3rd edition site on What Class Do People Avoid Playing? and divine casters were the overwhelming #1 choice with 48% of the vote. No other class archetype got even half as many votes. If the cleric were nerfed, I bet they would be played even less.

FWIW I did a poll about a year ago on what character classes were actually played in peoples campaigns (and specifically how many levels of each class). The results were interesting, and I'll include them again here:

<pre>
Fighter 1038 16.6%
Rogue 840 13.5%
Cleric 831 13.3%
Wizard 815 13.1%
Sorcerer 529 8.5%
Ranger 437 7.0%
Monk 403 6.5%
Paladin 374 6.0%
Barbarian 303 4.9%
Bard 275 4.4%
Druid 208 3.3%
Psion 138 2.2%
Psychic Warrior 50 0.8%
</pre>

As you can see, the cleric (in terms of actual amount played) was right up there with the other main classes (and this was quite a large sample size, even if not significant across the entire D&D population of course!)

The big surprise at that time was the druid, coming in even lower than the bard.

Cheers

 

[S'mon]

I voted balanced. In my experience, there needs to be some incentive to play the party healer as well as "answer" to a god. Having someone say "Yeah, but if your god took your powers away, you'd just be like the rest of us, eh?" isn't very appealing....

As long as we stick to core rules, I think the cleric is well rounded.

Mechanically I think the Cleric class as written is fairly obviously more powerful than any of the other core classes - this becomes obvious when you have more than one cleric in the group.
As far as I can tell, Clerics were made more powerful than other classes as an incentive to get someone to play one, which I don't think was a very good idea.
I agree that mechanics can't really be balanced by roleplaying factors, so I have to disagree a bit with Tallarn here.

I think the class that suffers most from the Cleric being so powerful is actually the Paladin, since my impression is that war-oriented Clerics seem to be able to do everything a Paladin can do, only better. Fighters suffer too, to a lesser extent. The combination of 3e's buffing spells with the increased combat power of all classes (previously only the warrior classes got multiple attacks) makes the Cleric potentially just as good a warrior as the fighter, nearly as good a spellcaster as the wizard, plus he heals too. Of course fighters can be buffed as well, but they're dependent on the Cleric to do it, and it takes a good player to always buff the other party members before himself.

 

[Gez]

The cleric is overpowered. It's a conscious choice of the game developers. Why ? Because they want people to play clerics. Why ? Because they made the game in a way that makes clerics necessary.

The basic team is Cleric (healing), Fighter (bashing), Rogue (scouting), Wizard (toasting).

Noone can heal as well as a cleric. Druids ? Except cure minor wounds and cure light wounds, all their healing spells are one level higher, and they have much less. Rangers ? Don't make me laugh, they may heal maybe the twentieth of what a cleric can, and not before level 4. Paladins ? With lay on hands, they're better than rangers, but not by much. Bards ? They need to take a cure wounds spell, which isn't a given considering their little spell known list, and they're maybe one half of a druid there. Other classes ? Only through twisted ways, such as a rogue using a magic device, or a wizard using polymorph self or summoning eight formian workers or a celestial unicorn...

A party without a cleric is a problem (well, if you have Oriental Adventures, shaman and shugenja may replace the cleric).

However, a party without a fighter isn't much a problem. Paladins, rangers and samurai bash nigh as well as fighters. Monks, clerics, druids, rogues, and psychic warriors are all potent second choices.

A party without a rogue isn't in big trouble either, unless they're deep into dungeon crawling and there are traps everywhere. Even then, a single level of rogue is enough to be allowed to search traps (and the cosmopolitan feat can take care of that pesky cross-class thingie). All other parts of a rogue's task (scouting, socializing, disposing quickly of a sentry) may be filled by other party members (ranger, bard, spellcaster).

A party without a wizard may toast on great scales as well. Sorcerers, of course, but also clerics, druids, and psions (plus their oriental variants, shaman, shugenja and wu-jen).

But there are still people who don't want to play clerics. Maybe because pedophile biggots don't have much an appeal. So, they'll be still a bit more overpowered.

 

[Quinn]

I voted that the class is just fine. Yes, with the right ability scores, spells, and equipment, a cleric can go toe to toe with or best a comparable fighter. Does this denote that the class is too powerful, though? I don't think so. The cleric is susceptible to a lot of attacks that the fighter is not. The cleric doesn't gain the number of feats that a fighter receives. The fighter doesn't have to worry about his attack rate, hit point total, and strength falling due to a dispel magic. His abilities are always there, while a cleric must spend time to "buff" himself or be concerned that he has used up his most crucial spells right when he may need them.

Does the cleric's abilities allow him to duplicate the abilities of a rogue? Not really. A wizard or sorcerer? I'd argue that their spells are of a different nature. I don't think the cleric really has a comparable spell with the firepower of fireball or lightning bolt as a 3rd level spell. Sure, the cleric can get access to some really far out domains and use their domain spells and powers. Within the core rules, I don't see an issue. Outside of the core rules, I've seen abuses creep in, but that's more of an issue with the design of those particular domains.

Is the cleric powerful? Hell, yeah! Is he so powerful that he detracts from the enjoyment of the game, or makes the DM bend over backwards to come up with challenging encounters? No, I don't think so.

BTW, regarding Monte Cook's view of using role-playing limits to offset rules advantages: He doesn't like their arbitrary use. However, if that is built into the campaign in a logical fashion, i.e., something goes against the tenets of a particular cleric's religion, then that is fine, and is in fact something that Monte has used in his own material.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't think the cleric really has a comparable spell with the firepower of fireball or lightning bolt as a 3rd level spell.

I've just got to pick you up here - fireball and lightning bolt are hardly the powerful spells which they used to be. 5d6 damage in an area effect is perhaps OK for clearing out a lot of weak, CR1 or CR2 creatures (but then the fighter/barb/etc could do that with great cleave) but against foes of equivalent CR it is vastly underpowered compared to the old days... everything gets CON bonuses now, and that really ups the hps of characters and monsters.

Fireball may be an iconic sacred cow, but it isn't a tremendously effective spell, merely useful in some circumstances.

Furthermore, the clerical disparity in spells starts to become most significant from 10th level (5th level spells) onwards

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Pick the right domains and get the Brew Potion Feat and the cleric is very powerful.

Brew potion allows you to stock up the party with healing thus leaving more spells for you to cast.

I have always felt that rogues and clerics should swap Hit Dice. Rogues should have the D8 and clerics should take the D6. I am undecided though about druid and bard then. A druid should retain his D8 but what about the D6 bard?

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Vastly overpowered. The reasons have already been said above, so I wont go into those again.

But I will pick on this cleric burdon to heal crap. Yeah clerics are expected to heal to some degree, but at the natural helaing rate, and easy access to wands of cure X it isn't that big of a burden. and on top of that its no more of a burden than the burden every specialist class has. Rogues are expected to be lock and trap monkeys even if they were going for more of a wordsmith. Oh the fighters burden to be a meat shield, the fighter who wants to be an archer but the party lacks the spare meat shield is truly a sorry sight.

Healing is a expected role for their class like every class has some expected roles. It may be a less popular role but this role doesn't dominate the characters existence like the meat shield role dominates the sole fighters existence. And also you don't have to follow the extected role. But whatever the expected role is its never a limitation if its an option. The cleric can choose to burn spells for healing, or choose to proactively use spells to end the threat earlier, or choose to just beat the foes down. Healing sometimes is effective so how terrible is it to sometimes choose to heal and contribute to the partys success.

 

[CrusaderX]

When I get the urge to play a new character, I rarely think of a concept that fits a cleric. I want to play a charismatic rogue, or something unusual, like a halfling barbarian or svirfneblin monk. Play a cleric? Boring. It seems like the only interesting clerics are the really evil ones I run as npc's.

What I'd like to see are some character concepts for a cleric that are interesting, with hooks that I, as a player, can get excited about. Any examples out there?

If you enjoy playing a charismatic rogue, simply play a Cleric as a charasmatic rogue - not "Rogue" as in class, but "rogue" as in personality.

Since a typical Cleric might have a higher Charisma score than a typical Rogue anyway (CHR is usually important to Clerics), it's very possible that the Cleric class could be better at being roguish and charasmatic than the Rogue class could.

Play against type!

 

[Numion]

It went wrong with the assumption that clerics would use a lot of their spells to healing. I play a cleric and I've told up front other characters that I'll use their wands of cure light wounds for them between fights, but during combats I'll act as I see fit. Most of the time it's better for me to cause 50 points of damage than heal 15. Thats just the way it is.

Of course I'll save their lives if it depends on me, but the goal is always to win the fight at hand, not to keep the fighters fighting. Sometimes those goals are the same thing, but most of the time it's more useful to deal damage than to cure it.

Most of my clerics (11th level) spells are cast before the first fight anyway, so this isn't a big issue. I usually have following spells cast:

3-5 x Protection from Elements (132 points of damage from each element absorped. Not enough slots to always take all 5 elements.)
1 x Magic Circle against Evil
1 x Delay Poison
1 x Endurance
1 x Emp. Bull's Strength
1 x Emp. Cat's Grace (domain)
1 x Magic Vestment
1 x Greater Magic Weapon
1 x Death Ward
1 x Freedom of Movement
1 x Spell Immunity
1 x Air Walk
1 x Antilife Shell

As you can see, thats some serious "shields up!" attitude right there. I play an archer (but arrows and bows don't stack in our game), so those spells make me a really good in striking while avoiding being struck. All those spells have at least 10 min / level duration, so I'll activate those when we get inside the dungeon or whatever. Rest of the spells are short term boosts (quickened divine favor for ex), utility (dispel, invis purge) or attack spells (flame strike).

Being dispelled is a risk, and has happened a couple of times, but since around half of those spells remain active it's not too critical. It's usually more intelligent for the enemy to try to kill us than to try to dispel me personally.

Point of this tirade was that hell yeah I'm powerful! Protected to boot, and I still manage to top our front-line fighter in average damage output.

 

[Arnwyn]

I voted overly powerful. However, there's a voice in my head (stupid voice! ) that is screaming "vastly overpowered!".

My players have no problems playing clerics. No problems at all.