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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1233707" data-attributes="member: 151">All I can say is that my experience meshes with the designers intent, as opposed to yoru experience.  Of all the groups I've played with, the cleric was often looked down upon in 1e, where he was viewed as 'healing machine'.  Some groups literally referred to it as 'being stuck being the cleric'.  In 2e, from what I've heard, pure clerics were very unattractive in contrast to specialty priests, who all got much better powers for little to no cost.  Under 3e, clerics are finally customizable enough that you can be more than a walking medic...and more importantly, you can swap prepared spells for healing spells on the fly.  That single ability alone makes clerics much more attractive, as they can still fulfill their 'healer' role, but now can prepare to do more in an adventure than wait for someone to get hurt.  Two reasons, IMHO.  The cleric class is a D&D archetype by now.  He fulfills a specific role within a gaming group and is mechanically balanced to do so.  Without a cleric in the party, for example, most Undead are probably +1 to their EL (due to a lack of turning and spells like restoration and death ward, to name a few).  Second, because having it would be mechanically difficult to create a cleric class that would meet the criteria as broad as the concept of 'holy man'.  As I said, the D&D cleric is now, well...the D&D cleric.  In 3e, he represents himself as much as any specific archetype.  To make a more specific cleric, 3e advocates either multi-classing or prestige classes.  Beyond that, it expects you to either use the NPC class or create your own campaign-specific core class, such as OA does.</blockquote>

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