Help me swing my players away from clerics

[Tessarael]

They tend to gravitate towards clerics... a lot. Mostly because they are considered the "best" class (understandably). With the proper combination of buffs, these clerics easily surpass the party fighters and barbarians in damage dealt. [..] In short, I need to give an incentive for 3/4 of the players to NOT be a cleric for once.

Common opinion is that Clerics are overly powerful as you noted. I would drop their BAB to 1/2. That makes it much harder for them to be a good tank. (I'd still be inclined to leave Druid BAB at 3/4, as Druids are intended to be able to tank and Druids get less spells. Unless you have a problem with them playing Druids ...)

Now, if they're buffing themselves, why aren't they buffing the party tank? That has got to be more effective, unless those spells can't be cast on the tank. Consider changing spells like that to allow them to be cast on another person (range touch). This at least will make 2 Clerics and 2 tanks a better combat party than 4 Clerics.

Hiring NPCs should be far more difficult at high levels. There simply aren't that many high level Rogues, Wizards, etc., that aren't doing anything better in their free time.

Don't allow spells to replace needing a Rogue. Get rid of Find Traps, Jump, Knock, Spider Climb, and so forth. Those are the main spells that spring to mind. Clerics don't get many skill points and if everyone picks Cleric, the party simply can't handle a wide range of skill situations. Require Listen and Spot checks with high DC sometimes - that requires a Druid, Monk, Ranger, or Rogue for Spot; Barbarian and Bard also get Listen. Similarly for other skills - e.g. situations where Bluff might be useful.

Combat-wise, Clerics need time to buff. Don't give them that time always. A typical combat lasts 3 to 8 rounds. If you spend 2 to 3 of those rounds just buffing yourself, you're taking damage and not damaging the enemy. For encounters that they are aware of ahead of time, no problem, let them buff. But sometimes they can be ambushed, and then they will be in trouble. Enemies should use Silence to stop them spellcasting. Dispel Magic will help remove their buffs. (The way we rule Dispel Magic is that you roll separately vs. every spell in the area of effect, so a Dispel Magic can really rip through those buffs they'd prepared.)

Just my thoughts ...

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, you could simply ban the class. Use some slightly-less-lethal hit point house rules (such as a faster hp recovery rate) to alleviate the problem of *needing* a cleric, or just give some of the cleric healing spells to the Sorcerer or Wizard spell list (just the Sorcerer would make them interesting...) at one level more than the cleric spell list (cure light wounds becomes a second level spell, for instance). You could also use a different 'healer' class to fill that role (the cloistered cleric from UA, the healer class from the MiniHB, maybe just a wizard with the cleric spell list), or just nix the troublesome spells (though I'd make sure you're using 3.5 rules; the 3.0 ones are more useful in buffing).

You could also just roll with it....you can challenge these guys just fine with reflex saves, ambushes, etc., so there's no real need to force them to pick something else........they know where the cleric is weak.

If you want a campaign reason to do it, the following can work:

1) Clerics as a class went extinct when Undead grew powerful enough to rule the planet. The campaign is about surviving and destroying the undead rulers. Also works if the rulers are fiends of some sort....only then, evil clerics can still be around.
2) Divine magic has suddenly ceased to work; the gods and philosophy can no longer conjure energy. The campaign is about discovering what happened to the gods.
3) A great war between divine casters and arcane casters has resulted in the arcane ones succeeding, and destroying all divine ones. The campaign can be about setting up this new arcane empire, or about fighting against it, without divine magic.
4) A grand, world-spanning, and hideously corrupt church has just fallen to the machinations of a group of nameless adventurers. Clerics are hated as the vestiges of that holy empire, and the less aggressive healers (druids, bards) are valued instead.

 

[S'mon]

I make all Divine casters Spontaneous casters with a limited spells list. Seems to balance them up nicely (in 3.5).

 

[Parlan]

Roleplaying is also strong. I hand out large XP bonuses for role-playing. The usual game session has 1 to 3 battles, and the rest rolplaying (over an 8 to 12 hour period). So a lot of roleplaying goes on, no problem there.


I have no problem with people who play clerics because they like the concept, but this party has a lot of clerics who play them because they like the munchkiness of them. As a matter of personal play style, I don't like to limit the classes the players have to choose from. e.g. Doing an all wizard game would certainly be cool, but I have a player who sticks to rangers, barbarians and druids because he likes the concept.

Banning everything that can be abused will ruin the game experience for me and all my players. We LIKE exploiting the rules. The core problem is that the players have come to the conclusion that there are more exploits for clerics than with any other class. Thus, I made this topic.

To be honest, it doesn’t sound like you have much of a problem.

You say your players are Rules Lawyers/Munchkins, but then go on to praise their roleplaying.

You say they re exploiting the rules, but then say that’s the kind of game you like.

Your players don’t sound like the Godawful Rules Lawyers/Munchkins we’ve heard stories about, and in fact sound a lot more like the Tweaker type of gamers mentioned in other threads.

If you just don’t want another party of clerics, why not just ask your players not to play them? Or to agree to only have one in the party or something. Sure, its arbitrary, but that isn’t necessarily bad if they don’t mind agreeing to it.

Or just relax, accept that their PCs are tweaked, and enjoy creating tweaked monsters to throw at them.

 

[Ogre Mage]

Clerics

Get the FR book Lords of Darkness and modify the Kir-Lananns for your campaign. The Kir-Lananns are a race of gargoyles who loathe all faithful groups, being magically-created creatures without a god. They would be great reoccuring villains for an all-cleric party.

 

[Darklone]

Go with the cloistered cleric from UA.

 

[fba827]

I make all Divine casters Spontaneous casters with a limited spells list. Seems to balance them up nicely (in 3.5).

That is a great idea ... if you have many of the same kind of thing (like wizards) guiding them towards specialization keeps things more interesting for all involved! In this case, by making them spontaneous casters they will have a limited number of spells known (you can use the varient in UA or the one suggested in the DMG to just use the sorcerer's progression).

At the very least, it will offer _some_ change if you make this a rule from the get-go.

 

[Belegbeth]

Go with the cloistered cleric from UA.

Yeah, this is the route I would take. The cloistered cleric looks like a proper priest (not an uber-crusader).

Boy, does anyone remember the good old days, when NO one ever wanted to play the cleric?! :\

 

[Darklone]

Yeah, this is the route I would take. The cloistered cleric looks like a proper priest (not an uber-crusader).

Boy, does anyone remember the good old days, when NO one ever wanted to play the cleric?! :\

I do. Well, not really. We always had one or two guys in the group who wanted to play clerics. You could have taken away the spellcasting from them, they still would have picked cleric.
But I remember the good old days when the powergamers never ever wanted to touch a cleric.

 

[Henry]

Eldragon, what rules are you using, especially in regards to the various buffing spells? If you are using the 3.0 versions, then one fix to remove the inherent desire of the players to play a cleric solely for power is to go to the 3.5 versions of the spells; this dramatically reduces the amount of power, as the clerics have to spend precious time casting these key spells just before a fight.

If you are already using the 3.5 rules, then the other suggestion I would have is to use those Walking Melodramatic Hooks for all they're worth.