Iconic D&D Clerics (Blog)

[Janaxstrus]

With the advent of all of the 3.x paladins of X (freedom, tyranny etc), I would much rather have Paladins just be the class doing the heavy armor wearing, moderate healing, tank type guys in the front of the battle.

I could even see reducing clerics to light armor, although medium would be best and making them the spell slingers from the rear. You'd have your Cleric of War who got heavy armor maybe, while your cleric of the goddess of healing maybe stuck to light armor and simpler weapons.

If you insist on Clerics AND Priests, I think they Paladin needs to be divorced from the holy aspect, and instead be a crusader for a cause (law, evil, good, chaos), as mentioned above.

 

[StarFyre]

What want to see is making Gods really matter; not just roleplaying wise.

In cultures all over the world, if you look at their mythology (Hindu, Christian, Greek, etc) not everyone who was considered 'blessed by the gods' would be a cleric/priest. Some could be regular peasants, warriors, etc.

WHat we do in my pathfinder game, we build up (over time), some rules for what different gods give players, but i varies with Class (and in some cases race)

So a warrior who worships bahamut would get some small bonus, or feat, or ability, while a paladin or cleric or wizard gets something else.

Players love it as it makes even more things make a true difference and make them feel unique (ie. a fighter that follows bahamut or tiamat is even more unique from a fighter that follows asmodeus or jazirian or corellon)

Sanjay

 

[Andor]

This is a golden opportunity to make the distinction clear. Either Paladins fight for their gods or they fight for some metaphysical concept (Good, Evil, Quantum Physics..). If they fight for their gods, then they are the warriors and clerics/priests are not.

I actually quite liked the 'cause of' champions from Monte's Arcana Unearthed. I'd like to see that idea as the paladin for 5e, allthough without those god damned daily abilities.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I like the Essentials version of Paladins/Blackguards. Paladins embody a virtue such as Valour or Sacrifice, and Blackguards a vice such as Wrath or Tyrrany.

I also like the split "Wizards are academics, clerics have a specific responsibility that overlaps with their God (for instance nurturing the flock or tending to the wilds), and paladins are armoured warriors."

 

[gyor]

The Goddess of Lust did have Specialty Priests in 2e, they got a cat familar, could summon bigger cats like tigers and lions and cast charm and intensgify sensation and a the kiss of Sharess spell that acted like a cheap limited wish spell.

Personally I'd base the Paladin on the 4e Cavalier/Blackguard with a smidgen of the the 4e Opaladin. Paladin's should keep Plate Armour.

The Cleric would funtion more like a traditional Cleric as preposed in the artical.

The Priest would function as a mix of the 2 priest, 4e Warpriest, Archivist, and the invoker.


That makes each distinct.

 

[tlantl]

Looking at the 1e clerical spells list goes a long way toward understanding what the cleric did. They had virtually no combat oriented spells. All of their spells were designed to augment the party or provide some form of healing or curing magics. There were precious few attack spells, they needed their heavy armor and maces to dish out damage.

Somewhere along the way some genius decided that they needed to be able to cause more damage with their spells without taking into account hoe over powering it would be if they continued to be melee powerhouses too.

Taking away the limits imposed by the different strengths of their gods (Greater, lesser, and demigod) and making their spells as powerful as those of the strongest wizards turned the class into something that has come to be viewed with disapproval.

If the cleric is to continue to have flashy exploding spells and other damage inflicting magics the I say strip them of their armor and give them clubs to fight with.

I'd rather they return to their roots as healers and loose the chaff that turned them into something other than what they were originally designed to be.

 

[Alphastream]

I would like the leader role to continue to exist, and to be flexible. Here are some of the things I want to see:

• Ability to cure while still having other impacts on battle (attack, skill use, defend, buff, debuff, etc.)
• Ability to cast utility spells (sanctify, protection from evil, water breathing)
• Not to have to convert spells into healing such that those utilities never see use
• Defensive spells, but not a tank-style defender (no marking, etc.). This is especially true if the healer must heal... you don't then also want the conflicting role of drawing foes' attacks.

I'm not concerned with the idea of a priest that casts lots of flamestrike. In my mind that's a spell choice and not a build, though it could be a build or sub-class to provide greater depth. A lot of this depends on the overall system (such as how many builds there are for each class, and how many classes overall).

I am ok with the variety of 2E (clerics with weapons, clerics that multiclassed to magic user, etc.), but with better balance and proper confines. I am against a system like the 4E deity choice becoming a choice over which strong power to take. A good model is a theme, where you would get flavor and minor benefits. And I emphasize flavor here over crunch. I would rather see an iconic cleric than to never know what will show up at a table. I'm especially wary of any move away from healing if healing is vital, and even more so if clerics were to again be the only real healers in the game.

Actually, a good model for D&D Next could be this. Each PC gets a "Character Theme", which is largely backstory focused (similar to current themes). Then each PC gets a "Class Theme", which fine tunes the type of cleric (or fighter, or wizard, or thief, etc.) that you happen to be. Each theme would be fairly low in power - let the basic class provide the actual power and these add flavor, utility, and some definition to the character.

 

[rogueattorney]

Funny, I don't remember Van Helsing casting spells.

I've never read the other two books you mention. Does either one of them actually make use of divinely-granted magical powers? And if so, which ones?

Face in the Frost, yes. High Crusade, not as such. Like Stoker's Van Helsing, you have a man of science and of God who used his knowledge of Heaven and earth to achieve "magical" effects. It's an archetype that's quite common in the Verne/Burroughs style 19th-early 20th C. adventure story.

And that's where the disconnect between the original cleric and what it's become in D&D over the years comes in. The cleric was originally a bureaucrat, scholar, functionary, or other office holder within a crypto-Catholic medieval society - literally a "cleric" by the dictionary definition of the word. Some of his "spells" were miracles associated with Bible stories and tales of the saints. Others of his "spells" were applications of his superior knowledge of the nature of the world (which would include the nature of God). The 1e PHB models this by mading the distinction between early level spells, which the cleric could produce on his own, versus later level spells that he needed to beseech from his deity.

A great example of the kind of lower-level clerical "magic" is the Zelikman character in Michael Chambon's Gentlemen of the Road. Also, I think Indiana Jones would be a good example of a secular modern take on a cleric - university professor who uses his knowledge of this and the spiritual world to find treasures.

However, since its inception, the cleric has morphed into this weird pagan warrior-priest identity that shares with the druid a strange mid-point between a paladin and a wizard. I think three big things contributed to create the change in the cleric.

First, as OD&D morphed into 1e, TSR's official take on D&D's cosmology changed from an implicit Christianity to an explicit mixed-up polytheism. So the tie between the medieval Catholic clergy and the cleric was severed really early, leaving us with Christian artifacts (the prohibition on edged weapons, for example) that didn't make much sense in the new paradigm. (Why wouldn't a priest of Odin, for example, use spears? A priestess of Artemis use a bow? Etc.)

Second, the 19th C. notion of the natural connection between God and science, that it was the duty of those who studied one to study the other, is almost completely alien to us in the 21st C.

Third, as the game began to focus more on the role of classes in combat, there was an increased role in figuring out exactly what a cleric was supposed to be doing in combat. Originally he was just a normal guy who could be as tough or wimpy as anyone else, but wasn't trained in martial weapons. Maybe he was a tough "Father Flanagan" type who preached with his fists as well as he did with his Bible, or maybe his was a wimpy scholarly type. His class didn't really tell you. Anyone objecting to Indiana Jones as a cleric because he uses a whip is thinking of latter day D&D clerics - in OD&D, what he does in combat, if anything, doesn't tell you whether he's a cleric or not.

 

[Li Shenron]

Honestly, I don't think I need a separate Priest class. I just need the Cleric class to be versatile and flexible. And I need Clerics of different deities to be different for (their) God's sake

I've played cleric-archers that weren't really good at melee. How is that difficult? I just happened to put my second-best ability score to Dex instead of Con or Str, so I had little reasons to wear heavy armor or jump to melee with a mace. For a cloistered temple priest, I'd just put that second-best score to Int. Want a bishop-type with a huge career in the church hierarchy, put your second-best score to Cha.

Then all the big difference is made by spells. Healing/curing spells notwithstanding (everybody else will always, inevitably look at the cleric when healing is needed), the cleric can focus on very different types of spells and end up filling a very different tactical/strategic role.

Of course, some things beyond these need to be tweaked also, at least skills... in 3ed it was very hard to make a skilled cleric (you needed both high Int and a domain granting extra class skills), and since skills covered a lot of concepts, this was a missing opportunity to differentiate clerics of different deities.

I really believe that rather than splitting the class in two is wrong: it will create a problem about what to do with the original generic cleric because you can be quite sure that at least some of the specialty priest will in fact end up being pretty much like the generic cleric! How about priests of Heironeous, Lathander, Tyr, Kord, Helm, Hextor, Torm, Tempus... they have some differences sure, but more or less all of them are "melee fighters with healing powers and undead turning". The specialty priest class would work just fine to cover everything, so why not still call it Cleric and have only such class?

 

[Li Shenron]

Only sort of.

Actually, I think it opens up an interesting possibility: specialty priests that come from all classes.

What if "Priest of Kord" is something that any fighter, barbarian, or tough-looking street brute can become? What if the bard goes well with the goddess of lust? What about priests of the god of thieves that are ACTUAL THIEVES?

I think it might make a brilliant theme: a few divine powers related to your deity of choice, regardless of class.

You'd have paladins and clerics who are specialty priests, too -- but only of certain gods, not of everything.

If multiclassing is done very well, this could be just a matter of having a few levels of Cleric.

As a matter of fact, I often have "priests" in my games which aren't necessarily clerics, they are just ministers of their religion. For me in 3ed the "clericness" is defined by how powerful clerical spells you can cast. A cleric's spellcasting is typically seen as a bless of the deity, although there is always the doubt on how much of it comes instead from personal talent, so it's natural that a character who can cast very high-level clerical spell is also highly regarded by her church and climbs the hierarchy more easily, but a high-up in a church does not strictly have to be the highest-level cleric. I have in the past explained this with a comparison to Christianity (sorry for bringing real-life religions here, it's just an example ok? ) which has saints presumably performing miracles without even being ordained priests, while priests don't need to make miracles to become bishops or popes.

So in my games there's nothing wrong with a church of the god of thieves where the official clergy is made of a mix of full-rogues with 0 levels of cleric, some multiclass rogues-clerics, and some full-clerics.

In 3ed there aren't any core rules to grant cleric spells to someone without levels of clerics, and a rogue with just a few cleric levels does not work well with them due to problems with multiclassed casters... and this is why I say that if multiclassing is designed better than 3ed, it would still be very possible without a separate mechanic specific to priests!