If A Rogue Has The Ability To Use Any Magic Item...

[kenjib]

Yeah, the bard is a much better healer than a rogue. I think he's the second best healer after the cleric. He can use healing magic items, use magic device skill for stuff he can't access, like raise dead, and if he takes the healing spells at each level he can spontaneously cast all of them just like a cleric, since he uses spells like a sorcerer. That means, unlike a druid, he doesn't have to worry about how many healing spells to prepare in advance. EDIT: Oh, but the druid does get higher level spells faster. Hmm...

 

[Shaele]

Wow

As I've said, I've never seen a real use for Clerics except for their healing abilities. For 1e, 2e, and even 3e.

I would have agreed with 1e, and maybe 2e, but clerics are quite a bit more powerful in 3e.

I played a cleric to semi-high levels in our last campaign who started with Air and Travel domains. He had the best buffs in the party, every miscellaneous spell imaginable, close to the highest armor class and hit points. With his domains, he eliminated many of the traditional clerical weaknesses (travel gave him Dimension Door and Teleport, and Air gave him Chain Lightning!)

Funny, I created him for flavor, and he ended up being the most powerful character in the party, hands-down. No offense to the rest of the group of course

 

[Numion]

For example: take the Cleric. There's only one real reason to have a Cleric in there, and that's for their healing abilities. I personally don't see any other reason to have a cleric in the party. When a Rogue gets his skill high enough, he'll be able to use magic items that can heal, thus eventually replacing the cleric.

I couldn't disagree more. Cleric archers / meleeists are very viable choices in 3e. Damage output matches, if not exceeds, that of fighters and barbarians. Protective casting makes them the hardest class to kill, and their utility spells match those of a wizard (and surpass sorcs, because of their limited selection.)

My current character (elf archer cleric) doesn't do much healing. If people want, he'll fire their wands of CLW for them (unlike the rogue who will waste half the charges with his use magic device).

I don't dominate combats, but due to my general robustness (ability to take punishment) I have saved the groups collective ass more than anyone else. It's also nice to have choices in combat - I can start out with a flame strike if the enemies are bunched up, or I can start to punish them with arrows. Or of course I can almost reverse the fight with a well placed Heal.

It's all about the choices, and clerics have lots of them.

 

[d12]

As I've said, I've never seen a real use for Clerics except for their healing abilities. For 1e, 2e, and even 3e.

Well I mean there's your "preferences" and then there's "usefulness" and the two aren't the same. Consider that the cleric can select from all the spells in their class list (including supplement books if your DM allows), wear heavy armor, has those cool domain abilities and can cast healing spells spontaneously. Sure, their offensive spells aren't as great as a wizard/sorceror but a person that knows how to play a cleric can seriously mess up the badguys. Cleric is the class that makes all the other characters in the group better. Sure, the cleric may not slay the Ogre but they probably cast augury before the party went in the Ogre's cave and consequently buffed the fighter with endurance before-hand. At a higher level they may have even used clairvoyance to see into the cave the day before and so they prepared a bunch of spells specifically designed for Ogre-killing (or dragon-killing, or undead killing, etc...)

 

[d12]

I also wanted to add that as a DM, cleric bad-guys make for a hard row to hoe for the PC's - especially at mid-to-high levels.

Imagine clearing out most of a dungeon/fort/castle and then falling back for a rest. The next day you return to find the evil head cleric raised or resurrected everyone you just killed including that nasty dragon in the first room. My group found that to be one of the worst/best parts of running through a certain mega-adventure module that will remain nameless due to spoliers.

 

[Arnwyn]

Everybody has their class preferences, and the Cleric isn't one of mine, for the reason's I've stated before.

My favorites are fighters/sorcerers/psions.

And *this* goes to show that there are all types out there...

Anyways, as another poster said, "preferences" and "usefulness" are two different things.

This thread reminds me of what one of my players said - if you were to have a group of 4 adventurers who were all the same class, which would it be? Obviously, a group of 4 clerics would blow anything else out of the water - decent combat abilities, good defense, decent hps, healing, raising, creation of magic items, some attack spells, divinations. They got it all.

 

[Numion]

This is just an example, but I thought to mention it anyway. Our 10th level group was going into a beholders lair. We knew to expect a beholder at the end, and this is how it turned out:

Two clerics (archer - me, and a melee half-orc), fighter/barb and a rogue. Clerics took the beholder by themselves, while other two had to duck for cover. Luckily there were some wimpy henchmen for them to take out..

Us clerics had no trouble weathering the beholders magical assault. We couldn't reach it at first since it was floating, and it had the AM thing going on. The best line was: "I ready to cast blindness when it shuts the central eye". Game over. CR 13 critter with two 10the level clerics.

BTW, coincidentally it's the rogue that has been the most useless in our campaign. Mostly he's been defusing traps, but I can do that with my uberbuffed cleric too - by walking into them. Just to spite the rogue I sometimes just go purposefully touching everything. Different strokes, I guess.

 

[WizarDru]

As I've said, I've never seen a real use for Clerics except for their healing abilities. For 1e, 2e, and even 3e.

Don't fight a lot of the undead, then?


"Hey, did you see that? It's a Bodak!"

(thud)

"Bob? BOB?"

 

[JChung2003]

< bunch of cleric bashing snipped >

Next time just label this thread "I hate clerics," m'kay?

 

[d12]

I ran a 4th level cleric with a Charisma of 14 through a one-shot adventure that featured a castle with 4 single-roomed stories. Each room had 10-30 skeletons in it for a toal of around 100 skeletons. After getting modestly good turn rolls on five turn checks total, my cleric turned 75% of them into dust.

BTW, I prefer wizards to clerics but you gotta hand it to the ladies and gentlemen with the holy symbols....