D&D General I'm a Fighter, not a Lover: Why the 1e Fighter was so Awesome

[James Gasik]

I played some clerics in 5E and pointed out in session 0 that I was a Cleric, but NOT a healer. That is not to say I would never heal anyone, I would use healing spells. By my PC was not going to be running around the combat topping up other PCs every round.

I played a Ranger once who did not use Cure Wounds until around level 9. I healed up a PC when our healer couldn't or was down or something. Before I cast it I even said - "I don't even like other players to know I have this spell"

It is interesting that you can easily dispense with any character role in a party but the healer with ease. I've seen parties with nary a spell caster wiggling their fingers, and parties lacking pure warriors. The way you tackle problems changes, but you can generally muddle along.

Right up until 4e, in fact, the Cleric remained the the best character at keeping the party going. Oh sure, other classes might get access to healing spells, but these tended to be more limited (just look at the Druid). But it's more than just healing- there's a host of horrible things that can befall D&D characters, and most of the ways to overcome those things are found on the Cleric spell list. Diseases, curses, insanity- I think the only thing a Cleric can't cure is petrification (which if memory serves needed a Wizard spell).

Even in later years, when developers started to tinker with other classes that could heal, the game still heavily leaned on the Cleric. In Pathfinder 1e, for example, they created the Oracle, a spontaneous-casting Cleric akin to the Sorcerer. I kept hearing people talk about how the "Life Oracle" could kick out much larger numbers and keep the party HP up with ease.

But I saw the problem right away- with limited spells known, it was inevitable that a party member would succumb to some wacky status penalty, and look to the Oracle for salvation in vain.

Because on the average adventuring day, a Cleric might not have, say, Raise Dead prepared. But the beauty of the class is, all he has to do is wait a day and beseech his deity (or more likely, a proxy, like a Solar or other high-ranking celestial servitor) for the precise spell required.

-Whenever I play, say, a Wizard, the ability of a Cleric to just get any spell they want irks me, but I understand why it's vital that the healer role demands it. It's when Clerics aren't really concerned with healing where the trouble begins.

Being a Cleric can be a rather thankless job. I've played more than my fair share of them, usually total support types, because my party really doesn't want or need me to do anything else- my first 3.0 Cleric was an Elf with the Magic Domain. He wielded a long sword, could use Wizard wands and scrolls, and I used his precious few Feats on combat- basically, he was a Red Mage! But as the game progressed, my party was annoyed whenever I would attempt non-Cleric tasks, lol. "Stop wasting your time with that sword/wand and heal!", they'd cry.

So any time I played a Cleric after that, I was a technical pacifist that didn't even carry a melee weapon!

 

[haakon1]

It is always interesting to read stories about how different tables played the same game back in the day.

In my main AD&D 1E group

Same on much of this:

• Mostly humans & half elves. But half orcs, elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes were all there too.
• All 4 major class types represented (F, MU, C, T)
• Marching order with a fighter in back
• No inter party fighting or robbing. All For One, One for All.
• Norse pantheon. But also Greek and Greyhawk
• Sharing out magic items to whoever could best use them.

But not just in AD&D, and not just in one group - all of them in all editions. Though in 5e, the species and classes are more towards the non traditional versions of F, MU, T, and C, and marching order seems to be forgotten.

 

[Lanefan]

It is interesting that you can easily dispense with any character role in a party but the healer with ease. I've seen parties with nary a spell caster wiggling their fingers, and parties lacking pure warriors. The way you tackle problems changes, but you can generally muddle along.

I've also found that parties without a Thief or equivalent can find themselves in trouble. No scout, no lock-picker, no climber - for lower-level parties in particular, it's a problem.

Right up until 4e, in fact, the Cleric remained the the best character at keeping the party going. Oh sure, other classes might get access to healing spells, but these tended to be more limited (just look at the Druid). But it's more than just healing- there's a host of horrible things that can befall D&D characters, and most of the ways to overcome those things are found on the Cleric spell list. Diseases, curses, insanity- I think the only thing a Cleric can't cure is petrification (which if memory serves needed a Wizard spell).

Correct. In 1e Magic Users also got Remove Curse, I think.

Being a Cleric can be a rather thankless job. I've played more than my fair share of them, usually total support types, because my party really doesn't want or need me to do anything else- my first 3.0 Cleric was an Elf with the Magic Domain. He wielded a long sword, could use Wizard wands and scrolls, and I used his precious few Feats on combat- basically, he was a Red Mage! But as the game progressed, my party was annoyed whenever I would attempt non-Cleric tasks, lol. "Stop wasting your time with that sword/wand and heal!", they'd cry.

The way we play, curing during combat is very risky. Usually, curing is something done after the fight.

One of my own best characters these days is a straight-up Cleric. He's the only "normal" Cleric (as opposed to War Cleric, a homebrew class) I've ever played who's lasted longer than the first few combats, and I've found ways to make him entertaining.

The only 1e classes I've never played are Paladin* and Monk. The only Bard I've ever played (they're not the 1e-style prestige class in our games) was a short-term replacement for a dead character; when the dead one was revived I sent the Bard down the road.

* - I had a Paladin rolled up ready to go once, a long time ago, but between the time I rolled it up and the time it would have entered play the DM decided to drop Paladin as a class; and so I rolled up something else instead. I did play a Paladin in a 3e game and ran it into the ground pretty quick.

 

[CreamCloud0]

if you don't want a healer to be an essential role in the party maybe stop resorting to lethal combat as your solution to all your interpersonal conflicts

 

[Lanefan]

Same on much of this:

• Mostly humans & half elves. But half orcs, elves, dwarves, halflings, and gnomes were all there too.

For us it's mostly Humans and Elves. Part-Elves used to be really popular but have tailed away dramatically over time. Dwarves are next, then Hobbits, Part-Orcs (who seem to have risen as Part-Elves have fallen), and Gnomes.

• All 4 major class types represented (F, MU, C, T)

Yes. In terms of what got played, Gygax (at least I think it was he) expected something like a 40-30-20-10% long-term ratio of, in order, Fighters, Clerics, Thieves*, and Mages; ignoring Bards and Monks our long-term numbers show that ratio as being very consistent at almost bang on 40-20-20-20.

* - Clerics and Thieves might be reversed, I can never remember which is 30 and which is 20.

• No inter party fighting or robbing. All For One, One for All.

Anything goes, here. Low levels in particular can sometimes become exercises in wild-west gonzo infighting, which tends to fade away as the levels get higher.

• Norse pantheon. But also Greek and Greyhawk

Greek, Celtic, Norse, Sumerian, several homebrew - and that's just the Humans. Each other species have their own pantheon.

• Sharing out magic items to whoever could best use them.

While still in the field, yes.

Between adventures, though, everything gets divided evenly by monetary value; you get a share value, and then can claim magic items up to that share (or higher if you have the spare cash or can borrow it from someone). Unclaimed items, or items no-one can afford, get sold. Thus, if everyone's share is 7500 g.p. one character might get a ring of invisibility for 5K and the other 2500 in coin while another character might get a +1 sword for 2000, two potions of healing for 800 total, and the other 4700 in coin.

Attempts at other division methods over the years have invariably led to one or two greedy characters cleaning up.

 

[Staffan]

if you don't want a healer to be an essential role in the party maybe stop resorting to lethal combat as your solution to all your interpersonal conflicts

Healer, particularly combat healer, is an inherently problematic role. You can make the game is balanced around having one, and then you need to make incoming damage big enough to be threatening in order for that role to be useful. Or you don't expect to have one, in which case you need to make incoming damage low enough to be survivable.

I think the best three things 4e did were all healing-related. One, it made out-of-combat healing a personal responsibility. You spend your own healing surges to heal your own injuries. Two, it made several other classes (theoretically) equal to the cleric when it came to healing: the warlord in the core rules, but also the artificer, the bard, the shaman, and the ardent (I don't know if there were any other Leader classes). Three, it turned long-term condition relief (primarily curses and diseases) into rituals which, in theory, anyone could learn as long as they had the Ritual Caster feat (which wizards and clerics got for free – not sure if any of the others did), and ideally also the Medicine skill. This all meant that the need to have a god-botherer around in a party was finally gone, and good riddance.