D&D 5E Is the Cleric really one of the ‘core four’ anymore?

[Neonchameleon]

However, it’s archetype has never really featured much in fantasy literature, and although some people liked playing them, for many it was a situation of the unlucky straw being drawn to have to play them in an adventuring party.

D&D is not and has never been generic fantasy literature - closer cousins would be Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft and the Cleric is thriving in both those (under the name "White Mage" in FF). Indeed the WoW trinity of Tank, DPS, and Healer is pretty much the core 3 classes (the Rogue only appearing in Supplement 1: Greyhawk). As [MENTION=53176]Leatherhead[/MENTION] said, the Cleric is (once we get away from van Helsing) a gameplay patch caused by the unashamedly gamist innovation of hit points.

 

[dream66_]

That's a debate for a different forum, but it involves Catholicism and it's use of Saints as surrogate prayer receivers and the perceived nature of the Holy Trinity.

If you know where to have that discussion that won't break the rules I'd love to have it.

 

[Henry]

If you know where to have that discussion that won't break the rules I'd love to have it.

[MENTION=53176]Leatherhead[/MENTION]
[MENTION=13744]dream66_[/MENTION]

Funny you should ask...

Have Fun!

 

[Remathilis]

As a sideline debating issue, why does a Medieval-themed game include polytheistic religions as the norm? Why isn’t there a D&D setting that has monotheism as the norm for a Cleric?

I think it was to avoid the ****storm of trying to quantify "God" as a concept (or worse, give him an alignment, AC, and HP!), increase diversity (by giving clerics choices, fluffy at first but mechanical as the game grew) and augment the mythological element (if your game is already going to have centaurs, nymphs, and frost giants, why not add the option of having Zeus and Thor?) Later, It was an easy way to avoid "religious" debates with BADD members.

 

[dream66_]

[MENTION=53176]Leatherhead[/MENTION]
[MENTION=13744]dream66_[/MENTION]

Funny you should ask...

Have Fun!

Yeah.... there's this strange line I find myself in, where I can have that conversation without breaking these rules, but I think I need some rules. I'm too much of a softy to survive over there.

 

[DMZ2112]

The Cleric has always existed in the D&D game as the third Class (preceded by Fighting Man and Magic-User, and slightly earlier than the Thief). The Cleric role has always centred around being the party Healer, making it vitally important in some games.
However, it’s archetype has never really featured much in fantasy literature,

It no longer matters. D&D is its own canon.

as the number of Classes also expanded I wonder whether it can really be considered more ‘Common’ an adventuring Class than some of the others?

Are you seriously making the assertion that in the last 15 years (since the launch of the original class-glut edition) the Cleric has fallen more out of use than the Fighter? That the Cleric's universally superior healing skills are somehow less relevant than the Fighter's often negligible combat superiority in comparison to the Barbarian, Paladin, Ranger, and Assassin Rogue?

I question your very thesis, sir. On what are you basing this theory?

Even in 4th Edition, when the concept of Cleric or healer was conflated with the Leader role, the only consensus I heard on the topic was that the Cleric was the only truly effective Leader. By comparison, many of the Defenders who shared that role with the Fighter were far more effective in combat.

What is the relationship between Clerics and Paladins, or Druids for that sake?

Well, in direct response to what I read as your intent, the cleric virtually exclusively casts spells (which can heal injury) and channels divinity (which can heal injury), while the paladin and druid do other stuff that diminishes their healing capacity, either directly by game balance or indirectly by providing more effective combat options for them to choose.

More importantly, the role of a priest is to administer to his or her flock. In the case of the D&D cleric, that flock is the party. Believers or not, his companions are the cleric's responsibility. The paladin's first responsibility is to smite the infidel and the druid's first responsibility is to the environment. Both classes may have minor ministration responsibilities but it is not the purpose of the class. The ministration of the cleric is part and parcel to D&D lore, regardless of its presence in irrelevant external fiction.

 

[DMZ2112]

I think it was to avoid the ****storm of trying to quantify "God" as a concept (or worse, give him an alignment, AC, and HP!), increase diversity (by giving clerics choices, fluffy at first but mechanical as the game grew) and augment the mythological element (if your game is already going to have centaurs, nymphs, and frost giants, why not add the option of having Zeus and Thor?) Later, It was an easy way to avoid "religious" debates with BADD members.

TSR did eventually provide rules for playing a Christian cleric. I believe they were first printed in the Glory of Rome supplement to AD&D2 and I am hard pressed to believe they were not reprinted in some form in the later historical supplements, Charlemagne's Paladins and A Mighty Fortress (the latter is a straight up reference to a Lutheran hymn).

But to the best of my knowledge the Christian God never received a hit point total.

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

You know, the Fighter, Cleric, Thief, and Magic User should be called "the original four" or "the basic four"

It's fairly common and quite easy to form a very effective party without any of these classes.

a "fantastic" Four, if you will.

 

[halfling rogue]

I think it was to avoid the ****storm of trying to quantify "God" as a concept (or worse, give him an alignment, AC, and HP!), increase diversity (by giving clerics choices, fluffy at first but mechanical as the game grew) and augment the mythological element (if your game is already going to have centaurs, nymphs, and frost giants, why not add the option of having Zeus and Thor?) Later, It was an easy way to avoid "religious" debates with BADD members.

If you think about it, Wizards or Magic-users (before modern fantasy genre) were clerics. In ancient thinking there was no magic outside of the power of the gods. Those who could wield it were the ones who could access it, and the ones who could access it were the priests, the clerics. Beyond that, we see this in classic fantasy lit like Conan, where wizards and sorcerers are all essentially clerics. And we can definitely see the impact that Conan stories had on the game.

So the real question might be, when did wizards and clerics become something separate (in history)? When were wizards disconnected from the gods? Perhaps modernism had something to do with it, in that science and magic, which at one point were one in the same, gradually drifted apart into different categories. While this Enlightenment was taking place, and while God was more and more being removed from science, perhaps He was also being removed from magic at the same time? Thus rendering the picture of a wizard just as disconnected from the divine as the scientist? And when D&D came along, the image of the godless wizard was already ingrained, and yet the past mythologies and literature was littered with divine magic users. Now they are re-combined via D&D, not into one as of old, but as two separate 'classes', the old magic user now with a new name: Cleric, and the new magic user who usurped the old name: Wizard.

Just a thought.

 

[steeldragons]

I think the broader question of whether there is a "core four" anymore/post-3e is a valid one. And viewed through that context, the answer is no. Because it is no more "core" than any other class. There are other archetypes that do what it does...what any class can do.

THis is part of the reason I do not care for those editions and prefer the "class groups/sub-class" structure of pre-3e D&D.

At the root of the game, you have a non-caster (Fighter/"Fighting Man") and a caster (Magic-User). Then came the Cleric in his Van Helsing glory. The original "Fighter/Magic-user": able to hold his own, using armor and weapons, when the frontline needed support and possessing/able to handle supernatural/esoteric lore and ability. In either capacity, the Cleric was the first "Support" class.

The thief, then, similarly, came about as a different sort of non-magical, skill-based "mundane" Support class.

So the proto-typical party, from which would branch hundreds of other archetypes, those "core" four classes involve the front line fighter, the back line magic-user, and two support characters: one magical that can survive the front line, one non-magical but still capable from the back (whether by ranged weapons, "sneak attacks" -which typically involved hitting hard and getting back out of the way, and/or getting that locked trapped exit open so we can get the frel out of here before the monsters butcher us all!).

In that context, the cleric's role has not changed or been diminished...and if one is to say there is a "core four" then, yes, the Cleric still warrants its place among them.