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

[FormerlyHemlock]

In 5E, Lore Bards who steal Aura of Vitality are better healers than almost any cleric. They still don't have the flexibility of the cleric (are less likely to have access to Speak With Dead/Death Ward/etc.) but they have their own perks like Bardic Inspiration, Hypnotic Pattern and Vicious Mockery. My experience with 5E is that it is possible to survive and thrive with a bard or druid in lieu of a cleric. (Theorycraft says it is even possible to survive and thrive with no magical healer at all, due to the Short Rest Healing mechanic and things like the Healer feat, but so far every party I've played with has had at least a druid in it.)

 

[TrippyHippy]

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

Unless you are willing to accept no influence whatsoever from fantasy literature into your D&D games, of course it matters! D&D doesn’t have canon - it’s got a bunch of assumptions which gamers are always eager to argue about! Big difference.

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?

It’s almost been an unsaid thing I guess, but the Cleric has always been a hard sell to many gamers as a cool class to play. The Fighter fell out of fashion for a bit because of the simple ‘boring’ nature of the class, but with the various feats, manoeuvres and various other gizmos and features that have been brought into the class since 3E onwards, they have maintained a certain degree of popularity. Moreover, they have always remained popular in some groups for the sheer diversity of types of fighters.

My experience with the latest edition, admittedly in it’s early days, is that I have found plenty that want to play Fighters, but barely anyone plays a Cleric. Why? I’m not sure - but I think a lot of it has to do with the various role models they relate to in fantasy fiction.

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.

Different people have different experiences, but then that’s what makes it an interesting point of debate.

 

[DMZ2112]

D&D doesn’t have canon - it’s got a bunch of assumptions which gamers are always eager to argue about! Big difference.

That's nonsense. D&D is more than 40 years old. It predates the vast majority of currently running fantasy novel series, not to mention the entire history of the narrative video game. Thousands upon uncounted thousands of pages have been written detailing its rules and lore. Make your argument, fine, but don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

It’s almost been an unsaid thing I guess, but the Cleric has always been a hard sell to many gamers as a cool class to play.

It hasn't been an unsaid thing; when it comes to D&D, it's pretty much the most popular sequence of vocal chord vibrations to squirt hot air through, with the possible exception of anything involving alignment.

There is no empirical data to support this idea, and your completely unrelated assertion that the Cleric is the easiest of the Core Four to substitute in a system with barbarians, lore bards, paladins, rangers, assassin rogues, sorcerers, and warlocks has less foundation than a storm giant castle.

Because they float. In the clouds.

That's part of D&D canon.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

My experience with the latest edition, admittedly in it’s early days, is that I have found plenty that want to play Fighters, but barely anyone plays a Cleric. Why? I’m not sure - but I think a lot of it has to do with the various role models they relate to in fantasy fiction.

I'd rather play a Bard than a Cleric even if the Bard turned out to be somewhat suboptimal for the role, just because I absolutely cannot relate to the idea of worshipping a semi-powerful creature like a D&D god any more than I can imagine worshipping a mortal human like a Pharaoh. What does "worship" even mean in this context, and why would you ever do that? We all have our roleplaying limitations and that is one of mine: it's just so different from the way I would use the word "worship" in real life (meaning deep admiration, desire for emulation) that I'd rather leave it on the table and play a character whose ethics/values and class abilities operate independently of each other.

I could see myself playing a Dark Sun-style cleric though, which is basically just a wizard with a different specialty.

YMMV.

 

[Henry]

I'd rather play a Bard than a Cleric even if the Bard turned out to be somewhat suboptimal for the role, just because I absolutely cannot relate to the idea of worshipping a semi-powerful creature like a D&D god any more than I can imagine worshipping a mortal human like a Pharaoh. What does "worship" even mean in this context, and why would you ever do that? We all have our roleplaying limitations and that is one of mine: it's just so different from the way I would use the word "worship" in real life (meaning deep admiration, desire for emulation) that I'd rather leave it on the table and play a character whose ethics/values and class abilities operate independently of each other.

I could see myself playing a Dark Sun-style cleric though, which is basically just a wizard with a different specialty.

YMMV.

My mileage does - Cleric used to be one of my favorite classes prior to 3e. From the mechanical side, it was indispensable - no sane party in AD&D left the front door without a cleric. Every PC knew better than to be abusive to the cleric, because that meant they were last in line to get healing from me. "oops, sorry, i just used my last cure light wounds on the rogue. You'll have to dig up that healing potion you've been saving or wait till tomorrow."

From a role play perspective, I always liked to be the character who KNEW what the afterlife held for him. There is a certain freedom in duty and obligation, and knowing the right thing according to doctrine - and being able to tweak the villain's nose in what the villain was doing was only going to set him up for Afterlife as a lemure, or dretch, or some devil's plaything has a set of reassurance all its own.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

From a role play perspective, I always liked to be the character who KNEW what the afterlife held for him. There is a certain freedom in duty and obligation, and knowing the right thing according to doctrine - and being able to tweak the villain's nose in what the villain was doing was only going to set him up for Afterlife as a lemure, or dretch, or some devil's plaything has a set of reassurance all its own.

Maybe that's the difference between us then: not only do I not see the cleric as having any unique insight into the physics of post-Prime Material existence of D&D characters, not only do I not see any D&D vision of afterlife as compelling, but I don't even really grok why anyone would care about afterlives anyway. Clearly I exist, it's an observable phenomenon--and since spacetime cannot be destroyed, clearly I will always exist here-and-now. Even if my existence were to turn out to be bounded in some direction or other (north/south/east/west/up/down/past/future), why should I care? I already don't exist in Nebraska, who cares if I don't exist in 2017?

In real life I have a very strong belief in my religion as factual, but I can wrap my head around an atheistic universe as a role-playing exercise. I can't wrap my head around being afraid of death, which sounds like perhaps a necessary prerequisite to enjoy being a cleric. All of my characters have the confident "freedom in duty and obligation" you ascribe solely to clerics except the ones who are deliberately created to feel differently (e.g. fiendish warlock/bards who secretly feel very uneasy about their life choices but try to avoid thinking too much about it).

 

[steeldragons]

I'm afraid I must confess I am confused by the premise/assertion that the cleric's place as a "core four" class is somehow forfeit because there are druids and bards and paladins.

One just as easily can say Fighter's are no longer core 4. If you want a frontline damage dealer/guy who relies on weapons, you have a barbarian, ranger, paladin...to a secondary extent bards, monks, and assassins.

Thief is no longer "core 4" because anyone can learn to be stealthy or deal with traps. Previously, assassins, thief-acrobats, and bards could all deal with traps. All of them and monks could be stealthy. This edition you also get the arcane trickster. I recall something about the 1e Barbarian (or maybe it was Rangers?) detecting pits and snare traps, at least. That's partial help/coverage.

Wizards, obviously, are as superfluous as clerics since we have sorcerers warlocks, arcane tricksters and eldritch knights can all lay down the spell hurt.

TLR "Because there are other classes/archetypes that can" is not a reason any of the core four -if you accept the existence of such, as my original post asserts- are obsolete.

 

[TrippyHippy]

That's nonsense. D&D is more than 40 years old. It predates the vast majority of currently running fantasy novel series, not to mention the entire history of the narrative video game. Thousands upon uncounted thousands of pages have been written detailing its rules and lore. Make your argument, fine, but don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

So what? It also has a DMG that explicitly tells you to alter the rules and assumptions of the game as you wish, and provides a source of inspirational fantasy literature to read. There is no ‘canon’ in D&D. As for pissing on your leg, etc, I frankly have no idea what you are trying to say.

 

[Rygar]

Unless you are willing to accept no influence whatsoever from fantasy literature into your D&D games, of course it matters! D&D doesn’t have canon - it’s got a bunch of assumptions which gamers are always eager to argue about! Big difference.

What fantasy literature? You're basically going to have to cherry pick your sources to support this assertion. The "Healer" is a common archetype in not only fantasy literature, but also Sci-Fi. Nearly every D&D novel has clerics, Shannara's main character is a healer in some of its most popular novels, Dark Sword has a "Cleric" though they're called Druids, Star Trek has a healer in every episode, etc. The Healer is more common than any "Class" other than Fighter in Fantasy, I'd be willing to bet there's more fantasy literature with a Healer in it than there is with a Mage or a Thief in it.

It’s almost been an unsaid thing I guess, but the Cleric has always been a hard sell to many gamers as a cool class to play. The Fighter fell out of fashion for a bit because of the simple ‘boring’ nature of the class, but with the various feats, manoeuvres and various other gizmos and features that have been brought into the class since 3E onwards, they have maintained a certain degree of popularity. Moreover, they have always remained popular in some groups for the sheer diversity of types of fighters.

My experience with the latest edition, admittedly in it’s early days, is that I have found plenty that want to play Fighters, but barely anyone plays a Cleric. Why? I’m not sure - but I think a lot of it has to do with the various role models they relate to in fantasy fiction.

Different people have different experiences, but then that’s what makes it an interesting point of debate.

This is your observation, we don't know if Cleric is a class that no one wants to play for the majority, we just know that it is a class some number of people don't want to play and quite honestly I think we would find that some number of people don't want to play each class. I suspect the only reason we hear about it as much as we do is because its the least optimal class for Powergamers, In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if we did a poll 10 years ago during CoDzilla era we would find people scrambling to play the Cleric.

 

[TrippyHippy]

What fantasy literature? You're basically going to have to cherry pick your sources to support this assertion. The "Healer" is a common archetype in not only fantasy literature, but also Sci-Fi. Nearly every D&D novel has clerics, Shannara's main character is a healer in some of its most popular novels, Dark Sword has a "Cleric" though they're called Druids, Star Trek has a healer in every episode, etc. The Healer is more common than any "Class" other than Fighter in Fantasy, I'd be willing to bet there's more fantasy literature with a Healer in it than there is with a Mage or a Thief in it


This is your observation, we don't know if Cleric is a class that no one wants to play for the majority, we just know that it is a class some number of people don't want to play and quite honestly I think we would find that some number of people don't want to play each class. I suspect the only reason we hear about it as much as we do is because its the least optimal class for Powergamers, In fact, I'd be willing to bet that if we did a poll 10 years ago during CoDzilla era we would find people scrambling to play the Cleric.

Yes, it’s my observation. Do a poll if you like. For me though, this conversation is getting a little ping-pong like, so I’m outie.