D&D 5E Lack of Evil Cleric Options "Not Exactly a Typo;" Cleric Changes Incoming

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I've always thought that classically, D&D clerics filled two different roles.

The "Life Priest" (defender/leader) who uses healing magic and buffs and turns undead. Good.

And the "Death Priest" (striker/controller) who uses fear and death and undead. Evil.

I agree with this. The death priest exists, sort of, in 4e, as the invoker. However, the lack of roles means someone can tell the group they'll be a priest, and then they show up as a death priest, and too late, the group realizes they don't have a healer.

That's happened to my group, repeatedly, in 2e.

Man, if a cleric (good or evil) is the only class that's able to heal, this game is gonna have deeper problems.

Isn't it looking that way? (At least when it comes to "adequate" healing.)

 

[DEFCON 1]

No... right now everyone thinks a good cleric is "mandatory" because they can do the most healing in the shortest amount of time for the least amount of resources (compared to the druid, ranger, paladin and bard).

But that doesn't matter in the slightest.

Why? Because if quicker and more efficient healing is important to your game so that your party can get back to adventuring as soon as possible... you just select a different healing module for your campaign.

If your game requires so much healing so that the "good cleric" is the ONLY viable choice for the way you play... then just change the modules you use so that's no longer the case. And that's the beauty of 5E... you don't need to change the way you play... you change the rules so that the game plays the way you want it to.