No Cleric in my Group

[Gez]

I won't vote because there's no "From time to time", it's always, just once or never in the options.

We had several campaigns without clerics. In the first, eventually two characters multiclassed as clerics, but only for one or two levels. In another, there was a cleric at first, but she got eaten by an ogre mage. In yet another, no clerics at all, just a bard, and we always finish combats in pyrrhic victories (everybody save one or two party members lying in the negative and needing instafix through potions or heal checks.)

 

[Shellman]

In low magic campaign, I don't think a Cleric is necessary if you have a viable alternative for healing.

In high fantasy campaigns, Clerics are a necessity due to the wads and wads of damage Arcane spellcasters are throwing around.

Most of our games are pretty much High Fantasy and we routinely have encounters with tough CR's.

Sometimes our DM will have a NPC Cleric who is only good for healing and such and basically does nothing else at all.

 

[Ron]

I am currently running a game to a clericless party. It is pretty good, as they have to be much more careful regarding combat and it take days before they tried to fight again. In the end, the game became much more believeable.

 

[DragonLancer]

I've run and played Dragonlance games set during times when clerics/druids don't exist in that setting. The party had a slightly harder time of it but not overly so. Perfectly fine IMO.

 

[Mystery Man]

Looks like I've convinced the groups paladin to take one for the team and choose the leadership feat. That should get them either 2 5th or 1 6th level cleric.

 

[drothgery]

I played in one game that was a low-magic setting where the DM ruled that you had to gain a convert in order to gain a cleric level. In retrospect, finding converts would have been a lot easier than all we did to compensate for the lack of a cleric while facing lots of undead.

 

[Romnipotent]

Clerics are nutty religious types... if theres no religion they're even nuttier!
As for a more "party healer" dealing of mechanics, then theres Healers, Druids, Favoured Souls, weird sorcerer builds using prestige classes, and my favourite, The Spellcaster (UA).
I've had games without a cleric. Its just a different play style, one of them being "resting" more to stay alive

 

[woodelf]

I'm currently playing in a group that does not have a cleric. Actually the campaign rules that the DM has setup have made it so that clerics are not found in this campaign world. So we have a druid and a bard in the party that makes up or quasi healer. Now I have played in games where there was no magic in the world, so of course there were no clerics, but in a world of magic, have any of you ever played in a game where the cleric is prohibited??

Not exactly. But it seems like what you're really asking is if we've played without easy access to healing magic. I've never had a shortage of clerics/priests in the games i've run, but i've also never had a healing cleric in the games i've run. The players have always chosen to play clerics of gods that grant little or no healing magic. [No undead turning, either.] I ran a 7.5yr AD&D game, and i think there was only one character with healing magic during the entire campaign--and that was a shortlived character. The group either used healing potions and thelike, or did without.

In the current game i'm running, there're a runethane and a multi-class magister (mostly other classes), so they have access to a little bit of healing magic. There's also nominally a greenbond, but the player's schedule hasn't let her attend in quite some time, so they're pretty much playing without her abilities.

In my experience, lots of D&D players want to play divine champions of one sort or another; very few want to play support-role characters; so cleric-as-healer-and-buffer isn't attractive. When that role is enshrined in the cleric's class abilities, those who want to play religious characters use another class (such as the akashic/unfettered/magister in my current game). When it's possible to play a religious character of a more active sort, players play clerics in droves (i think my long-running AD&D game was typically 1/3rd priests of one god or another).

 

[Darth K'Trava]

Clerics are nutty religious types... if theres no religion they're even nuttier!
As for a more "party healer" dealing of mechanics, then theres Healers, Druids, Favoured Souls, weird sorcerer builds using prestige classes, and my favourite, The Spellcaster (UA).
I've had games without a cleric. Its just a different play style, one of them being "resting" more to stay alive

Alot of ours hasn't been the "nutty religious types".... they usually do their jobs within their deity's doctrine (we don't do the "no deity" cleric) without alot of "spreading their gospel" to the masses. We do have one who does the "may the blessings of Tyr fall upon you" as a parting phrase... or try to convert a surrendered enemy when he can (worked for this bugbear who was the last one to remain alive after we'd killed his companions. He's now a Tyrran follower due to our "intervention" into his life.... )

 

[Mixmaster]

I did it once.

Fighter in the campaign with near max HP's, could never get healed completely, but the campaign was fun except for this:

Used to get ribbed for fighting defensively by the DM. My comeback was "Everybody we fight is always fresh. Why is that when we're fighting at 1/2 to 3/4!" Never got an answer to that.