No Cleric in my Group

[Samothdm]

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

This is what the DM did in one of the games in which I play. The NPC cleric really doesn't do much at all besides healing. He was really pretty good at healing though, and we always shared a portion of our treasure with him to be fair.

That game also has no druid and no bard (well, there is a druid NPC who replaced the cleric NPC, but that's a long story). The game actually started with a cleric (before I joined the group) but he changed characters because he felt like all he did was heal people.

In the second group in which I play, there is no cleric, and also no bard and no druid. Not a lot of healing going on there. We have another NPC cleric in this one (same DM!). She's a young, teenage part-celestial and she basically just heals. Her healing capacity is much more limited than the NPC in the other group. She actually fit into the story pretty well, too, as one of our first adventures as a group involved meeting her and helping her out.

For the game that I DM, there is only one cleric, but he's a multi-class cleric/sorcerer who is pretty much evenly splitting his levels. So, he sucks. To top it off, for the past 6 months of game time, he's been out of communication with his deity so he couldn't heal anyone through spells anyway. He could, however, use a wand, and yet the player never really stopped to think about why that was the case.

I think playing without a cleric can be done. But, I think clerics are an interesting class, especially if the player really plays up the religious aspect (which 99% of the clerics I've ever seen played do not do). Also, as my DM says, if the player plays the cleric correctly, he'll be able to convince the party that he's much more beneficial using his spells for other things than just healing, and the party will learn to adapt to that. When you're facing an evil outsider, which is more important - for the cleric to cast Dismissal or for him to wait on the sidelines to cast another healing spell?

 

[Darth K'Trava]

For the game that I DM, there is only one cleric, but he's a multi-class cleric/sorcerer who is pretty much evenly splitting his levels. So, he sucks. To top it off, for the past 6 months of game time, he's been out of communication with his deity so he couldn't heal anyone through spells anyway. He could, however, use a wand, and yet the player never really stopped to think about why that was the case.

Did he tick off his god or something and didn't realize it?

I think playing without a cleric can be done. But, I think clerics are an interesting class, especially if the player really plays up the religious aspect (which 99% of the clerics I've ever seen played do not do). Also, as my DM says, if the player plays the cleric correctly, he'll be able to convince the party that he's much more beneficial using his spells for other things than just healing, and the party will learn to adapt to that. When you're facing an evil outsider, which is more important - for the cleric to cast Dismissal or for him to wait on the sidelines to cast another healing spell?

Clerics can do most anything, provided the player can figure that out.....

In one game, I had a "discussion" with the player of the other cleric as to who should prep the most Dismissal spells (we've run into quite a bit of evil outsiders and I'm sure the DM is going to figure out around that so his monsters don't suddenly go *poof* when one of us casts that spell. He did the same for my previous character, a ranger, who would use Entangle on a regular basis....

I've yet to see any cleric in any of our games just sit on the sidelines and wait for someone to cry for healing. I had one who, if she didn't see someone get hurt, wouldn't heal them. And she worshiped Pelor! It goes under the "don't assume the cleric can see all, hear all, in the middle of combat". Especially if she/he's in the middle of it!