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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 7419653" data-attributes="member: 53176">Oh man, you want to talk about the identity of Clerics? Lets talk about Clerics.But first, a clarification: Fighters can heal other people. The Purple Dragon Knight isn't popular, but it does boast short rest healing power.Anyway:This is a multi-layered question which goes even farther that it think's it does.It's first important to mention, the Cleric (A.K.A Priest), was originally a <a href="http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2011/01/bishop-carr-first-d-cleric.html" target="_blank">rules patch</a>. They were not the healers, per say. But rather explicitly anti-undead at first. Of course, that's way too narrow of a niche, even back in the day. So they slap-dashed some healing, a bit of spells, and some of the fighting-man (with an arbitrary restriction on weapons for reasons) on for good measure.It's also worth mentioning that Paladins were introduced shortly after the Cleric was, so the overlap between them has been a thing for nearly the entire run of D&D. So if you wanted to get your smiting, shiny armor,  and god-worshiping on, you had multiple ways to do so from basically the beginning.This means that Clerics became tied to the idea of being a healer. And that's only because healing was a problem that needed to be solved. Nobody really liked having their character in bed for weeks, if not months, at a time after every fight. And people loathed the idea of characters just getting back up after being stabbed in the stomach. It was such a problem, that to this day, there are still message-board skirmishes fought over just how much "meat" an HP consists of.  So, Clerics became the defacto method of healing for the game, and there was much quieting of gnashing teeth.For a time anyway. Because the fate of all patch-fixes is eventual catastrophic failure when the higher-ups inevitably decide "It's working, just leave it be" instead of properly replacing the system. And boy were there problems with this particular patch fix. Firstly, not everyone likes the idea of being a Cleric. Clerics are characters who pray to the gods in order to get spells, and some people just can't handle that core. Maybe because of IRL religious beliefs, or maybe they can't stomach being second fiddle to anyone or anything. Secondly, the social contract regarding being the designated healer can be downright toxic. I can vividly remember the time someone exploded at me because I had the audacity to cover the entire party with a Wall of Stone, preventing the enemy archers from delivering a TPK via the business ends of their arrows, which allowed one of the party members to bleed out due to dice rolls.So at this point in history, the Cleric has an Identity. But it's a crappy one. They are the Healers who also worship gods to get spells. Who are different from the other guys who worship gods so they can stab the badguys better.These problems festered for a few editions, right up until 3e, where they decided to make Clerics more popular by shaking up a few things. Naturally, the fixes made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Mostly because they didn't fix the mechanical problems and even went as far as to introduce new ones. The Mechanical fix: Clerics became "Full Casters" which meant they had the spellcasing potency, if not breadth, of a Wizard who walked around in full plate all day. This change eventually lead to the monster known as CoDzilla, who frequented CharOp circles and terrorized many tables, or something like that. On the other hand: The fluff change, despite being largely overlooked, was considered relatively benign, if not positive,  and easy to ignore for those who demanded it due to tradition. Clerics were no longer explicitly required to worship gods. In retrospect, this idea may not have been all it was cracked up to be, as it effectively eroded the RP side of things and left the Cleric more or less a necessary evil type of mechanical monstrosity, though you could still do the prayer thing if you wanted too.So at this point, I'm going to dredge up:In 4e, the Cleric class as we knew it was more or less outmoded. The Leader Role (and some downtime streamlining) broke up their monopoly on healing. The Divine Power source expanded the "person who prays for power" idea into two more classes (both of which were arguably cooler than the Cleric ever was), which in turn meant that they could gut the New Cleric of it's seemingly endless array of powers. With this there was much rejoicing, for CoDzilla was dead, with a vengeance. A monster grown out of trying to fix a problem by treating the symptoms instead of the disease.This path more or less continued into 5e. Healing is again covered by multiple classes, and multiple classes get their powers from the gods. However, now that the specter of Codzilla is no longer at the forefront of the players minds, it begs the question: What exactly is a Cleric for? It's not that religious connotations aren't popular. Not only do the Paladin, Warlock, Druid, and Monk classes cover that out of the gate to various degrees, but there is an ever-growing collection of subclasses that are aping that angle. It's not that healing isn't useful, as evidenced by the also large number of characters and classes who can pull that off.No, the problem now, is that the Cleric can't latch itself onto an external rules problem anymore, forcing the Cleric to stand on it's own merits, while people slowly realize it had none to begin with. TL;DR: the Cleric is a hot mess, because the Cleric has always been a hot mess. Only now, it isn't a "necessary evil"</blockquote>

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