So what happened to arcane and divine characters?

[SteveC]

So I have had about an hour with the D&D books now, and have started putting together a review. In putting my thoughts into place, I started with the PHB, and I really have to wonder what happened to arcane and divine characters.

For one thing, we have only two examples of them as opposed to four martial characters, which inherently gives fewer choices, and thus fewer options. That's a bit of an aside, however.

What I'm really struck with, when I look at low level characters, is how much of their abilities just seen to be gone. As a low level cleric, I can make attacks, some of which have minor buffing effects on my allies or perform healing. That's great for combat, but it's only a small part of being a cleric ... what do I do outside of combat?

The obvious thing is "use rituals" but in my limited perusal of the ritual effects, it looks like a lot of things one could do as a cleric are just gone from the rules. By that, I don't mean "things you could do with all 900 splat books," I'm talking about core class functions from previous editions.

It seems like the wizard is helped by still having cantrips, but again, where is the tremendous flexibility of being a wizard? I see attack spells, and some limited situational movement and defensive powers, but there doesn't seem to be much to do with your powers outside of combat.

Now all of this comes from looking at the rules for a grand total of an hour, so feel free to tell me that I'm wrong and that I've just missed something, because otherwise it looks like 4E is not addressing the "out of combat" situations very well at all for these characters.

Color me confused, so help me out, ENWorld!

--Steve

 

[Kordeth]

Wizards and clerics have lost a lot of their versatility, because in previous editions they outshone every other class in the game. Why have a rogue when you can cast discern lies, spider climb or find traps? Why have warriors at all when, after 5th level or so, casters outstrip them in damage output to ridiculous extremes? In order to not make them Swiss army characters, wizards and clerics have had their focus tightened. Rituals and utility powers are there to fill out noncombat power applications, but just like all class abilities, the powers are focused on what you do in combat. 4th Edition never makes you choose between being able to do cool stuff in combat and having some random utility spell like water-walking prepared.

Maybe if you listed out the specific things that you feel are missing from the low-level spells and prayers, we can help point out what's happened to them and why.

 

[JesterOC]

For one thing, we have only two examples of them as opposed to four martial characters, which inherently gives fewer choices, and thus fewer options.
--Steve

There are 2 divine based classes(Cleric,Paladin) and 2 arcane based classes(Wizard,Warlock). If you discount the Paladin you still have 3 spellcasters and one highly magical Defender.

As was stated before the wizards had to loose the pocket knife uber utility factor to let others in the party shine.

 

[Obryn]

I think a fair counter-question would be, "In previous editions, what did a fighter do between fights?"

Part of me misses the long, crazy spell lists.

A bigger part of me, though, is glad my game won't drag to a halt as we read through quarter-page-plus spell descriptions to find the exact wording. Oh, and glad that I don't need to look up every demon's spell-like abilities in the SRD or PHB before I use them in a fight.

-O

 

[Blackeagle]

The obvious thing is "use rituals" but in my limited perusal of the ritual effects, it looks like a lot of things one could do as a cleric are just gone from the rules. By that, I don't mean "things you could do with all 900 splat books," I'm talking about core class functions from previous editions.

What exactly do you feel is missing?

 

[SteveC]

Aha! Sorry for the delay, it seems that ENWorld is running very slow for me.

Two responses: first, for clerics, I miss the various healing of status effects, but then I saw that for the most part, there just aren't long term status effects other than disease, which is handled by a ritual (is that correct?). Still, I think it makes for a less interesting game to get rid of those sorts of things. Rapid healing of hit points doesn't bother me, since I have always considered them to be a sort of "encounter based" resource, but I find it less interesting that poison, curses, blindness and so on are gone. That's just my preference, I suppose.

Outside of that, I like utility spells, the mendings, make whole, stone shape, shatter ... that sort of thing.

For wizards, it seems like transmutation, alternation, conjuration (summoning), divination and necromancy spells are mostly gone, and abjuration spells have been reduced to round/turn duration. Very interesting, but less exciting both in and out of combat.

The second point: I think the question of "what does a fighter do outside of combat," is an excellent one, and it's what I suppose the designers were thinking. My reaction would be that they will have something do to when they're given it, much like all the powers they have in 4E for combat, non-combat powers sound like a no-brainer to include.

It's strange, but there seems to be the possibility for a whole series of books with crunch on what characters can do outside of combat, which is a sort of strange situation, isn't it?

Again, just my opinions, and my not overly informed opinions at that, so they're subject to change...

--Steve

 

[Blackeagle]

Rapid healing of hit points doesn't bother me, since I have always considered them to be a sort of "encounter based" resource, but I find it less interesting that poison, curses, blindness and so on are gone. That's just my preference, I suppose.

Well, curing long term status effects does provide the Cleric with something to do, but that means if you don't have a cleric your kind of screwed. I think removing them is probably part of the whole "You don't need a cleric in every party" push.

Outside of that, I like utility spells, the mendings, make whole, stone shape, shatter ... that sort of thing.

I think that sort of stuff falls into the realm of ritual magic.

For wizards, it seems like transmutation, alternation, conjuration (summoning), divination and necromancy spells are mostly gone, and abjuration spells have been reduced to round/turn duration.

Some of that will probably be ritual magic, but some of it is being reserved for other classes. WotC has said that the specialist wizard types are going to be their own classes in 4e, rather than wizard variants. They've specifically said that the Wizard's illusion spells were toned down to allow some room for an Illusionist class later on. This could apply to a lot of the other areas you listed too (Summoner class, Necromancer class, etc.).

The second point: I think the question of "what does a fighter do outside of combat," is an excellent one, and it's what I suppose the designers were thinking. My reaction would be that they will have something do to when they're given it, much like all the powers they have in 4E for combat, non-combat powers sound like a no-brainer to include.

Out of combat stuff is kind of hard because it's going to differ so much from one campaign to another. Skill challenges seem to be WotC's effort to provide a system to handle this sort of thing.

 

[Byronic]

Wizards and clerics have lost a lot of their versatility, because in previous editions they outshone every other class in the game. Why have a rogue when you can cast discern lies, spider climb or find traps?

In my day we did it different, we didn't always cast spider climb. We actually climbed. And we thanked God if we could use our ropes to climb because otherwise we used our God given hand and feet to climb.

Why have a Rogue find your traps for you? Because we wanted our Clerics to do other things with their spells and because Clerics can't disarm traps. Even if we didn't have a Rogue we wouldn't let the Cleric use disarm traps. No we'd just get a Halfling to walk in front of us.

And discern lies? We never used discern lies once. We just found a dark alley and beat the living crap out of him until he hurt too badly to lie. Have a man scream in a bad part of town and after five min he'll tell you everything.

 

[hong]

If you can't have fun with at-will mage hand, you're not trying hard enough.

 

[Nellisir]

Wizards and clerics have lost a lot of their versatility, because in previous editions they outshone every other class in the game. Why have a rogue when you can cast discern lies, spider climb or find traps? Why have warriors at all when, after 5th level or so, casters outstrip them in damage output to ridiculous extremes? In order to not make them Swiss army characters, wizards and clerics have had their focus tightened.

I read stuff like this, and I really have to wonder if you and I were both playing the same game. Why have a rogue? Because the rogue can find traps, spider climb, discern lies, and sneak attack -every- round in -every- encounter. Why have warriors? Spell resistance, energy resistance, attacks of opportunity, and multiple attacks. And hit points.

I played a mid/high-level, fairly munchkined wizard, and while he was pretty powerful in his own way, he would've died without the cleric, the rogue, and the fighters. Did he have the shiny blasty spells? Heck yeah. But he had them because he didn't have to be three other characters.