D&D 5E So what's exactly wrong with the fighter?

[Minigiant]

Wait, there's 9 now? In AD&D there were only 8...

I wish cleric domains were more like AD&D specialty priests. Domains are kind of bland and samey.

You're right. It's 8. I keep forgetting generalist don't exist in 5th.

I'm find with cleric domains but I wish they did more with them. But I understand since they have spells to bring out their flavor.

Just peeved that this forced fighters, barbarians, rogues, rangers, sorcerers, and other classes to be short changed on general subclasses.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

How did specialty priests work? I haven't played AD&D in almost 20 years.

I'm playing a Cleric right now for the first time ever, and my Tempest domain Cleric is wholly different from the other Life Domain Cleric in the party, and crazy fun to play.

The biggest difference specialty priests is that each one had access to different spell spheres--different subsets of the priestly spell list. A priest of mathematics might be casting spells like Solipcism and that one spell that alters quantitys by deliberately miscounting them, and opening Wormholes with Spacewarp; meanwhile a priest of the mind might by Mentally Dominating people and changing their memory; and a priest of nature might be summoning animals and blessing crops; and a standard cleric might be healing people and resurrecting them from the dead. In 5E all priests use pretty much the same spell list; everybody can cast Revivify and Cure Wounds[1]. There's less opportunity cost and less differentiation.

In AD&D, post-Tome of Magic, priests were approximately as interesting and versatile as wizards, just in a different way. Post-AD&D they've tended to create new classes instead, i.e. 5E has "Druid" and "Cleric" as separate classes instead of just two different kinds of specialty priest.


[1] In AD&D this is equivalent to those rare, crazy-overpowered specialties like Priestess of Isis who got access to ALL spell spheres.

 

[Quajek]

Post-AD&D they've tended to create new classes instead, i.e. 5E has "Druid" and "Cleric" as separate classes instead of just two different kinds of specialty priest.

But how is that functionally different?

If you were playing a PRIEST OF NATURE then and playing a DRUID now, you'd still not have access to all the Cleric of Life spells.

It's just a question of making one big class with different specializations that allow characters to differentiate versus making different classes that do the same thing.

It's like if a Rogue were a subclass of Fighter. So you play a Fighter (Rogue) instead of a Fighter (Swordsman) or whatever, so you CHOOSE Sneak Attack and Skill Proficiencies instead of Martial Weapons and Heavy Armor, but it's still mechanically the same result as if they were separate classes to start with.

 

[Tony Vargas]

How did specialty priests work? I haven't played AD&D in almost 20 years.

That's actually a confusing question. In 1e AD&D, there were not specialty priests, all Clerics were the same. In 2e, there were two different systems. The one I'm familiar with was in the Complete Priests' Handbook by Aaron Alston. In that system, the DM designed specific priesthoods that could be based on the veneration of a Deity, a Philosophy, or a Force (which, ultimately, made little difference). The key design points were combat ability, granted powers, and spheres. The weaker the combat abilities of the priesthood, the more Major & minor accesses you had to Spheres (thematically related sub-lists of the Cleric+Druid spell lists), and the better the granted powers you could get. Turn Undead was an example of a granted power. You could approximate the PH Cleric and Druid using the system, though the PH versions were more powerful (particularly the Cleric).
I think the other system was in Legends & Lore, but I never adopted it, and just remember that it could be decidedly overpowered in some cases.

Since then, Clerics have chosen Domains: Two Domains in 3.x granting fairly 1 extra slot/spell level and adding a special ability and 1 spell/level each to the Cleric's list, optionally one or more Domain feats in 4e, one very defining Domain choice in Essentials and 5e.


To try to relate that back to the thread topic: in 5e CoDzilla doesn't step on the Fighter's best-at-fighting toes so much as in 3.x nor even 1e AD&D. Not all clerics get the fighter's heavier armor, they don't get any extra attacks per action, can't crib the equivalent of fighting styles, and don't self-buff as outrageously. (A Human Cleric can still get heavy armor, snag a feat, and maybe show up a fighter at first level, a little, but it doesn't last past Apprentice Tier, when the classes sort themselves out, and the Cleric becomes all about casting, and the fighter all about weapon-based single-target multi-attack DPR.)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

But how is that functionally different?

If you were playing a PRIEST OF NATURE then and playing a DRUID now, you'd still not have access to all the Cleric of Life spells.

It's just a question of making one big class with different specializations that allow characters to differentiate versus making different classes that do the same thing.

It's like if a Rogue were a subclass of Fighter. So you play a Fighter (Rogue) instead of a Fighter (Swordsman) or whatever, so you CHOOSE Sneak Attack and Skill Proficiencies instead of Martial Weapons and Heavy Armor, but it's still mechanically the same result as if they were separate classes to start with.

The difference is that Druid is the ONLY specialty which is differentiated now. Priests of Air, Priests of Death, Priests of Deception, Priests of Earth, Priests of Knowledge, and Priests of Mathematics in 5E are all essentially clones of each other with some medium-sized tweaks in the form of domain powers. That is substantially less differentiation than in AD&D, although more than in 3E.