Specialty Priests Class

[gyor]

I hear the Specialty Priests or just called priests will be making a come back in 5e.

They will be splitting the ideas of the traditional cleric off from the domains, creating a traditional mace and shield weilding, undead turning, healing cleric and a Priest Class that will be closer to the God and be Domain based.

This sound cool and excites me.

 

[The Shadow]

I hear the Specialty Priests or just called priests will be making a come back in 5e.

They will be splitting the ideas of the traditional cleric off from the domains, creating a traditional mace and shield weilding, undead turning, healing cleric and a Priest Class that will be closer to the God and be Domain based.

This sound cool and excites me.

It's interesting, but I do have to wonder in this case if we really need both the cleric and the paladin.

 

[Minigiant]

I hear the Specialty Priests or just called priests will be making a come back in 5e.

They will be splitting the ideas of the traditional cleric off from the domains, creating a traditional mace and shield weilding, undead turning, healing cleric and a Priest Class that will be closer to the God and be Domain based.

This sound cool and excites me.

Interesting.
I can see the priest beating up the favored soul and invoker and taking their stuff. Could work if 5e carefully describes the training and path to become a cleric, paladin, and priest.

Clerics: Divine agents trained by a church or cult in some martial arts and divine spellcasting. Equivalent to a wizard taught in a school except they teach divine magic and combat.

Paladins: Divine knights who channel divine power (not spells) due to a divine rituals, sacred vows, or partial possession. Equivalent to a warrior turned into celestial or infernal being.

Priest/invoker: Divine spellcasters who gain their power through the direct connection of a diety. Equivalent to a warlock but the patron is a deity.

 

[tlantl]

It's interesting, but I do have to wonder in this case if we really need both the cleric and the paladin.

Hopefully more than we did in 3e and 4e.

If the power to fight and absorb damage is diminished for the cleric, returning to where their power level was before the aborted attempts to balance the classes in combat turned the cleric into superman, there will again be the need for the holy warrior that gets fighter bonuses and a few divine abilities.

If they continue to treat all the classes as competent fighters then the entire fighter class and sub-classes become redundant.

I mean who wants to play a boring old fighter if they can play a character that is a decent fighter who also has a ton of gods given powers and spells.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, I think the Paladin should be moved out of its "Holy Warrior" role (which belongs to the Cleric) and back to the wandering champion of Law/Good like the knights of Arthur or Roland (where it came from).

Then Clerics can go from focused on healing and be more back to the Van Helsing/Templar/Hospitaler model.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Well, I think the Paladin should be moved out of its "Holy Warrior" role (which belongs to the Cleric) and back to the wandering champion of Law/Good like the knights of Arthur or Roland (where it came from).

Then Clerics can go from focused on healing and be more back to the Van Helsing/Templar/Hospitaler model.

I would like this too. Another way of looking at this could be a Paladin "Theme" (as well as Templar/Hospitaler themes) which overlays a Cleric "Class". I also think Minigiant's ideas of channeling divine power is pretty cool for the paladin. A priest becomes another theme again perhaps?

I'd really like a variety of Themes to take on this sort of role, not dissimilar to Archetypes in Pathfinder which are perhaps the best rulechange out of that ruleset but when mixed with themes can really scratch any character creation itch.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[mkill]

I'm very much looking forward to this Priest class. Of corse, it's just an off-hand comment so far, not an announcement. I hope they get at-will and daily or encounter spells, rather than vancian stuff, which I think never fit the Cleric.

As for Cleric vs. Paladin, I prefer a general holy warrior class that can be tied to a religion. The LG Smiter of Evil is a subtype for me (theme?). As for maces, that was always a lame trope and can go die in a fire as far as I'm concerned. It would be better to have different oaths that you can choose from. Using only bludgeoning weapons can be one of them. Favored weapons of deities always had much more flavor, though, and I'd rather see that return in some form.

For the record, my 3.5 LG (Living Greyhawk) Cleric of Kelenar used a bastard sword, and he'd disarm people with it (to show off his superior swordsmaship)

 

[Khaalis]

I'd honestly like to see the Cleric as the base class, with the Priest and Paladin being variants of the class, whether they be called Kits, Themes, Talent Trees, Builds, whatever. The Paladin class on its own has IMHO, never really been a good standalone class. It could easily be made into a variant of the Cleric whereby it looses spellcasting power to gain heavier armor, better weapons, etc. In the same vein, the Priest would give up better armor and arms to gain more 'specialized' casting/divine powers.

 

[Tallifer]

The Fourth Edition made it very clear what the difference is between the Cleric and the Paladin through their differentiated roles of Support (called Leader) and Defender. I liked this interpretation.

I never really liked Clerics however, because they are clearly inspired (albeit in a very contradictory way) by Christian priests plus Knights Templar, but because D&D has always distanced itself from real-world religion, they are half-hearted and usually used for completely un-Christian-like deities and religions.

A Priest class which has much more open armour, weapon and magical parameters to suit the particular culture and god makes much more sense. Then just make the Cleric a sub-class of the Priest, but make this particular sub-class part of the Starter Box Set from the beginning to appease the Old School.

 

[Mattachine]

I never liked the armor-shield-mace cleric. I really liked specialty priests in 2e.

A long time ago, in a 2e game I ran, there were only specialty priests, often with specialized spell lists. No "generic clerics" at all.