Taking the fighting out of fighting cleric

[Taren Seeker]

Hi all,

The fighting cleric concept has alwatys rankled with me. With 3.5, being a FC is tougher due to some buff changes and our removal of persist which is a good thing (although it's taking a while for the FC's to notice ).

I was thinking of a way to make the cleric more of a caster, but not necessarily more of a healer.

Changes:

1) Remove all armor proficiency and have cleric casting subject to ASF
2) Lower BAB to poor

To give the class more oomph, I was considering allowing a 3rd domain, and gaing 2 bonus spells per level from the domain list rather than 1.

Would this be balanced?

 

[hong]

Been done a few times. My effort is here:

http://www.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/priest.htm

 

[Ackem]

My thoughts on yours is that it might be "balanced" but it wouldn't be a big hit with people who play clerics. They lose a large part of their of their ability to participate in combat and only get a comparitive token in exchange. Playing a walking Med-kit and second-rate Wizard isn't very fun, and that's what your new clerics would be pushed toward. They need something more to bolster their combat utility if you expect people to still play them.

As for my take on a non-fighting, less pigeonholed cleric:

Prior to scrapping Divine Casters altogether, IMC we used a variant cleric. I can't find where I saved it's exact details, but here's the gist to give you some ideas.

-BAB stays at Medium, Skillpoints go to 4/level, Hit Dice drops to d6, only has a good Will Save.
-Same Spell Progression but no domain-only slot.
-Lost Shield, Heavy, and Medium Armor Proficiencies.
-Lost gaining Turning automatically
-ASF effected Cleric casting but with an innate -15% to it.
-Got to pick a cleric ability at level 2, 6, 10, 14, and 18. Could choose a feat, a special ability from the Hierophant's list, Divine Grace, Lay on Hands, Turning, Smite (Insert Opposing Alignment Here) or one of a couple other abilities including one chain of them that slightly increased how much ASF the cleric could ignore.
-Started with 1 domain, gained a second at level 8, and a third at level 16.
-Lost spontaneous healing, gained spontaneous casting of domain spells.
-Domains and their abilities heavily revised.

You could still end up with a fighting cleric but it wasn't the default and it took some work to do. You could also end up with a number of other styles.

 

[Merlion]

Personaly, I advocate doing away with the whole Arcane/Divine divide altogether myself. And I am also not all that wild about the concept of a spellcasting class that must automaticaly be a Priest, and so I created the Mystic class (which is here in this forum).
However your ideas for making the Cleric into an actual Priest class rather than a warrior-mage sound quite good. Ackem is right that less people are going to want to play such a class, since it has a different role. The same is true of my Mystic. But there are people out there who enjoy the concept of a support character. And truly, if you leave the spell list the same, its not like their bereft of offensive power.
Ackem's alternative looks pretty good to. Also brings it more in line with priests of different deities have substantialy different powers. A priest of a god of healing with the healing domain would still spontaneously cast cures, but a cleric of a god of justice could spontaneously cast rather more apropriate spells based on domains.

 

[Scion]

Been done in different ways lots of times..lol.. mine is in the link below which is also on this site, the final version is about halfway down the page.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?t=65058&highlight=fighty+cleric

 

[DreamChaser]

It is my personal opinion that anyone who thinks of a cleric as a second rate wizard should never play one.

Their spells are different than a wizards and have their own strengths. The idea that they need to be good combatants because they can't fireball things is, IMO, silly. If you want to blow things up play a wizard or sorcerer if you want to play the single most overpowered class that can do anything and with the right domains can render nearly any other class obsolete play a cleric.

But don't forget that because you can spontaneously cast cure spells, no matter what other abilities you have EVER you will never be anything but a walking med kit ...even though you always have the option of making (or buying) scrolls, potions, and wands so that you never need to loose your preped spells. Potions are great because the put the burden of healing on each party member.

So now that the "my spells are useless cause I can't afford to cast them" argument is nixed, and I've already dealt with the blow things up argument, what's left but an overpowered class?

DC

 

[Merlion]

So now that the "my spells are useless cause I can't afford to cast them" argument is nixed, and I've already dealt with the blow things up argument, what's left but an overpowered class?

Nothing. I agree completely...that is all it is now. The Cleric class has become a mechanical neccsity(or so people see it) that the designers have intentionaly unbalanced so someone in most parties will want to play one. It no longer has any semblence to any sort of fantasy archtype, and no thought is given to the way it infringed on other classes.
However many of the thoughts given here on how to make it into an actual spellcasting Cleric(priest) class that actualy has some resemblence to an archtype are quite good and workable.