The Cleric Pregen

[Sitara]

Haven't seen any threads on this so I thought I would go ahead and make one.

What are your thoughts on the cleric pregen? Seems in 4e clercis are very flashy, tossing blasts of radiant energy hither and tither, on a par with wizards. (at least, at level 1)

 

[Nymrohd]

I actually like the cleric. He has decent offense, on par with other non strikers. His offensive prayers have leader carry ons that facilitate tactical combat. And Turn undead looks simple and elegant. The interaction between leader healing and second wind is also interesting and considering the strength of healing surges it does promise a leader who spends most combat attacking and triggering effects rather than healing. This will certainly help ease the classic starting issue of noone interested in playing a healer character.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Seems much like the clerics of before, only without spending a lot of abilities for cure spells. There are a fair number of protective/attack abilities in the current cleric spell lists, particularly if you include splatbooks. And I expect that will make playing clerics more appealing (except for me -- I've never really been into the whole "holy warrior" schtick).

I find the use of Amanuator interesting. I wonder of that implies a change to FR where Lathander the Morninglord has now matured into Amanuator (or some other reverse of the Dawn Cataclysm from FR history). Amanuator is the old Netherese sun god, pre-Lathander. Anyone know if there has been any clarification of this change to FR?

Edit: Some are pretty powerful, though. Given how we're seeing ongoign effects work, the power that is an attack and also allows an ally to make a save to end an ongoing effect out of sequence could be very helpful at any level of play.

 

[Shroomy]

Seems much like the clerics of before, only without spending a lot of abilities for cure spells. There are a fair number of protective/attack abilities in the current cleric spell lists, particularly if you include splatbooks. And I expect that will make playing clerics more appealing (except for me -- I've never really been into the whole "holy warrior" schtick).

I find the use of Amanuator interesting. I wonder of that implies a change to FR where Lathander the Morninglord has now matured into Amanuator (or some other reverse of the Dawn Cataclysm from FR history). Amanuator is the old Netherese sun god, pre-Lathander. Anyone know if there has been any clarification of this change to FR?

I haven't read anything, but with the resurgence of Netheril and the Shades, I would think that gods like Amanuator would become more popular overall.

BTW, I love the new turn undead rules.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I haven't read anything, but with the resurgence of Netheril and the Shades, I would think that gods like Amanuator would become more popular overall.

BTW, I love the new turn undead rules.

Yeah, anything that eliminates that stupid turn undead table is OK in my book. Eight years since 3E release and we still reach for the book every time we do turn undead.

 

[Nymrohd]

The issue with Amanautor has been steadily escalating in recent splatbooks and in Shadowstorm Novel it seems that the Risen Sun heresy (the sect that believes Lathander is maturing into Amanautor) seems to have increased in importance. Two things comes to mind:
The high priest of the Risen Sun heresy is directly opposed to the Shades of Netheril. With the Shade probably being the main villain of FR in 4E it would make make sense for opposing forces to be promoted.
In Faiths and Pantheons Lathander is reworking on the incantations that caused the Dawn Cataclysm with only Chauntea privy. So he certainly has big plans.

Still there is a rather huge issue with exchanging Lathander for Amaunator. Lathander is the only adventure-worthy NG greater power in Faerun. Amaunator is deeply lawful.

 

[Voss]

Interestingly, I think the cleric is a bit better than the wizard, but this particular cleric is fairly unoptimized. I suspect the powers come from WIS, STR and CHA, and several of them seem lacking due to the poor CHR. (the divine fortune ability in particular, it would be much more impressive if that was +3 to an attack or save).

But the healing and buffing seems much more useful than the relatively low area damage the wizard is shelling out. Sleep is too unreliable. With saves at the end of the creature's turn, the slow effect only really matters to melee combatants that aren't in combat already (all it does, from another thread, is lower movement to 2), and then there is a 55% chance it just ends.

On the other hand, handing out damage, healing, buffs and saves is huge! Particularly since you can do any 3 in the same round.

The one downside the cleric seems to have is 2 of his key ability scores are in the same 'group', so he has to let one of his defenses down (reflex, if my suspicions on his key ability scores are correct.) But then it looks like the paladin and fighter have this same problem.

As for the amauntor thing. I dislike it intensely. I don't want a set of gods hardcoded into the rules. Power/blessing of the sun would have been a lot more acceptable.

 

[Kordeth]

Still there is a rather huge issue with exchanging Lathander for Amaunator. Lathander is the only adventure-worthy NG greater power in Faerun. Amaunator is deeply lawful.

Given that the only alignments we've seen so far are "good," "unaligned," and "evil," I really don't think this is a rather huge problem.

As for the amauntor thing. I dislike it intensely. I don't want a set of gods hardcoded into the rules. Power/blessing of the sun would have been a lot more acceptable.

Erm...the DDXP game was a Living Forgotten Realms game. Why wouldn't it use Forgotten Realms gods?

 

[vazanar]

The issue with Amanautor has been steadily escalating in recent splatbooks and in Shadowstorm Novel it seems that the Risen Sun heresy (the sect that believes Lathander is maturing into Amanautor) seems to have increased in importance. Two things comes to mind:
The high priest of the Risen Sun heresy is directly opposed to the Shades of Netheril. With the Shade probably being the main villain of FR in 4E it would make make sense for opposing forces to be promoted.
In Faiths and Pantheons Lathander is reworking on the incantations that caused the Dawn Cataclysm with only Chauntea privy. So he certainly has big plans.

Still there is a rather huge issue with exchanging Lathander for Amaunator. Lathander is the only adventure-worthy NG greater power in Faerun. Amaunator is deeply lawful.

True, but since this is happening in 4e FR, we no longer have lawful/chaos distinctions. Also it isn't the first time someone replaces a Gods position but with a diffrent alignment.

 

[Hathorym]

BTW, I love the new turn undead rules.

Absolutely concur. The beauty of it is a sense of actual divinity thrust in opposition to undead. Rather than rolls that followed an arbitrary chart, like 2nd, or were so convoluted that my players hated even using the power, like 3rd - this version of 'Turn Undead' is simple in it's implementation, while giving a glimpse into the actual power of divinity by 'searing' the unholy denizens of undead persuasion. I guess the question is, why'd it take so long to get this logical? I love it. I'm still on the fence of 4e over all - but even if I stay with 3.5e, I'm going to add an interpretation of the 4e version.