The party's cleric *won't* heal your character?!

[Nonlethal Force]

Heh, I thought is was more of a joke. But it does hightlight an important fact: Compromise is important. If your are roleplaying a concept at odds with the other players and refuse to change, then you should gracefully adapt or change your character.

Player 1: My character is Sir Baldan the Tough. He's proud and a bit haughty but a reliable armsman and seeks to bring goodness and justice to the land. He likes to fight and is overconfident in his abilities, but I'll try not to get us all killed.

Player 2: I play Orly Yarly the gnome rogue. He's a bit of a soundrel but a true friend to his companions. He likes to steal "extra" treasure but we can just pretend that's how he gets his share of the treasure. Plus he likes to treat everyone to inn rooms and the finest meals.

Player 2: My character is Seelee the Devout. She worships the God of Fire and Protection. She sermonizes a lot and ehorts everyone to become a Flame devotee, but don't worry, she believes that persuasion through example is best. Just to warn you she gets worked up in combat so don't expect her to rush to heal you in a fight.

Player 3: Zees the Unwholesome is a necromancer dedicated to bringing death to all beings. He likes to make undead and has no qualms about traipsing around with a bevy of zombies. He will let nothing stand in his way to achieve ultimate power.

Guess who should get the axe?

Uh, I vote the necromancer or the rogue. Both of them are doing things that typically brings more attention than desired and by people who can usually do something about it. Nobody likes a thief (or a thief's friends) and not many living beings should really have a ton of respect for someone whose soul (sic) desire is to bring death to all beings.

I'd certainly keep the fighter around as long as for the most part he keeps his mouth shut in conversation with others and lets others try the talking route. And I'd definately keep that cleric around because if its a motivated fighting cleric it might well be a better fighter than the fighter! Heck yeah I'd keep that cleric around.

Yet, somehow I don't think this answer was the one you wanted. Sorry!

As for the comments that are being made, remember that I don't think a single person in the camp of "clerics can be non-healers too" would say their character would never heal. That is a point that the people in the "clerics must be healers" camp likes to assert. I've heard many cleric players say that if the party is willing to go "halves/thirds/quarters/fifths/etc" on a wand of healing that they'd be more than happy to use it over and over! My clerics heal through wands all the time! My clerics will also heal a fallen comrade in combat if necessary, too. But my clerics are not a "heal me cause your character sheet says cleric and that is your role forced upon you." Screw that.

As far as people having niches to fill, if that were the case the PHB should have 4 classes in it: fighter, healer, scout (not the CAd base class), arcanist. But you see, the classes can do things that the other classes can. A cleric can be a better fighter than an actual fighter given the right conditions. A wizard can make a decent rogue substitute in the right circumstances and with the proper spell selection. I've seen fighterless parties do fine, cleric-less parties do fine, rogueless parties do fine (these are my favorites, personally) and arcaneless parties do great (These have to be very careful, though!). PArt of the fun of the game for me is tossing out the "assumptions" of a class and letting other people play what they want their character to be. If the arcanist wants to be an illusionist and not toss out fireballs and we need a few fireballs then we'll get a scroll, or a magic item, or whatever. No big deal! You want healing? Get a wand! They're not that expensive in the greater scheme of things and you don't even need a cleric for that!

Anyway, I guess it just grates on my nerves to hear anyone force their assumptions for a class on someone else. Just because wizards can cast fireball doesn't mean they have to and in some concepts they shouldn't! Just because a rogue has the ability to open locks doesn't mean in every concept he should! Just because every fighter can fight with a greatsword and have a high strength doesn't mean that in every concept he should! And just because some clerics (those who can channel positive energy) can heal spontaneously (or even cast a memorized cure spell) doesn't mean that with every concept they should. Since when is D&D about forcing other player's characters to live up to my metagaming expectations?

 

[Nonlethal Force]

natural healing rates are a joke.

Sorry to potentially hijack this thread, but I have to raise an eyebrow at this. They are a joke? Have you compared the natural healing rates of this game to its earlier editions? With a full night's rest you recover 1 hit point per level! If you do full bed rest, you get 2 hit points per level! A 10th level character can heal 20 hit points just by laying around! That is not shabby at all.

I would assert that what has happened is that D&D has come into being as a "combat/dice" centered game and RP is getting pushed further to the side in the typical campaign. I would suppose that the typical party would rather gain their XP by slaughtering hordes of monsters in a dungeon or some other suitable place than by RPing their way through many of the combats to avoid them entirely. I would guess that in most games the typical number of encounters per rest period (what is it, 3 1/3? 4 1/3?) gets inflated to five or six in a typical campaign. Players in general are less happy to have an encounter or two, do a bunch of RP, and then rest up, think, plan, strategize, craft weapons, have a job, have a family, make friends, go to the tavern, etc. I would suppose that for the sake of gaining XP the typical game is set at a torrid pace in which players potentially could gain as many as 4 or five levels in a month's game-time! I've even heard of games where players have gained several levels in a week of game time - although I think that is a bit stretched and doesn't happen often.

Natural healing works fine if the pace of the game is brought to a normal life level. If we lived at the pace that our adventurers lived, I bet we'd have a heart attack from over-work, depression, and stress!

Now, I also understand that games need not mimic real life and I am not criticizing too much the pace of other people's games. ITs there game and they have the ability to set the pace how they see fit. That's great so long as they are having fun. But realize that natural healing rates are only a joke if we choose to assert a pace controlled by "gaining XP to level" and not one based upon legitimate feasability.

 

[Driddle]

The point is that the PCs are a team. ... Co-adventurers are like roommates. If you don't like them, you get new ones.

That's ONE way to view the adventuring experience.

 

[Felix]

Beg your pardon, but isn't that advice for a Sorcerer? A Wizard's strength is their ability to be everything the spell list allows.

A wizard's strength is their ability for their spellbook to be everything the spell list allows.

Which means that oft times the wizard won't have something prepared that would be eminently useful at that moment.

It also means that they should leave slots open to fill in spells as needed when they have the required 15 minutes to memorize it. Which leaves them with even fewer spells per day to cast when taken unawares.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Once, as a DM, I ruled that the god of the party's good-aligned cleric would not allow the cleric to cast any spells, including healing, on the group's ranger after the ranger tortured and killed a helpless, bond prisoner during an interrogation. This was in 1E, when rangers had to be of a good alignment. When the cleric tried to cast a healing spell on the ranger, it just didn't work.

The ranger had to go on a quest to atone for her misdeed.

The only time I, as a player, have encountered a situation where a cleric in the party wouldn't cast healing spells on my character was during a recent RPGA Living Greyhawk event. There was a dwarven cleric in the party who said up front, at the start of the adventure, that she would not "waste" any of her healing magic on any "orc-blooded" character. My half-orc was the only one affected. But it wasn't too big a problem since my character is a fighter/cleric of Kord.

We role-played this a little bit and came to an agreement. If my character was unconscious, the dwarf would have used my cure light wounds wand on me, or one of my cure light wounds scrolls. "I'll use someone else's healing magic on ya, but I won't waste my own," the dwarf said.

During another RPGA LG event, we had three divine casters at the table: my half-orc fighter/cleric, a human cleric/paladin and a human druid. Our snooty elven arcane caster started pissing everyone off with his superior attitude, so at various times during the game each of the divine casters threatened not to use healing magic on him. But it was all just role-playing kidding around -- we would have healed him if he had needed it.

 

[Henry]

A lot of the dependency on clerics seems to be focused around not having healing sources in any other way. From my perspective, if I were limiting magic item availability in my games, I'd also as a DM correspondingly crank down the encounter strength to a level that can be more easily handled with natural healing or other means. To do otherwise to me is putting undue pressure on the cleric to be something OTHER than the medic. It seems that previous editions placed so much focus on cleric as "medic and undead turner only" that no other roles are thought of very highly.

Yet, as Lanefan indicates, most folks seem fine with a Fighter Archer, or a Wizard Charmer, of even a swindling but not trap-springing Rogue, but Cleric who doesn't give healing, or only gives healing in duress, is anathema. I don't get the seeming lack of flexibility.

If someone played a cleric of Wee Jas in-game, would they be "useless" if they didn't load up everything they had with cure wounds spells? I'd rather they be loading up with spells to kill the enemy, rather than heal me, necessarily, with maybe a few slots reserved for keeping people from death.

 

[Ipissimus]

Hmmmm... this question makes me realize why I no longer play Lawful Good characters.

I can understand refusing to heal someone because of stupidity, I can understand triage (ie not healing someone when another is more needy) and a few other sensible reasons for not doing so. But if a PC cleric flat out refused to heal party members when he could or started trying to charge other players money or extorted favors of belief in trade for healing... if I was a player in that situation, I'd wait until we were camping for the night in the middle of nowhere and coup de grace him in his sleep. If I were a DM, I'd take the player aside and ask him very politely not to deliberately insite party tension and ruin the game.

From a character's perspective, I look at it this way. As an adventurer, I'm in a dangerous job. I have a cleric buddy because when (not if, when) we get over our heads, he can piece us back together. In return, he gets a share of our loot, fair deal. If he's not doing that then, one day, we're all going to die or miss out on the big score. We may even face the possibility that the whole world will be plunged into darkness due to the birth of a new evil god, failure is not an option. The moment he starts pulling this sort of thing, he becomes a liability, if we're in a town or close, either he leaves the party and we get another cleric or I leave to find a smarter party. Out in the big, bad, wilderness, I can't afford to be so nice. Better that cleric makes a quiet exit and give the Rogue with maxed out UMD all the healing scrolls, then divide the potions until we can get back to town.

Even if I was playing one of my Paladins, my first reaction to this would be kicking the Cleric out of the group. He can hang around if he wants, but he gets treated like an NPC, and he doesn't get a single share of the loot. This works really well if you do like my groups do and designate all magical treasure obtained by the party as party treasure until such time as we divide up the loot back in town. I am then perfectly within my rights to demand all the healing scrolls and potions he's carrying that were obtained in the dungeon. If he refuses, I can restrain him and take them. If he fights back, I kill him in self defense, most likely with the help of the rest of my party.

They want to RP their characters, the character suffers the consequences of that RP choice.

As a DM in a group with a cleric like this, I would explain very politely that I can understand that the player wants to play his character, but there are interpersonal concerns involved with the other players when they get shirty. If the root cause is something like 'I don't really want to play the cleric', then I suggest that he creates a new character, and politely ask if someone else would like to try their hand at the class. If he wants to play this character and no other, I politely suggest that he or she finds another group which will accept it.

DnD is meant to be fun, players who are yelling at each other are not having fun. I'd do the same thing to the wizard that kept blasting the fighters along with the other monsters, the rogue who refuses to find traps because he might take damage or the fighter who uses the wizard as a meat shield.

 

[green slime]

I do find it incredible, the amount of ill-like for non-bandaid clerics.

 

[Numion]

As for the "my character concept isn't about healing" argument: That's fine to a point, but you have to adapt. A concept of a wizard that isn't a fireball tosser is ok, but once you have to save the village from a tribe of trolls you might want to adjust that a bit.

I think this is a really good point. I never say no to healing "just because", but because a) it's usually better tactically be on the offensive b) most of my spells are spent on buffs and blasting. So, healing in combat costs 1) a round of action for me 2) a spell from my prepared list - both of which can usually be better spent.

Flame strike can cause 30 pts of damage to multiple targets. Usually much more useful than healing 30 points to a single character. Because those multiple targets will deal that damage back in no time.

I'd never refuse healing to a dying or about to die comrade. It's just common sense. But the other characters are not entitled to my characters healing, any more I'm entitled to the stuff the wizard makes.

But as you noticed, I said 'usually' many times. Not always. Sometimes healing is the thing to do, and then it's time to adapt.

 

[Driddle]

So it would be easier on everyone if the rest of the table crew told a guy right up front, "You're the cleric. You heal people. Get used to it."