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

[Endur]

Healing is a gift. It is not a right.

Clerics (and other healers) should only use their powers when they want to.

If we wanted to be realistic about it, many fantasy healers would probably only heal members of their faith.

 

[D.Shaffer]

I have to wonder how many people who hate the idea of a non-healing based Clerics actually play clerics themselves? In any case, my feelings on the matter can be summed up pretty easilly.

1: Forcing a player to go a certain way leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. We're ALL here to have fun. Forcing someone to play a role they dont have fun playing so YOU can have fun is very greedy on your part. If you want healing that badly, there are ways to get it. This reminds me a lot of MMORPG attitudes where if you're not built to a certain 'This is the best optimization route', no one wants you in their group.

2: While Clerics are very good at healing, they're not the only ones who can heal. There are tons of ways to get healing in a party. Druids and Bards have it on their spell lists. Rogues can use magical items if they pump the skill high enough. Paladins can lay on hands. If you're playing in Eberron, there's an entire house dedicated to healing. There are cohorts and hirelings that can heal. It's a bit more expensive, but there are other items that also can pass on healing as well as feats that give you healing abilities. Scrolls, wands, and potions arent that expensive.

3: I dont like the assumption that because a Cleric isnt healing, he's not helping the party. Clerics dont suck at melee combat, especially with their self 'buff' spells. They have spells that effect the entire party or can make the fight easier in other ways. If they're a member in good standing with the church, they can get information and certain services the rest of the party cant. They're the premium undead killers. Clerics are very versatile in what they can do.

4: I dont think anyone is arguing that a cleric should NEVER heal. If they are, I havent heard it. What they're arguing against is the idea that Clerics shouldnt do anything BUT heal and should do it without question or pause. There are plenty of reasons that Clerics might have a self imposed limit on healing, both RP and campaign based and if they DO heal you, they might lose their abilities.

 

[Endur]

I think it's arrogant for a cleric to not heal his buddies, but expect his buddies to get him out of a jam when it happens to him. I mean, really, it's not the fighter's fault someone got a crit on him with an axe.

Well, the cleric can try to aid the fighter by using his weapon or a flame strike. There is no rule that the cleric should aid the fighter by casting cure light wounds.

 

[Henry]

I have to wonder how many people who hate the idea of a non-healing based Clerics actually play clerics themselves? In any case, my feelings on the matter can be summed up pretty easilly.

It may also be true that I am biased by the fact that clerics are one of my all-time favorite classes to play. I've played Helmite Guardians, Priests of Death, Evangelistic Proselytizers of St. Cuthbert, and Druids of Silvanus and Mielikki, and even Kender clerics of Mishakal, so I've played all over the spectrum of clerical personalities. Never has the issue of clerical healing come up, because if healing more than I can provide was needed, we sought out other means, from potions to scrolls to wands to extra clerics, or we RAN AWAY.

 

[Aaron L]

Id only be upset if the cleric was the only source of healing available and he let me die instead of deigning to heal me. But usually we actually dont have a cleric, becase weve never forced someone to play a cleric if they didnt want to. Or a fighter, or a wizard. If someone plays a cleric, its becaus they want to and no other reason.


Reminds me of an all cleric party we had back in 1E. We were all missionaries exploring the newly opened southern jungle reagions.

Well, I was a half-elven fighter/cleric/mage, but I was still a cleric. Uziel Valar. Really cool character.

 

[green slime]

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.

I see more arguments over rules than the way people play their characters. Maybe we should ban rules?

I've seen rogues suddenly refuse to go for traps, because they "have a bad feeling about this one". I've seen tanks beg to get burnt, because they "know" they can stand the heat better than the opposition surrounding them. Clerics bicker about theological details in the middle of battle.

Yet all the players present were having fun. Despite the in game incriminations. Guess it comes down to playing with friends.

 

[Krelios]

Before all other concerns, your character must do his bloody job in the party. The cleric must heal, the fighter must hack in melee, the rogue must be stealthy on command, and the wizard/sorcerer must blast monsters to pieces. If your PC can't do his job, then he's worthless in actual play and he has no place at the table. You can be as unique and precious a snowflake as you like, so long as you still do what you're expected to do when you're expected to do it. Otherwise, get lost.

Whatever happened to the DM allowing the players to play whatever they want and designing adventures that are challenging to them without exploiting obvious weaknesses to the point where it's no fun?

I've DM'd parties with no divine casters at all and they did just fine. I think that players can make up anything they want, it doesn't have to be "optimized for combat," and it's my job to make sure that works.

 

[Mercule]

I think part of the argument is whether the rest of the group is gamist or dramatist. If the group is looking at their characters as playing pieces on a board -- i.e. set up the stats/abilities as best you can to face your challenges -- then the cleric should probably fill a gamist role, which may mean he gets stuck healing.

On the other hand, if the group is more interested in character motivation and telling a story, then the group needs to accept that the cleric will be motivated by his deity's ideals and personality. That may mean not using much healing, or even prepping oddball spells. But, then, this group is liable to find more fun in that than in crushing skulls, anyway.

Something else to remember, though, for the gamist group, is that there is more than one legitimate/solid build for most character classes. Just as you can make a fighter who is either a tank or an archer (among other roles), you can make a cleric who is support/medic or a skull-crusher.

A player who wants to play the skull-crusher cleric hasn't violated any "trust" or "position" any more than the guy who plays the archer has. Further, the guy who plays a skull-crusher cleric when the party needs a healer hasn't violated his "position" any more than did the guy who played the fighter (or rogue, wizard, etc.) when the party needed a healer.

Obviously, he doesn't really feel like filling the role of "medic". If you think it's so bloody important, maybe you need to suck it up and play it. If you don't want to, then accept that you're just trying to get another player to sacrifice his fun for yours.

And, yup, I've been in a group where the cleric just said, "I'm not that kind of cleric." It was in RtToEE and it was tough. Of course, there were some other issues that made our life tough, too.

 

[Desdichado]

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."

I'm gonna take a fairly strong stand against one side of the argument here: nothing personal, but I've got strong beliefs about this, and since I game for fun, the beliefs are all the stronger. I'm not likely to sacrifice my fun for "the good of the game;" I'll quit playing first. If I were that guy mentioned in the quote above, I'd almost certainly drop out of the game post haste. I'm a strong believer in the concept that it's the DM'S JOB to make sure that the players can -- within some obvious limitations -- play the characters THEY want to. His job is to tie them together, and help all the players make sure that the group isn't so diverse that they have no reason to work on the same goals as a party, but it is NOT to say, "well, we need a cleric for healing, so someone's gonna have to suck it up and play one."

To me, that's a sign of rigidity and is a clear red flag of BAD DMing. No thanks. Count me out of that campaign.

There are plenty of easy solutions that don't require a cleric, all the way from a rich patron of the party who provides them with more potions than normal, to a cleric cohort after a level or two, to even a cleric NPC. Or, you can get even more drastic; I adopted a rule from Unearthed Arcana that had armor convert some portion of "real" damage to subdual damage, changed the Heal skill to work like Treat Injury in d20 Modern and had Action Points that could be burned for "Insto-Stabilize" in one campaign. Those three minor changes completely eliminated the need for a cleric.

If nobody wants to play a cleric, or the cleric character isn't the cliched "walking first aid kit" (which is probably the most boring role I can imagine in D&D) then in my opinion, neither the DM nor the group has ANY BUSINESS WHATSOEVER telling the other players either what they should play or how they should play it. That's crossing the line over what their responsibility vis a viz the other players is, and by a lot, IMO.

 

[ThirdWizard]

The problem is, all clerics are good at healing (admittedly assuming postive energy channelling cleric). If someone dies and the cleric could have saved him with a well placed cure spell, but opted not to because he doesn't like healing, then that cleric is putting his own fun ahead of the others.

So, while I understand that its okay to play a cleric to whom healing isn't a major schtick, and I have one in my game (half ogre barbarian/cleric), if you're a cleric there are certain circumstances in which you're just going to have to heal during battle. Remember, after that first PC goes down, things usually get much much harder. It's like dominoes.