The reason for the cleric class' lack of popularity?

[HighlandsBear]

I was thinking about this when the 4e classes thread came up. At first I didn't like the idea of just 3 classes by reducing all spellcasters into one generic class, but really on a historical level didn't they all come from the same source? For example, shamans had totem animals, gods had animals they were associated with, and then witches and wizards had familiars. Maybe they are just the same class at different points in time.

The modern fantasy wizard might be more of an oddity as his/her power is more like a scholar/scientist than supernaturally granted. There were fields like alchemy, astrology, and golem legends where knowledge about the world was the key, but did they stand out as a whole class? In celtic and norse myths bards, heros, and druids are given powers by the gods, in the middle ages you still have deals with the devil (or maybe continuing with the old pagan deities from their own point of view), and so on. In fantasy lit Gandalf continues this with his supernatural background and little emphasis on his having to learn his trade. Maybe its only D&D where wizards learning their spells are more common than priests with granted powers!

 

[Frostmarrow]

-Tuck. Tuck's a cleric/rogue of sorts. I always liked him a lot.

 

[fusangite]

Well, here I'm going to do the opposite of what I seem to have been saying elsewhere on ENWorld this week. I believe the unpopularity of the cleric has little to do with its lack of popularity in post-enlightenment literature.

The cleric is unpopular because when you play one, just when you get to the moment in the combat where you can start dealing some serious damage, you have to rush over and heal someone. During many combats, even though you have the power to do something exciting and damage-dealing, you turn into a field medic and spend your time treating your allies' wounds while they have all the fun of bashing the enemy to pieces.

WOTC does its best to compensate clerics for this by making them by far the most powerful class.

 

[Psion]

Maybe he should've replaced clerics with favoured souls (from Complete Divine).

Don't think I didn't mention it (actually, I mentioned the spontaneous casting rules in the UA, but the principle is the same: balance spontanous casting with a shorter list of known spells.)

 

[Gentlegamer]

There are no clerics in LotR. There are warriors and wizards (even if you can argue that these wizards are rather like D&D's solars than like a character class). There are, arguably, thieves.

Gandalf the White and Elrond were Clerics. Aragorn displays some clerical healing ability: "The Hands of the King are the Hands of Healer." None of these are precisely the kind you would think of as a D&D cleric, but an examination of their actions and outlook reveals that they do conform, within the context of Middle-earth, to the cleric character class.

 

[fusangite]

Gandalf the White and Elrond were Clerics. Aragorn displays some clerical healing ability: "The Hands of the King are the Hands of Healer." None of these are precisely the kind you would think of as a D&D cleric, but an examination of their actions and outlook reveals that they do conform, within the context of Middle-earth, to the cleric character class.

I think your definition of cleric needs to be explained before you can make this case. If, by cleric, you mean "person with the capacity to heal," then you can make that case but that's not what cleric means. I think you're confusing necessary conditions with sufficient conditions here -- just because being able to heal is a necessary condition for people to be D&D clerics does not mean that all people with the capacity to heal are therefore D&D clerics. Indeed, by your apparent reasoning, bards, paladins and druids are clerics.

 

[Storyteller01]

That's the very reason some people I game with take the cleric (or paladins, for that matter).

The main reason not to play a cleric is because most people don't want to serve the party (as in: roleplayers more often than not want to accomplish something, not merely be the party healer).

Or at least want their own 15 minutes of fame. Hard to do if your buffing the three main powerhouses.

 

[Southern Oracle]

I've found over the years that players avoid the cleric class because of the learning curve. With a massive list of spells at each level, in order to be truly effective, a player has to be familiar with those spells. Very few people, in my experience, have the patience and dedication to do so. Most just settle for healing spells, as that's what's "expected."

I've been trying to think of all the fantasy books I've read over the years, and I can't pin down any with clerics in them that aren't directly related to D&D. There are plenty with gods, though...even Fritz Leiber's short stories had appearances by gods (although they were so limited in their activities that they would be laughable by D&D standards). And I'm reminded of the Saturday morning kid's show Isis, where she uttered a prayer every time she flew or generated a weather effect. That's clerical behavior.

We do have clerics in real life, although only those in the Bible are attributed with any "magical" abilities (Moses is the most obvious). Perhaps the D&D cleric is just an evolution of the real world cleric, giving demonstrable results to a subset of society that in real life needs no proof that faith is justified.

 

[Whimsical]

There is no real fantasy archetypes for clerics. It's all biblically inspired.

Plus, clerics are the most popular class to have another player play.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I think your definition of cleric needs to be explained before you can make this case. If, by cleric, you mean "person with the capacity to heal," then you can make that case but that's not what cleric means. I think you're confusing necessary conditions with sufficient conditions here -- just because being able to heal is a necessary condition for people to be D&D clerics does not mean that all people with the capacity to heal are therefore D&D clerics. Indeed, by your apparent reasoning, bards, paladins and druids are clerics.

I'm not predicating the definition of cleric on the magical ability to heal. For the record, druids ARE clerics . . . in my book, and according to AD&D.

Something to keep in mind is how magic works in Middle-earth. There is essentially sanctioned and unsanction magic. Unsanctioned magic is associated with "power" . . the Rings of Power, and so on. Galadriel admonishes Sam that he uses the term "magic" for both what she does and "the deceits of the enemy." Clearly, there is a basic dicotomy between magic types in Middle-earth. Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel use sanctioned magic. This kind of magic is principally supportive, filling the role of the cleric character class in D&D.

Specifically, Gandalf the White excorsised the influence of Wormtongue and Saurman from King Theoden and turned undead with his rays of light against the Nazgul, as well as stopping the Witch-king from entering Minas Tirith. Elrond is famous as a healer in Middle-earth, and not in the physician sense of the term.

Also, Sauron is probably not more than a 5th level magic-user, in AD&D terms . . .