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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libramarian" data-source="post: 5874406" data-attributes="member: 6688858">This word "force" you are using...doesn't mean anything.Of course a party should be worse off without a cleric, just as they should be worse off without any class.At what point is a party "forced" to bring a cleric? I don't know. When the game is literally unplayable without one I guess. But that would never happen.I suspect what you mean is you don't want to "feel" forced to have a cleric. But different people have different sensitivities to that.Personally, I don't mind making difficult choices sometimes.  Like...do I want a damage spell or do I want a  healing spell that lessens the chance one of my allies will unexpectedly  die. Do I trade that risk, and the associated social reproach for more  damage and the associated social showing off. I don't think that this choice is so bad. Yes it involves other people making judgements on your play, but that's kind of the point of games in general. It's not an objectively good thing to make clerics less useful, because  it works both ways -- it allows people who don't really like clerics in  the first place to have more fun, but it lessens the fun of people who  actually like to play a class that contributes largely by helping  others. Sacrificing one's own opportunity to be flashy and do a lot of damage in  order to help one's allies is the "cleric feel". That's what the class  should be about -- altruism. Of course the class should be balanced so that it is actually better for  the group as a whole that the cleric focuses on helping allies rather  than hurting enemies. But it doesn't need to be wildly tipped in that  direction. Evil damage-oriented clerics should be viable. And remember that part of  the cleric benefit is managing HP  attrition to spread out risk. Like diversifying your portfolio. The  cleric makes it less likely that any individual party member will  unexpectedly die. That's a useful benefit that doesn't show up if you're  just looking at the effect of a cleric on overall party vs. party HP  attrition.</blockquote>

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